How We Gonna Kick It?

Wow! It sure has been a while since I have actually sat down to write an entry. I constantly have ideas for things I want to write down in my head, but the planets rarely align these days to give me the time, energy and brain power to put together a coherent blog entry. Today it is a little like 1950 here in Watertown, living the housewife stereotype to the fullest by popping a pot roast into the crock-pot and setting the timer for seven hours. I am not ashamed to say that I LOVE my crock-pot. So today will just be a brain dump of sorts of all the funny and fantastic things that Buddy and the Goose have been up to these days.

Josh is six months old. He is still a total tank. He is getting his first teeth, he just got over his first ear infection and he has outgrown his infant car seat. He has totally outgrown that newborn stage, it even feels weird to call him an infant, he just seems to big for the term. He's just a big, round, roley-poley baby. He is totally digging eating his solids now and can pack away two jars of baby food like he has never eaten it before. Lucy calls Josh "Buddy" now and has taken her assigned "jobs" as my helper very seriously. Her responsibilities include helping me choose what Buddy will have for dinner, often deliberating with serious thought between sweet potato and pears. She has to help stir the food together with his baby cereal. When Buddy get his bath, Lucy's job is to help wash his hair. When we are out and any other kids get too close she stands guard to make sure that nobody scares him or gets too close. She is also the one who can make Josh laugh the hardest. It is the funniest thing to watch. The first time Michael and I saw it, it was really amazing. We sat and watched this exchange between Josh and Lucy. Lucy flopped herself back on pillows and Josh would do this HUGE belly laugh. The more he laughed, the more she flopped. They were solely looking at each other and the whole interaction had absolutely nothing to do with Mom or Dad. It was amazing and made all the times I felt like one or the other was getting short-changed disappear.

Josh also has been a little snuggly these days. Unlike Lucy who was attached to me for the first six months of her life, Josh prefers his space. He's never been a real snuggle in kind of guy. He likes to drink his bottles laying in his crib, he prefers not to be held. But lately he's cuddled in here and there and been a bit of a snuggle muffin. I can hear his breathing relax and watch his eyes get heavy lidded with comfort. It makes me smile to myself.

Lucy is two-and-a-half. She is so funny these days, she just says things and I have no idea where it came from. Yesterday morning she was washing her hands and started counting in Spanish. "Uno, dos, tres...," she counted to five. I don't really know where she learned it. A couple of weeks ago I taught her how to do a somersault using my yoga mat as a gym mat. I had to demonstrate and I felt real old because it was so painful. Our gymnastic session turned into a pseudo break dancing lesson as well. We blasted the Beastie Boys and I showed Lucy some moves. Scary visual, I know, but thankfully she is too young to be embarrassed by me. She liked the Beastie Boys and now if you ask, "How we gonna kick it?" she replies with gusto, "Root Down," and I am proud. We're a little ghetto-fabulous here these day, making toys out of whatever we can just for kicks. Michael is very good at it. In past weeks he made a zamboni out of an empty diaper box and a side-car for Buzz Bear out of an empty Miller High life twelve pack. He made a house which we call Disney out of a moving box. He later adapted the design to become a rocketship by taping empty soda bottles to it and covering them with tinfoil. I made a space suit to match.

We've been doing a lot of fun things these days, we've made playdough from scratch and we were in a bit of a turkey handprint frenzy around Thanksgiving. I made home-made finger paint the other day and realized that just opening one of the ten bottles we has was just as fun, and a hell of a lot easier. Lucy and I went to see the Toe Jam Puppet Band the other and we're thinking of becoming groupies and touring with them. Lucy had a blast, she shook her little bum and ate up the whole experience. Her favorite books these days are Olivia and The Grinch. When we put Lucy to bed she likes to quote Olivia and says, "You know Mom, you really wear me out but I love you anyways," to which I have to reply, "you know Lucy, you really wear me out, but I love you anyways too." Lucy then says, "ahhhhh," and puts her head on my shoulder for a hug. She really couldn't get any sweeter. There are moments when I could just cry thinking about how much I love her.

Feels good to write all this down. I feel a little guilty that the apartment looks like a tornado went through it, but every now and then you just need to embrace the mess of it all and remember the good stuff. I guess it will be easier to sweep up the playdough and cous cous once it has gotten crusty and dried up, right?

Happy Halloween

For kids, Halloween is right up there with Birthdays and Christmas. It really doesn't get much better than a holiday that revolves around playing dress-up and getting tons of candy. Last year Lucy was too young to really understand Halloween. I bought her some lovely, pink skeleton jammies and that was her costume. She and I loitered at the end of our walkway, handing out candy to the few and far between trick-or-treaters who dared to venture down the black-hole of a street that ours is on Halloween. This year it all came together and she is already asking when she can go trick-or-treating again.

I am one of those Moms who is perpetually disorganized. I do my best, but ultimately feel like I am scrambling to be prepared for holidays. I'll find the perfect party-dress, but forget to buy tights....that kind of stuff. About 80% organization and 20% fly by the seat of my pants. This year I got my act together and in ninety-five degree heat Lucy, Josh and I went to Babies r Us in August and bought Lucy's costume. She was going to be a dinosaur for Halloween. We saw it in the flyer, which sadly we read one night for a bedtime story and she decided that a big dino was perfect for her. We took the costume home and blistering heat and all, Lucy transformed herself into a dinosaur. Halloween was still far off, but she had a great costume and I could already tell we were going to get our $19.99 worth out of her polyster dino suit.

The leaves fell, the mornings got darker and Halloween was finally here. Thanks to Dora's Halloween episode, Lucy had gotten the idea of the proper Halloween etiquette. We rehearsed the drill - ring doorbell, say trick-or-treat, choose one candy and say "thank you, Happy Halloween." She was pretty good at it. I told Lucy in the morning that it was Halloween and she asked to go trick-or-treating right then and there. I had a feeling it was going to be a long day.

