Pictures are at smugmug
and videos are at YouTube.
Millie is really developing into quite a little character. She owns her entire school; her teachers joke that she's their boss: she tells them what to do, she informs them of what she will do. And they comply.
She's also wound pretty tightly. Currently there are only a very limited number of outfits that she will wear without crying and screaming; well actually there are 4 and she has a clear preference within those 4. The favorite is a pink velour patterned dress that we got last winter. Millie insisted on wearing it even in the summer (it's velour, like I said, and long-sleeve). Now it's been washed so many times that we have to launder it in the delicates. We might go back to the same place in NYC to get an identical dress in a larger size (maybe 2 so that we don't have to do so much laundry). Next favorite is a purple sun-dress. I sewed up a large hole that ripped in it. We've convinced her to wear a long-sleeve shirt under it, now that the weather is cooler. Next is another purple dress, then a crazy-patterned Oilily summer dress. That's it. If those 4 are in the wash then the morning dressing becomes a battle royal.
Millie likes her 'blankie,' which she likes to carry everywhere and which she refers to almost as another stuffed animal: "I want my blankie to watch me eating" or "Blankie! I drop her down the stairs.' (Don't all blankets take the feminine?)
As for Anna, well, this is tough to say, but my daughter has an addiction. She's a junkie, it can be rather sad. She's addicted to books! Right now she's going through the "Pony Pals" series. We've scoured local libraries to find different ones. Our town's library had only a half-dozen (of which, Anna has read 5) so she threw a fit. She reads in the car, although after dark [e.g. 4pm in late November!] when she begs to keep the light over her head on, she tends to get carsick.
One good side-effect is that, when Anna is on the couch reading or with her nose in a book in the car, it does clear some space for Millie. Her sister can be a bit domineering when they play together, although Millie has been learning - she's found that a screaming/crying fit can work to move Anna too!
Anna is getting more spacey. She's developing a head for abstractions: she can get lost in reading a book and lose track of the time. She can get lost in just gazing at all sorts of other things and not think about getting ready in time for school in the morning. It's lovely but frustrating.
She's very strong and well coordinated, too. She passed her skating Level 5 and is now in 6 - wow what a skater! (Millie has now been going on the ice with us every week; I will shortly be the worst skater in the family.) Anna also had a gymnastics exhibition. It was great to see how much she's improved: she can not only do floor exercises but can even translate those onto other equipment, doing headstands on the balance beam or flipping over the bars. Those pictures are online.
The girls can be awfully funny sometimes. From watching the movie Madagascar they've picked up several lines, most prominently Chris Rock's line, "Excuse me! You're biting my butt!" Now when we try to teach manners, to explain that they ought to say "Excuse me" they inevitably append "You're biting my butt!" Someday, other people will critique our parenting based on statements like that…
At the beginning of November Donna went to DC for a conference to roll out the big project she's been working on for the last year or so. She's been the chief editor for a sourcebook on reinsurance treaty language, working long into the night and spending many days on hours-long conference calls with the other editors as well as shepherding the various sub-groups that wrote the various parts. Amazing work! And finally done, after much last-minute fussing. I'm just not sure that the girls realize how amazing their mom is - maybe someday, they'll figure out just how extraordinary it is to have a mom who spends so much time with them, looks after them so well, and somehow has time for a super career.
Here's a snapshot of a typical morning on a school day. The alarm is set for 6:30 (earlier if I have to get to NY). Millie wakes up at around 6:45 and wanders into our room. We convince her to sit on the potty and then try to get her to pick out some clothes. If her #1 or #2 outfit is available, then good; else she goes into the laundry room to pick #1 or #2 out of the pile of dirty laundry, whereupon we have a discussion about why it needs to be washed. Eventually she gets into some clothes - whatever she's willing to wear, we don't worry about matching! At 7am Anna's alarm goes off, which she often doesn't seem to hear, so we go into her room where the radio is blaring and try to nudge her. Hopefully she has picked out an outfit the night before, otherwise then she needs to go to the computer and check the online weather forecast. Then she spends a lot of time staring at her closet. Nevertheless, her choice of outfits seems to have little correlation with the weather forecast. Eventually the girls are convinced to "brush and brush" (hair and teeth, respectively). Anna insists on her Momma applying the straightening iron on the flip in back. Millie often asks for a ponytail or pigtails. Then we go downstairs to breakfast. Millie is set in her ways: she wants one big red bowl with either cereal or oatmeal and one small bowl with cereal (usually Cheerios), along with the tiny baby spoon. (Where does she get these OCD-spectrum behaviors? Not from her Daddy who has toast every morning, no!) Anna is a bit more flexible: toast some mornings, sometimes cereal, sometimes a blueberry muffin. Sometimes a mixture (a slice of toast and a small bowl of cereal.) Often if it's bread, Anna demands a triple-decker: butter, cream cheese, and jam piled high. Momma usually has cereal although sometimes a muffin or bread if it seems unusually yummy (i.e. if Daddy hit a homerun rather than his usual single). At breakfast the girls are both testing behaviors, trying to do just about anything other than eat. Only much hassle gets them in the car in time to get to school (or, if Momma drives because Daddy goes to NYC, the carrot of a stop at Starbucks might get them to move faster).
A few days after Thanksgiving Donna and I went to our 20-year high school reunion. The coincidence of events gave me pause to think of what I'm thankful for: my spouse is my best friend, I have two healthy beautiful daughters, the three aforementioned women make my life abundantly happy, my job suits me and our family is well-provided for - what more could we ask?
It also got me thinking about happiness, acceptance, and ambition. I'm much happier now than I once was, mostly because I've accepted the way that I am, I'm no longer so unhappy with the person in whose life I have been set. Partly that's healthy, I spend less time uselessly beating myself up. But partly it also means less ambition, since I'm not so willing to forego happiness in order to change the person I am, to change the facts of the life I'm in. I don't know what is the right mixture of acceptance and ambition, of letting go and of bearing down. By the standard of just happiness, I guess I'm closer. But some days it still seems so far.
The girls love their new school. It was a big transition for both. Millie went from an ordinary daycare (without any real curriculum) to a much more structured Montessori program. She's not in the Primary class yet; still with the toddlers, although she's one of the oldest in that class. Her teachers love her and she adores them right back - Miss Debbie is often working at the front desk when we leave, and Millie can't pass her without going for a hug and a kiss.
Anna, too, would have transitioned anyway from Primary to Lower El, so she made a double-hop between schools as well. Her teacher, Maurice, is also super: he helped Anna catch up to the level at the new school (yes! We were amazed to find out that she was behind on several topics…) and now she's zooming along.
One transition for all of us was that Anna is now given homework assignments. It was tough for the first few weeks since she hadn't had any experience with (or even heard of) such a thing. But now she's getting along better: the aftercare includes a "study hall" so that the kids can work on their homework after school before we pick them up. Anna sometimes uses that time to get ahead.
The school also offers extra programs like piano lessons and art classes after the school day - which fits us perfectly. So Anna has additionally been taking piano lessons there. That teacher is much more formal than her other one (she's taking both) - he works more on proper form for hands and learning scales. As a teacher I understand the tradeoff: if someone is going to be a star then they need to cram all the basics, but that's not the way to instill a love for the discipline in somebody who's even a bit ambivalent! But the combination works: during the week she has piano lessons and then on Sunday she has her music (piano/guitar/drum) lessons with Jackson. He's been great: takes the formal lessons that she's been learning and shows her how it relates, how scales on the piano translate to scales on the guitar, even a bit of theory of the types of minor scales.
And Anna has gone back to ice skating lessons now that summer is over. She's still in Basic 5, which is an extraordinarily long section that requires mastery of so many skills - i.e., she's been in that level for quite a long time, and after zooming through levels 3 and 4, she's a bit frustrated now. But now she's putting it all together - no doubt helped by the fact that she's the only one in the class so she's been getting private lessons. Now she's doing crossovers as she goes around the circle, even beginning doing spins - really amazing to see her start to pull it all together.
Her gymnastics have also been doing well, although unfortunately I haven't seen much of that class since it's scheduled for the same day that I'm teaching late in NY.
Millie is in the midst of her verbal explosion, she now talks almost non-stop, saying just about whatever is on her mind. It's interesting to see how some things get processed. Today (Columbus Day) we all had off (well, Donna took a vacation day) so after the girls spent the morning at the playground the sweeties went to the mall for lunch at Rainforest Café, where Millie was terrified of the animatronic animals. So this afternoon Millie collected her stuffed animals and carefully told each of them, "Don't be scared of the animals, they're not real, they're just puppets."
Millie got her new bed at the end of September - or, actually, we put Anna's bed into Millie's room (which matches the other furniture in that room) and got Anna a new bed. But Millie's big-girl bed is a big change - no more crib! She went right to it, without the slightest hesitation. Although the first few mornings, she just cried like usual until somebody came to pick her up out of the bed. It took a bit before she figured out that she could get out on her own.
Millie has been doing great with potty training, she's now wearing her undies all day long, in school and at home. We're keeping her in a diaper for the night, but that's only because we're wimps - most mornings she gets up with a dry diaper. She has had a few accidents, but that hasn't slowed her down. Actually the worst one is her sister: when Millie has an accident, Anna melts down in screams, "Aaaaaaarrrrrgggghhhhh Millie wet the carpet!!!!!!!!!" So Anna keeps a keen watch, always asking "When is the last time Millie used the potty?" "Millie do you need to use the potty?"
The girls started at their new school finally. Anna had enjoyed her summer camp but that finished just before we went to Maine. In the two weeks since getting back but before school, she had been at daycare. She liked to be at the same place as Millie but daycare isn't much besides a holding pen.
Millie started very slowly: she went for 20 minutes the first day, then 30, then 2 hours. She cried for the first few times, saying she missed her daycare teacher -- but then, she sometimes cried when we dropped her off at daycare. But over the first weekend, after she's just gotten an introduction to the school, she talked about how exciting it was. Saturday she cried because she wasn't going to her new school. So by the time the first full week came, she was getting adjusted and enjoying herself. She says "Millie is a very busy girl!" when we ask about what she does (such a cute phrase, since she still hasn't gotten the "rl" sounds so "girl" sounds like "goiyl" or something!).
When Millie went for the first time, Anna (whose school days didn't start until 2 days later) marched her sister in and "gave her a lesson" on some of the Montessori materials -- spooning work and pouring work. Millie has been roaring through those works.
Anna has just looooooved her new school from the start. Going into Elementary is very exciting! She gets homework assignments. They go to gym class (they get on a bus to drive to a local field for soccer -- the bus ride is a highlight for Anna!). She has Spanish class, art class, theater, we signed her up for more piano lessons. She gets hot lunch (on Friday including a cookie or brownie!). Zoom!
On Anna's birthday I picked up the girls from daycare and we went swimming. Millie for the first time figured out how to swim by herself! (With a bubble on) We had been doing our usual playing, with me holding on to her. She liked to climb up the ladder on the side of the pool, get out, do a cute little dance at the side of the pool, then jump in (with me catching her so she didn't go in very deep). As she turned to go back I was trying to let go a bit more and more. Finally she did it all be herself and that was it! She spent the rest of the time paddling around, sometimes making more use of her arms to shoo me away that to swim. With the bubble strapped on, she basically is in the water upright and moves her legs like she's riding a bicycle. But she swims around the pool, utterly fearlessly.
Anna had her two birthday parties: one with family on the 17th (Sunday) and the other the next weekend with her friends. The friends birthday party was at the skating rink -- a party for the cool kids! Some of the kids were pretty good skaters; some hadn't done it before but they all seemed to have fun.
Maine Trip
We left Saturday, before noon. I even took Millie to her gymnastics class from 9:15-10 while Donna and Anna loaded up the car (lucky me!). We met Pat & Barbara for a somewhat late lunch in Sturbridge, finally finding a Wendy's that wasn't too packed with people. The Mass Pike going west was a complete parking lot; fortunately we were going in the other direction. But the rest stops and restaurants along the way were pretty busy. The girls got into their grandparent's car to ride up to Portsmouth NH where we had ice cream at Annabelle's down by the water. Again, Portsmouth was jammed with people. Millie went with us and Anna went with her grandparents up to Maine. We had reserved a hotel in Portland but had also gotten tickets to a circus in Kennebunkport. Since it was getting late (in fact, we arrived at the circus about 15 minutes late) we went directly to Kennebunkport.
We had discovered Circus Smirkus when Anna's old school had it's "clown in residence" program. It seems like a college-level circus, the analog to AAA baseball or college basketball. Its charms are similar: the performers are not so super-human as to seem almost inhuman; they're not buffed and perfect. You can see them sweat. And the setting was appropriate, too: a horse field out in the middle of nowhere. It has been a wet year and the week was rainy so there was mud mud mud! But the performers were all in one ring with bleachers going up only about a half-dozen rows up. The kids got to sit around the ring, so Anna (and, for a short time, Millie) got the best seats - the performers would high-five the kids! The aerialists were spectacular; the clowns were goofy and the jugglers seemed like they had extra hands. But apparently the show was put together in just a 3-week intensive rehearsal/practice!
We got to Portland late and had only granola bars (and popcorn and cotton candy) for dinner. The kids were zonked. Next morning we went downtown and got breakfast (Big Mama's) before doing a bit of looking around. The kids got into their grandparent's car and we went to Freeport. Spent a bit of time at LL Bean; spent nearly as much time in traffic looking for a parking spot. Then the kids got into our car. We made the next 3 hours mostly while Millie & Donna napped.
We arrived at my parent's house - beautiful and soul-refreshing! We unpacked quickly and headed out for a dinner at Lompoc Café. Then ice cream and back home to get the kids to bed.
That evening was quite cool; the fog blowing off the water made it downright chilly, probably into the 50s (in August!). Everybody bundled up to try to ward off the chill. Imagine, back home it's sweaty and nasty!
The next day was our first at the house. It was cool and cloudy so we first walked up toward the Bowl. The girls are not yet good hikers, particularly in the less-than-perfect weather and without the proper shoes. Anna kept dunking her Crocs into puddles which got her feet wet; Millie just disliked the mud and dirt and puddles altogether. Neither thought much of the bushwhacking that is at the beginning part, where there is no real trail but we just felt our way up the slope. So we didn't quite get to the main trail. Well, although the girls had moments of really hating the hiking they also had moments of loving the whole experience. Perhaps with better weather and a better trail and better gear they could really love it.
After the day had warmed a bit we left to go to Sand Beach for the kids to trot down to the water, squeal at the cold (well, Anna did; Millie got scared of the mild waves) and scamper back. Then they commenced to digging; Anna made a one-girl bucket brigade to bring ocean water up to her castle's moat. They had great fun even though, as I said, it was chilly and grey.
Then we found a tiny deli in Otter Creek for a late lunch/snack (PB&J for 2; just PB for 1; Millie had fruit and granola bar).
Afterwards we went back to the house to see the grandparents. The girls played for a while and we went out to dinner - tried to find an old-fashioned lobster shack. Found the "Bar Harbor Lobster Pound." The lady at the counter was suitably surly to make it "characterful". Donna, Pat, & Barbara each had a lobster. Anna was hell-bent on getting her own lobster but balked at the very last minute and went for the bright-red hot dog. Millie & I never waivered from our initial picks (hot dog & burger, respectively). Anna said that the lobster sample she had was "kind of yummy" so she might one day like it. Anna and Millie had great fun tying on the lobster bibs. Then another ice cream (this one at the slightly hipper MDI Ice Cream, where I got "stout" ice cream with fudge ripples (the girl serving it admitted that they used Cadillac Mtn stout, so they know quality). We could have gotten blueberry basil but nobody else was brave.
The next day was rainy and soaked. The girls were unhappy about getting wet and missing a day to go play at the beach. I tried to convince them that they wouldn't get as wet in the rain as they'd gotten at the beach, but the mood was grim. We went to the Sieur de Monts Nature Center and Abbe Museum; the girls didn't much like either one of them. (I confess, my memories of rainy days on MDI are not much better.) Then we went into town to get stuff for lunch and dinner.
