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!!
Saturday, April 16, 2011
Doing drugs as a family
All four of us are on amoxicillin for the next week or so. When Travis got so sick last week with apparently the same thing I had, he went to the doctor and got a strep diagnosis. So I went, thinking maybe I was still carrying it, and I was positive too! We got the girls checked, and while they never actually got sick (Emily had no fever, but her glands were swollen to the point that the doctor was impressed that she wasn't complaining about them) they were both carriers, too. SO! A round of meds for all, and new toothbrushes, too. Why not? This was a particularly nasty germ - my mom had it, my brother, and my sister and her girls all had it. I guess that means I must hang out with my family of origin quite a bit!
We were going to go up to the VEISHEA parade today, but we thought that taking the girls out in 40-degree weather with a 25 mph wind might not be the guarantee of a good time. So, another quiet weekend at home for us!
I am most excited about the video I took of Emily singing along with the piano the other night.
Immediately after we recorded it, she turned to me and said, "I don't want to do that again." :) I guess that was my cue to tone down the stagemom-like pride that welled up in me upon hearing her sing! The craziest thing about this is that Audrey is matching pitch, too! Although her regular babble is pretty lyrical, there's definitely a difference between that and her singing, and if I sing while I'm holding her, she can match pitch -- IF I'm not paying attention. She's such a stinker. :) If you try to interactively do it with her, she just looks at you with her big blue eyes, waiting for you to go back to something else so she can practice without an audience.
Another nice surprise yesterday - Emily called to me from the other room, exclaiming that she had just written her name! Neither Trav nor I have been working with her on writing letters, except that I knew she could do an "E" and copy letters for Mom and Dad pretty nicely. So I was quite surprised to see her whole name spelled out on the magnadoodle! When Trav got home from work, she wrote it out again for him, except she started with the Y and worked backwards. :) So she's not totally there yet, but boy is she proud of herself.
I sure like bragging about my kids. Nice that I have a truly appreciative audience for this blog!
We were going to go up to the VEISHEA parade today, but we thought that taking the girls out in 40-degree weather with a 25 mph wind might not be the guarantee of a good time. So, another quiet weekend at home for us!
I am most excited about the video I took of Emily singing along with the piano the other night.
Immediately after we recorded it, she turned to me and said, "I don't want to do that again." :) I guess that was my cue to tone down the stagemom-like pride that welled up in me upon hearing her sing! The craziest thing about this is that Audrey is matching pitch, too! Although her regular babble is pretty lyrical, there's definitely a difference between that and her singing, and if I sing while I'm holding her, she can match pitch -- IF I'm not paying attention. She's such a stinker. :) If you try to interactively do it with her, she just looks at you with her big blue eyes, waiting for you to go back to something else so she can practice without an audience.
Another nice surprise yesterday - Emily called to me from the other room, exclaiming that she had just written her name! Neither Trav nor I have been working with her on writing letters, except that I knew she could do an "E" and copy letters for Mom and Dad pretty nicely. So I was quite surprised to see her whole name spelled out on the magnadoodle! When Trav got home from work, she wrote it out again for him, except she started with the Y and worked backwards. :) So she's not totally there yet, but boy is she proud of herself.
I sure like bragging about my kids. Nice that I have a truly appreciative audience for this blog!
Sunday, April 10, 2011
Spring spring spring!
Ahhhh how glad I am that it's finally, really, truly spring!! Green grass under my toes, warm breeze on my face, and as Emily says, "No coats!!" The girls were outside all morning today, playing on swings and slides and the sandbox and looking at flowers... it's great!
The downer of the weekend: Travis got sick today. He's going to go to the doctor tomorrow, rather than suffer for several days like I did, to see if it's strep, since that's what my sister and her girls had. And if it's positive, I might get the rest of our family checked anyway to see if me or one of the girls is a carrier. I feel bad for Trav, because if he's got what I had, it's really awful! And he's got allergies besides, which makes it hard for him to sleep. And just when it's finally blooming and wonderful outside, and it seems like we can actually go out and do stuff, he's set back.
