mango bounce

hallea barrelman

2010-09-02T13:28:00.005-05:00

and the rocks said..., originally uploaded by kelanew.

On Monday, when I picked Eva up from kindergarten, she very excitedly began to tell me all about what she learned in Language Arts class. She said they discussed fiction vs non-fiction, and read one of each kind of book. The fiction was a Clifford book ("I wasn't so interested in that" she said, glossing over it entirely). The non-fiction book was about "a time when people were forced to work without being paid". It's so unfair, she said, that people would treat each other that way.

The book was about one such girl, Hallea Barrelman, she said, who had to start working when she was just six years old. Eva went on to tell me everything she knew about Hallea Barrelman, and from the extent of the details she provided, I could tell this made a real impression on her: "She would even get whipped if the thread broke when she was spinning yarn, can you believe that?" "She was so brave that even after she got her freedom, she went back to help other people get free too." She told me all about the Underground Railroad ("not a real railroad for trains, but a bunch of houses one after the other"), and had so many details she talked for longer than it must have taken to hear the book in the first place. She asked if we could learn more about Hallea Barrelman on the internet when we got home. ("... and she was a nurse! There was a big war -- did you know the North won? And when they were escaping, they had to walk across whole *states*! And....")

I'd never heard this name before, but then again, I don't know the story of every freed slave ever recorded. I asked if she was sure about the name. She was. Definitely.

After some creative googling, I turned to her as she ate her after school snack: "Eva, was her name possibly Harriet Tubman?"

"Oh, yeah. Right, Harriet Tubman," she said, not even looking up from her carrots and hummus.

Barrel, tub... they're pretty much the same. A fun peek into how her brain works -- she visualized it, I guess, and then substituted a synonym. And she has no frame of reference for the name Harriet I suppose, so just made her best guess. (Reminds me of the other day when she said she thought Tom was "a pretty unusual name." It's all in what you hear around you.)

I can't quite do it justice, but it was just so sweet how excited she was to tell me about this new amazing thing she'd learned. I heard more about Hallea Barrelman than I've heard about anything so far in kindergarten -- even more than about chocolate milk! And, after reading through a biography online together, I have to say, Eva did in fact have all the various details correct. All, except... the name.

I have a feeling that someday when she's 24 she'll be rolling her eyes at me saying "oh Mom, not the Hallea Barrelman story again!"

eva goes to school

2010-08-21T20:44:00.004-05:00

I have so much to say, but life hasn't slowed down enough for me to write it. This whole month -- or in some sense, for the past three years -- I've been anticipating this day. With excitement, with sadness, with pride, with dread, all at different times, all mixed up in a muddle. I've been crying on and off for a week, and if I had more time, I could explain all the reasons behind the cliche (at least my version of it, which involves a lot of sadness that my era as a stay at home mom is drawing to a close, a heap of regret for a job half-done, and a fair sprinkling of identity crisis).

Presently, with 9 hours to go until the start of kindergarten, I have abandoned all internal conflict, and submitted to a firm state of denial. Though her backpack is hanging here next to me, and though her lunch is packed (in the new lunchbox I gave to her in joy then cried over later, thinking of my tiny baby in a giant chaotic cafeteria trying to open the various containers), I can't quite believe it. Off she goes. She's so ready, but I'm not sure I will ever be.

Ah, so much more to say, but 6 a.m. comes extra early in this late-riser household, and Hazel is awake waiting for me to take her back to bed.

Now, in tears, I leave you with Larry's ever-gentle rejoinder from earlier:
"She's not exploding. She's just going to school."
True. But somehow I can't help viewing it as a beginning and also an end.

hazel goes to school

2010-08-19T22:15:00.001-05:00

conspiratorial cousins, originally uploaded by kelanew.

(photo: Hazel and Lilly join Eva at the girls' preschool, celebrating Eva's crossing over ceremony.)

Hazel just started preschool this month. I debated starting her this fall -- after all, she's only just turned two (Eva was nearly three). It would be for 6-7 hrs/day twice a week (Eva started with 3 hrs/day). She'd have to eat lunch and nap at school (Eva didn't do that until she was 4). But as I've often had cause to discover and rediscover, Hazel isn't Eva (in that shocking way that one person consistently is not another person). I suppose it's only natural to fall back on your previous experience, never mind that a sample size of n=1 never led anyone to valid conclusions. And indeed, Hazel is her own kid.

We had two visit days, during which I stayed with her, and they went fine. In fact, both times I had to pretty much drag her kicking and screaming out of the place. No wonder she feels at home there -- she's been there more or less two days a week since she was negative 2 wks old. She knows the place; the playground (where the best swing is located), the teachers, and many of the kids. In fact, the only time she cried during the visit days is when an overzealous friend of Eva's decided to "help" Hazel a bit more than Hazel strictly wanted to be helped. Well, and I guess the time she got her arm stuck on the submarine climby thing. I helped her loose her wedged elbow and calmly sat back at my do-not-feed-the-animals perch ten feet away, and she went right up to a teacher and they dealt with it together, and she was almost immediately fine.

No surprise, then, that on the first day (arriving late, after a detour to the pedi to determine that Eva's pink eye was from her newfound love of underwater swimming, not in fact from pinkeye) Hazel was off and playing happily before I could even set down her lunch box. "Hey you, come back here and give me a hug and a kiss!" I reminded her that today, Mama was going to go, but that I'd come back after lunch and nap. "Mama always comes back... right Hazel?" (I've been feeding her that line for a few weeks now.) She looked right at me and said "Okay, bye-bye, Mama. I see you later." A perfunctory second kiss, and she was off.

Huh. I mean, I know this is Hazel after all (same baby who used to squirm for me to put her down so she could crawl or toddle over and entice my friends or their husbands to hold her instead), but come on. I was in a bit of a daze, not quite able to comprehend my child-free state -- it was, I realized, the first time in my entirety of motherhood someone other than a close friend or family member was watching all the children I had (okay, except for the two days of preschool Eva had before Hazel was born, but I was so pregnant I mostly just napped the whole 3 hours). I went home, burst into tears in Larry's arms, then asked him out to lunch. We ate -- there was an actual waiter and everything! -- and

[Wait, Hazel -- who is recovering from a hellish week hosting the coxsackie virus and is now feeling better and wide awake at 10 p.m. -- just ambled over to announce playfully: "Mama, I find a very scary ("beh-wy skeh-wy") robot. I need-a nuggle you. That scary robot go'n step on my foot!" She laughed -- she was just pretending, after her adventure in the dark hallway. She's bouncing off the walls, happy to be feeling better. She was so very miserable all week... okay, now as I'm typing this, she's "riding my horsey" and asking for nummy bed at the same time; can't decide if she's wide awake or tired. "You finish your 'puter, okay Mama? Finish your 'puter."]

Anyway, quickly: I arrived at school to pick her up after our lunch, and no fewer than four people told me "oh, Hazel was crying!" "wow, Hazel sure wasn't happy"... hey! What?! As predicted, she was not a fan of nap. She's accustomed to nursing to sleep for nap and bedtime (and, you know, when felled by the mean ol' coxsackie, when she couldn't even tolerate sips of water but would nurse, thank goodness) -- so I knew adjusting to school nap would be a trick. Other than that, she had a grand old time, and again, I could barely entice her to leave. The next school day she slept, and next, she slept without crying first. She'll adjust -- and she loves every other moment of being there. If only she could actually *go*... she's been sick twice already in her first three weeks of school. Same happened to Eva, which I had blocked out of my memory -- scarred as I was by it, in part because a virus Eva caught from school during her first month is what hit newborn Hazel, and what caused the horrifying image of the face of my 18-day-old baby as she endured a spinal tap to be forever seared onto the back of my eyeballs. (Yes, I know; I said I both had blocked it out and had it permanently seared into my memory... but that's exactly what it is.)

Next week, she'll go back. Eva will then be in Kindergarten (another post, to be sure). Too bad the girls only got to overlap by 3 days (would have been 5 without illnesses), but already, Hazel is on her own path, and ready to venture forth. I don't know if I'm so ready for that, but time freezes for no mama. Or so I'm discovering.

art and love, rips and all

2010-08-03T17:22:00.003-05:00

eva at sunset, originally uploaded by kelanew.

Eva's been having some amount of stress over her artwork lately. Apparently her preschool teachers (at least according to Eva) "always tell [a certain boy] that he's 'turning into a real little artist'." This, she says, makes her feel sad. Or jealous. Or left out. Or that her art isn't good enough. I empathize -- I really do -- as I remember feeling the same way lots of times as a kid. But, I also figure it's okay. It's a little nudge, a reminder, to think of our own work and our own creative expression as an end in itself. It's irrelevant what anyone else thinks about it (in many cases, anyway) and I know only too well what happens when you get caught in the trap of acting primarily for ever-more external validation, when feeling good about it for yourself is never quite enough.

We told her, maybe they thought this boy needed extra encouragement. Maybe he's been practicing a lot and working hard and just figured out some new cool stuff. Maybe your teachers already told you lots of good things that day and they were focusing on someone else. Maybe you're good at lots of stuff so they didn't think they had to tell you every part. Maybe we could do more fun drawing at home if you'd like to learn some new techniques. Maybe it's okay, so long as you enjoyed making your art, and you're pleased with it.

She hears us, sometimes, but she's spent more time moping and or crying about this than I would have anticipated. More than once, I considered asking her teachers to throw her a "good at art" bone to make her feel better. But, in the end, I think this lesson is worth learning. The process is more important than the end result. Your art should make you happy, who cares about everyone else.

The artist boy at school had apparently been noticed in part for his adept shading and blending of colors. I know this in part because Eva told me, but also because suddenly her art has become far more influenced by shading, blocks of swirly colors, layers, with different intensities, and so on; works of art that might, however, be mistaken by the uninitiated as, well... scribbles. Gone (for now) are her drawings of what I'd look like as a robot (purple bow on my trapezoidal head), or aerial views of swim lessons, complete with each child in the color of their actual swimsuit. No more scenes of a sunny garage sale, complete with price stickers, where at least half the merchandise consists of wigs and vases.

I know where she's going with this, so I'm letting her go along... though, admittedly, I had a bit of trouble when she made a card for a soon-to-be kindergarten classmate's birthday that was a depiction of "swirly fairy land", a blend of many soft colors, that would look (to this family we don't know all that well) possibly like the work of her younger sister. I let go, and got over that. We support the process.

Like last weekend, when hours and hours into sorting and packing (in preparation for the new carpet installation -- happening as I type this) Eva came upstairs to proudly show us some of her artwork from the day (we hadn't heard a peep from her for over an hour). We discussed each drawing, then she climbed up into Larry's lap, and he told her he was really loving this new art she'd been working so hard on lately.

She said, "Papa, I love you even more than art! Yeah, I just love you, even more than art." Aww. Knowing I was totally setting myself up, I asked, "Hey, Eva, what do you love me more than?"

Without missing a beat, in her perfected five-year-old deadpan, she said to me,

"Well, I love you more than a ripped paper bag."

Zing. We all laughed, and Eva eventually let a little smirk sneak out. Sometimes, even when you know where you're going, you can be surprised at the answer. And though I don't know exactly where she's headed with her artwork, but I trust in the process, in the evolution. Who knows if I can help her find her way toward an internal motivation, toward love of the intrinsic challenge (because isn't that by definition sort of something she has to do for herself?) but I can at least point her in the general direction. Maybe I'll make a signpost out of a ripped paper bag.

hazel dictionary

2010-03-29T23:29:00.003-05:00

hazel and butterfly, originally uploaded by kelanew.

i started this list almost two months ago, and reviewing it just now, i see it's already changing a lot. so, here it is, before we lose any more time. (nevermind that i missed what is approaching a year in chronicling her life, but if i start to think about that i start to want to curl up in a ball, so let's just not dwell on that bit...)

my favorite current word: screwdriver -- skoo-why-weh (refers to both just the screws and actual screwdrivers.)
that tells you a lot about our current life. this baby sees as many screwdrivers and other bits of construction detritus than she does proper toys. hopefully this phase will calm down soon. :)

various requests and commands and other such ways of communicating her needs:
stop, please! -- dop, peas (she says please for *everything*)
thank you -- tank-oo
sister aka Eva -- dit-der (eh-Vuh)
hazel do it/ i did it! -- ha-zool do it / i dea iht (so triumphant! :)
help, please. -- hep, peas
i would like more of that -- mo dat.
i don't want this -- no wahn dit (aka, i see something i'd like better, so please this this now odious item from my grasp.)
i do not like it -- no lie dit
i am all done with this -- ah dun dis (so take it away right nooooow!!!)

some important sources of nourishment:
water (woy), orange (ohnsh), yogurt (yo-dit), snack (nak), cracker (cack-ee), juice (djoose), cheese (shez), taco, toast (toatst,) her early favorite from time in ND, apple (appo), pretzel (pet-zol), broccoli (bok-ee)

her favorite source of nourishment, however, is of course nummy. good ol' nummy. whereas eva always said "maok", hazel came up with nummy -- started with my making an "uhmmm" sound when trying to motion for her to eat, which she changed to ummmmy, then yummy, then nummy. (even now, she will say "mmm, nummy!" when she likes some food, so i think she thinks it's the same word, the word for milk and the word for delicious. and hey, why not?)
along with nummy, we get such phrases as "hep nummy" (hey, why's this annoying shirt in the way? can you please help me?) "peas nummy" (sometimes said sweetly and other times screamed over and over, which is less but somehow nearly more convincing, i have to admit) and the new favorite "nummy bet. peas? nummy bet." (i want to go up to bed and go to sleep)

some favorite fashion items:
glasses (ga-sess, generally papas which she steals before he wakes up in the morning) neck-us (not so crazed for them as eva was for her beloved "neckies"), boot & socks (sots), which come off and on repeatedly. since she potty trained herself last week (more on this later, hopefully), she's become quite fascinated with unnies (underwear), to the point of demanding -- absolutely insisting -- that i help her put on all 9 pair she owns. at once. i feared all that elastic would cut off her still-residually-chunky legs, but man, she was not happy when i took them off. (as i type this, she is still awake (10:30) and just announced "potty", then walked to the bathroom, and i can hear that she took off her nighttime diaper then opened the potty and sat down. i still don't know where all this came from. it's all her.)

conversations to be aware of:
--(me saying anything)--- "what?" --(me explaining)-- "oh."
she asks with genuine interest, and then no matter what jibberish i say in reply, she says "oh" as if my explanation was highly elucidating. it's one of my favorite things ever. other versions include:
"what doing?" "oh."
"happen?" "oh."
several weeks back, she was dreaming and awoke, looked at me, and said (clearly very concerned): "happen? happen? sary. sary." (as in, scary) then fell immediately back to sleep. oh, baby, you had a bad dream... sad, but glad you can tell me about it now.

a favorite word:
soh-we. soh-we. i soh-we.
i soh-we.
if she bumps into you, if you say something sounding irritated, if you're crying, if she perceives that she has slighted you in any way.... i'm sorry. i know she's modeling our saying it, but the frequency with which she says it makes me wonder...

responses to questions:
i no know. -- said in the cutest voice, with her hands thrown up in the universal gesture... hazel, where are your shoes? i no know! ("know" comes out as about three syllables, in a sing-song fashion. huh, wonder who talks like that?)
in addition to the usual "no" and "yes", we also have unh-uh (no) and mm-hmm (yes) though that has become "uh-huuuuh", in the same three-note sing-song.
oh-kay! she says that a lot. (that and "uh oh! key-mup!" (clean up)...at least someone around here is interested in cleaning.)

(as i'm typing, she came out of hte bathroom holding a wipe, giving a token effort to wiping herself, saing "'nuff wip." yes hazel, that is enough. you only need one wipe, not the usual one dozen. or one package.)

she knows tons of words -- already, sadly, far too many to chronicle -- but these are some i like. for a few months now, she's been firmly in the phase of filling in the words she doesn't know with what sounds to us like jibberish. but, the sentence structure is all there, as is vocal inflection, and given the intelligible words she mixes in there, she makes her meaning plenty clear. the times when i have no idea what she's said, i repeat it back to her as a question and she'll emphatically reply "yeah!" yeah. i thought so hazel. because you clearly feel strongly about this, whatever this is...

i've always said that that phase from about 15 months to 2 yrs is just the most delightful, when they go from just saying a few words through this explosion of language and come out *talking* to you. and while they're doing that, you're really getting to know more about how they think, you see who they are more clearly... and all the while, the full-on conflicts and tantrums aren't there yet (just the practice kind -- not that i knew that the first time around. first time, those early tantrums seemed so huge, and this time they're almost cute. :)

okay, off to take this little baby to bed. 22 months old now, so soon she'll be 2 already! my baby, already a kid. she is quite simply a joy. almost everything she does, it's just fun to be a witness to that spark in her eye as she figures it all out.

she just brought me a pressure gauge, announced "clock" (okay, so she said it w/o the L sound) -- and i'm wondering, how does she even know what a clock is? we don't have a working analog clock in the house. then she looks at me and says "haha. funny." what's funny is htat she has now fed me at least a dozen pretzels despite my protests, ferrying them from the bag at the other end of the coffee table. i resist, then get distracted while typing, and she sneaks another one to me. haha. funny.

and now we've come full circle back to a "nummy bet" request, so off i go to take this night owl baby to bed.

ps> i almost forgot what might be the best one! in addition to hug (uhk) and kiss, we have "nuggo" (or slowly it morphs to get that L on the end, nuggol). snuggle. there's little i love more than when my baby walks over and asks to nuggo. that's the good stuff right there.

naycation

2009-08-27T19:22:00.004-05:00

like the nice wife that i am (read: pragmatist? martyr?... chump?), i said, sure larry, head to italy to attend an amazing wedding with your friends. while you're there, you may as well swing up to switzerland and visit your brother. no worries, i'll just be here at home with the two kids, enjoying what the 105 degree weather does to people after the pools close for the summer. enjoy your 9 days in europe.

so he gets the vacation.
and you've heard of the staycation.
what i have in front of me, however, is the naycation.

wish me luck.

DAY 1:
all three stopped crying before we got back on the highway from the airport. got massive groceries while spirits were up (or sense of resolve was strong?), including what turned out to be $22 worth of 10 kinds of fruit. no chocolate though, what's up with my definition of "comfort food"?

so far no yelling or crying or "that voice" from any of us. well, except hazel:

hazel can now reach every flat surface in the house (save the top of the refrigerator) which is trouble. i moved a glass out of her reach, to the opposite edge of the island, then promptly turned and slammed it (along with the ceramic mortar i had in my hand) to the tile floor. it was the kind of breakage that rendered much of the glass into a fine powder, and it flew into three different rooms. with no back-up, hazel had to cry from behind emergency baby gates while i swept and eva did her sisterly best to entertain her.

since her only nap was 15 min in the car on the way to the airport (typical!), she's asleep now at 7:30. hurray, i can get eva to bed with relative ease! but first, packing lunch and picking out clothing for tomorrow, to facilitate a smoother morning.

DAY 2:
stayed up far too late, i guess because no one told me to go to bed. oops. thus, was groggy when i rolled over from snoozing the alarm to find... a naked baby bum inches from my face. could have been bad, but i lucked out. her diaper was on the other bed, who knows what she was up to while i was konked out.

still fighting the ants that invaded while we were out of town. today they found the diaper bag, so i unknowingly transferred ants into the car. time to clear out the car clutter (a task that can only be done between 1:00-8:00 a.m.). found a winter coat though. nice!

vacuumed and cleaned the car after school, with double kid assistance. even with the a/c running nearly had heat stroke, but hey, clean car.

dinner and margaritas at a friend's house, and along with an itunes tour through decades of TV theme songs, it was just what we needed. drove around the neighborhood to induce slumber. eva woke up and flipped out as i was transferring her, and i responded by yelling at her for the first time since larry left. so i made it 32 hours. is that good or bad? in my defense, i had hazel locked in a car in the dark driveway in 95 degree heat. (sure, you're saying, bring the baby in the house first. but lately that just ends with two awake kids, one screaming. i know from experience.)

10 pm and two sleeping kids, and i even remembered to feed the dog! (what dog? we still have one of those?) project runway premier is waiting for me on my dvr, so that's a bonus. not a trapsing-around-italy type bonus, but hey, i'll take it.

DAY 3:
"mommmm! lemma pooped on floor and it's in my room and hazel's carrying it around!" i got out of bed with the speed of what i'm sure were those circle-blur cartoon legs, imagining all manner of horrors. thank goodness hazel has moved beyond the "everything in the mouth" phase. we did have to sanitize the whole bucket of duplos, though. note that at this very moment, larry is at the wedding in italy. we seriously need some 'freaky friday' action up in here.

yea! as expected, eva "graduated" from care at her endo appt today. the kids were delightful and i think it's now officially feasible to take both kids to doctors appointments. shh, don't tell larry. (larry, don't tell yourself.)

DAY 4:
went to a clothing swap today -- scored some cool stuff and even got it silkscreened. straight from there to lunch, then hanging out with friends, then to a pool party (where we met lots of new people, many of whom live in our new neighborhood).

so, no surprise really, that 9 hours after leaving the house, we knew it was time to go home when eva lost it over being presented with the wrong dip for her broccoli and started screaming and flailing, nearly (inadvertently) kicking a lovely pregnant woman in the stomach. after all that, said lovely woman was kind enough to hold hazel (who was then crying simply because eva was crying... oh and because she had had no nap) and to help me in getting my sobbing offspring to the car. nice to meet you!

i'm proud that i kept my cool, and that i followed through on my previous warnings that we'd leave if she was unable to change her behavior. we talked on the way home and she seemed to really get why we left.

larry called this afternoon, and we shouted at each other for a while on some sort of old-fashioned ship-to-shore line (or so it seemed) that had a good five second delay, plus echo. he reported that he had such an amazing time at the wedding yesterday that he can't even put it into words.

hmm. i'm not having that particular problem.

damn, just realized i forgot to ask him where the wine and the ant poison are (um, to be used for separate purposes). i mean, not like i can't go buy more, but haven't managed to yet.

DAY 5:
first day that we just stayed home all day. by the end of the day, you could really tell we needed to have gone somewhere, but too late by then. i was feeling sick (presumably allergies) and hazel was feverish/snotty/cranky from some acute teething... and then the trifecta: eva announced she didn't feel well, and sure enough, she had a fever. of course! nearly every single time larry goes to europe the kid(s) get sick.

what did we do all day... i can't remember...i just know it was somehow terribly exhausting.

DAY 6:
spent a nice day out and about with friends at the history museum and whatnot. i'm learning that eva's most ill-timed and maximally embarrassing fits are due to misunderstandings that she can't quite articulate.

spent yesterday with no internet b/c i couldn't figure out which of the various devices hazel had messed with and in what fashion. turns out the answer was "wireless router" and "unplugged" (with a candlestick in the study?).

being beckoned to play "restaurant" in the kitchen. eva just called me on her toy phone to say she hopes i'm already about to turn into the parking lot because my food is getting cold. maybe i can harness this play into some actual eating of actual dinner. (update: nope.)

oh man, that was some fun, elaborate pretending. in the end, i was the chef at the restaurant (what else?) and she came to fix our water pump (??) and paint the kitchen. she didn't have all the tools at first, and called her friend to ask to borrow some, but in the end she got the job done. (it involved waving a broom around, and hazel managed to avoid getting clocked, a win-win.)

uh oh, she's awake again... it's like a game of whack-a-mole with these two tonight, one up then the other (then the other and the other). current score: hazel 4, eva 2.

DAY 7:
okay, the less said about day 7 the better. suffice it to say, 11 p.m. and eva's just now asleep, so now hazel's playing with the dog water while i research double jogging strollers online. eh. good enough.

i'm thinking even the most crazy high-end expensive strollers are in fact a bargain in comparison to a trip to italy and switzerland. i mentioned this to larry, he may or may not think i'm joking. i was at first, but...

DAY 8:
the home stretch! we have enough planned today to require military precision so i best get a move on.

jumpy place (fun! both kids are getting so adventurous!) and swimming lessons filled up the day. earlier larry tried, with moderate success, to cajole the crank out of eva via phone from switzerland. but hurray for small miracles: as i contemplated what was sure to be the rockiest bedtime yet based on our collective mood, eva just curled up and fell asleep on the couch! amazing. hazel poked her with a stick for a while then also fell asleep. as i type this, larry's probably at the zurich airport. i did finally find that wine, and i think it's called for now.

in just 24 hours larry returns and my naycation draws to a close. at least i don't have to spend the next 24 hrs traveling since i'm already home. well, hmm... would i take the travel or my day here? at the moment it's a bit of a toss-up.

DAY 9:
three more hours! all that's left is to shower, maybe read some of our new library books, then head to the airport. eva was a mess at the library, so on the way home we had a random treat from the DQ next door. ugh, haven't had a blizzard in years and now i remember why. (does soft serve make everyone queasy or just me?) eva had her *own* dish of "ice cream" though, which thrilled her. i sold it as "a treat for us since we made it through papa's whole trip!" rather than the blatant anti-whining bribe that it was.

all in all, i think we did pretty well. we had our moments, but it wasn't a survive-at-all-costs scenario -- the house is cleaner than when he left, i actually cooked food, and until tonight, haven't gone with the cheater version of double bedtime (letting them crash out on the couches in front of the TV at 11 p.m...). in fact, i think we were pretty freakin' awesome, considering.

so next time, i'm the one who gets to travel around europe for nine days, right? enjoy *your* staycation, larry. the wine is in the hall closet.

a farewell

2009-06-28T22:24:00.001-05:00

cousins, originally uploaded by kelanew.

we said goodbye to john, karen, sarah, and katherine on friday. they're in switzerland now for a couple years.

before they left, we got the cousins together nearly every weekend (gram was helping watch the girls while john and karen packed). the little ones, hazel and katherine, won't remember, but for eva and sarah, who are so close, it's all a bit harder.

eva mostly understands -- but at her age she's still somewhat fuzzy on time. so, i had to explain that no, we won't be visiting them in a couple weeks or months. it won't be until way past winter (the farthest thing she can generally conceive of is "winter" or "your birthday" depending on what time of year it is :). so, now she is announcing "we're going to visit sarah in switzerland in the winter!" um, not exactly, but i closer.

the extent to which logical connections don't just fall into place was hammered in this weekend. we were at work day at grammie's house, and we were discussing eva's upcoming birthday party at gram's house. eva casually mentioned that sarah would be there.

sigh.

when she would mention her birthday and sarah a month ago, i just dodged the question ("we'll see") because there was no point telling her that far out that sarah was leaving. so now she knows sarah moved away, but somehow it didn't connect in her head that (therefore) sarah wouldn't be at her party. she was crushed. but, she's okay now, she was just surprised.

when they said goodbye it was a lot like any other goodbye, the "see ya' later!" sort of thing. but then i noticed eva was just standing there totally still, looking over at sarah in her bed. i crouched down, caught her eye, and asked,

"what are you thinking, baby?"
she smiled just a bit and looked back over in sarah's direction as she said, in that way only kids can, that is both matter-of-fact and conveys a ton of emotion:

"that i will miss her."

charlie's robot

2009-06-15T20:54:00.002-05:00

happy!, originally uploaded by kelanew.

today, as told to me on the drive to the first day of summer camp(!) -- she's going every afternoon for two weeks to an arts camp -- visual and performing arts, including dance, drama, and singing, so i think it's just the wright thing for her for the moment. her story:

charlie invented a brand new kind of rocket. it's the fastest rocket ever, and it can go really far into space. millions of miles into space, like past the sun! all the way to the top of outer space! it's different from other rockets, because it's so powerful that instead of having lots and lots of fire that comes out of the back when it blastes ("blast-es") off to space, it only needs a little bit of fire. and that way, it's safer so no houses get burned. then, it shoots out most of the fire once it's already in outer space. and then, a computer tells it if there's an astronaut nearby, and if there is, it just sucks the fire back in to keep the astronaut safe. isn't that great? and also this kind of rocket is really good for the earth.

that charlie, he's so clever. good thing he (as eva often says) "teaches her lots of interesting things".

heartstrings

2009-06-10T01:22:00.001-05:00

big sister anniversary, originally uploaded by kelanew.

"eva, can i hold your hand? not because you *need* to hold my hand on the sidewalk -- you can walk along this busy road by yourself -- but just because i like to?"
"because then our hearts will be connected?" (i must have said this to her one time.)
we were walking to a trial dance class at the rec center down the road. there was a pause.

"mama? can we pretend there's a string that attaches to my heart, and goes all the way over and connects to your heart? and then we'll always be connected?"
"sure! hmm, i wonder what happens if i went... all the way across the street! then what?"
"well, it would still reach, because i'd just make it longer."
"what if... what if i was at home but you were at school?"
"then i'd just make it super long! but we'd still be connected."
"does it stretch, or grow, or, how does it get so long?"
"no, it's automatic. you see, i just have these buttons..."

she went on to describe the buttons -- there were three, one to make it short, one to make it medium, and one to make it long. oh wait, she decided after some thought, there's one more button to reel it back in when we go closer to each other. also -- she was very clear on this -- each button makes a different sound (she went on to demonstrate them as we walked).

"eva, what is this whole system called?"
"it's called the Automatic Super String of the Heart Connect."

be still my heart. and i love that it's mechanical, with buttons. when it comes to this sort of thing, she generally reports that charlie taught her about it.

so she had a big long day of too many new activities, with some intense emotions (accompanied by some insight, "i'm having a lot of trouble today, it's a really hard day!" she said through her tears -- usually that realization comes not until she's calmed down).

as i was working on painting her room late tonight, she woke up and needed more water, but mostly wanted to snuggle. i told her i was working on her room, and said i was curious whether she thought she'd choose to sleep in the big bedroom or in her new bedroom.

"mom, i have the perfect solution. i can start the night sleeping in here with you guys, then if i wake up in the night, i can just move to my own room."
huh. odd that she hit upon the usual arrangement, but in reverse. i offered the more standard order of bed-moving, and she would have none of it.
"oh, mama, i just prefer my solution, okay?"
fine, then. she rolled over to go back to sleep.

"you know what eva? i think if you choose to sleep in your bedroom, i might miss you a bit."
(honestly, i'll miss her a lot, but my point in telling her this was to let her know it's okay to be happy and sad at the same time about new things... she's had several changes to cope with lately.)
she rolled back to face me, smiling, and with half-asleep eyes.

