Niblings and nibbling

So me and my brother Jon?  We have babies 11 days apart. They are both girls.  They both have big cheeks and ski-jump noses. They are both utterly loveable rolly-pollies. And, yeah, I think it’s pretty special! What is even more special is that our families got to hang out a couple weeks ago! Jon and Zanna are only a five hour drive away, but we learned our lesson from trying to drive straight to Chicago and stopped for a good while at a rest area to let Charlie get his wiggles out before naptime.  It was fun!

Charlie and Wendy were much more interactive in the car, playing peek-a-boo and ‘talking’ a lot to each other.  Wendy woke up while Charlie was still asleep at one point and proceeded to squawk loudly at him every 30 seconds until he opened his eyes.  He woke up saying “Baby Sister wake up me!”  It was pretty funny! And then we got to see Ziva!  Family resemblance, anyone?Zanna made us a delicious French dinner that night.  ( I still want the recipe, Zanna!)This is a picture of Jonathan contributing to the wine sauce of the said French dinner.  Really, you say?  By rooting through the tool chest?

Yep!  A very creative use for pliers and screw!

After dinner and a delicious Tres Leches Chocolate Cake for dessert, the kids went to bed in opposite order of their age while we waited for Jon to get home from work.This is me being excited to see Jon.  This is tired Jon after a long day at work trying to enjoy his cup of coffee and not knowing I’m taking a picture about how excited I am to see him.  Then we called Erik.  (This is a stock picture of Erik, he was not there.) We called him several times—on all his phones, on all his phones at the same time and then had to settle for leaving a voice mail. It was probably the best group voice mail I’ve ever been a part of leaving. I hope he saved it for posterity.After Erik failed to answer his phone, Jon read aloud to me about preserving liquid manure (urine) from farm animals for use as fertilizer and we laughed so hard we cried.  I think it might have been very late by then.   

The next morning the girls had a good heart-to-heart while Charlie ‘helped’ Aunt Zanna make cheddar cheese and apple scones for breakfast.  YUM!Eeeek!  Those cheeks! (not you Jon) She is so cute!We played lots of games.  Little people games involving object permanence. . . …and gross motor skills.  (“I see you grabbed that egg-plant looking thing over there.  Wanna pass it over here so I can drool on it too?”)Medium-size people games involving shapes and colors.And big people games involving Kinect and a lot of really silly uncle moves.Speaking of silly, your guess is as good as mine: whose baby is whose?   Yeay!  for nibblings, and yummy nibbles and family close enough to drive to!  

Thanks for a wonderful visit, Jon and Zana!

The pros and cons of sleep training.

In my humble opinion:

Cons—

• ….*silence*….

Pros--

• baby sleeps better and longer at night
• baby sleep better and sometimes longer for naps
• you get to do things while they are falling asleep AND while they are sleeping
• older siblings actually feel like they have a mama again!

For example:  Charlie and I made a whole alphabet of roads to drive his cars on today.  It was fantastically fun. 

And, for those interested grandparents out there, he now can name:  A, C, E, H, K, O, S, and “W-for-baby-sister” , of course!

my incredible housekeeping skills…

umm, yeah…

This is what happens when you decide to breastfeed your baby in another room because she thinks her older brother is so interesting that she hasn’t eaten in his presence all morning and has become a total crank-pot.  

(I keep reminding myself that women have been doing this for thousands of years, with fewer gadgets like dishwashers to help them out.  AND no birth control!  So really I should get the hang of it soon.  But I really don’t know how they managed.  To encourage myself and all mamas in similar situations, I just want to put it out there—perhaps they didn’t—just like me!  )

peek a boo

This was too fun not to post!

Enjoy!

Car Throw Foot Ball

I was introduced to a new sport last night.  It’s loads of fun for the whole family, so I thought I’d pass it on here.

Equipment:

• 1 Child-sized Foot Ball
• 1 match box car  (I was told it much be a race car, so it’s fast)

Players: 2 or more, divided into two teams, standing facing each other about 4-6 feet apart.

Rules of Play:  First player holds car in right hand and football in left hand.  He makes eye contact with the opposing player, and asks “Ready?”   The second player nods his head to show he is ready.

First player then hits the football with the car, using the same technique you would to hit a baseball with a bat (assuming the car is the bat) and immediately lets go of the car as well.  Then he falls down. 

The second player tries to fall down before the first player does.  If he achieves this he get to yell, “You’re out! Taaaaaag!!!” in a gutteral voice,  and the play switches sides.  If he doesn’t fall down first,  the first player gets a point.

Also, if any player is a toddler, they get to change the rules at any given moment. 

Anyone want to donate their toddlers for a tournament?

“Far Arms”—(moving from maidenhood to matronhood )

We all drove to Chicago a couple weekends ago to visit our dear friends Megan and Peter and to meet their new little baby Elijah.   My friend Abby, was also there with her daughter Suzanna.  They live in Seattle.  So it seemed like a good weekend to pick.  Much like other times of getting together with my girls, it was a blessing.  What I was struck with this time is that we were all mothers.  We really have worn out our awkward and flimsy college identities to become women, wives and mothers!   I consider it such a blessing to be able to continue to ‘grow’ up with these girls!