We had a really nice weekend up until he hit his wall, though. Relaxing, not much going on. The house is a disaster but i just can't bring myself to change it because it'll just be a disaster again as soon as I turn around. I did a bit of spring cleaning upstairs today, which seems better because it isn't being actively "undone" as soon as I turn around. Which reminds me of something funny: Audrey likes to get ahold of Trav's car keys that he keeps in his top nightstand drawer. The girls and I were upstairs one day, and Trav was downstairs when he heard the car out in the garage start up -- since it has remote start!! Funny girl!
The supper that I made tonight was really awesome. I haven't googled yet to see if it was truly an original recipe, but it was fantastic. Sausage, apples, onions, peppers, corn, and fried potatoes. Simple, but so good. I think that I could write recipes the way I could write music: somewhat basic themes, actually quite lovely sounding/tasting, somewhat original but mostly just a pleasant variation on something that someone else has done before. And, I enjoy it but I'm noncomittal enough about it that I really don't care to share the results with anyone outside my immediate circle of trusted parties.
I think I'm out of my post-vacation funk, finally. The girls seem to be doing better too. Emily napped on Friday, which was great because we ended up staying out late (8:45! ha!) with friends and although Audrey was on my lap with a blanket when she got tired, Emily just kept going full steam. But, they're both really back in the normal routine, which makes everyday stuff better. I'm solidly back on Iowa time, and so far I've successfully fought back my gloomy funk from earlier in the week. Today, I made a list of stuff to do next week, which means I'm really back and ready to dig in!!
The downer of the weekend: Travis got sick today. He's going to go to the doctor tomorrow, rather than suffer for several days like I did, to see if it's strep, since that's what my sister and her girls had. And if it's positive, I might get the rest of our family checked anyway to see if me or one of the girls is a carrier. I feel bad for Trav, because if he's got what I had, it's really awful! And he's got allergies besides, which makes it hard for him to sleep. And just when it's finally blooming and wonderful outside, and it seems like we can actually go out and do stuff, he's set back.
We had a really nice weekend up until he hit his wall, though. Relaxing, not much going on. The house is a disaster but i just can't bring myself to change it because it'll just be a disaster again as soon as I turn around. I did a bit of spring cleaning upstairs today, which seems better because it isn't being actively "undone" as soon as I turn around. Which reminds me of something funny: Audrey likes to get ahold of Trav's car keys that he keeps in his top nightstand drawer. The girls and I were upstairs one day, and Trav was downstairs when he heard the car out in the garage start up -- since it has remote start!! Funny girl!
The supper that I made tonight was really awesome. I haven't googled yet to see if it was truly an original recipe, but it was fantastic. Sausage, apples, onions, peppers, corn, and fried potatoes. Simple, but so good. I think that I could write recipes the way I could write music: somewhat basic themes, actually quite lovely sounding/tasting, somewhat original but mostly just a pleasant variation on something that someone else has done before. And, I enjoy it but I'm noncomittal enough about it that I really don't care to share the results with anyone outside my immediate circle of trusted parties.
I think I'm out of my post-vacation funk, finally. The girls seem to be doing better too. Emily napped on Friday, which was great because we ended up staying out late (8:45! ha!) with friends and although Audrey was on my lap with a blanket when she got tired, Emily just kept going full steam. But, they're both really back in the normal routine, which makes everyday stuff better. I'm solidly back on Iowa time, and so far I've successfully fought back my gloomy funk from earlier in the week. Today, I made a list of stuff to do next week, which means I'm really back and ready to dig in!!
Wednesday, April 6, 2011
San Francisco
I did it. I went on vacation without my children!!!
