Helga

Add blogging to the list of things that get harder with two kids. Not only do I have significantly less free time and less energy, but I am faced with the challenge of giving equal screen time to both darlings. We've been a bit Jack-heavy recently (hard not to be, as he is so consistently engaging and amusing these days) so here is a bit about Ivy.

As a way of explaining the title of this post-- some of you may remember Gunther. Gunther was the name given to Jack's alter-ego, the pleasant, complacent baby who would show up from time to time, who looked a lot like our mercurial little boy but couldn't possibly be him... In Jack's case, Gunther had a habit of appearing when we were out and about with the baby, meaning no one would believe our complaints about the boy.

Well, Helga has been showing up around here the past few days. Helga and Ivy share the same blue eyes and ridiculously long eyelashes, and both are very good at chewing on their hands. The main difference we've noticed between the two is that Helga seems to tolerate being in the car. She does not scream as soon as we click the car seat in. She sits in her seat quietly, looking around and even, sometimes, smiling as we drive. She quietly drifts off to sleep as we cruise along. She might "talk" a bit when we stop at a long light, but she does not demand that we rock the car seat in order to calm her back down. Helga is really, really great. We hope she sticks around.

It is amazing to me how babies really do follow the timeline, like all the books say. Here we are, looking at 13 weeks tomorrow, 3 months. The end of the 4th trimester. And here we have a baby who is actually ready to be "born." This little girl is a real baby now, not a mushy anymore. She's getting more solid, holding herself out straight, holding her head up as we pick her up and carry her around. She loves sitting up and standing on our laps and and is in almost constant motion when she's awake, looking around and kicking and stretching and reaching. She reaches for and grabs toys in her baby gym. She loves holding her hands out in front of her, regarding them as she clasps them together, her eyes just slightly crossing as she examines them. She holds and chews on blankets and burp cloths. She absolutely adores the view from her changing table (what is it with the side of her white shelf??? Who knows, but she just gets blissed out and content when she looks at it) and her mobiles. She'll kick and coo and look at them for 10 minutes or more. She loves to look at us and have us sing to her and she laughs out loud and squeals and giggles and is really a very happy little girl, most of the time. When she cries or fusses there is almost always a clear reason-- hungry, overwhelmed, poopy, or tired-- and what's more, she actually calms down when we meet those needs. Almost all the time. She sleeps for a good 6-7 hour stretch (albeit still in the swing) at night and goes back to sleep easily (in bed with us) for 2-4 hours after that.

I think she might be a pretty good baby, actually.

Wow.

Summer

It's hot. Sticky, sweaty, swampy, humidity-like-you-only-get-in-Cleveland hot. The kind of hot that makes me wish summer would just end, already. I've had enough. To top it off Jack was needy today and wanted only to sit in his playroom with one of us, playing dinosaurs, mail, or Wild Things. Sit on the floor, in the hottest little room in the world, and tell us exactly what to do and say. Over and over. Yep. Enough.

But then there is an evening like this one, a sublime evening in that hot summer light, the sidewalk gardens smelling of dry earth and bees and browning leaves, the heady scent of August.

Finally getting out of the hot sticky house and walking to the library with my boy, stopping the stroller so he can hop out and investigate some mushrooms ("Look at dat one, mommy, it's a bigger size! That one looks like a flower!) or step on seed pods scattered on the sidewalks...

Playing at Coventry Park, Corydon making friends left and right, the boy going down the big slide, all on his own. Not just going down it, push-push-pushing with his feet to go faster, this exquisite smile of excitement and pride on his face...

Listening to him giggle and talk and share and play so perfectly with a gorgeous little 2 year old girl at the library, while I browsed for books, and feeling so very proud of how sweet he is. How gentle and funny and silly and kind. I'd play with him anytime...

Stopping for an ice cream cone on the way home, and giving him a quarter to spend at the candy machines ("Look at these bones! Can we get these bones? Can we EAT them???" Best 25 cents ever). Passing our cones back and forth across the table to catch the drips and share, and the boy declaring that the orange sherbet on my cone "tastes like my favorite!"....