"oh mama!" she said in that clearly-you-jest voice she has perfected, "you wouldn't miss me. because of our heart-connector strings!"

oh right. how could i forget?

back in january (when i planned to start working on her room, before i knew i'd be half or more sick all spring) i asked her if she might like to sleep in her new room. i asked just like that, very casually. she immediately started crying and protested, "but i'll miss you guys if i sleep far away by myself!" i reassured her she didn't have to sleep anywhere else if she didn't want to. what a change, five months later, when *she's* reassuring *me*. i always trusted that we'd collectively know when she was ready, and i guess she is. (or, i should say, ready to give it a try... )

[i can't resist adding: she even helped me paint earlier, until she decided it wasn't "as interesting ("inch-rest-ing") as i thought it would be... it seems like painting a *whole* room is annoying!" sorry to burst your bubble.]

huggers shirley

2009-06-04T12:28:00.004-05:00

snuggling up, originally uploaded by kelanew.

remember that old sesame street bit about the two aliens (apparently called the geefle and the gonk) who are trying to eat some nectarines from a tree? the gonk is too short to reach them, and while the geefle can reach them, he can't bend his arms to get them to his mouth (never mind that this seems a terrible evolutionary adaptation on a planet where the only available food is nectarines, and the tale doesn't explain how the geefle managed to survive as a species thus far without previously establishing some sort of symbiotic relationship). they hit upon a solution wherein the geefle tosses nectarines down and the gonk in turn feeds both of them, and decide to give this process a name. the gonk says "let's call this 'cooperation'", and the geefle responds, "no, let's call it shirley." (video)

this story, and specifically the phrase "let's call it shirley", are firmly entrenched in the lore of my family growing up. (this, along with "duh stephanie" from full house, "johnny five is alive", any reference to the benniker gang, and of course, jokes about the lennox man.)

a few weeks ago, eva gave me a great hug. one of those hugs where the kid actually squeezes you rather than just flopping across your body, squeezing so tightly that she is compelled to let out a "ungh!" sound. she nestled into my neck and sighed. i squeezed back, and rocked side to side, supporting most of her body weight.

"mmm-uh. wow, that was a great hug, eva! maybe we should give that kind of a hug a name so we can remember it."
"okay! um... let's call it 'huggers-buggers'." [she's into rhyming endearments, gee wonder where she gets that. emma-lemma. hazel-basil. or larry's: eva-boliva-conceeva-bohneva. yes, really.]
"no," i said, reflexively taking my 25-years-old entrenched cue, "let's call it shirley!"

thus "huggers shirley" was born. we discussed that maybe at times when we were having trouble with each other, instead of arguing or yelling, one or the other of us could say "stop! let's do huggers shirley!" so that we could remember how much we love each other. (a few months ago we were into rubbing noses for the same purpose -- it's hard to stay frustrated with someone when your noses are touching. or, i know of other moms who will stop and smell their preschooler's head mid-breakdown to reestablish that connection.)

it's great. now she has specific (nonsensical, but effective) language to say "mama, i need to reconnect to you", and asks for it probably every other day. when we're having a hard day, when she's feeling anxiety about something (recently, school/social stuff), when i'm putting her to bed at night, when hazel's monopolizing my attention:

"mama, can we do huggers shirley?"

and i know never to turn her down. even if the food is about to burn or hazel is trying to teeth and nurse at the same time. it's a little contract of sorts, and we're both really enjoying it.

let's call it reconnecting! no, let's call it huggers shirley.
hey... want part of my nectarine?

growing up

2009-06-02T12:41:00.004-05:00

"mama, at night sometimes i dream about what my life will be like when i'm a grown-up. sometimes in the mornings i do that, too, when i'm awake. i was just doing that right now."

we were in the car, about to pull in to a parking space at target. we sat in the car, a/c running and hazel sleeping, so i could take advantage of one of these moments when she feels like sharing her big thoughts. here's a basic synopsis of what she told me about her dreams for her future (my neutral probing questions omitted, a lot of "oh reallys" and "i'm curious to know more about thats"):

"i am going to have the most wonderful children in the whole world. i'm going to live in a beautiful house. there will be flower vases in every room. the one on the table will have honeysuckle in it, and then at lunchtime, we can suck on the honeysuckles. i wish that my children will never get into fights with me, but if they do i'll just go to a different room until everybody calms down and maybe they will say 'i'm sorry'. i want my house to look similar to gram's house, with the rooms in similar places but smaller. everyone will have their own bedroom, but the babies and kids will sleep with us. [who is "us"? i asked]. the mama and the papa. i'm the mama, and i will choose who will be the papa. i will have a job, so i will not be around my children as much. that will make me feel sad, but if i feel sad, i'll just order a necklace like yours and i'll feel better if i have to be away from my children [the one i have with a charm with both girls' names -- i told her once it makes me feel happy when i'm away from my girls, because i can touch it and feel like they are near me.]. i wish for my children to be brother and sister. or if i have two boys, brothers, or if i have two girls, sisters. or twins."

in the past couple weeks, she has for the first time stated What I Want To Be When I Grow Up. the verdict? a "photographer artist". she's mentioned it several times, sort of elaborating on the concept"when i'm a photographer artist, i'll make art that people can buy. it might have paint and photos and other stuff all mixed up." she also added that she might like to act, but that was immediately after we were at the children's theater. i reminded her that in a few weeks, she starts summer camp at arts center, which is visual arts combined with dance and drama.

wow. mama's so smart. (i.e., sometimes i get things right! :)

today was her first day of school having switched to mornings from afternoons. she went to morning class twice in the week when larry was abroad and i was having trouble, say, standing without leaning against available walls. she loved it, minus some trouble with the foreign concept of napping. well, i sort of forgot that it would be a big deal, her first day moving to mornings. same school, same teachers, some of the same kids... plus she'd been to mornings twice.

well yesterday she was sort of insane all day, then at bedtime, it all came flooding out.

"what if the morning kids are mean to me? last time at morning class, i asked if i could play with them and they said no. only the all-day kids [who already know her] would play with me. and i don't know how to do the dancing class that they do at school and all the other kids will know how. and i want to play with the boys, but they only want to play firefighter and i don't like playing firefighter. i could ask them to play race [which she used to do months back with boys when she tired of princessy stuff for a spell], but i don't have any racing shoes that fit me anymore. my sandals run faster than my feet so i can't race in them, but i don't have any good race shoes!"

after a surprising amount of back and forth, it became clear she was referring to tennis shoes. ah, tennis shoes! well, my dear one, that we can fix. we can go get you some tennis shoes. i wish i could fix it so that no kid was ever mean to you and you never had to have your feelings hurt, but that's not how it works (nor should it be). but shoes... check. i've got that covered.

she was excited and apprehensive this morning, and there were a few tears when i dropped her off. by the time i left (after chatting outside the gate with another mom), she was on the playground, chatting with a "new" (morning) boy and a girl she already knows. hazel spied her all that distance away and repeatedly waved bye-bye. at pick up, hazel saw the playground and begain waving again, though it was empty, looking for eva. eva was tired and cranky, but i think that's to be expected after a big new experience. so, i think it's going to be a good switch for her in the end.

but this growing up stuff, whether making new friends or planning for your future as an artist who lives in a flower-strewn house with your kids, is hard work. here's hoping some appropriate footwear can help a little.

happy birthday, hazel!

2009-06-02T11:04:00.002-05:00

my baby is one. in fact, she's been one for ten days already, but i'm just now writing this. that's in part due to the fact that i've been sick again (since roughly january, but was basically non-functional for a couple weeks there, coinciding with larry's trip to qatar --but frankly i'm sick of thinking and talking about all that, so the less said the better at this point). but i've also not written about her turning one yet because it took me a while to process it.

it sort of snuck up on me, as i was doing my best to get through the minimum level of daily tasks until shortly before her birthday. and then it felt bittersweet -- she's amazing and i love seeing all the new things she can do, love bearing witness to the person she's becoming before my eyes, but it's also a little sad that she's not a tiny baby anymore. she's likely my last, and i already miss it. and i worry at times that i wasn't present enough, because i already can't really remember her first year. i worry it happened while i was busy dealing with life, and if so, that's sad, too.

but really, i think i don't remember it because i was living it rather than recording it all as it happened. i was far more present this time around, that whole living-in-the-moment thing. i spent more time just being with her (and with eva, and as a family with larry) and less time worrying about whether or not i was doing everything the right way. i guess that's the gift of being a second child. the drawback is that your mama's memories are foggy -- but hey, hazel doesn't remember it either, so we're even.

we had a lovely little party to celebrate her big day -- postponed a day with a venue change due to rain, but happily most guests were still able to make it. she looked like such a kid in her puffy party dress, running around with all the kids (who were really basically eva's friends and younger siblings, but at the tender age of 1 hazel is already starting to roam around in the pack of preschoolers and toddlers -- i love that). she really liked her cake and would light up when she saw the dragon (signing for dog, because what baby has a frame of reference for a dragon, right?) and doing her best to get her hands on it and, i presume, eat it.

she is so fun at this age. she has been walking with assurance for a while now, so is trying out new tricks like climbing and "running" when excited (which tends to end with a face plant as her center of balance gets ahead of her feet). she copies *everything* we do, especially eva, and is watching and absorbing everything. yesterday, eva had a doll, so hazel went and found a doll (uh, more accurately, hazel had the first doll, eva snatched it away, and hazel found a new one). eva wrapped her doll in a blanket, so hazel disappeared into the kitchen and came back with a scarf, holding it out for help wrapping up her baby. hazel holds the baby up to her neck and twists back and forth just like eva. eva set hers down on the coffee table (for a diaper change or something), so hazel followed her over and did the same. this morning, hazel walked over to me after i fixed eva's hair for school, hairbrush in hand, wanting me to brush her hair as well. the other day i implored eva to get her shoes on so we could go somewhere, and there's hazel, walking over to me with her shoes in hand, ready to go, too.

it's those sorts of behaviors (as much as size, or walking, or the like) that has totally shifted my perspective. she's not a baby now, she's a small kid. she participates in our family life. eva and hazel play together, they snuggle up when they need a break, they wrestle each other (eva may find they're evenly matched before long!), they play games of chase. the other night before bedtime, the girls got us started in some crazy running around giggling game (good ol' RUSD as larry has termed it -- rile them up to settle them down (before bedtime). he claims it works, i claim it makes bedtime harder but is fun so i go for it anyway). hazel was gigging like crazy, running at one then the other of us, diving at us, wanting to roll around and be silly. i chased them in circles around the pathway through the kitchen, they flew in the air, larry tossed them on the sofa. stuff like that was always fun with eva, but is exponentially more joyful with two, since they feed off each other.

hazel has also reached the stage of having very strong opinions. no longer the happy-go-lucky laid back infant, she now will let you know what she thinks. if she wants to drink out of your water and you decline (or stop after you get bored of helping her after 10 minutes), she might scream. or plop down on her bum, tilt her red face up at you, and cry. or, if proximity allows, scratch you on the face. at this point it's mostly cute (mostly), but it is definitely a preview of toddlerhood to come.

happy birthday, my sweet hazel penelope. we are all thrilled beyond words to have you in our family. and while i will always remember your babyhood (and probably bore you to death recounting it when you are a teenager), and though i look forward to getting to know the person you will become, right now, i'm so happy and thankful to simply be with you. (i'm sniffing your head as i type this. you're nursing on and off, interspersed with roaming around carrying blocks in a bag, putting the phone in papa's (empty, phew!) coffee cup, and climbing in and out of the rocking chairs. busy as always.) i love you, little one year old baby. forever and always.

walking

2009-04-21T23:50:00.005-05:00

walking baby, originally uploaded by kelanew.

it's official, people. she's walking. as in, she no longer crawls.

it's so fascinating to watch the transition. eva woke up one day at 15 mo and decided to walk. so she did, from then on. she had clearly known how for months, but needed to decide to go for it. but once she did... she went from full time crawling to full time walking literally overnight (i believe it was october 3rd?) hazel, on the other hand worked it out over a period of a few weeks... those first strings of 5 or so steps a month ago, then part-time walking (arms out for balance), slowly tipping the balance to walking more than crawling... and for a week or so now, she walks full time. so every day this last month has been something new, a measurable shift in her abilities (not unlike how eva and i have been watching her pinto beans grow, and there's often a change between lunch and dinner. don't blink or you'll miss it!)

she seems thrilled that she can now transport items around the house in true bipedal fashion. which explains why i keep finding markers and rubber bands in the silverware tray of the dishwasher, and why the remote and both cordless phones can generally be found under the kitchen table or in the pantry.

she's signing a bit more but still not too much -- she clearly understands lots of signs, but isn't that in to doing them. and i don't care, because it's communication, that's all i'm really hoping for. she'll be crying at the gate because papa left to go upstairs to work, and i'll call to her from across the room, ask if she wants milk. she'll stop crying, turn and grin, and walk over to me, both hands up flapping away signing milk (one that just really "clicked" for her recently). wow. she's like a whole person. i know that shouldn't continue to amaze me, but it does.

and that brings me to the dominant theme of the last several days -- hazel is officially in a papa phase. say, in that previous scenario, that i'm sitting nursing her, and she may even be three-quarters asleep. larry will walk in, he may or may not speak, and hazel will pry herself awake, wriggle herself into an upright position on my lap, climb down, and make a beeline for him. this is new to me, a baby who will give up nursing to do... well, anything else. but hazel is 100% in love with her papa: more than almost anything in the world, she loves to sleep on his belly (she always has). she lights up when he's around (sorry, mama, you're old news :) and cries when he leaves. she finds him hilarious.

it's a beautiful thing to see. and while part of it is personality and part is the situation (two kids, divided attention), he has more than earned this adoration. they spend so much time together, including hours in the late evening. after i head up to bed, he stays downstairs with her (as he's generally up late anyway) so i can get a couple hours of uninterrupted sleep. if she wakes, he can get her back to sleep with no problem at all. this, too, will never cease to amaze me. (but not really. because it's larry.)

i've said it many times, but we feel so privileged that our children get to have two parents around them for so many hours of the day. (okay, there are times when larry might not think of this is a "privilege", like when he really needs to get some work done and there's crazy flying around out of every corner of the house.) it's easy to become immune to one's own daily experience, whatever it may be, but i am in fact conscious of this one quite often. among all the many blessings in my life, this is a good one. my kids get to have this amazing relationship with their dad (who nicely balances out the mama side of the parental equation). and of course that would be true whatever his job (or my job)... but the extra time together sure is nice, and i am truly thankful for it.

okay, that wrapped it up in a nice tidy bow, but i can't resist this postscript: it's like wrestling a drunk monkey trying to change hazel's diaper these days, never mind trying to get her dressed -- she's halfway across the room and somehow you're still holding onto one sleeve chasing her down. she's not opposed to these things, not (generally) protesting or crying -- she's just too busy to be bothered with it, she has places to be.

but come at her with her shoes.... wow. she-who-shall-not-be-still becomes placid, calm. she watches with rapt attention as you slip the shoe onto her foot. she doesn't even move while you hunt around for the other shoe ("hey eva, have you seen hazel's shoe? can you check the dishwasher?"). she knows her shoes mean freedom. and then she's ready to go.

dualities

2009-04-21T22:37:00.002-05:00

oh yeah?, originally uploaded by kelanew.

so, i don't know if it's something that works sort of like christmas creep, what with reindeer flying over the jack-o-lanterns while out running errands. or if, instead, it has something to do with environmental estrogens, smashing puberty right down on top of preschool. but whatever the cause, we're getting a serious preview of eva at fourteen these past few weeks.

there's glaring. there's dramatic sighing. there's flopping down onto the couch in practiced anguish.

i'm now often called "mom", which is pronounced across three syllables and as many notes ("ungh! mah-uuuuh-AAAAHM!") and i'm pretty sure we're ruining her life. i can tell, because apparently i never let her buy anything she wants, i never let her do what she wants to do, and i never do anything fun, never ever. or so i'm told. often.

i'm sure a lot will change in the next decade, but i think some things might remain constant. i knew enough to expect this eventually, but was naive enough to think i had a few more years. just wait until she learns how to roll her eyes in exasperation. then we'll be ready to go.

(and yes, i know this is all just life coming full circle on this former petulant teenager who gave her own mother no end of grief.)

but for all the times she's sighing and moping and saying "i don't know" when i inquire about her life, there are other times when she's almost comically articulate about what ails her:

"this shirt causes me to struggle."

she said that today, in a frustrated but not whiny voice, and i couldn't help but smile.

and then, of course, there's the rest of the time, which is actually the vast majority of the time, when she's sweet and caring and just so excited to learn everything about everything.

it can be really up and down, this preschool thing. and i'd better just hang on tight and enjoy the ride...

return of the troubador

2009-04-14T14:03:00.003-05:00

walking, "help", originally uploaded by kelanew.

"mama, can i sing you a song? it's a song about you."

(i then missed the first verse, but quickly realized i might want to type as she sang. so she danced and flowed around the living room, singing like so:)

Mom Song:

mama you are thankful for giving me your care
when you are my mama, you will be my favorite
you are beautiful and thankful
oh, you are sweet to me, you are happy
you are just my mom.

when you are happy i love you
you are my mom for ever after all
you are my mom, you are my mom
you you you are my mom
you you you are my mom
you are my mom forever until...
you just are my mom forever.

you are my best mama
you are lovable
mama, mama, mom.

you are great for giving me your care
and hazel needs help from you and me and her whole family
woo woo you are the best mama i ever had.

when you are great, you are sweet
mama you take care of the whole family
the whole family takes care of theirselves and each other
you are my mama and i love you
and you love me

mama you are sweet to me
mama you are happy
you can always be my mom.

"that's the end. do you want me to sing you another similar song? it's similar but a little bit different."

Girl Family Song:

mama you are great for giving me your care
you are sweet, happy as can be
you are my mom forever after all

i will have my sister, she will always be my sister
when you are sweet
i will love you even when you are mad
mama i love you so much

my sister loves me so much and i love her so much
and you love me so much
woo woo woo and joolaloo

i love everybody who i know
you are my best wholooloo

hazel and you are the best people in my family

[interrupting:]
K: "what about papa?"
E: "he's in one that's similar to these two girl ones. he's in the boy one. [pause] next i'll sing you the boy one."

Dad Song:

daddy is the lovable
daddy is the best
woo woo woo
dad loves all his whole family
even the dog
who barks a lot

you are my best family
you are sweet, i love you papa
you are my best caring
woo, you love me and i love you
you love me and i love you
you are so so happy to be my papa

dad is my dad
he loves me and i love him
he's the best when he is the best
when you are the best dad
you know you are the best
dad is the best and hazel is the best

hazel is the best of all the people i love
.
woo i love dad
dad is the best dad and he is
you are my sunshine and he is too

dad you are the best of anybody i know
so you can be my dad you know
you are my dad

("hazel no no no! no grabbing my telephone!")

thus ends the program.

bedtime for two

2009-03-20T23:42:00.001-05:00

sisters at play, originally uploaded by kelanew.

how to manage bedtime for two kids on your own, when the elder is not accustomed to falling asleep on her own and the younger is too old to just nurse quietly at any time of your choosing:

night 1: take papa to the airport at the crack of dawn. during the sleepy day that follows, discuss with eva that after pjs/potty/teeth/book/song, you and hazel will go downstairs so hazel doesn't keep her up. feel far too reassured when she agrees to fall asleep on her own. subsequently answer her queries down the stairs every 20 minutes, at first with "iloveyous" and giggles then later with shouting and explanations of consequences. continue in this loop until 11, even though you must wake up early for a daytrip in the morning.

night 2: in an effort to avoid a repeat of night 1, orchestrate your day such that you eat dinner before your drive back into town, planning for the kids to fall asleep in the car. inexplicably, feel far too reassured (once again!) when the plan works. ninety minutes later, start the cycle of the previous night all over again when she wakes up. later, make her cry by shouting up the stairs in frustration "just. go. to sleep!", and nearly cry yourself when she responds through tears, "mama, you're not being very nice to me." go up and sit with her until she falls asleep. fret that she was up until 11:30, knowing the alarm is set for 6:45 to take the rescue puppies to get spayed and neutered.

night 3: get home late when it takes forever to pick up the puppies. mentally check out after the makeshift dinner, mentally check back in to realize your daughters are playing on the floor, giggling hysterically at each other, scoop up your heart from where it melted into a puddle on the floor. decide "screw bedtime" and follow the giggles instead until after 9. be amused rather than frustrated when hazel grabs the bedtime book 42 times and literally crawls back and forth over you and eva over and over as you read. wish you had a video camera handy to record the insanity. go along with eva's request to stay with her. amuse hazel on the floor rather than the bed so that she'll stop crawling on her sister. stare at eva's sleeping face just 7 minutes later. wonder why on earth you bothered with the hours of craziness the previous two nights.

night 4: plan to not bother with bedtime at all, given there's no need to wake up early and that papa will be home tomorrow. surprise yourself by initiating the bedtime routine promptly at bedtime because things seem to be heading that direction with ease. follow the night 3 plan, marred only by papa's phone call home when eva is all but asleep. be amazed when both children are sleeping peacefully by 9:15! get a glass of wine and watch an hour of trashy television. be more than ready to welcome papa back home tomorrow!

ralphie, help!

2009-03-20T00:04:00.003-05:00

you will not believe what just happened to me.

i was packing our lunch for our day trip tomorrow, and since my last remaining ice pack leaked yesterday, i was making another tray of ice to use in cooler instead. (our ice maker has been broken for ages, so we put trays in that little bin up top since it's otherwise unused freezer space.) so i filled the tray, spilled a bit, and stuck it in the freezer.

("spilled a bit" is the foreshadow there, but "stuck" is really the key word.)

well, apparently my wet index finger and thumb found a metal bar inside the ice maker, and were instantly and firmly stuck. really stuck. who even knew that metal bar was there, hiding behind the plastic case up high where it can't be seen? uh oh.

i tugged a bit, no luck. i glanced around for some sort of tool... not sure what i was looking for, but in any case, our kitchen is arranged such that the freezer is practically in the hallway, so there's no way i could have reached anything other than a box of oatios. contemplated flinging a foot toward the counter in hopes that my water bottle would roll my way, realized that wasn't going to work. it was my right arm stuck in the left-side freezer, so i couldn't really open the fridge side, let alone reach anything of use in there.

i should point out that i'm alone in the house but for a preschooler and baby (both asleep) and three dogs, two of which are post-surgical and locked in a crate -- in the kitchen no less, watching me with interest. i suppose i could have, in theory, yelled loud enough to wake eva all the way upstairs, but i'd rather rip the skin off my fingers than traumatize both my kids to that degree (nevermind the case of frostbite i'd have by the time she could help).

i was still calm, and remembered what i learned growing up on the tundra, what everyone tells you to do when the predictable happens and you get your tongue stuck to a metal pole -- you wait. wait until your body heat melts the ice and then you will be free. well, i only stuck my tongue to a pole once as a kid and this was before i was offered this sage advice, so i've never personally tested this theory. until now. i don't know if it only works with tongues not fingers, or if the freezer makes it worse than the outdoors somehow, but i waited as long as i could and the stuck-on patches didn't even get smaller.

or, it seemed they didn't anyway. i couldn't see my fingers (or that damn bar!), and it's hard to assess since they were getting so cold. by this time, it was really starting to hurt quite a lot, and i'll admit, the cool-in-a-crisis me was walking out the door, leaving time-to-panic me still stuck in the freezer. sure, it's funny, (i thought), but i've exhausted my options and i can't just live in the freezer from now on. here comes the inevitable -- similar but more dire versions of this thought have gone through the minds of many a hiker trapped under a boulder or logger trapped under a tree -- i'm going to have to just do it. i'm going to have to rip off my finger skin.

oh, but i really, really don't want to! i gave it a tentative little tug. apparently, it's not as easy as you might think to rip off your own flesh. but man, was it starting to hurt... or maybe you have to do it bandaid-style and just go for it? i was thinking this one through when inspiration struck! i had it, i thought of the solution, and it worked! (obviously it did, or i wouldn't be typing this... i'd still be in the freezer or nursing some sizable finger-wounds instead.)

now, let's just pause here for a second. anyone remember "encyclopedia brown"? i used to love those books, and loved that feeling of satisfaction when i could figure out the mystery on my own before checking the back of the book for the answer. so let's all have a little encyclopedia brown moment, shall we? you have all the clues you need to solve this problem (not to mention you have the benefit of it being thusly narrowed for you, rather than having to scan my entire kitchen in a panic as i did).

did you figure it out? probably it's obvious, but no cheating. scroll down after you've made your guess.

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(guess, you smartie-pantses, if only because then you can gloat in the comments section...)

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the ice cube tray! i had just put it into the freezer, so it was filled with water (versus, say, ice). after some maneuvering, i managed to get it out with my free hand and pour the water over my stuck fingers. (there was a momentary panic when i thought all available water was gone and one finger was still stuck, but turns out there was enough to go around after all.) my fingertips were blanched completely white in a weirdly-defined shape on both fingers, which looked pretty freaky, even for someone who grew up routinely dealing with 40 below temperatures. after the painful "thaw" stage was over (yeowch!) things seem fine, though, and i think come morning i won't even know it happened.

except, i will know. i'll not soon forget the time i managed to get stuck in the freezer with no one around to help. though perhaps it was better that way -- remember that woman in the 80s who famously got stuck in her dishwasher? rather than helping, her husband video taped her and laughed his karmically-challenged head off, then sent that into america's funniest home videos. that said, i'm sharing because i don't mind being laughed at, as long as it's happening while all my fingers are a normal temperature and i'm free to move about the cabin.

car rhyme

2009-03-19T10:01:00.001-05:00

nurse...?, originally uploaded by kelanew.

eva made up this rhyme in the car, then repeated it three times the exact same way so i knew it was important and had better write it down. fyi, when i asked eva what a "soldier" was when she started saying it a few months ago, she said "someone who guards a castle" (meaning she heard this term at school). okay, good -- glad she didn't learn about soldiers from overhearing too much NPR! (can't remember the last time we read "brown bear, brown bear" but i guess she saw hazel's copy lying around recently?)

soldier, soldier, what do you see?
i see a dragon chasing me.

dragon, dragon, what do you see?
i see a bear eating my tail!

bear, bear, what do you see?
i see an alligator jumping on my head.

yesterday we played all day long at the new braunfels children's museum. she and hazel had a great day, and it was sweet to see them playing alongside each other with eva's friends.

nine in nine out

2009-03-18T00:29:00.001-05:00

eat your veggies, originally uploaded by kelanew.

poor, poor, neglected second children. hand-me-downs aren't the half of it -- eva's babyhood was meticulously recorded (at least in contrast!) and hazel's... well, i end up posting every two months or so, and saying everything i can think of all at once. (though, i hear third children are known to pick out their own baby books at the age of four or so, right baby sister?) hazel, as for you, find solace in the fact that i'm playing with you and enjoying you instead of obsessively recording each and every tooth.

well, so far, i'm actually on top of the teeth. two. that's it.
check.

hazel is 9 1/2 months old. she's healthy and happy and growing like crazy. she's smiley and easy-going (but makes her opinions known when she needs to). just by being who she is -- and her hazelness is really starting to make itself known -- several times a day larry and i are required to exchange glances, smile at each other, and say "just look at that baby!" or "can you even believe this baby?" being her parents it's not too surprising, i know, but we're endlessly amazed by her very existence on a daily basis. it can't get better than that.

i should say (and should have said to start out), you can pretty much stop reading unless you're a grandparent or auntie. these "baby book" posts are just that -- intended for hazel herself when she gets older, and for doting family. everyone else can tune in another day if they like.

today i called larry at his conference to say "guess which one of your children just said 'light'?" generally i'm not so bold as to pronounce a word as being an actual word until i hear it in context a few times, but it was just so obvious i called larry. she's already been saying "mama" -- that started as sort of meaning me but sort of meaning "someone bring me comfort!", which is more or less what mama means, anyway. that would be her first official word at 8 mo (eva's was "dog", followed months later by "grandpa", at least as i remember it.) since then,she's been saying "ummuh" for "lemma" (the dog, i'm sure because i'm always shouting the poor dog's name... oops), and a few times i've thought she's said "baba" for papa, but i'm not sure of that one yet.

light, though... that couldn't have been more clear. why? well, as much as i'm a huge proponent of baby signs (i'll tell anyone who'll listen, it's the biggest payback for the least effort of anything i've ever done as a parent), we've been a bit lazy about it with haz. she signed some around christmas, and then dropped down to only signing light. we're really consistent with that one! at every meal, we sign when we turn on the light above the table. so, today i flipped on the light and was about to sign it to her, and she looked at the light, looked at me, and said "ligh" (missing the "t"). cutie.

this photo was taken 6 weeks ago when she was 8 months old, eating various veggies. she's quite the eater (and let's just say, that's in stark contrast to my previous experience). i think she's yet to turn down a food -- maybe zucchini? -- and loves to eat all different kinds of tastes and textures (and rocks too). we've still not given a few things (like dairy), but other than that, she pretty much eats what we eat. i love that, like a few nights ago, sitting at the dinner table with larry and our girls, everyone eating veggie & lentil stew over brown rice. those moments make me wonder where this little family of mine came from. crazy!

hazel's new favorite game is to use the rocking chairs my dad made for eva as climbing gyms. she stands on the seat and holds the back and rocks, or sits on the arm (threatening to tip it over on herself!), crawls off face first, etc. loves it. she gets her leg stuck under the arm, but works out how to disentangle it on her own.

but the biggest news is probably that she's thinking about walking. she took her official first steps this week (or last week,maybe? it's all a blur, honestly). she'll reach out and take three to five steps toward you, with a huge grin on her face. now she'll walk between pieces of furniture, and so i think we could be in trouble very soon. she's been on the go since she was just days old, so once she can walk for real... she'll be off exploring her world with mama trailing behind trying to keep up.

her hair is getting a bit lighter, in that zone between blonde and brown, and the more it stands away from her head, the clearer it becomes that she will have some amount of curl. eva loves that idea, that they'll both have curly hair.