I got to make dinner - got lots of yummy ingredients and spent the afternoon cooking. Three girls took a nap while Pat hiked up from the backyard to the peak of Champlain (!). I enjoyed using the granite part of the countertop for kneading bread.
We had a dinner guest, Pauline who is a friend of Barbara's from high school. Pauline and her husband, Mike (also a common friend of Pat & Barbara's) moved up to Maine (near Ellsworth on the mainland) decades ago. Mike couldn't join us for dinner, he was elected First Selectman and had too many other commitments. Pauline is great and she and Barbara enjoyed catching up.
That night we got out the telescope from the house (which Eric & Daniela had gotten my parents). The crowd was disappointed since some high clouds moved over and obscured the view. But after they went to bed I went back out to find that the sky had cleared, so I got a magnificent view of Jupiter with 3 Galilean moons ( · · · O ) and the three-quarters moon. I even saw two Perseid meteors.
Next day was sunny and beautiful, finally! We went directly to Sand Beach where the girls had fun sand-pipering to and fro from the waves, building castles, etc. Pat & Barbara joined us (although Gramma didn't get even her feet wet!). That beach is peculiar because it is filled with people doing all of the usual beach things - laying on blankets, lunches set up, umbrellas, kids digging, -- everything except doing much swimming! The water is probably not 60° so only the hardiest go in, and even those come back to sit in the sun and recover.
After a few hours at the beach we went on to Thunder Hole. It was quiet so wasn't too interesting although we all enjoyed watching it fill and recede. Then Anna and I went climbing out over the rocks, looking at the tidepools and generally enjoying scrambling up and down over the granite. Millie, Donna, and the grandparents waited - very patiently, since we took a while! I had to drag Anna off so that we could go back to the house for lunch. It's good to see a fourth generation beginning to love Acadia.
In the afternoon the grandparents took the girls to an 'Oceanarium' where they had touch tanks so the girls returned full of knowledge about marine life and with hands dirty from the salt water. Donna and I went downtown to do some shopping and -principally! - to tour the new Bar Harbor brewery complex. The brewery has a new owner and new brewer, who have taken a rather sleepy franchise and really pushed it ahead. The 'tour' was mostly just drinking samples of their lineup - very fun, and we left with a case of their finest.
That evening we had dinner (Mex). Since the sky was still clear we drove to the top of Cadillac to see the sunset - or so was our plan. We had great views of the sunset as we drove up but as we neared the top suddenly we drove into cloud. By the time we got to the pull-off near the top the fog was so thick that we could barely make out the headlights of cars twenty feet away. We saw a ball of orange sinking down - which was pretty neat, though not as spectacular as a full sunset. Afterwards we headed around Ocean Drive for a night-time viewing of Thunder Hole when the incoming tide would make it more likely to rumble. Sure enough it was a bit better, we got our toes sprayed once, although only once. We couldn't see the moon through the clouds overhead but we could see its glimmering glaiks far out in the ocean dancing on the wavetops - another beautiful scene.
Thursday we cleaned in the morning and got going by the afternoon. We got to Portland and had dinner at Gritty's brewpub. Next day we returned home - lunch in Portsmouth, hit traffic on the Mass Pike.
Saturday morning was back to routine: Millie's gymnastics and Anna's music lesson. Then the Foster's took the girls so that we could clean the house for Anna's birthday party on Sunday. Happy Birthday, Anna!
For the Fourth we went to see the Hartford Symphony's Talcott Music Festival. The girls really seemed to enjoy the symphony performance - easy, since it was full of Sousa marches and cheering and ended with fireworks! And it was a nice atmosphere: there were so many other kids there, and everyone was at ease, so there wasn't too much worry about keeping the kids quiet, not like if we went to a real symphony concert. The fireworks afterward were fun, although it took Millie a while to get into it. Walking from the car to the field with the bandshell, Millie was excited about getting to see the fireworks. But when they started she covered her ears and buried her face in her Momma. Only about half-way through did Donna finally convince her to look up. Then it was OK (although Donna kept her hands over Millie's ears).
Anna has started at summer camp and is blissfully happy with it. They go swimming three times a day, run around, and do other activities from gymnastics to pottery to "fun with food". Anna is doing well swimming and just passed "Level 2" so she's beginning to learn diving and some more advanced strokes. And we signed her up for French lessons so she's been spending about 40 minutes three times a week learning a bit of French. She learned a joke "un deux trios - cat sank!" Now she can count just about to 10. She's learned a song or two. Mainly she's learning that there are other languages in the world and learning them can be fun.
We're also members of the local YMCA outdoor pool so we've been swimming on weekends too. Millie is doing very well: she's unlike her sister and much more comfortable in the water (of course, she's got more examples: her big sister is doing so well and even her parents have been trained now so we're pretty comfortable -- in the shallow end). Millie was standing on tip-toe in the water and, for some reason, decided to lift up her legs. She didn't have her mouth closed so when I lifted her up immediately she was choking on water and gasping for breath. We got her out and wiped her face dry - and then she climbed right back into the pool. How brave!
We went to see Rush again (7/7/08) - another great show. We got better seats this time than last, at the same venue (Mohegan Sun). We were about half-way up the first section, just about perpendicular to the front edge of the stage. So we saw a lot of Alex (since we were on his side). But the viewscreens were far enough back that we didn't miss anything. Donna and I went with my old friend Raj and his 6½ year old son - the kid's first concert! And Raj and I realized that our first Rush concert was 20 years ago, back in 1988. The concert was terrific, they played a lot of their newest material, and it seemed that they had selected most of the songs based just on which ones they enjoyed playing the most. So the band all seemed to have a good time and the audience did, too.
Now deep in the "terrible twos" we can both agree fully that it's sometimes terrible to be two (and sometimes terrible to be a parent of a two-year-old), but it's also wonderful and rewarding. Granted, sometime Millie seems to just be experimenting: I wonder what happens if I fall onto the floor and scream about *this*? Can I extract another concession from these hapless adults? (Sometimes she's a ruthless negotiator.) But she's also blossoming into a wonderful fun funny joyous person! She's so charming and cute because she says just about everything that comes to mind. She's got a great sense of humor and loves to be silly with us. The same violent emotions that wrench her to run screaming to bury her head in her "blanky" and sob - those same emotions also get her laughing and bouncing and running around having great fun. She loves to sing and has a great musical talent. It's just different with Millie than with Anna because, when Anna was this age, she got our sole attention. Now Millie must share attention. Sometimes (every other minute) Anna is sweet and sympathetic. Other times she's angry and controlling: "Millie you must do this!" We enjoy family times with all of us together but then we also spend time each weekend with the girls separately.
Our Trip to See Eric & Daniela, June 7 - 14, 2008, all written by guest blogger Donna from her blackberry We've arrived safely in Despite the fact that we had rented a car, Eric &
Daniela welcomed us tired travelers at the airport. They saw us safely to our rented minivan
(snickered a bit) & then left us to find our hotel. After a short while we joined them again for
dinner at the Town Hall Brewery in Sunday, the only thing on the agenda was the
WATERPARK!!! But before it opened, we
did take a small walk around the corner from the hotel to the We also saw the place where the bridge collapsed last
summer. I was actually surprised how
short the span was over the river, but even if it wasn't long, it was enough
for tragedy. It also
made me nervous driving over the various other bridges spanning the river. Then we spent 2 hours in the waterpark! It was actually a nice place for the
kids. There was one pool with depth
ranging from 3 to 12". That was the
one with the train in the middle that had various slides coming out of it. It also sprayed out great amounts of water
from time to time. Next there was a pool
with depth ranging from 3.5' to 4' deep with a basketball hoop, a plastic log
to climb on in the middle & its own sprayer. The water was nice & warm! Lastly there was a water slide which actually
went out of the building & back in.
Luckily the kids were too short for that one, but despite our best
effort, the kids seem as tentative in the water as we are, so they probably
wouldn't have gone on it even if they could have. It was actually a good thing that Anna had an
opportunity to get reacquainted with the water before she goes back to Renbrook this summer. Given the lack of nap the day before, both girls were monsters. We ended up getting a quick lunch followed by
a long nap (2 hrs) for all of us. And so
any plans to return to the waterpark or see something
else that Sunday were gone. But the
purpose of vacation is to rest & rest we did. So, we packed ourselves into the
(surprisingly not horrific The next day we checked out of the hotel, but then headed
back over the river to where we were the night before to check out some stores
we had seen. We did a bit of economic
stimulus & then headed to our rented house in The house appears to be a typical turn-of-the-century built After settling in, we grabbed a quick bite to eat with Eric
& Daniela & headed to After that we were able to see a couple animals - zebra,
giraffes, lions & tiger, but Daniela had to leave for work, so we headed
home. It actually ended up being a
gorgeous day & the perfect amount of time spent. After doing some food shopping for the house we just hung
out at the house for a little while before heading to dinner at an Afghan
restaurant. Tuesday, Donna headed to a Kevin & the girls tried to go canoeing with Eric &
Daniela that morning. Although it was (relatively) warm & sunny, it was too
windy for them to go, so the girls ended up spending the morning at Eric &
Daniela's playing with their dogs & cat. They met up with Mom for lunch - a Tibetan/Nepali/Indian
restaurant. After seeing Eric &
Daniela off, we hung out at the house a little while longer. Then we headed
back to Anna had been working on her loose tooth all day & it
was bothering her. Finally a piece of lettuce vanquished it. We had brought her tooth fairy box in
anticipation, so it was well used. Unfortunately, though, both Tuesday night & Wednesday
morning Anna was in quite the mood.
Assuming she was just tired & perhaps in a bit of pain from the
tooth. But still it would be nice to
have 2 pleasant, appreciative children for a little while. We're currently sitting in our minivan here on Wednesday
morning in the midst of a thunderstorm.
We're planning on heading to the Children's Museum in downtown The saga will continue... When last we left our heroes, we had some cranky kids on
what was to be a rainy day. Although
there were periodic soaking thunderstorms and the threat of hail and even
tornadoes in surrounding towns/counties, it ended up not being so bad here in We spent a couple hours there playing with their hands on
attractions. Millie liked the tv
studio where she & several other hobbits holding plastic guitars appeared
to be shooting music videos. There was
also a storybook dress-up area and various climbing/sliding attractions. We weren't able to hit everything though
because the kids were hungry/tired again. After a quick lunch and a stop at the nearby
store Candyland (more for my We went to CVS to pick up a few things, stopped at Starbucks
for a drink & then brought Anna to a local spa to get a manicure (she ended
up picking red) and pedicure (pink there).
She was delighted & asked the poor girl doing the work so many
questions - why do you have curtains there, why is the water orange, what is
that pointy thing, why are you putting that on my nails,... In any event she was delighted & needed
the time alone with me as much as Millie needed the nap. After we got back, we joined Eric & Daniela for a
family-friendly dinner. Daniela had to teach her class, so we took Eric home
which allowed the girls to "play" with the dogs & cat. I say "play" because Millie's
version of playing is generally shrieking in terror, particularly when Moose
comes near. Anna also broke into
hysterical sobs when Moose slurped her face or one of the animals scratched
her. But Lucy is a nice size &
pretty laid back, so Anna picks her up from behind
under her front two legs, leaving the hind two on the ground &
"dances" the poor thing around. Thursday was a delightful day. Quite warm. We took a riverboat ride on the For dinner we went with Eric & Daniela to Daniela's
mother's house. Mita
has a beautiful home in one of the posher sections of
Mita has 2 pugs, Rudy, boy, black
& Claire, girl, brown. They are a
little bit more rambunctious than Lucy, but the girls mostly made their peace
with them & even walked them briefly outside. We ate some yummy pizza, but then left pretty
quickly to get ice cream at Eric & Daniela's favorite Twin Cities' ice
cream place. Daniela's friend Jenny
showed up with her black pug, Suzie, who was very mild & tolerated Anna's
handling her, including the aforementioned "dancing". Anna begged us for a dog. Friday, our last day in Anyway, this museum was also very nice, new, bright, airy, with engaging hands-on displays. But unfortunately Millie & even in some
cases Anna are still too young to be truly engaged, although Anna did spend
quite a lot of time around the dry ice live demo. They even did a good job of showing the
science behind Star Wars - robotics, prosthetics, hovercrafts, etc. But Millie was the tired one today & so we left without
seeing everything because she was becoming quite the little monster. After a decent nap for Millie (after which she woke up even
crankier than before), we packed up & joined Eric & Daniela for one
last dinner - this time Ethiopian - followed by ice cream. The kids also got a chance to play with the
dogs again. This morning we had to pack up & then we went out for
breakfast at a place called Bread & Chocolate. Now we're at the airport in a nice little
play area for the kids. We should be boarding
the "hairplane" (as Millie says) in half an
hour. We had a good time, but there's no
place like home! email from Anna: "thank you daddy for putting up the
trampoline i love
you may 18, 2008" May 2008 We have signed up Millie for gymnastics – how cute! I know, the idea of a two-year-old doing
gymnastics is yuppie overconsumption hell, but Millie and the other kids in the
class love it, and they're hilarious!
The Little Gym has scaled-down (and well-padded) equipment that allow
the kids to climb, balance, and swing on bars.
Millie likes grabbing hold of the bar and swinging then dropping. She's strong – already can lift her legs up
and is beginning already to be able to get her feet up to the bar. So on Friday mornings I take her for her
class (each kid is accompanied by an adult) and we both have fun. Millie stands out because she's learned some
things from her sister, particularly that when a girl does gymnastics she needs
proper attire, so she insists on wearing her sister's hand-me-down leotard
(it's still quite big, I think Anna was 3.5 when she got it). Every other kid wears regular clothes. But, like I said, Millie loves it and talks
about it for days afterward. Anna has been doing really well with her gymnastics,
too. It's all coming
together and suddenly in the space of just a year she can do a cartwheel well,
is working on handstands, tumbling over her head into a bridge and on kicking
from a bridge up to a handstand. The
gymnastics place then made the selection of putting kids with different
abilities into different groups. Anna
made "Pre-Team" – which is about where most of her cohort is. It's the thin end of the adolescent team
sports wedge – we've been warned! We
have been just trying to encourage her to do what she thinks is fun, without
any pushing or even much suggestion from us.
Of course we have occasionally pushed her to go to a class on a week
when she just didn't feel like it, but always at the end of each session we've
seriously asked her if she wants to do more or if she's had enough. Some things, like dance, have fallen – she
only on rare occasions now mentions "wouldn't it be nice to take tap-dance
classes". Gymnastics is something that
she's really enjoying right now, but we'll see in the future. It's rather in contrast to ice skating, where
she hasn't been as thrilled by the classes.
Some of the difference, we think, is simply due to her time path of
learning: right now she's making rapid progress in gymnastics but at ice
skating has been going more slowly. (In
the fall it was the opposite.) We try to
moderate her swings of enthusiasm but still stay sensitive to the overall mood. It's crazy because now I'm beginning to talk to other
parents who are full-tilt into the pushy sports parent insanity. They're talking about their 5-year-old
gaining the skills necessary to get on the path to high-school team, and how
they're pushing said kid – completely wacky!
They'll chew out their kids right in public for
any reduction in performance. These are
people I had, until now, only read about – now they're revealed as fellow
parents lurking among us, throwing back the mask of civilized behavior and
revealing themselves as wolf-born lunatics.
Anna's music lessons are also going well. Since she has the keyboard always set up she
often uses it. She comes downstairs each
morning and plays a few songs; not much, just for 5 minutes (she would probably
do more, if not prevented by her hunger and her parents' pleas to hustle on to
breakfast so we can get going!). Every night when we get home, another few minutes. Not as much with the guitar, but still she's
making progress. She has been learning
about composers at school and learning some simple compositions: Bach's Minuet,
Beethoven's Für Elise, etc. Then her weekly sessions with Anna's school year is winding down, although she's still
getting new lessons at a tremendous clip.
