Heard Blobbo!

Nora has an imaginary friend named Blobbo. Here’s the thing about Blobbo– he’s a monster and he’s very scary, but he is still Nora’s friend. He is extremely large. Whenever Nora sees a very big house, she tells me, oh, that’s Blobbo’s house. One of his houses is in Piermont in a big mansion with a river view. She reminds me that he lives there every time we drive by.  He also owns a lot of property in Bethany Beach.

Blobbo can be nice, but sometimes he just gets very over-excited and Nora has to help him calm down. How does she do this? She tells him to take a breath or to drink some water. That usually does the trick. If not, she reads him a story, or gives him some quiet time, or tells him to play with his toys quietly in his bed. But, still, he doesn’t like to go to sleep at night. Why not? Because he is nocturnal. Well, he isn’t actually nocturnal, but he likes to pretend he is nocturnal. Because he wants to stay up all night. Why does he want to stay up all night? Because he likes to do things instead of sleeping. Like watching TV. Watching TV is actually his favorite thing to do.

Blobbo is friends with some of Nora’s other buddies, including Bubba (sometimes bear, sometimes human), Firefuchi (the dragon), Petunia (the lady dragon) and Eggbert (their dragon child).

Once or twice a day, we can hear the fire station sounding an alarm near our house. It is a loud, repetitive honking noise. That’s actually Blobbo. When we hear that sound, we should hide. Because that sound means that Blobbo is coming for us.

Rosie knows this, too. When she hears the alarm– or, Blobbo– she scurries over to me, buries her head in my legs and cries, “Heard Blobbo! Heard Blobbo!” (Heyard. Blobbo!) Sometimes Blobbo makes that noise in the middle of the night, and if the girls hear him from their rooms, they’ll let us know.

It’s good that Nora is friends and not enemies with Blobbo, because she really has been a big help for him when his temper gets the best of him. She is showing him how to be his best self, which is hard to model when you’re four and a half. She’s just figuring it out herself– how to ask for things instead of demanding, how to take a deep breath when her Magna tile tower tumbles rather than yelling and hurling magnets across the room, how to hold her sister’s hand and walk with her slowly rather than yanking her by the hood. Blobbo might live in mansions, but he also lives inside of Nora. They’ll work on it together for the time being.

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What’s going on with Rosie these days? She got all of her molars and her little pointy teeth are coming in on the sides. She yells at me all day and her voice is surprisingly loud for a small person, “Mo cracker! Peeease!” She is talking A LOT, saying whatever we say. “Skye house.” “Big bear. Zoo. Daddy. Zoo.” “Nora. School.” “Nora. Hebrew School.” “Nanny, Poppop, heere.” “Dora. Phone.” “Elmo book. Read Elmo book.” She says no to many questions, shaking her head. “Do you like apple?” “Mo.” “Is your name Rosie?” “Mo.” She has some mean dance moves– kind of like a tribal dance meets Footloose kind of thing. She sometimes whispers, randomly. When I tell her I love you or tell her she’s a cutie, she whispers, “tank tu.” When I sneeze or cough, she says, “Bless you, Mommy.” When Nora tries to give her something, she yells, “No tank tu!” and shoves it away. Her favorite song is “Wheel a Turnin'” and she sings it and does a little swaying motion. She gets so excited if I put the song on in the car, laughing, saying, “Wheel! Heart! Wheel! Heart!” She sings “Let It Go” with Nora. “Gooooohhhh! Goooohhh!” She has very strong opinions, just like Nora. She is a snuggle bunny.

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Thanks for checking in!

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/

Beach day

 

I’m so proud of you

Rosie walks at 13 months! We’re so proud of her and of her big sister, Nora for being so sweet and supportive of her. She has been cruising for a few weeks now, but she took her first few steps yesterday. Today, she walked across the floor all the way to Nora.

What else is Rosie up to? She has two new teeth on the top, so that makes eight teeth! She says Mama, bye (with a Southern accent– Bah!), hi (ha!), ball (bah!), Nora (Rara), and something that could mean this or that (datssss). She loves to point at everything and say datsssss or yayackkkk. She really wants to talk about everything she sees. She makes a bunch of animal noises– hooo hooo (owl), pppp (cow or elephant), gah gah gah (duck), raaaaaar (bear, lion or miscellaneous animal) and my favorite- blehbuh blehbuh (fish). She gives hugs, putting her head in your lap and kisses (mah!) She just learned how to drink from a sippy cup and a straw. She wants to join in the fun, whatever it is. She is always mimicking the noises that Nora makes, and she leans forward in her car seat so she can get a better look at whatever shenanigans Nora is up to. Her belly laugh is the best. She is so sweet.

Now, Nora. She really seems like a big kid now. She has a big kid double bed, she can get herself dressed, and she just looks so tall suddenly. She is very thoughtful when she speaks. Sometimes, she’ll look very pensive when I peer back in the rear-view mirror, and she brings up something we talked about earlier that day.