speaking of that... eva loves hazel with the biggest love i've ever seen. it's overpowering, and i just enjoy watching them together. they're getting to the age where they play together -- athough sometimes eva shrieks and tries to hoard her toys when hazel starts plodding over her way, just as often she's trying her best to entice hazel to join her. eva tells us (daily!) that she loves hazel most of all, even more than mama, even more than papa. that she sometimes is sad at school since babies aren't allowed to go there, so she misses her sister. she wants to snuggle with hazel, to touch her, to talk to her, all the time (which sometimes becomes an issue when hazel is trying to sleep). and it's clear already that hazel reciprocates all of this, she seeks out eva and laughs with eva more than with anyone else. if eva is around, hazel feels safe and comforted. i know they'll have to work through their relationship as young kids learning to share space in a family togther and as teenagers/adults as they have to figure out how to relate to each other as people -- and none of that is easy -- but when i see the foundation they have, the love in their eyes... i feel so happy that i get to be a witness to their unfolding relationship. they'll always be sisters, as eva is fond of saying.

off to bed, big adventures in store for tomorrow and i've been behind on sleep this week.

first date

2009-03-14T23:20:00.002-05:00

[rereading this, it almost sounds like things are Just Plain Awful. and they're not. there are a few more struggles than usual, and eva and i could stand to reconnect a bit, but it's not like we're having a big problem or anything. i just felt compelled to point that out. that, and that she adores her sister like you would not believe... but loving your baby sister doesn't preclude you from missing your mama. --k.]

eva has been a bit out of sorts lately. i know some of it is just the usual stuff -- social learning at school, what seems to be a pretty good growth spurt in the last month or two -- but some of it is coming directly from me. i've been struggling (again!) with this health stuff, whatever it is (we're guessing orthostatic hypotension type stuff, but who the hell knows), so i'm often tired, or cranky with her when i shouldn't be. plus, hazel is requiring more attention these days, and with hazel's tendency to get into eva's stuff, the responsibility of figuring out the early sibling dynamic falls mostly to eva. it's hard being three and a half sometimes. so she's been expressing a lot of frustration and anger, but also a lot of love, sometimes colored with a bit of longing, i think. (and she tells me things like "... and sometimes you're tired and papa has to help me instead" or asks "are you too tired mama? do you have no blood sugar?" which pretty much breaks my heart.)

i decided that maybe what might help would be some one-on-one time with me, which she has had almost zero of in nine months. (our big first date!) so we discussed it, and made a plan to have some "special eva and mama time all by ourselves" at a coffee shop. she planned the activities, and wisely chose things that are made more difficult when hazel is around (books, puzzles).

so after i took the dogs to get their vaccinations (these would be the stray puppies that last week began living in our back yard -- after being tossed over our fence in the middle of the night -- but now due to inclement weather apparently live in our kitchen), and after she selected exactly what she wanted to wear and how she wanted her hair, we headed out to a coffee shop we had never been to before.

from the moment we set out, her mood was completely shifted. we chatted and joked, no crankiness anywhere (from either of us). she ordered a foamy milk and chose a cookie as her treat. she chose a high table and scrambled right up into the chair.

we finally did the puzzle gram sent. she loves puzzles, but they can be hard at home because hazel can't leave them alone, but hazel also gets upset if we're all somewhere she isn't. i noted that she did this puzzle with zero frustration, when lately even taking off her pants can cause an explosion of frustration. so much of this is about feeling heard and validated (which can't be faked while doing six other things), i'm now realizing the full extent of this need. then we read a chapter in the book she chose. she lounged back in her chair and sipped her milk as i read to her, uninterrupted, until we were done. and no one tried to grab the book out of our hands, or needed to nurse, or bonked her head the whole time. (reading can also be a challenge at home.)

she wanted to label our cups with our names, which she did, and then she moved that into my writing words for her to sound out, which is one of her favorite games these days. it's fun to watch her start to make all these connections about letters and sounds and words, and the concept that someday she'll be able to put that all together herself and read on her own. she insisted we bring the cups home. i guess once something has your name on it, it becomes more difficult to just toss it mindlessly into the trash.

and then, she had a hard time leaving. i know she didn't want it to end, and promises to do it again soon fell on deaf ears. like a switch, she instantly moved back into that other mode, the "if you say that then you're not my mama anymore!" mode. "if you keep saying we have to leave," she continued, even though we were in the car and halfway home at that point, "then i'm never going to play with you again!" oh, i said, then i would be sad because i like playing you. she replied in true three-and-a-half form (so many conflicting emotions!): "i would be sad too, because i like to play with you, but i still wouldn't play with you because you said that!" all followed by a sigh, sounding just about as exasperated as she could manage.

and true to form, i understood and worked with it at first. i know where she's coming from, i get it. but after being yelled at every-which-way for the entire drive home and into the house and then waking up her sister, i lost my cool and got snappy at her. i always mean to do better, and sometimes i do. or, i do for a while, but i can't quite shake the feeling that i'm failing her at least some. because for two hours on a saturday afternoon, removed from all distractions, we were perfect. and it was lovely. and i miss that.

but i know life is just what it is. we're both doing what we can, and generally it's good and only sometimes it's not... but then sometimes it's amazing. today was amazing in that little pocket of time. and never mind all the rest, we have that. and we can move from there.

learning more about things

2009-03-14T18:54:00.006-05:00

driving to school the other day discussing her shoes, i sounded like an Official Mom and said "you know eva, when i was your age, they didn't even have velcro on shoes. can you believe that?" this lead to a discussion of other things they did or did not have when i was a kid. she asked:

cars?
yes, we had cars, but they didn't have cars when my grandma eva was a kid.
paper?
yup. paper is actually really old. like more than a thousand years old!

"but you know what we didn't have? the internet. there was no internet when i was a kid."
"what?! no internet? but then how did you learn more about things?"
"that's a good question, eva. i don't know, i can hardly remember how we did that..."

and honestly, it is all pretty vague. how *did* we learn more about things before the internet? i remember a world with these things called "phone books", which much to my annoyance *still* up on my front step every spring. and i have fuzzy memories of a school trip the library -- the nearest one was 45 minutes away -- so i could use a "card catalogue" (eh?) to find books about laura ingalls wilder for my 4th grade research report.

i'm all for limiting media for young children, but i see little benefit in being dogmatic about it. (that said, i have little patience for dogmatism in general, as it often belies a lack of critical thought and is almost never helpful to one's cause.) opinions vary, but for me, i have no problem using appropriate media to facilitate her desire to investigate a topic of interest. computer, TV, whatever... to me, the content is far more at issue than the particular medium (just because it's in video form doesn't mean it's garbage, and just because it's printed in a book for children doesn't mean it's quality material.) but i digress...

earlier today, we finished reading "clementine", a "young reader" type book (10 chapters, 160 pages of largish font, some pictures, you remember the type) about a precocious eight-year-old girl who tends to find a lot of trouble despite her best intentions. eva loved it -- no surprise, since she is currently *obsessed* with how amazing life will be once she's eight years old. in fact, we were going to save the last chapter for our coffee shop date later that afternoon, but then she decided "just one more page", then maybe one more, and then i just read to the end. i was an avid (obsessive?) reader as a kid (flashlight under the covers on a school night type of thing), and it makes me so happy to see her learning the excitement of sinking into a long story, wanting to know what happens but at the same time, not wanting it to end.

so after the last page she said, "is that the end? is there any more?" i told her i didn't know if there were other books about clementine or not, but that we could find out. i brought up google, and told her she could type the author's name so we could search on the internet. i know she's a fan of copying down words by typing them -- various times recently i have returned to my email to find it says "caps lock" or "backspace", which she carefully copied from the keyboard itself. she carefully typed "s-a-r-a p-e-n-n-y-p-a-c-k-e-r" and hit enter. up popped the author's website, with a familiar picture of clementine right there! one more click and we saw cover images for *two* other clementine books. i navigated us over to the city library site, and we found that one of them is on the shelves at our local branch. yea! she's very excited. we'll have to pick it up next week for extra entertainment when larry's out of town.

i don't really have a grand point here, but yea internet, yea love of learning, and yea reading. and yea for sharing all these amazing things with my very own daughter. that's one of the best things i've ever had the privilege to do.

she just said to me while i was typing, "mama, did you ever have this feeling that you love everything in the whole wide world? i'm having that feeling *right now*!" yes, eva, i do know that feeling.

fun with spatial relations

2009-03-03T23:01:00.003-06:00

lately many of my "hmm" moments with eva have related to spatial relations. seems like she's starting to wire up that aspect of her brain. (other fun things include more wacky vocabulary that surprises me, and adding/subtracting, which for whatever reason, happens mostly during dinner, when "subtract" = yum.) so, some spatial relations related (ha) highlights from this week:

eva's been taking a keen interest in left and right. we were driving home from an errand, and she noticed i was going straight instead of turning, so i pointed out there is more than one way to get home: turn right or go straight then turn right. she said, well, if you go straight even longer then turn left instead, you go to jennifer's! [jennifer cuts our hair.] i was surprised, since she was in fact correct, but we'd never gone to jennifer's from there before because it wouldn't make sense based on where our house is. then, she wanted to discuss more about which is her left hand. it's the one closest to the window, this is the left side of the car. she thought about it then replied "but hazel's left hand isn't on the left side because she's backwards. when we turn her car seat around when she's bigger, then her left hand will be to the middle."

last night, larry was reading her some new chapter books we got from the library (she was really excited about this, we even talked to the children's librarian to get suggestions. we've started with a "mrs. piggle wiggle" selection.) he read to her for over an hour, so i guess it went well. i overheard a line stating that mrs. piggle wiggle's house was upside down, and before he could continue with the description of what that would entail, she said "that's silly, then her fan would be on the floor!"

this morning, i found the ticket stubs from the children's theater performance rita treated us to this weekend -- that was eva's first theater experience (a musical, "the and and the elephant"), and she loved it. as distracted as she was by the setting ("we're way up high by the ceiling! those lights are shining from behind a screen!"), she followed the story and enjoyed recounting it later. anyway, i showed her how the tickets told us which seats to sit in, pointing out that we had seats 2, 3, and 4 in row N. eva, who sat between larry and i at the performance, said "oh, that means i was sitting in seat 3!" (she likes 3s. she's three and a half, you know. oh, did you know that she's three and a half? in case you hadn't heard.)

this morning she told me something i'd said was "quite cute". touche, eva.

andy pandy

2009-02-05T22:57:00.005-06:00

so, this is one of those times when larry is working nonstop. as in, some days i see him for about 5 minutes 3 times per day when he emerges to find food. instead of getting snappy at each other (which is sometimes the case under such circumstances), this time we've been quite cheery and supportive of each other (nonstop work mode creates very different but real challenges for each of us :). that said, this has been going on for about a month, and a month is about how long either of us can stand it. so, things may or may not start to get a bit precarious around here. (eva loves using that word, though she thinks it's "precurious" which is, frankly, just plain adorable).

that preamble is mostly to provide context for eva's recent obsession: andy pandy. for those of you who wonder (as i would have) why you haven't yet heard of this preschooler trend... that would be because apparently eva is the only child in america who cares about this show.

andy pandy was originally a 1950s british children's television show, (think howdy doody), but in 2002, it was revived -- in color! and claymation! eva doesn't watch a ton of kid tv -- mostly sesame street, and last fall, many many viewings of "how the grinch stole christmas" -- but i am not above just rolling with tv requests when necessary for family sanity (and nonstop work mode is one of those necessary times). so, in between viewings of "ace of cakes", we stumbled across three -- yes, just three -- episodes of andy pandy on bbc kids on demand.

"mama, can i watch andy pandy? the one with the picnic?" with just three 20 minute episodes, we came to know well the adventures of andy pandy and looby loo (yes, this character is the source of the song "here we go looby loo... all on a saturday night"). "mama, now can i watch the one with the man from the moon? please, just one more andy pandy?" the best thing about this show is that there are no squeeky fake kid voices (think elmo, etc) -- only a decidedly grown-up sounding british narrator. but a mama can only hear about, oh, say... how teddy painted looby loo's flowers blue with sailor bilbo's blue paint so many times before she looks for options. as in, where's the dvd?

after much google searching, it seems more andy pandy is not to be found. no dvds, no streaming video from bbc online, nothing on youtube, very little on ebay (when last i checked, a single region 4 dvd and some $35 collectible vhs tapes). so, as i said, sadly for eva, no children in america seem to share her obsession.

well, today -- after an unprecedented three day break from andy pandy -- i pulled up the preschool on demand channel on the cable box to find... no andy pandy. sure, the programming rotates, but since this long-off-the-air show had been present for many months before we ever started watching it, i presumed it would outlast her love for it. sadly, it did not.

i actually paused, probably with my mouth hanging open, before breaking the news, not relishing the thought of crushing her little world.

"oh, eva... there isn't any more andy pandy. they're not here anymore. i'm so sorry."

i can't remember when i last saw her so sad. her eyes instantly brimmed with tears, her jaw quivered.

"you mean all of the andy pandy's are gone? even the picnic one?" at which point she collapsed into sobs.

i held her, i told her i knew how sad she must be. after a minute, i suggested we go up and tell papa about it. he repeated all the google searching i had done several weeks ago, and i hoped he would have better results. we found a 5 minute clip in italian, which seemed to make her feel a tiny bit better, but no solid leads.

"mama? maybe we can just make a cd of andy pandy instead?" she's a surprisingly smart consumer of technology (grasping the difference between dvr recordings and live tv, and between flickr videos and skype), so i think this was maybe in part the "bargaining" stage of grief and part preschooler misunderstanding.

poor kid. for whatever reason, she just really connected with this show. in a world of super-duper-attention-grabbing kid shows that are too hectic or scary for her tastes (meaning, pretty much every kid show), andy pandy was just her speed. i think she mostly gets that it's gone forever, and (since she has already torn through the first several stages of grief) i think she'll get over it pretty quickly. but it was still just... sad.

i guess to avoid potential disappointment (not to mention future lack of cultural knowledge), she should just go with disney?

nah... she'll recover. but, if anyone has a lead on an andy pandy dvd, do let me know...

UPDATE 08/2009: it came back. hooray! i guess i freaked out too soon, because it reappeared on the on demand channel, a different set of three episodes. it has since rotated a few times, offering different episodes every few months. though, by now, she can take it or leave it. ("uh, yeah, mom, that was so, like, 1/8th of my life ago." heh.) she asked to watch andy pandy yesterday, though, when she was feeling sick. so i think it still brings her comfort.

immortal charlie

2009-01-29T00:25:00.003-06:00

stone, girl, originally uploaded by kelanew.

"mama, you know what? every time charlie dies, he just comes back to life again! he comes back to life every time. charlie's special; he's the only one who can do that. and so guess what? someday a long time from now when all the people in the whole world are dead, charlie will still be alive. he'll be the last person alive in the whole world. and that's what makes him special."

so, maybe everyone has conversations like that with their three year old about her imaginary friend who dies many times per week. maybe, as it has been suggested, it is just the normal thing at this age to start discussing life and death with that combination of matter-of-factness and awe that only a preschooler can manage. and, maybe other people know exactly how to respond all the time... but despite feeling like i've got a pretty good handle on how to guide her through the great mysteries of life, every so often i'm just completely speechless.

so not only are you telling me charlie is immortal, but that you've thought it through regarding how this will play out at the end of days? really? i'm pretty sure i have no response to that.

---

she of course experienced significant loss at what turned out to be a key time -- when she was old enough to "get" what was going on, but young enough that it has been part of her life for as long as she can really remember. consequence or coincidence, she does talk about death often. not in a morose way, but just as a topic of unending inquiry. all kids do process this eventually, but i suspect it might be a little sooner than normal in her case -- whether because of our experiences of the past year and a half, or because she is simply more curious about working out every little detail than is the average kid, i can't say. i guess i'm not overly concerned, but sometimes i am struck by it all.

but man, do i love charlie. charlie helps eva figure things out, and his (or her!) form changes to suit the needs of the day. sometimes he's in school, sometimes he's a teenager (the holy grail to a three year old!), sometimes he's a teacher. sometimes he lives in new york city, or has moved to guatamala. sometimes he has sixteen dogs, or is a big sister, or has a baby sister who is too loud in the car. and in this way, based on who he is that day and what he's going through, i get an extra glimpse of eva's view of the world, and know how she's processing the joys and challenges involved in growing up.

but charlie sure is a moving target; you never know what you're going to get. sometimes, from the beginning of the conversation to the end, i'll discover he has shifted -- to protect her from the appearance of having made a mistake or contradiction in her narrative. (she has a strong aversion to ever being wrong, which is a story for another day...)

--

"so, charlie will live forever and ever?"
"uh huh."
"hmm. i curious what he thinks about that."
"oh, he won't be lonely or anything."
"no?"
"silly mama! he's just a robot!"
(aha, i forgot. every since maker faire, charlie is periodically a robot.)
"uh huh, and that's why he'll be the only one left when the dinosaurs come back."

the shift

2009-01-26T22:54:00.002-06:00

so in a two week period right around christmas, hazel: got her first tooth, learned to sign, started crawling for real (not just the army crawl thing), began pulling up, ate her first food. and grew some hair.

the shift. she used to be a baby baby, and now we've transitioned and she's a kid baby. as in, a baby who explores, has opinions, looks for people if they leave the room, and laughs at her sister's jokes. it's really fun, but man, were we caught off guard. we returned home from our christmas visit in ND to a home that was not at all ready for a baby that moves around. we also launched directly into several weeks of larry working round the clock for a big deadline, so it was a bit of a rough time there for a while. (he's still working enough to make himself loopy, but things have settled back in a bit.)

hazel, here are some details and thoughts on your fast flurry of milestones (sorry my love, if you wanted a doting write-up on each one like your sister got, you should have spread them out a little! think ahead next time.): your first food was... cheerios. not too exciting, but it was on christmas, so that's fancy, right? after all but begging for food since you were four months old, we were all a bit amused to see your less-than-enthusiastic reaction to this new taste and texture. your famously expressive eyebrows were working overtime in trying to sort out what exactly was going on. but you quickly warmed up to the idea, and soon you were munching away happily on carrots, broccoli, pasta and more.

it's been so fun watching you learn so much in such a short time. you figured out that you could pull up, and suddenly your realm of movement expanded from the three inch layer directly above the carpet to a so much more. it doesn't seem like it would be a big difference, but it was like a whole new world for you. you could go wherever you wanted to go, stand up when you got there (assuming a suitable vertical surface was nearby of course), and sit back up if you managed to fall over. at first, we all noticed that we could find baby contraband on the floor just by plotting your trajectory -- whenever you got that look of focused determination, you were clearly heading slowly but surely toward something you didn't usually get to have. well, those days are already long gone... you're always heading somewhere, and you're fast enough that by the time we notice, the baby contraband is already being gummed to death.

so, for the record (since i've not yet managed to write anything in a baby book for you, and as you can tell even this blog is proving difficult to keep up with):
first tooth 12/18 lower left-middle 6.5 mo
second tooth 1/10 lower right-middle 7.5 mo
first food 12/25 7 mo
crawling 6 mo (speedy by 7 mo)
pulling up at 7 mo -- love this photo set, look how excited your papa was!
signing at 6.5-7 mo. first sign: dog, followed by light and fan

and now you're awake and making some very loud grunts, so i think that's it for today.

signs! and a tooth!

2008-12-20T14:05:00.002-06:00

quickly, because she's impatient today...

hazel signs! i can hardly believe it, already. we noticed some pronounced mimicking about two weeks ago, so we started signing a few signs to her (bird, dog, milk, fan, light... all the important things :), but hadn't really yet gotten into the habit of doing it consistently.

on tuesday night, when i was in and out of sleep due to a 102 fever, i saw her watch the dog jump off the couch, then stick tongue in and out, then look at me for understanding. i responded, then she did it again and looked at the dog. wow... but i'm borderline delirious, did that really happen? despite my state, she was absolutely clear.

so two days later, after just having arrived in ND for christmas, as she was lying in my lap i noticed her eyes had locked onto something. she stuck her arm up and swiveled her wrist around, and sure enough, i looked up to see we were right below the fan. since then, she's repeatedly signed for dog, fan, and now light, too. (of course, milk is the one i really want her to learn so i know when she's hungry, but in order for her to learn that, i actually have to remember to show her the sign as we're nursing... i keep forgetting.) anyway, i'm sort of in disbelief that she's already old enough to be signing, and half-crawling, and clapping... time is flying by.

she's so cute, she claps (in this funny splayed-finger tapping sort of way) to inspire interaction. she claps, we can't help but clap back, and on it goes, and she gets the biggest grin when we "get" her clapping or signing. i'm sure she's thinking "finally! you people finally understand what i've been trying to tell you..."

due to a canceled flight, we killed 8 hrs at minneapolis airport on thursday (gotta love that playscape across from gate C12! the tram and moving sidewalks are also very popular). while eating a snack with eva and allowing sleepless papa to rest a bit, i noticed... hazel has a tooth! the lower left tooth was just *barely* poking through, and already now two days later it's much more pronounced. and, she already bit me (in her sleep, so it surprised both of us).

today it is -13 degrees F (-39 with wind chill... and that's not the low, that's just the mid-afternoon temp). eva spent the morning making a gingerbread house, and had a grand old time, and got the hang of piping the icing herself. christmas prep continues, as everyone works on projects in assorted groups whenever the recipient is out of view (though, not much of that has really happened yet... difficult when no one can leave the house.) larry contemplated driving to bismarck to get the supplies santa will need to make eva's gift (i think santa needs some help sometimes, right? the elves must get exhausted) but was deterred by the crazy wind chill. i mean, not that he's any stranger to this.. the first time he ever visited me here (my first year of college) it was -60 and we finally left the house to walk 5 blocks to my friend's house... only our eyes were showing, but i was still pretty sure we were going to die before we made it back home. luckily, we made it, and lived on to produce two pretty entertaining and cute kids. good thing.

catching up

2008-12-10T12:24:00.002-06:00

i'm bummed out that i haven't posted in so long, it makes me feel like time slips away unaccounted for or something. but guess what? it seems that having two kids (combined with it being the holiday/travel time of year) means i haven't had as much time as i'd like. shocking, i know...

mostly it makes me a bit sad because there has been so much cuteness and so many fun things happening that i want to share all of it, but the snippets and sentences i think of while nursing a baby to sleep stay in my head, because i can't type enough with one hand.

at the moment, eva is snuggled on the couch to my right watching sesame street. last night she vomited all over me at a restaurant, and larry and i handled it like seasoned pros. i don't even think anyone else knew what had happened, even counting the fact that both eva and i had to basically strip in the parking lot. i think we get parenting bonus points (merit badge, maybe?) for that one. hazel is sleeping on the couch to my left, zonked out probably because she hasn't been sleeping much, particulary at night, resulting in a tired mama who refuses to just give up and go to bed at 7 like i should, because i have too much to do.

we're enjoying the holiday season (despite any side-effects of the list making and checking and such). eva has become obsessed with christmas songs, and in about two weeks, she's learned so many songs. (did anyone know there's a humorous second verse to jingle bells, by the way? fun. oh, and not the batmobile one. it's about a guy being passed over by a sleigh-driver after falling in the snow.) rudolph is her favorite and she sings it beginning to end over and over. frosty and jingle bells and "we wish you a merry christmas" and silent night are all runners-up. we've been doing our advent calendar (which became a hit in the craft blog world and is showing up all over the place (google "recycle advent calendar" and i'm the top three hits, crazy!). eva enjoys finding a new tiny ornament to hang on our (rosemary) christmas "tree". she's been sewing felt ornaments for her friends. sweetest of all is that larry has been reciting (from memory :) "twas the night before christmas" to her to fall asleep to many nights.

i'll have to catch up with news from maker faire, our month in ND, hazel's new tricks at 6 months, news of eva's growh from her endocrinologist appointment, etc. but all that must wait. i can smell that hazel to my left needs a diaper, and i was waiting until she woke up. she has now pushed herself up to semi-sitting and is happily watching TV along with her sister. oops.

in case i never catch up on all that, though, what i really want to record about this time is the sweetness, the goofy playfulness that inserts itself into our days together, the inquisitive learning and leaps of thought from eva that astound us, and the overall joy. this is a great time. tired and busy, but so happy. i would freeze time right here for a while if i could.

the four month report

2008-10-01T22:42:00.004-05:00

four months. four months! hard to believe, yet here we are. until very recently, despite all evidence to the contrary, i liked to claim that she looked "the same" as when she was born. time was standing still. she's a newborn.

well guess what?

it's not and she's not. and i guess that's okay, too. she's so big for her age that she looks like a 6 month old, and is wearing some 9 month clothing. so, all that makes it pretty difficult to pretend she's a newborn.

size: she had her well check on tuesday, and she's doing fine. she's 16 lbs 3 oz (95th %ile), 24 3/4 inches (75th %ile) and -- can you believe i remembered all these numbers? -- has a 16" head circumference (50th %ile). she's a grower. i think they say a baby should ideally double their birth weight by four months, but she did it by 2 1/2 months. she's so chunky that she has rolls and creases everywhere -- ankles, backs of knees, dents at her shoulder blades. she has pudgy tops-of-feet, fingers, back-of-head, even her pinky toe has padding. wow!

and she's proving to be physically adept, too. i didn't really get it when a friend used to talk about her daughter having stood on her legs at birth -- how is that possible? what does that mean? well, hazel has always supported her weight on her legs, and was lifting her head off my shoulder in the first week. a few weeks ago, she started rolling from her back onto her stomach, and after holding her head up and looking around for a good while, would get tired and find herself unable to roll back over. within a week, she learned to get from her stomach to her back, but in that intervening time, eva was more than willing to assist her by "rolling"/shoving her over onto her back, much to hazel's perpetual astonishment. (this was no easy task... eva only has 10 pounds on hazel, you know.) for the past two weeks, she's been rolling and rolling, inadvertently using it as a form of locomotion. i'll set her down, go spend a few minutes making breakfast and coffee, and come back to find she's well off the edge of the quilt five feet away looking a bit bewildered. better yet is when she gets herself wedged against the couch leg or something -- and even though she can't crawl or really pick up toys, i've had to start watching what stuff eva leaves on the floor near her. pipe cleaners, not so safe, i'd say. oh, and she's working pretty hard on sitting up -- with the boppy around her, she sat the other day for a good 5 minutes. since then, it's been a bit more floppy, which is fine by me. i'm not used to all this! being even a little on the early side with all this physical stuff is especially confusing to me, given that eva was on the later side of such things. for all i know, hazel will decide to start crawling before christmas.

the love list:
i love her expressive eyebrows. everyone comments on this, so it must be really noticeable. the eyes may be the windows to the soul, but watch her eyebrows and you can see what she's thinking, how she's feeling...
i love that her mouth is the exact shape of the yellow hat worn by curious george's friend. it's true.
i love how she can be so agitated one second, then as though a snap of hypnotist's fingers, eyes close, arms go limp, head droops to the side, toes uncurl, and she's in utter peace.
i love that low grunty sound in her throat, the one she uses when she wants to remind you "i'm still here".
i love how for months now, she'll start cooing, louder if i look away: ohhh, youuu, ahh (a few months back, eva said sleepily in the middle of the night: "i think hazel's trying to spell something.") with all those letter sounds, perhaps she is.
i love how she often wakes with a look of searching confusion, then sees me and breaks out a giant gummy grin, laughing "heh heh heh!"
i love how she delights in having an older sister (despite the occasional pinches to the arm this week) -- she'll stop crying or start laughing when eva entertains her.
i love the two random exra-long hairs on the top of her head (one wavy and one straight) that have been there since birth. i check for them almost daily an will be sad one day when they are no longer there.
i love how she flaps her right arm when she's happy, and that now that she has discovered use of her legs, how she can entertain herself by kicking, kicking, kicking.
i love it when she sighs with contentedness upon latching on.
i love hearing her chuckling in her sleep or while nursing, because i know she's happy.
i love rubbing her furry hair.
and most of all, i love that she's mine, that we're the ones who get to have her in our family because she's perfect for us.

and i love that she knows to wake up right when i'm done typing. :)
the end.