She's learned multiplication and division (in the equivalent of
Kindergarten!) and writes and illustrates stories. (Since the writing is phonetic, sometimes it
can be quite cryptic; they aren't yet working on spelling.) She also is beginning to look like a bibliomange like me – her teacher at school hooked her on
the "Freddy Goes to Which is good, because it means she's not
tormenting her sister, which is otherwise about the only way they seem to be
able to interact some days, each tormenting the other! Yell, cry, scream, whine. The worst is when they use some of the
phrases that they learned from their parents, I can sometimes hear myself when
Anna yells at her sister – ugghh! There are some days when parenting is a chore, when it seems
that all dinner long is spent Finally, as for the story
of the change in schools, here's the short version. We still think very highly of the Montessori
approach, we're just changing from one Montessori school to another one in
town. This new one was started by a
group of teachers who were dissatisfied with the one that we're leaving – there
is much bad blood there, as might be imagined. Our odd story began when Anna's teacher, Miss Nancy, who she
had worked with for 2½ years, abruptly left the school, complaining that the
school was harassing her and making her work miserable and unbearable. That got all of the parents quite upset,
since we had all thought really highly of So we had been looking around at other schools even before
our summonses and had already been leaning toward this other Montessori
school. They're a lot more informal and
easygoing. Our complaint about the
former school, going back to our first impression of the school, was that it
was run by a few bluestockings. But most
of the people there are great and we have little actual interaction with the
chiefs, so we were very happy for 2½ years.
But I think we'll be even happier at this new school. Anna
lost her first tooth
- how exciting! Lower bottom front, taken down by a quesadilla. She immediately called both sets of grandparents.
I'm very happy with
this picture, it's just what I'm trying to get, the spontaneous happiness.
I haven't been keeping up: having fallen behind, I don't want to start again until I have time to really do it right and recap all that came in the interval. … Until it gets long enough to just say 'heck with it'!
This has been a time of racing changes for Millie, she's really changed into a little kid not a toddler anymore. She's learned to sleep on her own, drinks from a cup and always feeds herself, is using the potty on occasion, talks up a storm (including with a sly humor) - what fun!
More on particular topics - the sleeping part is a real relief. Millie's sleeping habits had gotten worse, she was waking up nearly every night in the middle of the night and would either keep us awake for hours or only sleep in our bed. (And the latter option was bad, too, since toddlers sleep with amazing energy, bouncing all around throughout the night!) We were getting advice from all corners to just let her cry it out but the softer-hearted half didn't like that advice. Until the sleep deprivation was getting nearly as bad as when she was a newborn - then even the softer-hearted one cracked. Millie is very stubborn and cried for quite a while, but after several hours she finally konked out. She's not just stubborn though, she's also very smart. Next night she tried crying, which had worked like a charm for about two years, but after about 30 minutes gave up and went to sleep. Next night, no problems. Ever since, no problems. We're all much happier.
In other news, the girls will be changing schools in the fall. There's a story but I won't go into it here now. 'Nuff said.
Millie has been making great progress on potty training. She was in daycare with three other kids who are almost three so she had role models - in addition to having her sister, and Millie wants to be just like her sister!
It's also funny the way that, since Millie spends the time at daycare with three boys, she's picked up some of their habits. When she falls she'll call out "I OK!"
Both girls have been doing great. Anna enjoys her weekly gymnastics classes, comes home, and tries to teach them all to Millie. Millie gamely follows along. Anna has been working on her headstand (which she does, propped against the couch) and handstand (she walks up the glass door). Anna is getting the hang of it, getting good at holding her balance. Millie tries to follow Anna, although of course she's differently proportioned. A toddler's giant melon head doesn't fit under the arms so good. Millie can do a headstand without even using her arms!
Millie is at one of those inflection points where she suddenly seems to have grown
by a big amount in a short time. She's using complete sentences (usually either with the first
word as "NO!" or some phrase involving "I want!"). We decided, that, since
she's approaching her second birthday, to retire the high-chair and move her into Anna's Stokke
chair. This gives her much more freedom of action during meals: she can climb out and leave if
she feels like it. And since she's still not a chow-hound, she often feels like it.
Millie dialect: "Hairplane"
During the time between Christmas and New Year's, Millie
officially hit the Terrible Two's (ahead of time, yes, she's advanced in this
as in so many other things!). More and more often she will look you in the eye
and yell "NO!" Just for the fun of it, just to see what happens.
Where Anna was more content to sit back and observe, Millie is much more interested
in seeing how things work (a nice way of saying, she takes things apart). She's quite
clever at figuring out how to unscrew, pull apart, wriggle and rip all variety of toys
and other items. Maybe she'll be an engineer someday?
She's also figured out about stepstools. When Anna was this age we hadn't yet provided
easy means of a kid increasing her height. But now there are 3 stepstools (2 in bathrooms
and a milk-crate in the kitchen), which Millie has become quite savvy with. One night we
were bathing the girls. Millie decided, for some reason, that she needed to get her little
bathtub, which was in our tub. We didn't see her get it, only saw her drag in her tub and
wonder "How did she get that?" Then we found the evidence: a stepstool left by
our tub, then a stack of papers nearby that had been pushed over. The rascal had set herself
a goal and put together all of the necessary tools to get it.
More on Millie's dialect. Whenever we pass a construction site she
eagerly calls out the names of the working machines, "Ek-e-deh-deh"
and "buh-duh-duh" to the excavator and
bulldozer. She remembers exactly where
they are on our regular trips and sings them out just as we come up to the
place, even before she sights them (and she asks about them, once they
leave). Before Christmas there was a
roadside lot selling trees, in front was a big inflatable Santa. Now after the holiday Millie asks "where
Santa go?" Christmas season with my three lovely girls was
wonderful. Anna's excitement grew with
each day in December as the 25th grew closer and closer. My Grandma Reed had long ago made Donna and I an Advent-type calendar, with a marker to be taken off for
each of the 25 days. Anna gleefully took
off each day's mark upon waking and counted the days remaining. Anna carefully wrote out her Christmas list for Santa's
edification: she wanted a guitar, a large stuffed pony, and chocolate (yes, no,
yes). Anna heartily sang her complete
repertoire of the season's songs. Since
her holiday songfest at school included two Hanukkah songs, she included those
too – very ecumenical! (Although
afterwards we had some uncomfortable questions about why Santa doesn't go to
Jewish homes, maybe they didn't have chimneys?) Millie, of course, lives in the moment and so, although she
enjoyed all of the odd activities that her family got
up to – new decorations around the house, even a big green tree propped up in
the middle of the house. And she's happy to
learn Anna's songs and generally enjoy the good cheer that properly becomes
with the season. We were fortunate to get a couple decent snowfalls in
mid-December, so Santa didn't have to sleigh through just mud. Anna's last day before the holiday was a
half-day so after I picked her up we went to a local playground. What fun!
Even though it had been a few days since the snow, ours were the first prints on the
playground so Anna cheerfully stomped over everything and knocked off icicles. The next day I had to work in NYC so Donna had to stay with
Anna. She brought her into work for
Anna's annual meeting with Jim, the chief actuary who (most importantly for
Anna!) keeps a strategic reserve of M&M's in his office. Anna wrote more notes on her momma's
whiteboard. We had at least four separate Christmas celebrations. On the Saturday before the holiday, Donna's
cousins Jen, Russ, and Michael visited – they were up in Christmas Eve of course is Donna's favorite time of the
holiday, with my in-laws at Rosemary's.
Anna and Millie enjoyed time with their cousin Katie (who grows and
grows! Isn't it strange how my own kids
change only gradually but other people's kids sprout up out of nowhere?!) Donna's Grandma Jarvis took the train
down from After getting her to bed, though, we discovered that we had
no heat! This was a bit of a surprise
since we'd had the repairman out just the day before for the same problem, and
he'd repaired the faulty power venter (those
execrable things are always breaking!).
But this time the repairman diagnosed a simpler problem: no oil. (Why didn't we, or yesterday's repairman,
notice? Because two years ago the oil
gauge had broken, stuck at full, so we had two competing measures – this time I
remembered to put tape over the faulty gauge so hopefully we can avoid this
problem in the future.) It took another
hour for the oil truck to get out for an emergency fill – I doubt that anyone
was happy with a This was a minor glitch – the kids hardly noticed. On Christmas morning we were awakened early
(our hopes that a late night might keep the kids sleeping later were
dashed). Anna and I went downstairs to
fetch the stockings (to be opened on our bed) – what a look on her face, just
rapture and excitement!, when she saw a big guitar
case with a bow on it! After opening the stocking gifts we had breakfast and then
made sortie against the mountain of gifts under the tree. Millie is very funny, since she would be
perfectly happy to unwrap one gift and play with it for a while and maybe even
forget about getting more (just like Anna at that age). But although Millie would get quickly
absorbed by a new toy, she could spare a glance at her sister, who yelled
"Millie! Aren't you going to open
your next present?" Not getting an
affirmative answer within ten seconds, Anna very graciously began to help her
little sister by ripping a corner.
"NO ANNA! Millie
by herself!" (the latter phase "buh-huh-seff!"). And so on as both tore through their gifts. After that morning we went to see my parents, where we
joined Uncle Eric and Aunt Daniela (who had come in from On the day after Christmas we had Donna's parents and her
Grandma Jarvis back to our house – we even had hot water by the time they
arrived! Again we were buried under
presents; again we ate too much. The day
after that, we had Eric and Daniela over. A couple days before Christmas we brought in Millie for her
first real haircut (momma had trimmed her bangs before) but we wanted to wait
to put scissors to the scant hairs that the girl had! But by then Millie had enough hair that you
could just about tell a difference between "before" and
"after". She sat in the chair,
overwhelmed by all that was swirling around her, staring with wide wonder at
what befell. The lady finished by tying
a pretty pink bow in her hair and tying one for Anna too. Both girls got a little toy, which Millie
lost within fifteen minutes – thus all earthly glories. Now that the holidays are over we're trying to break Anna of
her generosity. She really got into the
spirit of the season by bundling up several of her old toys, wrapped in
construction paper and sealed with yards of tape, then put under the tree. Most were for her sister; her momma got a
bundle of rocks – but not for wrong-doing!
These were special rocks that Anna had collected in the summer, stored
on a shelf, and finally carefully chosen as being a wonderful gift that her
momma would cherish! But now that the
holidays are over she's still asking to wrap up things, and we're trying to
discourage that. After the holiday buzz, we had some time off work, so we
spent some good time enjoying our family and also did some necessary
housecleaning. Over the past year, as
Millie has outgrown clothes and toys, we've just put them into her closet,
along with the (rather smaller quantity of) clothes that Anna outgrew. It was time to go through them and figure out
which to donate, which to give away, which to throw out. Bittersweet! I'm
proud of my swift-growing daughters and only hope that they continue to develop
as well and as true. But Millie has just
transitioned from baby to toddler and, since we don't plan another, we have to
face up to the fact that we will have no more babies in the house. No mistake – I don't miss waking at all hours
of the night! But I cherish the times
when I could hold my little bundle in just one arm, look down at her soft sweet
helpless face. I don't miss the mewling
and drooling but rocking and singing over her is probably gone. I love it as the girls each become more
independent, yet there is a part of me that loves to be depended upon, that
loves to be the near-center of a child's universe (and I write 'near-center'
since of course their momma is the true center, I was just reading Thackeray
about a mother being God in a child's theology). Over the T'giving weekend we went to NYC for the first time in a while (well, Daddy goes regularly but not the sweeties).
We mixed old favorites with new experiences. We stayed in Chelsea at a Four Points Sheraton, surely among all of the Four
Points properties this is the chic-est-per-square-foot, although that's saying something about both numerator and denominator.
We went to Bryant Park to see the ice skaters and the holiday shops, saw the shops in GCT (bought stuff for all 3 sweeties),
went to Roc Center to see the tree and the ice skaters, then up to Central Park to see the fountain in front of the Plaza
Hotel with the trees in it. Had one dinner at Ghenet (Ethiopian food -- whole family liked it!) and another at Dos Caminos
(hip Mexican in SoHo). More shopping in SoHo. Hot chocolate in Maison de Chocolate & Vosges. Millie liked getting on trains,
both "choo-choo trains" (i.e. MetroNorth) and "subway trains". We finished with lunch at Meli Melo.
We didn't do much yesterday b/c we were all so tired. We went for walks around the neighborhood where we are staying (right across a canal from the zoo) & filled our fridge w/ some groceries. The girls fell asleep in their strollers as we pushed (we have a picture). Anna went to sleep around 8:30 pm local time & did not wake up until 11 am. Even Millie (although harder to get down to sleep), awoke only a 1/2 hour before.
After getting ourselves dressed & fed this am we took a 1 hour canal cruise, got some food & during our walk stumbled upon a playground where Anna is running around happily while Millie naps in the stroller.
Yesterday started off hot but cooled down when the clouds rolled in. Today was much cooler & tomorrow is possibly rainy.
Yesterday morning after getting ourselves going - Anna & Millie still slept until 9 or 10 - we made our way to the flower market. It is housed on several barges in the middle of one of the canals. Really most of what they sell are bulbs & souvenirs. Wasn't sure we could bring bulbs back home with us, so didn't even try, although the variety of flowers is breathtaking. We did buy Anna a pair of wooden shoes. Millie will have to settle for the ones Joyce & Xandra sent Anna when she was a baby that were too big at first, and then too small the next time we thought to check. (Hope that's not already the case with Millie.). Joyce swears they are comfortable, but I can't say they're my style.
At lunch we discovered that Holland burgers have a weird taste to them & that Anna has taken to the European way of eating her fries - with mayonnaise! I'll stick with ketchup any day!
After that we took the kids to TunFun - an "indoor" playground. I say "indoor" b/c it is housed in an old underpass of some kind. It has been ingeniously converted to a wonderful space with all manner of bouncy, climby things for all different age groups. The kids had a blast! Millie is fearless - or perhaps as a parent twice over, I am not so fearful & let her explore more. She climbed up this rather large set of foam "steps" all by herself & slid down a slide over and over and over again.
Dinner ended up being Italian. Anna was in meltdown mode, but Millie scarfed down a large majority of my Spaghetti Carbonara!
Today was a wandering day. We took the tram (our normal mode of transportation, it being 2 blocks away from our apartment & we having purchased 96 hour passes) to Museumplein where the famous Rijksmuseum & Van Gogh museum are. We did not go for the museums (we had seem the Van Gogh museum on our first trip to Amsterdam & not thinking the kids would be much for it), but rather to the street with the ritzy shopping. We ended up getting several items for Anna from Oilily. Although Oilily can be purchased in the US, it seemed right getting it from Holland & they were having quite a sale! Alas, poor Millie did not fare so well, but we did find her a bright pink t-shirt with the word "lief!" written on it. I was told it translates to "sweet". Let's hope they weren't playing a trick on us ugly Americans!
Unfortunately I did not enjoy the shopping so much. It is tough toting the two kids around (thank heavens we brought 2 strollers btw).
We walked some more to an old brewery that still brews a few beers. We sat & tried the Dutch comfort food "bitterballen" - mashed potato with bits of beef in it, rolled into a ball & deep fried. They were actually better than they sound.
Millie woke at 7 this am & only got perhaps 1/2 an hour nap in the stroller, so she was the one having a meltdown tonight. We decided to order takeout. We walked down the block where K was able to get Indonesian, while the girls got pizza. Having the apartment is nice. It is not large, but it is immaculate & well appointed. It is really just one big square with one side lopped off for a bedroom & the other for a bathroom. The kitchen has a fridge, stove, microwave & dishwasher. The bathroom has the teeniest washer/dryer. We have had to do 3 loads so far, but how nice to have the option! Anna sleeps on a pull-out futon in the living room & Millie has a pack & play that we pull into the kitchen. The apartment is in an old warehouse that was converted into apartments & offices/studios. It overlooks a canal & is right next to the zoo. Our "landlady" lives right next door.
I guess that is all for now. Tomorrow is our last full day in Amsterdam before heading to the countryside. We need our rest! Good night!
