stories

hazel pose, originally uploaded by kelanew.

all these stories this week... i don't know if i'm paying more attention (or am less sleepy, so i can actually remember?) or if more things are going on, but i feel like i have lots of stories. also, little opportunity to type them, so here they are with a minimum of fanfare and flourish.

on the way to the pool wednesday (our usual wednesday plan this summer), she sang to herself in her carseat, as she often does. she sang:
"love is like a dream for every day of your life"
that could almost seem profound in some enigmatic way, but before you think about too much, here's what she sang on the drive home:
"the season of the carrot, dripping through the trees"
hmm. sometimes she's like a random word generator. or, for all i know, that's my misinterpretation of some actual song she learned at school... but she said it was her own song.

you knew it was coming eventually: this weekend, eva was married to charlie. several times. she said to me, "he lives pretty far away. he's a really nice boy, though." (hmm, same explanation that your mother had for her own courtship, eh? :) she was married in a hooded bath towel (as veil/dress) and "fancy bride shoes". she explained to me that i needed to stop talking because now was the quiet part (hey, i guess she *was* listening when we explained this to her at the two weddings we attended this summer). oh, and by the way, she and charlie rode their bikes to the church. after was the "party part" aka reception, which featured ballet dancing and i was scolded for sitting when it was so clearly time for dancing, hazel's nourishment needs be damned.

hazel is teething. teething! i know that's not so very uncommon at almost three months, but i was hoping she'd wait a while longer. man, is she angry about it, too. today she screamed most of the day, except when she had a nipple in her mouth or when larry tossed her in the air (which made her giggle like crazy). this evening, she enjoyed staring at a photo of a baby for about 15 minutes, then talking to me in call and response -- and if i ever looked away, she'd get a huge grin and coo louder to regain my attention. cutie. (she's also now wearing 6 mo clothes... at this age, eva was just growing *in* to 0-3 mo size. as a result, i had to go buy a few 6 mo summer items, as eva didn't wear that size until winter.)

as a random note for posterity's sake, eva is now eating (knock wood!) pretty well. we no longer have to cajole and do a little dance for every single bite. she'll often sit down and eat, say, 8 or more bites all on her own, then will consent to a bit more with a little encouragement. i hope it sticks -- i had grown quite tired of the constant enticement needed for hte past, oh, several years. along with eating better, she's stopped being quite so crazy. at the time, i didn't know if she was just being three or if she was in fact a bit out of sorts after hazel's birth -- and upon reflection, it seems things have normalized. she never has had one bad thing to say about hazel, but i'm sure it was still difficult for her. (and too bad for grandma, who was here during the hardest part and got the brunt of dealing with eva's antics then!)

eva's started doing subtraction. we talked her through "if you have five and you take away one, how many do you have?", showing her on her fingers how to take away one at a time. she took to it, so larry asked her 4 minus 2, and she thought for a bit and got it (looking quite triumphant). then 6 (tricky, using both hands) minus 3, etc. my favorite part of this is that she took a concept or skill that we showed her and then applied it to new questions. that's how we all learn, of course, but it was fun to see it in so clear a way (for the record, she has no interest in addition. just subtraction. what's that about? :)

and now please permit me a moment here, i know this will sound like shameless bragging, but i just can't not include it, as otherwise it will be forgotten. she picked up "one fish two fish red fish blue fish" the other afternoon and started reciting. i jumped in to play along, and she said "no mama, i can read it myself, don't talk!" so larry and i laid there listening to her, turning pages and reciting. this is a book we read a lot when she was about 18 mo old, but it only recently came back into rotation. for the uninitiated, it's a dr. seuss book that is essentially a series of unrelated little poems, about 8-12 lines on each pair of pages. well, she "read", page after page, and she missed a few lines here and there, but the remainder was recited word for word. and on it went, my jaw literally dropping as she went on for 46 pages. (!) i think she would have recited the whole book (60-ish pages?) had she not been distracted by larry and i, who eventually were unable to contain ourselves. really, i don't include this to show off (well, on her behalf anyway, as it's her doing not mine) -- lots of kids can do this sort of thing, i was just really surprised to hear it go on and on like that.

and lastly, it bears mention that our family has been joined by twins -- olive and henry (eva named them as i read out names from the baby book upon request; it was still sitting around from when i was pregnant). they are 6" baby dolls who were adopted from target yesterday. she and ella (were were shopping with friends) each found a pink and aqua baby, and marched around the store with their twins, shushing and snuggling them with care. i don't know if wendy managed to leave without a set of twins joining her family, but my efforts failed (as i suspected early on they would). i had the audacity of suggesting she choose one baby, pink or aqua -- she all but glared at me, appalled at my solomon-like suggestion of dividing the twins! so, after a lengthy price-check interlude, they came home with us. she took them to bed with her, and took great care with them, even in her sleep. she woke up in the night due to a pretty significant nosebleed (i spent the bulk of her time at school today upstairs with a bottle of hydrogen peroxide, while teething hazel screamed around me), and as she returned to sleep, she kept adjusting the babies' positions. finally she settled (after yelling at me for moving the sheet and causing it to go over her baby's head), and i peered over her back as she slept on her side to find the sweetest scene: she had the babies lined up next to her in the perfect position for side-lying nursing, and she pulled the nearer baby in closer to her chest and said "there you go, henry." then "it's okay, olive." i guess i have my baby and she has hers. i'm trying to limit the consumerism and volume of toys/things that enter our home, but that might be the best $2.99 (x2) i've spent in a while.

and there you have it. that's our week, in a (admittedly large) nutshell.