Yesterday was about as nice a birthday as one could ask for. I woke up to the sound of Audrey singing pleasantly in her crib, and then the frantic pitterpatter of Emily sprinting into my room, shouting "Mom! It's your birthday!!!" We ate scrambed eggs and toast for breakfast, then I went for a 2-mile run, and showered. By the time I was through with that, Travis had cleaned up all of the kitchen and most of the toys. Emily helped me make an angel food cake in the afternoon, which turned out super tasty! This was my first try doing one from scratch, and my stand mixer made it SO easy. It was the first time I had ever had it cranked up to full speed, and man can that thing go! Emily didn't like how noisy it was, of course, but she sure liked licking the batter off of everything. I don't have any qualms letting her do that, since she only consumes about half of it and the rest goes on her face and hands and clothes. Anyway, I made a delicious supper and we ate the cake, and then put the kids in bed. Emily told me, as I was tucking her in, that we should've had people come over to celebrate my birthday, "like Jenny, and ... LOTSA people." I told her I spent the day with my favorite people, and that's all I needed to be really happy. "maybe another time..." isn't she sweet? Then Travis opened up a bottle of wine and I ate the sour patch kids he bought for me, and we watched some "Sunny in Philadelphia" episodes on DVD, and laughed ourselves silly. See? wasn't that a great day??
This afternoon, I'll be going to see the Des Moines Symphony, because I got a sweet deal on Groupon and the music looks like it'll be awesome - Shoshtakovich and Rachmaninoff. Yay! And tomorrow, Travis is taking the day off to attend a 15-minute hearing about the assessed value of our house for property taxes. Then we'll take the kids to the zoo, and hopefully get a few things planted in our garden in teh afternoon.
Audrey continues to crack me up with her expressive faces and babble. Still no definite words that I can decipher, but I sure understand what she's telling me. The other day, I was doing something silly in the kitchen while she and Emily were having their snack. I looked over at Audrey, and she said (my interpretation) "Mom, you're weird, don't do that anymore" while shaking her head, very seriously. Travis likes to ask her conflicting questions and laugh when she nods "yes" to everything he says.
And one of the great things about yesterday was seeing how many caring things Emily did throughout the day. It's fun to be able to recognize those things for her, and point out that she probably feels good because she did such a nice thing. Then, today I asked her how she felt when she look at Audrey crying after pushing her out of her way, and she said "not good." I am hoping that long-term this will do better for us than time-outs, although that option is still on the table for now. It's really remarkable how much there is to learn when growing up. It's nice for me to remember that it's a HUGE undertaking for little tiny people to tackle!
Speaking of that, Trav brought home a book from the library titled, "Mistakes Were Made (But Not By Me)." It was definitely out of character, I thought, but then he explained that he wanted to understand the topic in order to be an advantage at work (recovering from a failed project, dealing with people you disagree with, etc.) And then it made total sense, of course. It was good for me to read, too, to get a better understanding of some of the crazy stuff that's been going on in my extended family lately. I've been mulling over and over the way that Trav summed it up: "If you're going to do something because you're angry and you feel justified, then you're about to make a mistake." There was also a section about how different cultures approach learning differently, from an emphasis on getting everything right with no mistakes instead of allowing children to make as many mistakes as it takes for them to understand the right way. I might research that particular topic more, since I think my personality (or my upbringing?) tends towards the first, with getting it all right, no mistakes, and my kids might benefit from some of the other approach. It's interesting, anyway.
Sunday, May 15, 2011
Saturday, May 7, 2011
A fantastic day
Today was Poppo's 90th birthday. It was absolutely a great day. I went for a run this morning, and managed to keep the sideaches mostly at bay. I made muffins and scrambled eggs for breakfast, and my girls ate it up while singing together. It was awesome. We got ready and headed up to Ames, where we had lunch at my sister's house and Audrey had a brief nap. The girls were dressed in beautiful dresses, as were Jenny's girls, and we were in such great spirits.
