Letting go too soon

I posted this a few hours ago, and I just got a call from my friend Samantha. 

"I just read your blog," she said, pausing and waiting for my reaction.  When I just said, "Yeah?"  Samantha, who has never expressed annoyance with me the entire time I've known her, began what, for her, could be considered a rant.  She was completely horrified that, "instead of helping Kate, I'd stand there taking pictures."

When I looked again at the pictures, I've decided they should be accompanied by an explanation.  

This was not the first time this had happened.  Kate kept falling every time she tried this trick.  She did not want help.  Each time she'd finish, with a fall, I'd suggest, "I think you might be letting go too soon."  And each time I'd say this, Kate would adamantly insist she was not letting go too soon, and then she'd get up and do it again. 

We now have a couple foam pads under the rings.

Cake mix

Dave has turned Kate into a big Bucks fan, so both of them were disappointed when tickets to tonights playoff game were sold old.  I decided we'd have a little party at home and that I'd make them a chocolate cake, shaped like a basketball.  Since Dave, for some reason, prefers cake made from a mix to made from scratch, that meant I had to buy a cake mix.

When Dave and I were playing with the kids this morning and talking about our plans for the day, I said, "I have to run to the store and get a cake mix."

Anna, not wanting to be left out, asked, "We get an Anna mix, too, Mama?"  (She'd evidently heard "Kate mix.")

Perpetrator

Yesterday Anna was the perpetrator in an act of nursery violence.

Okay, so really, she just hit another little girl in the face with a toy, but even saying it that way makes me cringe.  I'm horrified.  I never wanted to be the mom of "that kid," the kid the other mothers want to keep their kids away from.  I realize we're not there, yet.  From what I can tell it was an isolated incident, but it sure is hard to even hear your kid did it once.  I thought it was bad when Kate had her hair pulled a couple times by another kid in her class at church, but this is hard in a whole different way.

And that's just the half of it.  As I got the kids in the car, I was apologizing to my friend Samantha.  (Thankfully, Anna chose to attack the child of my sweet, easy-going friend.)  Samantha insisted her daughter Abby was fine, and she tried to make me feel better by saying Anna's only two.  I insisted Anna was old enough to know better, and left things by apologizing for the upteenth time. 

When I got in the car, I didn't say anything more to Anna.  I'd already talked with her when I'd first picked her up.  All of the sudden, Anna piped in with, "It otay, Mama.  Abby fine!" 

I, completely frustrated, insisted, "It's not okay, Anna.  It's not okay to hit!  Hitting is naughty.  We don't hit." 

Anna came back with, "I only two."

Update on the twins...

We had our 23 week ultrasound yesterday, so we got to see the babies.  They looked so much bigger, which helped me feel a little better about also looking "so much bigger."  At one point the baby girl was kicking the baby boy in the head.  We saw it clearly.  Poor little boy!

Here's a little collage showing my growth...

And here's a silly pictue I made in explanation of the my quick growth.

Pre-adolescence

My Anna is a pre-adolescent. I'm taking a lot of liberty with the prefix pre-, of course, since she turned two only a couple months ago, but still… here is a conversation we had in the van earlier, coming home from the grocery store.

Anna asked, in an extra sweet voice, "We watch a movie, Mama?"

"No, honey," I respond, "it’s almost bedtime."

"Please, Mama," Anna persists, "it be fun!"

I smile, "I know, Anna, but it’s late. We can look at some books instead?"

Anna looked so disappointed, I thought of a compromise.  "Hmmm..."  I continue, "Do you want to play a few minutes, while I unload the groceries?"

Anna practically rolled her eyes at me when she responded, "No… that not fun!"

THEN... later this evening, as I'm trying to get Anna's pajamas on, she's playing with her dollhouse.  I tell her, "Anna, come here.  We need to get your pajamas on now."

"I play one minute," she responds.

"No," I counter, "now, please."

"Just a sec-in," she manages to pronounce, unmistakably.

Wow.  I'm in trouble.  Maybe someone can console me with a thought like "two is the new twelve"?

