E. just saw one of these and said “Ohhhh…Mommy! Can I get one of those for my birthday?? I promise to be good!” (This has been her mantra the past 2 weeks as her birthday rapidly approaches).
Trampoline with Handles
I just can’t decide. Good idea? Let them jump on something other than my sofa and get their sillies all out. Or Bad idea? They are gonna bounce right off and crack their heads wide open.
What do you think?
Really, you would think I was performing a hand amputation in our bathroom with no anesthesia this afternoon from the sounds of Em’s screams. I am talking blood-curdling, “help me I am being murdered”, screams that I am positive Daddy could hear sitting in the terminal at LAX (a good 15 miles away!).
What was the problem, you ask? A splinter. Not even a deep, you-have-to-dig-for-it splinter. It was a pretty good chunk of wood, but it was sticking out pretty far, so all I had to do was pluck it out. Easier said than done. I am literally holding Emma down so I can just get it out. She is screaming. Addie is standing next to me, thinking I am hurting Emma and she is screaming…it was quite the scene. When I finally got it out and got everyone settled down – Addie down for a nap, Emma on the couch with some cold water, we have this little exchange…
E: Mama. Aren’t you going to say “sorry?”
M: Um….for what, honey?
E: For hurting me!
M: I was just trying to get the splinter out so it wouldn’t get infected, Em. I didn’t make it hurt!
E: But it really hurt me.
M: Well, I’m sorry you GOT hurt – but I’d never hurt you on purpose, honey.
E: Okay. It’s ok. I’m sorry for making you hurt me, too.
I love that she realizes the importance of saying sorry when you hurt someone, but it broke my heart that she thought I somehow hurt her. If only she knew….
A. is obsessed with shoes. The shoes-of-the-week are these orange crocs that E. wore all last year. They are at least 2 sizes too big, but she clearly does not care and refuses to take them off.
She is a girl on a mission. Such fierce determination.
Meanwhile, this is Em’s shoe of choice…
Nakey toes! She wants to take her shoes off at the park all the time that I have to play “bad Mommy” and make her put her shoes back on.
And here is a photo of Em, just because. Just because I love it and think it is so beautiful. I’m not sure why I love it so – you can’t really even see her face, but just that top part of her head. That part that I love to kiss. It is so sweet.
Happy Wednesday.
It is a crazy little Tuesday around here. We had a weird hurricane-like squall blow through, complete with huge wind gusts and sideways rain. And then, 20 minutes later, the sun was back out and you’d never know we had had a storm, except for the branches and debris all around. During the storm it made me realize that I really miss rainy, stormy days! I need a good ‘ol thunderstorm where you curl up on the couch with a mug of tea and just watch the lightning.
A few other realizations around here today:
Although A. is so freakin’ tall, she is still my baby.
We went to tour a preschool today that is close to our house and got A. on the waitlist for next year. I couldn’t believe how tall A. looked next to these 3-year olds. But then they are all running around like E. does, coloring, painting and telling stories, and A. just clung to me and took it all in, not quite sure what to think of everything. In that respect she still looked so “tiny” and baby-like. I still can’t believe that she will be one of those kids in just one year.
Forty-five minute naps for cranky, teething girls do not help to make the day go very quickly.
Ugh. No explanation needed here, I guess. But we are in for a rough afternoon.
Sometimes you have to pick your battles.
This isn’t something I just realized today, I have been trying to *remember* this for awhile now. E. is four, it isn’t worth fighting over what she wears now…there will be plenty of battles when she is a teenager, I’m sure. (But I especially love the color choices and the velvet shoes!)
We move in one week. ONE WEEK!
Ack…got to get back to work.
This is my Best Shot Monday for this week. Addie loves “flying” with Daddy. He throws her much higher than Mommy does. The minute she comes down she does her little sign and says “Mohwr??” (More?!)
Check out Picture This to see some other BSM photos.
Guess what we got in the mail yesterday? Our first acceptance letter to preschool!
Yahoo! She’s in. We have a preschool. She has a definite spot for the summer and the fall!