And, walking home through our neighborhood again, waving at friends who passed by. The boy is so busy making sense of his world, so interested in who had passed, and where they were going. I told him the names of our neighbors and said they were going home, and he (always sure that everyone he sees is his friend, and ready to play with him) said, "maybe we can play at their house" and I told him that we'd actually played there before, on the 4th, that they'd had the pools out in their yard. A slight pause, and then the boy: "And I rode in the Rocket Car!" Yes, yes you did. And thus began half a block of remembering, Jack filling me in on all sorts of details that he remembered from the day-- riding in the street, the fact that the Rocket car went on Coventry and went fast and had seatbelts too... I am simply amazed by what he remembers and what he connects and what he can talk about. And him. I am simply amazed by him.

It was lovely to have an evening of just him. Just him, me, and summer.

Watching...

Watching my boy at the park this evening...

He is such an intriguing and amazing little creature, this one. ***

After nap this evening we went to Coventry park and I hung out with the kids while Nat got a haircut (crazy with this short hair!!). It took a while for Jack to adjust to the fact that, with Ivy in her car carrier, I was not quite equipped to run around the playground with him. I told him he was welcome to explore in the area I could see, and encouraged him to go climb while I kept the baby in the shade. For the next 20 minutes or so, I watched him watch the world. He wandered from spot to spot, observing the playground from different vantage points: the top of the slide, the ramp, the Jack-sized cubby under the red tower. I watched him identify a young man, who looked to be around 7, as his hero of the moment. He followed his friend around, watching from a distance and imitating his every move, inching closer each time until the two of them were collaborating and climbing on the tire-dragon together. I watched him sit near a family on a bench, shy-smiling and hanging out as they asked him how old he was and smiled and talked with him.

I watched him and I was so proud of him. This boy, this future man, this little child of my heart who was once my tiny baby. Who now roams the great Coventry park so independently, befriending the world and taking it all in.

Just watching first.

*** Disclaimer about the above photo -- this was taken at the second park of the evening, while Jack played, again, with some lovely older children who included him in their game of Capture the Flag while we hung out with the grown ups at Tina's for taco night. As you can see, though, he watched a lot there too.

Oh and then there's this bonus for you. Jack and friend Max pretending to nap together in the play cube at the Parent Center this afternoon. Does it make your day, too?

12 weeks

We are getting oh-so-close to 3 months of Ivy in our family! Crazy. With no further ado...
Jack is really liking to hold her these days...

Cleavage alert. Hey, I have to compete with the cute baby somehow..

We think our house looks kind of nice in this picture. We somehow managed to NOT photography the 14 piles of crap that are actually in the vicinity of the nursery. Rock on.

And, for fun, an updated "age to age" comparison. We think little girl is starting to look more like herself these days. We do not, apparently, produce clones. Or at least, not COMPLETE clones.

A rich and beautiful life

A book I was reading at Farley's used that line-- "a rich and beautiful life"-- and doesn't it just sound tantalizing? It's gotten me to thinking about how one goes about living such a life. How I might go about living such a life. So that, at the end, that is what people will say about me.

Here are a few ideas that have come to me since we've been home:

1. Keep the kitchen very very clean. OK, so there is nothing "rich" about that but I do think it makes life more beautiful. I have to thank the fruit flies, waiting here for us upon our arrival home, for this inspiration. As we work to combat the annual infestation, we have been trying to keep the kitchen scrupulously clean. Turns out life is better when I walk into the kitchen and my heart doesn't sink. That's all I'm sayin.

2. Drink wine, look at photos, and laugh really loudly with old friends. Sublime evening of doing just that on Saturday, thanks to visits from Deb and Meg, joined by Melinda and Tiffany and Camilla. Lots of raucous, inappropriate conversation out on the deck after babies were put to bed. Remembering stories from our inglorious, shared pasts... Thanks, Hiram. It was totally worth the exhaustion the next day when my children refused to understand how late I'd stayed up, and woke at 6am...