My baby

Anna's still struggling to understand the "babies in the belly" thing.  For the second time now, she saw me holding a friend's baby (This one was a 20 pound 9 month old.) and asked me, "That your baby, Mama?" 

I laugh when I try to figure out what she's thinking.  So, Mommy said she has babies in her belly and that they'll come out and live with us.  I wonder if that's what just happened.  Will she bring this one home?

I try not to make things harder on her, since the little things already upset her so much.  This was what she looked like a few mornings ago when I told her we had to wait until after breakfast to read her book.

Giving Anna a headache

My friend Samantha and her four kids were over Friday.  The kids were playing outside, and, as we pushed the younger girls on the swings, Samantha relayed to me a really frustrating experience she'd just had that afternoon.  Affected by her story, I said, "Urgh, just hearing about it gives me a headache!"  Anna, looking at me as she swung, asked, "You otay, Mama?  You head hoht [hurt]?"  Feeling immediately guilty for worrying her, since she's lived through multitudes of my migraines the last couple months, I tried to explain, "Oh, no, honey, Mommy's fine.  My head doesn't hurt.  I was just joking."  Anna didn't say anything for a minute.  She looked kind of dejected.  Then she mumbled, "I joking, too, Mama."

Anna's feelings healed quickly after a few sprinkles.

Nicknames

A week or so ago, Anna started referring to her sister as "Kate the Monkey."  I don't even know if I fully caught what she was saying the first few times, because she always uses it in casual conversation.  "You going to wear your coat, Kate the Monkey?"  "No, Mama, Kate the Monkey's fabwit [favorite] color purple."  "Where Kate the Monkey go?" 

I thought giving a nickname for her sister was appropriate, given the fact that she has often referred to her father as "Daddy the Dabe [Dave]" for the last couple months.  In fact, yesterday, she didn't want to be separated from him before he went to work, so Dave let her play in the bathroom while he showered.  She serenaded him the whole time with a song she'd composed just for the occassion, "Daddy the Dabe, Daddy the Dabe, Daddy Dabe, Daddy Dabe, Daddy the Dabe..." 

I've found the nicknames completely adorable... until I got mine.  She's calling me Mama the Big Red Dog. 

Chocolate covered strawberries

Since the strawberries in the grocery store have become more edible and less expensive lately, we've made chocolate covered strawberries as treats three times this week.  Each time, the girls have loved them, wearing them on their fingers as they happily eat them.

Thursday my parents were here.  Anna had gotten even messier than usual eating her strawberries.  My dad, who's always steered clear of messy little fingers, implored my mom or me to clean Anna up.  "She's a complete mess," he explained. 

Kate commented, "She's a chocolate covered human."

Breaking a bad habit

For months we've been trying to help Kate stop putting things in her mouth.  We've even had charts where she works to earn enough stickers for a bigger reward by remembering to keep things out of her mouth.  Anna, seeing the attention Kate's gotten over the issue, has taken to putting things in her mouth at times, which is always met with a quick reprimand.

While Dave and I were building the swing set in the back yard, Dave was putting screws into the holes I was predrilling.  He held a couple extra screws between his lips.  Anna walked over and said, "Get that out of you mouth, Daddy!"

"No show" socks

Last night we were going to the neighbors' house.  I have been wearing my shoes without socks, but decided to grab a pair of  socks, so I wouldn't be barefoot in their house when I took off my shoes. I was sitting by the door putting on a pair of "no show" socks, the small kind that don't go over your ankle. Anna crouched down and watched me for a moment before she decided she had to step in and help.  "Those don't fit, Mama!" she exclaimed, "Those Kate's socks!"

Picture this

You might remember a couple weeks ago when Anna was so annoyed that I didn't let her paint on her hands.  Well, she seems to be understanding the concept better lately.

