Becky

When I think about it objectively, R is a pretty amazing kid. In the last year she's had her entire world rocked, and she's come out mostly unscathed. She's survived me going on bed rest, having two new brothers in the hospital, having two new brothers at home, having one of those brothers back at the hospital, me going back to work, moving, and two long vacations.

Not only has she survived it, she’s mostly thrived, amazing us regularly. There was one day a couple of months ago where we sent her off to play with a sheet of alphabet stickers while we were busy with the boys. She came back with a sheet of colored paper on which she had used stickers to write her name, by herself, using both upper and lower case letters. We didn’t even know she knew lower case much less how to spell her name!

Another time last spring I was getting the boys ready to go to the beach and she was driving me nuts. To get her out of my hair, I told her to go pack her stuff. I told her she would need her swimsuit and an extra shirt and pair of shorts. I also told her to put books and things to do in her backpack so she could play while we were visiting with grown-up friends. I didn't expect her to comply. But she did. Not knowing where to put them, the swimsuit and clothes were piled together on her floor. Her backpack was crammed full of the other items. If only she could reach the faucet to refill her own sippy cup, she would’ve been ready to go.

And there is nothing like listening to R play. She has a vivid imagination, and it is always entertaining to hear the adventures of her stuffed animals, dollhouse family, and the menagerie of plastic characters that live in the bathtub. Lately she has taken to giving all the characters voices and nothing cracks me up like hearing her do male voices (well, aside from the voices of the mice in Cinderella which she can imitate disturbingly well). There was a night in the bathtub a couple of weeks ago in which Ariel (that’s the Little Mermaid to those of you not indoctrinated into the madness of Disney princesses) was fighting with her dad, played by a large plastic duck that was oozing a bit of black mold from his bill and looked like he had an unfortunate medical condition.

They had the following conversation:

Daddy Duck: (Somewhat chipper and in his deep, daddy voice) Ariel, time for bed!
Ariel: (In a girl voice even squeakier than her own) I’m not tired.
DD: I said it’s time for bed.
Ariel: But I’m not tired.
DD: (Growing impatient) You need to go to bed.
Ariel: But I don’t want to go to bed.
DD: (Angry) Go to bed.
Ariel: I don’t want to.
DD: GO TO BED!

And then Ariel stomped (splashed) off to bed.

It was pretty hilarious, especially since she has never fought us about going to bed or taking a nap. She occasionally sneaks a few (dozen) extra things on to her bed, but she cheerfully goes there.

These are the things I have to remind myself of, because often, she is not this much fun. It has only recently come to my attention that three-year-old girls can be a million, bajillion times worse than their two-year-old counterparts. They are conniving little demons cleverly disguised as Disney princesses with fake plastic tiaras on their heads. You think I'm joking, but I read it on the internet, so it must be true!*

Jeff and I have nicknamed this strange little alter ego Becky, and we never know when Becky will show up. We certainly weren’t expecting her last Friday morning.

I was working a half day from home on Friday, so Jeff suggested that we take a family trip to the aquarium on Friday morning. At breakfast, we told R of the plan. She was all excited and started naming the things she thought she would see at the aquarium. When we told her she probably wouldn’t see any mermaids, Becky emerged. Becky told us she would be watching videos when we got home. We told her maybe. Then she decided that we needed to do crafts RIGHT THEN. We told her no. She was not happy.

We had fun at the aquarium with just one minor breakdown. When we got done, we needed to stop and feed the boys before getting into the car. We headed to the museum café, and Jeff and I each grabbed a baby. Normally she is fine just hanging out with us or talking to us when we are feeding the babies, but this time Becky had other things on her mind. She ran around. She climbed on things. She played with the vending machine. She was an all-American brat. We finally resorted to bribery offering her a sno-cone if she just sat with us while we fed the boys. She sat. So then we got a blue sno-cone to share, and she was happy with the purchase. Then she threw a fit when we finished the sno-cone because she also wanted ice cream.

