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.

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

There once was a crocodile named Cari

At 6 months old, Rosie is in the 99^th percentile for weight, 78^th for height and 98^th for head size. She has tried solid foods, yay! So far she’s had oatmeal, banana and apples. The bananas are a hit; the other two are amusing to her. She does this little hehehehe goat laugh when I put it in her mouth. She has started to make the wild cat yelping noises I remember Nora making as a baby. For a while, I thought maybe Rosie was a much quieter baby than Nora was, but she has found her voice, and she is expressing it at 6am when Nora is still sleeping and I want her to stay asleep a little while longer. She also loves to tell me, Thhhh. She tells me this over and over again while feeding. She’ll stop nursing to look up at me and say, Thhhh and then go back to eating eagerly. She does most things eagerly with a little pep in her step, arms and legs pumping. She can roll all the way across the room. She likes to roll over to the magazine stack under the coffee table and chew on some tabloids. I have not yet re-baby-proofed the house but better get on it. She is still sleeping in a bassinet next to our bed, but she is ginormous. She is like a fish that has outgrown its tank—the walls of her bed surround her from head to toe. I know I need to get her out of our room and into her crib, but I also think this is probably our last child, and I start to get all nostalgic and weepy about moving her. This will be the last time there will be a baby sleeping in this bassinet next to our bed! What’s next—college?

Nora has just turned into this kid. She’s no longer a toddler. She has a sense of humor and does things intentionally. Her favorite joke: Knock knock. Whose there? Boo. Boo hoo? Don’t cry! Recently, she’s started doing things a big kid does. She can write her name now! She is good at drawing faces with eyes, noses, mouths and hair. She did an excellent family portrait of us—Mommy, Daddy, Nora, Rosie and of course, our pet giraffe, Marty. She also likes to draw monsters and robots. She is very into wearing her princess dresses. She loves reading Ladybug Girl, Curious George and Pinkalicious. She likes to make pillow forts and pretend to go to sleep. She also loves to hide. Anytime she hears someone walking downstairs, or anytime the doorbell rings, she goes, “Ah! Hide!” and covers herself with a blanket. She is becoming quite the big sister. She can be pretty rigid about what she wants to do and gets frustrated when someone messes with her vision—“I want you to be the monster and come in here and tickle me and then I’ll hide.” “No, I don’t want you to put the purple Lego there! Not right there!”

At night, she wants Daddy and Mommy to tell her a story, after reading several books. The bedtime routine takes forever.

Last night, I said, “There once was a porcupine named Ned.”

“No, no, no!” she said. “Not a porcupine! A crocodile!”

“Okay,” I said. “There once was a crocodile named Ned.”

“No, no!” she said. “Not Ned! Cari!”

She wanted me to tell her the same exact story that Daddy had told her, but I wasn’t in the room at the time so I didn’t know the story, and that was very frustrating to her. I explained that we have to do a little of what we want to do and a little of what others want to do. Just like on the playground today. “The little girl you were playing with wanted the windows of the playhouse open and you wanted them closed. It was important to do what the little girl wanted too, because that’s a nice way to play. A give and take. Do you understand?”

She nodded. “Yeah,” she said. “I do.”

“Okay,” I said. “So, there once was a porcupine named Ned who had a crocodile friend named Cari. A give and take. Both of our guys are in the story.”

“No, no!” she said, after all that. “Not a porcupine named Ned! Just a Crocodile!”

You win some, you lose some I guess. 😉

I call you Nokius

Kevin: Nora there’s a fox over there, look! Nora: Oh wow! Today? Kevin: Yes right now. On the side of the road. Nora: Oh! when we were driving home? Kevin: Yes, two seconds ago. Nora: Oh! You mean today?

Nora: Daddy? Kevin: Yes, Nora? Nora: Is it Valemtimes day today? Kevin: No that’s in February. Nora: Oh! Why?

Nora: Mommy, can I take my shoes off? Me: Sure. Nora: Oh. Okay. Why?

Leah: Why does Nora keep knocking down our castles? Nana: Because she’s three. Nora: Yeah, well… I’m a little bit young so I don’t know things.

