Squeezably Soft

Huggable, kissable, and oh, so irresistible. Found this one of Savanna in the archives. Have I ever mentioned how much I love chunky babies?

Just When You Thought You Were Accomplishing Something...

On Tuesday this week, I was feeling really good about getting some things done around the house without any interruptions. (Note: This never happens.) Amazingly, I got all of the floors downstairs swept, mopped, and vacuumed without so much as a "Mommy, I need..." It was truly miraculous.

Of course, I knew in my heart of hearts that there would somehow be a price to pay for this 45 minute interval with no appearances from my little friends. When I heard the DVDs being dropped onto the floor upstairs, I sensed troubled. Immediately following said noise, Savanna sounded the alarm: "Mom! She got your buttons!" (Thanks for the warning, Savanna. Oh, and thanks for opening up the jar of buttons for Lexa so she could dump them out all over.)

I came upstairs to witness the following:

So, whatever time I saved on floor-cleaning sans interruptions, I made up in DVD-picking-up and button gathering. 

It's good for me that I have the girls to remind me who's really in charge of my life these days.

(Hint: It's not me.)

For J

Our poor, sweet first-grader seems a little under-represented on the blog these days. Since she is at school for a large portion of the day, her shenanigans aren't quite as prevalent as those of the other two monkeys who spend all day around here. 

Little Julia, though she always did really well in kindergarten, really seems to have had an emotional growth spurt over the last couple of months. She is becoming more patient, more empathetic, more understanding, more responsible, and it is both exciting and nerve-wracking to see what a great older sister/student/daughter she is becoming. (Exciting because it is wonderful to see her mature, nerve-wracking because we know this means that she isn't so little anymore.)

I know we are a few weeks into the school year already, but here is a little something to commemorate J's passing into first grade. (In the meantime, I will be trying to get my head around the fact that, in a flash, she has gone from this:

to this:

Julia's First-Grade Poem

'Twas the night before first grade and up in her bed

Laid a little ex-kindergartner resting her head.

Her  backpack was left by the front door all packed

And her sandwich sat ready in its brown paper sack.

The children were put in their beds pretty early,

(With hopes that they’d rise in the morning not surly).

And daddy on his laptop, and I with my pen

Were feeling alright about school starting again.

Yet soon before our bedtime plans had been made,

The panic set in: “Wow! She’s starting first grade!”

(And though we both know that first grade is required,

we still were not sure it was what we desired.)

It seems that this baby we welcomed so gladly

Is determined to grow up (she wants it quite badly).

So while we remember her sweet baby fingers

We sadly admit that her youth cannot linger.

As children get wiser, well, so do their folks;

(yet they do it gladly; ourselves we must coax.)

So off to first grade we did send our sweet girl

Knowing she’ll make a great mark on the world.

  

This growing up business, we may well dislike,

this coming of age of an innocent tyke,

But since we agreed we would raise them up rightly,

We will let them grow up (and in secret, hold tightly)

To all of the joy that their littleness brings

(Begrudgingly cutting those dear apron strings.)

And though it requires an earnest endeavor,

We’re happy to note that they’re still ours forever...

Fin 

(Julia, you are the awesomest first-grader we've ever met! Thanks for being ours.)

Day in Flagstaff

 We recently improved a miserable summer-in-Phoenix day by escaping to my sister and her partner's adorable cabin in Flagstaff:

(Yes, adorable. I wish I could eat its toes off, it's so cute.) 

It was heavenly to be away from the desert sun for a 

few hours and spend the day doing practically nothing. 

Highlights included: playing with Gus-Gus, 

the cute-headed little boy of Laura and Amy's friends 

(with whom Savanna is completely enamored)...

Sweeping pine needles off the roof of the wood shed,

precariously balancing on a make-shift
teeter-totter engineered by Aunt Amy,

and hiding Daddy in the ottomans
that surround the dining room table.

Other highlights (not pictured here): being outside for more than 30 seconds without sweat running down our backs, devouring delicious chicken curry and couscous, (also engineered by Amy) going for a walk without suffering heat stroke, meeting friendly neighbors, sitting in a room in August with the blinds and windows open, and hanging out with people we love. (Oh, and La helped me with homework, too. Thanks again, Profesora.)

Invite us back soon (please)!