"i love u"

2008-09-24T23:15:00.001-05:00

"i love u", originally uploaded by kelanew.

hazel is cooing at me from her post next to me on the floor. she has a way of getting my attention, so i won't write the blog post i was planning just now. in fact, i have one half-written that is already a month old! hazel, my dear one, some day when you bemoan the fact that i wrote more about eva when she was a baby than i did about your babyhood... take solace in knowing that often enough, i put the computer down so i could just stare at your cute face, or so i could do as i'm doing right now, and watch you roll back and forth from stomach to back, holding your head up high, grinning at your own accomplishments.

photo: eva wrote this card for me. in her words, "it says 'i love you', because i love you mama, but i wrote two Us but one looks like a V but that's okay." she did it all on her own, without the usual asking how to spell the words or how to make the letters. (for the record, "love" just happens to be one of the words she can spell/read.) we were shopping for some clothes for hazel a month ago, and she said "let's get this shirt that says 'love' on it." that's how i know she can spell it. i think that came from the valentine's day project. :)

okay, now that hazel has "crawled" several feet away from me by inching forward on her belly, i'm going for real. she's too much, that one. oh, love, indeed.

clothing swap

2008-09-04T16:12:00.001-05:00

swimmer, originally uploaded by kelanew.

when you have two girls in a family (or maybe two boys? though i know nothing about that...) you expect that eventually there will be sharing of clothing. this can be a good or bad thing (or so i hear), depending, but it worked out well for me. growing up with two sisters and a stylish mom, i thought of it as a convenient extension of my own wardrobe.

well, first thing this morning, we had dueling bed... "issues". eva had an accident, and before i had the opportunity to do anything about that, hazel promptly projectile vomited across a broad swath of the dry side of the bed. well, good morning, indeed! no stranger to such things, i tend to have a stack of spare blankets, towels, waterproof pads, and fresh pajamas next to the bed so i don't have to go running downstairs in the middle of the night. so, i replaced or covered bedding as needed and swapped out the jammies of the kidlings... however, i had nothing dry for hazel, not even a swaddling blanket, so i put one of eva's pj tops on her.

i expected this 18 mo sized shirt (that eva still wears!) to drown poor hazel, but in fact, it fit her pretty well. the sleeves had to be rolled up, but the rest was fine. in fact, she's still wearing it now. so, it seems they might be raiding each others' closets sooner than i would have thought!

i'm going to blame the clothing swap for today's brilliant mothering moment: as we were leaving eva's school after having dropped her off, i put hazel back into the car. i felt low bloodsugar due to my slightly late lunch (my nursing body is rigidly tied to the clock with respect to caloric intake, i swear!) and i was also a bit preoccupied, which is my excuse for the fact that ignored the quiet little voice in the back of my head that said "hmm, something is amiss."

i pulled into the driveway at home 12 minutes later and opened the rear door to find hazel wasn't in her carseat. what, what?! oh... she's in eva's seat. eva's *foreward facing* seat! hmm, that's why my brain was trying to tell me, hey, those shoulder straps look a bit high...

seriously. some days i think i need supervision... and no, just because your child is in an 18 month sized shirt that your preschooler can still wear does *not* mean she should be forward facing in the car. eek.

in the now

2008-08-22T12:35:00.001-05:00

love, originally uploaded by kelanew.

milk is dripping again as hazel and i coo at each other
then she begins to nurse.
behind a big chair in a little nook,
eva reads (recites) book after book to her twin babydolls.
larry works from the couch, deeply concentrating for now,
as we all swirl around him.
i slept in too long, the house is messy,
my head holds an endless list of things undone.
it isn't perfect, but this is us.
here we are.

it is real life,
and it is good.

star

2008-08-21T20:54:00.002-05:00

nap, originally uploaded by evasnaps.

today was eva's last day in the rainbow (2-3 yr old) class at her school. on tuesday, she will be a star! (3-5 yr olds). she's so excited, she's been asking me if today is the day for at least a month... she also says that once she is a star, she'll be "much, much taller." today she took a drawing to the teachers she'll be leaving.

then after dinner, i made a special dessert of strawberries and vanilla yogurt. while we enjoyed that as a family, i gave her a special (from the dollar aisle at target :) self-inking stamper that says "super star" with a picture of a star on it. she was so thrilled, i was really surprised -- i think probably the acknowledgment was more important to her than the little gift, but she bounded around the room for a good five minutes. "mama, i love you so so much!" "hazel, i wanted you with me, that's why i'm so glad you came out of mama's belly!" and other generally excited lovey utterances. i was also a little impressed with myself that i managed to put together this little mini-celebration for her, and it turned out to be just the thing.

i can't believe i'm already beginning to think about kindergarten -- it feels like forever from now, but it's really only two years! crazy.

also, she's starting gymnastics at the rec center across the street from us in september. right after the olympics is a good time to start, i guess, because she watched a bit of the gymnastics and thought it was cool. and i'm happy, because 1) it's not early in the morning, since we're so bad at mornings now that we are four, and 2) we can walk there! that never happens. we can't walk to anything, so that will be a welcomed reprieve from having to strap them both in the car and burn gas just to get somewhere.

stories

2008-08-19T23:24:00.002-05:00

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.

hazel the basil

2008-08-12T20:37:00.003-05:00

be careful what you teach your children, that's all i have to say. the last several days, but particularly yesterday and today, have been nonstop rhyming. a few days ago, larry mentioned the concept to her (probably not for the first time, but the first time she found it this interesting). then i brought home a basil plant and told her what it was and what it was used for. as she helped me pull off leaves for our pasta dinner, she thought for a minute then exclaimed "hey! hazel and basil rhyme!"

all day yesterday: "hazel the basil. hazel the basil. hazel basil clazel nasal. [granted, clazel isn't a real word, but that doesn't stop her.] hazel the basil, i love you hazely basily." i think she's hit on all the obvious hazel-rhymes. there's also appraisal, but i think after that i might be stumped. then there's eva and diva. (hey julie: boniva! jinx.) possibly i should have named my child jane after all.

so instead of singing nonstop or reciting nursery rhymes all day or making up stories or regaling us with tales about charlie (it changes, but she basically talks all day every day -- wonder where she got that trait???), now it's rhyming. a lot of rhyming.

i made a note to remember the ones from dinner just now:
flute and boot
gram and ma'am
charlie and barley (i think that one was partly accidental... does she even know what "barley" is?)
bunny and funny
time and rhyme

and now as i type this:
"no, mama, i want you to tie this tight. [pause, then mostly to herself:] tight and bite rhyme."
holding a toy rolling pin by both handles like the spool of kite string: "mama, look, i'm flying a kite! kite and flight rhyme. flight is like when you go on an airplane."

and then, just to fill the air space, we get a lot of "mama-bomma-jomma" "papa-cloppa" type stuff, too. you'd hate to have dead air just because you ran out of rhymes, you know.

julie said her teacher-self was impressed... but like most of eva's phases, it's clever and cute and fun to a point, and then you end up wondering if it will ever end. and then later once it does, you wish she'd do it more.

other updates: eva's been enjoying the olympics along with us (learning about countries and finding them together on her earth ball, spotting flags, counting swimming lanes, figuring out that water polo is like basket ball but in the swimming pool), but tires of it eventually and wants to know when the "fancy dressed-up people and fireworks part" (opening ceremonies) will be on again. hazel is doing just great, and loves to smile at eva, and will give me a big giggle and smile if she's in the mood for it. and for the first time in a long time, i don't feel like i have a list of 75 things that need to be done. of course, i have at least 75 things i *should* be doing (who needs clean laundry anyway?), but i'm just going with the flow, enjoying my days rather than trying to "get through" them, which is always nice. maybe that's because i'm getting into the swing of the mom-of-two thing a bit, or maybe it's because i started a new crochet project (a dress for pip, 18 mo size so i'm sure to get it done in time) and am rereading jane eyre (about 2 pages at a time each night, which is all i manage before my eyes close). or maybe it's just the fact that i took up drinking caffeine again while in yosemite. in any case, things are coming around. they always do...

two months plus

2008-08-06T22:18:00.003-05:00

chunkamonk, originally uploaded by kelanew.

oh, hazel. when it's quiet like this and i have time to think (and by "time" i mean more than 9 consecutive seconds, when i'm not trying to think over the sounds of someone needing my care or attention) i well up inside thinking of how you're already not a newborn. how can that be? and i don't know if i'm sad or happy or what, but damn is it emotional. my baby... and you're so big already. (grunt, grunt, i hear you over there, a few feet away from me... i better type faster...)

larry's out drinking with the guys -- due to a scheduling accident, the second night in a row, actually -- and i have to say i've done quite well with putting both girls to bed on my own. last night i even cooked (!) dinner and fed eva while he was gone as well. go, mama.

hazel (as of a week or two ago, at her 2 month appointment) was 12 lbs 4 oz, and of some length... maybe 21 and some fraction inches? (i never have remembered anything other than an initial length for eva or hazel... lengths don't stick in my head.) anyway, not that i'm all percentile-crazed, but i found it amusing to note that that (unremembered) length puts her at 25th %ile, but she's 80th %ile for weight. ahh... we were thinking she was looking pretty chunky. maybe i'm supposed to think that's unbecoming a young lady, but no way. i think it's awesome in the literal sense of that word... i grew her. in my body. and now that she's out, she's approaching double her birth weight at 2 months, and all from my body. we're a team. she eats and sleeps, i feed her. it's doing well for her. :)

oh, another peep! type faster, mama...

last thing i wanted to share was that she is super strong, which is not something i'm used to in a young infant (er... my eldest was in physical therapy most of her first year to build up her strength, you may remember.) hazel, in contrast, is well practiced in Feats of Strength. i find it amazing and startling. you can hold her little hands and she'll stand there -- larry calls it waterskiing, due to the way she shifts her weight around and balances -- locked legs, supporting her spine and head. she can even do it with one hand. how can that be?

okay, full on cry now. the kind from the back of the throat, the "i mean it" kind. off i go.

hazel... you're really something.

ps> she's now wearing the same pajamas that i bought for eva when she was almost 4 months old. my goodness.

postpartum

2008-07-29T01:11:00.002-05:00

people ask, "how's it going?" "how are you doing?" sometimes it's just words, just part of the dance of social greetings, but sometimes -- particularly if asked by a mom, someone who's been there -- it's asked with some depth behind the eyes, with meaning in the voice. and those times, when it's a real question, i don't really know how to answer. it depends on when i'm asked, what time of day.

so two months out, all i can really answer is this: i feel like a crazy person. i seriously do, i feel like i'm not quite right in the head. i think that's what you call "normal" when you've recently had a baby, but really, it's nuts.

on sunday, for example, i went from optimistic when i woke up, to on the verge of tears within the hour, to cheery and connected at brunch with friends, to exhausted and teary and feeling like i could barely walk from the parking lot at the grocery store, to excited and happy by the time i left, to downtrodden again before bedtime. i think people routinely have variations in their emotions throughout the day, but i'm talking some wild and disorienting swings here. i can't keep up.

the annoying thing is that my brain tricks me into changing my entire world view wth every shift. in a down swing: i don't know how i'm ever going to do this, i feel bad for neglecting the differing needs of both my children while trying to meet the needs of the other, i'm cranky, i'm mean to my husband, i hate that my house is always a mess, and i feel guilty for just trying to get through each day rather than savoring and enjoying each precious moment of hazel's early babyhood. then in an up swing: things are great, i have two sweet adorable girls, i love my supportive husband, we're having an easy time with the transition, and hey, let's make some plans to meet up later this week.

*sigh*

i think being a temporary crazy person is just part of becoming a mom, or becoming a mom for the second or third time. i *know* i'm being crazy, i hear it in my voice. lately larry has been telling me i need to use more care in how i speak to him (sometimes he says it nicely like that, sometimes not), and he's right. i'm cranky, i snap at him for no reason (well, no reason that has to do with him, anyway). sometimes hazel is screaming and not being contented, causing stress hormones to surge through my body (thanks, evolution.), sometimes eva has been whining in my ear for an hour, and sometimes i'm just plain tired. and you know, sometimes i'm honestly just not trying very hard to rein it in because i'm caught in the negative-outlook version of my own reality. and as much as i'm sure it sucks to live with a crazy person, i'd like to point out that it also sucks *being* a crazy person. i prefer my other self, too (the one that's at least somewhat less crazy and snappy).

it's disorienting. emotionally i'm all over the map. physicaly, my body is completely unfamiliar to me. mentally i can hardly keep hold of a train of thought long enough to act on it. and i feel like i've aged about five years so far in 2008. that said, i'm not even terribly concerned. i don't think i'm verging on PPD or even that i've got much of a case of the baby blues (i find that term annoying)... i think this is just how it goes. by necessity you sort of muddle through those first few months, then later you look back and wonder why it's all such a blur. well, because you weren't totally sane at the time, and even if you were, your brain would protect you from remembering it clearly.

so, how's it going?

when asked by someone who actually wants to know, someone who's been there, i can just answer: pretty much the way you'd expect. mostly crazy, and incredible, and making it through. is there any other way?

reunion

2008-07-28T23:43:00.002-05:00

we spent last week at yosemite for a ewing family reunion. this was a reunion of dick's cousins and their families... since dick was the only surviving child in his family, larry and his brothers (and now the girls) are the only descendants of their grandfather ewing. and now that dick is gone, the link that that portion of the family is broken in a way. i never really thought of it this way until the trip, but this is a quarter of the heritage of my daughters. i know my side fairly well, my mother and my father's families, and we spend a lot of time around larry's mother's family... so i very much appreciated the opportunity to connect with the ewings.

one interesting point is that this branch of my daughter's family goes back the farthest in north america. all of my ancestors came across from europe much more recently -- during my great-grandparents generation early in the 1900s. rita's family similar, i believe. the ewing side goes back to at least 1761... backwards from texas to missouri to kentucky to virginia and so on. that's a bit of a shift in perspective, which really made me rethink my place in american history.

i really enjoyed meeting the extended family. there were about 19 or so ewing first cousins, and they were fairly spread out across the country. i'm not even sure dick had met all of them, and i know larry hadn't, so it could easily have felt like a room full of strangers (about 50 people were in attendance). but what struck me was that it quickly felt more like family -- and it was a really interesting, diverse group of people, the kind of people you want to get to know. by the end of the week, second cousins were playing a game of spoons so raucously in the kitchen it was even louder than the accumulated noise of the many conversations taking place in the rest of the hall as everyone chatted away.

as for the traveling itself, we had a great time exploring yosemite. it felt great to get out and hike (somewhere where it's not 105 degrees), and i always love being in the mountains -- i think that's my reaction to growing up in the flattest part of the entire country. sarah and eva continue in their sibling-like relationship, adoring each other and wanting to spend lots of time together, but eventually antagonizing each other a bit and needing space (i think that's also just part of being three years old). hazel did great on her first plane trip, and other than the fact that she cried in the car up and down the mountain roads, it was a breeze having her along. of course, having gram on the trip for hazel-holding or eva-entertaining certainly helped (a ton! um, can you just fly everywhere we go?) eva is now requesting that we go on "big long hikes" here in austin, with larry carrying her in the kelty pack. hmm, as soon as the temp dials down a bit, we can give that a go.

a great trip, and i'm really glad we went. many thanks to rita for making that happen...

it slices, it dices...

2008-07-18T17:40:00.004-05:00

i'm packing for our trip to yosemite, and while larry's out taking care of a last-minute errand for the trip, hazel is talking to herself in the bouncy chair and eva's on the couch watching TV. she's watching "martha stewart crafts", because as i've said before, it has bizarre calming effect on her. trance-like. it's odd. anyway, she generally doesn't watch much TV, but what she does watch is commercial free (sesame street, which does have commercials, but i fast forward through them since they're just at the beginning and end). i know the effect of marketing on children is powerful,and i'd like to stave that off as long as possible ("but i *need* a bratz doll! now with extra-hoochie outfits for a limited time, mamaaaaa!")

well, this is what i get for trying to pack (did i mention we're getting up at 3:30 a.m.?) i was in the kitchen packing airplane snacks, and casually thought that i should go fast-forward through the DIY network commercials i was half-hearing from the other room. oh well, a few commercials won't hurt, i reason. and then i hear:

"mama where are you?"
i'm in here, sweetheart. what do you need?
"mama, we should get one of those things that sprays away stains really easily!"
oh really? (realizing the commercial i was half-hearing was the voice of that oxy clean thumbs-up guy, advertising "oxy clean spray away".)
"uh huh! we should get one. they had a show about it, and it sprays away stains."

wow. see how they suck this stuff up, even when it's not a product that's terribly interesting to kids? in eva's mind, the guy telling her about spray away is exactly the same as martha showing her how to make a charming frame by gluing seashells to the edge. have i ranted yet about how i think marketing directly to children should be illegal? seriously. in fact it *is* illegal in many countries, but in america, instead we've decided to make it an art form. and we're so used to allowing the government to prioritize corporate needs over the needs of our children that we think this is normal. completely immoral practice...

this, by the way, is in part why i'm opposed to licensed characters. even if it's sesame street, even if it's clifford. that's *still* marketing to children. a kid choosing a backpack because it has dora on it over a similar backpack -- they're still using marketing to children to make the sale. which is at best obnoxious. it also reduces imagination, in my opinion, when kids want all their clothing, toys, DVDs, books, etc to be emblazoned with disney's latest movie. lame.

okay, back to packing. :)

three

2008-07-06T10:51:00.005-05:00

she's three! she turned three, and it snuck up on me. she looks so old there, compared to when she was two. but i feel like she's the same person as when she was two... we did all that traveling, life got speedy, i was pregnant, had a baby... who knows how it went by, but it seems like she was *just* two and so how can she be a different person? also, she could talk then, and do so much of what she does now, so though she changed a lot, it snuck up on me. just look at those photos! she was such a baby at 2, though i thought she was big. i'm sure i said that last year too, and i'll say it next year.

i love that it's the same pose though, sneaking into her cake (the same hummingbird cake -- here's her earth ball cake from this year.) she's taller, clearly -- can reach the table a bit easier -- and the other big difference? oh, i spy a baby sister in the background this time around. :)

last night i was holding hazel and she was wearing a sleeper that (somewhat cheesily) says all over it "if they could just stay little" in tiny print. it's subtle, so you don't read it every time you see it -- but i read it and then remembered having read it when eva wore them three years ago, and how it made me sad then. oh, time. it keeps moving.

speaking of that, i have a lot to say that never gets put here. i try to catch up with one-liners but then ramble on, so here's yet another attempt at one-liners:

hazel's been half-sick half her life -- congested the past several weeks, then got eva's cough. oh, preschool! eva was never sick as a baby, now is always half sick, and poor hazel gets it all passed down to her. we might take her in tomorrow to make sure she's okay before we fly to california on saturday (for the ewing reunion). hazel is chunky and starting to coo a bit and smiles -- sweetly at eva, which made me so happy.

eva has an imaginary friend named charlie that she tells us about daily. often this takes the form of trying to process her own experiences, or sometimes just entertainment, or sometimes cute little fibs (we've hit that stage, as i mentioned before). there's also amy, but she's not as prominent as charlie is -- oh, and we often hear about charlie's cousins. the little snippits about charlie are so cute because they are so telling about what she's thinking about her life. i never remember to write them down, but i should.

we went to jackie's wedding in dallas last weekend. both girls did well on the 4 hr drive each way, and eva *loved* the reception, dancing the night away. she danced in larry's arms, fell asleep, he sat down eventually, and she woke up and insisted on more dancing. i danced with her until she fell asleep... this repeated several times, and she made it all the way past midnight.

working backward... before that lora and julie and lilly were here for two weeks. that was so much fun, and i'm still sort of getting over the fact that they're gone. we did a ton of stuff, more than you'd think considering we had a toddler and two babies with us at all times. eva keeps talking about how much she misses lilly and her aunts.

eva's been in school for 10 weeks now, and seems to love it. when i drop her off, she simply turns, asks to give hazel and i each a kiss and a hug, then says says bye. when i pick her up, nowadays she's generally playing with other kids, seemingly integrated into the community there, making friends. and that newfound outgoing nature is either a result of school or just the age she's hit, because it extends beyond school -- today at the pool she was talking to various random kids, and just as often, their moms. (to the point i end up trying to distract her, lest the moms tire of talking to a random toddler.)

though today i was amused to hear one of these moms saying (as i chatted nearby), "oh really? your friend charlie has a floatie like this?" charlie. little do they know...

go away and hold me

2008-06-27T21:18:00.003-05:00

oh, eva. she's just been full of quotable quotes today. we had this conversation on the way home from swimming at deep eddy (lilly's first time swimming! too bad she slept through most of it :).

as hazel cried in her car seat a bit:
-- "it's okay, i love you hazel." (to me:) "mama, i think hazel hates her car seat."
-- well, i don't think she hates it, i think she'd just rather have someone hold her and snuggle her. you know, when you were little, you cried in your car seat, too, because you wanted me to hold you.
-- "and you took care of me?"
-- yeah, i did take care of you. i took care of you when you when you were a baby, and i take care of you now, and i'll take care of you until all the way until you are a big grown-up woman. and then i'll *still* take care of you, the way my mama still takes care of me. like how she came down to take care of all of us when hazel was born.
-- "hmm, but actually grandma is pretty old."
-- oh really? (trying not to laugh)
-- "uh huh, and gram is old, and grammie is old, ..." (trails off)
-- who else is old?
-- "i don't know."
-- hmm, then who is young?
-- "um... well, i *used* to be young."
-- well, if you're not young anymore, then are you old?
-- "no, mama, i'm just regular!" (pronounced "reg-lee-ar")

this afternoon, we were all sitting together in the living room, and eva was asking for chocolate milk (that was a slippery slope we've slid right down -- used to be she got an individual-sized box of organic chocolate milk at the grocery store as a cheap bribe to buy a bit more time at the end, but somehow they made it into the home. *sigh*.) she asked larry, and he said ask mama. i said to larry, oh sure, passing that one off to me, huh? then told eva, you have to discuss that with papa. she turns back to him (we're all within 5 feet of each other), and says "mama said yes. mama said i can have it." ooooh, boy. here we go into that realm of parenting! at least for now she can't quite outsmart us, but soon enough. (my first tip to her: try this tactic when larry and i aren't in the same room as each other.)

later today, she was having a bit of an issue, very upset over something in that way only an almost three year old can manage. she's a fan of telling larry or i to "go away!" in a stern angry voice. also, when she's been upset a while and now is looking to reconnect, she'll ask to be held. today, we had the inevitable collision of those worlds, a humorous juxtaposition that pretty much sums up our last few months. eva to larry: "(angrily) papa, go away! (softening, pleading) and hold me." oh eva. it's not easy being almost three, is it?

the hazel report

2008-06-19T01:17:00.001-05:00

mama and baby, originally uploaded by kelanew.

i have so much to say about my sweet baby, but never find the time to write it. (yeah, what have i been doing with my time anyway? and i have to say, that whole hospital thing really put a damper in lots of my plans, like sending out birth announcements in a timely fashion -- they're all ready to go, if i can just get them printed :) so here goes in a totally disjointed stream-of-consiousness fashion, keeping in mind that my consiousness is half asleep and distracted, and that apparently i don't know how to spell consiousness but am too lazy to run spell check:

i said before how hazel is a pretty content baby, and i will say she does actually cry some these days, but still, she's pretty great. the cool new trick she's developed (i hesitate to write this down lest the sleep gods smite me for it) is that she goes to sleep around 8 or 9 and pretty much sleeps until morning! what's that all about?! i mean, she wakes up to eat every two hours for most of that, sure, but she sleeps one or two longer (4 hr?) stretches and doesn't require tending in the night, like rocking or whatever to go back to sleep. cool! i doubt it will continue this way, but i sure am loving it for the moment. hurray for side-lying nursing and co-sleeping so i never even have to sit up or get out of bed (other than to change a diaper...)

she's a great nurser -- once we got the oversupply thing under control, we've been doing just fine. in fact, she nurses like crazy and has been growing a ton. she gained a full pound in just 6 days. at three weeks, she had gained over 2 pounds (the doctor's comment... we usually just want to make sure they're back at their birth weight at this point. :) she does like to nurse pretty much all the time, like every hour or more... basically one feeding blends right into the next. that's fine with me, though. she's doing what she's programmed to do, and it seems to be working out well for her. :)

she makes crazy noises, and has since she was first born. she grunts, she squeaks, sometimes sounds like a deranged horse. she's amazingly cute when she sneezes. she's really strong -- from just a few days old, she's launch herself right off your shoulder. she holds her head off your shoulder for a really long time. now she's practically holding her head up and will even support her weight on her legs. i know lots of babies do this, but i've never had one before that did (eva was little and had neck issues :). she smiles a ton, especially in her sleep, and she has really bright eyes that for the moment are a similar but different shade of blue/gray than those of her sister. and on that note, she looks a lot like her sister did, but they have distinct noses and chins.

today we had our first official solo outing, just me and the girls. we went to splash in the fountain with some friends followed by a trip to target, and everything went smoothly. hazel's 3 1/2 weeks old, and i recall that eva was 3 weeks old when we had our first solo outing (to a milk bank event in the park followed by lunch with sarah and baby liam, where i changed my first diaper in a public bathroom :). biggest slip: despite my efforts to keep her out of the sun (by draping a blanket over the sling and such), she did get a bit of color on one side of her face. why one side? well, it happened when she was nursing for 10 minutes in the shade of a baby tree. not a big deal, but i think i need to travel with an umbrella from now on (thanks wendy for the idea!) because the extra layer over the sling will just make both of us extra hot. today it was 104 degrees when we were out -- for 2 hours! oh, hot.... crazy texas.

okay, off to take my baby upstairs to join my big kid and all snuggle up in bed. it's funny, today went well (eva didn't freak out once! not all day!) and thus my whole perspective is changed and refreshed. i think i'm too susceptible to the most recent data point, i need to remember to take an average or something. well, at least on the bad days... on the good days i'll just continue to take it at face value. :) i was going to save this for another post but who knows if i'll get to that -- eva had a great day i think because we got out of the house, and because she actually ate and thus wasn't low blood sugar all day long. but i think part of it was that we were reconnecting a bit -- we did a lot of talking about things so that she knows i'm not upset with her, just frustrated in general, and how sometimes i don't like her behavior but i always love her, etc. later today out of nowhere she came up and told me "mama, i still love you even when you fight with me." hmm. i think she's getting it though, and i'm glad we can talk about it. (and this was better than last week when she told me "mama, i'm having trouble playing with you lately." yeah, i guess you are. sorry, baby, mama's trying her best.)

okay, off to bed for real. props to larry for holding a hungry baby while i finished that last paragraph. i'm slow, since i can't concentrate on two things at once and my brain shuts down at the smallest amount of background noise. someday i'll get my brain back... maybe.. :)

fever

2008-06-12T23:34:00.002-05:00

mom left monday, so tuesday was my Big First Day on my own with two kids. hazel hadn't slept well, and i woke up to find i still had the migraine that started the night before. then just before lunch, eva threw up and started having diarrhea. i actually thought, "oh great, can this day get any worse?"

never, never say that. because yes, it can get worse.

by nine that night, i was with my 18 day old baby, admitted to children's hospital. she had developed a fever high enough that we were instructed to take her to the ER, where she had fun new experiences like a spinal tap. we stayed there until this afternoon so that she could get IV antibiotics as a precaution while we waited for the results of the 48 hr cultures from her blood and urine tests.

larry, of course, was at home with our elder sick kid. i'm lucky to have such great friends, because within about 15 minutes of placing a call, i had company in the ER and throughout the evening, food, help the next day, someone to bring larry to the hospital since he had no car, etc. happily, by the next day, eva was well enough that she and larry could come visit us, and i even got a 20 minute nap. (hazel was not feeling at all well, and thus i had spent the whole first night holding and comforting her, and only slept maybe 2 hours broken into 20 minute chunks.) hazel's fever kept coming back, and i could tell she was unhappy since she was acting like an entirely different baby. at one point, a dose of tylenol kicked in and suddenly i saw her eyes looking at me and thought "oh, there you are." it was like she came back from somewhere else; i hadn't seen her eyes for a while, given she was either scrunched up screaming or eating or fitfully half-sleeping.

so today we're back home. well. if i thought i was starting to feel overwhelmed at the prospect of our doing this on our own as of tuesday... i'm trying to stay positive, but it's feeling pretty hard right now. we'll work it out, i'm sure, but it's not going to be pretty. as in, there will be a veneer of toys coating every surface of my living room for the foreseeable future, and we may or may not keep ourselves in clean cups and spit-up rags. i felt like i was going to hold it together despite the challenges early on tuesday, but now two short days and zero sleep later, it's feeling a bit more precarious. i've collected myself for the moment, but earlier eva was offering me her corn chips to make me feel better as i cried scrunched up sitting on the floor in the kitchen. (i'm writing all this not to sound overly whiny or desperate, but rather to be honest about the whole experience... and maybe someday hazel and eva can read this and maybe not feel like a total failure if they're not happy and perky the whole time as they welcome a new baby into their families.)

everything already feels like it happened a million years ago. was i really at the hospital just today? was mom really here holding my baby three days ago? did i really give birth less than three weeks ago? was i really ever pregnant?

off to feed a baby, then get some sleep. tomorrow is a new day!

birth story

2008-06-04T21:36:00.002-05:00

what follows is the story of hazel's birth. birth stories tend to be long, but this one... it's long. i think i wanted to include every detail so that i would remember as much as possible. you can also see some more of the photos from the birth here.

-------

On Thursday evening (May 22nd), we were starting a movie after Eva was in bed around 8:30, and I started to feel contractions. I'd had a couple of false starts, so although I felt sure this time, I kept it to myself until around 9:00, when I mentioned it to Larry and Mom. I watched the movie for a while, but by 11:00, I realized it would be in my best interest to sleep now if I could. The next day, May 23rd, was our 10th wedding anniversary, and it was clear to me it would also be the birthday of our second child.

I was able to sleep until 2:30 a.m., waking every 45 min or hour to pee and also because of contractions (hard to know what exactly was waking me up). I laid there, unable to get back to sleep, feeling excited but not at all panicked – this is interesting to me, because during the big false start I had the week before, I quickly became very anxious and full of doubt. Maybe I needed that chance to practice my reaction? I became more uncomfortable and headed downstairs at 3:30 to find Larry awake. I asked him if he had slept yet, and he lied and said “sort of” but we both knew he hadn't (he just didn't want me to worry). Contractions were every 5-7 minutes lasting 45-60 seconds for the whole hour I had been awake, so we decided to call Faith, our midwife. She had asked that we call with early signs, since my previous labor was only about five hours, so we thought this one could move quickly and she lives an hour away.

Larry went to get some sleep, and I watched TV and tried to rest on the couch. Faith arrived at 5:00, but of course by then contractions had slowed down to every 10-15 minutes. She napped on couch and I went upstairs but didn't manage to sleep. Faith examined me at 6 a.m. and found I was 3 cm and actually went to 4 cm during the exam. I went back upstairs and still couldn't sleep through the contractions. Larry and I got up at about 7:30 and Faith left soon after to head to her office.

I had been planning to go on a walk to get things moving, but it was pointed out to me that rest was more important than rushing things along. I went upstairs and took advantage of the slowing down and was very surprised to find I slept until around 9:00. Throughout all of this until closer to the end, contractions were variable depending on what I was doing: if I rested, they slowed, but if I moved around, they picked up.

When I woke, I ate some breakfast and puttered around the house for a bit while Mom took care of Eva. I found myself wandering off to whatever room was vacant downstairs during each contraction, then rejoining the activity of the house. I was basically squatting or walking through all these contractions, in part to cope and in part to make them more productive. Sometime around 10:00 a.m., Larry and I decided to go for a walk to see if things would pick up. We walked a loop around the neighborhood for about 20 minutes, and I had contractions every 3 minutes. We came back to the house so I could pee and drink water (it was really hot out), then did a second loop during which contractions were closer to every 2 minutes. Faith had called while we were out, and when we talked to her she said to rest and see if the pattern changed. I laid on the couch for maybe an hour and sure enough contractions slowed back down to every 7-10 minutes.

At 12:15 while sitting on the couch (just having eaten a sandwich), my water broke – not much came out at first, so I jumped up and managed not to make a big mess. Contractions quickly moved to about 5 minutes apart and got much stronger than they had been to that point. After about half an hour, Larry and I moved upstairs.

