Rosie’s turning 3

Happy birthday to Rosie! On Saturday, she’ll be 3.

Rosie is a character.  Today, we shared fruit and a croissant at the Art Café. She sat across from me with her hands folded on her knees, a little smile on her face. “Well,” she said. “This is a lovely snack.”

She chats from morning to night, a steady stream of related and unrelated thoughts: “Last time, it was Halloween at scoowal and I weared my skeleton costume, and Luca said to me, “hey, badoinky face! And I said, that’s silly Luca because he’s my friend and he’s a silly guy!” The story pauses so she can belly laugh, showing those little teeth with the spaces between. “Is that funny?”

Sometimes, Nora laughs with me after Rosie’s long-winded monologues. “Rosie, you’re just so cute, I can’t take it. Oh, Rosie, I just love you. I love you more than infinity!” Other times, she’s not into it. “Rosie! Yesterday wasn’t Halloween! And you weren’t even a skeleton for Halloween!”

Rosie’s favorite game at the moment is: “Can you make this guy talk?” She’s moved on a little bit from pretending that she herself is the character to bringing all of the inanimate object in our house to life. She will hand you anything—a stuffed elephant, a play doh flower, a stick. “Can you make this guy talk, and then I’ll make the other guy talk?” This happens nonstop throughout the day, so when I’m trying to clean the dishes, I’ll try to make the sponge talk. Sometimes this works and sometimes it doesn’t. “No, sit over here, no right heeeare! And you be the Mommy and this guy will be the baby and it will be night night time, okaaay?”

She gets so engrossed in her make pretend, that she never wants to move on from an activity. When we must move on, Rosie freaks out. She can be a dramatic little person, screaming, “No!!!!!” and flopping around. “No, no, no, no, this is not-a-great-day-today.” I have to crawl over and under jungle gyms to retrieve Rosie and carry her, flailing, to the car. This is a challenge. I am trying to figure out how to set the limits for her, to be clear with my expectations, to decide which battles to choose, to know when to distract and when to teach, and to give her opportunities to feel in control. Sometimes, I do these things well, and sometimes, I don’t.

Rosie and Nora fight like sisters do, and it is usually because they would like to play the game in two different ways. Nora is often more logical, possibly because of her age—while she also thrives on make pretend, she likes for the game to be somewhat consistent with reality. “Rosie, if it’s a Zumba class, we don’t wear tutus. Zumba is not ballet.”

“Yes, we do.”

“No we don’t, Rosie!”

“Yes, we do.”

“No. We. Don’t!!!!”

“Yes. We. Do!!!!”

Etc., etc, etc.

I am shocked when they occasionally work it out on their own.

Nora: “Well, I guess you can borrow my pink tutu.”

Rosie in a high voice. “Oooh! That would be so very nice.”

Nora’s big sister voice is funny to me. She sort of drops her chin, lowers her voice and says, “Rosie. That isn’t true. Frogs don’t have wings. They’re amphibians and they live in the water.”

Rosie, usually flitting around the room, humming a little song: “Yes, it is. Because today was my bertday and I said, I’m not eating anything today and you said, oh yes you are! And I’m going to decorate your arm or you will have a time out.”

Nora scoffs, not even looking up from whatever she’s doing: “Rosie. That doesn’t make any sense.”

Oh, they are just so interesting. I’m not always able to appreciate it, because sometimes, I just want them to stop fighting and play nice. Sometimes, I don’t feel like “making this guy talk” because I need to move through the day: give them bath, get them dinner, get Nora in her leotard and tights and get back out the door to dance. We spend a lot of time cleaning, getting them out the door, getting them back in the door and getting them to bed.  It so nice when I’m able to pause, play, and observe them.

That’s why I want to write it all down, so I can have a little distance to sit back and enjoy the moments.  And they’re good at pulling me out of my to-dos to make sure I’m paying attention to their cuteness. Rosie sat next to me at the playground yesterday and said, “Well, it is a beautiful day, today.”

I’m really proud of them, and in awe of how they’re growing.

Happy, happy 3^rd birthday to sweet Rosie!

