Travis and I are going on vacation!
We are going to Thailand for a week! We are leaving the kids with grandparents (who are sharing the week) and going there for a traditional Indian wedding, along with Travis's brother and his wife. The wedding is friends who are closer to Mark and Lea than me and Travis, so I feel a bit like a tagalong, but I would say that Travis and Pranav have shared enough good times over the years that we're welcome. We are spending 2 days in Bangkok and 4 days at a resort where the wedding is, and the remaining 2 days are travel. It's crazy how long the flights are, and that it takes 24 hours to get there. But Travis will be doing essentially the same trip a month later when he goes to Singapore for work, so I guess that's just how it's done!
And wow, am I nervous. Travis says he is 0% nervous, which is good because he'll need to be in reassurance mode for the whole trip out there. I have basically 4 days left to get everything ready here at the house, and while I've made some good progress, there's a lot left to do that I can't really do ahead of time. But updating the blog was one of those things that I really wanted to get done, so here it goes! This time, Clara first!
Clara's words have blossomed over the past two months, and now we can really talk to her. I know that it won't be long before I'm tired of this, but right now I absolutely love to hear her little "no." It's so quick and small, with a big of "neo" to it. Very, very cute! She's got a lot of other words that sound alike, and you have to go off context to figure it out: "Odder" is both "water" and "Audrey," although she's getting the Y better for her sister now. "Besh" is both "berries" and "paci". "hock" is both "sock" and "hug". It's adorable to see her go through her baby book, pointing at pictures of her sisters and baby (Emily is "Emeee", and getting clearer all the time). She has a hard time with her own name, which is just unfortunate cuz R's and L's are hard to say and she's got both! so she's Cae-uh. Amanda thinks she said her name today, which was very exciting. The girl is so full of love. She kissed me on each cheek tonight, then nuzzled noses, and smooched me on the lips, just because she felt like it. She snuggles in the morning and after naps - so cozy!! And when I'm laying her down at bedtime, she sings along with the lullabies with much gusto, and she sounds SO good! She's got pitch! Yeah!! She's gotten REALLY good at puzzles over the past few weeks. The 9-piece wooden puzzles are a snap for her - he likes to hover the pieces over places they don't belong, and shake her head saying "noooo...." Got a good video of that! So fun to see her sense of humor coming out. She can now independently put together a 12-piece jigsaw puzzle that she's been working on for a few weeks, which is amazing. And she was learning to ride the little red and yellow balance bike tonight! She looked so grown up out on the sidewalk with her helmet on!! Ready to go off with the big kids! She knows now that she is not "baby," she is a "guhl."
Audrey is her amazing little self. She continues to read books like crazy and sing and wear ridiculous outfits and pretend to put on makeup using just about anything she can think of. I caught her using a piece of pipe cleaner on her eyelashes the other day, pretending it was a mascara brush (it really did look like one, in her defense, very clever). The biggest thing for her lately is her obsession with Tinkerbell. She wants to be her when she grows up. She howls in excitement whenever she sees something that is Tinkerbell Green. She flips when she talks about she has blue eyes and Tinkerbell has blue eyes. And the hem of her dress is jagged the way Tinkerbell's is. and on and on and on. It is an obsession if I've ever seen one. She is my outdoor rugged girl, though. She's ready to go out and kick a ball and swing on the swings, singing about what a wonderful day it is (thank god it's spring finally!!!!!!) She's probably ready for a pedal bike, so that'll be something fun to do this summer. She likes to snuggle with me on the couch and "play Spanish," which is something I'm doing using an app on my phone. I'd swear she's picking it up faster than I am, but true to her learning form, she won't let on that she knows. She just looks at me with those amazing blue eyes and smiles, but won't say. I hope her teachers understand that about her, because they may think she actually doesn't know. She does. Oh my gosh she does. I am saving the most hilarious project that she brought home from preschool. Her teacher asked her to draw a dinosaur, and she wrote her name in the middle of the page, alternating the colors of her letters in tinkerbell green, pink, purple, repeated. Then she didn't have room for a dinosaur, so she drew its tail coming in from the edge of the page, and told her teacher that the rest of the dinosaur is hiding. I hope future teachers don't think she's being a smartass when she does stuff like that, because it's insanely clever. And really, really funny!!! Hard to stay a step ahead of this girl!!
And Emily, who is running the show. Travis and I have talked about how confident we are in how she will help her grandparents find everything they need while they are here with the girls. She pays attention to everything and can be totally trusted with things. If this were 150 years ago, I'd totally leave the farm in her care. :) Which is why it's been so frustrating that she's had surprise poops lately, so out of character for someone like her. But I think we've finally gotten to the bottom of it (no pun intended!). She's such an intense person that she doesn't just hang out and relax long enough for things to move along naturally, so we created a daily schedule for her, and she's enthusiastically sticking with it, since we rolled it out as a total positive, "we're helping you be successful" kind of thing. She's been totally fine and confident with it ever since. Phew! She's been bringing home take-home reader books from school, and the first 5 or 6 were the kind of thing she had to work on. But the past few, she just flies through. She reads smoothly, she's not guessing so much, so the confidence just builds. I think she's starting to enjoy it now, and I KNOW she's enjoying writing. Her handwriting is so cute, and very legible and deliberate. She's a silly little girl, but very determined in her efforts. You've just gotta take her seriously, even if she's a lunatic 6YO!
I've been reading more and more about parenting philosophies, and I'm trying to back off and enjoy my kids from periphery a bit more. I don't need to be solving their problems - they can work out differences between each other (not Clara yet, of course). I don't need to be directing their play outside or downstairs in the basement, and if Emily wanders upstairs to do some writing or playing with her things in her desk, she should be able to do just that. I have supervised so much of their childhood that I want them to start getting a feel for safe independence around our house. It's crazy to think how grown up they are, that I'm now thinking about that instead of obsessing over nap schedules and what baby foods they will or won't eat. Emily is so very attached to me, that it's hardest for her - Clara actually will wander down to the basement and turn on the music without me even noticing!! - so it's nice to see her independence from school show up in some things at home too. I've decided that if there's a day that comes when my kids hate school, that their needs aren't being met, I'll be ready to pull them out and homeschool. They learn so much at home already that it'd be fun to give them the opportunity to put all that wasted downtime at school into something they're really interested in. And there's enough going on in Des Moines that I think it would be totally doable. If they're happy in school, great! When it sucks, well, life is too short to ask them to stick it out.
I am so bummed to miss Emily's school program next Monday. She has her cow costume all ready, and she's been practicing singing her songs around the house so much that I feel like I kind of know what I'm missing. But it really almost made me say we couldn't do the trip, seeing that I would miss it. It's silly, but it's a big deal, too, you know? She'll have her sisters and grandparents in the audience, so it'll be fine. But... But... *sigh*
I love my girls so much. It's fun to write about the details of who they are in this moment. I'm already looking forward to my first hugs with them after we get back from the trip!! I think I'll go take a peek at their beautiful sleeping faces right now. :)
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