Donna
Despite the fact that she didn't get to bed until 9:30 or later last night, Millie was up with the roosters today (5:50). And given that the same space is shared by all 4 of us, none of us could sleep with Millie up, so it was an early morning & hence a long day for all 4 of us.
We are at our friends' house now & their accommodations consist of 2 bedrooms in the attic of their "skurr". As I understand it, skurr means shed, though it's a large shed, more like a garage without a car in it. You get to the upstairs through a "door" in the ceiling up a set of ladder-like stairs. The rooms are fine - not any different from the bedroom in their house, low-wooden beams included. But it's not like at home where we can separate an overactive child from the rest of the pack. So I sat outside on the deck/dock with her, trying to keep the noise from Kevin & Anna, but to no avail. Anna was up before 7 as well!
We are in farm land here, only about a 40 min drive north of Amsterdam. The homes are small, although they are all extremely well maintained, always with a lovely garden of flowers. I am always struck by how Europeans in general, but the Dutch in particular have designed their lives in such tiny spaces, while Americans believe bigger is better. I can certainly understand the need for compactness in a big city. This holds true of cities like NY as well, where people have to "loft" their beds to create more livable space. But even in this area, despite large tracts of farmland, homes are small & built right on top of each other. Stairs are steep, narrow, twisting or some combination of the 3 and appliances such as refrigerators and washers are much smaller As a result, food is sold in smaller portions, necessitating more trips to the market, but that's ok because the market is less than a 5 min walk from their home. When making up our beds last night, I also figured out why duvets & covers are more popular here than in the US. It is a heck of a lot easier to fit a duvet cover in their washing machines than a large comforter or bedspread. I also note that they all seem to have tiny garbage cans, necessitating more frequent garbage collection as well.
Okay, okay, so thinking back to yesterday, getting our rental car was a bit tedious. We waited in line for a while. Then the brand new Volvo they gave us didn't seem to have enough trunk space for our luggage, so we had to switch cars to a VW Touran-our first minivan! Trying to get back to the apartment in Amsterdam was also fun, though I should let Kevin be the judge of that since he was driving. Oops, wrong street, turn around, oops we're in the tram lane! Amsterdam has cars, trams that run on tracks in special lanes, pedestrians & tons & tons of bikers, including parents with babies/children in special seats either up front or in back. Nobody wears a helmet, women ride in dresses & skirts and the bikes are out come rain or shine. Bikes are parked everywhere! Bikers follow the rules of the road (mostly) & they have special lanes & sometimes even traffic lights.
Anyway, finally got back to the apartment only to have a hell of a time finding the right highway to get to Joyce & Xandra's. We finally found it & got here shortly thereafter. We spent the rest of the afternoon/evening hanging out & just relaxing, which was nice after Amsterdam. J&X have 3 dogs - Westies. Two are from their time in the US, and so quite old & fragile, the other a 6 year old rescue from a shelter. Anna is enjoying the dogs. Millie loves to point & say "goggy", but when you try to put her down next to one she screams bloody murder. She is starting to get more comfortable with them now.
Joyce & Xandra also have 2 guinea pigs & they own a horse that is boarded at a farm just down the road. Joyce is the rider & because she had hip replacement surgery on July 4th, Xandra has had to do all the horse grooming & they have found others to ride the horse to keep him trained & exercise him while Joyce is convalescing. Of course we had to go see the horse. He's a big horse & his name is Gijs (pronounced "hice" with a guttural h). Anna was delighted & even got to sit on Gijs. Millie was terrified by these huge beasts & yet in her own way transfixed.
Unfortunately this put us back to the house late & we had yet to have dinner, so the kids went to bed late. (See start of e-mail.)
We kept the girls entertained until our friends were up & we could get into their house at a more social time. They weren't up until 9:30, and so by the time we had all sat down for breakfast it was 10:30. J&X have many friends with kids & they invited one little 3.5 year old girl named "Moe.". Actual spelling is Moo (with a line over the o to indicate a long o sound). Poor girl was a bit overwhelmed by the lot of us speaking English & barely said a word for the 36 hours we were with her.
Saturday we went to a fairy tale theme park. Some of it was pretty cheesy - animatronic figures telling fairytales in Dutch. But there was also a petting zoo, a small train and various other rides/ amusements for small children. All, in all, it was good. Millie had actually just fallen asleep in the car as we were arriving due to her early morning wake up, so Kevin & Millie stayed in the car for the duration of the nap - 1.5 hrs & joined us later.
After that, dinner at Joyce & Xandra's, but the kids were already in full meltdown mode again!
I really need to add Sunday to this. But will do so in separate e-mail.
L,
Donna
Millie could have chicken pox, although we are not sure. Saturday night she felt warm. Our hosts lent us their oral thermometer, but it was hard to get a good reading. Anyway, she felt warm, so we gave her Motrin. When she woke up the next morning (again at 6, although we were able to coax her down for some more sleep), she had a couple red spots on her face. Joyce thought it might be chicken pox, but there were none elsewhere on her body & it didn't seem to spread at all during the day. She still had a slight fever yesterday but didn't seem uncomfortable at all. This morning she has woken up with a couple more red spots on her face, but nothing that we see anywhere else. My Blackberry allows me internet access, so I just read about how to identify chicken pox & apparently I won't know unless some of her spots crust over. So we wait! I was concerned that she had picked it up here, but incubation periods for such things are fairly long, so likely not. It could also be fifth's disease or any one of a number of other harmless viruses. It could also be insect bites since Holland/Europe doesn't have screens, but still has bugs. We have been hearing that telltale buzz at night while we're sleeping & Kevin has woken up w/ numerous bites as he generally sleeps uncovered. I guess it's possible that Millie could have gotten some bites on her face as that is the only part of her exposed at night. We're trying to decide if we should take her to the doctor here in Holland. The internet research we did seems to indicate that without the crusted over spots, even the doctors can't definitively diagnose. She also has a runny nose which is more characteristic of fifth's disease, but not the characteristic rash on her cheeks which looks like a slapped face.
Anyway, yesterday we took the kids a few minutes up the road to a really nice playground. They charge 1.5 euro per child, but they've got nice & nicely maintained equipment with a snack bar.
After that we came back to J&X for lunch, after which Xandra took us for a ride on their motor boat several towns over to return Moo to her parents. Being on the boat was fun. Xandra let Anna drive. Let's just say I'm glad she has a ways to go before 16! On the way back it began to rain, so we did get a little wet! Also, I was so worried about my condition on the trip that I took a Xanax to help me relax. Luckily it worked!
After that we took our hosts just across the street to a local restaurant for dinner. The food was good, though the service was slow, and consequently we didn't get out of there until 9. Millie fell asleep in my lap before her food came & even Anna fell asleep in her chair. We had to wake her up for dessert! We carried them back home & plunked them down in bed clothes & all.
Millie managed to sleep until 7 & Anna until 8:30. After breakfast we took the dogs for a short walk. Millie has become comfortable with the dogs & can even walk one of the calmer, older ones. Now we are at the beach in Enkhuizen. Or at least Anna & Kevin are. Millie fell asleep in the car, so I am sitting here w/ her until she wakes up. We plan to bop around the old port town of Enkhuizen & have lunch today. Hopefully it can be a quieter night. We need to pack up and clean up befor our trip to Den Haag tomorrow.
Hope all is well back home!
Love,
D
When last we left our heroes, Kevin & Anna were playing on the beach in Enkhuizen & Donna & Millie were snoozing in the car. As soon as Millie woke & was changed, Kevin & Anna were back. Although Anna continues to say her favorite thing so far was the beach, it was windy & cold & she was playing by herself which also isn't much fun. So into town we went - an old seaport town now on a lake since the building of the dyke. We didn't do much except have lunch. So we just went home to J&X's to spend our last night with them.
You are probably wondering what's up with Millie. Well, other than a serious case of the cranks today, she seems fine. No fever, no more spots & no crusting over. We think they are just mosquito bites. Although Joyce & I looked up every conceivable rash on the internet, called our pediatrician & were even advised to perhaps take her to a doctor here, after putting a little mosquito netting over the crib she was sleeping in, it seemed to do the trick.
So this morning we packed up, cleaned up our living quarters & headed to Den Haag. The ride was pretty short.
Before getting to Den Haag, we tried to stop at a nearby attraction famous for its tulip festival in March/April. I thought it had gardens all year round, but apparently not.
Our hotel is gorgeous! Le Meridien (a Starwood property). For some reason they told us we could not have both a baby crib & a roll-away for Anna, although the room is huge! The ceilings have got to be 15 ft high, and the bathroom floor & towel bar are both heated. I believe the room normally goes for 400 - 500 euro per night. Because I didn't quite have enough points, I had to buy them, so we're staying 3 nights for $200. Not bad! Anna wants to take advantage of the pool. The next 2 days look rainy. There were only 2 things I really had on the agenda - the beach, complete w/ boardwalk & casino & Madurodam - Holland in miniature. I had grand designs to drive out to Gouda, Kinderdijk, Delft, but perhaps chilling out for a couple days would do everyone some good!
So off to bed it is on this wonderfully soft, high thread count set of bed linens!
Toodles,
D
It is time to go home. The kids are getting crankier & need sleep. I need time apart from them.
Today we were concerned that it would rain, but it did not. We took the tram to the beach "resort" of Scheveningen. It was probably around 70 degrees when we arrived there around 11 or 12, but the wind was extremely strong, so it made it cold & somewhat painful from the blowing sand. Despite that & the freezing water, Anna happily ran into and out of the waves crashing on the shore in her swimsuit for quite some time. I guess it was a bit higher class than Atlantic City with casinos, souvenier shops, places to eat, junk food & things for the kids to do that cost money (eg trampoline, carousel, etc.)
That's really all we did today other than do a little shopping. I bought myself two watches. I have been looking for a watch I like for years. It has to be unique, but my style & not too large or too small. Well, I finally found 2, so we bought them both!
We tried a Dutch version of a Mexican restaurant for dinner tonight - not a good idea!
Can't believe tomorrow is our last full day in Holland! Hope the weather is good. We plan to go to Madurodam - a place that has some of the more famous Dutch sites in miniature on a scale of 1:20. Then Anna has been dying to use the hotel pool & the hotel gave her the gift of a free ice cream that we have not yet taken advantage of. Plus we need to pack up!
Looking forward to being home!
Love,
D
Last week I had the girls since Donna was in NYC for a long day's meeting. I asked Anna if she wanted to have a joint
bath with her little sister. We hadn't done it previously since we've been worried that if Millie let go and pooped or
peed then it would be too traumatic for Anna, but I explained the risks and Anna was delighted at the possibility. So I
undressed Millie as I chased Anna and filled the tub. I looked back to check up on Millie and saw the bare-assed girl standing
in a puddle of piddle. Forunately Anna was not so horrified, more amused. So I scooped her up and cleaned her off. Then
I set her back down while I tried to cool down the tub water (it had been running hot while I cleaned off Miss M). Next thing
I know, Anna says, "Daddy, Millie's grunting!" And I look back to see a little brown turd on the floor... The good news
was that then I could be pretty sure that there would be no 'accidents' in the tub, since they'd already happened on the tile.
Lovely.
Millie is such a charmer -- she's getting better and better at walking while holding on to something, even takes a few
steps (up to maybe a dozen) but still hasn't made the plunge into walking. She's able to say a few words, again not always
at the appropriate time -- she likes to say "Da da" and "Ma ma". She's pretty good at feeding herself, able (and willing)
to stuff her mouth with a variety of foods.
When we were children we first learned about love as what we felt about our parents, even
from the moment of birth when the baby wants nothing but to lie against her mother's body -- that relationship with the parents
is the kernel of everything we know about love. But then a child's love for a parent always runs up into the problem that
the parents are (as I was just reading in Gilead) a mystery to the kid, since the parents had an entire existence before they
had their kids, since they came into the world so long before. But then the feelings of a parent for the children is another
sort of love, much different since we brought her into the world. It's a wholeness in the heart beyond prior imagining.
Our love for our children is beyond all imagining, beyond all expression. It's mixed in with a knowledge of the corresponding
burdens -- of course babies are enormous work, enormous difficulty -- I've had more migraines in the last year than ever
before, from sleep deprivation! But that work is completely incommensurable with the love that we have; incompossible
within the universe of my thoughts. It doesn't change the love at all, just the opposite: the love hallows the daily pain.
I know that some parents harp on the guilt to their kids, "do you know how much suffering you've caused me?!" but of course
it doesn't work that way. Our love for our kids is no more imperilled by the daily pain, in the beautiful phrase of Hugo's,
than is a star in the jaws of the clouds.
Millie's first birthday -- what an event! It has been quite a year! A very short time, yet we can't
really imagine that there was a time when we did not have that little girl in our lives. I mean, I know intellectually that
there was a time before kids, when I was childless, but I can't emotionally recall that, I can't empathize with that far-off guy.
It's odd how children accelerate the
passage of time. Donna and I were married for almost 10 years before having a kid but now the time just washes through our
fingers like water. Millie is already past the age that Anna was, when we moved up here, so really all of her life has been
up in Burlington (it also marks many years now of long commuting by me!). But Millie's first year has been a rush, of course,
partly because sleep deprivation impairs the ability to form memories, but it's more than that.
The clock ticks at an entirely different rate! It's partially because life has accelerated so
much, it seems we're so hectic now. When Millie wasn't sleeping through the night we were like junkies always looking for
a fix of even just a twenty-minute nap; we sandwiched as many other possible activities in between. But we were always
hectic, maybe we just keep ramping up to a new level. I've joked that my
calendar has become just one long game of "chicken" trying to find who blinks first, me or my deadlines. We run so fast
just so that we can spend some "quality time" with our loved ones, hoping that we're not speeding down the road so fast
as to miss that blind turn to the Serendips. I try but even so, I know that I fail too often.
I remember thinking, back when I was a teen, that my parents had seemed to have become much more reasonable and less quick-tempered
than they were when I was a little kid. Now with the perspective of a parent I see that, actually, little kids make
perfectly reasonable grown-ups act ill-tempered -- crankiness begets crankiness. I try to stop it, try to keep a more
reasonable tone, but there are times when I lose my temper -- it's embarrassing to the pulled-together guy that I once
believed myself to be. I have to hope that, somehow, the kids will learn more from me in my better moments than they learn
from me in my worse moments, but honestly I don't know.
But Millie's first year has been quite a ride!
The other thing, that I've meant to discuss, is Anna's amazing progress in school. At our parent conference, we mentioned
to Miss Nancy that Anna had been lately coming home and trying to draw the continents on sheets of paper; we thought that she had
gotten a lesson on it. Nope, Anna had just been watching the other children. So that week Miss Nancy gave her a lesson on
the continents: the school has a wooden puzzle with two circular hemispheres and the puzzle pieces in each for the seven
continents. The child takes a large piece of paper, draws the two big circles, then takes each piece, puts it in the appropriate
place on the paper and traces it. Then the child colors each continent (thus Anna asks seemingly-nonsensical questions, "What
color is Australia?"), carefully labels each one, and colors the ocean. They had a visitors night where Anna demonstrated:
it's a 45-minute process! It's impressive that she has that much patience and concentration. So now she does several of those
each week, she really seems to enjoy it.
In our lives otherwise, it is Day 6 and Donna and I are slowly decaying under the sleep deprivation. Being up 3 or 4
times each night, sometimes for hours at a stretch, eventually takes its toll. We try to catch up sleep during the
day (especially during the week when Anna is at school) but there's so much else to do. I know that I sound melodramatic
or histrionic, but "perspective" is one of the first things to go! I see it in our own reactions: when we have a couple
of good hours (even just a couple!) then it seems like we could keep doing this forever. But after a bad night, we ask
ourselves how we will ever do this for even a week more? We almost fear the growing dark since we know that we will be
sleepy and tormented by this screaming baby. But then she opens her eyes and gives that half-smile (that babies do, when
they are about to fart or poop), and looking at that cherubic face makes everything good. Until the next time...
