Summary of Recent Developments

Avery - favorite subject in school is art.  Has discovered a love of horses and Batman (?).  Is learning to play chess, taught by Dad.  Getting better and better at reading.  She reads books to little sis all the time. Still wants to take gymnastics, and we are working on finding a way for her to do that.  She and I went to her first ballet, the Nutcracker, a couple weeks ago.  She dressed in finery, and the high


 Elena's new words and phrases are too many to list, but the cutest highlights are: "Dopit!" (Stop whatever you're doing before I put the smack-down on you),  "Go-way!" (self-explanatory), "Wantit!" (also obvious), "Wike-it!" (I don't like it),  "Doo!" (I want one, too),  "Back!" (Put it back, or I want it back).  When helping with the laundry:  "Meents" (pants),  "Gox" (socks), "Doight" (Shirt), "Dacket" (Jacket).  She likes to identify each item of clothing as she pulls it out of the dryer and hands it to me, i.e. "Daddy doight,"  "Lena meents." Singing: "Binkle daw, uhp-ah-bowjah....wike-yeeeewwww!" This is a combination of the parts she knows of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star and a song Avery likes from a show on Nick Jr.

Oh, and everyone's current favorite: "Oh bah gosh." (oh my gosh, always said in an incredulous tone).

Sick Kids + No Halloween Party = Pumpkin Carving Extravaganza

There was considerable disappointment about not being able to go to the party we'd been planning for, so we splurged on a few more pumpkins than usual and partied at home.  Avery helped choose the jack-o-lantern designs and got to help Dad do the carving, and Elena helped herself to anything anyone else was doing.

Brains!

 

Novelty of the Week: The Potty

Poop, Pee, Potties, Dead Moose, and Throw Up

Colds are going around, and our elder seems to have contracted one from the younger, because last night she started coughing before bed - that dry, continuous, post-nasal drip kind of cough.  We set up a humidifier, and since I know how she rolls when it comes to sleeping with an on-coming cold (and by "sleeping" I mean "not sleeping at all and keeping the rest of the house awake with her") I made her take a belt of cough medicine.  She typically complains on the rare occasions she's required to take something, but tonight's complaining was pretty creative, I thought.  While alternating between microscopic sips of the medicine and huge swallows of water, she declared that the medicine tasted like pee and poop together.  Next sip. "Ewww, now it tastes like pee and poop AND potties!"  Another sip.  "And dead moose!" Last chug.  "Make that pee and poop and potties and dead moose and THROW UP!"

How she knows what any of that stuff tastes like, I don't want to know.

Colbert on Immigrants

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/27/alabama-immigration-law-colbert-i-told-you-so_n_1035165.html

"No!" and "Go Away!"

Okay, so it wasn't quite that emphatic.  But tonight I had to hear it from both kids, and that's a first.  Elena has finally started to speak the word "no," and she says it repeatedly and with great enthusiasm.  As in:
"Let's change your diaper."
"No!"

"Time to get dressed, honey."
"No, no!"

"Get down from there, that's dangerous-"
"NO!"

"Please stop drinking your bath water!"
"NO NO NO!!!"

And then there's Avery.  Tonight I read stories with her, as I always do, then turned out the light and put on her bedtime music, which is Enya's first solo album.  Normally I lie down and snuggle with her for at least a few minutes, then tell her I need to go downstairs and clean up and I will check on her in five minutes.  And when I go back up to check on her after a generous five minutes, she's normally fast asleep.  I enjoy and look forward to this ritual.  It's a bright spot in my day.  There's that few minutes where we're done with stories and she's just talking and telling me about her day or about something she's thinking about, and I feel completely peaceful, like everything in the world is just fine.  I like my few minutes of delusion, okay?  Tonight, for the first time ever, she turned to me when track #3 (her favorite) started playing, and told me she'd like to be alone.  Well.

I dutifully kissed her cheek, said my I love you's and bid her goodnight, promising to check on her in a few minutes but knowing she wouldn't need me to.

It's too soon.  I'm not ready, dammit.