When we reached the top of the stairs and saw the stack of birth stuff sitting there (towels, sheets, birth kit, the pool, etc), it triggered a realization that, oh yeah, we should inflate the birth pool. Larry began to work on that and I laid down on the bed. Contractions were strong enough that I felt the need to hop up out of bed with each one. Since I was leaking fluid, I would jump out of bed and walk the four steps to the bathroom where there was tile rather than carpet. I tried leaning over the counter or squatting next to the tub, but really I wanted Larry there. I felt better hanging from his neck or just leaning into him, so I had him rushing over from where he was pumping up the pool as each contraction started.

At about 1:00 p.m., I called Meredith (a friend who was to take photos for us) to let her know things were moving along. At that point, I felt like it could happen either in two hours or not until evening – I didn't feel sure enough to tell her to get on the road, but she was smart enough to do that and call our friend Sarah anyway. From this point, I no longer jumped off the bed for contractions; rather, I just insisted that Larry rush over without delay to put his hand on my back. These contractions were starting to get more intense. I was vocalizing for real, and things started to feel a bit dreamy. Not long after we called Meredith, we decided to call Faith (meaning, I rather quickly went from “hmm, it could be a while” to “we better get a midwife here right now”).

I didn't want to be lying down for contractions anymore, but it felt too hard to stand up and lie back down (which I needed to do so I could rest in between). I moved to the edge of the bed, thinking that squatting would be good to move things along even though that would make it more intense. After a few contractions in that position (2:15 p.m.), I asked Larry for the big bowl we brought up earlier when I felt nauseous. (Specifically, I think I asked just by saying “vomit”, but he knew what I meant.) I did throw up, and so might have known I was in transition, but like with my first labor, I persisted in thinking it could still go for many hours. Faith arrived just prior to this, at 2:00, and contractions were 2-3 minutes apart. Right before she got there, I was so anxious for her to arrive, I guess somehow thinking that when she arrived it would “fix” something, that I'd feel better. Well, guess what, I still had to do it, no one can really change that. She busied herself setting things up, and I noticed Meredith had arrived and she was helping Faith get set up.

They had me move over to the ball next to where I was on the bed so they could change the sheets for the birth. Lying draped over the ball, this is when I started to feel like I might not be able to keep it under control. I was really having to concentrate to keep my vocalizations low rather than tightening up and making more of a screaming sound. I started lowering the tone in waves, so as it started to go up I'd take it back down, sort of passively noticing my own sounds and focusing on that. I was told later that it was like singing (though not in the usual sense I'm sure). At some point while I was on the ball, Larry was gone for one of my contractions – I think that was when he was sprinting through the garage, throwing boxes and things out of the way to get to the hot water heater to turn it up, only to find it was already up all the way – and I suddenly felt very untethered without him. I think I may have said “help” or “Larry”, and maybe it was this or a subsequent contraction where I saw Faith standing next to me as she worked on the sheets or something, and I stuck my hand out to touch her leg because I couldn't even form the words to ask for help.

People kept telling me I was doing great, and of course I didn't believe a word of it. I think I got a bit wrapped up in wanting to be like the strong, confident, joyful laboring women in Ina May's book, seemingly smiling their way through labor. Rather, I felt like I was really on the edge of losing it, and that somehow that was a failing rather than just being the fact of how it is during transition. (And of course, I still wasn't letting myself think about whether I might be in transition or close or not – sort of as though if I lower my expectations and assume I still have hours to go, I can be pleasantly surprised rather than crushingly disappointed.) Given that early labor was peaceful and happy and I was handling things just fine up until this time (until transition) made me think that labor was actually just starting at that point, so I thought I'd never make it. I thought the same thing with my first birth, but not as fiercely. I know at some point I did ask Faith “where am I?” meaning how far along, and she said it would be soon, and I suppose I didn't really believe that anyway. It's weird the tricks your mind plays on you in labor. (It's worth noting that it says in Faith's birth notes that active labor was “precipitous” since it was only 2 hrs 34 minutes (with a latent labor of 10 hours)... so that's probably another reason for why I thought I had much longer to go – in some sense, it really was just starting.)

I moved back to the bed while they worked on filling the tub with water. I think there was some concern that they wouldn't get enough water into the tub in time (we bought the larger version of the tub, so that Larry could fit in there with me if I needed, but that means it took a lot of water). Our hot water heater wasn't keeping up, so Meredith and Sarah and maybe others were hauling kettles of boiling water up the stairs – even at the time, I thought that was funny: quick, she's having a baby, somebody boil some water! I really wanted to get into the tub rather than be on the bed, and there was a lot of talk about getting the water hot enough. I wanted to say that it was fine if it was cool since I felt so hot already, but I couldn't really form the words. I figured maybe they knew better and wanted it hot at first so that it wouldn't get too cold over time (again, assuming I had hours to go). While I was on the bed, I needed Larry right there touching my lower back – I didn't need the kind of pressure I hear of other women asking for, I just needed his hand there to somehow provide a balance to the sensation I was feeling inside, a connection to the world outside my body, I think.

Things were getting really difficult, I know Faith was there at one point telling me to just sink into the bed. In addition to concentrating on keeping my vocalizations low and not screaming, I was really doing all I could to just go with what my body was doing, to release, not to fight. I felt like despite working at this, maybe I was actually fighting it. I mentioned this to Faith later, and she said at this point when she was helping me, my whole body was loose and totally relaxed, so I guess I was doing better than I thought. I remember dozing off once or twice between contractions, and feeling slightly disoriented when I woke up when the next one started. Time felt unreal and the room seemed to be glowing, and it was so quiet despite my vague awareness that there were people surrounding me.

Finally, they said I could get into the tub (around 2:50 p.m.). After I found a comfortable position, it was immediately so much better. That said, things still got worse, but stayed right under that threshold of what I felt I could handle (I suppose that threshold moves up when you're not looking as labor progresses, though, so you don't necessarily cross it when you expect you might.) Periodically, I felt the rush of warmth when another kettle of hot water was poured in behind me. I rested my head on the vinyl of the pool edge between contractions, and as each one started, I'd lift my head up to look right into Larry's face. I knew as long as I could look into his eyes, I'd always be okay. The panic that I felt rising would melt away when I saw his face, exuding such love and calm. I knew from our experience with Eva's birth that he was all I would need to get through. Near the end, as one particularly strong contraction began, my head snapped up from its resting place, and even with the state I was in, I was aware that my eyes must have looked wild with panic. Then I saw his face, I brought it back under control, and made it through. I think I'll remember that particular moment for a long time.

Faith asked me if I wanted her to check me, and I don't know if I answered, but then she was downstairs doing something for a minute. I did want to be checked to know how far along I was, but I also was apprehensive, too, in case she'd tell me I was only at 6 cm or something. I had another contraction of two (I think, it's all pretty fuzzy really) and June, the second midwife, asked me if I felt like pushing. I said I didn't know, and she said it can be hard to tell. I had one more really strong contraction (I think that one that put the panic behind my eyes) after she asked me. Then on the next one, at the end of the contraction, my body just pushed. After the fact, as I sipped some water that appeared in front of my face, I reported “that one felt pushy”.

Faith rematerialized (apparently laboring women lose their sense of object permanence?) and checked me to find that I was complete with just a tiny lip of cervix left in front of the baby's head. Ah, such wonderful news. I heard June say that she figured I probably had been complete for a while, but I'm glad I didn't know, so I wasn't tempted to try to push before my body was ready to do it on its own. During the next contraction or two, Faith slipped the lip of cervix back around the baby's head, and I heard her apologizing that it was uncomfortable, but really I didn't even notice it on top of what else was happening (I guess I was supposed to not push or just push a little while she did this? I can't remember.) Then it was time to push (this was just after 3:15). As each contraction began, I took a deep breath, blew it out, then held the next deep breath and used it to push. I was so happy to be pushing, to have something active to do, and I could sense the progress of the baby moving down. It's funny, I heard Faith say “wow, you're a great pusher” and comment how well I was doing – I brushed off the very same comments during other stages of labor, but for some reason I believed it during pushing.

After I pushed a few times, Faith rechecked to make sure that lip of cervix was out of the way, and found that the baby's head was right there within reach. She asked if I wanted to feel it – it was amazing, there was the head! I threw my head back on the edge of the pool and smiled and exclaimed, and everything else melted away. It felt so squishy, which I thought was because of membranes and such in front of the head, but Faith told me later that there weren't any, that it was actually just her scalp all bunched up at the top of her head. (Imagine the force it takes to push together enough of a baby's scalp to make it feel that squishy...) I could also feel the baby's pulse in the scalp. The whole thing left me feeling totally re-energized.

They were monitoring the baby this whole time, and somewhere in here (before or after I felt the head?), Faith told me that the baby was in a tight spot so that I needed to move the baby down with the next contraction. I (of course) responded by asking “but it's okay?” because I wanted to know if I should worry. I also asked later to confirm that we wouldn't cut the cord until it stopped pulsing. (This was a regret of mine from Eva's birth; they were accommodating at the hospital, but I never thought to ask, since we'd only even met the doctor the day before. So at some point late in labor, I realized I'd never specifically addressed this with Faith and felt compelled to double-check even though I know that pretty much any midwife is going to wait to cut the cord.) Apparently this is what I do, ask a lot of questions at the very, very end of labor (like right before or during pushing; I did this with both births). I can't remember what else I asked, but I think what I'm really doing is asking in different ways, “it's all okay, right?” so I feel freed up to continue doing what I'm doing. The irony is that no one would tell me if things weren't going okay, I'm sure, but I guess I'm assessing their tone of voice (also kind of pointless, as no one is going to sound all panicked when talking to a laboring woman of course).

Right around this time, someone yelled down so that mom would bring Eva up. I saw her face between pushes, and she was just beaming as she watched quietly, and that smile never left her face. Another push or so and the baby was crowning, then a big push and the head was out. Amazing. I couldn't believe it when they said the head was out – until I looked and saw it for myself – because I had expected it to be really difficult and hurt a lot more during that part (not having had a vertex baby before, I wasn't quite sure what to expect – and since it was one aspect of birth I had never experienced, it had me a bit worried). But there was the head, purple and full of vernix. We waited for the next contraction for what felt like a long time, but I didn't worry, I'm pretty good at staying calm when it's important to do so -- as is Faith and so was the doctor who attended my breech birth, so I never felt rushed or stressed either time. (In fact, as a sign of my lack of worry: June suggested that Larry could do a bit of nipple stimulation to hasten that next contraction, and I immediately brushed his hand away. I was thinking, I did more than enough of that at Eva's birth since we were under a time limit that time, so we're not doing that unless this becomes an actual emergency! For now, we wait.) And then, with one last push, at 3:31 p.m., there she was. I heard them say, reach down and grab your baby. I did, and there was a baby on my chest. It's hard to describe that moment, but I could feel the energy from the people around me as we all took it in.

(We later tried to remember how many times I pushed, and settled on four or five, and apparently it was 11 minutes – it was just over 15 minutes and around the same number of pushes with Eva, so in that respect my breech and vertex births were similar. I can't really answer if it felt different – in some sense, it was the same, but then each birth is so different and you remember things differently, so it's hard to say...)

Here was my baby. I just held her and stared. She was a bit purple, but not for long, and covered in lots of vernix. Her dark eyes scanned around, taking it all in as everyone watched her. I remember her hand resting against my shirt, and the weight of the towels draped over us to keep her warm. She was very alert and calm. I don't know how long it was before I thought to check if she was a boy or a girl. I announced “it's a girl”, then had everyone laughing because I insisted someone double-check. Under all those towels, I couldn't get a good view... so later I said again, “no seriously, did someone else check?” I'd hate to be wrong about something like that. Eva came around to stand near my head where she could get a closer view of the baby, and said in her sweet voice, “oh, Panowah...” That reminded me that we hadn't yet shared the name. I checked with Larry one last time that we were sure of the name – because sometimes a person changes their mind once they see the baby – then announced that her name was Hazel (I think it wasn't until a bit later that I shared her middle name). Eva reached into the tub to touch her baby, and I was startled at how large her hands suddenly looked by comparison. Eva was all smiles, offering soothing words to Hazel and asking everyone around if they saw her new baby sister.

We stayed in the tub for a while (I suppose so I could deliver the placenta) and Faith helped me lower Hazel a bit so that she was mostly immersed in the water to stay warm. It seemed a nice way to transition from her watery world to her new loud bright dry one. After a while, I was helped to the bed while Larry held her – there's nothing like seeing a dad with a tiny brand new baby – and then the four of us snuggled in together. Hazel nursed, and about an hour after she was born, we cut her cord and weighed and measured her. Phone calls were made, and one by one, the people who had attended the birth faded out of the room... and there we were, a family with our two sweet girls.

my girls, day 4

2008-05-27T20:08:00.003-05:00

oh, where to start? has it really only been four days? somehow i feel like she's always been here with us, like the birth was part of a whole previous life. and i guess both those things are true in a way. so here she is, sweet lovely hazel, and i can't even believe how blessed i am to have these two children. life is so amazing...

we're all doing well. i feel fine, really -- i get tired easily and feel a bit achy from time to time, but i have a hard time believing i was pregnant and gave birth four days ago. i had very little bleeding with the birth or since, which i'm sure is a big part of why i feel good (that and the fact that i've been home the whole time! i think having to change locations can really take it out of a person, especially if you have to spend much time in a hospital where their secondary goal seems to be to ensure you never sleep for more than 45 minutes at a time).

eva seems to be adjusting quite well thus far. she seemed so excited and proud to get to see her baby sister's birth, and immediately started trying to soothe hazel by singing her songs and stroking her hair... so sweet. sure, eva's been a bit out of sorts this week, but i think that's as much due to general commotion and change in routine as it is to anything else. she asks to hold hazel a couple times a day, and earlier today as she held her, she sang this song to "her baby" (as hazel began to make a few noises and root around): "oh hazel, your breastmilk is coming pretty soon, i know you are hungry... but i have to snuggle you first and we also love you too..." then when larry began to bring hazel over to me (after eva agreed it was time), eva said to her, "i love you so much and i'm glad that i have you in my family." oh! this hormonal mama just about melted (and i was glad i had a pen handy to furiously scribble all that down).

and hazel... oh my sweet baby. she's doing so well for someone so new to this world. she's a very content, peaceful baby (for now, i know these things can change :). she basically nurses and sleeps, with charming periods of quiet alert newbornness in between. at this early point in her life, if she cries, that means she's about to burp (or poo), and as soon as that's done, she drops right back off to sleep or goes back to nursing. she's also been tricking her papa with lots of those triple diaper changes, where even when he waits until it really seems she's done, she'll fill the clean diaper within moments of it going on. it's kind of comical from my position across the room, possibly less so to him, say, in the middle of the night.

it's so nice, we're so much more laid back this time around. that's largely the second baby effect, but it's also due to not being influenced by the medical model of baby care this time. with eva, we wrote down the time, side, and duration of every nursing session, tracked her poos and pees, took her temperature every few hours, and swabbed her cord with alcolhol at every diaper change. with hazel, we haven't done one of those things, and it's so nice to save that mental energy for something else -- like just enjoying gazing at her. i hope this early trend of being more calm and present in the moment persists. that's my goal, anyway.

for the data junkies: at 48 hrs, hazel weighed 6 lbs 10 oz (meaning she had lost about 5% of her birth weight), and now at 4 days, she weighs 7 lbs 2 oz, above her birth weight already! i'm not surprised she's back over her birth weight quickly (eva did the same), but i am a bit surprised that she gained 8 oz in 48 hrs. (if you couldn't guess, my milk arrived on day 2 and she's been nursing like a champ since then...)

so here i sit, cabbage in my bra, spit-up from three separate incidents covering my shirt (the second of the day), needing a shower (and a nap, i'm sure), with laundry in stacks and toys everywhere... but deleriously happy. at some point, the fatigue will catch up with me and i'll crash and wonder what the hell i've gotten myself into, but for now, we're soaking it all up.

hazel

2008-05-24T19:29:00.001-05:00

hazel, originally uploaded by kelanew.

welcome sweet baby...

yesterday, may 23 2008 (our tenth anniversary) at 3:31 p.m., we welcomed hazel into our family. she was born at home in water, and the birth was witnessed by eva and my mom as well as larry, two friends, and two midwives. she's a bit bigger than her sister was, measuring in at 7 pounds even and 20 inches.

more details later, but the labor and birth went smoothly and we are so pleased to have had a beautiful home birth. such a peaceful way to welcome our new daughter into our family.

we're all doing well (if a bit tired), eva is thrilled as can be, often checking on hazel and comforting her with kisses and songs. we look forward to introducing her to more family and friends over the coming days and weeks.

(if you like, click through on the above photo to see more photos on my flickr site.)

waiting

2008-05-18T20:04:00.002-05:00

larry's on bedtime duty tonight, and i can hear eva upstairs singing the end of the ABCs, and a moment later, squealing. she's sort of hyped up this evening, which is either due to the chocolate milk (that she only gets while grocery shopping) or just a reaction to the general mood around here. something's definitely afoot, and i'm sure she can tell.

i'm a bit surprised (though for no logical reason) to still be pregnant the evening before my due date. a week ago i had some signs that i was pretty sure were the real deal, but turns out i was just a bit sick, not laboring. since then, after the anticlimactic dip wore off, i've again found it hard to believe that this baby will in fact come out of me at some point. that part doesn't quite seem real. and so i think, did i feel this way last time? no, of course not, i never had the chance to consider such things. eva came early and under such a flurry of activity and changing of plans, i never got in my head about the whole thing. this time, for better or worse, i've been given that opportunity.

at a certain point, a pregnant woman at term is supposed to feel done. i still don't know that i feel "done" (despite all logic! i'm plenty uncomfortable, what with the various indignities of pregnancy sneaking up on me these days), but i guess i'd have to say i'm feeling "ready". i've done most of what i wanted to do around the house (like find the newborn clothes and pull out diapers -- even for a procrastinator, it seems prudent to get around to such tasks prior to birth), i've put myself into the headspace for birth as fully as possible, i've even bought the necessary ingredients for the chocolate birth-day cake i hope to bake during early labor. i'm anxious to meet the baby and find out who it is in there, i'm anxious to stop waiting and move forward. that said, i feel like i could be happy being pregnant for much longer. i like it, and i probably won't get the chance again. but this anxious feeling will probably slowly migrate over into the realm of "impatient", which i think is what being "done" is all about. i'm ready any time now, though.

the photo at the top is a montage of eva's very first haircut a bit over a week ago. she was thrilled with it, and smiled the whole time. i knew she'd be comfortable since she has been going with me to see jennifer since she was a baby, but i didn't know she'd love it so much. despite it being a bit shorter than i had hoped for (oh well it'll grow), it's much more manageable now and looks nicer in general.

below is a photo of the birth flags eva and i did, to add to the string of them done by my friends at my blessingway. a more complete description is on flickr (if you click through on the photo), but the centerpiece of eva's is a drawing of panowah inside my uterus, complete with amniotic fluid and an umbilical cord. and hair. everyone has green hair. oh, also, she's riding a skateboard, apparently.

my mom arrives day after tomorrow. so, baby, come out any time now... there'll be one more person around who is very anxious to meet you.

blessingway

2008-05-06T18:46:00.004-05:00

my blessingway was on sunday. this is a tradition among my group of friends, a way of honoring the mother who is about to welcome a new baby. in contrast to a traditional baby shower, it's less about the baby and gifts (and balmex, oh that commercial is annoying, isn't it?) and more about the mother and her transition and also about the birth itself.

i've been thinking for a few days how i might describe it, and i don't know if i really can. it was empowering and i felt incredibly supported as i leap into the unknown of life with a second baby. it's really something to feel that connection not only to my circle of mama friends, but also with women in general... say, maybe, the 300,000 who will be having babies the same day i do. (having a baby is this crazy mix of life-changing and kind of mundane, at least on a broader scale. weird.)

last friday, my friends surprised me with a trip downtown to get henna on my belly, and as you can see above, they all got their hands done. i absolutely love my henna, i think it's really beautiful. i can imagine looking at in labor, letting it ground me and bring my focus back where it needs to be.

we also generally do some sort of offering to the mother, something assembled or crafted by each of us, offered up with some words of support for labor and beyond. i was given a prayer flag, with one panel from each person, along with three blank panels for larry, eva, and i to complete later. eva just drew hers, i'll get a photo up on flickr at some point -- it includes panowah in my uterus along with amniotic fluid. cute, right? it also includes her riding a skateboard (what?!) and the dog "swimming in water at gram's house". so, it's a mix of accurate and befuddling.

and if that wasn't enough, there was more -- a food tree to begin after the baby is born, candles to be lit by each person when i go into labor, an amazing and beautiful homemade cake. the best part, though, was having that time to spend with my friends (both on friday and sunday) before life gets a bit more crazy.

i was hearing some concerns that i might go into labor before the blessingway... and i kept thinking "what are you talking about? i'm nowhere near having this baby!" (you know, despite all... logic. and reality, and that sort of thing.) well, somehow now that the blessingway is over, and the fact that the next day i hit 38 weeks, suddenly i'm feeling like, yes, i could actually have a baby at some point here. at 38 weeks, i'm officially more pregnant than i've ever been before (and oddly, have gained to the pound the same amount of weight i gained with eva).

so now i feel like i can have a baby, but i still don't know that i will imminently. i'm perfectly happy being pregnant -- in fact, i think i'll need to get over that before the baby will be born. this is likely my last pregnancy, and despite the difficulties i had a few months ago, i like being pregnant. i'm sure i'll feel done at some point as time progresses, but for now, i'm content to wait. don't get me wrong, i'm excited to meet the baby, very much so. but i guess (at least for now) i'm willing to be patient. so unlike me! maybe this portends well for my ability to be more in the moment this time, to not try to rush through always to the next stage. that's my hope anyway, to really treasure these fleeting moments that are gone too soon.

all of that said, there's some crazy stuff going on in there right now, so who knows. maybe the baby will be here sooner than i think. i have a history of being too dismissive about such things. :)

school

2008-04-30T19:06:00.001-05:00

tea party, originally uploaded by kelanew.

eva has been on the wait list for starbright preschool for, well, about half her life, actually. i planned that hoping a spot would open up right around the time that a future second child would come around, and we were close -- we had a spot confirmed for august. well, we got a call yesterday that they had a last-minute opening starting... tomorrow. we thought about it for about an hour, then took the spot.

for now, she'll be going thursday and friday afternoons (2:30-6), and starting in august she'll move to a more normal schedule of monday and wednesday afternoons. starbright is a lovely (and coveted) waldorf-based preschool, and the kids spend much of their time outdoors playing in the huge wooded lot. eva has a good friend (ella) who goes there, too, and i think they're both fairly excited to be going to school together.

this couldn't have come at a better time -- now we'll have a little while to get her used to school before the baby comes, and i'll have a bit of a rest during the last weeks of pregnancy, and she won't feel like she's beeing shooed out the door and replaced by the baby (as is the concern had we started in, say, june). also, i've been making plans in recent weeks to expand her social opportunities a bit, hoping to augment what we currently do by finding some contexts that would be better suited to *her* needs (as opposed to my own needs of hanging out with my friends :) now that school is starting now rather than in august, i presume it can fill that role very nicely. i think she's going to love it, and i'm sure i won't mind having a few hours per week alone with the baby, either.

ordinarily, they invite parents to bring a new child for 6 weeks prior to their start date so they can acclimate to the school setting. well, we had only one day's notice -- today -- so today we went to school. i explained to eva that i would stay at school with her while she got to know her teachers and the other kids, and then once she was ready, she could tell me to go. i figured i'd stay for three or so days, depending. we arrived, she and ella ran off to play together, and basically eva didn't even check in with me for the next two hours. she played, had snack, went potty (with her teacher, not me), played some more -- and thought it was even a good sign that while she played with ella, she also played with other kids or just explored on her own. well, after we had been there about two hours, she came running over to me. i thought perhaps she was needing to reconnect with me a bit, or just wanted to chat, but she said with a cheery yet very sincere expression on her face, "okay mama, you can go now. i'm ready for you to go." well, okay then! i wasn't expecting that she would kick me out... on the first day.

so, i went out front to sit in the car until school was over. about 45 minutes later, one of her teachers saw me while taking out the trash and said she was doing great. but i guess i should have headed in a bit earlier than i did, because at 5:48 they called me saying she was sad. (i planned to head in a few minutes before that.) and, wow, she was really sad! she even continued to cry as i held her, saying she was "sooo hungry" (not used to eating on a schedule, i guess) and that she was "just very sad". the first issue is that she saw other kids leaving and i guess wasn't totally clear on the fact that i would be coming back, too, and how exactly that all worked, given it was the first day. and i think she really *was* hungry (we simply could not convince her to eat much lunch today, and she didn't eat much for snack at school)... and then halfway home, after all of five minutes in the car, she fell asleep.

until the pick-up time started at the end of the day combined with the tired and hungry, though, she did amazingly well for her first day. i was there the first two hours, as i said, but she couldn't even see me most of that time, let alone come hang out with me. my mom laughed, saying that sounds just like eva's mama and her grandma, too (we were both very ready for school). i think she's going to do just fine.

intensity

2008-04-28T10:33:00.004-05:00

yesterday was one of those days of emotional intensity -- probably to be expected when a mom at the very end of her pregnancy and a two-and-three-quarters-year-old toddler, each with their own incomprehensible emotional swings, join forces.

mixed in with lots of joyful playing with her cousin (we'd stumble upon them having created their own tea party in the playroom, or snuggled together on the couch looking at books together), eva had four big breakdowns yesterday. these were the sort of things that can be frustrating to a parent because on the surface they appear to be about nothing -- because the asked for soap was placed onto her hand one half inch to the left of where it should have been, because i put pita chips into her bowl (the way she had asked not five minutes prior), because the of the two towels offered after her bath, one was too small and one was too big. but after a retreat to our room, lots of screaming and sobbing, and a few deep breathes, the return of toddler language ("use your words", indeed) would clarify to me that in her perception -- which really, is no less valid than my own -- she had a perfectly good reason for being upset. it turns out, i then recalled, she had asked that she be allowed to have the whole bag of pita chips rather than just a few in her bowl, and i absent mindedly responded with a yeah-sure-whatever, then failed to deliver. that's a reasonable injustice in a toddler's world. granted, she could have pointed that out (with words!) rather than throwing the chips and screaming, but really, maybe she couldn't have. she is, after all, two. something i struggle to remember throughout the day.

apparently i need all the opportunities i can get to be reminded. after each of these intense interactions, i resolved to do better next time. i respond in anger at first, then calm down, which is better than staying pissed off and acting accordingly, but i'd prefer if i could just stay calm in the first place. on the first of these two events, larry and i "traded off" after the first aggrieved parent needed to breathe (and i mean literally aggrieved -- she bit my hair and pulled (what is that?) and later unintentionally kicked me in the belly; another time she bit larry's shoulder hard enough to leave a big red bruise). trading off isn't always an option, of course, and i was pleased that i managed to calm down the times it wasn't. if only i could avoid that initial burst of anger... only one of us needs to act like a two year old, and eva gets dibs on that.

eva, however, is actually doing pretty well at coping with these situations (given her age, that is). she starts out screaming and sobbing and hyperventilating, even throwing or hitting or (the new lovely development) biting. but quickly, through the screaming, she'll say "i'm so angry! i feel like throwing things at you! i'm very frustrated right now!". or, through the sobs, she'll say "i can't get calmer. i'm having trouble calming down..." she said that then looked up at me with a face mixed with anger and a longing for comfort, and reached her arms tentatively up toward me and immediately dropped them and looked at her feet, seemingly unsure what to do with herself and even more unsure of how i would respond. i reached across the literal and figurative space between us (that in her tiny wisdom she had begun to bridge) and scooped her up into my arms. her breathing immediately began to slow as she sank into my shoulder, the two of us a mound of spent emotions and belly.

this may at first sound like a tangent, but on days such as this, where we find our connection split apart and rejoined an exhausting number of times, i am so thankful that we still co-sleep. i know the benefits (facilitation of breastfeeding, reduced SIDS risk, extra sleep for mama, and so on) may seem to end after the baby stage is over, but i swear we get as much out of it now as we did then. without realizing it, i developed a ritual long ago of reconnecting to her as she sleeps, and i absolutely rely on that now. probably around the time all the toddlerness began, i found that i would lay down to join her in bed (after she had been asleep for a few hours already), and just stare at her sleeping face and breathe it all in. i smooth her hair back, and as i gaze at that peaceful face, all eyelashes and cream, how could i be irritated or stressed? watching her chest rise and fall, i subconsciously match my own breathing to hers and am reminded of her as her baby self, when a different intensity of emotion prevailed, when i was overcome with a physical need to hold her. the stillness is broken a bit as her jaw clicks around, squishing up her quiet lips, a remnant motion from her days as a nursling. there she is, my beloved tiny baby, growing into a child, into a person. each day she will travel just a little farther from me, needing me less, until one day all of this is a slightly blurry memory. even in a matter of weeks, my nighttime attention (like all of my attention) will be split between two. but for now, i can end each day -- whatever that day may have brought to us -- with her sweet face as the last thing i see as i drift off to sleep. soon enough i hear through my eyelids, "it's a beautiful day, mama, let's wake up!" and after a night of jumbled legs and arms, physically as well as emotionally reconnected, we're both ready to do it all over again.

bogumil superbus

2008-04-19T20:28:00.002-05:00

until very recently, one of us (guess which one?) had become a bit stressed at our complete lack of having discussed baby names given that we were halfway through the third trimester. i was concerned that we might not find names we agreed upon until the very end, and after my experience last time of clutching a list of boys names while i was about a half hour away from actually pushing the baby out, i really wanted to avoid a last-minute decision. a person needs time to mull it over, to be sure. naming another person should in no way resemble impulse shopping. (damn, where did i put that receipt, anyway?)

well, it turns out my worry was for naught. we messed around for a week or so crossing names off a big list (a mix of the plausible and the slightly ridiculous), and made some progress. then, we decided to each make a list of our top names (i had about a dozen for each gender; larry had around five), and then compare the lists. we had a high degree of overlap (i was going to say a "surprising" degree, but it's not so unexpected, since we generally have the same tastes in names... and most things, really). armed with a list of our mutual top five or so names, i figured we'd mull it over for a while, and then start narrowing. but we both looked at the list and said: "i like this one" "hey, me too." and weirdly, that happened for both the boy and girl names. and there you have it, a full month before the due date, too.