Thanks for reading!

Baby clothes collage

Thought I’d share my little idea with you. It was definitely time to give the baby clothes away, but I had a hard time letting go. I went through a very special, emotional process,  holding up onesie after onesie, mystified that my girls could ever fit into those clothes and by the whole thing– that at one time the girls didn’t exist, and then they did, and then, I put them in those teenie onesies and took them for walks in the carrier and nursed them and rocked them to sleep. Now, my girls are huge, and they just keep getting huge-er, and they do their activities like soccer and dance, and they have their own very strong opinions about everything, and they say things that I didn’t teach them to say. Nora is especially big now. She’s a real kid– nothing babyish about her.

It was stupid for me to let bagfuls of baby clothes collect dust in my house when another little baby could be looking adorable in them. Most of the clothes were hand-me-downs from my sister, and I really appreciated having them. So, now friends will create their own memories and go through their own special, emotional processes of letting go when the time comes, and then they might give the clothes to another friend who might go through that special, emotional process too, and it will be this endless cycle as the clothes continue to circulate from mom to mom until the end of time.

Maybe that’s dramatic.

The point is, I came up with this idea to create a collage of some of my favorite clothes. I’m thinking I’ll make a print of this for the girls’ rooms. Although, this is definitely more for me than for them. Each image tells a story for me. If you’re nostalgic like me, maybe this idea will appeal you. 😉

Here it is:

You A Chicken For REEAL

If you were to walk by our house, you’d probably hear children singing “How Far I Go,” from Moana in very loud, (and nasally) voices. “When the sky from the light from the sky meets the sea, it calls me! Now I KNOOOOWW how far it GOOOOOs!” Nora and Rosie are obsessed with this movie, (and they’ve only seen it once), to the point that I decided we had to cool it with the soundtrack to give their brains a break. It was the ONLY thing Rosie talked about for awhile. She really hasn’t watched THAT much TV– okay more than what I let Nora watch at this age. Poor second child. She just absorbs TV unlike anything else. She started telling random kids on the playground, “We watched Moana and it was scaahwy. Moana and uuuummm Heihei  and uuuummm Maui is funny. Um. I’m Moana of Motunu and you will board my boat.” She told Kevin, “I’m Moana and you Heihei the CHICKen.” He said, “I’m not a chicken!” And she said, “But. You Heihei the CHICKen Foh Reeeal.”

She’s pretty good at zingers without even meaning to be. For awhile, she’d call us Sven the reindeer from Frozen. “Mommy, you Sben! I Anna and Nora Elsa and you Sben.”

Also, she said to Kevin, after I’d asked everyone if they’d rather be a cow or a horse (by the way, he said cow if it was a bull). “No, Daddy,” Rosie said. “You a DONKEY.” Zing! What’s with her and calling people not-so-glamorous animals?

Rosie is a chatter box now. She opens her eyes after a nap and immediately starts chatting as if she was not asleep for the last two hours, but in the middle of a thought. The way she talks is so funny to me. She sounds like a voice navigation system. The words are real person words, but her inflection is not quite right and often ends with a question when it shouldn’t, i.e. “AYE love YOU so MUCH?”

She’s started to really think about things the way Nora does. She watched an episode of Super Why with Nora (again with the TV. Sheesh. I’m ashamed!) The episode was about Little Red Riding Hood. That night, I was rocking Rosie and she kept asking, “Is da woof gramma?” “Well,” I said. “It’s complicated. Not exactly.” She was not satisfied. “Mommy, is da woof gramma?” She asked me over and over and over again. “There’s a whole story about it,” I said. “You see, there was this girl named little red…” She lifted her head from my shoulder, put her hands on my cheeks and turned my face toward her face. We were nose to nose. “Mommy,” she said.  “Look at me. I TALKING to you. Is the woof gramma?” “No,” I said, finally. “No, it’s not.” I tried to get her to relax and rest her head on my shoulder, and she started whispering to me. “Mommy is the woof gramma? Mommy is the woof gramma?”