After we left, she battled us in the car because she wanted to pick where we ate lunch. Thankfully, it turned out she was just hungry, and she felt much better after consuming a platter of fried shrimp. (I did joke with Jeff that our kids are going to be so confused when we travel and the kids’ menus in other places don’t all have fish and shrimp.)

Things were actually okay when we got home, but Becky popped up again after dinner. At that point Jeff looked at her and asked if she was acting like a Becky. She looked at him confused, as we haven’t let her in on the nickname. Then she answered, “I’m not a Becky. I’m a girl.” And for the rest of the night, she was just a girl, and a sweet little one at that.

*It was recently discussed in Parents magazine and was referenced in this post at dooce.com. And just FYI, if you aren’t a Dooce fan, I think she is fabulous, but she is a little rough around the edges, so reader beware.

Pigpen

I actually, theoretically, have a few free minutes to write this morning while M is playing and everyone else is sleeping. Yet where to start? I need to be FAIR to all my kids. Hmm, perhaps it is time for an update on each kiddo. Since M was the first one up this morning (as he nearly always is), he gets to go first.

His current nickname is Pigpen. The child is ALWAYS dirty. This has a couple of causes. The first is that our floors are always dirty. We have two large, hairy dogs, and we live in a warm climate. They are always shedding. I could easily sweep every day. Probably more. At our old house we had vinyl floors in the bathrooms. Dog fur sticks to vinyl. Really sticks. There would be times in that I would finally get all the dog fur swept off the bathroom floors, leave the room to get the mop, and come back to discover a new layer of dog fur had settled on the floors. Given that I am clearly not the Martha Stewart of cleaning, there is always dog hair on the floor. Living on the coast, rather than having dirt for soil, we have black sand. Have you ever looked at a particle of black sand? They are really little. Really, really little. And they cling to everything. We try to be good and always take our shoes off at the door, but that isn't always possible when we are outside with the kids and need to run in to get something. And the dogs track it in. We clean their paws, but Pru always wants to go lay in the nice, cool sand in the shade, and so it clings to her fur. So despite cleaning the floors at least once a week, there is always a fine layer of fur and sand on the floor.

And Pigpen has is own special way of crawling. He worms around the house on his belly, using his arms in a swimming motion. He rarely pushes up on all forms. It is the perfect recipe for a messy baby.

Last Friday I CLEANED the floors. They looked good. Seriously! Then on Saturday morning, Pru decided to roll on the ground outside. When she came in, she left a trail of sand. Thankfully, I noticed it while all the kids were eating breakfast, so I quickly swept it up. But that didn't stop Pigpen. No, he managed to find the areas that I had somehow missed (and you would think that I would find most of the black sand on white tile in broad daylight). Before I could put him down for his morning nap, he had to have an emergency bath. The child looked like he had just swept a chimney with the front of his body. The front of him was covered in black from head to toe. The back, aside from his bottom, was miraculously clean.

But Pigpen does do more than crawl around getting dirty. He loves to sit and play, and he is very content to play independently as long as he knows where Jeff or I am. His favorite place to play, of course, is his big sis's room since it has nice soft carpeting to crawl on and is filled to the brim with choking hazards. We now close the door to her room whenever she is not in it since every time we put him down he heads straight to her room.

Baths are one of his favorite activities. All I have to do is start running the water in the bathtub, and he will come race-worming through the house in an effort to be the first to take a bath. He usually wins since his sis is not a fan of the all-sibling baths and is brother isn't at his best around bath time. One of his favorite games (and mine) is played most nights while undressing him. As I take off his shirt or onesie, he grabs it and starts playing peek-a-boo. He will pull it over his face when I ask where he is, and then he quickly pulls it up and grins when I see peek-a-boo. This came never gets old, at least for me. He is probably completely sick of it.