I've also learned a lot about parenting and begun to understand my own parents more. I'm both more grateful for all that
they did (now that I learn just how much!) but also understanding that I'm not doing it just for Anna and Millie. I'm not
a parent because I expect gratitude or payment in the future; I'm doing it because I want to, for perfectly selfish
reasons. I want the best for my kids because I expect the best for me and my own. I don't know quite how to express it all,
just that I'm growing into some better understanding of my role and the roles of those before me.
Today she was standing by the chicken run, trying to feed stalks of grass to the
chickens, yelling "Rooster, come here! Rooster, eat grass! Rooster! Come here now! Listen to my words! Rooster!"
I guess that's what her parents and daycare teachers sound like to Anna's ears (daycare uses the phrase "listen to my words").
Then there's Applegate Farm, which Anna calls "the corn farm" because that's mostly what we buy there (many ears of
corn during the few months when it's in season) along with tomatoes, maple syrup, and other produce. But their chief
attraction (from Anna's view) is that they also have a riding stable with 6 horses: Bluebird, Mo, Lee, Happy, Davey, and
Huck (that's in the order of their stalls as you walk into the barn). Anna has learned all of their names this summer
along with the important distinguishing characteristics: Davey has a ball toy, Huck will pick his head up from his oats to
greet her, Mo has a blaze on his face and a leak in his stall (he gets water in when it rains), etc.
Milestones
We've been bad about keeping up notating Anna's milestones in her (paper) babybook, so we're trying an electronic version.
Kevin's Blog (mostly about Anna and Millie)
reminding nagging about manners (Say
Please and Thank You! Eat with
silverware not your fingers!). But then there
are other moments of bliss (more fleeting, but much more valuable).
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: happy easter
Date: Sun, 23 Mar 2008 10:07:40 -0400
From: Anna Madeleine Jarvis Foster
To: Kevin R Foster
happy easter i hope you loved the cookies i made
i love you love anna
The last 2 weeks of the month were quite trying. In those 2 weeks we had just 3 days when school
was open and neither girl was sick -- awful for productivity! And Millie has been cutting her 2-year
molars (right on schedule) meaning she's been waking up in the middle of the night again, staying up for
hours at a time. Donna and I are back in that fuzz-brained place that we thought we'd left a year ago!
But we got one very funny episode. As Millie gets more independent she's become very sharp at figuring
out how to bring around a stepstool to climb up and get what she wants. So one morning, while we were
getting ready upstairs, Millie went downstairs. She decided to have breakfast. So she got cereal, a bowl,
and spoon. She poured the cereal into the bowl, which made a mess because it was the very bottom of the
cereal box with all of the crumbs and dust, which went all over everything. So she got a napkin and began
to start wiping it up. All very good -- except for one MINOR detail. She was not pouring out cereal at
the table or on the counter but on the COUCH! The napkin was just rubbing crumbs into the fabric. Donna
came down and caught her red-handed, but couldn't do much except laugh and take a picture. How cute!
Here's the scene of the crime.
Also when she refers to those tuxedo-suited aquatic birds, "pahgans," so I point out that we don't really know if maybe,
in some "Happy Feet" way, they might be saved through Jesus.
Then there's the porridge routine: blow on the oatmeal until we set it in front of her, Millie says "hot", we say "no," so
Millie says "cold," we say "no," Millie says "wahm" and we agree finally.
Millie also has a habit of running words together, using two separate words as if they were one. I've earlier written
about her use of "hold you" as a complete verb, so she'll say "Daddy, hold you" to mean that she wants to be held --
she's answering the question "Do you want me to hold you?" So when I pick up Millie she knows that we usually next
go to get Anna so she'll say "get it Anna". It's not an unsurprising mistake, considering how many verb forms,
like "pick up," have the verb and preposition in lockstep.
Thanksgiving went well this year; I cooked for 6 adults and 2 children. Just a few minor mistakes, so I'll make some notes here for next year:
Here's Millie (on R) in the same pose as a picture of Anna, back when she was a year
and a half old. Cute!
Millie is getting more bossy. She and Anna like to follow Mama wherever she goes (including the bathroom). One day Millie goes
to the door, yells "Anna!" and points one strident little finger right out. Or if Millie's trying to monopolize Mama's
lap, she'll yell "Anna No!" sometimes adding "Mi-yee Mama" (Millie's Mama).
For Halloween, Millie got the "usual," the ladybug costume. Anna used her costume from her dance recital,
a sparkly white tutu (which had been meant to be a cygnet). I had to work late so the girls went over to
Aunt Rosemary's, where they were spoiled by Grandma and Papa J and Papa F (Grandma F was at a conference
in San Diego, she was very sad to miss it) and John and Kathie. So 4 adults shepharded 2 kids through the neighborhood.
Later they were joined for a bit by Katie, Maegan, and Ryne. Anna was delighted to see her cousins.
The weekend before we went to the Collinsville Halloween Parade.
It was fun to see Millie, eyes wide open, taking in all of the festivities. First we carved pumpkins, then
went home for dinner and went back to see all of the wildly-dressed people processing around. The Master of Ceremonies
for the parade had the crowd yelling "boo!" to rank the scariest costumes, then throwing candy and cookies; nearby
they had a cannon shooting other goodies. It's very Collinsville; we all like it. But I can only imagine Millie
wondering what these crazy people were doing!
"Verbal explosion" is the term, it's really almost miraculous the way that Millie is just putting words together and daily saying a wider and wider vocabulary. She's at two-word sentences now – it's impressive how many things can be communicated that way, particularly when there's no need for manners or extraneous modifiers. "More milk" [pronounced more like moe möck]. "Hi Mama!" "Anna jacket" [her pronunciation of Anna used to be 'nana' but now it's closer to Ay-na) or "Papa funny" [with the imperfect differentiation of phonemes its almost 'baba fuddy', her pronunciations sometime sound like someone with a bad head cold]. Another well-used sentence is "My ___" where the second word is toy, jacket, milk, bear [she lengthens the dipthong so it almost sounds like beer] – whatever her sister is attempting to wrangle out of her hands. Her toes are referred to as "piggies" [bigkies] – as in, "this little piggy had roast beef, this little piggy had none." A frog says "riddit." Overall she's great fun – her grandparents, teachers at school, everybody loves this age!
Millie is finally getting over her fear of horses. In Holland she got to see Joyce's horse, which began the process. Then Anna and her friend Navya went for pony rides so Millie got to see that one could emerge unharmed from a close encounter. Finally, at the Harwinton Fair last weekend, Anna went for a pony ride and then we managed to get Millie on. Up to the last minute (even for the first minute of the ride) she squirmed and was uncomfortable but then she settled in. Once she realized what she was doing, she proceeded to big belly laughs. That's the other thing about this age: completely unselfconscious laughter, often big guffaws from deep in the belly.
Millie is also singing very well, she's very tuneful. Her sister, at this age, was enthusiastic but not necessarily always on key. Millie sings along pretty well, although of course her grasp of the words is rudimentary – but then she either makes up the sounds or just hums. When you've got a great tune (Frere Jacques, for example) why bother with details?!
Millie is such a happy kid – she lives entirely in the moment, it's the embodiment of that present-centeredness that is entire bliss. But I'm ambivalent for doing that myself. I do tend to throw myself into whatever I'm doing at the time, and I'm certainly not one to concern much about the past. But that's not always best; there's a certain amount of forethought necessary, even if it intrudes on our bliss. Maybe that's what vacations are supposed to be for, taking even a short time to forget about past and future and just be in the now. We just can't live like that.
As Anna gets a circle of friends – Jeanna, Navya, and Lizzie – she is no longer quite so happy-go-lucky, since there are daily soap-opera dramas in the group. Either 3 on 1 or 2 on 2 or all against all, those girls love each other and then make each other crazy. We try to help her by offering perspective, but I'm not sure to any avail.
But overall Anna is also doing great, she loves her school. She's learning an enormous amount of new material – comes home every day with a new lesson, it seems!
Even her games are evolving. She got a deck of Uno cards and has been a fiend for that game. Overall we're content with that, it's certainly better than the baby games like CandyLand (UGGHH! I'd rather gouge out my eyes!) or Chutes and Ladders. What's really interesting is the way that she has quickly absorbed the rules and been able to figure out extensions. The two-player Uno game (which she often plays, since one parent plays cards while the other diverts Millie) has some peculiarities where a player can put down a Reverse, Draw, or Skip card (or several) which all let that player keep on going. So it rewards strategizing – figuring out series that a player can just lay down, one after another. But then Anna was able to abstract those rules to a one-player game – she just deals herself 7 cards and plays that hand. That REALLY involves strategy (figuring out that, if there are two colors in hand each with several numbered cards, how to play them all so that you can pivot around a shared number) but it also means that some previously-good cards are no longer good. A Draw 4 means that you yourself draw 4 cards, getting further from the goal of putting down all your cards. But Anna quickly figured that out and now, if playing alone, groans when she gets a Draw 4 dealt to her – but is happy if playing with other people.
Anna has been taking music lessons, too, from a high-school guy named Jackson. He plans to show her the basics of guitar, drums, and piano. For now they've started on the guitar, slowly. Each week Anna learns the notes on a new string; next week they'll begin with chords. Anna's very serious about it, although we haven't (yet) bought her a guitar to practice at home so she's going slow. She's also cute because she moons over Jackson, seems to have a little crush on the boy. It's basically like the way she is in awe and fascination of her teacher at school – she loves learning and so loves the people who teach her. I will also note that I'm impressed that Jackson's so patient with a little kid, I'm not sure I was that mature when I was in high school.
That first week was pretty demanding of the kids. Anna was so excited the night before, I don't think she slept much, and then the rest of the (Labor-day-shortened) week she was kept pretty excited. This is the third year of her Montessori classroom so she's now in the eldest group. They will be matched up as 'mentors' to the new students, the three-year-olds beginning this year. It's nice that she can go back to the same classroom and the same teachers; it provides some continuity.
At a Parent's night I talked with one of her teachers, who told us that over the summer they had significantly added to their reading curriculum - Anna had, in just the previous half-year, torn through most all of their collection of books! We'll see how hard they have to work to keep her busy this year. Even before school began, she announced that the first work that she wanted to do was one of the number chains, and sure enough she did the "six chain" (Navya beat her to the thousand chain).
Millie is also doing great, continuing through her verbal explosion. Previously she knew (and often used) the word, "no," but now she's got "yeah" as well, so we can ask questions in hopes of getting an answer (of course it can change within milli{e}seconds, a lady always has a right to change her mind!). She's learning songs now (she has a great ability to carry a tune, actually!); she'll sing the alphabet song in a form that could probably be recognized by a non-parent.
Both kids are developing a sense of humor, which is so adorable. One night Anna asked the (usual) question, "Did I eat enough to have dessert?" But we had had pasta so she'd cleaned her plate. Her mama, without skipping a beat, said "No, you have to eat your plate, too," which got "No, mama, that's too crunchy!" quickly in return. That might mark her first impromptu joke. We all laughed. A couple days later we saw Millie's humor. Anna had been playing with me on the old game, standing right behind me so that when I turned around to ask "where's Anna?" she stayed behind me so I kept turning and turning, while she spun with me. Millie wanted to get in on the act, too, although she was a little slower and quickly dissolved into giggles. Fun!
This weekend Anna and Navya had their birthday presents. By arrangement between the parents, they each got the other a pony ride at a local stable. They groomed the pony and got to ride 'Barney' around the ring while the instructor explained how to use the reins to tell the pony where to go.
Millie is so cute, the way she tries to do whatever her big sister does! Anna, excited about her gymnastics that has just
resumed, was doing the vault in the family room (she brought out the IKEA stool from the bathroom) -- she goes into the
kitchen, gets a long running start, runs up to the 'vaulting horse', stops, puts both hands down on it, hops, and then
'sticks it!' (she's learned that part!). Then Millie tried to imitate, except that she's not even such a good runner yet. Then
Millie tried to turn a somersault -- easy getting her big toddler head down but tough to get all the way over! Then
she flopped over one ear, landing flat on her back with a look of terror, until I yelled "Hooray Millie!" and she gave a big grin.
Some audio clips of the noises that Millie's been making (recorded with my phone, so not great quality)
and some movies, also from the phone,
And her sister has been doing very well at her summer day camp. Since they swim twice a day, Anna has had great
practice in the water. She came home on Friday just glimmering proud that she'd passed the Red Cross Level 1 and is
going on to Level 2 next week!
Anna is mastering water in other forms, too. She's been doing ice-skating lessons and been zooming through the levels
of those tests, too. Now that she's got her feet under her steadily, she's having a good time trying to learn all of the
fancy stuff like turns and spins. She's fearless!
Millie is developing into her own personhood quickly. She's very opinionated about foods in a way that Anna wasn't.
Millie is much pickier; if it weren't for green peas I wonder if she'd be starving! But we keep a bag of frozen peas
around and so any meal can be rounded off. But she occasionally eats other stuff -- can't keep her off pappadums!
Like her sister, she's displaying the anal-retentive traits early: she wants
to make sure that doors are closed, for instance. We open the house doors for ventilation but need to figure ever-increasingly
complex ways to make sure that she can't close them. Same for the shower door: she'll walk into the bathroom and, if the
shower door is open, go right to it to push it closed. Which is surprising since she's fascinated by the water. When Anna
has her bath, Millie likes to stand by the side and splash. (She also likes to try to drink the water, the soapier the
better! But that must be a stage, since Millie also likes to put the bubble wand in her mouth just like her sister did --
that soap bubble solution tastes nasty!)
We're really living in the woods. Just this week we had a fawn and doe walk through on a couple mornings and a
whole gaggle (?) of turkeys: 2 adults and 5 poults. We've got a family of bunnies each in front and back yards. Last week
we came home to find a bunny on the front step munching on our mat.
Anna's geographic mastery from the Montessori school has been put to use now spotting license plates on cars. She keeps
a map and colors in the states that we've spotted already. Driving with her grandparents in Vermont, they tried to help out:
"Look! There's Colorado!" "Boring!" announced Anna.
Anna has learned some games at camp, but imperfectly. She wanted to play 'hangman' in the car while driving to Vermont
but she didn't want to tell us where the letters that we guessed went -- so she'd tell us the word had 5 letters and one was
an 'E' but not which one. And then she'd sometimes forget, so we'd be getting seriously hanged (fortunately, the game
never really ends, she just draws each finger and toe!) guessing down to 'Q' when suddenly she'd say "Oh, yeah, there IS an
'A' in that word -- and an 'R'!" Very funny to play!
Let me try to remember all that has gone by. We had our conference with Anna's teacher, who told us that Anna is
remarkable and so advanced in her (pre-K) class. Earlier a teacher had mentioned that Anna had exhausted all of the books
in the classroom so they had to bring in new ones! But Anna is doing just amazing stuff -- adding 4-digit numbers, working
addition tables (multiplication tables come next year), copying books on bugs and reptiles and planets, just amazing!
Millie is also zooming along. She is now a much better walker, using every possible opportunity to get into trouble (!)
especially since she's much more interested in climbing than Anna ever was. Millie has no fear of heights. Her vocabulary
is building: she now can say "Nana" to refer to her sister as well (she had already gotten Mama and Daddy). Anna was very
happy that her sister can finally (kind of) say her name!
When I get home, on days that I go to NYC, both girls run to the door to meet me, Millie saying "dadee dadee daadee" and
Anna also happily running, then they both demand to be picked up (which I can still manage to do -- Anna in one arm and Millie
in the other) and covered in kisses. Can life be any better?
And as for me, I'm a bit lighter now; or, as Pat (my father-in-law) jokes, I'm a junior member of his club, 'The Semi-Colons'.