Nora and Rosie are doing just what sisters are supposed to do. They play together, wrestle with each other, scream at each other, fight with one another, turn on us and get into trouble together and love each other in an almost primal way. It’s cool that they can play together now. The game of choice right now is called “sick baby.” Often, I find Rosie sitting in (I mean, dwarfing) a bouncy chair or doll’s stroller while Nora checks her heartbeat with her stethoscope or puts a blanket over her and tells her she needs to rest. “Don’t get up, Baby,” Nora says. “You need your rest.” Rosie says, “My rest? Okay, Momma.” They also like to put on backpacks, rainboots and our jackets and play a game Rosie likes to call, “I’m going at school.”

I can’t keep up with the rapidly shifting love/fight dynamic between these two, and often it’s best for me not to jump in too quickly. I might hear screaming and run into the room to find them both yanking on a toy. I’m just about to intervene when the screaming turns into laughter and then the two of them are chasing each other around the room, in hysterics.

Nora says she loves Rosie just a little bit more than she loves me and Daddy. But that she loves us all a lot. It’s cool. They’ll have a bond that no one can match, and they should. Their relationship will be theirs and only theirs, and that’s what I would hope for them.

PS- I’ve been really bad about updating so I’m going to add a few little funny things Rosie used to do. She’d would start walking backwards and yell “Backwards!” and bump into stuff. Or, she’d put her hands over her eyes and walk around like that and fall all over the place. Also, for awhile she investigated putting food up her nose. She did this with a very serious expression. She put stuff in her ears too. Glad those phases are over. (Knock on wood.)

Thanks for reading!

Billy, the nicer monster

Nora and Blobbo haven’t hung out very much recently. They used to play together a lot when Nora was four. That was before he became invisible. The reason they stopped playing together is because he got tired of being her friend. 😦 (Your loss, Blobbo. Nora is the best friend anyone could ask for.) He decided to come back now that she’s five, but now she can’t see him– she can only hear him. He became invisible by stepping on the gray rug at Nana’s and Poppop’s beach house. Nora actually almost stepped on the gray rug too. Good thing she didn’t because she would have become invisible too.

Blobbo has really a lot of energy and he eats a lot of food. But he shouldn’t eat that much food because Nora doesn’t want him to be too big, because if he’s so big, then wherever she walks, she would bump into him! When she told him not to eat to much food, he said, “Cheeks!” That means he only eats cheeks. And Nora didn’t know that. Cheeks are not like cheeks on our face. They are roast beef, hot dogs and roast beef/chicken. And that’s what Blobbo likes to eat.

Nora has a new friend named Billy (pictured below.) He’s much nicer than Blobbo. They met because Blobbo was trying to be mean and throw Billy onto a roof, but Billy didn’t fall onto the roof– he got into Nora’s arms.

Billy has a unicorn horn that looks like a unicorn’s horn and it’s gold. And he has purple out here and green inside his belly. And he has ears like this and little green spots inside. He has two feet and two hands. He’s as big as Nora’s arms outstretched. He has two mouse teeth just like this:

He does person things, like he runs around a lot. He’s kind of wild. But he’s very nice. Nora knows he’s nice because she has seen him be nice to Blobbo.

Nora has sort of figured out on her own that Billy might just be better company than Blobbo, and good for her. She and Billy have a great time together. Their favorite thing to do is have tea parties, just the two of them, and to drink real tea (both cold and hot.)

🙂

 

Winter fun

 

Peaceful day

 

Summer pics

Good times! Goodbye summer break!

 

 

 

Summer kiddos

Summer, summer, summer.

It’s going by too fast. I’m going to miss the long days at the pool and at the beach, swimming, playing, eating ice cream, sleeping through the night after a long, exhausting day. (I am not going to miss packing bags for the pool and the beach, wrangling kids in and out of wet bathing suits, wrestling one kid to put on her sunscreen while the other one makes a run for it, and bracing for meltdowns at the end of a long, exhausting day.) But, it’s all mostly fun, and we’re making memories, here, people! 🙂

 

Okay, now for the updates.

Nora:

She is so curious about everything.

She asks “Why?” a million times everyday.