The party was great. There was some angst amongst my mom and her sister trying to get things planned, but everything went great and I don't know when I've seen Mommo and Poppo happier. There were more than 100 people who came, maybe 150. The venue was the annex at the church, which is a funny building across the parking lot, a stage across the end of a big open room. That was all the girls needed to entertain themselves for at least half of the party. Sarah orchestrated the most hilarious play, where she was Cinderella and Emily was the prince. They danced, and then Sarah ran offstage, leaving Emily standing there looking after her, waiting for the next instruction. Then, a shoe is launched from offstage, since Cinderella forgets her glass slipper, but this was a white sandal, chucked from a distance, landing with a heavy thunk. Funniest thing I've seen on stage in a long, long time! Emily went to bed happily talking about how she was a prince who married Cinderella. :)
The girls slept all the way home, and after a lousy, simple supper, they played outside until collapsing happily in their beds. It was a really, really great day. Tomorrow is Mother's Day, but it'll be hard to top today.
The party was great. There was some angst amongst my mom and her sister trying to get things planned, but everything went great and I don't know when I've seen Mommo and Poppo happier. There were more than 100 people who came, maybe 150. The venue was the annex at the church, which is a funny building across the parking lot, a stage across the end of a big open room. That was all the girls needed to entertain themselves for at least half of the party. Sarah orchestrated the most hilarious play, where she was Cinderella and Emily was the prince. They danced, and then Sarah ran offstage, leaving Emily standing there looking after her, waiting for the next instruction. Then, a shoe is launched from offstage, since Cinderella forgets her glass slipper, but this was a white sandal, chucked from a distance, landing with a heavy thunk. Funniest thing I've seen on stage in a long, long time! Emily went to bed happily talking about how she was a prince who married Cinderella. :)
The girls slept all the way home, and after a lousy, simple supper, they played outside until collapsing happily in their beds. It was a really, really great day. Tomorrow is Mother's Day, but it'll be hard to top today.
Sunday, May 1, 2011
Spring spring spring!
What a beautiful weekend. Both days were fabulous outside, and it just makes me feel good to finally have the dreary, rainy, cold April overwith. Bring on MAY!! but not necessarily the 31st birthday. I'm okay without that...
Emily konked out pretty easily for bed tonight - we've had a crazy week, and weekend!! Wednesday, I took her (and Audrey) to Cici's pizza because her class was having a field trip there and she was sooooo excited about it. Thursday, the Iowa Cubs mascot showed up to her preschool, and although Emily is generally pretty scared of giant mascots, it turns out that "after all, I like Cubbie Bear!!" Friday was a picnic lunch for the preschoolers, but we had our picnic lunch with Megan instead. We went up to Ames in the morning to pick her up, and ate at a park in Ankeny on the way back to Des Moines for Emily's first ever SLEEPOVER. Can she really be old enough for that?? The great thing about a sleepover with girls this young is that they were so excited that they completely wore themselves out and were asleep by 8:30, without any reminders to quit giggling in their beds. Amazing. However, at 5:50 AM, the lights were flipped on in her room by little girls looking for a misplaced stuffed cat, and I highly doubt they went back to sleep after that. It was a really great weekend, and Emily is ready to have Megan stay over again tomorrow night. :)
It was pretty fun to see how Emily interacts with her class. Her teachers have to overemphasize some things to get all the kids to pay attention, and it's a little bit paralyzing for Emily. You would be hard pressed to pick her out as the youngest of the bunch, though, which was reassuring for me to see. I also liked seeing how much her teachers really like her, and like Audrey, who was confused to see them there but enjoyed being passed around to different people.