Over Memorial Day weekend I had to get my appendix out. On Friday I went to a conference and had lousy hotel food, so when
my gut hurt that evening I thought it was something I ate. By next day when I still wasn't feeling any better I worried
that I had gotten some really awful food poisoning so I went to get treatment. I thought I could just go to CVS' Minute-Clinic
but they told me, no, they don't go GI because that could be really serious. So I went to my doctor -- that office happened
to have one location with Saturday hours. They took X-rays, couldn't be sure what was the trouble, and sent me to the ER.
The ER doctors agreed that it was either appendix or a kidney stone -- what a menu of options! A CAT-scan determined that
my appendix was inflamed and, late on Saturday May 26, I had a laparoscopic operation to get my appendix removed. (Now I
have a personal stake in the evolution so-called-debate -- I'm an example of "Unintelligent Design"! [in so many ways...])
It was rough for the girls particularly. Anna had been looking forward to going swimming on the very first day that the
pool was open for the summer, but our medical odessey began around noon and went late into the night so she cried and cried!
We were very lucky that my in-laws were around and could come to the ER to pick up the kids and bring them home, so that Donna
could look after me.
Now I have a much better understanding of how people talk about getting whisked away into the medical universe. One day
you're healthy and fine, then there's a slippery slope. At noon I was in CVS with a tummy ache; by 3 I was at the doctor's
with GI pain; by 7 I was in a room at the ER wearing just a johnny and waiting for the CAT-scanner to be readied; by midnight
I was on a gurney going into the OR. (I have no recollection of anything after they got me onto the table!) Donna took my
clothes, watch, wallet, cellphone, ring, glasses -- everything that I had of value, but also everything that distinguished
me from any other naked patient.
Overall, I guess I can't complain. I recovered quickly and went home on Sunday, about 15 hours after my surgery. The
timing could have been much worse (the semester was just ending) so I didn't miss many deadlines (I did miss Kabir's
wedding, which is too bad). They got the appendix out before it burst.
I guess things have been too busy to post for a while. Much has gone on in
the last month that deserves comment.
Starting w/ Anna. We just had our conference with her teacher. Miss Nancy
actually said that Anna is "truly exceptional for her age" and that she had
blossomed since becoming extended day back in January. We have been
delighted with all the lessons she has had. More recently she has been
working with number chains - beads strung together in groupings of 1
through 10 that a child counts off. Anna just got a lesson on the 1000
chain which requires her to count off the first 10 beads followed by each
subsequent 10 through 1000. A lot of concentration is required for this
work, as it takes a long time to complete. She is also working with the
addition finger chart where she learns to select the 2 numbers she wishes
to add together on the corresponding row & column & then to bring her
fingers together to find the answer.
As far as non-math work, she has been creating her own books - copying
pictures & words or sentences based on particular, usually scientific
themes. She has done books on planets, the parts of the bird, body parts
and reptiles. Although her handwriting (and by that I do mean cursive) is
still a work in progress, Anna is so proud of her work! She carried her
first book around with her all weekend!
The one area to which Anna really seems to gravitate is geography. She has
been doing quite a bit of map work lately. She has been working on a US
map, identifying the states. She has become so good at this work that we
often play various games in the car where one of us thinks of a state & the
others try to guess it by asking questions. One time we were guessing
Tennessee & I gave the clue that it was not a coastal state, but was closer
to the east coast than the west coast. I then gave her the clue that it
was a skinny state. That's so easy Mommy! And sure enough it was. We
routinely look for non-CT license plates, although the New England states
are boring now. We have also attempted to work through the alphabet naming
all the states that begin with each letter. My daughter is not even 5 and
her knowledge of the US is truly amazing!
On to ice skating - Anna has been taking lessons since October & she's
doing very well! She made it through the first 3 levels - Snowplow Sam 1 -
3, and she is now delighted to be in Basic 1. She can skate forward on one
foot & can wiggle backward a little bit. She is just discovering curves &
circles & spins. We are continuing her lessons until early July & then
will break until the fall. She hopes to be in Basic 2 by then! I am truly
impressed with how quickly she has taken to it & how much she enjoys it.
When I ask her which of her activities is her favorite, skating is always
#1.
On to gymnastics. Anna just had her year-end show last weekend. She has
really blossomed there as well. Between gymnastics every weekend & her
playing on the monkeybars at school, she is a master on the bars & the
rings! Some girls are afraid of the bars and choose only to swing from
them. Not Anna - she will go backwards only to hold herself up on the bar
& roll over forwards!
Lastly, ballet. Last weekend was Anna's first dance recital. What a crazy
weekend with the gymnastics show, the dance rehearsal & then the recital.
Anna was dressed in a sparkly white tutu, representing a swan. The kids
that age are really cute. They cannot be relyed on to remember their
steps, so their teacher stands on the side of the stage to remind them.
It's funny to watch all of the kids with their head turned in the direction
of the teacher. Even with the assistance, they all turn in different
directions and bump into each other when they move at all. Anna actually
did very well with the dance since she is very good at following
directions. But she says she isn't interested in continuing with ballet.
I think it was too slow for her & she didn't see the progress she has seen
in other activities - namely skating & gymnastics. She does say she wants
to take tap. We'll have to see.
As I write this, I am actually sitting in Hartford Hospital's ER with Kevin
on Saturday of Memorial Day weekend. He has had severe abdomial pain since
yesterday afternoon. After thinking it was food poisoning, we went to a
walk-in clinic. After taking x-rays & various samples, they still were not
able to diagnose him, and therefore sent him to the ER. We have been here
since 3. It is now 6. We are awaiting a CT scan & the result of some
blood tests. They have narrowed it down to kidney stones or his appendix.
Treatment for each is very different - and so we wait!
9:30 and Kevin is in surgery to have his appendix removed. We are told the
surgery is minor and minimally evasive - laparoscopic. He will be home
tomorrow. But it is still surgery, and there are potential risks & I have
had a crappy day of keeping two kids entertained all day while we waited to
figure out what was wrong with Kevin. I am tired, hungry & cold & alone in
a place I never expected to be today, so I am not in my best frame of mind.
We've gotten into a bit of a routine in the mornings with Millie. She's up at about 6 every morning (weekend or not, ughh)
so I go get her and bring her into our bed for some cuddling time. She's usually happy to snuggle up to each of us in turn,
present her face for kissing and giggling. Very fun!
Millie is such a chatterbug now! Not that her vocabulary is huge, she's instead mastered the art of using "daddee" as
every part of speech, sentences like "Dah-dee daddEE DADee daddy? Daa-Dee!"
On Wednesday we went to Parent's Night at Anna's school -- again, so impressive! She had gotten a lesson that day on a map
of the states of the US. She has a blank map of just the state outlines, one master map with the states labeled, and a
series of cards. Each card says something like "Find Nevada on the map and color it pink". So she has to locate the state
on the master, relate it to her smaller version, then read the name of the color and properly color the state. She can
even do the hard ones (like Wyoming and Colorado, 2 rectangles in the middle that would be easy to confuse), and she
enjoys it so much! Her friend Navya was doing a "reptile book" which Anna learned the next day: there are a series of
cards with printed words (not cursive) and pictures, like "Reptile babies hatch from eggs" or "Some reptiles eat plants",
and Anna copies the words onto her own paper, copies the picture below, then takes all 11 pages and staples them between
covers. So good!
We got Anna her first bike, it's a birthday present but we're not going to wait for the end of the summer. Saturday was
the only decent day of the weekend so although we wrestled her down for a nap we then had to wake her (nearly 2 hours later),
rolling the bike right into her bedroom, so that there would be daylight enough to try it out. She fell twice, claiming
that the bike turned without her -- actually that she was looking off to one side and so it automatically turned. One
skinned knee is not the last injury of childhood biking, alas!
But everything worked out in the end -- Grandma and Papa had just arrived when the nurse came out to tell us that
the X-rays had come back clean. By then Millie had slowly begun to use her arm. Apparently the dose of Motrin plus getting
the joint back in place had taken effect, she was even back to trying to pull herself up with that hand, grabbing and trying
to get in trouble with it. It seems that the memory of the pain was enough to keep her from using that arm for a while even
after it got better. We're very grateful to my parents, who ended up coming for nothing -- although if they hadn't, maybe
it would have taken another hour and Anna would have turned from calm to meltdown, who knows? Going to the hospital with
2 kids is quite the campaign: we had various snacks for Anna, food for Millie and a bottle, toys and games to keep them
both occupied, as well as all the winter gear (now that it's finally cold).
Sitting in the children's ER for a while certainly brought home that we can be very grateful that Millie's elbow
was dislocated. Many of the kids there had far worse problems; or some seemed to have fewer problems but no regular
doctor so the ER is their pediatrician -- a reminder that one-quarter or more of children are in poverty. We're very
grateful to have two healthy strong kids, and to be able to provide them with good all-round care.
But anyway, by now Millie seems to have a couple of words in her repetoire. "Mba" has mutated to get a much softer "b"
sound to sound more like "more"; she also uses it (sometimes doubled as "Ma Ma") to refer to Donna. She sometimes uses the
baby sign language gesture for "more". She sometimes uses "da". Most commonly at present, she knows that if a telephone is
presented to her, she should say "hi". Once a week when I work late, I talk with my 3 sweeties on the phone: Anna understands
how it operates but Millie has just been beginning to get it, working from burbling noises to "hi da".
But Millie is very expressive in other ways: we all love to watch the faces
that she makes! When we introduce a new food, she gives an expression of "Yegads, what deviltry have you wrought now?!" If
she likes it then the face evolves to "no ce male" to "yum"; if not then she bats away the spoon or, if feeding herself, picks
up a piece and magestically puts her arm out straight to her side before dropping it on the floor (it's also her subtle way
of saying that she's full). Of course she has a full range of laughs and giggles, from wry merriment to joy to raucous
guffaws. She has a particular holler when Anna pushes her too far and begins to manhandle her -- it means "Anna stop it
now or else Mommy or Daddy will come to reprimand you" and both kids know exactly that yell. (She uses it at daycare, too,
for the other bigger kids if they get a bit overwhelming.) She knows how to wave goodbye.
Christmas Eve was spent at Aunt Rosemary's. I almost ruined the holiday at the last minute when, while packing the car,
I spilled the crock-pot full of squid & red sauce all over the trunk of Donna's car. [Yes, it has been weeks since and the
stink is still not gone; it was unpleasant to begin with but has gotten steadily more fetid.] But with a minor Christmas
miracle I only spilled half of it (bad enough, since I'd seen how long it had taken Donna to chop up the tentacles). No one
who wanted squid had to go without (admittedly, there aren't too many takers). I made pizzas; Rosemary had made the pasta
and sauce, and there were several different kinds of cookies. Donna and her mom paid a visit to Aunt Lizzie while we got
the food ready. Kathy was there and Jennifer, Russ, and Michael all made it. Unfortunately Philein, Maegan, and Katie
couldn't be there: they were knocked out with stomach flu. John spent some time with us but then went home to tend to his
sick brood. So Anna and Millie were the only small people there -- it really changes the dynamic! When there are enough
more kids (and enough more parents looking after kids) then the evening tends to focus around them; this evening was more
about the cousins (particularly the west coast crew) talking together. Not that the kids were left out! Anna was as
delighted as could be. She'd been talking about it for a while (she had to learn what "feast" meant, when we were explaining
the game plan) and even, after much hemming and hawing, decided that "first presents then dessert" was the right order.
Millie couldn't quite manage to unwrap her presents. At home she likes shredding papers so we had hopes, but presents are
tougher: she's tear a bit, then get distracted with a bright shiny ribbon or some other decoration. In the pictures she's
sitting on a box marked for her and occasionally shredding some other paper.
We came home and Anna wanted to make sure that everything was ready for Santa: would he be able to get down the chimney?
would he be scared off if Millie woke at the wrong point? We tried to reassure her.
The next morning we actually got to sleep (reasonably) late. Millie was up at about 6 to nurse but then fell back asleep
until about 7:30. Donna and I showered because Anna didn't wake until about 8:30. She quickly found that Santa had come!
We opened our stockings on the bed and then moved downstairs for the main events. Anna and Millie got lots of clothes and a
globe and a sled. Anna got a special wheelie bag for her ice skates along with some other things (skate soakers, new laces,
that sort of thing). I got a new camera. (It's SOOOOO nice! Almost no digital delay in shooting -- the old one [4 years old!
we got it just before Anna was born!] was getting outdated and I had been having real digital envy, particularly when we got my
mom a lovely new one.) Anna excitedly told everyone who asked that she had gotten "everything I wanted!"
Then we went to my parents' house, where Eric and Daniela were staying, and where we got to see Grandma Reed. Anna was
probably as excited about their dogs as about presents -- Moose and Raz and Lucy are so much fun! Anna hauled the smaller
dogs around in the same way she hauls around her sister (encircle her arms below their arms/forelegs and lift). Millie
complains more than the pugs did. Right now they're about the same weight -- around 20 pounds. All three dogs were
incredibly patient and gentle. Anna liked to follow/chase them around but quickly figured that Raz is too slow, Moose
is too fast, but Lucy is JUST RIGHT. I got some pictures of Anna pretending to be a dog. We all got more presents and had
more feasting on ham and trimmings.
The next day we went to see the Jarvis grandparents again. They hadn't brought all of their gifts to us over to Rosemary's
(since those kids open more presents on the next day, it would seem unbalanced to have our sub-set opening so many more gifts).
What a Christmas!
The next day we (except Donna) spent with Eric and Daniela. We met downtown at Papa Foster's work. He got to show off his grandchildren;
his grandchildren got MORE gifts! Since he works at Giftcorp they have quite a selection. One of the ladies took Anna's hand,
found a large container, and went around stuffing it full before letting Anna choose the color of a giant ribbon and bow!
Then we went out to lunch with him at a downtown brewpub. Then Eric, Daniela, Anna, Millie and I went to see the Roaring
Brook Nature Center for the first time. E and D had gotten Anna a family membership to the CT Science Center, of which
Roaring Brook is a part, so it was appropriate (and since it's right in Canton and we hadn't gone there in the previous 3
years we've been living right near it, it was getting embarrassing). The inside part is small but they have a network of
trails, and the mild weather meant that we didn't mind some outdoors time. The girls got a kick out of seeing the
rescued birds there: one great-horned owl seemed to fascinate Millie! After that we went back home, to say goodbye to Eric
and Daniela who were driving back to Indiana the next day.
On the 29th we left for Vermont to see Donna's grandmother. It's a bit of a drive, but we coordinated with Anna's
grandparents to make it easier on her: we met in Brattleboro, had lunch, and then Anna drove the rest of the way with them.
We had dinner with Great-Grandma J (I made pizza again). We stayed at a bed-and-breakfast just across the railroad tracks
from her place. The next morning we awoke to snow! Since we've had a balmy winter so far with zero snow, Anna was delighted!
She made her Papa pull her aroung on a sled that the B&B had, even though we hadn't brought proper snow gear. Then we
had dinner with the family and got back on the road to get back late on Saturday.
New Year's was pretty sedate, after all of the excitement I don't think any of us were up for very much. I got a great
picture of the family: Millie had fallen asleep in her high-chair with her head slumped to one side. Unfortunately I deleted
it accidentally (I'm still getting the hang of the new camera, so just trust me -- it was very cute).
Anna got big news: she will be one of the "Extended Day Children" at her Montessori school beginning in January. Since
she got to the school, she's understood the hierarchy of "babies" [the 18mo-3yr old group, that only goes M-Th so our kids
can't go], then the "Morning Primary" (where she is now), then "Extended Day," then "Lower El" [-ementary], then "Upper El."
Anna was just thrilled when the letter came!
We've been preparing for Christmas, of course. Anna is very excited, especially since her list has grown from last year's
"chocolate." We went out to get a tree over the weekend. We stopped at the orchard where Peter Hayward noted the 50-degree
weather and compared it to last year, when the low had been 2 below. Then at the Holiday Christmas tree farm, where the lady
selling the trees told us that last year a heavy early snow had led to complaints that "the trees are too short" so they
had ended up shovelling out the snow from around many of the trees!