He is great in the tub too. He crawls around a little, but having wiped out twice, he is a smart little guy and crawls only to reach toys and knows to keep his head high above the water. He mostly sits and plays or watches his sis as she "cooks" or acts out crazy adventures in the tub.

M remains the most scheduled of our children. He takes two naps a day, at prescribed times, and always goes to bed between 7:30 - 8:00. Always. We have learned not to push him. The same is true for dinner when he eats no later than 5:45 each night. We do NOT serve him food at 5:46. It is too late! There will be a price to pay for such foolishness.

As much as I love his peek-a-boo, the most amusing fact about Pigpen has to be that he thinks he is a dog. While L wants to be just like R, we are almost certain M aspires to be a dog. He spends his time worming around looking for crumbs on the floor, and he can spot a fallen Cheerio or frozen pea from 10' away. (Not an easy trick if you have ever held your head six inches off the floor and tried to look for things.) M always comes when called, and if he had a tail, we know it would be wagging. He also loves to chew on rugs and shoes. We cannot leave shoes on the floor. Last weekend my brother and his wife were in town, and M was in heaven. With guests around, there were always shoes to chew. Hopefully, he will outgrow this, and if we catch him trying to chase his tail, we'll know he's gone too far.

Abandonment

Okay, so I know I've abandoned all of you by not writing for two weeks. (And I know there is at least someone reading this. My fabulous friend Stacy admitted to it. Crazy girl, but it totally made my day, and for that, she is my Number One Fan!)

As always, long gaps without writing mean lots of great things have been happening preventing me from taking the time to write. But the new plan (I seem to have a new plan every 10 minutes these days) is to take home my 'puter and start writing at night. I actually did that last night but didn't get very far with my writing. Here's hoping for a better night for writing tonight. In the meantime, here's a quick R story.

In one of R's favorite Baby Blues comics, Wanda, the mom, is in the bathroom with the kids. Zoe is in the tub, and Wanda is holding baby Hammie in her lap and trimming his nails. She accidentally cuts his finger with the nail clippers, and he starts crying. Of course Wanda starts crying too and laments, "I'm a terrible mom!" (We all know that feeling!) We haven't read that comic in awhile, but R has a freakishly good memory. Two Saturdays ago R and I were in the car in the drive-thru at Chick-Fil-A. I placed our order, but it wasn't until I got to the window that I remembered to order a sandwich for Jeff who was at home with the boys. Jeff's mom was with us, and I joked to her that I was a terrible wife. As we were driving home, R says in all seriousness, "Momma, you are a terrible mommy!" I nearly burst out laughing. As I struggled to compose myself, she went on to recite the comic and compare it to my near-disaster. Our little English major conducted a very thorough analysis.

Happy New Year!

My year always starts in late August/early September. I spent two years in the real world trying to operate with a year that starts in January. I was miserable. I had previously spent my entire life working on a school year. It worked for me. I saw no reason to change. So I was very happy when I returned to the safety of operating in school years. I plan to stay on this schedule for a long time.

That being said, today is the first day of a new year. For the first time ever, the school year is no longer all about me. It doesn't start on my first day of class as either student, teacher, or administrator. The torch has been passed down, and the new year really begins on the petite princess's first day of preschool.

Getting ready for preschool has been an adventure. It started with clothes shopping. I've never really cared how I dressed any of the kids, but suddenly I panicked. I didn't want R to be The Weird Kid at school, so we went shopping. But she's so teeny! At 3, she is just starting to wear size 24 months/2T clothes. This didn't seem like a problem until we went school clothes shopping. Shirts in those sizes sometimes still have snaps at the neck. Snaps at the neck are for babies! Not to mention have the shirts we found were onesies, and those just don't work for potty training kids. And everything in the stores is long sleeve. Do the stores not know that our high temperatures are in the 70s and 80s most days until Christmas? Do they want her to roast? She is too young to suffer in the name of fashion! Finding pants that fit was no easy task either. Pants in her size are designed for big ol' diaper-covered bums. But R wears pull-ups or panties. Saggy butt has never been a very fashionable look. Thank goodness for the return of leggings!

