Boring

Did you know that I'm boring? According to Jillian, I do all the things that are boring around here. Matt took the girls downstairs after dinner last night and was trying to connect the final speaker to his new surround sound system (we are re-doing the basement, part of which includes Matt's beloved TV/movie watching area). Anyway, Adrienne was kind of ornery and clingy (she is a daddy monster right now), so I asked Jillian to just come upstairs and help me for a few minutes. I told her that I needed to finish the dishes and fold some laundry. "That's so boring, Mom", "You do all that boring stuff", and "I don't like anything boring. I like fun stuff" were just a few of the phrases I heard from her. I resisted the urge to go into a lecture about how, yes, those things can be boring but they are important, make everyone's life easy/nice, etc, how I of course would rather do other things, blah blah. But I didn't. Instead I just explained to her that this is part of taking care of our home and our family, and that since she is part of our family, she will need to start helping out a bit. She still wasn't impressed with the non-glamorous idea of helping with the dishes, but I asked her to dry the dishes for the first time (in the past her dish helping has just been clearing the table), and suddenly she was all over it. "Oh wow, yes I can dry the heavy pans. Cool!" She worked hard at drying the pans, and was pleased that she was able to lift them to help me put them away. Then she wiped the table off (pleased that I just handed her the rag and told her to go for it). Finally, I told her I needed some help folding the towels/washcloths so I took her in my bedroom, gave her a quick demo, and she went to town. "Oh Mom! I can do it! I can fold these like a square! I am really good at this!". Yes, she really was. She also got a little sock pairing/folding lesson. My point of the story is this: I don't let her help nearly enough. I am so busy trying to do it all, and do it all my type-A/control freak way, that I miss so many opportunities to develop her independence and skills. And you know what? Those "boring" jobs really are much more fun when she is helping and interjecting her funny little comments. A child's perspective is really so refreshing.

My little helper in action.

Cries In The Night

Adrienne sometimes cries in the middle of the night. It's not uncommon for her to just suddenly sob/wail/scream bloody murder for a couple of minutes, and then just as suddenly, go back to sleep. It happens about 2-3 times per week and I always assume that it is because of a bad dream.
Lately she has become quite choosy about which pajamas to wear. She absolutely refuses the cute fleece zebra-striped pair (even when Jillian is wearing hers), and shouts, "No yike ze-bas"! Tonight, she dug in her drawer and was excited about those striped Christmas pajamas with the little elf hat. Matt obliged her, and also let her wear the hat because she wanted to. The hat remained on through story time, and she still wanted it on when he put her in bed. No big deal, let her wear the elf hat, right? So we did. Fast forward to 12:15 a.m. I hear the screaming start. I laid there for a couple of minutes, waiting for it to stop. It started carrying on longer than usual, and was a bit more intense than usual, so I decided to make the trek upstairs to make sure she was OK. I walked in her room and leaned over her bed in the dark to look at her. She immediately shot her hand up at me, shoved the little elf hat in my face and said, "I want da hat on, Mama". I replaced the hat on her head, to which I heard, "Thank you, Mama", and she was silent. Just like that. I can think of a lot of situations that I imagined would cause my children to cry out for me in the night, but never once considered I'd need to replace an elf hat. Motherhood is full of surprises like that.

Poor Second Child

It occurred to me recently that I do not take nearly as much video of Adrienne as I did of Jillian. I am sorry, A, I promise I love you just as much as your sister. The trouble is that you are hard to capture. You never ever ever "perform" for the camera, and in fact, you often do just the opposite of what I am trying to capture when you hear that telltale 'ding' that means the camera is rolling.
This morning, I got a fairly good clip of her asking me for breakfast ("I want Alpha Bits* with Mama", "I want Alpha Bits for fock-iss"), imitating Jillian ("I want a banana, too"), using her secret weapon screech for a brief instant, and using her signature word for breakfast repeatedly ("fock-iss"). You can also get an idea of what a little stinker of a toddler she has become (appropriately so, of course)...love that whiny "NO!"

 *Back story: I bought Alpha Bits ONE time a few months ago for Jillian as a treat. She saw Super Why on the box and wanted them. Now the girls are obsessed with them. I am getting weak in my old age. There are worse things, right? They are pretty yummy....

