This afternoon, I left Louisa and Bridget alone in their room for approximately 90 seconds while I went up the stairs to say something to Bill. I can't remember what I was saying to him-- I was midsentence when I heard the thud... waaaaaaaail coming from the girls' room. As I hurried down the stairs I saw Louisa making a quick exit from the bedroom. You know, casually. I went in to find Bridget lying on her back, halfway under the crib. Although Bridget is just at that stage where she will pull up on anything and everything and she is pretty likely to get distracted and let go (and then fall over), I suspected foul play.
Louisa came strolling back into the room once I had Bridget in my arms and her cries had subsided. "What happened?" I asked her. "She just fell over, all by herself," Louisa said. Which means, of course, that Louisa was definitely involved. "You aren't in trouble," I said, "but I'd like to know what happened." "She just... she bumped her head. When she fell down." In other words, Louisa wasn't telling.
It was about half an hour later and we were all hanging out upstairs, watching the Puppy Bowl. (Which, by the way, is awesome.) At one point, Bridget attempted (for about the sixth time) to grab a power cord and unplug it. Louisa said "No Bridget" and as I bent over to pick Bridget up, Louisa grabbed her and tried to lift her as well.
"Now Louisa," I said, "you know you don't pick Bridget up. You're pretty strong but only grown-ups can pick her up."
"I know," she said, "but one time I picked her up. And I was standing up, because I am strong.
Bill and I exchanged a look. "Is that how Bridget wound up under the crib?" I asked.
"Yes, because I dropped her," Louisa said, in the most matter=of-fact tone. I was so glad to have gotten the real story that I didn't want to freak out over the fact that SERIOUSLY, THEY WERE ALONE FOR ONE MINUTE AND LOUISA PICKED HER UP AND THEN DROPPED HER. I mean, they are sharing a room. We have to be able to leave them alone together at some point. But Louisa is totally going to be teaching Bridget how to climb out of her crib (just like Eric taught me when we were little), I can see it now. Excuse me while I go price what it would cost to cover the entire bedroom in foam padding.
Sunday, February 7, 2010
Sunday, January 31, 2010
A Very Good Day
Today was awesome. It was also the first really fun snow day we've had in a really long time.
Before kids, the concept of a snow day was a magical thing. A day off from school or work, a day to sleep in, laze about, drink bloody Mary's all day, watch movies, walk around town marvelling at how different things looked. I remember the excitement of staying up late watching the news and the weather outside, just hoping for the announcement that work or school was closed the next day.
These days, a day off from work also means a day off from daycare. There is no sleeping in, there are no all day bloody marys. It takes approximately an hour to get everyone ready to leave the house in snow gear. When reports of an impending snow storm come in, it's not beer and chips we stock up on these days, it's milk and baby food. It's a lot less fun, is what I'm saying.
Today, I got a glimpse of our snow days of the future.
The first thing we did this morning was that we made doughnut muffins for breakfast. Basically, that's cake. Why not? It's a snow day after all. And actually, it was second breakfast. Perfectly reasonable.
After that, we bundled ourselves up and headed out. Yesterday, Louisa and I had taken a walk out into the neighborhood. We headed for the park (with our sled) but Louisa got too cold before we got down there. It was just too cold. But today was beautiful. We thought it would be fun to go see the ducks up at Duke Gardens. On a whim, I brought one of our sleds.
When we got to the gardens, we discovered that the steps that lead into the main entrance we completely covered with snow. It was the perfect sledding spot, with just enough of a slope to get some speed, with no trees or creeks to run into. Bill went first to check it out. He went pretty fast, and turned around a couple of times in the saucer sled on his way down. Up next was Louisa. True to form, she was up for it and didn't even seem scared. Right before Bill let go of the sled, I called out "lean forward!" and she smiled and leaned waaaaay back right as Bill pushed her. She went FLYING down the run. I was somewhat concerned that it was going to scare her. But, no. She loved it. By the next run she had the technique down: legs crossed, lean forward, hold on to the sides. I posted a bunch of pictures up on flickr and if you look at the biggest versions you can see that in every single one of them, she is sticking out her tongue in concentration.
For most of the time, I had Bridget strapped into the Bjorn. She seemed happy enough to watch the action from there. Bridget was wearing her hat with the ear flaps. At one point, a woman came up to me and said, "can I adjust this hat or is it supposed to be a nose warmer here?" Bridget's hat had gotten twisted around so that one of the ear flaps was hanging down right on front of her face. But she hadn't complained! I think she was still so amazed at the crazy scene around her that she was willing to overlook the fact that her hat was half blinding her.
Today was such fun. It really just made me look forward to snow days of the future when we can all go sledding.
And then we had maple-syrup-drenched snow for dessert.