Language Explosion

The toddler is saying so many new words these days, I don't know if I can remember them all right now.  I'd probably have to post about every ten minutes to keep up with her.  But here's a partial list:

Juice
Water (sounds like "whaaat?")
Nana (banana)
Cheese
Apple
Cookie

Tea (whenever she sees someone holding a mug)
Eat
Done
"Oh, my!"
Pen (sounds like "bun")
Swing
Bath
Piggy
Poop
Potty
Phone
Walk
Down
Ouch

Also, she says "peeeeesh?" when she's begging for something, so we're assuming that's "pleeeeease?"  Which she totally got from listening to big sis.  Interesting that she doesn't say the word "no" yet.

Hurricane Camping Homework Farm

.....A summary of last month's events with the kids, since I haven't blogged much.  So I'll lump all the pictures together and let them speak for themselves. 

Taking a walk before the storm really hit

Rain + drain = equilibrium

Not everyone was excited to come back in the house.

Morning-after fun in the dwindling pool

Power's out?  Let's play dress-up!

Backyard camping! Avery helped Mom put up the tent.

..Hey, princess fairies go camping too, right?

Building up the fire with Dad

Elena: "They have homework in Kindergarten now.  Yeesh."

Elena assigns herself some homework, makes big sis feel better.

On the way out the door to go to Ashton Farm

Elena at the farm in her Daisy Dukes.

Avery catches her third chicken of the day.  Poor bird.

Avery hops on horseback like an old pro.

Basketball Head: Story of a Grade School Guidance Counselor

Yep, that's what we used to call her.  Sixth through eighth grades.  Her real name was Mrs. X, or something.  I'm not going to share her real name, which I do remember, not out of any courtesy for her, but because Basketball Head is more ridiculous.  She was mean.  I don't remember anything specific she did that was mean....wait, that also is a lie.  I remember a good few.  I came to her once with intense distress over a personal situation having to do with my parents, who were divorcing, and she was flip and made me feel like a retard.  My best friend was verbally abused by her;  I would go so far as to say emotionally manipulated by her.  Basketball Head was maybe a bit sick.  By the way, we called her Basketball Head because of her hair.  It was short and fuzzy, wiry-curly, so thin you could easily see her scalp, and colored something weird and pale and nondescript.  Why this reminded us of a basketball is a mystery, but look, we were twelve.

My niece went to the same school twenty-some years later, and fortunately B.H. had long retired.  What made this woman want to be a guidance counselor is not only obvious, it's frightening: she enjoyed the privilege of being a jerk to easy prey.  Now that I'm a mother and have a child in school, I'm suddenly remembering stuff long buried in the old coffers.  I realize we're WAAAAAAY too early in the game to worry about such things, and I also realize that my kid goes to a school that so far we could not be happier with, but facts and logic have never stopped my anxiety disorder yet, and they're certainly not about to when it comes to my kids.

I had one small victory with Basketball Head, in 8th grade when we all had to fill out some career survey thing and then have our results evaluated in a private consult with her.  My profile showed that I should have become either a meteorologist or a babysitter for brain-injured pigs.  No, really....I have no idea what it said.  Too long ago.  What I do remember is that when B.H. asked me what I thought I might want to do, I told her I wanted to be a philanthropist.  I had recently learned what that word meant, and I thought it was hilariously funny - to be a philanthropist you had to have a shitload of money, right?  Isn't that great as a career choice, then?  I mean, HA HA HA HA HA HA!!!!!

....Tumbleweeds.  Among her many crimes, B.H. had no sense of humor.  I have since told that joke to probably too many people over the years (.."ya know what I always wanted to be growing up?  A philanthropist!  HA HA HA HA HA HA!!!)  It's kind of like when I crack wise at the doctor's office, which I like to do because dammit, going to the doctor is stressful - rarely have I gotten the response I wanted.  Tough crowd, these "professionals" with "credentials."  But that's another post.

Chopped Up Fish Farts

So, the summer crop of experiments has been harvested, dug up, and composted over the back fence, and the soil has been turned over.  It was a good crop - all credit to GW for defying the drought and the record heat this summer.  We had basil, chili peppers, cucumbers, a couple of watermelons, and a ton of really awesome cherry tomatoes.  Among the casualties were the pumpkins, which died of some horrible bacterial infection that turned the insides of their stems to goo.  The cilantro lasted about ten minutes, its delicate little leaves fried by the intense sun like mosquitoes in a bug zapper.  But a great many gardening lessons were learned, and the next go should be easier. 

