portraits by a toddler

Gretchen has taken a fancy to photography.

aka

Ernie-Dale & Delilah
Sparky & Pedro
Bert Fido MD
Maurice de Skelator
Schmoo
Sweets
Frances
Superpower princess
jelly bean
punkie
FEDGE

today I am

Happy that 4 kids under the age of 3 are currently sleeping peacefully in the house. The dresser fell over on some climbers earlier, I was reprimanded for my poor skills in making PBand J, but now all is good.

Fina is almost running now, taking after big sis in the daredevil department. We got pictures last week at Sears and the photographer assumed that Fina was our 'difficult' baby-well that is most definitely not true. She is 'difficult' to diaper and cloth but all else is filled with ease. And of course "Frances" as she prefers to be called this week had difficult moments, but we like to believe that that means she will never let anyone walk all over her or be quiet when it's time to share an opinion. And boy oh boy did "Frances" love to pose for the camera! Perhaps she will be a model and share her wealth with her old parents.

The holidays are approaching and for "Frances" that means trading in blue paci for some Barbies with Santa Clause. I've been contemplating the fact that we are associating something so negative with Santa, but I really don't want to be the one to take the blame. So, yes, the heavy will lie on Santa.

The Backyardigans are in our background constantly these last few weeks. I am constantly amazed at Gretchen's memory. She seems to be able to recite whole shows after only seeing a few. Same with books. And dear Fina is already pretending to read and turning pages like a pro. We are happily raising readers and glad to pass on one of the great joys in life.

October 2010

Cannot believe how incredibly fast life goes by with children in our lives. Yesterday I finally got around to unloading all the videos from our flip cam from this year. Fina was just a tiny little thing only a short time ago, lying in her swing just quietly watching everybody. Now she is crawling all over everything, up stairs, under tables. She eats everything in sight. She has had a few poops with sequins and happy face stickers! Early this year Gretchen still had hardly any hair. She was talking a lot at the beginning of the year, but now her vocabulary is crazy. The other day she told me she was gradually going to go down the stairs and that she wanted to find the camoflaged salamander.

Halloween was only a few days ago and both girls went as pink batman. G loves batman from playing with some toys of Eric's. We were looking at costumes online one day and saw the pink batman costume, which of course her cheap mama would never buy, so we made one instead. I made the shirt and cape and Eric made an awesome very very tiny belt for her. Fina wore a very similar costume and had a blast trick or treating at Living History Farms with our friend Allison and through Nana's neighborhood with Ben and Vivi and Luke(who was Batman)

Gretchen walks on air when I pick her up from preschool. She's getting a little better at telling us what goes on there. We just finished swimming class for both of the girls. Gretchen actually lets the teacher hold her now:) and she can start to kick and move her arms at the same time. Fina does not care one bit if her head goes under water and she absolutely loves to splash. We were 'excused' from class one day after G puked in the water. This has happened twice to us. The entire class gets cancelled. Most of the other parents say they don't mind..blah blah, but I've never seen it happen to anyone else. The girls didn't mind though, except for the time that we got the whole family dressed and realized that class didn't start until the next week. It's becoming apparent that mama can't be trusted to know the exact day that events take place.

ah sista sista

Could Fina love anyone more than she loves Gretchen? I think not. The sound of G sucking on her paci(going to give it to Santa soon) will bring Fina from a dead sleep to extreme wakefulness. She just stares at Gretchen as if she is the most fascinating person around. Gretchen has been going to preschool one morning a week and Fina and I really don't know what to do without Gretchen around. Right now this sisterly love isn't a mutual feeling as Gretchen has asked me several times to leave the room so that (in her words) she can 'hurt Fina'. So much for lying about it:)

Fina eats well and it seems that she is trying her best to get as big as Gretchen is-which with a little more than 2 years older is less than 10 pounds more.

Lately we've enjoyed great weather after the summer is over. Fina crawls all over the backyard and eats everything that she can get into her mouth. Gretchen has mastered her 2 wheeled bike with training wheels. We sometimes go to the park to ride because of the great sidewalks. Yesterday Gretchen made a picnic for lady bugs in the driveway and I'll admit I'm no bug expert, but she insisted that they really enjoy eating large rocks. We spend a lot of times with different friends and much time together. I try to remember that the dishes aren't as important as playing 'cats' on the couch. Or that checking my email isn't quite as fulfilling as 2 young ones cuddling up near me with a book.

