Boo-boos

In addition to having completely opposite personalities, the kids have opposite reactions to boo-boos.  Jessie can go bouncing down a flight of stairs without any significant trauma, but Sam gets a scratch and it’s a major crisis.

Sam tends to blame Jessie for every little thing, regardless of whether Jessie is even near her or not.  Just a few minutes ago, Sam was eating lunch and bit her cheek (or her tongue…she’s not too specific with her boo-boos) and blamed Jess.

The other day they were playing around with the door that is between the entryway and the rest of the house.  It has a lace curtain and Jess was hiding behind it, Sam was peeking around the side and they were giggling.  Suddenly Sam pused the door.  There was no giggling.  I ran over, opened the door, and there was Jess behind it, with the biggest surprised look on her face. Two seconds later she was wailing.  I checked her over and discovered that one of her big toenails got bent backwards.  Messy.  Sam just continued on with her playing, oblivious to Jessie’s screaming.  Neither one of them ever considered it might have been Sam’s fault and I certainly wasn’t going to point that out to them.

We’re still trying to wean them off the binkies.  We were making progress until this weekend. It’s a long holiday weekend and daycare was closed on the 3rd and I had off. Matt worked.  The kids screamed. I refused to give in and give them their binkies.  Yesterday was the holiday.  Matt watched the kids while I did yard work. The kids screamed. Again, we were strong and didn’t give them binkies.  Today Matt has to work again. I was planning to be tough.  After we got home from the grocery store, Jess wanted her binky. We were strong. We held out. Jessie sat in another room screaming.

Then I changed her diaper. While she was on the changing table hollering, I got a look inside her mouth. A big molar coming in.  No orajel in the house and Matt was almost ready to leave for work.  It was almost naptime.  They got their binkies and we’ll get some orajel after they wake up.  Poor kid.  Three days of getting in a big old molar and we make her suck it up.

Sam is quite the little goodie-two-shoes adult in the pair.  After lunch this afternoon, after she had just finished crying about biting her tongue/cheek (Jessie’s fault, of course), Jessie, tired after so much screaming earlier this morning, laid down on the kitchen rug and assumed the nap position. Sam ran over to sit next to her, rubbing her back. Every time Jess’s head popped up to look around, Sam would push it back down to the ground and rub her back.  Something tells me that’s what the daycare workers do to get the reluctant nappers to sleep.  Sam was pretty persistant about it, so I just took them upstairs for their naps.

By the way, Mom, the pair of Plutos are a big hit. They cart them off to bed and naptime now with Tigger and Eeore.

Time Out

I should start this by emphasizing that the girls are really little sweeties.  They are very well behaved.  However, they’re toddlers and trying to find out where the boundaries are.

They did some good testing this weekend.

Food-throwing is always a good one.  Biting is another.  We’ve gotten a couple of bite reports from daycare – that the girls have been bitten, none so far that they’re doing the biting. However, they’ve been testing the biting thing out on us (and the furniture).  Jess bit Matt yesterday in the tummy.  I didn’t realize he could yell that loud.  Neither did she.

Sunday Sam was a little beligerant.  She got a timeout.  Jessie was quite upset when we carted Sam off to stand in a corner, so after Sam returned, Jessie did the exact same thing and then was rewarded with her own time out.  We’ve discovered that a time out tends to disturb the kid who wasn’t involved more than the kid who was.  And for some reason after one is punished, the other thinks she needs to do something to get herself punished, too.

They will also apologize for something the other kid did. Jessie hit me with a toy, Sam said she was sorry and then gave Jessie a hug.

You know, it’s really hard to discipline someone when it seems to have no effect on them whatsoever, but their sibling gets deeply disturbed by it.

And it makes no sense to just let them do whatever they were doing.

Separate houses and raising the kids independent of eachother isn’t in the budget, either.

Solutions from anyone out there are very welcome.

Chutes and Ladders

Now that the weather is nice, we’ve been spending a lot of time outside trying to tire the kids out. We take a lot of walks.  Those are “fun.” (Sometimes like a root canal)  The kids are distracted by every little thing.  We take a wagon along and sometimes they’ll ride in it. They like to push their toy busses, so mostly the wagon is used to carry the busses after the kids get tired of pushing them.

The other night the kids went for a tiny little walk. Not too far into it, they got crabby, so we went home.  Once home, they played for a little while in the front yard. Then all of a sudden Jessie just took off down the sidewalk for her own little walk.  Matt went after her and just walked along behind, making sure she didn’t get schmushed crossing the streets.  After a bit Sam decided she was missing out on something, so she convinced me that we needed to go on another walk, too.