Last weekend Avery was helping GW plant some carrot seeds, and he decided to fertilize.  He doesn't just use Miracle-Gro - he has this rust-colored concoction in a milk jug that he made himself, and although the plants love it, GW's the first to acknowledge that it smells like the rear end of a cow with dysentery.  Noticing this, Av commented on it and asked her dad what, exactly, this foul stuff was made of.  "Mostly it's chopped up fish parts," he replied helpfully.  She seems to have made a highly appropriate pronunciation error of that last word.  We thought it was pretty funny.

First Day of School!!

Wow.  My big girl.

This first week they're starting late, to give the K parents & kids some time to adjust and learn the ropes.  So there were a lot of kids like Av, escorted in by their whole fam damilies.  We ended up getting there pretty early, but so did her friend E. and family, and when their teacher discovered they've known each other since dirt, she switched seat assignments around so they could be next to each other.  That was sweet.

I don't know who's more excited about this whole school thing, her or me.  

Posing in her self-chosen first-day outfit

The look isn't complete without the backpack!

Note El's self-tattoo on right arm, via Sharpie.  Thinks she's clever, that one.

Little Sis needs a backpack, too!

More New

El:  "Book!"  "Shoe!"  "Gook!" [we think it means "Look!"].  Two-word sentences are emerging.  "Up me!" for example.  Not hard to figure out what that one means.

Av:  Kindergarten starts in five days.  Not only is she going to a great charter school and got the best Kindergarten teacher there, according to parent poll, but as of yesterday one of her very best buddies will now be attending her school and even better, will be in her class.  This is a huge bonus for all, adults and kids alike.

More later...

New Words, Etc.

Yeah, you're a toddler, and you're super-cute, and everyone loves you.  They can't help it.  Your little pursed lips in a half-smile are enough to disable an army of hardened criminals.  Your tinkling laugh would fetch more fans than a Justin Bieber book signing.

Here's your latest:
            "Ock."  [Sock]
            "Didit." [I Did It]
            "Nine-nine." [Night-night]
            "Uck." [Stuck]
            "Aaaaaah-yoooooo?" [Where AARE You??, as in playing hide-and-seek]
            "Ein!" [It's mine, step off]
            "Out" [pronounced "ouwwwt" as in "get me the hell out of my high chair."]

We still have Hi and Bye and Mommy and Dad-dad and Aay-ee and Hot, but lately you're trying out a lot more new sounds.  One day you watched me make the sound "Mmmmoooooo!" about sixty times until you figured out how to make your little mouth do it, too.  That was cute.  And of course you imitate absolutely everything big sister does.  My favorite is watching you dance and sing when she does (you spin around and around as fast as you can - that's dancing), and watching you try to jump.  You can't get your feet off the ground yet, but it won't be long.

Chill in my shades.

Painted it myself.  You know you want the look.

Chef Lena - pensive as she contemplates her next recipe.

A tad nappish after swimming in her cousins' pool.

Swing!

For her acting portfolio.

Sisterly Love, and Other Funny Stuff

Av informed me recently that she wishes she lived with her cousins, and that Elena was the cousin she visited twice a year instead of her sister.  Ahh, love.  I think all older siblings have these thoughts, though.  And when you're five, you think nothing of saying them out loud.  To wit, earlier this evening we were all upstairs in the play room for wind-down time before bed.  Av was dressed up elaborately as a magic fairy named "Selena," demonstrating the powers of her wand and engaging the rest of the family in her scenario.  I asked her if she was the only magic fairy or if there were others, and she replied that her little sister was a fairy as well.

   "Oh," I said, "and what's her name?"
   "Her name is.....Gross." This struck me funny.  "Ah," I replied, trying not to laugh too hard and thus reinforce this bit of knavishness, "why is that?"
   "Uhm, because she poops in her pants and because she puts stuff in her mouth that's not food."  She was enjoying my amusement a little too much, so I steered the subject in another direction.  Eventually.