Sleep and Speech

Sleep. I wish I had gotten more of it last night. Jillian was up from 1-4 with a variety of issues: scared, hungry, not tired, wanted to sleep with us, etc. I am not ever very happy about walking up and down the stairs as many times as I did in the middle of the  night, and it is so, so, so hard for me to be patient. And to remember that the smart-as-a-whip little person in the bed above me is only 4. I know I am way too hard on her. Anyway, the irony of the above situation is that Adrienne usually sleeps until 7:30 or so. This morning? Up at 6. Fantastic start to our Sunday.

Now for the speech part of the post. Jillian and I have had a few funny conversations the last few days.

J: (while eating lunch, almost choked on an apple) "Whoa, that apple almost went down my air pump!"
Me: "What?"
J: "You know, that tube that goes to your lungs"
Me: "Are you talking about your wind pipe?"
J: "No, my air pump?"
Me: "Uhhh....your air pipe?"
J: "Yeah, my air pump. What's it called again?"
Me: "Your trachea"
J: "Got it"


J: (after almost clogging the toilet) "Wow, Mom. This toilet is acting up. I think you need to get the sponger"
Me: "What?"
J: "The toilet is making a "guh guh guh" noise. You need to ask Daddy to sponge it. Get the sponger and sponge it."
Me: "You mean the plunger?"
J: "Yep, get the sponger!"


J: (while holding hands with Adrienne and spinning around the living room): "Dad, does your arm have a sock on it?"
Matt: "Uhhhhh....no, I don't think so"
J: "Why not? Adrienne's has a sock on it"
Me (chiming in): "You mean a socket?"
J: "Yep. Mom says if I pull on Adrienne's arm too hard I will pull out the sock on it"
Me: "I think you mean, pull it out of socket....."

I can't make this stuff up, people.

Adrienne has couple of cute ones as well....

-When I enter her room in the morning, after telling me good morning she tells me she wants to go eat breakfast..."I wanna go fock-iss Mama!" Yep, somehow breakfast is "fock-iss"

-At "fock-iss" this morning, she tried to get her sister's attention: "Scooz me, Jillian. Scooz me! Jillian. Scooz me!" (Excuse me, Jillian!)

-The new game at meals is for Adrienne to throw her plate off her tray or (when I am lucky) hand it to me and declare, "I don't yike it, Mama!"

-Every time she tumbles, bumps into something, etc, before I even ask, she hollers, "I'm OK!"

Lesson Learned

Remember how I said I didn't want to be cleaning poop up off the walls now that Adrienne can remove her diaper? Yeah...to spare you much gory detail, let's just say that we both needed a bath, as did all her babies/stuffed animals, bedding, and board books that were involved in Operation Boycott Nap and Make Your Mother Crazy this afternoon. I'll spare you the picture I sent my husband at work. On the bright side of this clothing removal habit, comes a desire to try and dress herself as well. She waddled over to me last night and said, "Mommy fick it" (Mommy fix it)

I also love to take pictures of my kids sleeping--to capture the peacefulness that is possible, and that does eventually happen after all the chaos.

Adrienne and her entourage. This was yesterday during nap. Currently, all of these creatures are spinning around in a hot-as-heck bath in the washing machine.

All In a Day's Work

Not to belabor my previous point, but I'm going to. The girls are tough right now. My head often feels like it might explode, and I find myself chanting "breathe" to myself repeatedly throughout the day. I was away on a girls weekend last weekend (I'll post about glorious experience that in a bit), and I snapped a pic of a card while we were in a little shop that describes me perfectly right now

Amen

 And then there was another card that reminded me of motherhood, too--and how moms feel guilty for every little thing that happens to/with their children.

A sense of humor is a wonderful thing, isn't it?

Anyway, let's just say it was a challenging day in the land of mothering. At the end of each day I've been trying to ask Jillian about her high and low for the day--ie: what is the best thing that happened and what is the worst thing that happened. Today she told me that the best thing was playing a Mickey Mouse game on the iPad at rest time, and that the worst thing was that she didn't get any TV shows. And there you have a glimpse into her TV obsessed little brain. Matt arrived home after dinner so didn't get to be part of the discussion today, which meant that no one asked me about my highs/lows. So guess what? I am going to write them here. Why? Because I think they are funny. And because I can.  Let's start with the "lows"....

-Adrienne figured out how to remove her diaper. And she did so about 175 times. Every time she was out of my sight, she stripped. I have a lot of pictures of the various situations I discovered her in this state, but none are appropriate for posting here. I suppose I should just be grateful that she never removed one of her 3 dirty diapers for the day..