So many 'firsts' are happening in our lives these days. I feel compelled to somehow keep track of them all, but easily overwhelmed. So should I remember the first time Fina ate a bean? Or what Gretchen's first words were? How about the first time Gretchen said something so incredibly rude that I wondered whose child she was? Will they want to know when they get older? Here are some 'firsts' that are in my immediate memory. Please note that I've become enamored with lists since reading the Lisa Lutz Spellman Files book!
Gretchen's firsts
1st walk 9 months
1st words cat, banana
1st use of toilet 10 months..first time we could say she was potty trained 2 1/2 years old
1st visit to ER from climbing at the park on something that was for much older kids
1st time spending the night away from home was when Fina was born
1st trike ride summer 2010
1st ride on bike with training wheels summer 2010
1st close friend-Luke Howard
1st time facing forward in car seat 1 year old
Most of the time she is in the 20th % for weight and 60th % for height
1st airplane ride-9months to see California relatives
saying things like "that is a lovely cottage" 2 1/2 years
Telling mommy how to drive 2 1/2 years
Stomping feet and slamming bedroom door 2 1/2 years
Wanting time to read books on her own 1 1/2 years
Asking nicely or rudely for privacy 2 1/2 years

Fina
eating all foods at 6 months
sitting up well 6 months
crawling army style 6 month
So seriously Fina really didn't start doing anything all that interesting to anyone but her parents and relatives until just a short time ago. We like to refer to this as the end of the 'luggage' stage of baby development. Most of these things I've listed are from this summer 2010. It's been a busy crazy summer of growing up. I had a friend who said that being a parent is like dying 117 times a day. When I see Gretchen riding down the sidewalk on her bike or Fina crawling all over and playing with toys, it's this strange strange mixture of sadness, pride, and extreme joy that sort of is like dying and being born again in a moment. I think that these highly emotional vivid moments will be forever in my memory, but so much is happening that there's not enough room for all of it. So, we will continue with lists, but always know that the moment something is happening cannot be recreated in words.

Long and winding road

Staying home with the girls is the most fulfilling job I've ever had. It is also the most challenging and while I may not always 'meet or exceed expectations' I do know that this is precious time, well spent time, and most importantly time to get to know our children. It did get me thinking though, as I do all my mommy things exactly how many jobs I've had. Really, a long road of 'career choices' led me to this place. So, I hope for my girls to some day read this-by no means exhaustive-list and know of all interesting job experiences I've had before settling on mommy (aka personal assistant to the stars)

Bus girl at a truck stop, got to run the cash register one weekend and screwed it up so bad that I was once again known as bus girl
Cashier at hardware store leading to person who counted money in very very tiny safe room
Bar maid in what can only now been seen as a really skimpy uniform
Secretary for a non-profit group(my boss was always taking me out for drinks after her divorce and seriously she had years of handling her liquor whereas I did not)
Answering phones for magazine subscriptions and sending free inappropriate subscriptions to friends
Answering phones for people who ordered coffee through the mail(I had this job for one day)
Working the drive-thru at a credit union
Day care for exceptional children(first job I was officially allowed to nap at)
Bartender in a much more appropriate uniform( I was really really awful at this, I could never remember what went in a drink, learned it was not good to ask a patron if a margarita had vodka in it)
Check encoder at a bank
Counselor at a group home where I saw things like one guy who was always trying to eat his sheets and another who often told a strange story about bodies being buried
Driver for a hotel-this lasted one week, I altered some labels on things to read Days End instead of Days Inn
Hostess at Perkins, I was always screwing up on the seating and the cooks hated me because they thought I was rich...must've been those Goodwill Doc Martens I always wore
Retail store cashier where I was moved to tiny tiny safe room to count money after checking customers through so quickly that I earned the daily prize of free nachos too many times
Overnite counselor at a group home(paid to sleep)
Counselor a children's habilitation center
Counselor at group home again
finished college finally
special education teacher
English speech teacher
got my masters degree
mama!