Jessie led Matt over to the playground thingy behind the community center a block from out house.  I’m not an expert on playgrounds, being some 40 years removed from my own experiences there (and back then the school playground equipment was located on the blacktop….), but these days the trend seems to be one big connected unit made up of various climbing devices and walking bridges and steps and slides.  The one by the community center is pretty big.

Jessie loves to climb. She’s scared to death of slides.  Sam does the climbing because it gets her to the slides, but since she has such short little legs, it’s more of a task for her to get up them than it is for Jessie. Sam, however, lives to go down the slides.

I stood down at the bottom to catch Sam when she got down at the bottom of the slides.  Matt climbed up the device to follow Jessie up and down stairs to make sure she didn’t fall off.  At one point Jess thought about trying a slide. She sat at the top forever debating whether to go or not.  Sam eventually came up behind her. She waited for a bit, then got impatient and just shoved Jessie.  Jess came down the slide with the most terrified look on her face. Sam came down right after her just full of giggles.

Eventually they started picking up stuff (straws, cigarette boxes, etc.) and we decided to leave before they got to the glass and used condom.

A block from daycare there’s a little park.  Park might be generous.  It’s a vacant lot that the city somehow owns and they put of a very small playground unit with one slide on it.  We stopped there after daycare last night on our way home. 

It had a small, short slide.  Sam loved it.  Jess wasn’t too interested until she got sick of going up the few stairs and back down again. Eventually she tried the slide, decided it was fabulous, and they both went up and down for quite a while.

And then there are the ladders.

These things scared me to death when I was a kid.  Our kids aren’t even two, and they just go right up them without a care in the world. I let Jess try one the first time thinking she’d give up after the second rung.  Nope. Right to the top she went.  Eventually Sam decided she had to try it, too.  I spotted them and rarely had to grab them.  I took a few pics of them going up while Matt was watching them.  He was a bit more hands-on than I was.  Mom, you may not want to look. 

Jessie

Jessie

Jess on the slide

Sammie

Sam

Stop the Addictions!

It’s tough to be small. You’ve got no control over anything.  Your parents start you on these little addictions and then stop you and you can’t do anything about it.

Pacifiers.  Again.

We’re doing pretty good with those. They don’t use them at all at daycare. It’s home that’s the problem.  By the time they get home, they’re tired and cranky and we’re tired and cranky and it gets easier and easier to push the problem off to deal with it another day.  However, the Mom-imposed deadline of getting them off those danged things is only just over 3 months away. Seems like a lot of time, but it goes pretty quickly.

They can have them in the car.  They can have them at bedtime.  We cave and give them the binkies after supper.  If we go outside, they have to surrender their mouthpiece to the nearest adult. If they get out of the car, they have to hand it to whoever is removing them from their seat.  When we get to daycare, we bring them to the room and then take them away.  Today I talked Sam into giving me hers while she was still in the car.  She initially said “no!” and held on to it, but then thought it over, handed it to me, and looked pretty proud of her big-girl self.

Cold turkey would probably kill all of us plus the cats, so we’re trying to ween them down to just certain occasions.  The long three-day weekend was trying because they get used to having it around the house at night and then think they should have it on weekends, too. I’m sure the daycare workers hate us on Mondays.

We are open to any suggestions for making them hate the binkies from those of you who are more experienced in this.

Another little addiction: doggies.

I remember when I was younger and had very little to do, I would dream of taking a three-day weekend and making a movie marathon out of it – you know, watching a whole series of sequels, like all the Star Trek movies in order, or all the Star Wars movies in any kind of order.  Or watching a couple years’ run of a tv show.

We did something like that over the weekend.

We watched 101Dalmatians  a 101 times.  We couldn’t even change it up with the newer live version. All we have is the 1961 animated film.  I’ve got the danged musical theme to that movie stuck in my head.

Every moment when we weren’t outside, the kids would run into the living room begging for “Doggies! Doggies! Doggies!!!!”  We’d turn it on and they’d sit and watch it forever.  We agreed because it was easier than dealing with screaming from telling them no and because it would allow one of us to run off and get some work done for a while.  I swear though, I am soooooo freakin’ sick of that movie. We’ve got to do something.  Anyone know if Lady and the Tramp is still available???

We’re also trying to find some used tricycles for them.  New ones are either crazy expensive or really crappy.  The sucky thing with two of them is that it just isn’t worth it to spend the $$ to get something nice because then we’ve got to get two of them (trust me when I say this) and there will be no siblings later on that can get more use out of them.  New trikes (that aren’t plastic and don’t have steering problems) are around $70-$90.  I just can’t see spending $140-$180 on something they’ll probably only use this summer. Especially when I’ll be off without pay for 6 days.