i kept waiting for "The Name" to jump out at me, and i guess it did. there's still time should we decide to change our minds, but i think we're pretty settled. now we just need to find middle names, but that feels more fun and less stressful (says one of the parents who had to return to the hospital when eva was three days old to legally bestow upon her a middle name).

in the course of reading through names, we came across some that caught our eye. larry always makes lots of jokes about baby names (making the actual decision making process both more humorous and more frustrating). last time, our unborn child was often referred to as "strikeforce", a foreshadow of her future ninja training in her quest to take over the world, or so i am told. before that, she was lampwick. well, it goes without saying this baby would eventually get such a name (and panowah doesn't count; that came from eva). we'd both become impressed by the name bogumil -- i mean, how great is that? and then later, larry came across superbus (apparently the last king of rome, as in "superb"), and announces "super bus!"

now, you should know that when i'm pregnant, i tend to find things very funny. things that otherwise would illicit a chuckle or even just a grin cause a massive belly laugh. and i think that's just the reason -- the massive belly. i think saint nick and his bowl-full-of-jelly style of laughter was no exaggeration. i laugh and find the laughing itself so funny it spirals a bit out of control, until i fear i'm going to pull a belly ligament. "stop it! stop saying superbus, i'm going to hurt myself..." and then it's sealed; i'll find that same thing immensely funny from that point forward.

so, wee baby, in case you thought panowah wasn't enough of a fake name... you now have bogumil superbus. i really think (despite tradition) that it could work for a boy or a girl. so if anyone asks, that's what we're naming the baby.

just admit it, you secretly love it, too. it's perfect.

open letter

2008-04-13T00:14:00.002-05:00

hi baby.

you might think -- someday, once you come out, and have a gender and a name among other key attributes -- in reading this that you existed during my pregnancy in my mental framework only as an upcoming sidekick to your sister, as a foil for her cute and humorous antics.

you might wonder, "where's the journal of when you were pregnant with me? eva has a whole book!" sort of an "i gestated in your uterus and all i got was this stupid nickname" type of scenario.

well, you'd be justified in asking these things (both your parents are second children, so we can try to relate). there are some legitimate key differences in a first pregnancy and subsequent ones. but you'd be wrong to think that those differences mean i (we) think of you less, wanted you less, that we are any less excited to have you join our family. not in the slightest. it simply comes down to a matter of split attention. your sister, who will always be "older" from your perspective, is barely more than a baby herself right now, and as convenient as it would be at various moments, we can't just hit the "pause" button on her while we focus on the amazement we feel in contemplating your arrival. breakfast still has to be made. so, the thoughts i have and have been having since the moment i learned of your existence don't always make it into a written record. but they're there...

these feelings are so strong, so real. it's overwhelming, really, when i think of how much i wanted you, how i was made to wait just long enough that i began to have sporadic but serious doubts that you would ever come to us... then the joy of the news. all that fear melted away, and i felt the same roller coaster of emotions that i felt the first time around (though i got to enjoy it more, since "fear" made up far less of the pie, since i at least marginally know what i'm doing this time). this pregnancy has been filled with so much -- so many things have happened, so much emotion has flooded through all of us -- that the time has flown by. i look down or in the mirror and am surprised at times at my shape -- when did this happen? wasn't i just 4 months along yesterday? in some sense, i feel caught off guard by the fact that you'll be here in a matter of weeks. on the other side, i feel like you've always been there, and i feel so comfortable in my body as it is right now (okay, not always *physically comfortable but in a broader sense) that i feel like i could just stay this way forever.

i intended to write more for you, but i didn't, and for that i apologize. but i'm writing now to tell you that the feelings are no different the second time around. i hear people say that while the second child never gets to be the sole focus of his or her parents' attention, this is balanced out by getting the more experienced parents that the older sibling, ever the guinea pig, never gets to have. i don't know how the scales tilt on this, but i do know how i feel.

so though i say i could stay this way forever, i wouldn't really want to... because what i'm really wanting, what i think about more and more every day, is finding out who you are. i am so excited for you to join our family. you are so loved already...

always,
your mama

growth

2008-04-02T13:26:00.002-05:00

eva had another of her semiannual follow-up appointments with the pediatric endocrinologist today. it went well; they're pleased with her rate of growth (as has been carefully charted over the past year), and though she's not catching up, she's staying where she needs to be. she's 24.5 lbs and 33.5" (roughly, as best i'm remembering), which puts her at 3rd %ile for weight and 1st %ile for height -- and hey, we'll settle for "on the chart". good enough for us.

again, the theory is basically that she'll skate along at the very bottom edge of the chart, probably drop off a bit more throughout elementary school, and eventually catch up some time in high school (after hitting puberty later than her peers), to end up somewhere basically average, potentially around the 50th %ile. how's that for a detailed theory? in plain language, they're guessing she's a late bloomer. i'm not so tied to this theory, but i'm putting it here like a little time capsule. someday we'll say "that's exactly what happened!" or we'll say "oh, look how far off we were on that one..."

so, despite how little she eats (i swear it was no more than three bites of any meal or snack all day yesterday with the exception of a handful of pretzels), it seems she's doing okay. we have a repeat bone age x-ray and another follow-up appointment in six months. if by then she's still progressing well enough, we may only have to check in occasionally (to see if the above theory holds).

larry's birthday

2008-03-31T22:36:00.002-05:00

today is larry's birthday. eva helped me bake a cake for larry, and unlike my usual version of letting her help but still being a bit too controlling regarding the end product, i actually let her help. she stuck her hands into the sifted flour, sugar ended up on the floor. crumbs got mixed into the whipped cream, and the strawberries were smooshed right in rather than being arranged on top. and guess what? it's just fine. (i'm not saying i'm terrible about this, but i do catch myself at times and wonder... why not just let her do it? just let go...)

we followed the precedent set on my birthday and i took eva to roam target to find her gift for papa. she'd been saying all week she wanted to get him "that big bag she saw" so he can carry lots of stuff in it. i still don't know what bag she was thinking of, but we found a canvas messenger bag for him, and she said that was the one she wanted for him. in the bag went a summer shirt (eva chose the white one over the brown i had in mind, which turns out to have been the better choice) and a wii game where you swim around under the ocean, which i think eva will also enjoy. she then had the idea of buying him flowers -- pink tulips, specifically -- and choose a card with the whole alphabet on it (wow, was she excited to find that).

after cake (sure, why not before dinner?) we all went out for a leisurely dinner that wrapped up at 9. she was so cooperative both at target (roaming free out of the cart, because she insisted she would "cooperate and be patient") and at dinner, where we waited 40 minutes because we were set on the idea of sitting outside. for the last couple weeks of my, um, confinement, she understandably became quite difficult -- contrary about everything, having massive meltdowns whenever we returned home from somewhere -- because she was so fed up with being at home and with my being prone on the couch. i kept hearing how normal that was for her age, which it is, but i knew the suddenness of the onset when i got sick couldn't be entirely explained away as a phase. now that i'm better (mostly; enough so that i have more-or-less resumed my usual sort of activities -- like getting groceries or going to the park), she is much happier and by extension easier to deal with. sure, she still is contrary -- she is two after all -- but she no longer tells me on a daily basis how sad she is because she doesn't have any friends to play with. we'll consider it a practice run for the confinement that naturally occurs after a baby is born... in a weird way, i think it will give me strength knowing that it won't last forever. she went through a lot these past two months, and as hard as it was on all of us, she's amazingly resillient.

this feels totally disjointed, but these days my brain shuts off sometime around 9 p.m., so i think that's the best i can do. man, i'm really pregnant... (when did that happen? i swear, last time i checked i was like 4 months along, and now i'm having a baby in a month and change. wow.)

lillian

2008-03-22T13:26:00.003-05:00

julie had her baby this morning! welcome, baby lillian! i know she was born at 4 something a.m., weighs 7 lbs 2 oz and is 20 in long, and has lots of dark brown hair. she doesn't yet have a middle name (eva didn't either until she was 3 days old; she seems no worse for it :). i hear julie and lilian are both doing well, and i'll update this post at some point when i get my hands on some photos or more info. so exciting! i heardly slept last night knowing she was in labor...

thank you notes

2008-03-01T20:17:00.004-06:00

eva writes thank you notes for fun all the time lately. this started (before i got sick) when she'd ask what i was typing as i wrote an email. i'd explain that i was writing to tell our friends thank you for the food, or thank you for visiting, etc. now it's a full-fledged obsession.

there are two styles: the first is on the computer. she'll either tell me what to type and then type her own name, or she'll insist on typing it all herself, and asks me to spell the words she can't spell (which is, obviously, pretty much all of them beyond "hi", "love", and "eva", i'd guess. though she likes to figure out the first letter herself and type that, like "g j" for grandma janet).

in the second style, she "writes" notes on paper with a marker or pen while narrating aloud what she is writing. i rarely catch those verbatim, but in the first example below to auntie juile, i happened to have my computer open so i caught the whole thing. her writing consists of zig-zag scribbles, but they move from left to right across the page in tidy little rows, and there are even spaces between "words". she doesn't really draw representative pictures, but man, is she itching to write!

in the photo: i gave her the magazine subscription cards to put in the recycling for me, and said she could play with them first if she wanted. she worked diligently, then returned clutching all six cards, with "words" written across the blank lines (where your address info would go). she listed: this one is for jenny's baby luce, this one is for my cousin katherine, this one is for sarah fiona's mama, ... and she kept saying "i wrote notes for all the people who i love." she noted, "for the people who live too far away, we can post it to them." post. you know, at the post office. her new favorite place.

writing and emailing or posting thank-you notes. who knew it would be her favorite pasttime? just goes to show, modeling works!

a few examples from the past two weeks:

----

prompted by seeing the envelope that julie's valentines gifts came in, she began to write on it. as she "wrote", she narrated the following (exactly her words, she didn't know i was listening and typing):

auntie julie,
i'm so happy for you to give me presents for valentines day. thank you, auntie julie. i miss you. i hope you were here to play with me. auntie julie, to eva. i miss you soooo much. dear auntie julie, auntie julie...

----

wendy and ella and dash,

thank you for welcoming me. thank you for giving me the balloons. i had fun playing with you. i drew a picture of dash.

love,
eva

----
(typed herself:)

tttttthank you
love eva

wvaaaaaaaaaaabsdemvgfvbbvhrea wx ertydbgmc/
("thank you for the food it was delicious.")

----

auntie lora and grandma,

thanks for showing us the pictures. i saw the light and the
refrigerator. thank you.

happy valentine's day. i love you.
from eva

----

piper,

thank you for the play dough. i'm playing with it. i'm making a
strawberry out of it. that was nice of you to give us play dough.

happy valentine's day!
eav

(name typed herself. before she learned about "backspace".)

----

and off topic, a bonus evaism:

she was just pretending to "read" the back of her probiotic yogurt drink package, and i dont' know what it said, but she kept saying over and over (trailing her finger across like she was pointing out each word), "it says 'necessities of life and of the world.'"

what?

where the heck did she come up with that? sometimes when i can't think how she knows something, i realize it's from one of her books (like harry the dirty dog goes down a "coal chute", or the "plaster cast" comment she made about something wrapped around her calf which came from when curious george breaks his leg.)

all i can think of is that the TV has been on a lot lately where it is otherwise off during her waking hours. maybe it's a commercial or something? she is a sponge and picks up every little thing.

oh, after she was done saying "necessities of life and of the world", she announced, "hey guys, did you know that 'oh holy gosh' starts with 'o'?" thanks eva, yes i did know that. oh holy gosh, indeed. crazy kid.

update: below is a portion of the letter she wrote to gram the next day.

bed rest

2008-02-28T21:02:00.003-06:00

when last i wrote, we were about to head to the internist to figure out the source of my mystery pregnancy malady. well, from that appointment i was admitted directly to the hospital -- primarily because upon standing my pulse rate shot up 30+ bpm to 120-something. i also could barely move.

i ended up in the hospital overnight for testing and observation. long story short, the countless tests didn't really show anything, though it did rule out a lot of scary stuff that would have been bad for me and the baby (and the baby is doing really well, by the way). we did find that my sodium and potassium were a bit low, so that could very well be interfering with my body's ability to expand my blood volume quickly enough to meet the baby's needs (which surge ahead at this point in pregnancy). the theory that i just don't have enough blood would explain all the symptoms (and explain why they so closely mirror the symptoms of anemia -- different path to the same result). i also have chronically low blood pressure and such issues run in my family. so, in the absence of any other plausible theory, this is the one we're going with.

the doctor put me on bed rest for a week, and has me drinking sport drinks and adding more salt to my diet, etc. i'm also trying to boost my iron a bit higher since that can only help. the next 10 days were worse than the first 10 i wrote about before. i basically was unable to sit up at all in the mornings, and often found that simply sitting would exhaust me. i pretty much didn't move other than to plod over to the bathroom. fun! luckily friends have been bringing us some food and helping to entertain poor, housebound eva. that made a big difference.

just in the past day or two i've been seeing a gradual upswing. i decided on wednesday (after being released from bed rest) that i'd just be better through sheer power of will and determination. that didn't work out so well; about ten minutes of very light activity around the house wore me out and i napped for an hour. today i managed an actual shower in the morning and larry took me to my midwife's office for another round of blood tests, and after we thought we'd get lunch to go at central market since we were right there. well, after a very short walk into the store and down one aisle, i very quickly realized my mistake. my body insisted that i sit down *right now* and i was at a loss for how to get back to the chairs near the entrance. i sort of stood there and felt panicky, looking for something to lean as my vision started to get fuzzy, and larry led me back to the chairs. i was really frustrated and disappointed by this encounter, realizing that "feeling better" is a far stretch away from resuming anything resembling my normal activities. something as simple as driving eva to the park for 20 minutes or out for ice cream seems out of reach at this point, and in the mean time she asks me every day "when are we going back to my music class, mama?" (we've missed the last three and there's only one left, i don't have the heart to tell her.) larry reasoned with me that my failed outing needs to be viewed in context -- i did more this morning than i've done in over a week. so, i'm getting better, but this is going to be a slow climb, i think. we'll just take each day and see where it carries us; there's not much more i can do than that.

larry has been amazing through this whole thing, tending to my every need as i sat glued to the couch, and taking care of eva as well, all the while trying to squeeze in his actual job wherever it would fit. the amount of patience and caring he has displayed overwhelms me, so much so that i can't begin to articulate how i feel about it. eva has been pretty great herself, patiently entertaining herself when we need her to (except maybe for that long 24 hrs at the hospital) and coming over to give me (and panowah) kisses and hugs and toys just because, or looking at me with peace in her eyes as she strokes my hair when i cry out of frustration. she's quite a kid, resilient and caring beyond measure. i've always known these things about both of them, but sometimes extreme circumstances allow you to see with greater clarity the things that have always been there.

malady mystery

2008-02-17T17:25:00.001-06:00

happy valentine's day, originally uploaded by kelanew.

first of all, happy late valentine's day. you can read more about the valentines eva and i made and sent to our loved ones on my craft blog.

the primary news of the week (and this will be brief -- well, as brief as i ever am, ha -- for reasons that will soon become apparent) is that i'm experiencing some sort of mysterious pregnancy malady. for the last ten days, i've essentially been on the couch barely moving. symptom roll call -- fatigue, vertigo and/or lightheadedness, weakness, shortness of breath, and heavy limbs. the first several days, i could barely sit up for 30 minutes at a time, finding it too exhausting. now i'm a bit better off, sitting up more than i'm lying, but still make it off the couch for maybe two hours a day (if that's something as simple as sitting on a bench or in the car), or instead, maybe an hour of light activity around the house (making my own breakfast, loading the dishwasher, helping eva get dressed, whatever). i am getting very sick of television, but a good portion of the time my arms feel to heavy to crochet or hold a book, and the lightheadedness/vertigo makes it hard to read or use the computer. i feel somewhat better in the evenings, but still find that simple projects like sewing a few lines on the sewing machine quickly make me too tired.

my very first thought was low blood pressure, since it feels sort of the way i feel (outside of pregnancy) when my usual low blood pressure dips too low. but, larry bought a bp cuff in the middle of the night (when i was having constant bed spins and felt drunk) and we ruled out a crashing bp (which helped us calm down and not immediately head to the ER). next, we looked at anemia, but my blood test came back thursday and my iron levels are fine. too bad, because that would have been an easy one to fix, and fit with all the symptoms. my midwife spoke with the backup OB, who said that if she had a patient with these symptoms, she'd send her to an internist. so, after much hunting to find someone who could see me before, say, i have a newborn, i have an appointment tomorrow. actually, i have two appointments, because before i found an internist appointment, i got in with my primary care doctor's PA so that i can get a blood draw to test my thyroid levels.

both my midwife and the OB have assured me that while i may feel awful, it's not an obstetric emergency. that said, i don't like the not knowing. i can deal with feeling this way if i have to (though it's not good, we might want some laundry done and to eat some non-take-out or freezer food at some point) but i just want to know what's going on. and every so often, i decide, hey, it's not so bad, i just need to buck up! go for it, get something done! then i head upstairs, pause along the way to rest, and wind up out of breath by the time i get to the top. or try all day to get a load of laundry done so eva can have clean underwear, only to go to bed no closer. but i waver between "oh, i'm so much better, i just need to get over it" and "oh man, i need to sit right now before i tip over." very perplexing.

we'll see if monday's appointments and the subsequent test results yield anything useful.

on language

2008-02-07T22:36:00.000-06:00

"The face of a child can say it all, especially the mouth part of the face."
-- Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey

as you may know, i am endlessly fascinated by the nuances of how toddlers pick up language. i love to notice which things come earlier or later, or to see the little quirks and idioms they grab on to from their parents. and all of this changes so quickly as they grow. eva is and has long been quite a talker, but this isn't about checking off milestones. i love that as her language skills grow and develop, she is increasingly able to pull back the curtains for me so i can see what's going on in her head. the more i get to see of how and what she thinks, the more i find that i just adore her spirit and personality. she's sensitive and caring, observant and curious; she has a quirky sense of humor that fits right in around here, and is sharp as a tack. none of this is news to me, but the more i see of it -- and so much of that comes through language -- the more i fall in love (if that's even possible?).

in a (very loose) interpretation of those dorky motivational posters in offices everywhere (you know, the one of the guy surfing that says "persistence" under it followed by some inspiring quote?), i've assembled some of the little language things i've been noticing lately under theme headings.

appreciation
("thank you, mama.")
you know all the proverbially thankless tasks of motherhood, like bum wiping or fixing endless snacks? these are all now thanked. no act is too small to escape her appreciation radar: glass of milk, a kiss on forehead, the wiping off of the jelly from the face. "thank you mama for getting me a clean bowl." this sounds like a dream come true (and proof that modeling works! we rarely tell her "say thank you", we just do it, and now she follows in that behavior), and i'm not complaining at all, but it's sort of weird in a way, too, to be thanked a hundred times a day. as in, you don't have to thank me sweet monkey, that's just my job. this behavior, however, emphatically does not extend outside of our home. she still won't thank the clerk at target or a friend who lends her a hand. oh well, all in good time.

negotiation
"okay, but first i just have to finish this one thing."
yeah, just a sec, mom. five more minutes! i think i'll be hearing this one from now all the way through her teenage years.

compassion
("i'm sorry, mama." said in the saddest small voice ever.)
this one can freak me out. she apologizes for everything that isn't her fault. if larry gets frustrated while working on a project and expresses that aloud, or if i cry for any reason (or no reason, as the hormonal case may be), she comes over, pats his arm or my head, and says "i'm sorry. i'm sorry you are sad. it's okay, i'll help make you feel better." it's very sweet, but sometimes i think in her instinct to be caring, she takes on too much of our emotion as her own. i worry about that at times. she's so sensitive to it.

assertion of opinion
("i believe that...")
"mama, i believe that those boys have one orange ball and one blue ball."
"i believe it's too cold to play at the park today."
it's weird (and at the same time, totally expected) to hear your child talking and sounding just like you. sometimes you wonder where they got a certain linguistic quirk, only to realize you say it yourself fifty times a day. ("there you go, mama." -- gee, wonder where she gets that one? if you've ever met me, you don't wonder either.) but i was telling this story to my friends and said that i didn't think i said "i believe" all the time. i stood corrected by the crowd; apparently i'm guilty of this one, too! (how is it i don't know what it is i say all day long? how can this be a surprise to me?!) but it's irresistibly cute coming out of the mouth of a two year old (you know, "the mouth part of the face").

observation
("did you ever notice that...")
"did you ever notice that Owl and Wren both have wings because they are birds? and some dinosaurs have wings too? and airplanes!" (a shout out to all the "bear snores on" et al fans out there! :)
"did you ever notice that when i was littler i used to ride backwards like panowah will when she comes out of your belly, but now i ride frontwards? did you notice that mama?"
this is her all time top phrase. she wants to share her many observations throughout the day, and more than that, she wants to know if you know the things she knows. sometimes i don't, so she "teaches" me about it.

reassurance
("don't worry." "but that's okay.")
"don't worry, i'm being very careful because i'm the big sister. it's not too dangerous." (said as she perches atop a high unstable bit of furniture.)
"oops, i dropped that spoon, but that's okay. i can pick it up later."
again, my own words turned around on me. i say these things to her when she starts to get upset about some unintended consequence of her actions. and now she reassures me about it before i have the chance.

qualification
(actually/otherwise/probably/unless)
she's been saying these for a long time. less so now that i'm used to it, but it used to just crack me up. here are some quotes i saved from around the time of her birthday last summer:
"actually, that's not juice, but it's just water."
"this look like a toy. mama, what is this actually?"
"we don't feed lemma people food, otherwise she might get sick."
"gram make food for grampy probably."
"who make this house? maybe matt maked it."
i was struck reading those, because already she sounds different -- now she knows noun/verb agreement, and gets a lot of irregular verbs. it's fascinating, watching language acquisition over time.

verification
("is it okay if i...?")
"is it okay if i stand on the table, because i will be very careful?" um, no.
"is it okay if i draw on this paper?" hurray! she finally asks before coloring on every stray bit of paper in our house.

motivation
"i think that would be a good idea, mama. let's do it!"
"do you want to go have dinner at a restaurant? i think that would be a good idea."
"maybe we should make muffins. um-hmm, that would be a good idea. c'mon mama, let's go do it."
it's like living with my own personal cheerleader.

consensus
("... isn't it?", "...didn't i?")
"mama, that's a beautiful green shirt, isn't it?"
"i made a big huge mess in here, didn't i?"
again, a habit of mine, ending every statement with a question. but she enunciates the heck out of all those consonants in the last words of the sentence, so it just sounds so cute to me.

persistence
"i'm doing it, but it's hard and takes a lot of work. babies can't do it, only big sisters can."
we talk about this sort of thing a lot, how some things take a lot of hard work, or can only be learned through lots of practice. and, she's very much into embracing her role as the big sister (and i'm trying to help her realize how little babies can do at first -- she's got big ideas about helping panowah eat or brush teeth or play with toys right away.)

description
(often used words: beautiful, gorgeous, delicious, wonderful, and -- in a divergent theme -- gross)
"i really like that necklace you're wearing today, it's gorgeous."
"thank you for making me muesli for breakfast earlier. it was delicious muesli."
"throw away this avocado peel mama, it's old and gross." (as in, left over from 3 whole hours ago.)

jumbled logic or reversed causal order
"but papa, you can't do that, because i'm your daughter!" (in response to his picking her up.)
"i'm so sleepy because i'm going to bed." ahh, if only it worked that way!

and finally, the favorite: recitation
eva's taken to reciting dozens of nursery rhymes starting a few months back. it's weird, because she'll launch into one that i have barely heard of, since she gets them from books read to her by others as well as from me. a perennial favorite is wee willie winkie, and before that, humpty dumpty. a new one in frequent rotation: "tom tom the piper's son stole a pig and away did run. the pig was eat and tom was beat and tom went crying down the street!" she says it just like that, with nary a pause, but with a crescendo on the end.

um... have you ever noticed that the messages presented in nursery rhymes don't necessarily conform to current cultural norms? we're not so much with beating kids for their porcine thievery these days. that said, i tried to change the wording once in the "taffy was a welchman" one, from someone being "beat" on the head with a stick to "bonked" -- just because this seemed like an idea i didn't need to plant in her head for our next park gathering (but don't ask why bonking with a stick was deemed acceptable, it was a snap decision -- and she stopped me. i was corrected in no uncertain terms: no, mama, it's "beat" not "bonked". she's a stickler for staying on script, i guess.

but when your kid is into nursery rhymes, the strangest things come out of their mouths. like this random line: "gentlemen come every day to see what my fine hen doth lay." (said with an impromptu tissue paper bonnet she fashioned from my birthday wrappings.) i must have looked slightly perplexed in surveying the scene, because she shot me a huge grin then trotted off to sing one of her troubadour songs, the kind she writes on the fly about the toaster or a gas station we drove past.

but if there's anything that can beat nursery rhymes around here, it's the grinch. what does it mean when your baby is obsessed (still! in february!) with "how the grinch stole christmas"? talk about weird stuff coming out of your child's mouth: "for fifty-three years i've put up with it now. i must stop this christmas from coming, but how?" she rattled off under her breath while i made her breakfast. i'm used to the randomness of toddler brains, but that one made me stop and squint at her for a minute.

but why should i be surprised? the day before while making valentines, eva sang the following (to a tune of her own invention): "tomorrow the grinch knew that all the who's boys and girls would wake up bright and early and they would rush for the toys. then all the noise noise noise! that's one thing the grinch hated, the noise noise noise noise..." (i got that on tape :). she is also fond of discussing "cindy lou who who is not more than two", and how she says "santy claus, why are you taking our christmas tree, why?" or announcing that the grinch left "crumbs much to small for the other whos' mouses." but other than quote the lines to you, she'll also explain the premise of the story. the other day, she came over and took away my stuff, but then a minute or two gave it back, saying she was playing the grinch and her heart grew three sizes that day, so she brought my things back.

if she keeps this up, she is definitely being cindy lou who for halloween. i can hear it now: "i think that would be a good idea, let's do it! but actually, mama, did you ever notice that cindy lou who has yellow hair and i have brown hair? but don't worry, that's okay. it will still be beautiful!" okay fine, i'll make you a wig.