I suppose I'm going to sound like That Mom again, but I would swear that I've heard Audrey singing, really singing. Yesterday I thought I heard her matching pitch with one of her toys singing Old McDonald, but wrote it off as coincidence. Tonight, though, I was holding her while I was one-handedly perparing supper, and I distinctly heard her sing the first two lines of twinkle, twinkle. I swear I did. When I looked at her and asked her if she was singing, she did her little nod. Now, the nodding is adorable and generally I think she really is answering what i've asked her, but her answer is yes to probably 90% of the time, so there's that disclaimer. Anyway, she refused to do it again when i asked her to sing more, but i heard more of it later when she thought I wasn't listening. What a stinker! :) And I think I heard her chiming in with Megan and Emily yesterday, when I asked them to sing two songs while they were waiting for me to get ready to go ride bikes with them. They were so sweet, just looking at each other and singing together - it was beautiful. Even poetry, or lines from books that Audrey knows, will cause her to pause and calm down. If she's freaking out, I just calmly start in, "In the great green room, there was a telephone..." and by the time I get to three little bears sitting on chairs, I've got her rapt attention. Pretty handy! what an expressive, beautiful little thing she is!
And, oh yes, the bike!! Emily now has a Bike With Pedals! Travis found it on Craigslist for $10, and went all the way to Waukee one night after the girls were asleep to get it. It's perfect - it's hot pink and has training wheels, streamers on the handlebars and decals of ponies all over it. He hid it in the basement because the next morning he flew to North Carolina for work. He was back the next day, but she managed to find it while we were down there doing laundry. I felt SO bad, because Travis wanted to surprise her with it, but she was certainly surprised anyway. I got such a kick out of her telling Travis on the phone about what she had found, and that it was pink with pedals and "There are flowers on the... on the... where you put your bottom!" and the whole time while she was thinking of the words, she was patting her little backside. So cute!! Anyway, I think when she finally got to take it out to ride on Friday afternoon, she was a bit disillusioned that it was so much harder to pedal than she was anticipating. But she's a trooper - she was determined to figure it out! We took her and Megan (on Emily's balance bike) and Audrey (in the wagon) down to the church parking lot so she could have some room to not worry about traffic or falling off the sidewalk or rolling down a hill too quickly. It was one of those moments for me where I just couldn't believe how fast this little family is growing up. Pictures on picasa, of course.
Emily had Travis and me in stitches tonight. Trav has told the story about the guy who we hired to fix our basement, that was probably 80 years old and scolded us for not having a handrail. He told us (twice) a horrible story about a woman who fell down the stairs on christmas eve and died, so he makes sure everybody has a handrail now, in his deep voice saying, "Gotta have a handrail!" So tonight, when Emily saw Travis coming up the basement stairs, was going on in her little voice, yak yak yak yak, "I told you," then as low as she could, "You gotta have a handrail!" Writing it down makes it sound kind of lame but it was absolutely side-splitting to hear.
I wish, wish that I could think of everything I want to record when I sit down to blog. These girls do adorable things all the time, and sometimes I manage to get a FB post about it but mostly I just laugh and try to enjoy the moments as best I can. I gave the girls a little dish of ice cream after supper tonight, and later, I looked up to find them both holding their dishes up, drinking the last few drops. One pink bowl, one purple. I wish I could upload that mental picture!!
Emily konked out pretty easily for bed tonight - we've had a crazy week, and weekend!! Wednesday, I took her (and Audrey) to Cici's pizza because her class was having a field trip there and she was sooooo excited about it. Thursday, the Iowa Cubs mascot showed up to her preschool, and although Emily is generally pretty scared of giant mascots, it turns out that "after all, I like Cubbie Bear!!" Friday was a picnic lunch for the preschoolers, but we had our picnic lunch with Megan instead. We went up to Ames in the morning to pick her up, and ate at a park in Ankeny on the way back to Des Moines for Emily's first ever SLEEPOVER. Can she really be old enough for that?? The great thing about a sleepover with girls this young is that they were so excited that they completely wore themselves out and were asleep by 8:30, without any reminders to quit giggling in their beds. Amazing. However, at 5:50 AM, the lights were flipped on in her room by little girls looking for a misplaced stuffed cat, and I highly doubt they went back to sleep after that. It was a really great weekend, and Emily is ready to have Megan stay over again tomorrow night. :)
It was pretty fun to see how Emily interacts with her class. Her teachers have to overemphasize some things to get all the kids to pay attention, and it's a little bit paralyzing for Emily. You would be hard pressed to pick her out as the youngest of the bunch, though, which was reassuring for me to see. I also liked seeing how much her teachers really like her, and like Audrey, who was confused to see them there but enjoyed being passed around to different people.