Jonathan and I hadn’t been on a long drive together since before Charlie was born, and we were really excited about it.   The five hours drive took quite a bit longer than expected, since Miss W turned out to hate sleeping in the car and only napped for 20 minutes at a time.   Charlie was very excited about going on a “road trip”  until he figured out that it was just fancy talk for sitting in the car for a looong time!  Luckily for him, we took lots of breaks to feed this one….. …and there were plenty of things to talk about and see out the window…(he now can recognize and name a corn field, a wind mill and a bridge when he sees one)…and silly things to do inside the window…

My favorite part of the ride was when Charlie dropped his book in a place I couldn’t reach.  As Jonathan fetched it out, Charlie said excitedly to me,

“Dada CAN reach it, Dada have far arms?” 

I assured him that Dada, did indeed have “far arms”  (And I challenge you grammarians out there to explain why far can’t be an adjective?  Does it sound wrong just because we don’t use it that way?  He’s got me stumped on this one!)

And then we arrived and got to meet Elijah!!!   He is very serious about life and had a lot of deep thoughts to think.  Thoughts which, no doubt, he will astound us with when he gets old enough to put words to them.  In the mean time, he kept us amused with his powerful expressions.  After church on Sunday, Abby and Suzanna came over to play.   Oh it was good to see our children playing together!   The papas and toddlers kept each other entertained while the mamas talked and oogled over the babies.Then we had nap time…should I say, all the children co-operated by being asleep at the same time and we had an adult conversation!   What a blessing!   And pretty much a miracle if you consider the fact that we had two toddlers and two infants in a small two bedroom apartment.  After naps we spent some time outdoors.Suzanna and Charlie played really well together.  Though, they have been arranged for marriage since before birth so I guess its not to0 surprising.  And I don’t know about Charlie, but I am smitten with the pigtails!

       

Wendy was smitten with the moving shadows of tree leaves on the ground!Elijah was smitten with sleep!And we were all smitten with this scene!  There is SO much to love in this picture!  It makes me chuckle every time I see it.  The dimples, the eyebrows, the toes, the rolls, the sideways ponytail, the leaning, the bottom lips, the white, white teeth… “Our children” has such a powerful emotional weight to it when you’re speaking it with some of your dearest friends!And if these two don’t remind you of Jack Spratt who could eat no fat and his wife who could eat no lean…  

Elijah: “Mom, she is TOUCHING me!!”  

Wendy:  “There, there now, dear, just relax.  It will be over in a minute.  Can’t you see they will just keep waving those cameras around until they get at least one good picture of us together?”

Ahh joy!…

…until we get to hang out together again!….

What? This isn’t how YOU make play dough?

What I have found surprising about being a mother of two is that there are real moments of peace and calm.  Believe it or not, there  have been whole 10 minute increments in our house when everyone is happy, asleep or self-entertained enough that I’m freed up to ignore folding the laundry while I write a blog post. 

What I do not understand is how quickly this calm disintegrates into such absolute chaos that nothing short of being an octopus would enable me to adequately address the situation.  For what ever reason, both children know when the other absolutely needs me and find it unacceptable to be put on the back burner.  

Take today, for instance.   It was 11:30.  Wendy was fed and contentedly kicking in her bouncy seat.  I thought it would be the perfect time to take 15 minutes to mix up some play dough for Charlie   (something I’ve been meaning to do for the last 2 weeks)  since she likes watching “her people” do things.  The first batch went so gloriously well that I thought I’d make a second color while all the ingredients were out.   Charlie helped me measure it all into the pan, and then squeezed in enough green food coloring for twenty batches.  Such is cooking with toddlers. And I must say, I like a nice strong green color myself when I can get it!

THEN….one minute into the critical heating/stirring process, right as the play dough was starting to set, Charlie announces he needs to go pee pee.   I flick the burner off and we race to the potty.   Success.  Wash hands.  Hear Wendy start to squawk about the fact that her people left her “totally… utterly… miserably….ALONE!…unacceptable….people?…my PEOPLE!”   Replace pants and underwear.  Wipe pee off toilet seat and floor (we’re still working on our aim)  Pick out an orange, no, pink, no, purple—“Charlie JUST CHOOSE one!”--finally settle on the red gummy star for a reward as Wendy absolutely looses it from the kitchen.  “I am alone….ALONE….ALONE!  I WANT MY PEOPLE NOW!!!!”

Here’s a picture of the somewhat frenzied next 5 minutes while I tried to salvage the play dough and console Wendy at the same time.  (We were making so much noise that Jonathan came out from the office to see what the hubbub was about.  Then he started laughing so hard he could barely snap this picture.) 

What might not otherwise be obvious was that Wendy was screaming her head off, I was stirring hard to get the lumps out, bouncing Wendy vigorously with my foot, belting out Charlie’s favorite song from Sunday School with him (so he wouldn’t object to me singing so loudly), and making sure he didn’t burn himself when he tried to eat pieces off on the first batch of play dough already cooling on the counter.  Multitasking, anyone?As crazy as it gets, I am just loving our stage of life right now!