We (me, especially) are so very excited for school to start. E. was so funny yesterday when I told her what was in the package and read her the letter. She then proceeded to tell everyone we saw yesterday, “I got a package and it said that I have to go to Sunrise Preschool!” It was funny that she said “have to” go, because she clearly is excited to “get” to go.
Anyhow, that is our exciting news for this Saturday.
Now, back to the regularly scheduled packing.
I have a few blogs that I read every single day, and my bloglines (thanks, honey for fixing it!) has a running tally of 95 blogs that I check at least weekly. I am just amazed by all of the good reading material out there. There are so many mommy blogs that I can commiserate with; trashy gossip blogs that I can escape reality with for a little bit; and then just some bloggers who make me laugh my butt off. It is inspiring and helpful in my own writing to continually be “trolling” for new stuff. It’s tough work to keep you people entertained!
Lately I have been following a “meme” called “Real Moms.” A “meme” (rhymes with “dream”) is kind of like those emails with the “get to know your friends” questions that you answer and send around. In the blogosphere, bloggers “tag” others with a “meme” and you are supposed to answer the questions, make the list, etc.
So anyhow, I’ve been following this “Real Moms” one and have seen some pretty fun ones. You are supposed to take a picture and finish the sentence “Real moms….” I haven’t been able to come up with a really creative or original one yet – so I haven’t participated. But most of them are really funny and as I clicked on one link last night, I was expecting to get another of these little glimpses into our “real mom” lives. Instead I was hit in the stomach with a post so amazingly beautiful and poignant and heart-wrenching all at the same time…I still can’t look at it or think about it without crying.
I can’t even begin to imagine or pretend to know what it feels like to lose a child, just thinking of the mere possibility cripples me. I think I would just completely shut down. But, I also think that this is a beautiful tribute and far better attempt at anything I could ever hope to write.
So, don’t say I didn’t warn you – just make sure you have a minute to yourself to really read this entry, and another minute to really compose yourself afterward. Ready? Go read Bonnie’s meme.
And, then go hug your children. Tight. And be thankful for what God has given you.
So, do any of you have recurring dreams, like scary ones, where you are falling and you wake up right before you hit the floor/sidewalk/ground, etc?
I have a version of that dream, and have for awhile, but mine always involves these three elevators. It is always the same elevators in the same building, but I have no idea where this building is – it isn’t like any that I’ve ever been in. There are always three elevators, big cargo-type elevators, and they are always precariously hanging in the shafts, and in my dream, I always try to pick the “safest” of the three and cautiously step into the elevator. It always sways like it is going to tip, oh, and did I mention this is about the part of the dream where the actual elevator walls disappear? Yeah, the walls are now nonexistent. So I’m essentially standing on a floor, suspended by two wires and trying to keep my balance, so I don’t tip the floor and fall many floors below.
(You can predict what happens next, right?)
So I do a horrible job of balancing, slide off the floor of the elevator, fall……………….and then jolt myself awake. Just in the nick of time. Every time. Same exact dream. Weird, huh?
I don’t know anything about dream analysis, but I wonder if I dream this more when my life is spiraling out of “balance” or when I’m doing a poor job of juggling everything I need to keep up.
I haven’t had the elevator dream lately, (I did recently have the “college dream”, where I am late for my exam, but haven’t been to class all semester and don’t even know where to go for the exam. Perhaps we’ll analyze that one another day.) but today we had a bit of our own “elevator adventure.”
Nothing nearly as dramatic as my dream, but the girls and I were actually *stuck* in an elevator this afternoon!
We were coming home from the gym and lunch and trying to get to the 2nd floor of the parking garage to our car. E. pushed the button (and then A. had to push the button, too) and we merrily started going up to the 2nd floor and it stopped, but the doors did not open. There was another man – a custodian for the garage – in the elevator with the three of us, and he spoke zero English. He starts calling someone on his cell and speaking rapid-fire Spanish and I’m seriously trying not to panic.
E: “Mama, are we there? Why won’t the door open?”