Before kids, the concept of a snow day was a magical thing. A day off from school or work, a day to sleep in, laze about, drink bloody Mary's all day, watch movies, walk around town marvelling at how different things looked. I remember the excitement of staying up late watching the news and the weather outside, just hoping for the announcement that work or school was closed the next day.
These days, a day off from work also means a day off from daycare. There is no sleeping in, there are no all day bloody marys. It takes approximately an hour to get everyone ready to leave the house in snow gear. When reports of an impending snow storm come in, it's not beer and chips we stock up on these days, it's milk and baby food. It's a lot less fun, is what I'm saying.
Today, I got a glimpse of our snow days of the future.
The first thing we did this morning was that we made doughnut muffins for breakfast. Basically, that's cake. Why not? It's a snow day after all. And actually, it was second breakfast. Perfectly reasonable.
After that, we bundled ourselves up and headed out. Yesterday, Louisa and I had taken a walk out into the neighborhood. We headed for the park (with our sled) but Louisa got too cold before we got down there. It was just too cold. But today was beautiful. We thought it would be fun to go see the ducks up at Duke Gardens. On a whim, I brought one of our sleds.
When we got to the gardens, we discovered that the steps that lead into the main entrance we completely covered with snow. It was the perfect sledding spot, with just enough of a slope to get some speed, with no trees or creeks to run into. Bill went first to check it out. He went pretty fast, and turned around a couple of times in the saucer sled on his way down. Up next was Louisa. True to form, she was up for it and didn't even seem scared. Right before Bill let go of the sled, I called out "lean forward!" and she smiled and leaned waaaaay back right as Bill pushed her. She went FLYING down the run. I was somewhat concerned that it was going to scare her. But, no. She loved it. By the next run she had the technique down: legs crossed, lean forward, hold on to the sides. I posted a bunch of pictures up on flickr and if you look at the biggest versions you can see that in every single one of them, she is sticking out her tongue in concentration.
For most of the time, I had Bridget strapped into the Bjorn. She seemed happy enough to watch the action from there. Bridget was wearing her hat with the ear flaps. At one point, a woman came up to me and said, "can I adjust this hat or is it supposed to be a nose warmer here?" Bridget's hat had gotten twisted around so that one of the ear flaps was hanging down right on front of her face. But she hadn't complained! I think she was still so amazed at the crazy scene around her that she was willing to overlook the fact that her hat was half blinding her.
Today was such fun. It really just made me look forward to snow days of the future when we can all go sledding.
And then we had maple-syrup-drenched snow for dessert.
Monday, January 25, 2010
What Goes Around, Comes Around
When Louisa was a baby, we knew that we wanted to eventually have a second child. So, when she outgrew clothes or baby gear, we would just pack it away into one of the carefully organized and neatly stored bins of baby things around the house. (Ahem.) OK it was more like we would put the clothes that no longer fit on top of her dresser and when the mountain up there became too big and precarious, we would stuff it all into a bag and chuck it into the spare room upstairs. Along with the piles of maternity clothes, which were heaped in front of the piles of clothes in a size I have not fit into since before I got pregnant for the first time.
I've been trying to get more organized. All those baby clothes do not help if I don't find them until after Bridget is too big to wear them, after all. I'm making a bit of progress but the thing is, we have an embarrassing amount of clothing for our girls. At some point recently I went through Louisa's drawers and closet and took out everything that was smaller than a size 3T (even though some of those 2T's still fit her.) The result was that everything actually fits in her drawers and she's a bigger variety of clothes now. I think even she was overwhelmed with the choices and so she just stuck with her favorites most days.
This isn't really my original point but I'll go ahead and take the tangent: you can spend a fortune on kid's clothes, to be sure, but you can also get a lot of stuff for very little money. Between consignment shops and sales, it's easy to wind up with a ton of stuff because it all seems so reasonably priced. But I really want to avoid this. Partly because it's a pain to store all those clothes, but more importantly because I don't want my girls to grow up thinking it's normal to have so many clothes that there are things you only wear once or maybe twice before you out grow them. That's obscene, even if you aren't spending a lot of money on clothes. Also it just means that the laundry piles up and piles up and piles up until the mountain of clothes is so big that it takes a week to get it all done, and then when it's done you're right back to issue #1 which is: there is no where to put all those clothes. So, one of my goals for 2010 is to stem the heavy flow of kids clothes into our house.
Back to the point: part of the problem is that we never really got rid of anything because we were always saving the outgrown clothes. As it turned out, we do have a second girl who is wearing mostly hand-me-downs (for now). It looks like she might turn out to be shaped differently enough from Louisa that some of the pants and things might not work on Bridget, but we'll see. I'm so excited, though, because as Bridget outgrows things I can actually get them out of the house! (Most of them. It turns out that there are items I can't part with- not yet anyway, and maybe not ever. But I'm storing those in a more organized fashion.)