Also last weekend we went to our first Hannukah party at the Schweitzer's (Anna's friend Hannah from her school). They
live in Canton where valid directions include "ours is the house with the lighted Menorah"! They had a big crowd of people
at their big house; Anna and the other kids helped to light the menorahs and listened to the ancient story. Then they went
downstairs where the 3 kids sat at the (grownup) bar, sipping Shirley Temples and amusing (?) the bartender.
I tried my Xmas brew -- it's still not fully carbonated (only 5 days in the bottle) but it seems good, I only realized
after tasting it that I was (perhaps unconsciously) going for an Anchor Xmas style, dark and subtly spicy.
3 lbs gambrinus honey malt (25° L) held at 158 degrees for 40min
.5 lb black patent (550° L)
.5 lb roasted (580° L)
.5 lb chocolate (375° L)
8 lbs English Maris Otter malt
2 oz English Kent Golding whole hops (6.5% alpha acid) in entire boil
1 oz at end (1/2 12 min, 1/2 2 min)
1 oz baking choc + 1/3 cup cocoa 20 min
2 tsp coriander
2 tsp caraway
4 tsp cumin
2 tsp cinamon
It was 1.058 o.g. I pitched a container of Rogue's Pac-Man yeast (Williams Brewing had a special offer; apparently Rogue
has made their yeast public for a limited time). I hope to bottle it soon -- I'd like to crack open a few for the holidays!
The day before, we'd gone to the pediatrician for Millie's 9-month checkup. She's 19.25 lbs and growing very well: in
about the 70th percentile for height and weight. The doctor gave the OK to introduce milk products like yogurt and cheese,
with meats just around the corner. So we immediately introduced her to yoghurt and we've been adding more foods. We're
not going quite as gingerly as with Anna, where we were hyper-careful to keep it at one new food a week. We introduced
yoghurt and then, since the next day was Thanksgiving, Millie shared in sweet potatoes (just whipped up -- no problem!) and
regular potatoes (with milk and butter -- yum!). The turkey and gravy will have to wait. We've also been introducing more
textures: peas, rice, and coarsely-mashed foods.
Over the holiday weekend we went to NYC, in what is becoming our usual holiday. We had a great time! On Friday we strolled
through Rockefeller Center and then went down to Bryant Park where they had a holiday marketplace and an ice-skating rink
set up. Then we went down to Soho for hot chocolate as Vosges, which is excellent -- although Anna's comment was that it
didn't seem chocolatey enough! Then to Ghenet for Ethiopian food (yeah, we are getting a bit of a routine). Next day we
went to Tiffany's to get Millie's Christmas gift (don't tell her! it's a surprise!) -- a silver locket, just like the one we
got for Anna, engraved with her initials. Then we went over to the Pierre Marcolini chocolate shop, which had hot chocolate
that Anna much preferred. Millie is really unfolding herself: she's now aware of what a camera is for, and gives a big
grin whenever I pull it out.
Then up to the CMoM, the Children's Museum of Manhattan. It wasn't great: two floors were
commercially-sponsored exhibits on 'Bob the Builder' and 'Dora the Explorer' which were just so awfully designed! Anna went
in and out of each within about 10 minutes, bored already. There were basically no interesting things for the kids to do,
or a few very highly-planned activities: pull a particular lever in one direction and a single thing happens; that's it.
To be fun, an exhibit has to have a lot more possibilities. (The final insult was all of the nicely-created sculptures of
each character that had many signs about "stay off", "don't climb here", and such.) But that seems to be the way of most
toys designed by major corporations: they're relentlessly single-purpose and quickly bore kids. Most of the kids were on
the third floor of the museum: it had a replica of a bus and firetruck. There was a fireman's pole that Anna went up and down
about a 100 times in a couple of hours. And it had a baby obstacle course: some vinyl pads and blocks, which Millie and the
other babies loved.
After that we found an Afghan restaurant for dinner. Next day was time to go home; we had time just to go to Rock again,
see the Christmas tree there again, watch the ice skaters and the Zamboni! The Zamboni was the highlight of Anna's weekend
(possibly even beating out the chocolate!). Since the rink gets such heavy use, it went over the ice 3 times. It had to stop
in the middle to empty itself of ice, dumping a pile of slush on the side. Anna was enrapt. After that we went to the GCT
holiday market, then stopped for the third and final hot chocolate tasting at La Maison du Chocolate -- excellent. Then home
(albeit with a stop at Meli-Melo in Greenwich for a late lunch and some of their ice cream).
The only problem of the weekend was Millie's sleeping -- there wasn't enough. She woke several times each night; Sunday
morning she was awake and woke up Anna by 6:30. So her parents are very tired after their short 'vacation' -- back to work
for some rest??!
2. It's now official: in a race between a turtle and Millie, I could now bet on Millie with decent odds -- as long as
the race were on a smooth surface like a wood floor or tile. We set her down during Anna's bath, and Millie started to
scoot -- Backwards! Her legs just kick ineffectually while she uses her arms to push herself backward. Occasionally she
cocks her head around to check where she's going. She got about 10 feet or so down the hall. Now if we spray some
Murphy's Oil Soap on her belly we could get some work out of her.
It's one more expression of a general intellectual blossoming. She's also become much more aware of each person. She's
figured out that, on nights when Daddy's home with her, the faint noise of the garage door opening means that "Mama's home!"
and she gets very excited and delighted. The other day, I didn't see Anna coming down the stairs after her nap, but Millie
saw her and gave a great hearty laugh and a grin of delight!
Anna has also been doing a great deal with language. At school she's learning letters and at home she's gone back to
some of her old baby books. They have just one or two words per page but, it turns out, they're great for a beginning reader.
Anna is so proud to be able to work through the books sounding out words. She even went to a set of "yittle books" (little books
that Donna's Aunt Mary gave her) and copied out all of the words onto a piece of paper. It's below
-- it looks like modern art because the words are all over the page and each other. But it took quite a bit of effort,
especially since Anna was printing capital letters although the books were in lowercase, so she would occasionally come to me
to check "Is this a b?" Is this a d?" I highlighted one of her words, "TRIANGLE," from her "Shapes" book (strawberry is right
below it); there's also the "Rooms" book (so "TABLE" and "CHAIR" on the right-hand side of the first one) and others to find.
Anna can be quite the histrionic prima donna! Today while she was playing with Millie just before bed, Millie spit up
and got Anna's PJ sleeve. She gave a huge wail of sorrow and collapsed to the floor, blubbering about "her favorite PJ!"
Offered other PJ tops just got more wails and screams and temper tantrums. She does the same whenever she's startled --
just a loud noise can tip her over to caterwalling.
The G's had both girls on Friday because Donna and I went down to NYC for the big auction at Christie's of Star Trek
memorabilia. Grandma picked the girls up and they all had a great time. Millie had her first ride in a swing -- we've known
how much she likes that motion, but the playground that we usually go to doesn't have baby swings. Another nearby
playground has baby swings but the other equipment isn't as nice. We picked up Millie that evening (so Donna could feed her)
but let Anna have a good time with her grandparents. Sure enough, the three had a great time. Next morning Anna tried out
a bike that they'd gotten, zooming down the driveway with her Papa holding onto the back. What fun!
Anna's latest bedtime ritual is to have her Mama swish up her covers to her chin, then woosh off, then back to the chin.
She does it four times -- because Anna is four. So Anna is planning ahead, asking questions about "When I'm 20, it will
take SOOOOOOOooooo long! And when I'm 50, even longer!" Our answer is that we'd like to have that problem -- if she can
still put up with her parents through her teen years, then we'll be lucky.
Overall Anna has been terrific with her new sister. But occasionally there are signs that, below the surface, she's
working on making sense of it all. Recently she's taken to playing underneath Millie's crib: she gets up in the morning,
takes her pillow and blankets (also her box of kleenex, since she's had a cold) and makes a little nest underneath the
crib. She takes some of the baby toys (that she used to have, although I doubt that she actually remembers them,
I think she just remembers us telling her that they used to be hers) and neatly and precisely lines them up
along the side of the crib with the kleenex box. Sometimes she brings a doll or stuffed animal. But generally she looks
quite happy and content there! It must be somehow comforting -- I don't know, but we give her even more hugs and kisses.
She's tough to read: with us she's cheerful and bright but with strangers she's very quiet (on her first day back at school
she told us that, when they went around a circle with each kid saying something about their summer, she didn't say anything
because she was too shy). She's even a bit shy when seeing her grandparents for the first time in a couple of weeks --
although that usually wears off after 15 minutes or so.
Anna has seemed to enjoy the first 2 weeks of doing both gymnastics and dance class. She's tired after it but seems
to have fun. It's so cute to watch them in dance class: after some stretching, they practice doing things like running
across the dance floor on tip-toe while their upper body faces front. You can see the concentration! (I know, because I'm
clumsy to this day, it takes ME a great deal of concentration to think about my legs, arms, and head all at the same time!)
And then the concentration lags: usually the first girl across does pretty well but each one thereafter drops off a bit, until
the last one is basically just trotting across. (And, yes, I say "girls" because that's who's in the class. At this stage
Anna is no tomboy -- maybe later in life, though?)
Millie has done a bit better sleeping on the past few nights, since it seems that her teething is getting a bit better.
Her 2 front teeth on the bottom are in, and the others are lying in wait. She's so strong now, she's sitting very well and
sometimes tries to pull herself up. Donna's worried that she spends too much time in a Jolly Jumper or exer-saucer, though,
so she wants to hop and jump not walk.
I don't think I'm explaining
this well, but there's something there, even if I can't put my finger on it.
Last weekend we went mini-golfing -- Anna's first time. We didn't bother to keep score. Anna had fun for the front
nine but her attention began to flag for the back nine and she only finished up for the ice cream at the end. It's a nice
place right by the Farmington River in Unionville. The next day we went to Aunt Rosemary's for a Labor Day cookout, where
we had the usual grill-and-pasta. Rosemary's sauce is very good, so Anna chowed down on pasta and meatballs!
I haven't been writing as much lately about Millie. She's great: finally she's able to sit up without help (although
we keep the boppie behind her in case she tips), so she's able to really play with toys and can, therefore, sit on the floor
with a bunch of toys and stay happy for 20 or 30 minutes (enough to make dinner or do other such chores). Soon she'll be
mobile! We've begun talking to Anna about that, trying to prepare her for making sure that she doesn't leave her toys where
Millie can get to them. We also went back and pulled out some of Anna's old toys from when she was a baby. We found her
old letter "C" and told her how, when she was a baby, she would pull that one out of the whole alphabet, and constantly chew
on it. So she reclaimed it, and has even tried chewing on it now that she's 4!
Millie has been eating a lot more different foods. We've introduced lots of fruits recently: watermelon, cantelope,
blueberries, peaches, and pears; plus green beans -- which she spits right back out. Since it's harvest time we've got tons
of foods to choose from.
The little one has been cranky because she's cutting a tooth (making her even-more-sleep-deprived-than-usual parents
rather cranky, too).
Today we brought Anna to sign up for BOTH dance classes and gymnastics classes. She wanted to do both, and although we
tried to figure a way to do one during the week, that didn't work out. So at 8:45 on Saturday she'll do dance and then at 11
gymnastics. But I think we made the right choice: when we stopped by the dance place, Anna was enraptured watching the older
girls practicing -- she told us that she wanted to be just like them. She saw one drink from a water bottle; Anna said she
needs a water bottle. She saw one with a particular bag for her costume; Anna needed that bag. But between the music and
the dancing, Anna seems hooked.
In the evening we went to see fireworks, in honor of our town's 200th anniversary. One of Donna's friends from work
lives right near the place where many of the celebrations were occurring: 3 bands played in a big barn (seriously, it's
still a working barn, with calves and pigs and sheep and horses and chickens -- do we live in the sticks, or what!?). Mostly
Anna ran around with the pack of other kids. Waiting for the fireworks was interminable but once they started, Anna was
enraptured. We had worried that the noise might be too scary, but even Millie seemed to be keen (Donna held her hands over
her ears, just in case). The fireworks were beautiful. And an orange harvest moon looked down, unperturbed.
With all of the presents there is a clear pattern emerging: that the concept "PRETTY" has a totemic, sacerdotal power for
young girls. Anna often exclaims, "Don't I look pretty!" (for instance with her flower girl dress -- her Grandma Foster loves
to tell how Anna, seeing Grandma's dress for the wedding and hearing me say it's nice, explained "Grandma, you're not as
pretty as me!"). Many of her gifts fit this "pretty" fetish: makeup and perfume and dolls and pink clothes. Donna and I just have to be
confident that this is just a phase, that she needs to fill out this role fully before moving on.
One odd habit of Anna's is her fascination with hiding. Often when either Mama or Daddy or grandparents or whoever arrives,
Anna will dash behind the couch or under the table and announce "I'm hiding!" She usually calls out from her hiding place,
so it's not a question of actually not wanting to be found. It is just somehow to make us make an effort to greet her, I
don't know -- I don't understand the motivation. But it's important to her. In the morning, if I get her up and she hears
Mama's footsteps down the hall, she'll scoot under her bed. If Mama steps in before Anna is properly hidden then there might
be tears and a little tantrum.
I'm writing this blog so that someday we can look back and try to figure out what behaviors of Anna and Millie were carried
forward to their adult life. I never really know about other people's stories about childhood because, from the persepective
of a statistician I understand the problem of recall bias -- the predictions that were accurate are remembered; the ones
that weren't, aren't. Since now I'm writing at the time of the behavior, we can look back and judge more accurately.
Millie is doing very well. It seems like one day she just woke up and figured out how to sit herself up. I guess she's
been getting stronger but it took a while to achieve that. But now she can sit up (usually with a boppie around her for
when she tumbles backward). With sitting up comes the ability to grab and manipulate toys. She's much happier now when
left to her own devices -- I can sit her down on the floor while I'm making dinner and she's happy until she's pushed all
of the toys out of reach. She can't crawl yet -- but she can certainly scream. So why go to the toys when the toys can come
to her?
She's still a sucker -- loves to suck on our fingers to console herself. That's usually how we get her to sleep: put a
finger in her mouth and rock her until she drops off. Although that doesn't always work -- since the last nights of our
vacation, Millie has been going retrograde in sleeping habits. NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!! She had
been sleeping until 5 or 5:30 which was quite decent (left her parents as high-functioning zombies) but now she wakes at 3
or 4 am, sometimes refusing to go back to sleep for an hour or more (leaving her parents as low-functioning zombies,
just a narcoleptic burp away from completely comatose). The advice books suggest beginning to let her cry it out, but
that would be easier without another kid sleeping near.
As the 5 pm wedding time neared, the sky began to darken and from about 4:30 it began to rain. But there was always a
corner of sky that promised better and, sure enough, by 5 the sun was back out. There were a few sprinkles during the
ceremony -- or maybe just tears of joy. As with all weddings there was at least one minor upset, when they couldn't find
a CD that they wanted to play. Eric dashed into and out of the farmhouse, looking downright harried and almost stressed.
Finally the bride burned a new CD -- could have been an advertisement for Mac!
After the ceremony we went under a tent and had superb Bar Harbor Brewing Co. beer, tapas plates, wine and other drinks.
They had a mariachi band playing; sometimes people from Daniela's family would sing. (Our family are much more uptight.)
Anna and the other flower girl, Isa, danced together along with a few other girls. Millie stayed awake for the whole thing,
smiling at everybody. There were well over a hundred people, with many relatives who I hadn't seen in quite a while. It
was over all too soon.
The next morning our parents had a brunch at their house. We got more of a chance to talk with Sally, Gail and Dick,
Norm and Joan, Scott and Belinda and their 4 kids, Todd and Sheila and their baby -- we all caught up, admired babies, and
ate more. (So much eating! I might not eat for days when we get home!) That afternoon we went to Sand Beach with Anna again
(Millie went with her grandparents and Eric for a walk up to the Bowl from their house).