Finally the afternoon was winding down and Michael got out of work early and we had a Halloween pizza party. After dinner we had to run out the clock while we waited for it to get dark. When we finally did start getting ready, Lucy was stepping into her dinosaur costume and looked at Michael and I with her voice loud with excitement and asked us what we were going to be. She looked so excited and so earnest in wondering what we were going to be I was kind of at a loss for words. If we told her were weren't dressing up she was going to be heartbroken. Michael excitedly told Lucy he was going to be a clown and shortly after zipping up her dino suit Michael bustled up into the cluttered attic and busted a clown hat, glasses and bow-tie seemingly out of nowhwere. There are many reasons that I love my husband and being able to pull a clown costume out of thin air so as not to disappoint Lucy made me fall in love with him just a little bit more. It was sweet and Lucy was awestruck when she saw "Bozo".

I wrestled Josh into Lucy's old bear cub costume. He looked quite dashing and if Halloween had been one day later the bear costume probably would not have fit Tank. We grabbed the trick-or-treat pumpkin basket and headed out. I don't think Lucy quite understood how this whole deal worked until we went to the first house. Our neighborhood isn't the best for trick-or-treating. There are lots of two-family houses and many seem to shut off lights and not really participate in Halloween. Then there are houses that have elaborate Halloween decorations which I am thankful for because it is a lankmark for lost, wandering parents like us. The first house we went to had a big skeleton, fake spiders and a witch. We see it everytime we go to the playground. We stop and say hello to "witchy poo" and Lucy isn't at all freaked out by the creepiness of it. So we rang witchy poo's doorbell and out came the bowl of candy and she said "twick-or-tweat" and it was really freaking cute. Her big dino tail swishing behind her as she dug through the candy bowl. It all came together for her and she was ready for the next house.

We went from house to house. Lucy liked getting the candy, but somehow I think was equally as excited to ring doorbells. Despite the poor vision due to his gigantic clown glasses, Michael schlepped Lucy up and down the many hills and stairs of our neighborhood. Josh ate a bottle and then crashed. Lucy totally dug halloween. We stopped every now and then for a candy break. Lucy would take one bite from something and then hand it to me and ask for another. We actually had to unload her bucket into the diaper bag because it was getting too heavy for my little dino to carry.

The night was winding down, it was already 7:30 and we headed for home. I told Lucy we were going to go to one more house - another set of witchy poo's. Lucy looked looked up at me past her big dinosaur teeth and said pleadingly, "no Mom, no more candy." We went home, I couldn't in good conscience force my little girl to keep trick-or-treating. At home Lucy dumped out her bucket and chose a few pieces of candy, taking a bite or two of each and then handing it to me all gross and slobbery saying, "all done." She crashed hard from the sugar and slept well.

We're still having daily candy battles. Yesterday morning Lucy was sitting at the table waiting for her breakfast when she helped herself to her candy bowl. By the time I brought over her pancakes and melon, Lucy had chewed her tootsie roll and wrapped the gooey mess all over a lollipop. She asked for dippy so I put some Italian dressing on her plate. She sat at the table dipping her lollipop into the dressing and then alternating licks with bits of pancake and melon. It was so gross, but she was so happy. Happy Halloween!!

Pumpkins and Preschool

Last year we went apple and pumpkin picking and I could not, for the life of me picture how things like that worked with two kids. This year we scaled the apple/pumpkin experience down a bit, but did go out and have some good, wholesome, fall-fun picking out pumpkins. Lucy was quite taken with the adventure and hugged several squash, posed for a picture with a scarecrow and told Michael and I that she wanted to stay and live with the pumpkins on the farm. She didn't quite get the idea that you couldn't eat the pumpkins and tried to take a big bite out of a mini pumpkin. I guess it is kind of an odd concept for a kid. We brought the pumpkins home and had ourselves a good old time and made a party out of carving the pumpkins. Lucy and I made a ham pizza for sustinence - it was messy but delicious. Michael carved the pumpkins. They were like wood and Michael had to really work to carve them. It was more of a stabbing motion than carving, but he got the job done. Lucy decorated her newly created jack-o-lanterns with marker made a fine mess of them but was as proud as if she had just painted the Mona Lisa. The end result, a happy Lucy, a sweaty Michael and a Mom that was just a little nauseous from eating a toddler-made, ham pizza. Good times.

This fall has also landed us in the season of preschool open houses. I think when we were kids most of us didn't go to preschool until the year before kindergarten. Now it seems that three is the typical age to begin preschool, some places accept children even earlier. I think preschool at three is good. Lucy loves her "school" now and I think will benefit from going to preschool next year a couple times a week. The first open house I went to was a cooperative preschool in Watertown. It was nice, the parents spoke highly of it and the word on the street (which is really the playground) is that it is good. The only catch was it was a mandatory five day a week program. My mind started racing.....five days a week this year for preschool, five next year for preschool, then kindergarten. Before I knew it I was in a place where my Lucy was fifteen, piercing her face and resenting me. I was clearly not ready for five days a week next year, and honestly I don't think she is.

The next preschool was nice, there was a great free-spirited vibe to it. Each day the school made a snack together and everyone brought something in to contribute. Thursday was applesauce day and each kid brought in an apple. One of the teachers taught music and dance so a regular part of each day involved dancing in the big room of the preschool. The teacher to student ratio was great and the space was sunny and bright with a totally kick-ass playground. But the group was a mixed-ages group which wouldn't be my first choice and the number of days was flexible, but the hours were 8:45-2:00 with lunch and rest in the second half of the day. Not sure if I need to pay to have Lucy eat lunch and then nap on a cot.....but we'll see, this seemed like a good place.