Last week I dropped of a huge load of things at the giant kid's consignment sale that happens twice a year around here. This is the second time I've participated in this sale. It's kind of a big pain in the ass to get everything tagged and hung and sorted and dropped off, but then it's all out of the house and BONUS! you get a check a couple of weeks later. I have no idea how much I will make on this sale, and I chose the option where whatever didn't sell will be donated, so I never have to see any of those items again regardless.
And then, I packed up another box of things to send off to my cousin who is expecting a baby soon. It would have been a much bigger box but he's having a boy so I had to sort through and pick out only the things that were non-girly. We had a fair amount of gender-neutral items in the 0-12 month range. After that, not so much.
We've been the recipients of some great hand-me-downs, from family and friends, and once I got three big garbage bags filled with things from the woman who used to cut my hair. Louisa has finally outgrown all of the items from those 3 garbage bags (it's bizarre how well I am able to remember where each clothing item came from) and this past weekend I was just thinking about how this might be the first time that we don't have a large store of hand-me-downs waiting for Louisa to grow into. While I'm happy to finally be getting a handle on the clothing, I found myself a little bit sad about that because I like the hand-me-down process. Louisa likes wearing the things that used to be her cousin's or another big girl's.
Well, it's funny how things work. Because today we got home to find that a giant box had been delivered from our dear friends out in Seattle. And wouldn't you know it-- it was filled with cute clothes that their daughter had outgrown. Louisa went to bed tonight in a new-to-her nightgown and has plans to wear a new-to-her dress to school tomorrow. And some of the stuff in that box looks like it won't fit until next year, so here we are: out with old, in the the new(ish)!
Now I just need to find someone (tall) to whom I can pass along these maternity clothes.
I've been trying to get more organized. All those baby clothes do not help if I don't find them until after Bridget is too big to wear them, after all. I'm making a bit of progress but the thing is, we have an embarrassing amount of clothing for our girls. At some point recently I went through Louisa's drawers and closet and took out everything that was smaller than a size 3T (even though some of those 2T's still fit her.) The result was that everything actually fits in her drawers and she's a bigger variety of clothes now. I think even she was overwhelmed with the choices and so she just stuck with her favorites most days.
This isn't really my original point but I'll go ahead and take the tangent: you can spend a fortune on kid's clothes, to be sure, but you can also get a lot of stuff for very little money. Between consignment shops and sales, it's easy to wind up with a ton of stuff because it all seems so reasonably priced. But I really want to avoid this. Partly because it's a pain to store all those clothes, but more importantly because I don't want my girls to grow up thinking it's normal to have so many clothes that there are things you only wear once or maybe twice before you out grow them. That's obscene, even if you aren't spending a lot of money on clothes. Also it just means that the laundry piles up and piles up and piles up until the mountain of clothes is so big that it takes a week to get it all done, and then when it's done you're right back to issue #1 which is: there is no where to put all those clothes. So, one of my goals for 2010 is to stem the heavy flow of kids clothes into our house.
Back to the point: part of the problem is that we never really got rid of anything because we were always saving the outgrown clothes. As it turned out, we do have a second girl who is wearing mostly hand-me-downs (for now). It looks like she might turn out to be shaped differently enough from Louisa that some of the pants and things might not work on Bridget, but we'll see. I'm so excited, though, because as Bridget outgrows things I can actually get them out of the house! (Most of them. It turns out that there are items I can't part with- not yet anyway, and maybe not ever. But I'm storing those in a more organized fashion.)
Last week I dropped of a huge load of things at the giant kid's consignment sale that happens twice a year around here. This is the second time I've participated in this sale. It's kind of a big pain in the ass to get everything tagged and hung and sorted and dropped off, but then it's all out of the house and BONUS! you get a check a couple of weeks later. I have no idea how much I will make on this sale, and I chose the option where whatever didn't sell will be donated, so I never have to see any of those items again regardless.
And then, I packed up another box of things to send off to my cousin who is expecting a baby soon. It would have been a much bigger box but he's having a boy so I had to sort through and pick out only the things that were non-girly. We had a fair amount of gender-neutral items in the 0-12 month range. After that, not so much.
We've been the recipients of some great hand-me-downs, from family and friends, and once I got three big garbage bags filled with things from the woman who used to cut my hair. Louisa has finally outgrown all of the items from those 3 garbage bags (it's bizarre how well I am able to remember where each clothing item came from) and this past weekend I was just thinking about how this might be the first time that we don't have a large store of hand-me-downs waiting for Louisa to grow into. While I'm happy to finally be getting a handle on the clothing, I found myself a little bit sad about that because I like the hand-me-down process. Louisa likes wearing the things that used to be her cousin's or another big girl's.