Now I Know

While this is what I envisioned motherhood would look like...

it turns out, it actually looks a lot more like this:

And that's why I try to focus on the rare, calm,
beautiful moments like this:

Chillin' Like a Villain

I found Alexa asleep like this a couple days ago
when I went to wake her up in the morning.
Apparently, she takes her relaxing very seriously.

This Is Getting Ridiculous...

In a recent post, I mentioned that little Alexa had started dragging chairs from the playroom in order to help me in the kitchen. That was cute for about a day. Soon after her interest in becoming taller set in, she happily realized that with the help of a chair, she could reach all of the drawers in the kitchen that her short stature had previously prevented her from encountering. She discovered a world she never knew existed: a veritable treasure trove of binkies, medicine cups, pens, screwdrivers, and myriad utensils, all within reach of her busy, sticky fingers. Wordlessly, methodically, she would empty these drawers over and over again  with the quiet fury and determination that only an 18-month-old possesses.

So, naturally, after feeling satisfied that she had had her fill of sensory experiences, (and certain that I had had my fill of cleaning up after sensory her experiences) I put the chairs out of her reach:

Then, about a day later, convinced that she had forgotten about the whole chair-dragging thing, I put all the chairs back in the playroom. And, of course, not five minutes elapsed before she was at it again, visiting her favorite kitchen drawer hot-spot: the gum drawer. (There are other things in this drawer as well, just so you know. But Lexa only smells the gum.) Oh, what a proud moment in this little girl's life.

This is visit #3 to the gum drawer. There are already two chairs 

on the counter, which means she is on the last of the 

plastic chairs that she is strong enough to bring into the kitchen. 

"Oh, what a delicious variety of gum to choose from..." 

Fast forward a couple days when all the plastic chairs 

are hidden away in the laundry room, and Little Miss 

starts attempting to move one of our heavy wooden chairs 

in a last-ditch attempt to get back to the gum stash.

Sadly, (for her, not for me) she just isn't strong enough to move it.

Happily, (for her, not for me) she has a sympathetic 

older sister who mill move the chair for her. At this point, 

the donuts on the counter are a much more compelling 

find than the boring gum in the drawer.

Fast forward some more, and this clever baby gets 

the ingenious idea to reach her favorite drawer 

by standing on a doll house chair. 

When she realizes that that won't work, 

she decides to sit on it instead.

Epilogue: The chairs are still in the laundry room.
Which means that I am living happily ever after.

Following in Cinderella's Footsteps

While Alexa was helping me mop the other day, I was reminded of a similar scenario from just a couple years ago. I've never enjoyed mopping with kids around just because it takes twice as long with their assistance. (Not that I enjoy mopping when they aren't around, either, but given the choice between the two, I prefer the latter.) I try to be good about accepting their help, though, since their little hearts are in the right place, and soon enough I will be asking myself why on earth I didn't spend as much time with them as possible when they actually enjoyed being in the same room with me. With their help, things don't always get done efficiently, but at least they get done together.

Anyway, here is the Savanna of yesteryear (at about 22 months) mopping right alongside the Alexa of today. (Notice the change in scale of the mop size. The Lexa of today made a much smaller mess than the Savanna of yesteryear.)

I love how these little sweeties think mopping with Mommy is a treat. And I need to remember that mopping with them is a treat, too.

(Check out the playroom in the background of the pictures: the years change, but the mess remains the same...)  

The Double-Edged Reward

I am all about rewarding myself. For a job well done, for getting through a stressful day, for finishing a difficult homework assignment. The problem with rewards, much as I love them, is their tendency to double as punishments. In disguise. They're very clever, actually.

As a recent reward for making it through a long and arduous week, I vegged and did absolutely nothing productive during a blissful kid-free night when Craig (saint that he is) took all of the girls to the Children's Museum. Sadly, I was also unwittingly doling out a punishment for myself of having to dedicate an entire Saturday night to preparing notes and writing a paper about The Scarlet Letter.

Another common reward in my repertoire is partaking of delicious food. Fun-sized candy bars, Cherry Limeades, dessert cereal, popcorn...you get the idea. I figure that I do a good enough job in my day-to-day tasks of school drop-off and pick-up and Not Killing the Children that I deserve this reward pretty frequently. Unfortunately, the hidden punishment for those indulgences comes in the form of my old nemeses, Double-Chin and its cousin, Too Tight Pants.