So as anyone can tell, I learn things the hard way. Maybe the girls will have lists like this or maybe they will know immediately what they want to do and how to do it. Either way is fine with their parents.

we are family

Our daughters are incredibly lucky to have lots and lots of cousins all under the age of nine. There is great love between all of them and it's wonderful to see them together and know they will have each other when we are gone. Some of our cousins we see quite often. Talan and Maddox often come over and spend the day with us..tearing up the house, dancing, singing, fighting...all the fun things that family does. Talan was here when Gretchen took her first steps. He fed Fina her lunch today. Maddox is a free spirit who always comes to join the crowd if there is music or dancing. I got some tears in my eyes last week when Maddox called me Aunt D. People often mistake them all for brothers and sisters because of the strong resemblance and red hair.

We see Ben and Vivian quite a bit also. Gretchen looks up to them and will do whatever they ask her to do. Nana's house becomes Ben and Vivi's when they are in town and the adults don't matter anymore. A few months ago Ben was in the car with us and I found myself filled with delight when I had the chance to go into the gas station to get a coffee with out all the unbuckling and cajoling of bringing everyone along. I came back and he told me that he had gotten Fina to stop crying by giving her a lollipop. I look into the carseat at my 3 month old baby sucking on a dum dum! Ben continues to be quite proud of being able to keep Fina happy and he does. She is lucky to have so many kids around because truth be told she prefers them to adults. Vivi loves to hold her as much as squirmy Fina will allow these days.

We also have Izzy in California who only 3 months older than Gretchen. We don't see her much but she is in many of the stories we tell and her pictures are everywhere in our house.

Ellie and Audrey live close also and Gretchen is glad to have some more girl cousins who treat her like a little doll. I'm sure Fina will join in soon as well.

Enough can't be said about how lovely it is to have our daughters have so many cousins who will grow up with them. Family is always.

someone left the cake out in the rain

So we've been following our fearless leader-Gretchen and trying to make different kinds of cakes for 'happy birthday father's day' Gretchen and our friend Luke like to stir and help measure and sing 'stir it bake it...milk for the batter milk for the batter' from the Maurice Sendak book which I really hate, but isn't that how it goes? Yesterday we made spice cake and upon mixing we added a little 'ginger' in the form of Gretchen's hair getting caught in the mixer.

Gretchen did not panic too much and to be quite honest my words of 'don't move' while I found the scissors were tinged a little with....'man I hope this doesn't ruin the cake'

She is quite the daredevil and rather fearless which we both try to embrace as much as we can. So jumping on the couch and bed is allowed in our house. Climbing to the tops of really high playground ladders is also allowed. I don't want her to be afraid of anything and at the same time I want her to realize her limits on her own without me constantly standing over her shoulder and waiting for something bad to happen. She can handle it. We don't let her run into traffic or eat poison(germs, bacteria are just fine) but we do let her explore her world on her own terms. And I don't want her to grow up thinking that she should be scared or constantly worried about terrible things, because in truth terrible things do happen and we deal with them but there aren't as many as the media or well-meaning people might lead us to believe.

So the cake was good even though it may have had a few hairs in it.

let's get it started

Been wanting to do this for a long time, but seem to never have the time. Well, my mid year resolution is to share my thoughts on our family and leave a bit of a record for the girls of what life was like when they were young.

Every single day I am extraordinarily thankful that I get to stay home and raise my girls. Even when I had to check the 'homemaker' box at my last doctor's appointment!

Gretchen, at 2 1/2 has been spending most of her days naked around the house and playing with her new obsession-the princess. We swore that our daughter would never by exposed to the princess culture, but she loves it and we especially enjoy her creating scenes with her princess that involve girls kissing girls, or princesses being attacked by spiders, or a farm animal being invited to the ball. She is going on the toilet all the time now and using similes to describe her BMs-"it's like a banana" or using number and size descriptions-"it's a small one and a big one, there are two." She is our resident weirdo and we couldn't be happier.

Fina enjoys everything Gretchen! She could sit and watch her all the time and wants to be right in the middle of all the action. Nursing her is a delight and sometimes a pain because she won't stop moving and stops quite a bit to look up at me and laugh. Her personality strikes me as someone who will be sitting in the classroom looking at butterflies out the window.

Today we went to a sing a long at a coffee shop and Gretchen went right up to the front to help sing the alphabet into the microphone. Fina took a nap in the Ergo pouch. We had monster cookies and splashed in puddles on the way back to the car. Afterwards, we went to the 'princess store' to get a potty training reward for G. We also stopped by Nana's house so that G could have some time with Grandma-ever since Fina was born she takes Nana out of the room away from Fina. A little jealous?