Does anyone out there know of a good source for used trikes? I suspect we could find them at yard sales, but we simply don’t have time to go driving around looking for yard sales.  Matt works half the Saturdays each month and I for sure am not going to cart two toddlers around from place to place and try to keep an eye on them while looking at other people’s stuff.

Kidlette Update

The kids are growing like weeds.  It seems like all of a sudden they hit a new milestone and you’ve got a whole new set of kids.

They’ve got way more words than they did a week or two ago.  They’re now able to listen to explanations about why they have to do something instead of just throwing a complete fit on the floor.

Cute little things:

Yesterday the kids were crabby at suppertime. Jessie ended up sitting on Matt’s lap, Sam on mine.  At one point Jessie found a book and brought it over to Matt to read.  Sam climbed off my lap, turned around, looked me straight in the eye, said “Bye” and waved, and went over to Matt to read the book.  At least she’s got good manners.

The other night when we got home from daycare, Jessie just did not want to go into the house for supper. I finally asked her to help me put my bike in the garage to distract her.  She immediately grabbed the front wheel and started pushing it towards the garage (I had to tell her that might not be the best place to hold on). She took it so seriously – she held on to the bike all the way into the garage.  Once in there I explained that we had to eat and then could come back out and play. A couple of weeks ago she would have had a meltdown and had to be carried into the house. Now she just nodded and went to the back door.

We took the kids to Lowes last weekend to look at flooring and to wear their little butts out running around – wide aisles, not too many people out shopping. We let them go without carts.  Jessie just runs around. I’d catch glimpses of her running between the aisles with Matt dashing along after her – it was like some old Warner Bros. cartoon.  At one point Sam and I were walking past the tool cabinets and they had one that was taller than me with speakers in the top -blaring some really bad music, of course.  I looked at them wondering when the heck tool cabinets got so crazy and kept walking.  About 10 feet farther along I realized Sam wasn’t with me. Turned around, and there she was, standing in the main aisle, right in front of the tool cabinet, dancing her little heart out, a grin from ear-to-ear.  Some woman three aisles back was almost wetting her pants laughing at it.  I don’t know where they get that from – neither Matt nor I can dance to save our lives.  If we’re taking walks and a loud car drives past, the kids will stop walking and immediately start dancing.  And they’re pretty darned good at it, too, for not having even been on the planet for two years yet.

Last night they came home from daycare just filthy.  Their clothes were just black.  They had dirt in their scalps.  Their legs and arms were brown.  They must’ve been playing outside all day.  Must be good to be a kid…wish we could still have that much fun! After supper we went for a long walk with them and then Matt entertained them in the front yard while I watered the transplanted roses.  The big game was to throw rocks up the driveway and watch them roll down. At some point Sam’s game devolved into throwing a rock and then running to pick it up and throwing it again.  Hey, anything to tire them out to get them to sleep.  Even if it means teaching them to throw rocks near the house.

Time to start getting their supper ready…if we can get them to eat it in this heat.  It’s in the 80s today.

Busy, busy, busy

(That should, of course, be said in the voice of the magician from Frosty the Snowman)

It seems like forever since I posted something.

You know all that stimulus money the feds are throwing around? Yeah, well, it all has to be reviewed by someone.  Our office reviews everything the feds are funding in Michigan except for services. And all that money is coming with very short timelines. So, all of a sudden folks are finding themselves with big pots of money and need to spend it quickly. Projects were supposed to be “shovel ready” but what that means in reality is that someone has an idea and now they need to get all the paperwork done by Monday.

At work the volume of projects to be reviewed has picked up considerably. Even more though we’re seeing submissions by consultants who are completely unqualified to submit the information (I got one call from some guy who was deeply offended that I said he wasn’t qualified and might want to subcontract to someone who was. The longer I talked to him, the more I was convinced he didn’t have a clue what he was doing….) So, we get crappy paperwork submitted, there’s nothing in there that we can review (and this assumes that the lazy folks even bothered to read the regulations and find out what was required, or – heaven forbid – checked our website to see what they needed to submit) so we spend a lot of extra time sending their projects back to them for resubmission. And then answering the calls when they get their projects returned.  I spend wayyyyyyy more time on the phone these days than I’d like.  And everything has to be done NOW.  Unfortunately, there are only a couple of us and a lot of federal bucks. So we’re getting rather swamped at work, plus most of it isn’t just the routine reviews, it’s a lot of dealing with people who don’t know what they’re doing and expect us to do our job and theirs….by the time I get home I’m worn out.  Sitting down in front of a computer at night to blog is just not going to happen much until things slow down at the office. Plus, the kids are wanting to stay up later because the sun stays up later.  By the time we get them to bed it’s late, we’re exhausted, and we still have to do the dishes and make supper for ourselves.