Then there are the times that I reward myself for getting through a typical morning of chaos by sitting at the computer for a few minutes with a delicious bowl of Frosted Mini-Wheats to read blogs, check email, upload pictures, and other such important-but-not-vital endeavors. The punishment here varies: sometimes it's as simple as a messy playroom. Other times it involves an entire rearrangement of a child's bedroom closet. (The trouble is, you never know what will happen.)

Everything being said, I have not decided to give up my rewards; bad as their accompanying punishments may be, I am still really very fond of them. So, even when my common sense urges against it, I will continue to eat, veg, fartknock, and otherwise indulge myself when I have reached my limit of stress, patience, or intellectual activity.

It's just too bad I will always have to pay the price for doing so.

p.s. the spelling suggestions for fartknock include: fart knock, door knocker, Vietcong, and fatiguing. Just thought you might want to know.

Cereal Killer

As I sit here devouring a delicious bowl of Cocoa Krispies, my favorite dessert cereal, I am reminded of a recent experience in the grocery store that left me...well, perplexed. I was at Safeway for the millionth time, stocking up, once again, on their awesomely-priced boxes of General Mills cereal when I approached a fellow shopper. I offered her my extra "$2 off when you buy 5 boxes of General Mills" coupon that I knew I wouldn't be able to use before the sale ended. (This is only because I had already bought obscene amounts of cereal and I had promised myself that this would be my last trip. And, unlike the previous trip when I had promised myself the same thing, this time I was determined to stick to my guns.) She declined the coupon, and in a very friendly way, told me that all that cereal would go bad before they could eat it and that they already had four boxes open at home that she wasn't sure that they could get through.

Excuse me??

I'm not sure which part was more disturbing for me...the "go bad" or the "four boxes." Neither statement was something that I could relate to, owing to the fact that # 1: We sometimes go through an entire box of cereal in two days, and #2: I experience something akin to panic when our pantry shelves house anything less than ten boxes of cereal at one time. (Hence my compulsive buying of ridiculous amounts of cereal when those sales hit.) (Ridiculous amounts of cereal that get gobbled up in no time.)

Deciding against preaching to this woman about the wonders of cereal for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, (not to mention dessert...ahem) I returned to my cart filled with 12 boxes of cereal and slinked back the other way, shaking my head in disbelief. Now, I know that not everyone is as crazy about cereal as me. But this was the worst case I'd ever seen.

As a thank you for a small favor done for a friend, she brought me a box of my favorite cereal and made me the happiest girl in the world. So, if you didn't already know this about me, now you do: the way to this girl's heart is through her pantry.

Mommy: The Universal Word

Since all my girls seem to say "dada" months before its "mama" counterpart, I've always been really impatient for them to form those two sweet syllables and utter them in my general direction. Alexa, of course, mastered the full "Daddy" way before she even gave "Mommy" the old college try, so I was oh-so-pleased when my name finally graced her sweet little lips. As a doting mommy, I couldn't ask for more.

Sadly, mere weeks into her new Mommy-cabulary, I am slowly going insane. Apparently hearing the word mommy 500 times a day has caused it to lose a little of its initial, innocent magic. I am learning now that "Mommy" doesn't even just mean Mommy anymore. It actually means every single that she can't say (and even doubles with some of the things she can say.) Here are just a few examples:

Mommy= I'm tired.

Mommy= I'm hungry.

Mommy= I'm poopy.

Mommy= Yes.

Mommy= No.

Mommy= I don't know.

Mommy= I am standing on the dining room table and can't get down.

Mommy= I want more food. No I don't. Yes I do.

Mommy= Daddy.

Mommy= I want to get on the counter.

Mommy= I want to get off the counter.

Mommy= I don't have any idea what I want.

After so much time and energy spent on trying to get Little Sweetie to pay me the ultimate compliment by addressing me directly, I finally got what I wanted.

And now I'll be changing my name.

Quotes of the Day...

Julia: "That smells deesgusting!" (Well I'm sure glad you're excited about what we're having for dinner.)

Savanna: "I can do this faster than you. Want me to teach you?" (Thanks for your help cleaning the bathroom mirrors.)

Alexa: "Aaaiiiieeeee!" (No, you may not have any more gum from the drawer in the kitchen.)

Predictions?

So...

Will she be like her Daddy and spend hours on the laptop?

Or like her Mommy and always have a book in her hands?