2^5: happy birthday to me

2008-02-01T23:11:00.000-06:00

today is my birthday. i'm now 2⁵ years old (and also, apparently, a recovering math geek). i've had birthdays that required a lot of planning on my part, and birthdays that required planning on the part of others. but today involved very little planning ("so kristy, what are you doing for your birthday?" "oh, i don't know, nothing really."), and it was just perfect. it ranks right up there at the top of the list.

my birthday experience technically started at 1 a.m., when i was awakened (having fallen asleep on the couch, foolishly thinking i could lie down and watch an entire TV episode at that hour) by my sweet husband kissing my forehead and telling me how happy he was to have me in his life. we went upstairs to shuttle sleeping eva to the potty and then go to bed. in her mostly-asleep state, larry told her it was now officially my birthday, and her eyes fluttered open just long enough for her to utter in a gravely 1-a.m.-style voice, "happy birthday, mama" (and then was instantly back asleep).

at a more reasonable hour of the day, i awoke to eva rustling around a bit next to me. "open your eyes, mama, it's morning. the sun woke up." i comply, and filling my visual frame is a sweet little face that lights up upon seeing my eyes. she throws her arm around my neck in a hug-slash-choke-hold and says "i'm hugging you so much because i love you." eva, do you remember what today is? a spark of recognition: "mama, it's your birthday today!" the three of us then hung out in bed being silly and cute for a bit before heading downstairs to a breakfast of pastries, smoothies, an assortment of glorious in-season citrus, and special decaf birthday coffee for mama. (the pastries came from cissi's market, the best assortment i've had in a long time. and i really liked that market in general, a nice urban touch in our own little city.)

eva and i then headed to the park to have playgroup with friends. somedays playgroup is nearly as challenging as it is rewarding (for eva or for me), but not today. today, the kids played. and played. no one hit anyone with a stick; there was no need for our intervention every 90 seconds. as a result, if watching the day on a time lapse film, you'd see me and my best mama friends sitting on the squishy playground surface next to the swings while a flurry of blurry children buzzed in the perimeter of the frame. time passed; other moms and kids left, classrooms of kids from the nearby elementary school came and left for recess periods, and our kids played independently while we had a (relatively) uninterrupted conversation. when the time lapse reel ends, you'll find that we were there for 4 1/2 hours. that in itself was a beautiful birthday gift from the wee ones.

we (finally) headed home to find larry. then somehow (an abandoned post-car-induced nap continuation, i guess it was) we all ended up lounging in bed again. after a bit, we got ready and headed out for some shopping and dinner.

larry had asked me what i wanted for my birthday, and i told him all i wanted was for him to take eva shopping to choose her own present for me. like many a toddler, she is obsessed with birthdays. and, on a daily basis (unrelated to my birthday) she wraps up little presents -- a crayon in a tissue, a toy spoon in a random box, a sticker folded around a small bead -- and gives them to me or to panowah (the ones for panowah must then sit perched on my belly until she forgets about them and i can take them off again). so, she was excited about shopping with papa to choose her present for me.

we headed to target (good ol' reliable target, perfect for every occasion). i ran parallel errands while eva and larry did their thing. when they stumbled across me later, she came trotting up to me with great enthusiasm, carrying a gift bag: "mama, i picked out a birthday present to give you at dinner! and i colored in it!" (apparently she then went on to charm the check-out person, and even paid all by herself. well, all by herself but with a bit of help from the bank of dad. not her last withdrawal, i'm sure.)

we had dinner at zocalo, which i'd been meaning to check out for ages now. it was really good food -- fresh and bright tasting, if that makes sense -- and the setting was lovely yet relaxed. perfect for the occasion (that being, a birthday dinner but on a friday evening out with a toddler, a set of requirements that limits one's options). the friendly owner and staff (not to mention the gratis chili chocolate cheesecake birthday dessert) didn't hurt either. eva was in rare form with respect to crowd-pleasing cute behavior and looked adorable in her new brown velvet dress (wardrobe change prompted by a refusal to don pants back at home). and with her hair up in a pony tail, when did she start looking like such a kid, no remnants of baby hiding in there at all?

she could hardly wait to present me with the special gift: the bag featured a roaring dinosaur (odd that she choose that, given her distaste for any images of animals bearing teeth). "make it make the loud sound, mama!" sure enough, if you push his belly he (nearly inaudibly, in a restaurant anyway) roars. eva had her ears covered and a huge grin on her face, enjoying and hiding from the roar simultaneously. i read the card she chose -- larry reported that she went with that one due to the flowers on the front -- and saw what she drew inside in black marker. (she had already told me six times "i colored in your present mama.") removing the tissue paper revealed not one but three gifts: the first one, which larry helped her with, was a mom and toddler exercise DVD. perfect, because i've been saying i could use a bit of exercise and eva's been obsessed with doing "kid exercises" (mostly yoga poses she picked up from her friends, but also things she makes up, like stretching her leg over the railing of her tower, etc). next i found a pair of knee-high socks in my favorite shade of celery green with turquoise trim. ("mama, we chosed the green ones because you might like that color i think.") and last but not least, eva proudly showed me an earring and necklace set -- and that was 100% her own idea and choosing. a few weeks ago, eva was playing with my new necklace lying on the bedside table and broke the chain. i tried not to make her feel bad about it, but she's able to sense these things (it was a chain larry bought for me on our belated honeymoon in hawaii, so i minded a little bit). despite my reassurance regarding the whole thing, she still talks about this. so, when i looked at my gift, she said proudly, "mama, i bought you a necklace that isn't broken!" my sweet baby. that whole thing shows some emotional understanding on her part that just makes me want to melt. where did this little person come from? and how did i get so lucky?

so, i next found myself crouching next to eva's chair to tell her "thank you", and she flung herself at me, arms around my neck, saying into my ear, completely unprompted there among the busy dinner crowd, "i love you mama. happy birthday." i had to hold back the tears. sitting back in my chair, i just blinked through my watery eyes at my sweet child, my amazing husband, and couldn't do anything but stare, wondering how on earth i ever got so lucky as to deserve this. this family -- this life, which contains such within it such moments of unbelievable beauty and perfection.

we headed home, she's sleeping now (thanks, papa :), and here i sit, reflecting on my lovely day. what more could i ask for? i can't imagine, but soon i'll look back and wonder how my life ever could have felt complete with out the presence of the new life that is about to join our little family. this new baby is a big part of our lives, each day, already. but for now, in at the end of my thirty-second birthday, i have all i need in the world.

carventures

2008-01-28T18:18:00.001-06:00

impromptu double nap, originally uploaded by kelanew.

i'm writing this post from the car (hurray for wifi), sitting with eva parked in our driveway. it's about 68 degrees, and we have the windows open, listening to the sounds of rush hour traffic as people head home for dinner. we're also listening to the radio -- it started on NPR, until eva tired of my "woman radio" and changed it to her "kid music" CD. she's in the driver's seat right now in more ways than one. she keeps changing tracks or stations, adjusting the volume to her liking.

as it turns out (and you may be surprised by our spontaneity in vacation plans), eva is driving us to the airport so that we can then fly to guatemala. apparently, we'll see all of our cousins there. just now, she buckled her bear into the car seat (correctly, too, quite snugly tightened), and both eva and i have our seat belts on as well ("so we can be safe").

why are we sitting in the driveway at 6 pm? well, it all started at 3:00 while driving home from our ice cream date, when i suddenly decided that i must, absolutely right now, clean out the car.

the car has been a huge mess for a few months -- traveling nonstop contributes to this, as does taking a month's worth of stuff plus everything christmas to college station in december. the poor car never really recovered from that. i think we had four of eva's hats, three of her pairs of shoes (one outgrown), and a coat or two for each family member all in the back seat. i feel overwhelmed by such things -- if it's not simple to tidy it up, why even start? -- and the car is just a microcosm of the house. i'm seriously done with the clutter, but feel helpless to overcome it. that's something i need to figure out before this new baby arrives.

so, at 3:00, frustration or a surge of can-do-it spirit or (and this is most likely) nesting urges brought on by pregnancy hormones caused me to drive straight to the car wash place. i did it by hand, feeding quarter after quarter of hope and cleanliness into the little slot. i cleaned every surface of this car, places such as the crevices of the air conditioning vents and the weatherstripping inside the trunk lid. it took two hours. i think the attendant was chuckling to himself watching me -- for all i know, he sees pregnant women scouring the hinges of their car doors on a regular basis.

upon returning home, we showed larry the fruits of our labor, and then eva refused to get out of the car. i so rarely let her play in the driver's seat for an extended period of time, so she's pretty much on cloud nine. now that the street lights and traffic head lights have come on, i think i might try anew to convince her to go inside. i think she gets the power of the driver's seat, and is hesitant to give it up. however, the power of my rumbling stomach will soon tip the balance, and all we have in the car is water and oatios.

who knows, next time i might be blogging from a sturdy branch of a tree.

enough to go around

2008-01-22T18:43:00.001-06:00

lash II, originally uploaded by kelanew.

earlier today, eva was feeling generally a bit put out, about life and the state of things (such as the relative number of peas in each of her two bowls at lunch, or the fact that larry lifted her breakfast bagel from the toaster by placing the tongs on the wide edge rather than the preferred narrow edge of said bagel). sometimes she has a lot of rules -- let's call them "strong preferences". i think that just means she's two; larry taunts me that it means she's just like me, and the truth is likely somewhere in between.

speaking of preferences, for the most part, i try not to interfere with her little projects and such if it's not really hurting anything. a little chaos is fine with me. but it seems that i will express my own... um, preferences... when it comes to large amounts of waste. encountering her in the midst of emptying an entire sheet of 42 cent stamps onto the leg of the kitchen cart, i explained that those stickers were special (along with the rudiments of the concept of postage) and suggested that we not waste them. more often, i present "waste" in environmental terms -- why we can't leave the sink running (even if we're sure we're going to come back later to finish washing our hands), or why we put certain things in the recycling rather than the trash, so it can be made into something new. avoiding these sorts of waste is good for the earth.

but you never know if these concepts are sinking in or not. sometimes they take hold in a way you don't anticipate.

so earlier today, when eva was protesting the state of her peas and the bagel tongs, i found myself taking her face in my hands, overcome with the need to give her lots of kisses. i smooched my way from her temple to her chin and was moving up the other side when she stopped me in cheerful protest.

"mama, that's too many kisses!"
i countered, "no, no, it's not. i need to give you lots and lots of kisses."
"but don't give me so many kisses, you will waste them!"

well played, eva, well played. but you should know, kisses are a renewable resource.

siblings

2008-01-12T21:54:00.001-06:00

sibling conversation, originally uploaded by Kristy and Eva.

so, i'm often asked what we're going to do when the baby is born and eva insists on calling her panowah. i may end up eating these words, but i really, strongly believe it's a non-issue. she's smart. a month ago, she insisted the baby was a girl and wouldn't hear otherwise, but now after we've discussed it a few times, she understands the gender is an unknown. (so now with great frequency she asks me rhetorically, "mama, do we know if the baby will be a boy or a girl?" similarly, she gets that there's a name for the baby when it's inside and that there will be a new one when the baby comes out (which, she hopes, will be any day now.)

eva, what should we name the baby when it comes out if it's a boy?
"um... saint nick!"
okay, that's a good option. but if we don't choose saint nick, then what should we name the baby if it's a boy?
"um... we should name him 'boy plane'."
boy plane?
"uh-huh."
hmm. well, what if the baby is a girl, then what should we name her?
"panowah."
well, but remember, panowah is a name for inside babies. what about when she comes out?
"lemony."
okay, but what if we don't name her lemony, then what should we choose?
"panowary." (rhymes with "january")
well, that sounds like panowah. do you have another idea for a girl?
"well, we'll just name her 'boy plane'."

now (for the moment) she's fixated on saint nick. "mama, when panowah comes out, then her name will be saint nick!" so you see, everyone, it will be fine. she won't continue to call the baby panowah forever. instead, she'll call her something much more appropriate. like boy plane. :)

the whole panowah thing in the first place is a function of how absorbed she is in the concept of the new baby. she talks about it endlessly, draws pictures for the baby, shares her toys with the baby (by setting them on my belly shelf ), and comes over to give the baby hugs and kisses (and *just* the baby -- if i try to join in, i'm often rebuffed, "no mama, i'm just hugging panowah, not you." well then.). she all but smothers every other baby we're around, and she refers to herself as "the big sister" as often as not. and i think all that energy needs to be directed at something concrete, something with a name... it's far less satisfying to fall in love with a nameless, genderless, belly-obscured lump.

so, panowah, or lemony, or whoever you are (and we *so* promise your sister will not under any circumstances be allowed to name you, even if she throws a months-long tantrum about it), you have no idea how much we all love you already. earlier, eva was jumping up and down squealing, and when questioned, said "i'm jumping crazy because i'm so excited about my baby!" we can hardly wait to meet you, and find out more about who you are.

[photo: 20 weeks pregnant to the day, on new year's eve.]

dear santa

2008-01-04T16:19:00.001-06:00

dear santa, originally uploaded by Kristy and Eva.

on christmas eve, karen and john and larry and i helped eva and sarah write a letter to santa. we suggested some general topics, but the words are theirs (well, toward the end they got a bit more distracted. the most humorous part was when i suggested they tell santa who was in their family, who they loved. eva piped up with "i love uncle john!" aww, nice. anyone else? hmm, ... silence. no one else of note, it seems. :)

Dear Santa,
Baby Katherine is very little. She likes to lay down. We have milk and cookies for you. Sarah and Eva made the cookies and everybody helped. Find the cookies near the fireplace. Santa, you will say "ho, ho, ho"! We are all at Gram's house in College Station. Today we played in the morning, and we played outside. Does Santa want to play outside? That's Panowah in Mama(Kristy)'s belly, and Katherine is out of Mama(Karen)'s belly. I love Uncle John.
Thank you for visiting us.
Merry Christmas. Merry Christmas.
From, Eva and Sarah

we had as nice a christmas as could be expected under the circumstances. as you can see, rita got all of us matching striped pajamas, so we had fun being all stripey and a bit silly. it was a mix of good times and hard times. i expect it will continue that way for a while.

one month

2008-01-04T15:16:00.000-06:00

tomorrow, one month will have passed since dick died. there are no words i could write here that would begin to summarize anything about his life or about the void he has left, so i'll leave that to others.

at this memorial page, you will find links to the obituary, news release, and an article in the college station paper (both lovely articles). there is also a link to condolence messages posted by colleagues and friends -- not surprisingly, there are a great number of messages, but it's worth glancing through some. from several continents, from student workers to college presidents and beyond, he was much beloved by so many...

i don't know what else to say. it still only seems real in short bursts, and my brain finds the news shocking every single time. as confusing as it is for we adults, the little ones are only marginally protected by their lack of full understanding. below is a sweet and sad conversation i had with eva just before christmas as while were laying together as she was falling asleep -- she's so clearly trying to make sense of something that her brain is simply not equipped to understand yet.

"mama, i miss grampie."
what? (because i didn't quite understand her at first)
'i'm sad because grampie went away."
oh, i know, sweetheart, i'm sad about that, too.
(short pause, wheels visibly turning)
"where did grampie go?"
well, i don't really know, eva. he died, which means he went away and he can't come back. his body got very, very sick and can't work anymore. but we can think about him, and tell stories about him...
(several minute sleepy pause, then she rolled back to face me with a questioning look)
"but i still don't know where grampie went. i've been trying to find him."

it made me cry then, and it makes me cry reading it now. for so, so many, there is a long path ahead that simply must be traveled, somehow.

insult to injury and injury

2007-12-02T22:21:00.001-06:00

curls, originally uploaded by Kristy and Eva.

larry returned home last night from a nine day trip to madrid. eva and i had sort of a long exhausting week, for a variety of reasons. first off, she spent a few days launching herself into a new phase of testing me (by doing things like throwing metal cups at my head then asking "are you mad now?" and, say, throwing water from the bathroom sink on me while i was using the bathroom). that would be trying at any time, but being pregnant and without any adult back-up, i found myself pushed to and right over the edge a couple times. i also found the time exhausting because eva developed some sort of aversion to being at home, so i found it easier to just plan stuff to do, playdates or errands or the like, from morning to evening. that makes a mama tired and crave a break. but, we made it through. normally i don't really mind when larry is gone, but this time, i found myself whining about it more than was strictly necessary.

the major theme for the week, however, ended up being injury. poor eva has had a couple of good falls in her days, but she had four this week each of which probably rank in the top five of all time.

first, she was tripped by the [expletive deleted] dog, who once she determines we're going downstairs must beat you to the bottom for some reason. eva was at the top of the stairs, the dog took out her knees (i'm guessing), and she fell halfway down the stairs. on her face. she seemed more affronted by the fact that lemma would do such a thing ("lemma pushed me down, mama!") than she was by the rug burn across her lip, nose, and cheek. she also reported a hurt arm.

about two days later, she was goofing around putting her feet on the table while sitting in her tall chair eating breakfast. as i was repeating the line about feet on the table, she lost her balance and began to fall. somehow, her hips actually rotated upwards and she ended up with her hips and legs on the kitchen table before she fell head first onto the tile floor. she landed in a crumpled pile, and had a welt that covered a full third of her forehead, all puffed up with a dent in the center. ugh.

yesterday, with larry due to return home late in the evening, i sent this email at 5 p.m.:

so, some of you will recall that since larry left, eva was tripped by the dog and fell head first down the stairs, and then a few days later, fell basically from table height head first onto the tile kitchen floor. i commented that i hope it wasn't the kind of thing that came in threes.

at chipotle she took a header off the bench, but i caught her leg so that her head remained about 2 inches from the concrete floor. meredith commented that that counted as #3, and i had hoped so too. apparently not.

i was putting away sheets in the linen closet, and the open door creates a bottleneck in the hallway upstairs between the door and the big wooden cradle. she came around the corner, tripped on the first rocker of the cradle, and promptly smashed her face into the other
rocker (she's the perfect height for that span, what luck.) she was all puffy and bloody, and from subsequent examination, she seems to have done a thorough job of ripping her tight upper frenulum (i knew that would have to happen sometime -- ironically my mom just had
surgery to have hers cut earlier this week!) and also gave herself her first bloody nose. she seems okay now, though whiny, in part because she's really hungry and every bite hurts and is making her upset.

anyway, just thought i'd share. nothing ever comes in fours, so i feel safe now. knock wood! or no better yet, knock a soft padded room!
--k.

oh, why would i say that about nothing coming in fours? at 6:04 p.m. (one hour later), i was obliged to send the following email:

excuse my language, but fuck it all if she didn't just fall down the stairs... again. but this time, all the way to the landing. i heard, thump thump thump all the way down. oddly, she seems mostly cool with it, though her belly now hurts in addition to her lip, she reports.

i give up.
--k.

seriously. the poor kid, she was thoroughly beat up, and i felt terrible. also, i had a proud moment when i saw the heel of her hand toward her thumb had a deep blue bruise... and i realized i had no idea which of three of the falls might have caused it. if you can't narrow it down to fewer than three incidents, i think something is wrong! (and someday if an ER visit reveals mysterious old hairline fractures, we'll look back to this week.) it has been suggested to me that perhaps she is growing, causing her to be less steady on her feet. given that she told me earlier this week that her legs hurt inside her bones (growing pains), i think that's likely a big factor. nevertheless, damn... i'm tempted to keep her on the ground level of a padded room for a while.

bigger and bigger

2007-11-22T19:04:00.000-06:00

i was explaining the theme of the day (thanksgiving) to eva, explaining what it means to be thankful for something. i listed some of the things i am thankful for, and asked what she is thankful for. her response: red, and blue, and green, and yellow, and purple.... my first thought is that the concept had gone over her head, but for all i know she really is thankful for colors.

instead, i offer you a list of her aspirations. eva is fond of saying "someday when i grow bigger and bigger, i will..." go or do or be a whole assortment of things. here's a sampling from the last several days (or what i can remember).

someday when i grow bigger and bigger i will
be a woman
eat spicy ("ficy") food
go on a big, big roller coaster with lots of people
use pointy things
go back to new york city
wear these bigger clothes, because then they will fit me
play bowling with papa
go there and do funny tricks (indicating the "ninja warrior" obstacle course on TV, because larry told her she could as part of her ninja training)
help take care of panowah
learn how to play a guitar
drive all the way to where austin texas turns into seattle and see the space ("face") needle
drink alcohol
drive mama's car (hopefully not those last two at the same time)
go climbing like the monkey mans (meaning rock climbing like larry)
do lots of things

i like all the varied plans she is making for herself. i'm glad i get to be along for the ride.

right now she's snuggling larry on the couch because she's sad that he's leaving for madrid in the morning. "you will fly in an airplane to 'fain' and that's a long, long way away." "i want to go with papa and stay in a hotel!" "papa, i'm going to help you pack." she gets that he'll leave and then come back, but more and more, she's truly sad to see him go. lately we have to go to the driveway and wave pretty much any time he drives off somewhere. it will be interesting to see how she reacts during this coming week.

it will be equally interesting to see how this tired, pregnant mama reacts, too. ha.

eva of new york

2007-11-17T20:56:00.000-06:00

we just spent five lovely days in new york city, along with larry's parents. i used to go to nyc nearly ever year, but haven't been since eva was born, so it was really nice to get back. i'm no new yorker, but i was pleased to find that i still knew my way around better than i might have expected. in just a few short days, i feel like we really saw a little bit of everything, which made me happy since rita hadn't been to new york since a brief trip when she was young.

eva, as expected at this point, was a great traveler. naps on the fly in the stroller, cooperative about going wherever and whenever, all-around cheerfulness (minus one or two brief bouts of sleep- or hunger-induced whining). she seemed positively charmed by the city -- the tall buildings, the taxis, riding the subway, the crowds and views on the street -- which made me happy. we hiked all over midtown, went to the top of the empire state building, strolled through central park, had a pint (not me :) at an irish pub in the east village that opened in 1854, saw several museums (she was the only child we saw at the guggenheim that day, hmm wonder why -- but she was asleep when we went in then stayed happy so why not go with it?), and ate lots of yummy food (that one mostly thanks to farah's guidance -- including some great ethiopian food, made possible by rita's generous offer to stay with eva at the hotel.)

the things that made the biggest impression on eva (other than having her grandparents nearly undivided attention for several days straight!) seemed to be riding the carousel in central park -- that thing is fast -- and having a sugary tea party with an "alice in wonderland" theme at a place called alice's tea cup. she had tea and scones, finger sandwiches and cookies, and best of all, chocolate mousse! very fun, and just about the cutest thing ever.

we stayed at flatotel, which was really nice -- we were in a two bedroom flat, so we could spend more time all together. i don't think they get many children there, so that could really go either way, but it seems eva sufficiently charmed the staff. riding the elevator one morning, eva stood holding on to the railing as usual and, looking up at the mirror on the ceiling, excitedly asked "do you see everybody?" and of course, everyone looked up and saw each other looking back. well, it turns out one of the other riders was the general manager of the hotel. upon our return that evening, the concierge came running after us with the cutest teddy bear dressed in the signature flatotel robe -- he said the GM thought eva was charming and wanted her to have it. how sweet is that? eva loved it and snuggled it in bed that very night; i was pleased that my child made a positive impression, haha. (in general, i was impressed with the staff there -- especially the bellhop who managed to get us a cab during shift change at the beginning of rush hour to newark of all places in the rain -- all in under 10 minutes. amazing.)

all this travel has allowed eva to have experiences she couldn't have at home. and on this trip in particular i was interested in what things she learned. she will tell you that (from our 27th floor room) the taxis look small since we're up so high but when we go down they look bigger. she knows the difference between a monorail and a subway train. she knows the weather is different different places. she can point out the chrysler building and central park, and knows how the subway works (she was running around the house today saying "please stand clear of the closing doors" -- that and ringing a handbell saying "happy holidays!" like the salvation army bellringers we saw). i don't know if she'll remember all the trips we've taken this year, but i think somehow it will be in there, contributing to her sense of the world -- or something. maybe all that will happen is that she'll remain enamored of subways and taxis, but i think maybe as she grows up strange and new things won't seems so bewildering, even if she doesn't consciously know why that is.

great trip, and a memorable one. and we're glad to be home with no trips coming up any time soon (well, excepting larry's departure for madrid on friday. but other than that...)

guess who?

2007-11-05T16:51:00.000-06:00

my daughter is, at this moment, pushing her doll stroller around and around (and occasionally over the dog). but, apparently, she's not my daughter. she's a boy, and i'm a man, and lemma is a boy dog. this boy, when asked, announced that his name is sentimenta. "hey man, say 'bye, sentimenta! have fun at the airport!'" (i comply.) "watch out, boy dog, don't block my stroller. this boy is pushing the baby sister to the airport, to go to the other austin texas where the sky is pink." or, sometimes sentimenta takes the baby to go get groceries. you go for it, sentimenta. don't forget we're almost out of cream cheese. (i don't point out, because i don't need her to know, that her first major foray into playing "boy" is by doing decidedly female-gendered activities. that makes this mama smile, truth be told.)

i previously discussed how reading books is her favorite activity. i'd say if she's not reading books (or, beginning two days ago, playing with the bathroom sink a.k.a. "swimming pool"), she's pretending to be someone and setting up scenarios for us. ah, the joys of imaginative play. i know it's good for kids, but i hope this level of pretending to be elsewhere doesn't mean she's (already) trying to escape her own life, haha. (ha?)

she's been doing this for quite some time (generally pretending to be a baby, or going to the airport), but it really amped up starting a month or so ago. first, it was "meerkats are everywhere" (she does a mean meerkat impersonation). then, in ND, she suddenly decided that she was anna (one of her new little friends). "what is this anna doing?" "no, i'm not eva, i'm anna!" after a few days, she decided she was (her cousin) sarah and i was (sarah's mom) karen, while anyone else around was either an additional karen or uncle john -- and any ajacent dog became a cat. this one persisted for a long while. during the flight home, sarah gave way to baby eliza and i was told i was "big sister anna". i finally figured out that anna and eliza are the only pair of young sisters she really knows, and is (obviously) exploring the role of big sister via these identities.

and now she's sentimenta, dear son to this man (gee, could she be exploring gender? i love how at least sometimes toddler explorations are transparent). oh, don't forget the imaginary sisters from august, bohp and panowah (though bohp has all but disappeared and panowah has transitioned into a new role). she also likes to be my dentist (though i believe that's just a premeditated ruse to be allowed to stick her fingers in my mouth), or to take her sick dog to the "vetinahwian". and sometimes, just to confuse me, "now sarah is being jennifer", my hair stylist, and she pretends to cut my hair. oops, i mean "karen's" hair. (c'mon try to keep up!) we often have parties and picnics or ride in a taxi or subway, and last night eva was the officiant at a wedding and (re?)married larry and i, ending in an uncharacteristic couple-plus-tiny-officiant hug. (even more unorthodox, the officiant was clad only in mardi gras beads and brightly striped rain boots.)

i do love her imagination, and i like getting a glimpse into what she's thinking about via play. perhaps the only drawback is that it makes me wonder why we own all of these toys... or any toys. she honestly could care less about them. ah, to simplify! it's on the agenda, as soon as i have a bit more energy...

speaking of that (and the other hints), the slightly old news is that i'm pregnant (12 weeks today). i can only think of a few people who i haven't spoken to in person, and i'm not sure they really read this anyway. i wrote a few posts about it along the way but didn't publish them until now. they can be found (oldest to newest) here, here, and here (or just scroll down). i'm hoping to start feeling better soon, and am excited about my first midwife appointment tomorrow. i've been explaining to eva that we'll hear panowah's heartbeat. however, that's a hard sell to a two-year-old who has no concept of the circulatory system to begin with. (i just mentioned the midwife appointment again, and now she's running around playing midwife. of course.)

"read this book to me."

2007-10-20T12:16:00.001-05:00

we're in north dakota, having a lovely time with my family (larry just left for boston yesterday). in the photo, we're playing at the pumpkin patch, eva hanging away, which is one of her beloved pasttimes.

her absolute favorite thing to do these days, though, is read books. it's convenient being around family, so i can share all the reading. (i do enjoy reading to her, but the fifteenth daily reading of some questionable book handed down from the 1970s can be a bit teadious.) "read this book to me, mama," she says. we curl up and dive in. should i get distracted, she'll tap the page and say "talk 'bout it, mama. talk 'bout this page." she likes to read anything, from the simple little books of her "youth" (haha) to some pretty long stories. and she'll turn up with book after book, all day, eschewing all toys (is she's not being read to, chances are she's wrapped up in some sort of imaginative play on her own or with others).

the thing i think is the cutest is that she'll pick up any random scrap of paper (target receipt, scratch pad, TSA pamphlet from the airport) and say "i'm reading this book to you mama". she'll make up a story, generally relating what's going on now or the adventures we had earlier. or (my favorite), she'll start reciting lines or whole pages from her favorite books (or sometimes books she's only heard two or three times):

"but the bear snores on. bear grumbles and he wheezes and the whole crowd freezes!"
"farmer brown was furious! dear cows and hens, there will be no electric blankets. i demand milk and eggs. sincerely, farmer brown."
"caps for sale, fifty cents a cap! but nobody wanted a cap, not even a red cap."

i find this amazing. how does a being go from not being able to, say, roll over, and then two short years later can relate chunks of stories (or ask relevant questions about the abstract concepts conveyed in the stories). it just seems a lot to catch on to in that amount of time.

on a humorous note, i noticed eva was chewing on her finger for most of a day. later, she said her finger hurt and larry asked her why she was chewing on it. "i'm trying to make it like grandpa marty's finger," she explained. hmm, good plan. grandpa marty lost the tip of one of his fingers in an accident years ago. apparently he had been answering her questions about it that morning. silly monkey.