Today Kate and Anna were working on their entries for a coloring contest at the library.  The contest guidelines were to draw a picture of a scene from a favorite book, but Anna, being just two, didn't understand this.  Anna would talk about what she was drawing, and Kate kept trying to correct her, telling her she had a to draw something out of her book.  Finally, I said, "It's okay; Anna can just draw something out of her head if she wants to."  Kate didn't respond, but Anna looked at me, partially amused, paritally horrified, and said, "No-o!  Mama, I can't draw on my head!"

Poor girls

My girls had a rough day today. 

Poor Anna. 

We were eating outside at a friend's house when I heard Anna joyfully exclaim, "Bee!"  Then, as if I were frozen to intercede in time, I looked down to see her grabbing a yellow jacket in her chubby little toddler hands and then cry out in pain.  As I ran around the table for her, she started crying.  I scooped her up and rushed her into the house, telling her we'd make it better.  I got ice out of the freezer and stuck it on her finger, but she was inconsolable.  I knew how much pain she was in, and there was nothing we could do to take it away.  My friend Katrina, a pediatrician, looked at it and suggested we give her some Benadryl and Motrin, which Jamie got for her, and then Jamie put on Dora to distract her.  I just held Anna on the couch in front of Dora, as she cried and I tried to keep the ice on her finger, which must have been throbbing in pain. 

And Poor Kate. 

An hour and a half later, after Anna had gone into a Benadryl induced slumber on my lap, then watched another Dora, Anna dozed on a blanket on the lawn while Kate played on the rings on the swingset.  Kate stepped jumped down from the rings and was going to walk under the slide to go around to the monkey bars.  She didn't realize that immediately under the slide was where the swings were, where her friend Parker was swinging very high.  Before anyone could do anything, Parker's shoe hit Kate square in the ear.  She flew and landed smack on the ground, on the other side of her head.  She grabbed her ears in her hands and writhed in pain on the lawn.  I felt like I was going to throw up.  I ran over to her, trying to comfort her, and quickly told Parker it wasn't his fault.  Parker just sat there on the swing stunned, looking at Kate, looking sick.  I picked Kate up and tried to comfort her.  Anna, in her Benadryl haze, got up off the blanket and began to rub Kate's back, putting her head down by Kate to try to make her feel better.  Poor Parker said, "I couldn't stop."  I, again, said it wasn't his fault;  it was no one's fault.  Kate, still grabbing her ears, kept insisting, between sobs, "I'm okay.  I'm okay.  I'm okay."  Then a minute later, she changed her mantra to, "I want to go home.  I want to go home now.  I want to go home." 

It was all so sad.

How blessed I am that this kind of thing breaks my heart.  This kind of little thing.  This kind of everyday, healthy kid stuff.

At Target

I've had this ongoing joke with the girls about where they got cute parts of their bodies.  I'd say, "Where did you get that cute little nose... at Target?"  Now, by the time I get to the question, they both supply the "Target" answer.  This morning, out of nowhere, Anna tacked on a little addition to the answer.  She was showing me her tongue, and I said, "Oh, cute tongue!  Where did you get it?"  She said, "At Target... for my birfday!"

Quite a sight

When we got the minivan, it came with a free trial of XM Radio.  I didn't even want it, because I didn't want Dave to get addicted to it and end up paying however many dollars a month for it.  Dave's doing fine.  He enjoys the radio, but he's got an enormous collection of music on his iPod to fall back on.  However, he introduced me to The Grateful Dead channel, and I love it.  All the songs I loved in college, played in the perfect order, and not off very scratchy bootlegs, but in perfect clear sound.  I'm still too cheap to pay each month, but I'm not opposed to getting as much use out of it as I can while it's free.  The other day, on the way back from the grocery store, they were playing on of my favorites, Black Muddy River.  When we got home,  the song was still playing, but the kids couldn't wait to get on the new swingset, and I had to five big bags of groceries to unload.  This situation set up what had to be a hilarious sight for anyone who would have happened to observe.

Picture this:  A nice suburban home.  A newly constructed swing set with two little kids.  A brand new, completely yuppy soccer-mom mini-van.  And a very pregnant woman, running in and out of the house, between the swingset, to push her two kids, and the minivan, to unload groceries.  Not uncommon.  But, this particular yuppy minivan has all the doors and the trunk open, and it's blaring Grateful Dead music.