Fall is such a season of change. Maybe it is because of the leaves, the temperature the hours of daylight. Lucy is changing so much these days. Some days I look at her and can get a glimpse of the little girl she will be in a year. It makes me a little sad. I would love to freeze her at this age just for another year or so, selfish I know but I don't want her to grow-up too fast. These days she looks at me with her huge eyes and long lashes and tells me, "someday I'll be growed up just like you Mom." I want to stop time. I look at Josh and see that he's no longer a newborn - he's just a jolly old baby now, drooling all over himself and blowing raspberries like it the best thing he has ever learned to do. These little monkeypants are funny little kids. These days there is little sleep, but lots of laughs.

What Sleep???

I can't believe Josh is almost five months old. I'm tired. It isn't the kind of tired like after one night of staying up late, it is the kind of tired that is always lingering. Nights are not so bad, I try to go to bed early - usually no later than 10:30. Michael usually does Josh's first feeding which can be anywhere between 10:30 and 1:00. I usually hear the guys and if it seems like Josh is exceptionally pissed I'll get up and make a bottle or do what I can to help. Josh goes back to sleep pretty easily and then wakes again around 3:00 or 4:00 for another snack. For a while he would be wide awake after the last feeding. I'd put him into his crib and he'd look up at me and his face would light up with a smile. He's gotten better and goes back to sleep right after his big gulp. Then at around 5:00 or 5:30 he wakes up and we bring him into bed with us and he'll sleep until about 7:00 or 7:30.

Lucy sleeps great some nights - other nights she stirs frequently. Sometimes she has nightmares, her little stuffed Cookie Monster has been banished from the crib because she had a nightmare that Cookie ate her hand. She still talks about it and scrunches up her little face and holds out her hand and tells me, "Cookie ate my hand." Nightmares are the new thing since Josh was born. It is hard to say if it is having a new baby in the house or if it is just being two. Sometimes she needs a drink of milk. Sometimes she has to pee. Last night just after going to bed she was unsettled and asked Michael for a piñata. He told her she could have one at her third birthday party at Chuck-e-Cheese that she talks about constantly. Her little mind is working overtime these days and some nights she just is quick to stir. She also has been waking up at around 5:30 in the morning when it is pitch black. She is WIDE awake and if you tell her to go back to sleep she has a big screaming fit. Michael has been great and we try to alternate who gets up with Lucy and who sleeps in with Josh. I never in my lifetime thought it would feel like such an indulgence to sleep in until 7:00 - it feels soooooooo good.

When Lucy was a baby nights were awful. She woke frequently and she screamed and cried for hours on end. Even if I was in bed and Michael would get up with her I would lay in bed wide awake, my stomach in knots as I listened to her. We were exhausted. At one point I remember walking into the refrigerator - like I didn't see it in front of me and then wham! Michael had a big gash on his head that we couldn't for the life of us remember how he got it. We were all so tired that we practiced what we called "diving". Whenever we could, no matter what the circumstances were if Lucy went to sleep we both dove for the bed to catch some sleep ourselves. It didn't matter if we were in the middle of eating - plates would be abandoned on the table and we would dive. Just drank a pot of coffee - no sweat, I could be asleep in six seconds flat.

Lucy slept on me for a great part of her first year. I remember when she was around eight or nine months old she would only nap on me. At night she would eventually sleep best with us, so that is where she slept. I read books, I knew that we should "cry it out" but I didn't have the heart. I paid seventy-five dollars to have a sleep consultant say, "have you read Ferber? Okay, good so you know you have to have her cry-it-out." I wrote out a check and continued to let Lucy sleep with me, on me, holding my hand while she lay in her crib...whatever it took until she was about seventeen months old. Then I got pregnant and realized that I would eventually need a few months of sleep before the chaos would begin again. I rode the coattails of my friends consult with a colleague of the great Ferber himself and got the sleep situation under control.

So I am tired now, but not the bed-diving, open head wound kind of tired that I was with Lucy - but tired none-the-less. I go to bed every night and on my night table are two monitors buzzing and twinkling beside me. My sleep is fragmented, disjointed and I wake up feeling fuzzy most mornings. One night I counted how many times I was up and down out of bed between the hours of two and four and I stopped counting after eight. Today my brain is especially dull. But I know someday it will be a distant memory. Someday when Lucy and Josh are teenagers I'll be struggling to wake them up before noon on weekends and I won't remember sleeping for the first year of Lucy's life wearing my glasses.

Mean Girls and Streakers at the Playground

Lucy, Josh and I are regulars at the playground. We have playgrounds that we frequent and know lots of the kids and parents who hang out there. Lucy has her regular playground friends that she plays with, snacks with and yucks it up with. The boundaries of play are pretty well established. Recently, Lucy was wanted to mix it up a bit so we've been exploring new playgrounds. She has taken a shine to one near our old apartment. Lucy calls it the Belmont playground. With a new playground comes new kids and new lessons to be learned.

Just recently we arrived at the playground on a beautiful day that felt more like summer than fall. Soccer practice was buzzing on the fields beside the playground and kids and parents were everywhere. As a mom you survey the landscape and the people in the playground like the secret service scans the perimeter surrounding the President. It was a pretty run-of-the-mill crew and then I spotted a mom with a big old wreath of flowers in her hair. Our neighborhood is pretty diverse so it only makes sense that hippies are part of the melting pot. Then I spotted her freebooting little guy on the monkey bars. He was probably three or four and was completely nekid except for a long sleeve shirt. Now I'm not quite sure what happened to cause the boy to lose his pants. Who knows, lots of things happens to clothing, so a half naked preschooler isn't that uncommon. Slightly awkward, but to each his own. Moon Blossom the Mom seemed fine with it so whatever. But the poor boy kept trying to go down the slide - without pants. I mean this was just painful to watch, and listen to. Lucy was oblivious, happily going down the slide next to him, whizzing by him as he squeaked along. It was just wrong - it seemed too painful. I think I will do my best to enforce a pants on the slide rule with my children, that is reasonable isn't it?