M: “Um, it might just be stuck.”
E: “How long will we have to stay in here?”
M: “Just a minute…they’ll have us out in a minute.”
Meanwhile I am thinking…how much air is in here? How long can we stay in here? At least I have some water and leftover noodles from lunch!
I start pressing the “Emergency” button and trying desperately not to panic. I offer up a quick prayer and also mention how thankful I am that A. is comatose from lunch – for once she is just hanging out, taking it all in. E. looked a little more concerned, so I said to her, “Wow! What a fun elevator adventure we are having, huh?” and that seemed to make her a little less apprehensive.
At this point little, Spanish, custodian-man starts pounding on the door and the operator finally asks if we need help – and about 10 minutes later we felt the elevator shift, and it went back down to the first floor and the doors opened.
We made a hasty retreat to the stairs and on our way up, I breathed a huge sigh of relief.
E. just laughed and said, “What a fun adventure, Mama! We are like explorers!”
I don’t know if we are “explorers” necessarily, but I am so thankful for once that my dream didn’t come true, but my prayers did!
I tried so hard yesterday to take the girls out for a really fun day, and, well….it really kinda turned into a disaster.
Monday night Denise called to switch her days to Wednesday and Thursday, which was fine – I’m still so grateful to get to work uninterrupted for 2 whole afternoons a week, but it still meant that our Tuesday was going to be a loooong day. So I decided I would take the girls to Kidspace, this children’s museum that is here in Pasadena. We have never been there because, well, there are always plenty of free (or cheaper!) things to do here. And I kept thinking, we’ll save the museum for a rainy day or a day when we just can’t be outside. Pretty logical thinking, right? And since we rarely have a rainy day here in southern California, we just haven’t gotten around to visiting it yet.
But this week has been a little chilly and rainy – so it was perfect! I psyched E. all up and told her I had a fun surprise for her and everything.
One major problem.
Kidspace is a kid’s museum, but probably 60-70% of the activities are actually at nature interpretive stations….OUTSIDE.
Ugh. And Addie had a rough night so she ended up sleeping in til late, so we got a late start. Got to Kidspace and found out it is $8…a person! So it was $24 for the three of us to slop around and try to “have fun” in the cold, wet outdoors.
And for some reason, (maybe they have become California-ized already?) neither girl likes wearing jackets or sweaters. So I spent most of the day fighting with them to keep their jackets and hats on. I didn’t even get any good photos to show for it.
I typically LOVE rainy days. I think we don’t get enough of them around here, but yesterday was an all-around bummer of a day. Although E. did say to me, “I think this place would be fun, if I didn’t have to keep my coat on!”
Maybe we’ll try it again on one of the 355 sunny days of the year.
Meet Addie’s favorite new word. “No.”
Sometimes it is just “No,” or “No, Mama” and even “Oh No!” But lately it has been NO! A much different declarative said with such force that you’d think I just proposed she jump in a pit of live snakes.
“Let’s change your diaper, Addie.”
“Noooooo,” said as screaming and running in the other direction.
“Please sit on your bottom on the chair.”
“No,” said as continuing to stand with a look of pure defiance on her face.
“Goodnight. See you in the morning.”
“No, no, Mamaaaaaa,” said as sobbing from the crib.
Occasionally she will start to do something that she clearly knows she isn’t supposed to do (i.e. put cat food into the cat’s water dish, turn the garbage disposal button on, stick her finger near an electrical cord) and with a devilish smile she’ll look over at you and say, “no, no, noooo.” Exactly the way we say it to her. It is kinda hard not to laugh at that one.
But the other “no’s.” They are driving me crazy.
She even says “no” when she means “yes.”
“Do you want to go to the park.”
“No.” And she says it with a nonchalant little shrug like “whatever.”
Arrrrggghhhh. I should be thanking my lucky stars that she is so verbal, independant, stubborn – all good virtues when she is older. But they are all so frustrating when she is only a toddler.
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P.S. Happy Birthday, Vic!! I hope you have a great day and a very happy year!