Our four kids

The twins are moving enough for the girls to feel them now.  This seems to add to the excitement.

Another bathtub picture

I’ve resisted posting bathtub pictures for a while now, but this one was way too cute not to post.

Teddy's home

Five and a half weeks ago, our friends went on vacation to South Carolina, and shortly after they left, their little dog Teddy ran away from his sitters here in Milwaukee. The sitters searched the neighborhood, the girls and I hung posters around the neighborhood and in nearby stores, our friends called the Humane Society and checked the MADACC website every single day. We couldn’t find him.

Weeks and weeks went by. I lost hope for them, thinking that it had been too long. Kate didn’t lose hope. Every mealtime and bedtime, Kate would add to her prayers, “Please help Teddy be safe.”

This morning, Samantha called me and said that she saw Teddy on the MADACC website. We met them there, and we were blessed to be part of the very happy reunion.  Four thrilled little girls, a very happy mom, and an ecstatic little dog!

One cute story about the experience...  On the drive there, I'd explained to the girls that we were going to see if the dog Samantha saw online was Teddy, and if it was, they could bring him home.  When we pulled up, I said, "Here we are!  Here's where we're going to look for Teddy."  As we got out of the van, we saw a volunteer letting a big Labrador-type dog out to go to the bathroom and get some fresh air.  Anna looked over, and, disgusted, commented, "Dat's not Teddy!"

Stupid swingset

Our stupid swingset is finally done.

I say stupid, not because I don’t like the swingset, but because it was the cause of endless frustration and an absurd amount of time over the last 11 days.

To begin with, the guide promised it would take "two people 10 – 12 hours" to build it. We scheduled two full days without the kids, which gave us well over that amount of time, but by the end of that weekend, we weren’t even half done. We ended up putting in about 26 “two worker" hours.  (Dave put in 29, and I put in about 23.)

Along the road we also encountered a lot of split boards and errors on Menards' part, all requiring a few extra hour-plus-long trips there, a broken drill, a broken tape measure, a broken cordless screw driver, a lot of drizzle, rain, high speed wind, cold, and neglected household chores, especially laundry, leaving our living room currently stacked with six baskets worth of clothes that need to be folded.

All along, Dave kept saying, “Just think of the satisfaction we’ll feel when we’re done, and we know we did it ourselves.” I’m sure it’s my own bad attitude, but I don’t feel satisfaction. All I feel is resentment toward Menards and a lot of relief that we don’t have more building to do.

Below is a series of pictures that document the process:

The directions for this step simply told us to stand the structure up.  Unfortunately, Dave and I are not two people who can stand up a 400 pound structure on our own.  So, on Easter Sunday, our dear friends Nick and Samantha came, dressed in their Easter best, to help us accomplish this.

For this step, which also required extremely heavy lifting, our nieghbors Scott and Kellie came to help us.  Scott stuck around another two hours with Dave to maneuver these two difficult boards together. 

 

She's two

I often worry about how to discipline Anna.  One of the problems I have with her is she's pretty smart, and, being only two, she uses her intelligence however she can for her own advantage.  She lies.  Luckily, she's only two, or she'd be kind of convincing.

The other day I looked over to see her smack Kate in the face.  As I carried Anna to her timeout, she kept insisting, "It was an assiden!  It was an assiden!"

The next day, I was taking a shower and the girls were watching a show on T.V.  When I came in, Kate told me that Anna had been hitting her throughout the show.  I asked, "Anna, were you hitting Kate?"  Anna replied, "I not hitting Kate, Mama.  Kate's just fine!"

Things that may cause Anna to tantrum

Having to wash her hands

Getting strapped into her carseat

Having to sit down for a meal

Seeing Kate playing with anything of which there isn't a duplicate immediately accessible

Getting her diaper changed

Being given a food that she loved the day before

Having to wear clothes

Note:  This is not a complete list.