I try not to make too big a deal about sibling jealousy - most of it is completely normal, and a little joking at the toddler's expense is harmless....for now, anyway, while she still doesn't quite get it.  That won't last much longer.  But sometimes Av needs to let off a little steam about the difficulties of having a baby for a sibling.  I'm grateful that she lets off that steam by joking and laughing, rather than the alternatives.  She's such a good big sister - always kind, always trying to help, and when she does feel jealous or put on a shelf she takes it out on me, rather than the baby.  Or she just simply tells me how she's feeling, and we talk about it for a minute or I try to do something to make up for it.  Pretty amazing, I think, for a kid her age.  I don't take credit for that, either - that's just her.

All My Friends Are Starting Kindergarten Next Week

This is the town of "year-round" school.  I talked to my mother earlier, the retired teacher, and she has never heard of such a thing.  The fuuhh?  Isn't there year-round school in every town now, or do I truly live in the asshole of the East Coast, where everything must be revised, redistricted, re-zoned, and repackaged?  How about regurgitated?

Okay, so I can see the benefits of year-round, and I will be eating the words I wrote in the previous paragraph next year at this time when I'm working 15 or more hours outside the home and have to pay for child care for two kids instead of one.  Plus I'll have a supremely bored 6-year-old instead of a somewhat bored 5-year-old clamoring at my heels for more stuff to do.  Hopefully my fifteen-plus hours a week will be able to pay for said stuff, and it'll be a non-issue.  There's also the pesky clinical research that shows year-round educated children to be superior in their test scores, having had less temporal interference between bouts of learning.  Whatever.  I'm such a curmudgeon, being all of 41 years old, and I have my weird attachment to this animal called "summer vacation," like many others my age.  True, the animal has changed quite a bit.  Gotten fat.  Instead of thriving on same-age neighbors, mud pies, cul-de-sacs and bikes, it now enjoys a less spicy mix of back yard toys with the boring siblings, parent-initiated art activities, and streaming Netflix.

Along the same curmudgeonly lines, in the above-mentioned conversation with my mother we talked about our perceptions of relationships with grandchildren.  Av was quite upset when my mom's recent week-long visit ended, and my mom expressed some surprise at this.  She holds that when we were kids, we barely spent any time with her parents, Bob and Helen (Pappy and Grammy, to us kids).  The weird thing is, I feel like we saw them all the time.  Or at least I never felt deprived of their presence the way Av seems to feel about her grandmother.  True, my mom is the only grandparent she has.  I had the full complement of four grandparents until I was ten or so.  But my mom pointed out that the memories I have of Bob and Helen are really memories of playing on the farm with my cousins, with Grammy and Pappy in the distant background putting up with our presence on their property.  To illustrate, Mom reminisced out loud about the time that we went to visit them at their winter home in Key West, and my grandfather's motorbike somehow became broken that week, although it was functional the week before and he was able to get it "fixed" the moment we were on the plane home.  He just didn't want a 16-year-old and a 13-year-old riding it, even though there were less than three miles of paved grounds in their double-wide retirement community, and the speed limit was probably 20.  Yeah, old Pappy was a bit of sourpuss.  But hey, I didn't know that at the time and I had a blast in Key West.  As I did at the farm, and what I remember is not that Pappy holed up in his barn caressing his ancient motorcycle collection until we were gone, or that Grammy stood methodically in front of her kitchen sink waiting for the kids to stop abusing her old piano.  I remember all kinds of fun times, and it seemed to me that our grandparents were a part of it.  I can only hope that Av's twice-a-year visits with her cousins will stretch out in her memory as much more than that, the way mine did.  Thank goodness for the distorted cognitions of childhood.  Or more hopefully, the inaccurate memories of curmudgeonly adults.

El's Words, Etc.

 "Hi!"

"Up"

"Mahhhmmmmeeeeeeeee..."

"Uh oh"

"Ush" (Brush)

"Hot"

"Hat"

"Aaaaaaaaapee" (Happy - her new one)

"Aieee" (Avery)

"Dad-dad"

And of course, the old standby:  "BweeeeeeeeeeeeeedabwapaghakgahkgahkdahgheEEEEEEEEahhhhgh"

Please pardon my excitement over the spewing of nonsense syllables.  I never had this with the first one, who was clear and articulate like Dame Peggy Ashcroft since age 10 months.