-Adrienne did not nap. She spent about an hour in her bed repeatedly removing her clothing and diaper, while I ran up like a crazy woman and re-dressed her. I'm sure I was just reinforcing the behavior, but I'm so not interested in getting myself into a situation where I am cleaning up poop off the walls. Just sayin'....

-Jillian asked me, "Mom, why are you so naughty all the time? You are being mean to me". This was after I raised my voice at her for pushing her sister. Still, not fun to have your kid tell you that you are mean to her.

And now for the "highs".....

-Adrienne went pee on the potty!! When we were headed up for what was supposed to be a nap, she said, "I wanna go potty". So I thought it was reasonable since I would be changing her diaper anyway. She sits on the potty every night before bath and never goes, but this time she surprised me. I'm not sure who was more excited: me or Jillian. Super cute.

-Jillian uttered these words: "More carrots, please". Did you read that? My kid who hates vegetables suddenly thinks that carrot sticks dipped in hummus is the most delicious snack. She is right, it is a great combo, but never one she'd give the time of day before. She ate about 10 carrots today. This is probably 9 more carrots than she's ever eaten in her life. In one day. I told her I was proud of her and that she was really making good choices to grow up and be strong and healthy. She said, "Yeah, I can't wait to grow up and be a mommy ice skater! It's going to be awesome". I'll let you know how that combo of jobs works out for her.

Stick a fork in me, I am done for the day!

19 Months

I am perpetually behind these days. My most frequently asked question is this: how in the world do people manage more than two children?? They are cut from sturdier cloth than I am, for sure. So, I am late posting about Adrienne, who officially turned 19 months last week. Maybe I am late posting about this milestone because she is so into EVERYTHING, ALL THE TIME, that I don't have a spare second to document. Yes, that must be the reason why. I am almost more frenzied and frazzled at this stage than I was when she was a newborn. Seriously. OK, a few tidbits about this busy little girl....

-She is pretty darn polite and uses conversational phrases appropriately. She says 'thank you' whenever given something, without being asked--usually, she'll thank you specifically for whatever it is you gave her ("Thank you milk, Mama"). She also greets me with a full "Good morning, Mama!" when I enter her room, and randomly bursts into song to wish her daddy happy birthday (for almost a month straight now)--"Happy Day, Daddy..." I have also started hearing, "Sorry, Jillian" (she suddenly started adding the "n" to Jillian's name last week) whenever I get after the girls for arguing/fighting over toys, etc. and she tells her sister goodnight without prompting ("Good night, Jillian").

-She is a master at imitation. She imitates everything she hears and sees. This is mostly with Jillian, but she also does it to me. As a result, I often hear "stop it" or "just a minute"....so I guess I perhaps say those phrases too often. To compare what that "skill" is like in a 4 year old, I was told "Mom, I am tired of your behavior" this morning. Awesome. Nothing like your children shoving your words right back in your mouth. Have I mentioned I think it is really hard to be a mom????  When we are eating dinner as a family, Jillian tells Matt about her day. You can bet that within 3 seconds of her finishing her tales, Adrienne is repeating as many of those same words back to tell her dad about her day, too. She wants whatever Jillian wants, and will pretty much do whatever she says. Her best weapon in a sibling brawl is still her shrill scream. It. Is. Ear. Piercing. And totally awful.

Two peas in a pod. I never get tired of dressing them alike. Jillian was dressed first on this day...guess who wanted to be just like her???

-She is into wearing her food. She feeds herself proficiently with utensils, but when things are soupy, all bets are off. She is passionate about oatmeal and yogurt. When I go to clean her up she tells me, "I do it myself". Got it.

-She is now interested in crafts and coloring. She will scribble for long periods of time, and likes to use stickers. When I picked her up at the RAC today, she was very proud of her craft. She made sure she showed it to Jillian when she got home from school.

-She loves to sing. She requests Itsy Bitsy Spider ("Eee Bee Pider") , Good Morning To You ("Good Morning To you, Baby"), and Happy Birthday (as mentioned above). Pat-A-Cake is another favorite. She is all in for living room dance parties, and shakes her little tush like nobody else I know. Her giggle is  infectious, her hugs are tight and sincere, and she can instantly melt a heart with that big toothy grin. What's not to love about this 19 month old? OK, maybe that toddler whine....