R has a study guide for every occasion, and she read and reread Elmo Goes to School in an effort to get ready for today. Unfortunately, last Friday we found out that at her school backpacks are banned and the kids are required to use tote bags (so that all ages can get stuff out and put it in by themselves). She was not happy about that change. At all. Not only does Elmo have a backpack, but she does too, and she packed hers for school weeks ago. But, last Friday she and I went shopping and get her a tote bag, some Strawberry Shortcake fabric, and lots of pink puffy paint. On Sunday she went crazy decorating her new bag which she proudly carried today. She even requested that I write her name "the real way" using both upper and lower case letters, rather than in all capitals.

There were a couple of other deviations from the book that threw her. One was the lack of school busses. She REALLY wants to ride a bus to school. We talked about her school not having enough kids for busses. She was also devastated that she was going to have two teachers in her room. Elmo only has one. She was really hung up on this. Who knew it would be so dramatic? But we discussed "same" and "different" and I think she was okay with it.

Dropping R off at school this morning was almost non-eventful. Because she is not yet fully potty trained, and because she isn't the most social, we switched her to the two-year-old class which is a teensy class with 4 students. We were able to meet 2 of the other kids from her class at the open house last Friday. They arrived at school the same time we did this morning. When they got to their classroom, each found something to do and were completely engrossed in their activities. Not one of them even cared about saying goodbye to their parents.

I haven't gotten all the details yet, but it must've been a good first morning at school. From what I hear, one girl cried (probably the fourth child who hadn't been there yet). For snack they had bananas, the one food on earth R doesn't eat, and Goldfish crackers, which thankfully she loves. She also managed to hit the little boy in her class during dodge ball. (Thankfully she got her father's athletic abilties and not mine.) It sounds like a successful day and a great start to a new year.

The Crying Game

After going out of town, the kids clearly suffered from what we decided to call Post Vacation Disorder (PVD). They whined, cried, refused to eat, and generally tried to will us back to vacation where they got to eat whatever they wanted and were lavished with attention. (While PVD is annoying for us, I can't say that I blame them. I would love to eat whatever I wanted and have attention lavished on me.)

What we didn't realize was that PVD can also refer to Post Visitor Disorder. Last weekend my parents were in town in honor of R's birthday, and we had a fabulous time. The kids got to eat whatever they wanted and were lavished with attention. And they have been absolutely horrible ever since.

We last saw my parents on Monday evening, and by Tuesday, the boys decided to cry all day. Yes, all day. Jeff wasn't even able to get them to stop crying to take naps. Instead, he had to put them in their beds and let them wail until they passed out.

As a result of the drama, I did have a truly fun greeting when I got home from work on Tuesday. Last week, the boys were still technically immobile. On Friday, L started crawling. On Saturday, M figured out his own version of forward locomotion. Rather than crawl, he moves his whole body up and down in a forward motion. He basically looks like he's doing the worm.

I guess M was done with his dad and the madness, because when I walked in on Tuesday, he power-wormed the 30 or so feet from the living room to the front door before reaching up for cuddles. I couldn't resist.

I scooped him up, which just encouraged L to cry harder since I was cheating on him with another baby. We then attempted one of their favorite activities. I call it "recreate the womb" and I sit down and hold both boys in my lap. They stand and hit and bash each other and me, and in all its violence, they are content because everyone is touching and it IS just like the womb. But, on Tuesday, it did nothing.

Jeff had actually managed to start dinner despite the crying, and so while it cooked, I made a quick trip to the library with the boys. (We realized we had turned in a DVD case on Monday without the DVD inside. We ended up getting fined $2 for being one day late for one DVD. Ridiculous!!!) The boys were FINE the whole time. Happy, even. So we had hope.