Well, it's funny how things work. Because today we got home to find that a giant box had been delivered from our dear friends out in Seattle. And wouldn't you know it-- it was filled with cute clothes that their daughter had outgrown. Louisa went to bed tonight in a new-to-her nightgown and has plans to wear a new-to-her dress to school tomorrow. And some of the stuff in that box looks like it won't fit until next year, so here we are: out with old, in the the new(ish)!
Now I just need to find someone (tall) to whom I can pass along these maternity clothes.
Saturday, January 23, 2010
A Dream Come True
You know that dream where you're brushing your teeth and suddenly little pieces of tooth start falling out and clattering into the sink? Ever have that dream? I do. It's one of the many classic anxiety dreams that I have all the time. In my version, tiny pieces of tooth clatter into the sink, and then when I lean in to investigate, whole teeth fall out, too. It's disturbing and brings on a shuddering sense of dread, like my teeth are only the first sign that the rest of me is about to crumble into dust.
I have tried to train my brain to recognize that if teeth fall out while I'm brushing, it just means I'm dreaming. (Also, if I see an airplane fall out of the sky or a giant wave crash and sweep under the porch of the beach house where I'm standing. I think I've written about this before- it's a pretty long list.) This works with varying degrees of success. But I might have experienced a setback with respect to the tooth-brushing scenario.
You see, on Thursday night I was brushing my teeth when suddenly I felt something odd and then-- clatter clatter-- a tiny little piece of something fell into the sink. When I say a piece of something, I mean it was either tooth or tooth-colored filling. I'm not sure which, but I am certain it was something that was supposed to be firmly attached in my mouth. It turns out that this is no less horrifying when it happens in real life than when it happens in a dream. In case you were wondering.
Also, it turns out that my dentist, or rather the three dentists that work in my dentists' office, do not work on Fridays. There is an emergency call line that goes to a voice mail box. You can leave a message. But, I can tell you that if you leave a message saying that you aren't sure if you are having an emergency or just a disturbing inconvenience, you might not hear back from the dentist on call. Which means you might be stuck going through a weekend with a jagged molar sporting a hole in it. It's not painful (not like the time I had a filling come loose and the nerve of the tooth was slightly exposed).
So the lesson I learned this week was: stop blogging for a week and your teeth will fall out. Duly noted.
I have tried to train my brain to recognize that if teeth fall out while I'm brushing, it just means I'm dreaming. (Also, if I see an airplane fall out of the sky or a giant wave crash and sweep under the porch of the beach house where I'm standing. I think I've written about this before- it's a pretty long list.) This works with varying degrees of success. But I might have experienced a setback with respect to the tooth-brushing scenario.
You see, on Thursday night I was brushing my teeth when suddenly I felt something odd and then-- clatter clatter-- a tiny little piece of something fell into the sink. When I say a piece of something, I mean it was either tooth or tooth-colored filling. I'm not sure which, but I am certain it was something that was supposed to be firmly attached in my mouth. It turns out that this is no less horrifying when it happens in real life than when it happens in a dream. In case you were wondering.
Also, it turns out that my dentist, or rather the three dentists that work in my dentists' office, do not work on Fridays. There is an emergency call line that goes to a voice mail box. You can leave a message. But, I can tell you that if you leave a message saying that you aren't sure if you are having an emergency or just a disturbing inconvenience, you might not hear back from the dentist on call. Which means you might be stuck going through a weekend with a jagged molar sporting a hole in it. It's not painful (not like the time I had a filling come loose and the nerve of the tooth was slightly exposed).
So the lesson I learned this week was: stop blogging for a week and your teeth will fall out. Duly noted.
Sunday, January 17, 2010
Productivity
I realize that I am mostly just saying the same thing over and over again- but wow, I cannot keep up. I have this perpetual to-do list that never gets any shorter, because I can't even get the daily things done. How do people do this?? I mean, I did get somne things done- I made jello with Louisa, for example. I did one load of laundry, and washed most of the dishes.
And now I'm trying to post something and watch a movie at the same time. Which means I am basically doing neither thing very well. I had hoped that blogging every day would get me back into the swing of posting interesting things but it looks like that hasn't happened this week. Maybe next week will be better. (Isn't that just the song of every Sunday night...)
And now I'm trying to post something and watch a movie at the same time. Which means I am basically doing neither thing very well. I had hoped that blogging every day would get me back into the swing of posting interesting things but it looks like that hasn't happened this week. Maybe next week will be better. (Isn't that just the song of every Sunday night...)
Saturday, January 16, 2010
Aargh
It looks like someone (Bridget) didn't get the memo that I declared January to be the month when we are all going to be healthy. Last week it was pink eye. Right now she has a cough and seems decidedly unhappy when she lies down but somewhat happier when she sits up. Tylenol has helped. In other words, all signs are pointing to ear infection. And of course, we notice this at 7pm on a Saturday.
Friday, January 15, 2010
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