Unfortunately Eric and Daniela had to be out of the farmhouse that morning, so they had a great deal to clean up and
didn't get such a chance to unwind after the big party. They brought the leftover booze over: almost 50 bottles of beer
(big 22 oz bombers), 25 bottles of wine, and a half-dozen bottles of champagne -- and nobody left thirsty the night before!
Their food leftovers were similar. What a wedding feast!
Finally today we left, going to Portland and then, tomorrow, driving the rest of the way. Eric and Daniela flew back
to Bloomington from Bangor; our parents drove home. It was a big deceleration from the crazy schedule.
Last night was the rehearsal and rehearsal dinner. The rehearsal turned out to be important to nail down
the details of who goes where and when. The location, on Fox Fields Farm near Clark's Cove off Indian Point Road, is
just beautiful! The sun will be setting over the water and the just-waxing-from-full moon will rise soon after. The
rehearsal dinner was at Beal's Lobster Pound -- very fun and informal. E and D have been to enough weddings to have seen
that a formal dinner on the night before a big wedding is just no fun. Daniela's family had bobble-head lobsters for
all of the tables and other lobster-themed items. Anna and her new best friend, the other flower girl, Isa, casually
beheaded the bobble-headed lobsters; I guess it was trying to imitate the way they saw the adults cracking open their
lobsters. They and Millie did very well even though the dinner didn't start until 8 (Anna's usual bedtime). Both fell
asleep in the car on the ride home; Anna hardly even woke as we took off her jacket and shoes and put her to bed.
The day was fun: we went to Sand Beach where Anna spent a couple of hours running into and out of the surf. COLD!
The ocean water is in the 50s, so standing in it makes my bones ache from the cold, but after enough times you sort of
lose feeling in your feet. Anna had a great time and it tired her out enough that she went down for a long nap to prepare
her to stay awake that evening.
The previous evening was also a great event: Daniela's siblings had chartered a boat to take us to a restaurant in
Islesford on Little Cranberry Island. It was the first time that we met her brothers and sisters -- they're a great bunch
of people, all very nice and good fun. Dinner was excellent. On the way back the rain came up and lightning crackled
over the sky and the wind whipped up the surf. We all got soaked in salt water -- it made a nice evening into a bit of an
adventure.
Anna likes stickers (along with most kids) so when we get those free address labels from some charity that wants us to
donate, we give her the labels before tossing out the request. Anna likes the ones that the ASPCA sent, since they've got
pictures of dogs and cats. Some have our address on them but others have slogans. So yesterday she went around all day with
a sticker on her chest saying "Think of the future, Spay or Neuter"! I can only wonder what other people thought...
Millie is also doing very well. After peas she ate summer squash (from the CSA farm) and then sweet potatoes (yum!). I
think that next we'll give her cucumbers (also from the farm; when put into the food processor they're like a simple gazpacho)
and then maybe blueberries. She's developing swiftly. At daycare, she spends some time in an exer-saucer getting to
stand on her legs and jump -- she likes that! She must be teething, too, although we haven't seen any breaking through,
because she's been cranky, drooling, and enjoying chewing/sucking on a finger.
Last weekend we went to get pictures taken, bringing my in-laws along with us (since their pictures were really far
out of date). I think we all had fun and we got some great pictures.
Anna has begun swimming again this season. After 4 lessons this week and some long practice, she's finally getting good at it!
She now dogpaddles for as far as 6 or 8 feet before putting her feet down. At first she kept a bubble on (a styrofoam block on
her back) but then took it off and just used a noodle (a long piece of styrofoam) under her arms. She's so serious about
practicing -- she spends about an hour just determinedly paddling out from the steps to me (in the center of the pool) and back.
Other kids bounce around and play but Anna just keeps on paddling. Such hard work! And such a payoff! Last summer she never
quite got it but this summer she's just made very quick progress. Granted she still doesn't like getting her head wet but
she's coming along.
Millie has gone from not sleeping through the night because she's too small, all the way to not sleeping through the night,
because she's teething (with a short half-week of not sleeping because she had a bad cold). Ugghh. Her parents could kill for
a good night's sleep, I swear it.
Anna has been enjoying rhyming things lately, "Millie silly tilly filly killy ..." -- doesn't matter if they're words or not,
she just likes playing with the sounds. She's also been practicing counting and now can count to 100 or more (and will
happily do so, if provoked!). When her Papa F turned 61 she told him that he was "nearly 100" and counted off, to prove it. He
was thrilled!
Anna has begun really reading, going back to some of her first baby books (with one word per page) and carefully sounding
out the words letter by letter. In Montessori schools they teach them letter names differently, using the sound that the
letter (sometimes) makes, so "A" is pronounced "ahh", "B" is "buh", "W" is "wuh" (that one actually makes sense). Of
course it worked much better in Italian than in the crazy English spelling! For some words it works like a charm: "buh"
"ahh" "ll" "ll" sounds out to ball. Other words with silent letters are tougher.
Anna also asked us to take the rails off of her bed. Now she's really a big girl! We had taken one off already but,
when we got back from the weekend trip, she just asked us to take the last one off. She knows when she's ready.
Millie is getting really smiley and expressive. Also crankier, waking up more often in the night and not going back to
sleep. It's a narrow balancing act!
On Saturday we went out to lunch with Grandma and Papa J. Where baby Anna was a real Papa's girl, making both her
grandmothers really quite crestfallen when she cried whenever they held her; baby Millie is the opposite. When Grandma's got
her, she's content; when Papa's holding her she cries. They know that they shouldn't be hurt but still, you can tell,
it stings. Turnabout...
Anna has a juicebox with dinner each night (the only juice we give her), which she's got in a precise order. In the
pantry she's got them lined into seried rows, each taken in its order. If, say, Momma just grabs one (Momma is the least
anal-retentive) then Anna will scream her protests, even going so far as to put the offending juice box back ino place,
taking the correct one (yes, they're the same flavor, but ORDER is important!).
Anna is becoming a bit less of a stream-of-consciousness chatterbox than she once was. She still hasn't learned the social mores about repressing
her feelings so she is still apt to go to either parent, throw her arms around our legs, just to say "I love you so much!"
Actually, one of her new items is claiming "I love you more than you love me" which has led her to learn some more about
numbers. One says "I love you a hundred" then the next, "I love you a thousand," then million and billion. (Anna says
"billion" like Carl Sagan used to, for anyone who remembers that reference.)
Anna is still devoted to differences in age. Her main classification now is built around her schoolmates. At Montessori
schools the kids are in groups with 3-year age ranges -- Anna is with 3-, 4-, and 5-year-olds. But from four-and-a-half up,
the kids go "extended day." Anna and the rest of the younger kids leave the class at 11:45. Some go home; Anna goes to the
daycare ("The Nest") right there at the school but still there's a difference. Anna's group has lunch and then (tries to) nap
but the extended-day kids have lunch and then do more "work". Anna is just finally getting able to say the word correctly
-- she started saying "eskended day children". The next step up is Lower Elementary (6, 7, and 8 years old) then Upper El.
So when Anna plays with her dolls or stuffed animals (she sees very little distinction) they usually are assigned roles
corresponding to those ages, "Panda is one of the eskended day children. Brown B is in Lower El."
I can still remember when I was in school, maybe elementary school, believing that the kids in high school who were SOOOO
much older than me must have their life really figured out -- they must be much happier than me. As I grew older, I wondered
why I wasn't getting that "Aha!" moment when I achieved the same level of "cool" that I believed those older kids had. Only
as I got past 30, got a career underway, started to get accustomed to being a father -- only now am I starting to realize
that maybe, just maybe, that moment will never come. I get older and I solve many of the problems that I used to have, but
then I confront new ones. I don't seem to get any wiser. I don't think I will ever get old and wise, just old and foolish.
Millie still hates baths -- screams throughout the process like we're the CIA, waterboarding her.
Millie is getting stronger and faster. Now when we change her, the 2 feet bicycle and kick, playing a good defensive
game. Sometimes she catches the wipe and prevents it from hitting her; sometimes it looks like she had a diaper rash on
her toes.
Anna feels very special because Millie can almost say her name. Millie constantly says, "Aaaa, Aaaa, AHHHGGH!"
Apparently she eventually gets frustrated by being unable to say "N".
Friday was Millie's 4-week checkup. Before the nurse put her on the scale, Donna and I guessed on her weight: D bet on
over 8 lbs, I guessed 7 14 -- right on the nose! So her weight is only at the 10th percentile but her height is at the
median, although both of them are measured with so much error that it's too early to tell very much. With Anna the doctor
was worried that she wasn't gaining weight enough but then they realized that they were using different scales -- a couple
of ounces difference can make all the difference! Time will tell if Millie moves on up the percentiles towards Anna or
if she'll be a bit more petite.
So generally we cleaned the house top-to-bottom, like an orthodox family before Passover (except for nits not yeast!).
It's exactly what we didn't need, but of course just part of the fun for a household with 2 kids. The last school epidemic
was a stomach flu, which Anna fortunately missed. This time we weren't so lucky. But by the next day we had rid her of
the lice, brought both kids to the pediatrician for another check ($180 for the 15-minute head scan!), and brought Anna into
school so that she could at least see her friends for the last half of the day. The next 2 weeks are school vacation, which
Donna and I are not looking forward to. With Anna in school we at least have time during the day to nap, either if Millie
goes down or we can sleep in shifts. But with Anna home, the sleep time is much more limited.
Also at Millie's 2-week doctor visit, they measured her again and this time got 21" not 18.5" from birth. The 21"
seems much more likely so that's what we put on the announcements.
The two new sisters have been great together -- Anna has been great! She loves her sister and nearly smothers her with
kisses. Granted, her hugs can be a bit too tight, but given the difficulty that she's had, of seeing her family
structure completely upended, it's understandable.
We moved Anna into her new room at the same time. We would have liked to have the events more separate but that was
how we got the scheduling done.
Anna enjoys watching the details of baby care and helping where possible. She hovers watching diaper changes, asking
to view the poop. She helps clean the baby's cord with alcohol swabs. She watches her Mama's breastfeeding carefully.
She helps to burp Millie, enthusiastically patting her back. All in all, Anna is terrific.
We've been getting a new room set for Anna, so that the baby can move into her present room (it's close to our room so it
minimizes the late-night commuting). So we've had a wall of built-in shelving created and the room is painted in terrific
saturated colors. We're only waiting for the carpet (on order) to move Anna in. She's excited, which is important in trying
to make sure that she sees it as a step up -- growing-up kids move to bigger rooms (not get kicked out of the room close to
Mommy and Daddy).
As part of getting her ready to be a big sister, we've adapted the Advent calendar idea to a "Little Sister Countdown" so that
Anna can, each morning, put a sticker onto the calendar to mark the day's date and then count the number of days until the
due date. Sometimes I worry that it might put an artificial precision on the due date, but I guess it's OK. Anna gets practice
counting -- she started in early January when she had 35 or 40 days to count!
A couple of weeks ago we had a chance to learn more about Anna's school. They had the parents come on Friday evening and again
on Saturday morning for "A Silent Journey." Friday we just walked around the classrooms, told to stay silent and not touch. On
Saturday we got to work with the apparatus. We were impressed by the many ingenious ways that the "Montessorians" use to teach
the kids! Some of the math devices are really super. Donna and I enjoyed playing with a "trinomial cube" that gives a geometric
interpretation for the binomial tree, as well as their number beads, their methods for learning multiplication and division,
and others. Then there are all the apparatus for the other subjects -- I wish I could have had those when I was in school! My
memories of school are mostly of being bored by the material and frustrated by the petty rules of the petite autocrats.
That also got us a chance to send Anna to spend a night with her grandparents, so that we could take several hours on Friday
and Saturday. Anna stayed with my parents. The week before she stayed with Donna's parents so that we could go to a
Saturday-morning 3-hour class to "refresh" us on birthing procedures.
Anna also got to take a class at the hospital on being an older sibling. It was cute, as the nurse showed the kids how to
diaper and swaddle a baby, using each kid's favorite stuffed animal or doll. Then they showed us a newborn in the nursery.
Anna seemed completely floored by that sight (OK, there's some projection, too!). She went completely silent when she saw
the newborn, turning absolutely all of her attention to examining this strange purplish, squirming, crying thing.
Those two classes have contributed to "making it real" for all of us. Donna and I finally got to serious negotiations about
the baby's name (no, I'm not telling!) since we each had had different ideas, and we worked out a plan. We've got a suitcase
packed so that we'll be ready when the time comes. (Well, we'll never be ready -- it's more precise to state "as
ready as can be"!)
And we found a doula, Linda Lowery. She seems really good -- one of the important features, apart from the expertise, that a
doula brings is just to have another person there to help Donna. Both Donna and I seem to have a good rapport with Linda. She
has spent several evenings just talking with us about what we hope and fear will happen, about how to best achieve those goals,
and what her role can be. When Donna told her OB doctor, the doctor was very supportive, agreeing that a doula can
be a great help. Plus she's a massage therapist so she's helped Donna with some of her aches and pains. (Not all
of them, unfortunately -- Donna is still very uncomfortable, feeling stretched-out and weighed down.)
Anna's parents got her mostly things for her new room. Since the new baby is going to get Anna's
room, we're decorating our spare room to be Anna's. We're getting built-in shelving installed on one
wall, and the room will be painted with lots of colors. (Including the girl's favorite, "I like dark
pink very the much!") We got a couple of funky chairs and a comforter at Ikea.
Additionally, on the day after Xmas, Anna and I went with her Uncle Eric and Aunt Daniela to the
East Coast's best bar/brewpub, McNeil's in Brattleboro. Anna enjoyed getting some time with
E & D. After some beers for 3 of us we got Indian food -- she spent the next week telling people
how much she loves Indian food (also a mango lhossie). We put some pictures on the web.
Donna's work Xmas party was fun. Despite Santa fizzling out (Anna did not sit in his lap) they had people in costumes
as a snowman and a reindeer. Anna stalked them for about an hour, getting high-fives but generally just staring. When
asked the inevitable question, "What do you want for Christmas?" Anna answers "Chocolate!" I'm so proud that I've taught
her right from wrong!
Sat Sept 30 - Oct 9
On the other hand, Anna is also getting better at understanding other people's emotions too. If she yells at me, and I yell
back, she has now figured out that sometimes it's better to say, "I'm sorry" and try to ask the question in a civil tone.
Like most kids her age, she still gives out orders, but she' beginning to temper that with manners. (At daycare, her
teachers say that she is very good, so apparently home gets fewer manners, but I guess that's better than the opposite problem.)
Her grandma F taught her a new way to eat the berries: count them all, eat one, count them, eat one, ... repeat until
they're all gone. It goes right to the girl's anal-retentive qualities and gets her to practice counting (she's pretty good
up to about 20 -- although that's limited more by the size of the bowl than Anna's counting).
Speaking of anal-retentive, Anna really enjoys seeing different potties! Driving down the road, she'll call out "Daddy,
look! A Port-a-Potty!" When we go shopping she tells us that she has to go, mainly to just check out the facilities.
The girl, asked about her favorite thing over the weekend, said "breakfast" (which, honestly, wasn't very good,
just a basic Continental b'fast, although they did have little chocolate croissants, which may have been the star). Later,
she told her Uncle Eric about her favorite things: riding a taxi, riding a train, riding the subway.
Afterwards, Anna got to play with her cousins Aimee and Deanna. They found a field nearby Great-Gramma's house where they
could roll down the hill, get dizzy, and get grass stains on their good clothes.
Anna's sense of time is a bit skewed: last week, her Papa was going to pick her up at school (we're lucky to have flexible
grandparents who can help out when Mama and Daddy work late). She was excited to see him so that in the morning she asked,
"Is Papa going to pick me up from school today?" "Yes," I answered. "OK, I go to school now!" The sooner she got to
school, the sooner she would be picked up -- can't beat that logic!
A: Mommies grow on trees.
M: Really? What about daddies? Do they grow on trees?
A: Nooooo! Mommy's a goof. Daddies grow on ... [pause for thought] - Drawers!
M: Drawers? Do daddies grow in drawers?
A: Yeah!