Lucy made a friend at the Belmont playground. She and another girl who was slightly older than Lucy bonded over trying to climb up the slide and then falling back down and laughing their heads off. This repeated over and over and on her way by Lucy skipped by with a big grin on her face telling me she made a new friend. She bopped around, following the girl as happy as could be - she was in her glory. Lucy's new friend and her sister who was younger than Lucy began to play a game that involved placing wood chips on a little shelf. Lucy abuzz with happiness joined right in and I could see her new friend's interest in Lucy was gone. The two girls went about their business and told Lucy she couldn't put her woodchips on the counter. She tried a few times not really getting it, and then walked away with a big handful and a confused little smile not quite knowing what to do with the woodchips. She put them on the end of the slide and went back over.

Now, as a parent I do my best to let certain situations iron themselves out. If everyone is safe and it is a matter of figuring out whose turn it is or a minor scuffle I think kids have to learn to work it out on their own. If the situation starts getting dangerous or out of control I will intervene. I have yelled at a lot of kids, big and small who have crossed the line. Lots of mothers are absolutely clueless and let their kids run wild. Anyway, I could see that Lucy's new friend and her sister did not want Lucy involved in their game any longer and she didn't get the message until they finally yelled, "go away." They ganged up on her and it was two against one. It wasn't my place to yell at the girls, I couldn't force kids to play with my child. Lucy came over, big sad eyes and her voice cracking with tears she said, "my friend is not being nice." My heart broke, it was Lucy's first encounter with mean girls and most certainly would not be the last. I gave her a hug and the mother of the other girls asked what happened and I told her. On her own accord the mother went over to scold the girls and tell them to apologize to Lucy. They did, but the damage was done and all Lucy wanted to do was go home.

The streaker was kind of funny, the mean girls were not. All I could think about is how as Lucy gets older I won't be able to protect her from all of the things girls today have to face. Not that boys don't have to face hardships, but girls can really be cruel. Body image, self-esteem, boys. On the way home she asked me why she was so sad. I explained as well as I could that her feelings were hurt and sometimes it made you cry and you didn't know why. I wish I could freeze her at this age, where she is so happy and the world is hers to explore. When a brush with mean girls can quickly be remedied by going to a different playground and playing squish the watermelon on the slide. But I guess that wouldn't be fair to her.

The Tank and his stats

I just had Josh's four month check-up - the boy is weighing in at 18 lbs 5 oz and is 26.75 inches long. He is big. The doctor just kept saying over and over, "wow, he's big." When a pediatrician says that repeatedly, the neurotic Mom can't help but wonder if my child is too big. But the doctor assured me that Josh was still on the same height and weight growth path that he had been on since birth. My pediatrician doesn't give me the exact percentiles - he points to the growth chart on the computer and shows me the little red x's that are on the border of the actual chart, where line meets grid - that is where Josh is.

It is funny going to these check-up's. I look forward to them to make sure that everything is developmentally on track and have any questions answered. When Lucy was a baby I would keep a running list for weeks and months before appointments. I would write down any ridiculous question that popped into my head and then produce the list when the doctor casually asked if I had any questions. I'd start, "okay, about spider bites," and he'd sigh. At one point I remember pointedly asking him if I was being neurotic. He told me that with all new mothers there was a certain learning curve. Alrighty then, neurotic I was I guess. This time I just go and listen and ask any burning questions that I may have, but my crazy list is gone and I'm a bit more rational.

The biggest thing that we've got to start working on is eliminating night feedings. Clearly he is not struggling growth-wise and he's like a shark at night -he glugs two big 7 oz bottles. He goes to sleep around 7:00 and drinks one bottle at around midnight and then another between three and four o'clock. With Lucy we struggled with sleep issues and eventually at seventeen months let her cry-it-out and she slept through the night. Now I realize that with Josh it is in everyones best interest to get sleep under control a LOT earlier.

Now I go, I try to have someone watch Lucy because the doctor is one place I recognized that she definitely does not like to share attention. On Josh's first visit I brought them both and Lucy stood on chairs telling the doctor that she was a daredevil and eating her cheeze-it's right below the No Eating sign. When it was time to listen to Josh's chest she pulled down her shirt and leaned forward so she could get in on the action. It was just a little too chaotic.

I'm going keep track of Josh's stats here. I'm not the best person for recording this kind of stuff, hopefully the blog will motivate me. Before Josh was born I finally got around to filling Lucy's baby book out. I remembered a lot of stuff, but the little things like which order her teeth came in totally stymied me. I just put a big question mark on the dental diagram and wrote, "sorry, this isn't my thing." Someday she'll get it, hopefully.

Stats for the guy
5/31/07 - I was induced early, Josh's due date was actually 6/3 but due to falling platelet levels I opted for an induction so I could get an epidural if I wanted. I did. It rocked.
Weight: 9 lbs 8 oz
Height: 22 inches

6/4/07
Weight: 9.38 lbs
Height: 22 inches

6/29
Weight: 11.38 lbs
Height: 22.75 inches

7/27
Weight: 13.88 lbs
Height: 24.5 inches

9/28
Weight: 18.5 lbs
Height: 26.75

12/14
Weight: 22.13 lbs (100th percentile!)
Height: 28.25 inches (99thth percentile!)

3/4
Weight: 25.8 lbs
Height: 31.50 inches
Off the charts again for height and weight!

6/2 - Josh's 1 year and Lucy's 3 year
Josh
Weight: 28 lbs
Height: 32 inches
Off the charts again!

9/2 - 15 months
Weight: 30.4
Height: 34 inches
Back on the chart, barely!