She takes her time to say what’s on her mind, speaking slowly and carefully, her head tilted.

Her smile brightens her face and she is always up for a laugh.

She lets us know when she’s unhappy, and she knows how to put her foot down.

She is smart. One day, we saw a large bird at a lake, and I said, “Nora, look at that cool bird!”

“Oh!” she said. “That’s a great blue heron!” She was right.

She is learning to swim at camp and she’s gaining confidence. She doesn’t want to put her head under water, but she’s starting to kick and move in the water a little bit on her own.

Rosie

Rosie is getting all four molars at once. She is 16 months… right? One, two, three, four… no, 17 months. My brain is fried– that’s what having two of them does to you. 😉

Here’s my favorite thing that she does: she pats and rubs my back when I pick her up. It is the cutest thing ever.

She shakes her head no when you ask her any question. “Is your name Rosie?” No. “Do you like ice cream?” No.

She says so many words now: Mama, Dada, Rara, gogurt, nak (snack), fishy noise (goldfish), ors (horse), hi, ello, bah bah (bye bye), bebe (baby), bup (cup), names of friends and family…. She’ll repeat almost anything we say.

She knows how to turn the hose on and off, flush the toilet, climb up onto the stool to wash her hands, take off marker caps and color, open and close the refrigerator, and more.

She thinks Nora is just the bees knees. Nora can make her laugh more than anyone. She has also learned to guard her belongings, and to lash out when Nora takes something that’s hers.

When she eats or grabs something she’s not supposed to, she smiles and laughs and speed walks in the other direction as fast as possible.

She likes to do ugamuga before bed and rub noses with all of us.

Her thighs are impressive.

Summer’s not over yet! Enjoy!!!

Until next time!

🙂

 

 

Spring Love

 

Rosie likes to dance with a swinging torso, arms by her sides and a very serious expression.

She learned to say mama and then unlearned it and started calling me dada. She says bup (cup), blehbu blehbu (for food. She wants goldfish most of the time), goggle (this is a funny one. She says it perfectly. I was like- “That’s funny. It sounds like she’s saying goggle! But surely she means something else.” And then she picked up a pair of goggles in the tub and held them out to me. I don’t even know why we had goggles in the tub. “Gah gul,” she said. She doesn’t know mama yet, but goggle, she’s got down.) She kind of says knock knock. (Nora has been practicing her knock knock jokes).

She is pretty sure she’s a four-year-old. She climbs up and sits in chairs with the big kids, attempts to eat with a spoon (she won’t let me feed her), wears a smock and paints, colors with a pincher grip (seriously!). She just wants to be part of the team.

Nora is hilarious. I wish I was doing a better job of writing everything down because she says the funniest things.

I love her baby voice.
“Rosie do you want your bup? We’ll get it for you when we stop the car. You are sweetness. You are a youngster.”

She’ll crack herself up. “Rosie is a youngster! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha!”

Our children are both very strong-willed. It’s good, right? Girls should be strong. Nora definitely knows how to hold her ground. This was a funny one: She kept trying to tell us from the backseat that it was an accident she had green marker all over her arms.

Kevin took a closer look and started laughing. “Nora– you wrote your name. That couldn’t have been an accident.”

Nora, frowning: “It was! It was an accident.”

“You accidentally wrote ‘Nora’ on your arm?”

“It was an accident!”

She was really holding her ground too.

Nora is so artistic. She gets very focused and in the zone.

She likes to pick things up and say “I need this for my collection” and takes it upstairs to her room, where she keeps a hand painted box full of items.

In her collection box: Rocks, flowers, pine cones, leaves change, buttons, hair– yes hair. I discovered a very large clump of hair in there, and that’s when I discovered she’d decided to give herself a trim. Help me. Oh boy.

They keep me entertained for sure. Love them so much.

You’re Doing It, Girl

Let’s be kind to ourselves, guys. Here’s an essay I wrote for Sammiches and Psych Meds. A reminder– you’re all doing it.

http://www.sammichespsychmeds.com/youre-doing-it-girl-nicest-thing-say-to-mom/