We shouldn't have, because Tuesday night was horrible. They were overtired and exhausted from crying all day. Their teeth seemed to be hurting too. Wednesday was more of the same. So was Wednesday night. When I left for work on Thursday morning, both boys were sitting in the pack and play, surrounded by toys, and crying. Jeff was sitting on the couch and he looked like he was ready to cry too.

So I spent much of the day fretting about the situation. Finally concluded that the boys were mostly overtired and were also doing with a healthy amount of separation anxiety. Came home ready to plan. The parents may have lost a few battles, but we would win the war! I was all ready to rally. And it turns out the boys had a great day. Go figure.

But we are not done with drama just yet. Last night I went to the parent meeting for R's preschool (more on that to come, promise!), and the boys cried the whole time I was gone. Rough night too. But we are not done yet. The parents will win and the boys will be happy again. Whether they like it or not!

Generation Gap

R, L, and I were in the car on Sunday when "Ball and Chain" by Janis Joplin came on. It had just ended when we got home. As I was getting R out of the car she asked, "What wrong with song?" I told her there was nothing wrong with the song, and told her the title and who it's by. So then she asked, "What wrong with lady singing?" I said that's just how she sang. R had to think about that one for awhile.

M Man

In thinking back, it's hard to remember that until they were five months old, M was the more difficult child. He did not want to sleep alone. He wanted to sleep in bed with us, preferably face down. He was in constant motion and got really angry if we tried to do something silly like swaddle him or tuck him in. We were still trying to figure out his sensitive belly, and he was always miserable due to gas or constipation. And he seemed to be slower to catch on to thing, but when he got them, he really mastered the new skill.

But things have really changed. These days, he is a relatively happy, easy-going guy. He keeps himself on a schedule, and if you mess with the schedule, there is hell to pay. But meet his needs, and he does just fine.

I've been so busy writing about the other two, that I haven't had a chance to write about some of the great things M does. He has become the chattier one. His words, said in his own special way, include mom, hi, and yum. He was calling me "eh-mahm," and I was hearing it lots when he was upset. In the last two days, he has started referring to me as "mahhhm" which was his sis's favorite way of calling me as well. He says "hi" whenever Jeff or I walk into the house. We also occasionally hear it when he wakes up for the day or from a nap. And "yum" is one of his favorite words. Anything edible is yum, and the word can be heard frequently when he is in his high chair.

And the boy loves to eat. Over the weekend he figured out how to feed himself Cheerios. This is huge! While L will happily sit in his high chair and chew on a baby spoon or use a couple of spoons as drumsticks, if M is in his high chair, he wants to eat. Due to space limitations, the boys' high chairs are situated directly behind my seat at the table, and I have spent a good part of the last 6 weeks facing backward so I can shovel baby food at the boys in an effort to keep the M man happy. Now he can feed himself for part of the meal.

When meals are over, M tries to take off his own bib. The boys have a few bibs that fasten on the side of the neck rather than at the back. These are designed to make things easier for parents. We're learning that they also make it easier for babies to remove them and should be avoided at all costs on nights when we know he'll end up finger painting with sweet potato and pea purees. Last Sunday I also noticed that after M took off his bib, he tried to unbuckle himself too. While I appreciate the fact that he wants to be independent, he doesn't need to be quite that independent!

All the food he is eating helps fule his motion. After weeks of only moving in revense, on Sunday afternoon he finally started crawling forward. He was supposed to be napping, and I was sorting a huge stack of old bills and documents on the living room floor. Rather than going to sleep while I worked, M screamed until I took him out of his crib. I then put him down to play on the other side of the living room while I sorted. Apparently all those piles of paper were the incentive he needed to finally go forward. He charged at my papers and had lots of fun destroying them. I have to admit, watching him was a lot more fun than organizing bills.

I think my absolute favorite thing about him right now are his kisses. Without us prompting him, he learned to give kisses. Now I get a big, sloppy, open-mouthed baby kiss when I get home from work and when he goes to bed at night. What is there not to love about that?