12/1 - 18 months
Weight: 31
Height: 34 inches
99th percentile for weight, 97th for height, and head is 100th percentile...big brains!

Lucy
Weight: 33 lbs
Height: 37 1/2 inches

I love you relish...

Lucy was eating her dinner recently and grabbed the jar of relish and hugged it and said, "I love you relish." Lucy is a pretty adventurous eater with a taste for dipping. At nine months old Lucy boycotted her baby food and she never looked back. She likes sushi, especially the flying fish roe and seaweed salad. She carefully looks at the condiment shelves on the fridge door and chooses her "dippy" like a wine connoisseur choosing a rare vintage. We recently made a collage and cut out a picture from a salad dressing advertisement. It top billing, right between Murray Wiggle and a picture of an owl. We have to look at all the different dressings in the picture and name them. Pretty funny huh.

Lucy has her moments. Vegetables are not really her favorites these days and over her little lifetime she has tossed quite a few plates full of perfectly good food. She has a savory little palate. We were recently at Babu and Dedu's (Michael's Mom and Dad) and for dessert were having delicious chocolate fondue with fruit and cookies for dipping. Lucy didn't want any part of it. "I want salty fish," she declared. Salty fish was herring in a jar. I have been with Michael for almost fifteen years now and I have worked my way up to eating a piece or two of salty fish every now and then. Lucy loves it. There are other scary looking fish that come from tins that she eats with gusto. It's crazy!

So my little nut hugs her relish and loves a variety of pickled fish. It is what makes Lucy, Lucy.

Roley Poley Josh

When Lucy was a baby I read the books and eagerly looked for each milestone. The book said things like, "baby should be able to focus on a small object like a raisin." Then I'd proceed to wave a raisin back in forth in front of my baby girl. Okay, not quite that manic - but pretty close. Lucy was not the most mobile baby. She rolled over twice as an infant - yep, count them, one - two. She never crawled and when she learned to walk at almost exactly a year, you had to stand her up and she'd take off. If she fell, she went down like a redwood and couldn't get walking again until she was stood up. I had always heard that boys were quicker with motor skills - and now with Josh and I already see the difference.

About a week ago Josh was on the floor in Lucy's room waiting for me to make him a bottle. His was quite irritated with having to wait so he was making quite a ruckus. When I went back he had rolled over. He's already a little squirmy dude when changing his diaper - craning his little neck to see what is behind him. Now when you put him on the floor he rocks back-and-forth until he is on his tummy. And now he can roll from his tummy to his back. Josh is a big guy, he is no waif - at four months I think he is around seventeen or eighteen pounds. When he rolls he has to work up some momentum and then he throws his chunky little leg over to serve as the anchor for his new position. Then he rolls. This is only the beginning.

With Lucy never really crawling or being an adventurous climber (until recently) I had it easy. I had friends that had little boys who climbed on everything and were opening drawers by the time they were nine months old. I'm not waving tiny little things in front of Josh like a total lunatic. I read the book to see what the developmental milestones are, but I don't hang on every page like I did with Lucy. He hangs out with us, smiles and talks and now is figuring out how fast he can get moving. He laughs his little head off at this goofy flower rattle that has a big smiley face. It cracks him up, he thinks it is hysterical. It will be interesting to see how his skills develop. I have a feeling that he's going to give me a run for my money!

Freebird!!!!

Lucy has always had a strong personality. From the terms by which she decided to come into this world, to how she asserts herself as a toddler. Lucy has developed into this funny and quirky littler person who totally cracks me up on a regular basis. She is such a chatterbox these days. I think it was sometime around twenty-two months or so she just exploded with conversation. We would drive along and chat and I would forget just how little my Lucy was. She absorbs quickly and parrots back everything. I relented and now have censored her music for the most part simply because I don't want her singing "Golddigger" at playgroup.

Lucy has adopted all of these new funny sayings. Some of them are of course strategically modeled and ingrained into her personality. She is a very polite little girl, saying her please and thanks you's when required. If you sneeze she will say "god bless you," and when she burps she says "excuse me." These are things that we have consciously taught her. There are also a number of things which over the course of time she has seen or heard us saying and has become quite fond of integrating into her repoirtoire. The more reaction she gets, the more she does it and so on and so on. Now when she farts, she laughs and says, "there is a duck in my butt." I probably should correct this because it is not very ladylike behavior, but it cracks us up and she is only saying it because it is what we taught her. She will also on occasion, when caught up in listening to music, pump her tiny little fist into the air and intermittently yell, "rock and roll" and "freebird". Again, all us - but she was the one who took it and ran with it. It is hysterical when we are driving to look at her in her carseat, fist up yelling "freebird" as we cruise around Watertown. It makes me proud.

So far this week she has worked "holy moley" into a lot of her chatter. Now she tells knock, knock jokes that don't make any sense at all and she tells me she smells like a beehive which I don't know what it means or where she got it. Everyday there is some new saying or word that seemingly comes out of left field. For a while after Josh was born she would say, "can you do me a favor," because I was always asking her to do me a favor like get Josh's binky or bottle. However, she would use her,"can you do me a favor," line to ask for outrageous things like a drinkbox while she was in her crib ready to sleep.

The development of her language skills are fascinating. To tracking her correct usage of pronouns and verb tense to hearing the funny little sayings she comes up with. There are some things she says now which cannot be described as anything other than Lucy, like Lucy is an adjective. Like when she looks at me with sunglasses on and tells me, "Mom, you look like a movie star." It is just so Lucy and I love it!

Confession

I put mousse in Lucy's hair. I just needed something to tame the curls.