Nora: Mommy, when is Rosie going to be older? Me: She’s getting older all the time. But in three years, she’ll be your age. Nora: Mommy? Me: Yes, Nora? Nora: I call you Nokius! Me: Nokius? I like that. What does that mean? Nora: It means you know things.

Nora: Wosie is my best friend! I love Wosie. Wosie’s so cutie. It’s okay, Wosie wosie petosie. Don’t cry. Mommy will feed you when we get home!

Me: Nora, did you like the fireworks? Nora: (Sighs) yeah. Yeah. But. I couldn’t get them out of my eyes! Because. They were a little bit too bright for me! So, so, so, I covered my eyes like this. (Puts hands over eyes.) Because. I couldn’t get them out of my eyes!

Nora: Well. Today, it was just a little too bright. Because. I couldn’t actually sleep today. But. I could actually sleep. But it was a little scary in my bed. Me: Oh, why was it scary? Nora:  Because. There were pictures in my eyes. And that’s why I wanted to sleep in your bed.

Rosie (4 months):
She stares intently at people and things and has started to grab and hold onto toys. She reaches out for my face and grabs at my chin. It’s the cutest. Her fingers are usually covered with slober because she sticks both hands in her mouth and sometimes tries to smile talk with them like that. She loves making noises and likes to chat, make eye contact and interact. She has started making a squealy noise that sounds a little like an angry cat. She is very smiley and happy. She is perfectly chubby, soft and so much fun to hug and squeeze. When she’s sitting on my lap she likes to look back up at me and hold onto my arm with love in her eyes. No sass. Unconditional love.

May pics

The good things and the hard things

Good: When Nora says “hug! And squeezes me tight.” She so snugly and sweet.

Hard: She does this when she can’t sleep in the middle of the night and it’s impossible to ignore at 3am. “Mommy! Hug! Hug!” 

Good: She says funny things. She sits her toys down at her small table and says “birthday party!” And starts singing happy birthday to you. She also feeds her dolls (Food! Baby!”), she shoves them in drawers with a blanket and says “night night, sleep tight” and puts hats on them: “Raggedy Ann! Hat on!”

Hard: She had her first fever recently and it was the worst. I just hate when she doesn’t feel good. Her nose was all red and she has a little rash on her face. She was crying a lot more than usual.

Good: Her songs are the coolest. “ABababc! H I gg abc!” “Old menonal. Farm. Ee I ee I oh! Moo moo heya. Moo moo heya. Old menonal. Farm.  Ee I ee I oh! “

Hard: She requires that we listen to these songs over and over again in the car and won’t take no for an answer. “Ee I ee I oh. Ee I ee I oh. Ee I ee I oh. Ee I ee I oh.”

Good: She can say what she wants and doesn’t want. “Ba na na. Peese.” “All done dwive. (Driving)”

Hard: “All done” is her favorite thing to say so I hear it all day long. While I’m changing her diaper, trying to brush her teeth, wipe her nose, put her in the stroller: “All done! Hug! Hug!” When she wakes up from her nap she yells “All done! Mommy! hug!” (As you can see, many of the hard things are also good things because she’s pretty dang cute– and  dang clever too.)

Good: She still says night night to people and things before bedtime. The other night she said “night night. Watch Dora. Night night. All done.”

Hard: She takes every puzzle out of the cabinet and throws all the pieces on the floor, removes all magnets from the fridge and throws them on the floor, takes Tupperware from the kitchen drawer and throws it on the floor, empties all crayons from their boxes and… (I think you get it.) And worst of all– food on the floor. Now, people tell me this is a phase and will pass, but it’s not passing! Everything we make just gets casually thrown off the high chair. Carrots, apples, bread, cheese, pasta, apple juice, milk. And lately she’s been saying (in an exasperated tone) “Nora. No, no, no.” Or “hey hey hey. Peese don’t do dat.”

Good: The other day, on a road trip, I was trying to teach her to say “no thank you” instead of “all done” but she didn’t seem to get it. We all sang row row your boat and then daddy said “doesn’t mommy have a nice voice?”

 “No thank you,” Nora said. 😉

Love her.