Trav and I left Friday morning for San Francisco, and left Emily and Audrey with his mom for the weekend. They went up to my sister's house in Ames on Saturday for Julie's birthday party, had a great time, then spent the rest of the weekend in Barnum. All parties, though exhausted, agreed it was a lot of fun and are willing to go for repeat circumstances on a future weekend.
Emily and I are outside as I write this, while Audrey naps. Emily is on her newly constructed swingset, learning how to pump her legs to make herself go. It's a beautiful day, and I just killed a wasp out on my porch, so I'm feeling pretty pumped up myself. It's been hard getting back in the routine of things, though. I remember wondering why my sister, after 4 days of Ragbrai, was so sluggish to get back into Mom-mode, and now I am living it. It's hard! I feel bad that the girls are having a bit of a tough time too, remembering what the rules of the house used to be and are again. Emily sat in the corner 3 times yesterday and once today. But, I've forgotten just how frequently they need to eat, so now that we've gotten a good lunch in her tummy, things are better. And I'll be more consistent with things, once I remember how. It obviously was a good vacation!!
We stayed with my college roommate Rachel for Friday night and Saturday night, eating fabulous food at local restaurants and drinking good wine, laughing about ridiculous stuff and feeling young again. I like knowing that the interesting people that I knew when I was young are still interesting, and therefore I must have been interesting at one point, too. On Sunday, we met up with Travis's cousin Kari and her daughter Allison, and they took us to Muir Park and over the Golden Gate Bridge. It was really, really fun. Allison is 2, and by that point, I was missing my girls so much that it was hard to not just "mother" her in spite of myself. I kept it together, except for one very snuggley hug that got a little out of hand. :) I took Tuesday off from work, even though we were back on Monday night, and I'm glad I did because the girls and I needed to ease back into our routine a bit.
I'm so glad it's finally spring. The porch is easily warm enough every day that it's sunny, and the girls are loving to be outside. The basement is done now, too, so we've got loads of room for these two little girls. If we just keep things picked up a bit, it'll continue to feel spacious. But again, I'm still not quite back up to full steam after vacation, so I just try not to step on things and break them. :)
Trav and I left Friday morning for San Francisco, and left Emily and Audrey with his mom for the weekend. They went up to my sister's house in Ames on Saturday for Julie's birthday party, had a great time, then spent the rest of the weekend in Barnum. All parties, though exhausted, agreed it was a lot of fun and are willing to go for repeat circumstances on a future weekend.
Emily and I are outside as I write this, while Audrey naps. Emily is on her newly constructed swingset, learning how to pump her legs to make herself go. It's a beautiful day, and I just killed a wasp out on my porch, so I'm feeling pretty pumped up myself. It's been hard getting back in the routine of things, though. I remember wondering why my sister, after 4 days of Ragbrai, was so sluggish to get back into Mom-mode, and now I am living it. It's hard! I feel bad that the girls are having a bit of a tough time too, remembering what the rules of the house used to be and are again. Emily sat in the corner 3 times yesterday and once today. But, I've forgotten just how frequently they need to eat, so now that we've gotten a good lunch in her tummy, things are better. And I'll be more consistent with things, once I remember how. It obviously was a good vacation!!
We stayed with my college roommate Rachel for Friday night and Saturday night, eating fabulous food at local restaurants and drinking good wine, laughing about ridiculous stuff and feeling young again. I like knowing that the interesting people that I knew when I was young are still interesting, and therefore I must have been interesting at one point, too. On Sunday, we met up with Travis's cousin Kari and her daughter Allison, and they took us to Muir Park and over the Golden Gate Bridge. It was really, really fun. Allison is 2, and by that point, I was missing my girls so much that it was hard to not just "mother" her in spite of myself. I kept it together, except for one very snuggley hug that got a little out of hand. :) I took Tuesday off from work, even though we were back on Monday night, and I'm glad I did because the girls and I needed to ease back into our routine a bit.