Lucy's First Day of "School"

Before Lucy was born I had originally planned on returning to my job as a seventh-grade English teacher. I had looked at one daycare before she was born. After she was born I continued my search. The summer went by and time was running out. I looked at home daycares, big daycare centers and also explored the possibility of a nanny. There was a big center that seemed okay, but it was in the almost windowless basement of the old arsenal - and it was around $1,600 a month. More than half my salary would be gone. There was a home daycare blocks away from us and on my visit the woman showed me "the viewing animals" for the kids. Okay, snakes and lizards were not exactly what I was seeking for the care of my twelve-week old infant. Then there was the "musical nanny" who brought her flute to the interview. When I asked her how she would calm Lucy during one of her colicky, endless crying jags, she said she'd play the flute. Right.

It wasn't that I had always dreamed of being a stay-at-home Mom. I loved my new teaching career. I just couldn't trust anyone to take care of her, not yet. So MIchael and I decided that the best decision for everyone would be for me to stay home. Of course this meant that buying a house would be put on hold, but for the price of being the one to take care of the goose I was willing to pay. The first year of Lucy's life passed, sleep was still a thing of the distant past. Eventually around the time Lucy was around six or seven months old her refulx induced colic seemed to be subsiding and we could leave the house without her screaming her head off the whole time. It was hard being home, Lucy was so used to me being with her all the time she didn't take well to not being right by my side. There were days when I wondered if she would have been better off in daycare. Would she be less clingy and more independent? There were days when I wanted to pour my coffee in a mug to go and head off to work just like Michael.

The next school year approached and I was thinking of going back to work. Lucy was fifteen months old and enjoyed being around other kids. I looked around at daycares again. On one tour I saw a little girl at the playground standing at the gate crying and crying and just saying, "Mommy," over and over. Everyone totally ignored her, they moved her out of the way so Lucy and I could check out the playground. "It is her first week," they explained. That sealed the deal, I just couldn't do it. She was fifteen months and would have been fine, but again I just couldn't.

As the next year passed I got pregnant and we got ready for Josh. Lucy and I explored the world. We went to the library, took music classes, staked our claim on the playground. She was up for adventures and learning. As a toddler she was not content to sit at home. She liked being out and being busy. After her second birthday she seemed ready to explore the world without me. After we made it through the blur of a summer with an infant and a toddler, I signed her up for a drop-off playgroup at the YMCA one day a week for two hours. I told her she was going to "school" and she was excited. I explained that Mommy wasn't allowed to stay. She mulled it over and would one second be fine with the idea and then the next tell me I had to stay because it was the law.

Today we geared up and I walked her to her classroom. Lucy walked in, saw the little plastic indoor slide and started playing. I actually had to call her name several times to say goodbye. I guess she was fine with me leaving. I dropped Josh off at the babysitting and actually worked out. I listened to grown up music really loud. I had two hours free of worrying about what would set off the next meltdown or naughty business. When the time came I picked up Josh who was happily drooling on one of the babysitters and then stood outside of Lucy's classroom and watched my little girl without her knowing. She was busy bringing things to and from the teacher. She made a Play Doh concoction in the play kitchen and went down the slide. She had a big smile on and her happy spring in her step. The woman running the playgroup said she did fine. There was another boy there who looked like he had probably cried the entire time. He looked so sad. That is what I had prepared for.

Once again I underestimated my Lucy. Now I am seeing that it is time for me to let go as much as she has. I have to trust in others if I want Lucy's world to get a little bigger. I don't regret my decision to stay home. It was a big adjustment for me, must bigger than I had ever anticipated. Literally one day my life was my own and then all of a sudden my life was Lucy. For every parent it is different. Some people choose to go to work because they want to. Some people go to work when have have a child because they have to. Some people stay home. To each his own, I feel very fortunate that I am able to stay home - even if it means waiting a few more years to buy a house.

Now with Josh I'm trying to keep my perspective and let go more than I did with Lucy. I need to find a balance between caring for and smothering my children. Next year Lucy will start pre-school a few days a week and she'll grow even more. It is such a god-awful cliche, but I really do wonder what the future has in store for her.

My Brother Bob

When I was pregnant Lucy watched my belly grow and grow and grow....I mean really grow, I was HUGE! We told her there was a baby inside and she seemed to really understand. Well, as much as an almost two-year-old can understand. She'd hug my belly, give my belly big kisses and we'd talk about what babies did. I told her that babies cried a lot. We asked her what we'd name the baby and she thought for a second and then said, "Bob." Ahhhh yes, Bob, as in Bob the Builder the TV show.

Eventually we told her that her baby brother was going to be named Josh. She preferred Bob. When people would ask the name, she'd tell them Bob and we'd explain who she wanted to name baby brother after and everyone would laugh. Since we had found out that the guy was a guy Michael and I had decided to keep mum on the name. At least there would be a little element of surprise. Every now and then Lucy would leak the real name, but nobody could understand what she was saying so we were in the clear. I thought and worried a great deal about how Lucy would handle the reality of a new baby brother. I tried to prep her as much as I could. I was in knots about leaving Lucy while I was in the hospital. As the time came closer I worried more and then eventually the night before I was induced I put Lucy to bed and sang her lullabies with tears streaming down my face. Her world was totally going to be rocked and she had no idea. I was scared. Labor and birth would be easy, folding the new guy into the life of Lucy is what I was worried about.

So the day arrived, at 6:00 a.m. over bagels and Lucky Charms we told Lucy that I was going to the doctor and the doctor was going to take baby brother out of my tummy. Lucy looked right at me and then grunted as she pretended to pull baby Bob out of my stomach. I knew we'd be okay.

Josh's birth was like having a spa pedicure compared to my labor with Lucy. Despite the fact that he weighed in at nine and a half pounds I was able to really enjoy his coming into the world. Man oh man that epidural really is a medical miracle. We welcomed the little guy into the world and by evening Michael was able to get home in time to read Lucy her bedtime story and put her to bed. When she came into the hospital to visit I thought she'd be all about Mom, but I was wrong. She was so into baby brother, looking at him and gently tickling saying, "tickle, tickle" in a high-pitched baby friendly voice. It was like that old Life Cereal commercial, "she likes it, she likes it!"