...

we're back home now, enjoying our week and a half at home before heading to nyc. i hadn't been looking forward to our flight home (just eva and i; larry had been in boston), a triple connection that had us up at 5 something. probably due to my determination to not be a dumbass about it and let myself get all upset at her antics (in combination with actually *asking* eva for her cooperation ahead of time, duh), the trip was peaceful. oh, i almost forgot to credit the french fries and chocolate milkshake we had in houston -- i don't often resort to food bribery, but there are times when it is totally justified. :)

pregnant sisters day out

2007-10-20T11:59:00.000-05:00

yesterday, julie and i went to bismarck to go maternity clothes shopping together. how often does a person get to do that, shop for maternity stuff with your pregnant sister? i found a ton of spring/summer stuff on clearance (which i'll need soon enough), so it was a productive trip.

after shopping (since eva was happy and content at home with grandma and auntie lora), we stopped for dinner. in an attempt to be wild-and-crazy pregnant mamas on the lam, we ordered a virgin strawberry margarita. hmm. not so crazy after all.

last week, however, man were we crazy. we all split up running errands in bismarck, and somehow the two preggos were sent to the liquor store to buy beer. our stab at cutting loose that time involved buying a two liter of squirt, a bar pour (bottle topper, like for liqour bottles), and came home and poured shots and slammed them on the table. interesting, because this isn't something i actually do non-pregnant with actual alcohol (nor does julie), but we found ourselves pretty amusing.

update: we went maternity shopping again the following day. okay, i think i'm covered on clothes now, sheesh. but, it was too fun not to, and plus, eva has a grand old time with grandma and lora, which is only somewhat due to the consumption of ice cream.

year three

2007-10-20T11:47:00.001-05:00

breastfeeding challenge 2007, originally uploaded by Kristy and Eva.

a few weeks ago (an annual september event), eva and i were part once again of the breastfeeding challenge. this is our third year -- she was so tiny the first time! -- and each year we were there with sarah (who was with fiona this time). austin smashed it's old winning record from 50-some moms and babies last year to over 100 this year. go austin!

i had a lot more to say about it last year, so if you're interested go check that out. :)

after the challenge, eva and larry enjoyed playing in a nearby fountain, after which we enjoyed a nice brunch downtown. that evening, we went to dinner with gram and grammie (larry's matrilinial line) for a four-generation dinner. after dinner, we enjoyed the choreographed, LED-lit superfountain at the new town lake park. (future note: we predict that park will be amazing in 20 years when the many trees they planted grow in to provide some shade.) eva had a great time, running with big kids and splashing away. it was a grand day of fountains!

gran

2007-10-08T12:54:00.000-05:00

larry's grandmother olivia clara (henrichson) ewing died on thursday october 4th, 2007. we rushed off to college station on sunday because it was clear she didn't have much time left, and we wanted to be able to say goodbye. she was largely unresponsive most of the days we visited her, but tuesday was something else entirely. she was making eye contact and tracking us around the room, and seemed to have pulled away the layers of dementia to know exactly who each of us was. we would say "hi gran, it's kristy (or larry, etc)" and she would respond with a pronounced wink as if to say "i know, i see you there, and i love you." she even smiled at several people, including the little girls. gran always winked as another way to say "i love you", so it was quite fitting. it was so amazing to have that last good day with her, when her eyes were filled with clarity and knowing rather than being somewhat clouded by confusion.

on thursday, when it was clear she had only a few hours left, larry and john went to join their father at her side. she died shortly after, with her only child and two of her grandsons holding her and offering comfort. apparently it was an incredibly peaceful death, she just took one last breath then was gone. we all should be so lucky to die peacefully surrounded by those we love.

it's hard to know exactly how to talk to a 2 1/4 year old about death. on the one hand, i wanted to be open and offer a healthy perspective regarding death; yet i didn't want to overwhelm or frighten her unnecessarily. i explained to eva that gran was very very sick, so sick that her body couldn't work anymore, and that gran died. that means she's gone away and we can't talk to her anymore, but we can remember her. despite her usual barrage of questions, eva accepted this matter-of-factly. we sort of followed her lead regarding the viewing, and for a few moments she seemed curious upon seeing gran's body, but was essentially unfazed. she also was able to sit still throughout the funeral and did so with a minimum of outbursts (mostly of the slightly comic toddler variety, not the whiny screaming variety).

gran was an amazing woman, graduating high school at age 13 and going on to receive a master's degree, an unusual feat for the era. she also faced a great amount of hardship and loss, losing her mother when she was very young, losing a newborn daughter and a school-aged son, and losing her husband prematurely. she was a devoted teacher for decades, and loved her family above all else. while it is comforting to know that she is now at peace, she touched so many lives and will be dearly missed.

travel, thoughts

2007-09-25T20:43:00.001-05:00

cart, originally uploaded by Kristy and Eva.

we've been traveling, a lot. almost as often as not, actually. that's kind of crazy, and it's making me feel kind of crazy (and making the house look very crazy) but it's all been good. there's more coming, too. larry potentially has five trips in a five week period coming up. eva and i will have flown somewhere every month, may through december. now that she's two, she's racking up the frequent flyer miles -- she'll have more before she's 2 1/2 than i had at age 17.

along with all that, i'm having all sorts of disjointed thoughts lately that doing lend themselves to an organized little essay. today, driving home, eva learned that her birthday was july 7th, then asked me when my birthday was. i said, february. she said, "oh, just like the groundhog." wtf? we worked out she knows this from doing "letters" on the computer (they discuss a groundhog coming out in february to check for his shadow) so it makes perfect sense. but that moment of "what the hell, how is it you know that, aren't you supposed to be a baby or at least only know what i remember having told you?" is very disorienting.

we spent a month (in june and july) in alaska. eva has a blast and it was fun to see how many things she could do now versus last year. she fell in love with camping, and we were there long enough that she got into a pretty good rhythm ("now it's time to get grandpa from work", she'd tell you that he works "at the pharmacy, he gives medicine to sick people to help them feel better.") the best part, though, was seeing how much my parents enjoyed eva, how they would just really be present with her and drop everything else whenever being silly and playing seemed more fun. eva, of course, thought that was great. there's something new that i didn't expect in being the link in the chain of those two generations. it changes my relationships both directions and it feels like we're all part of something bigger.

eva's obsessed with babies, which i think is pretty age appropriate. she also enjoys being a "pretend baby", and will say "this pretend baby wants this mama to hold her", or request pretend side of milk or she will pretend cry or ask for a pretend diaper. i think it must be hard, being between being little and big. i guess that's what all of childhood is in different ways. you're always saying goodbye to the stage you're leaving and trying to figure out the one to come. i like that she knows how to express this need to me, and i don't mind playing pretend baby at all.

in august we spent two weeks with julie and lora in north dakota, first in fargo then in wilton. i had so much to say about that trip, it brought up so many thoughts from my past life there, but it got all muddled and they couldn't get down. julie was newly pregnant and not feeling well, but eva did her best to keep her distracted (as if being in the process of buying a new house wasn't already keeping her busy enough). we went camping -- eva's now an old pro -- and saw lots of cousins, and there was even a street dance in wilton! because of that, i saw more people from my high school class than i've seen since graduation, plus i had a good talk at the bar with my favorite teacher which was really nice. but beyond the stuff we did, it was just nice all being together. i don't know how both my sisters got to be such naturals at dealing with toddlers, but that is a big bonus that i can go and relax knowing eva's in good company.

if i haven't mentioned it before, eva's been eating well for several months now. sometime in late june, i think, she started eating more than three bites at any given meal and i found i was no longer counting every single speck of food that went into her mouth (easy to do without trying when she ate so little). we still have days where she doesn't eat much, or where she rejects a dozen different food options before she'll eat something, but that's called being a toddler, and is not concerning to me. now she'll eat two eggs and cheese for breakfast, for example where last spring we'd be lucky to get two bites in her. excellent progress.

last week we went to seattle to my smith friend sarah's wedding. we stayed downtown (at the moore hotel, i highly recommend it for the budget-consious traveler, it was perfect), and eva was great the whole trip -- well, not counting 10:00 p.m. on the flight home, that was not so great. she loved downtown and would just nap in her stroller as we walked around or ate lunch. it's so refreshing to be in a real city where you don't have to drive everywhere. we took the bus for some day trips, and cabs to the wedding activities, but it was fun just walking and exploring. eva made friends with sarah and many of the wedding guests, since eva was being quite charming at the wedding and the party the next day (toddler at a wedding on a boat that doesn't dock until 10 p.m. could be a disaster, but she was great). we're really glad we went, and it was nice to have a little family vacation.

eva's upstairs, i can hear her chattering away to larry, who is trying to get her to sleep. sleep has been a challenge off and on the past few months (particularly naps) but it's been better the past few days. i think she had to adjust a bit from the west coast time zone. really, i complain at times but given we have no schedule to speak of and every week we're sleeping somewhere new she's doing amazingly well. i love love love that she is so adaptable, that she just goes with whatever is going on. i would have real trouble if i felt like we couldn't go to dinner for a special occasion because it's late in the evening, or couldn't travel because it would mess up her rhythm. she's a great traveler, which is what makes this crazy schedule this year possible. and i love that as she grows, she'll just be used to traveling and having new experiences, and think of all the places we'll be able to tell her she's already been...

better go help. i think maybe papa put himself to sleep but eva's still awake.

panowah

2007-09-22T20:57:00.000-05:00

oh, my sweet baby. or baby's big sister, i should say. she is so excited about the baby, and says the sweetest things. here's the conversation we just had lying in bed as i put her down to sleep:

"mama, you have a baby in your belly."
yes, i do.
"it's panowah! (looking down to my belly and waving) hi panowah! she's growing bigger and bigger."
that's right. panowah is only this big now but has to grow this big before it's time to come out of mama's belly.
"and she will be sooo big!"
and do you know that panowah might be a boy?
"ummm, maybe a girl." (sing-song convincing voice)
maybe a boy
"a girl!"
okay, we'll see.
"maybe she will share my toys with me?"
i bet she will. are you excited to be a big sister?
"yeah." (big grin.)

also, she has put the facts together (i'm growing a baby, it will come out, babies drink milk from their mamas, eva drinks milk from this mama) and deduced the concept of tandem nursing. she'll point to whichever breast she isn't at that moment next to and/or using and say "that side is for panowah." or, "probably panowah will want that side." crazy. but i'm glad she's (currently!) willing to share, since she may or may not be nursing by then (likely not, i'd guess).

the announcement

2007-09-19T15:00:00.000-05:00

i can still hardly believe it, but it's finally happened. i'm pregnant! we found out friday (the morning of sarah's wedding) in our seattle hotel room. i had had a negative test on monday, the first day of my missed period, but i tested again since there was still no sign of my period (confusing if i wasn't pregnant) and i had felt a bit queasy at dinner the night before. plus, i started doing that thing of being able to smell everything from across the room.

in the 9 or 10 months we were trying, i often pictured the moment we would find out. i sent larry in to check on the results, and imagined a sly grin or a big announcement... instead, he turned around and i was faced with mild confusion. oh, the momentary confusion of the faint second line! (on an ovulation predictor, that's a negative.) once we cleared that up, we crawled back into bed with sleeping eva and couldn't help but chat excitedly across her sleeping body, inevitably waking her up. deciding the only reason not to tell her is that she'll run and tell everyone else (yet, no one believes a toddler, right?), we told her there was a baby in mama's belly. "and papa helped", she noted. i was happy to be able to tell her this, since she had asked me a few days before, "mama, can you make a baby in your belly so it can grow bigger and bigger and i can play with it after it comes out of your belly?" she's been all about having a baby sibling for months, so she was pretty excited.

after a bit, i asked her if she knew the baby's name. she looked at me like the answer was so obvious i hardly needed to ask and said "it's panowah in your belly, mama." panowah is the second of her imaginary sisters and the one she discusses the most (sorry, bohp.) it's almost like she knew of panowah's presence before we did and was just waiting for her/it to get into my belly over the past few months.

already i'm having trouble remembering why i was so worked up about trying to get pregnant (funny how quickly it slips away). last month was my first confirmed ovulation, and true to form with our apparently a-ok eggs and sperm, that's all it took. (if i can actually *ovulate*, we can get pregnant on the first try, yet again.) i disliked the waiting and uncertainty, but i do like that it all happened according to what nature had in mind... i ovulated as soon as my body decided i was ready, and now i'm pregnant and presumably eva will wean naturally as my milk supply decreases in a few months (or not, we'll see, but i'm glad i didn't have to wean her to get pregnant, i prefer letting it happen naturally).

so, we're home now in austin, and i'm periodically tired and queasy and have the super-smeller, but nothing major yet, just enough to remind me that i'm actually pregnant. we'll slowly start telling people but for whatever reason, even after all the waiting, i sort of want to keep it to ourselves for a bit longer.

just now eva said, "mama i'm hugging you and the baby in your belly!" she's going to be a great big sister.

gotta run. i'll save these pregnancy posts as drafts for now and publish them after i tell everyone.

mother of the year

2007-09-07T00:44:00.001-05:00

bench, originally uploaded by Kristy and Eva.

today sucked.

not all of it, but enough of it to leave me questioning what the hell i think i'm doing. (i did go see a movie with a friend, that part was nice.)

this morning, we ran errands. i had (and still have) a killer headache that won't stop making me want to yell at strangers and/or cry. eva was putting on a good show of being two, arching her back to be let down in the chaotic yarn store causing me to nearly lose my balance and drop her, or running off screaming "no!" to everything i say. but the truth is, she was the same as always, a mix of charming and challenging, but i was just not handling it well.

we came home and she wouldn't nap. "nap" is turning in to a 2 hr stressfest of trying to get her to sleep because she's not truly tired until 4:00 but that's too late to nap if i want her to to go to bed before midnight. she's edging closer to dropping naps, but we're not there yet, so we butt heads over it. she was poking and scratching me during our 5 minutes of nursing, and after countless attempts to redirect her, i mentally lost it and marched out of the room, saying "fine, do whatever you want, i don't care.", plus some swearing. nice! just the perfect response for making your child feel unconditionally loved.

later after calming back down, i went up to relieve larry of the napathon efforts, and after some time, she announced that she was peeing on the special book i bought all of two hours prior, one that was for her and papa to share. contrary to all my thinking on such things, i basically shamed her for it including the gem "i thought you knew how to take care of your books but i guess not." lovely. once again, just the perfect reaction to have. no surprise that she peed in the laundry basket 30 minutes later, despite the fact that she rarely has accidents these days.

when i got home from the movie, larry reported that they had the calmest evening in a long time and eva fell asleep peacefully next to him on the couch -- a good hour earlier than she generally does. then when she woke up just now and he went to soothe her, it turns out she was having a bad dream, sitting up and rocking her knees talking mysteriously about a book (hmm...telling.). he was calming her by saying "papa loves you and mama loves you" when she interjected "no no no she doesn't!"

wow.

what a proud day of parenting this has been. as i hear myself get frustrated with her, that's quickly replaced by frustration with myself for reacting that way, for not being stronger. i can of course point out that it's been a bit of a struggle lately what with all of our travelling, and my weeks at a time without arry to help parent, and how he threw his back out and is stressed at work which makes things harder, and that i'm feeling just off in general lately. but even with all that, i need to be able to stay calm in the heat of the moment. eva deserves that much.

the thing is, i can't change the situation. she's a kid, i'm a mom, that's going to be hard sometimes. all i can do is change my reaction to the situation. i can get all upset and stomp around like an idiot, or i can take a deep breath and model something useful for my daughter. i'm working on that and making real progress; today was just a giant stumble along that path.

i'm saying all this not as self-flagelation, but in an effort to provide balance and realism to this little record of my days. i wouldn't want eva to read this someday when she has her own child, for example, and think that it was all happy all the time -- who can live up to that? it's that whole thing about not measuring your insides by someone else's outsides. you can't compare yourself to what someone chooses to let others' see, and i don't want this blog to be all outsides. we are happy, at moments deliriously happy, but not all the time. like today, which (as i so articulately stated up front) sucked.

so, i'm working to be more gentle with eva in these moments of extreme frustration and to get a better handle on my emotions. but i think i also need to remember in the mean time (as my friends and i all remind each other) to be gentle with myself. tomorrow i can try again. i can apologize to my daughter and do better. that's all i really need to worry about; the rest i can just let go.

ode to the moons

2007-08-31T20:49:00.001-05:00

garden, originally uploaded by Kristy and Eva.

just minutes ago, eva sang the following bit of toddler poetry as we drove home in the dark from a late dinner. the moon is rising late now, so she can't see it in the evenings. she's been thinking about this a lot. this was no performance; it was sung purely for her own joy (and that of moons), but larry and i were lucky enough to overhear it. i had to record it right away before it disappeared, falling through my fingers like so many of the glowing but slippery moments of our days.

there's no moon at all.
we can't see it, it's hiding.
papa moon and mama moon and baby moon.
they are hiding; they are taking a nap.
mama moon and baby moon are taking a nap
and having side of milk
together.
mama and baby moon are sleeping.
papa moon and mama moon,
mama moon and baby moon,
today there is no moon at all.

i don't know if others can really, truly see it there, or if such things are just for a mama to know, but hiding behind those words is a glimpse of what makes me love her so desperately.

monologue

2007-08-28T20:50:00.001-05:00

ringlets, originally uploaded by Kristy and Eva.

i owe entries about our trip to north dakota and still owe entries about our alaska trip and eva's second birthday... so of course i write less instead of more.

instead, here's a conversation eva and i just had during the time in which she was using the potty, as best i can remember it in her own exact words. i'll leave out what i said in the conversation, since it was a lot of "oh really?" and "hmm, then what happened?" -- just probes to encourage the monologue, but i didn't introduce any words or topics, just to see how it would go. (oh, i'll also leave out the potty commentary. i mean, really...there are limits.)

"panowah and bohp [her imaginary sisters] are at auntie lora's house. they're lying on the floor because they're so sad. they're so sad because auntie julie and tito went away. panowah and bohp miss them sooo much. auntie julie and tito went to auntie julie's house. auntie lora is making panowah and bohp feel better; she's singing them a song and snuggling them. they drove there in auntie lora's car. did you know that, mama?

mama, i want to see your funny bone in your back? yeah, your spine. move your shirt up please so i can look at it. haha, it's so bumpy! mama, your spine holds your head up and helps your body be so strong. and papa and eva have a spine, too.

mama, who bite a hole in that brown chair? lemma did it. and mama feels so sad. and papa said 'nooo, lemma, don't bite it!'

mama, you please sound like maggie [the alaskan elephant]? mama, you feel a little bit lonely because you don't have an eva to play with. mama, you pretend to cry and i will make you feel better. [i do, she does.]

mama, you have green eyes. eva has blue eyes like grandpa marty and auntie julie has blue eyes. papa and lemma have brown eyes. [she smiled at me and i kissed her forehead.] mama, i like your green eyes, they are so pretty. i want to give you a hug mama [she does] and a kiss [muah, then touches my cheek]. [another hug] i love you mama. i love you so much!"

we're having a lovely week and the three of us are just about as in love with each other as we could be. it's nice when you can let everything else fall away and just be, and soak up what's right in front of you.

missing papa

2007-08-14T23:05:00.000-05:00

we've been traveling a lot. it's been really fun, and eva's had all sorts of great experiences this summer. however, i think having been away from her papa for three of the past five weeks is starting to take its toll on my sweet girl. here's a conversation we just had (as she was supposed to be going to sleep -- as i type this it's 11:15 and she's still awake... apparently travel also takes its toll on bedtimes).

(enter mid crazy-long sentence-o-fatigue:) "...and go see papa and lemma."

eva, do you miss papa?

"yeah."

what things does papa do that you miss?

"play bunnies and play bowling!" [both wii video games]

haha. what else do you like to do with papa?

"um, read stories. papa read me the counting book... the counting ladybugs book."

oh, that sounds fun. what else?

"and eva and papa make a mess! and then papa clean it up and eva help clean up."

yeah, that's true. anything else that you like to do with papa?

"papa sing songs to eva. and make eva feel better."

enough said. this should be obvious, but i forget sometimes that she's not a tiny baby anymore, it's not all about mama all the time. she needs her papa, too. and unlike me, a grown-up, she can't necessarily understand why papa is sometimes not with her for a long time.

papa, we miss you...

ps> i mentioned eva's imaginary sister, bohp, last time. well, we apparently have a new addition to the family. eva now has a second imaginary sister: panowah (emphasis on the "wah!"). we had a big conversation between all of us over coffee while camping. later, eva had violet under her shirt -- "mama, i have a baby in my belly, and now it came out, look, it's violet!" she then put violet in her carseat "so she can be safe". eva does lots of caring things for violet (asks her if she's okay, sings her songs, gives her mama milk, snuggles her, puts her to bed), so i'm not surprised to find out that she's violet's mama after all. that seems about right.

ttc

2007-08-06T20:26:00.001-05:00

trying to conceive. and still trying.

what follows is something i wrote a month ago and never posted, because i wanted to wait and see if i could rewrite it from a better emotional place. now, rereading it, i've decided to post it anyway, because it points out to me how rapidly my emotions and perspectives shift (trying to catch a representative snapshot of my thoughts about it isn't likely as it's a moving target). a month ago, i felt frustrated but not terribly worried. this month, i'm taking it more in stride and have calmed back down, despite feeling a far greater concern. here's last month:

. . .

i've been meaning to post about this for a long while, but it's a fine line between talking about something and flat-out whining about something you can't change, so that probably explains my limited comments on the subject thus far.

we started trying in december. should i get pregnant next month (this month, it seems, is yet another no go), that will have been nine months since we started. enough time to have gestated an actual baby, which seems like an awfully long time all of the sudden. somehow the nine month thing is messing with my head, and i'm losing my resolve to be patient and just wait.

at first i had that giddy impatience, not really bothered that it didn't happen immediately, but kind of hoping it would (as it did with eva). that moved into actual impatience, long before such a thing was justifiable, yet there it was. i then came around to some semblance of resolve to be patient after i realized (despite all the signs) my body was only going through the motions of ovulation. i gained that resolve because it seemed ovulation would not happen until i weaned eva, and i wasn't ready to accelerate that process yet, so i had no choice but patience. now, however, that resolve is waning as i start to feel beat down by the months and weeks and days of waiting and waiting. approaching nine months in, i'm starting to feel betrayed... i guess maybe by my own body and even by my own emotions.

i hesitate to even say such things, since i know there are countless people who long for a baby they'll never have and here i sit with my beautiful little girl. and there are people who try much longer and have to go to greater lengths to end up with the children they have, so my relatively short amount of waiting is no big deal in the grand scheme of things. but it's still a big deal to me, in my life. (try as we might, i think we all have to fess up to the fact that knowing someone somewhere has it worse than you do doesn't in your heart of hearts make you feel all that much better.) i have more sympathy than ever for people with *actual* fertility problems. and in the mean time, i'm feeling more than a little bit sorry for myself.

so there we are. i'm mad at my body for deciding that nursing eva once a day means i don't have the resources to foster a pregnancy, and i'm mad at myself for having emotions that are at best counter-productive to creating a new life. i'm struggling with my own impatience, jealousy, fear, self-pity, and guilt over feeling all those things in the first place.

i know a lot of mamas (really, a lot) -- relatives, friends, acquaintances -- and literally every single person i know with a first kid eva's age is pregnant (barring the people who are having no more children). hell, even mamas who were trying *not* to get pregnant yet are pregnant. mamas with first kids significantly younger than eva are pregnant. i'm starting to feel like i don't know anyone who *isn't* pregnant. (my apologies to the 5 or 6 of you pregnant mamas who will be reading this. by no means does your happiness diminish my own, i just don't know how else to explain my frustration. but i promise, this is my own issue and it's really not about you. :)

all this emotion, and i don't even have a legitimate right to be worried yet! i guess i'm just disappointed that it's taking so long, and also disappointed that i'm not handling it with more grace and calm. it's hard, among other things, to let go of the false sense of control we all have over our lives when it comes to such things. we all know intellectually that we have little to no influence over our child's gender or our child spacing or whether we'll even have children at all, but how this plays out in reality is more trying than i had anticipated.

. . .

i feel differently now. all that emotion is still there in my darker moments, but i feel more open and accepting of the situation. that said, the real worry sets in. it's becoming extremely unlikely that nursing eva once a day is preventing ovulation and that begs the question, what else could it be? many of the "simple" things that are easy to fix don't apply to me. that leaves me with a big looming void of a question. basically, i've moved from "when will i get pregnant" to "will i get pregnant". and actually, that's okay. i think that's how i mentally prepare, just in case. (ever the planner, my wandering thoughts have already taken me past the fertility treatments i don't want and on to wondering how one explores adoption possibilities... i know, i know, that's premature, but that's how i process. with brute force preparation!) who can say where this journey will take us? it's still trying, don't get me wrong, but i'm feeling a bit more calm.

here's a cute exchange from a few weeks ago that made me a little sad. eva sat at the table having a snack while i finished making dinner.

"i sharing my food with my sister. my sister eating tomatoes with me."
oh really? what is your sister's name?"
"bohp"
where is bohp?
"she sitting right there. here ya'go bohp. here's your tomatoes. you like them?"
(then, 30 minutes later, she ran around singing "yea! bohp bohp bohp! bohp boooohp...")

eva is so very interested in her friends' baby siblings, and she talks about mamas with babies in their bellies, and how the baby grows bigger and bigger and then comes out. it's not like i drill her on this, she just clings to the information. i think a part of her knows she's ready to be a great big sister. hopefully soon...

10 things eva learned in alaska

2007-07-31T21:21:00.000-05:00

1. How to go night-night in broad daylight, and then to wake up whenever it's time for fishing.
We arrived in Alaska less than a week after the summer solstice, so there was about 20 hours of daylight each day. It looked roughly like "dusk" sometime just before midnight. We aren't much for strict schedules around our household, but this proved a bit of a challenge.
On the other side, Eva had to adapt to things like everyone getting up to pack up camp at, say, 2:45 a.m. to head out fishing. Despite all this plus naps wherever she could find them some days, she was amazing right up until the end of the trip. (It's only now that we're home -- where her bedtime would be the equivalent of 2 a.m. -- that we're having some struggles.)

2. How to get skeetos.
Oh, the mosquitoes. They really weren't bad for almost all the time (turns out with all the rain in Texas they're actually worse here, weird). However, any mosquitoes are enough to attract the attention of a kid. She started randomly hitting herself or others, offering the explanation "I'm getting skeetos. Go 'way, skeetos, don't bite me!"

3. To say "lah".
Either by random coincidence or because of the way Grandpa or others of us pronounce "yeah", Eva took it up with a passion while we were in Alaska. Previously, she habitually said "uh-huh" (like mama says :), but now she says... "lah." I wouldn't mind if she said "yeah", but it sounds very much more like "lah" or sometimes "nyah" (the latter of which is a very ambiguous answer to a yes or no question). So, we all took to encouraging "yes" (with an emphasis on the final letter) as a response, and she occasionally does say that, landing hard on the "s" with a snake-like hiss at the end, "yessss!" Lah, Eva, lah.

4. How to eat her weight in cherries.
I've never seen anything like it, but cherries went on sale for $1.98/lb. So, we bought several pounds. Then we went back for several more pounds before the sale ended at the end of the week. But, lo, then cherries went on sale at another store, and again the following week. For three weeks, we ate and ate and ate cherries. As far as I can tell, Larry prefers cherries to all other foods, and it seems Eva takes after him in that respect. Collectively we ate probably 30-40 lbs of cherries and Eva kept up with us. It was ridiculous.

5. Where the fish on her plate comes from.
They come from the ocean or the river, then you catch them with a pole or a big net. Then you hit them with a stick and cut the sides off. Then you beg Grandpa to cook salmon so you can eat it for dinner.
(Grandpa fashioned a fishing pole for her, complete with hand-carved walnut hook, and she had fun fishing for things -- bags, pails, Grandpa). She had fun while we went dipnetting at the ocean -- until her little hands froze playing in the cold, wet sand -- but she did often ask "what's that man doing with that fish?" Well, now she knows. It's the cycle of life.

6. That bears can be found really close to you, several times a day, while camping.
The day of bears: First thing in the morning, while Eva and I were still in the camper, Mom watched a black bear stroll right down the little winding road through the campground, directly in front of our campsite. This is, apparently, not unusual. It's Alaska. Later that day, while rafting down the Kenai River, Dad and I came across three brown bears, a mama sitting in the water eating a fish along with her two cubs frolicking on the shoreline nearby. We paddled over and watched them, but kept our distance. Then, on the drive back to the campsite, Dad spotted a bear in the bushes along the little road just outside the campground. It was a fairly young black bear and it sat there munching on red berries for quite some time as we sat and watched it. Eva sat on my lap, face pressed against the window, maybe 10 or 15 feet away from a bear in the wild. How often does that happen? Those were some pretty amazing bear encounters, all in one day.

7. What a "poopitz" is.
If you ask Eva to identify her belly button, odds are she'll tell you it's her "poopitz" (sorry, I don't know the correct transliteration). In fact, in true two-year-old fashion, if the dog casually walks toward her while Eva is in a certain mood, she'll semi-shreek, "oh no, Lemma, don't get my poopitz!" She learned this new word, of course, from Grandpa.
I grew up half-knowing various phrases in Ukrainian (like how to jokingly tell the dog "I'll box your ears"). I didn't know this until after she died, but my Grandma Eva spoke only Ukrainian until she learned English in school. So, on many levels, it's only fitting that Eva learn some random things in Ukrainian. (Meaning, something other than how to eat pudaheya until you can barely move.)

8. How to frighten her mother clear out of the bathroom.
People talk about how the poo of breastfed babies doesn't really smell, at least in comparison to formula fed babies or to toddlers who have begun to eat solid foods. Well, I can't say that I noticed much of a difference once she started eating solids (yet I knew other kids' diaper changes could run me out of the room) -- and now I know why. It's because she doesn't eat meat! How do I know this? Well, she began to eat salmon, her first meat in meaningful quantities, while we were in Alaska. And though I'd forget every time to steel myself as I went to help her at the potty, I'd immediately be reminded with unmistakable force. Yikes. I guess it's all what you get used to, but I'm glad I don't have to deal with that daily. A perk of vegetarianism they don't tell you about at Training Camp. :)

9. To know she must be really having fun when she can no longer recognize the original color of her shoes (and/or socks, pants).
She climbed, she hiked, she sat in the dirt. She helped me collect twigs for the fire, she rode around on a hand truck. She drug her poor green jacket around by the sleeve (as though she was walking a dog) for hours on end. She never stopped moving. At the end of the day, her green socks and black shoes both were brown, and she was very intrigued.

10. The concept of instant replay.
Immediately upon returning home from camping, we all would sit down and watch videos and look at photos of Eva. It's tradition. Plus, we can't help it. While this goes on, Eva says "what Eva doing on the TV?" As far as she knows, it's totally normal to watch yourself on TV at the end of a fun day. Why not?

a lot to say

2007-07-29T00:11:00.001-05:00

campsite, originally uploaded by Kristy and Eva.

we spent four weeks in alaska, and so much happened it feels like an entire season must have passed (the change in weather and light propped up that illusion). i try to encapsulate the experience, to store it here for later -- both for me and for eva, and to share it with others, and i get stuck. so, rather than wait for that clarity of mind that may never come (or will come too late), i'll not postpone other entries any longer. who says life has to be processed chronologically?

eva has not been sleeping well the week we've been home -- blame her molars, or the jetlag, or her sudden tireless interest in singing (having become, of late, the troubadour of her own experience). in fact she stopped sleeping well the last half of the alaska trip, once larry left for london (though he is not the one responsible for getting her to sleep, aparently his presence in the next room is a catalyst for sleep?). this is wearing on me, layered on top of the predictable malaise that sets in after returning home from any long trip. the result is a drained and periodically cranky mama, who unnecessarily snaps at her husband and is less sensitive than she usually is to her overtired toddler.

i'm doing my best, which is more than i would have done in the past -- the hardest truth of being a mom is that you can't crumple and stare at nothing for an hour, even if you really want to. you sometimes can't even cry for 15 seconds. ("what's wrong mama? mama, are you okay?" she peers at me quizically. "it oooh-kay, mama. it okay." she says, patting my back and kissing my head. so touching, to see the care i offer her reflected back to me, but i'd rather she not feel the need to comfort me in the first place.)

so, she has rights to be cranky given her teething and lack of sleep, given her fogged-in mama. yet, in true eva spirit, instead she sings. she sings songs she knows. she repeats songs she hears larry sing four words of while fixing her a snack. she makes up songs to sing sotto voce to violet and bunny (songs whose exact meaning cannot be descerned by outsiders). she sings to narrate her activities or thoughts -- the aforementioned troubadour. i will restrain myself from flooding you with examples (as the experience of toddler song loses nearly all meaning when translated to text) but here are two from this evening:

hearing larry sing a line of the johnny cash song, eva sung back without missing a beat, "papa sang bass, eva sang tennis..." the word "tenor" is unfamiliar, so she made her best interpretation. i like it.

an hour or so later, as she stood playing with some carved wooden animals (a gift from sarah karen and john today), she was remembering the elephant maggie we saw in the alaska zoo. there's controversy surrounding whether she should stay there since maggie is in questionable health and all alone, and elephants are social animals. anyway, processing what i shared with her about the situation (yet again), she turned it into a melody of her own creation. "maggie is a lil' bit saaad, she feel lone-leee. a lil' bit lonely 'cause she not have friends there. maybeee, the people help maggie feel better." i'd like to report it was a blues tune, but no. it was, however, in a minor key, as are most of her little songs.

i leave you with some quotes, from way back when she was not yet two from the depths of... last month.

"what happened to the bouncing bridge?"
oh, it's broken, eva.
"it broken. it got bounced too much. by kids... and boys!"
(this "kids and boys" thing persists. i wonder, does she see girls as the default and thus boys as the "other"? or is it just an accident of language acquisition?)

(seeing two men climbing giant redwood trees on the "planet earth" documentary:)
"what are those two monkeys doing?"
monkeys?
"ummm, it a man. two mans. two monkey mans! *hahaha*"
(little does she know her own papa is a monkey man.)

(first words after waking from nap)
"sareee!" (giggling, meaning her cousin)
"i love sarey."
ah, you love sarah?
"uh-huh. i give sarah a hug and a kiss at gram's austin house!"
yes, you sure did.

i'll leave it at that and do my best to write the many great stories from alaska soon. i just hate to taint happy stories by writing them while i feel less than happy (not that i'm so sad, i'm just not in the right head space).

but did you know? she turned two, my baby is two years old. amazing...