Here’s an example: “Mommy, can I drive the car?”

“When you’re sixteen, you can drive.”

“Why?”

“Because that’s how old you have to be. You take a class called driver’s ed, and you learn how to drive safely.”

(Insert Nora asking “Why?” several more times to whatever I say.)

“When am I going to be sixteen?”

“In twelve years.”

(Quiet for awhile)

“But, why am I three for so long and four for so long?”

“Well, you were three for a whole year, and now you’ll be four for a whole year.”

“But that’s a long time before I’ll be sixteen! What if I’m four forever?”

“You won’t be, I promise.”

I really enjoy these deep talks.

Nora loves art and gets very focused whenever she’s working on something. She made a beautiful painting called “Rainbow World.” She put her paint brush down and said she was finished. “When Daddy gets home,” she said, “I’m going to tell him that I’m not going to paint any more days.” I think she meant that she had created her masterpiece, and needed to paint no more. Luckily, she changed her mind about that later that afternoon and decided she’d like to paint again.

 

Happy first birthday, sweet Rosie!

How can that be? A year ago today, I was preparing to head to the hospital to get induced. I felt a whole mix of emotions. I was relieved to know when she’d make her appearance. She was over a week late, and the anticipation was getting to me, especially since there had been one snow storm after the other and I was worried my parents wouldn’t be able to get here to watch Nora when the time came. I was also anxious about getting induced. It felt strange to choose the date of her birth. She was nice and cozy in there. I didn’t want to force her to come out sooner than she was ready. I just wanted to know that she would be okay, a healthy baby. And, I was in tears as we drove away from the house that night (a year ago, tonight), watching 3-year-old Nora waving at me from the window. She didn’t know how life would change, that she would no longer be top dog all day long. I knew she’d be so happy throughout her lifetime to have a sister and a friend in the world, but I also knew how she was about to face the biggest adjustment she’d had to deal with to date, sharing Mommy and Daddy with another little being.

I couldn’t sleep that night in the hospital with all of these nerves and emotions. It didn’t help that I was hugely pregnant and having contractions, trying to sleep on a reclining chair, hooked up to a fetal monitor, Kevin curled up on a cot beside me.

The next morning, I woke up feeling anxious but also ready to go. They hooked me up to the pitocin at noon, and she was born at 2:56, less than three hours later. It was an extremely fast labor, and before I knew it, I was holding a beautiful, healthy baby in my arms.

What a blessing to have her in our lives. Rosie is the sweetest, happiest baby in the world. You only have to look in her direction and she lets out a belly laugh.

Her favorite thing to do is watch Nora and try to do what she’s doing. If Nora is coloring, Rosie is standing right beside her, trying to grab the crayons, knocking the whole box onto the floor. Nora makes Rosie laugh more than anyone. And Nora loves Rosie so incredibly much. Sometimes, Nora hugs and squeezes her a little too hard, and sometimes, she doesn’t want to share her prized possessions, but she also looks out for her baby sister, rubbing her head if she’s sad, playing peekaboo with her, saying “Aw, I love you, Rosie,” in a very sweet baby voice.

Rosie’s first word/noise was “woof” and “bbbhh” (an elephant noise). She points to pictures of animals and makes these noises, no matter what sort of animal it is. She also says “rrrrr” when she sees a bear or tiger. Her first (and only) word is Mama, but by that, she means baby. It’s funny because one of Nora’s first words was Dada, and by that, she meant baby too. Rosie loves to hug her baby doll, say “Mama” and give the baby a hug and a pat. She gives kisses too, but not on command.

This morning, I think she started calling me Mama for the first time. I had just put her down for a nap and I could see her in the monitor, standing at the edge of her crib. “Mama. Mama. Mama.” That’s it, it’s over, I thought. She’s got me wrapped around her little finger. I went back upstairs to rock her.

She does “all gone,” and “so big,” with hand motions. She can pull herself up to stand when holding on to things. She crawls very vigorously and with sound effects. Nora and Rosie like to “chase” each other. She has two teeth on top and four on the bottom. Around 8 months, that one rogue tooth came in on the bottom left side, and then around 10 months, they started to fill in every other tooth like a jack o’ lantern.

She warms my heart– the little noises she makes when she points at things, the smiles she gives me, the softness of her fuzzy little head.

I’m so grateful for my two girls. They give us so much joy. Happy first birthday, sweet little Rosie!!!

Love, Mama

 

Here are some pics from our little winter trip to the beach:

 

February pics

Shmooples turns 4!

birthday girl!!!!

I can’t believe our Shmooples is turning 4. It’s just crazy. She is a real kid now. She’s beautiful, goofy, full of energy, sensitive, creative, curious, strong-willed, funny and so sweet. We are so thankful for our little monkeys. Happy birthday, beautiful Nora!