The first month or so was tough. For a bit Josh liked to cry whenever he was awake and I had flashbacks to Lucy's colicky days and was terrified. But eventually he settled down and now at three and a half months is a pretty happy-go-lucky guy. He hangs with the girls, goes to the playground and watches his sister with complete adoration. Lucy for the most part has gotten used to having him around and likes it when I tell her he smiled at her or is talking to her when he is cooing. She likes to touch his soft hair and sit next to him on the couch. They flop around together in his or her crib after waking up from a nap. It is really just amazing to see the connection forming already between them. She has many nicknames for him. Sometimes he's "the guy," and other times Josh is "my buddy." She really loves him and it is amazing to see her with him. Now I'm not going to pretend there are not moments of her being less than nice to baby brother, but for the most part those moments are short-lived and she usually self-destructs and bursts into tears on her own when she is not nice to Josh. She loves hims and peppers him with random kisses and it is just the sweetest thing.

I forsee a future with Josh attending many tea parties and most likely getting make up slathered all over him by his big sister. The other day at the playground I saw a big sister and her little brother playing. The little girl had a pretend blow dryer and was giving baby brother a blowout and he sat happily letting her have at it just seeming to enjoy the fact that she was playing with him. I saw a little glimpse into Josh and Lucy's future and smiled to myself.

Scary zoo signage

I guess they don't really sugar coat it at the zoo!

Family Fun Day

This past weekend was the unofficial end of summer. This year I honestly can't say that I'm that sad. Summer with a newborn is kind of a tease. You can't really go to the beach, babies and toddlers get really cranky in the heat and pools and spray parks are out because you can't keep your eye on the toddler without leaving the baby. So, most of our big outings this year have been all together as a family. With two parents and two kids we divide and conquer. Our most recent outing was to The Southwick zoo in Mendon, Massachusetts.

Lucy had lots of fun looking at all the animals. The zoo was great, it was very manageable - they had a lot of animals and you could get close enough to actually see them. We saw camels, monkeys, turtles, rhinos - so many animals. The lion and the tiger were sleeping, so Lucy dutifully yelled at them to wake up but only the lion stirred briefly and then relocated to a new napping spot. We looked at the snakes and she did not like them - just like her mom. I am doing my best not to have Lucy inherit my neurosis as her own, so I pretended that I thought the snakes were neat and tried no to hurl when I saw the gigantic python slithering in the giant snake tank. But alas, she seems to just not like them on her own accord. Maybe she will also not rest easily in a bed that has sheets that are not tucked tight and neat.......Anyway, back to the zoo. Josh had fun, he is as usual mostly along for the Lucy ride. Now he likes facing out in the baby bjorn. He can check everything out and be part of the action. One of Lucy's favorite parts of the zoo other than getting ice cream was the bear ride. They had a little amusement park-like section which had pony rides and little honky-tonk carnival rides. She rode the flying bear ride all by herself and looked so grown up. She was mostly all business steering her bear and then eventually relaxed a little and tried to wave at us as she flew by in her big pink bear. It was so sweet to see her humoring us with her little waves. When she got off the ride we all had a big "family hug" and she said, "I love you family," and I fell in love with my little girl just a little bit more.

Okay, on another note, the zoo in general has a lot of things to generally throw gasoline on the fires of the neurotic mom. First, when we were going into the zoo there were signs that it was bee season and to beware. Well when we sat down to eat lunch bees were swarming. I was flailing my arms about like a windmill and Michael kept telling me to ignore them, but it was tough when they were trying to climb into Lucy's drink box. Okay, I survived lunch without needing to be medicated but then Lucy went into the petting zoo. Forget it. Goats everywhere. Thankfully Lucy gingerly touched a couple baby goats but that was all and then we had a "magic soap" purell party. And then there is the public bathroom element of having a two year old potty trained. There is a whole lot of mommy saying, "don't touch anything....I mean anything Lucy."

Other than the bees and the scary signs the zoo was great. Lucy had fun, ate ice cream and made friends with the animals. Josh had fun because Lucy wasn't poking him in the face and licking his head. Michael and I had fun because our kids were having fun and all-in-all family fun day rocked!

Arts, Crafts and Colonel Kurtz.....

Since Josh has been born we've had a lot more time in the house than usual this summer. So, a couple weeks into his life Lucy, Josh and I hit the craft store to buy some art supplies. I thought "art projects" would be a great way to pass the time indoors. We loaded up on paint, markers, feathers, pom poms's, glue, stamps - you name it, we bought it. As much as it was "art projects" it was more like "new mother desperate to compensate for spending lots of time and attention on the new baby projects." Everyday I would try to spend some one-on-one time with Lucy working on a project. Now the combination of new baby, a two year old and a grown woman almost incapable of anyting craft-related was not quite the dream team - but I was going to make it work.

One afternoon when there was a brief lull in the throes of Josh's newborn fussiness I embarked on an art project to give Lucy and I some special Mom and Lucy time. I got out macaroni, twine, paint, paper....it was a production. Sleep deprived and feeling guilty that Lucy was watching more TV than I'd care to admit, I set out to have some quality time damnit....We started with the macaroni necklaces. As I tried to teach Lucy to string the dried pasta onto the necklace she mostly ignored me, tried to eat the pasta and then crunched it into a million bits when it fell to the floor. Josh was still sleeping so I strung the macaroni while Lucy made a mess and then moved onto stage two of the project - painting. I laid out the paint, gave a lesson on how to paint each stupid noodle and waited for Lucy to obidently and neatly follow my instruction. Instead, she mostly rubbed the paint on her hands like lotion. When I had to leave for a minute to tend to the waking fuss-bucket she painted her arms and stomach. She was very pleased with herself and when I returned to see it she proudly told me she painted her tummy. As she continued to camouflage herself like Martin Sheen in Apocolypse Now, Josh lit up like fireworks on fourth of July. As I placed him on a blanket to wail away, I got Lucy out of her chair and into the tub leaving a trail of fingerpaint handprints behind.