I suppose I'm going to sound like That Mom again, but I would swear that I've heard Audrey singing, really singing. Yesterday I thought I heard her matching pitch with one of her toys singing Old McDonald, but wrote it off as coincidence. Tonight, though, I was holding her while I was one-handedly perparing supper, and I distinctly heard her sing the first two lines of twinkle, twinkle. I swear I did. When I looked at her and asked her if she was singing, she did her little nod. Now, the nodding is adorable and generally I think she really is answering what i've asked her, but her answer is yes to probably 90% of the time, so there's that disclaimer. Anyway, she refused to do it again when i asked her to sing more, but i heard more of it later when she thought I wasn't listening. What a stinker! :) And I think I heard her chiming in with Megan and Emily yesterday, when I asked them to sing two songs while they were waiting for me to get ready to go ride bikes with them. They were so sweet, just looking at each other and singing together - it was beautiful. Even poetry, or lines from books that Audrey knows, will cause her to pause and calm down. If she's freaking out, I just calmly start in, "In the great green room, there was a telephone..." and by the time I get to three little bears sitting on chairs, I've got her rapt attention. Pretty handy! what an expressive, beautiful little thing she is!
And, oh yes, the bike!! Emily now has a Bike With Pedals! Travis found it on Craigslist for $10, and went all the way to Waukee one night after the girls were asleep to get it. It's perfect - it's hot pink and has training wheels, streamers on the handlebars and decals of ponies all over it. He hid it in the basement because the next morning he flew to North Carolina for work. He was back the next day, but she managed to find it while we were down there doing laundry. I felt SO bad, because Travis wanted to surprise her with it, but she was certainly surprised anyway. I got such a kick out of her telling Travis on the phone about what she had found, and that it was pink with pedals and "There are flowers on the... on the... where you put your bottom!" and the whole time while she was thinking of the words, she was patting her little backside. So cute!! Anyway, I think when she finally got to take it out to ride on Friday afternoon, she was a bit disillusioned that it was so much harder to pedal than she was anticipating. But she's a trooper - she was determined to figure it out! We took her and Megan (on Emily's balance bike) and Audrey (in the wagon) down to the church parking lot so she could have some room to not worry about traffic or falling off the sidewalk or rolling down a hill too quickly. It was one of those moments for me where I just couldn't believe how fast this little family is growing up. Pictures on picasa, of course.
Emily had Travis and me in stitches tonight. Trav has told the story about the guy who we hired to fix our basement, that was probably 80 years old and scolded us for not having a handrail. He told us (twice) a horrible story about a woman who fell down the stairs on christmas eve and died, so he makes sure everybody has a handrail now, in his deep voice saying, "Gotta have a handrail!" So tonight, when Emily saw Travis coming up the basement stairs, was going on in her little voice, yak yak yak yak, "I told you," then as low as she could, "You gotta have a handrail!" Writing it down makes it sound kind of lame but it was absolutely side-splitting to hear.
I wish, wish that I could think of everything I want to record when I sit down to blog. These girls do adorable things all the time, and sometimes I manage to get a FB post about it but mostly I just laugh and try to enjoy the moments as best I can. I gave the girls a little dish of ice cream after supper tonight, and later, I looked up to find them both holding their dishes up, drinking the last few drops. One pink bowl, one purple. I wish I could upload that mental picture!!
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