3. Get out into the summer evenings. Do not pass go, do not collect $200, do not wait, just go. We headed out as soon as Jack awoke from his nap today, and spent a deliciously relaxing hour at the pool. Jack splashed and "swam" with his hands on the bottom of the wading pool and was really ridiculously cute, prancing around with a watering can in one hand and a little boat in the other. Ivy was pleased as punch to be laying on her back outside, looking at trees. Memories of the lake for her, I imagine. We picnicked on sandwiches on the grass and it was lovely to have Jack really eat, no nagging, and just sit there and enjoy the evening together. The icing on the cake was when Jack peed on the potty right there in the changing room... I do believe potty training is on the horizon (he's staying dry while awake about 80% of the time recently!)

We came home, changed into dry clothes, and realized it was only 7. So, back out. We walked as a family of 5 to Starbucks and the kids were just so good. Ivy enjoyed the baby bjorn, facing out for the first time. And Jack was just so excited to go to Starbucks, he sang a song to himself about it as we went in. He climbed himself into a purple chair and noshed on a granola bar while Ivy bounced on my knee and Nat and I enjoyed iced beverages. We joined the dog at an outdoor table when one opened up and we sat and drank in the temperate weather and our time together while Jack narrated the progress of traffic at the intersection for us. If that isn't rich and beautiful, I don't know what is.

Except maybe this: Jack got a "backpack" style shopping bag at Joseph Beth (where, incidentally, we purchased his new favorite book, Richard Scarry's Bedtime Stories). He loves this bag. He loves wearing it, with it dangling down so that it bumps the back of his knees, carefully adjusting the strings on his shoulders. So that's pretty cute, right? Well, today on our trip to the pool Jack wanted to carry his bag. So we put his towel in. And then he proceeded to pack 3 Capri Sun (his new favorite drink) in the bag as well. "So there are all for us!" On the way to the car, his backpack on and bumping into his legs, he turns to me and says, so seriously, "If anyone wants a Capri Sun, I will drop my bag off my back and give you one." Oh how I love him.

11 weeks old!

We are getting close to the end of the exciting 4th trimester, and it shows in just how pleasant Miss Ivy is, almost all the time. She certainly employs the full force of her lungs to tell us when she is hungry, tired, or has a messy dipe-- though I must say we are getting pretty darned good at reading her cues and she rarely gets up to a full shriek for those reasons. The car, of course, is another story. Ivy simply cannot tolerate being awake in the car. Put her in asleep, jiggle that car seat occasionally, and things are OK. Put her in awake and you better be ready to get some real arm exercise bouncing the carseat emphatically all the way to your destination. Hoping this phase comes to an end soon...

Current milestones:

*Great head control overall, and can push up past 45 degrees on her tummy.
*Loves to face out and look around.
*Continues to enjoy laying on her back and looking up at things--her mobile, lights, trees especially.
*Lots of smiles and noises and a few little laughs.
*Enjoying social games such as the "ahhhhhh-boop!" game Jack is playing with her in the above photo.
*A rock star at getting her little fists into her mouth.
*Wants to suck on everything!! Brings our hands and her blankets to her mouth.

And a little Jack update too:

Jack has always been a "reader"-- loves having stories read to him, looking through books. He is now enjoying longer stories, and ones with fewer pictures. "Frog and Toad" is a current favorite. And, he is aware of the words, and their power, as evidenced by him saying "I don't know how to read the words!" when we ask him to "tell us about the story." We are encouraging him to think about the meanings of the pictures as we expose him to the text. Who knows, he may be a reader before kindergarten at this rate.

Today, Jack and I enjoyed playing with some of my Playmobil collection for the first time. He absolutely loved it. We enacted a drama of a plane crash and the rescue by the ambulance, about a thousand times. It was so sweet, watching him carefully place the figures in the little seats, arranging all the tiny pieces just so, pretending. Love it.

flashback..

Picasa, the photo editing software I, for the most part, enjoy greatly, has one frustrating flaw. It frequently and without warning mixes newly imported photo files in with photos from 2,3,4 years ago. This leads to much scrolling down, scanning for dates, and quiet cursing. And, finds like this little video of a very cute young man we know...

2008-11-21 jack at 14 months--walking!