Eventually she got clean, he got fed. I learned that eventually we'd all get the hang of it and if it was going to work it would have to be real fun and not "forced fun" for our art projects together.

Guy Smiley

Josh is now almost three months old and he is so smiley. If you even just think about looking his way, his eyes light up and he smiles with his whole face. I noticed from the very first days of his life that he'd get these sneaky little smiles while he was sleeping. Of course when babies are that little people just discount those sneaky little smiles as gas or something else - but never are those little ones given credit for a real smile. I could tell with, "the guy" as we call him, that his smiles were genuine. They were while he was asleep or in a milk coma, but it was not gas, it was happy. When he was around four or five weeks old I got the first awake smiles. Talking to him on his changing table he'd look right at me and his little lips would curl into a goofy grin. Over the next weeks I noticed that I'd be feeding him and all of a sudden find myself laughing at something Lucy was doing and the big goof would look up at me and smile like he thought it was funny too. Milk would drool out of the sides of his mouth while he'd look like he was going to crack up. Now he smiles when you talk to him or make silly sounds. Lucy likes Josh to sit with her on the couch and while she chatters away or watches TV. Josh loves it too, he just looks over at his big sister and smiles. She is oblivious to his adoration. It is so nice and reassuring to see his smiles. He's just kind of a happy-go-lucky guy. He smiles like he's on the verge of laughter. Lucy was never that smiley as a little baby. Her poor little body was usually in too much upheaval from refulx that she was usually to pissed or uncomfortable to smile. It's nice to see a baby's gums from a big grin rather than a constant cry!

Potty Party

There are some things that I really amp up and get neurotic about as a parent. When Lucy was a colicky infant I researched formulas, pacifiers, bottles, nipples and everything else endlessly. I was certain that I could find the answer to stop her crying in a book, or on a website. As she got older I read about transitioning to solid foods, starting milk, drinking out of sippy cups and any other change to her routine. I would research endlessly, reading posts from other Moms on different approaches for tackling these issues. There were certain milestones that I got hyper about, and after Lucy's second birthday I was beginning to ramp up the process to tackle potty training.

When Lucy was around twenty-one or so months I bought a potty seat. When I brought it home and showed her she held it by the handles and stuck her face through it and grinned a huge ass grin. Okay, not quite time, so the potty seat went away. Eventually around Lucy's second birthday I busted the potty seat back out and every now and then would sit Lucy on it to just hang out. Clothes on, clothes off she'd sit for a couple mintues and then get bored. Every now and then she'd wake up dry in the morning, but there were no other cues for readiness that the books told me to be on the lookout for. When Josh was two weeks old, the whole house was just remembering how babies cry a lot and things can be pretty hectic. One morning I got Lucy out of her crib, took off her diaper and it was dry and then asked her if she wanted to sit on the potty and she said yes. Sure enough she peed and it was like the first landing on the moon - clapping, everyone looking at the pee. I was so proud of my little girl. Over the course of the next couple weeks she peed more and pooped on the potty. She was more ready than I was for this. I hadn't prepared my sticker charts or anything! Sure there were a couple days with pee on the floor and one poop in the underwear, but nothing too horriffic! She had basically potty trained herself. So we went out and bought underwear. We got fun colors, Dora underwear, Ariel underwear and even some Diego boy briefs since "the man" doesn't think little girls need Diego underwear. Anyway, I took Lucy to the toy store for a present for doing so good on the potty and she chose a trash truck.

My little Lucy proved me wrong once again. Sometimes I feel bad because I think I underestimate her. She took a new room and her baby brother in total stride - both things that sent me into a web surfing tizzy. I am so proud of her, she is becoming such a little girl. Now that she isn't in diapers she has total plumbers crack in like 90% of her clothes - it is pretty funny. She loves to pee in other people houses and relishes in everyone looking at her poo. We talk about her poo like she is laying golden eggs, but it seems to work. I dreaded the whole potty process, but Lucy once again proved to me that she is smarter than I give her credit for.

p.s. I use the word potty all the time now. It would have really annoyed me before I had kids to hear the word potty - but it really does sound much nicer that toilet. Given that I talk about it a LOT of time now, I'd much rather throw the word potty out there eleven million times a day than toilet.

The Meatball Song

I am always singing songs to Lucy. I am a horrible singer, but she loves songs and music so I sing songs she knows, make up songs, hum - whatever. So, last week Lucy, Michael, Josh and I were all loafing around on our bed and I started singing "On Top of Spaghetti". For those of you who are unfamiliar with this classic it is basically a song about a rogue meatball rolling off of the table and onto the floor, until eventually the meatball is nothing but mush. Sung to the tune of "On Top of Old Smokey", the meatball song is one I remember fondly from my own childhood. I thought it would be a funny, silly song that Lucy would really like. As I was singing I could see Lucy getting sad. It wasn't a typical toddler big burst into tears sad, it was a quivering of the lip and tears welling in the eyes sad. As I got to the end of the song tears were streaming down Lucy's little face and she was crying. So sad about the meatball, she was totally overcome with emotion and had no idea why. My heart melted. Her raw emotion and empathy were so sincere I just gave her a big hug. It was so funny and cute at the same time. I wanted to keep singing the meatball song because it was so cute, but it just made Lucy too sad. Now when we talk about "The Meatball Song" she tells me not to sing it because she cries and then she asks me why it makes her cry. She is such a funny little bird, so sensitive. The silly little meatball song making her cry makes me smile. I'm not quite sure why.