I'm so glad it's finally spring. The porch is easily warm enough every day that it's sunny, and the girls are loving to be outside. The basement is done now, too, so we've got loads of room for these two little girls. If we just keep things picked up a bit, it'll continue to feel spacious. But again, I'm still not quite back up to full steam after vacation, so I just try not to step on things and break them. :)
Sunday, March 27, 2011
Seriously, Stop!!
Travis and I have spent the weekend wondering what it will take to get Emily to actually stop doing something with verbal instruction alone. She cannot STOP if we tell her to. There were several instances this weekend where I told her to stop and she wouldn't; everything from getting something out of the pantry that she thought would be helpful, to dragging Audrey across the floor because she didn't want her to be where she was. If she's in the middle of an activity, it takes actual physical interaction to get her to stop, not just the threat of physical interaction, she must be forcibly stopped. No kind of verbal communication will do - I can use any language at any decibel level and any tone of voice, and she only hears that she should stop when she's done. It's infuriating, it's annoying, it's actually dangerous, and it's driving me NUTS, almost more than the constant Why's!! What do I do?! She's almost 3 1/2 now; is that really too much to expect of her?? Tomorrow we're going to try some Simon Says kinds of things, just for practice following directions like hop on one foot, STOP, spin in circles, STOP, things like that. I figure that'll be fun, or at least harmless if it doesn't help.
I managed to catch some kind of nasty bug this weekend. Friday, I was knocked on my back by it; my throat hurt so much I could hardly swallow, but not because it was red or raw, but rather because the glands in my neck were so swollen. I had such a bad fever that I was ridiculously bundled up all weekend, multiple layers of pants and socks, and wearing a blanket around the house like an invalid. This morning, though, I felt human again. The seemingly insurmountable list of things to do that I had realized the night before was actually quite do-able, and I had most of it done by 10:30. (I guess I never did get the fridge cleaned out, but hey, who really wants to do that anyway? :) ) Things really do fall apart around here when I'm out of service, which actually was probably part of the behavior issues we had this weekend. If I'm not bringing my A game, Emily knows it. I swept up probably 2 Cups of crumbs and food off the dining room floor this morning - yuck!! And I really didn't feel like eating, so supper last night was particularly awful; Trav said it was in the bottom five meals I've ever made (though I don't know if that counts things like tuna casserole that he abhorrs. it might; it was pretty awful.). It probably would've been better if I could have stood up, but I was really incapable of anything except staggering from the couch to wherever Emily happened to be assaulting Audrey. Therefore, dinner was total crap, and Emily pitched a fit because she didn't want to eat it. Trav was a good sport and told her there was nothing else, so she should just suck it up and eat it (like he was doing, but didn't say!). Today, I'm feeling good enough that I can look back at that and laugh. :)
Audrey is busy these days proving that 1 really is wonderful. She's got the understanding to be cooperative, but not the self-will to make things difficult. Putting her to bed tonight was the kind of thing that most parents dream about, where she happily participatee in or initiated each step for bedtime, then gave me a super-sweet hug and indicated she was ready for her crib so I laid her down, kissed her, and left, and that was it. Amazing! Never will happen again, but I figured I'd document it so I don't wonder later it was a dream. She toddles around so adorably, and reading her a book is a hilarious passtime. The Spot books with the creatures hidden behind flaps are her favorite. She lifts the flap, points and shrieks, "DEH DAAAA!!!" Dinnertime is a complete disaster, but that's just that she's messy, not difficult about eating. And of course, she's gorgeous, even with her Justin Bieber hair in her eyes. She had my sister really laughing the other day, playing a game making faces at each other, sticking out tongues. Seriously, how could you not love this kid?!