And then there's the dancing.  We hear music and we spin around in a drunken circle, la-la-ing along.

We look a tad like Uncle Mike in this pic

Oh, hi.

Hanging out with cousin L. in the pool

I hate this.  Obviously.

Beach.  It's hard work, Brah.

The Graduate, and Summer Kick-off

Av graduated from preschool recently, on May 27th.  Her uncle M., aunt J., and cousin L. were visiting from Seattle, so we all turned out for the big day.  There was a concert, in which the children sang the old girl scouts song "Make new friends, but keep the old....."   I tried not to cry.  Avery bowed during the applause after each song, which has become her signature move at school and she's influenced a couple of her little girlfriends to do the same. The kids went up one by one to receive their "diploma" from their teachers. I can't believe it.  Kindergarten in a few months.  Big, big, big.

So graduation ends and summer begins with our visit from my brother and family. Their toddler is growing by leaps and bounds, talking up a blue storm, and they are expecting their second baby close to L.'s second birthday.  I'd put up pics, because L. is one of the cutest babies ever to walk to planet, but she's not mine to publish.  So the millions of people who read my blog will have to eat their hearts out.  Sorry. 

The main point is that Av and El are freaking awesome, and I'm super-proud of my beautiful 5-year-old girl who is moving swiftly into a new phase of life, ready to take on the world.  I am absolutely the luckiest mom in the world.  I'd qualify that statement by saying that everybody says that, but the truth is that everybody doesn't. 

Polymath, anyone? I'm biased....a tad....

Chalkboard Easel Art, and Fashion (below), by Av

She can also solve just about any addition or subtraction problem using poker chips.  And she knows and uses the word "charcuterie."  Her new superhero name is Ainu.

I know I'm bragging on her big time, but I can't help it, okay?  It's not my fault my kids are smarter than I am.

More Fun Than A Pack Of Hairballs

Av's preschool held it's bazzillianth annual "Spring Fling,"  a huge fundraiser and super-fun event for the kids, this past weekend.  As all of us parents organize, design, plan, create, and run the entire day, she had plenty of time to anticipate it and knew a whole lot about what it was going to look like and what activities were on the docket.  The day before, by way of describing exactly how much she was looking forward to it, she declared to me that she knew it was going to be "more fun than playing with a pack of hairballs."  I replied that I certainly hoped so.

This is Av at a recent beach play date with friends. She looks cold, you say?  Yeah, that's because the water was approximately one degree fahrenheit. Five-year-olds "don't care about being cold," as she is often telling me in order to justify, say, wearing a pretty sundress to school in February, or plunging full-body into the chilly surf in late April.  I feel a moral obligation to point out that this photo wasn't taken by me, but rather by my talented friend E.J.

Ostensibly the beach is more fun than hairballs, as well.

Have Curls, Will Climb Into Baskets Meant For DVD's and Magazines

Today

Today the older one learned to zip her sweatshirt by herself.  And then she spent most of the morning up in a tree, and has the scrapes and bruises to prove it.

The little one got her first bandaid today.  It was pink.  Knee-scrape. 

These two, they're a couple of swashbucklers, I say.

There's Gotta Be A Better Word For This....

...than "cute."  Because it's beyond cute.  So cute it's almost painful.  Like when GW walks in the door from work, and El holds up a hand to him and shouts, "Eye!" (Hi).  Like when she burps, and if I say, "burp!" she'll laugh (how does she know that's funny?).  Like when she plays peek-a-boo with herself in a mirror.

She now says "Mama, up," when she wants me to pick her up.  She's practicing her walking all the time.  She's recently refined her kissing technique - instead of opening her mouth and diving for your face, she opens and closes her lips against your cheek.  She still likes the game where she tries to bite your nose and you try not to let her and you squeal in a really high voice.  She's a ham, like her sister.  She calls Av "Ah-ee."  Neat.

Let's see...finished unloading the shoe bench, what's next?

Grinning at Dad

Big Sis helps her walk

Hiey!

She clawed her way into the fridge and helped herself to a bloody corpse...I mean plum.

Her favorite ride.