Emily and I did several pages of her preschool workbook today. It's a hand-me-down from Megan, so maybe 1/3 of the pages are already done, and I didn't know if Emily would be ready to do any of it yet. We did several pages, and she was really getting the hang of circling the right answer, or drawing lines to connect like items. It's funny how that's a test-taking skill that a person has to learn. It took her 5 minutes to master, though, so, and in theory this book is supposed to cover everything to prepare a kid for Kindergarten, so I think I'll take my time stretching out its content for the next 18 months (ha!). Then again, she fell out of her chair at supper tonight while trying to reach something for Audrey. She fell really hard onto the floor, and it was one of those moments where you think, "What?? How did such a bright kid do something so dumb?" Happens a lot here. She'll go from singing beautiful songs with lovely pitch, to climbing the walls. Sometimes I look at her and realize she's kind of in an ugly duckling phase, with all this potential and beauty just waiting to break through the struggles that are a part of being 3. I love her so much!
I managed to catch some kind of nasty bug this weekend. Friday, I was knocked on my back by it; my throat hurt so much I could hardly swallow, but not because it was red or raw, but rather because the glands in my neck were so swollen. I had such a bad fever that I was ridiculously bundled up all weekend, multiple layers of pants and socks, and wearing a blanket around the house like an invalid. This morning, though, I felt human again. The seemingly insurmountable list of things to do that I had realized the night before was actually quite do-able, and I had most of it done by 10:30. (I guess I never did get the fridge cleaned out, but hey, who really wants to do that anyway? :) ) Things really do fall apart around here when I'm out of service, which actually was probably part of the behavior issues we had this weekend. If I'm not bringing my A game, Emily knows it. I swept up probably 2 Cups of crumbs and food off the dining room floor this morning - yuck!! And I really didn't feel like eating, so supper last night was particularly awful; Trav said it was in the bottom five meals I've ever made (though I don't know if that counts things like tuna casserole that he abhorrs. it might; it was pretty awful.). It probably would've been better if I could have stood up, but I was really incapable of anything except staggering from the couch to wherever Emily happened to be assaulting Audrey. Therefore, dinner was total crap, and Emily pitched a fit because she didn't want to eat it. Trav was a good sport and told her there was nothing else, so she should just suck it up and eat it (like he was doing, but didn't say!). Today, I'm feeling good enough that I can look back at that and laugh. :)
Audrey is busy these days proving that 1 really is wonderful. She's got the understanding to be cooperative, but not the self-will to make things difficult. Putting her to bed tonight was the kind of thing that most parents dream about, where she happily participatee in or initiated each step for bedtime, then gave me a super-sweet hug and indicated she was ready for her crib so I laid her down, kissed her, and left, and that was it. Amazing! Never will happen again, but I figured I'd document it so I don't wonder later it was a dream. She toddles around so adorably, and reading her a book is a hilarious passtime. The Spot books with the creatures hidden behind flaps are her favorite. She lifts the flap, points and shrieks, "DEH DAAAA!!!" Dinnertime is a complete disaster, but that's just that she's messy, not difficult about eating. And of course, she's gorgeous, even with her Justin Bieber hair in her eyes. She had my sister really laughing the other day, playing a game making faces at each other, sticking out tongues. Seriously, how could you not love this kid?!
Emily and I did several pages of her preschool workbook today. It's a hand-me-down from Megan, so maybe 1/3 of the pages are already done, and I didn't know if Emily would be ready to do any of it yet. We did several pages, and she was really getting the hang of circling the right answer, or drawing lines to connect like items. It's funny how that's a test-taking skill that a person has to learn. It took her 5 minutes to master, though, so, and in theory this book is supposed to cover everything to prepare a kid for Kindergarten, so I think I'll take my time stretching out its content for the next 18 months (ha!). Then again, she fell out of her chair at supper tonight while trying to reach something for Audrey. She fell really hard onto the floor, and it was one of those moments where you think, "What?? How did such a bright kid do something so dumb?" Happens a lot here. She'll go from singing beautiful songs with lovely pitch, to climbing the walls. Sometimes I look at her and realize she's kind of in an ugly duckling phase, with all this potential and beauty just waiting to break through the struggles that are a part of being 3. I love her so much!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)