Plus, there’s been the additional stress at work.  The state’s broke and we’ll be taking some unpaid days off.  I can live with that. Our budget is really tight with two kids in daycare, but we could have cut back (I’ve got a whole pantry of ramen noodles) and managed.  The annoying thing is that you only find out at the last minute what’s going on.  First it was 6 days. Then it was 6 consecutive days because of a union contract. Then it was 9 consecutive days because the state would have to pay us unemployment and that wouldn’t save them any $$, so they gave us more time off. And then it was 6 non-consecutive days because the union said “go ahead and do that.” 

When it was 9 days in a row, I was planning to take up the kitchen floor and put down a new one.  I had plans. Screw the household budget, I was looking forward to having  two weeks off of work and away from the office (see the first couple of paragraphs above).  Plus, the kids will need potty training sooner than we’ll be ready for it.  Potty training in the upstairs bathroom makes no sense as there are a lot of stairs to get there, so we’re looking at the tiny half-bath downstairs.  The sink in there hasn’t worked in two years.  We were planning to re-do the bathroom (new floor, sink, john) and then I got knocked up and we never got around to it.  So, the sink needs to be fixed.  We have a sink and faucet downstairs ready to install. However, to do that, we need to move the pipes a little bit.  And since the sink will hang on the wall with a pedistal stand, we need to redo the floor so that everything’s at the right height. 

Except that there’s no way I can get the floor done quickly. There are three layers of floor and the bottom one leaves a big mess on the subfloor. So, since the days off aren’t consecutive, we can scratch that idea. We’ll just slap a new faucet in the (crappy) old sink and call it good.

Anyway, we’re all wondering what other consessions the union(s) will make to balance the budget. Next year’s budget is even further out of wack.  We expect more furlough days then.  Matt’s worried that if the library millage doesn’t get renewed next year, he could be canned.  No point in spending a whole lot of money on the house right now…might just as well wait to see if we’ll even still be in Lansing in a year or two.

Plus, there’s the whole elimination of my department (History, Arts and Libraries).  That’s still going to happen, but every week there’s a new solution proposed for how to do it. And with the predictions for the next fiscal year getting worse and worse with each auto bankruptcy, we’re all holding our breath to see what gets cut. Even if our own positions don’t get cut, we could still be out of jobs if there is bumping.

So, lots of stress, lots of exhaustion, and no real desire to sit infront of a computer.  Doesn’t make for a very good blogger. Sorry.

Why Haven’t I Done This Before?

I had to run to another building to pick up some files this morning.  I took my bike.  The weather was fabulous!  Clear blue skies, birds chirping, grass growing, leaves coming out on the trees.  Since I was just zipping from one building to another, I left the helmet in the office. I had the time of my life.  I decided I needed to do that some more, so I came home for lunch.  Right now I’m eating leftover pizza, sitting in the dining room, listening to the birds outside and watching the cats have some fun.

This is WAY better than sitting in my cubicle, breathing the stale office air, trying to avoid answering the phone and getting annoyed when someone comes into the cube during lunch with an environmental review crisis so I have to go back to work before my lunch hour is up.  What idiot in her right mind would sit in her cube when she could bike home in 5-10 minutes and forget about work completely for a bit?  I might even have a scoop of ice cream when I’m finished with the leftover pizza.

I Never Promised You A Rose Garden

And yet I suddenly have one.  A big one.

Last Monday I took the day off to transplant roses.  It was part of a bigger plan.

When we bought the house, there were raised flower beds in front of the house.

Unfortunately, the bed on the left was allowing water to get into the house and the floorboards were rotting out in the front closet.  We took that one out two years ago.  The one on the right is causing the bricks on the porch to spall. That’s this summer’s project.

So, as long as I’m planning to take out the raised flower bed, why not address the brick walkway right in front of it? It was getting crooked, and it was too narrow to be really useful. I took that out after supper one night the other week.

And, as long as both the walkway and the raised bed were gonners, why not remove the grass in the front yard and make a big garden?

Because it’s a bigger job than we cared to take on, that’s why.

Hey, when has that ever stopped us?

So, I scaled it back to removing just half of the lawn on the right hand side this summer, along with getting rid of the raised bed and the walkway.  Next summer I was planning to address the upper half of the left side of the front. I was planning to move  a few roses from the back yard (where I never got to see them) to the front yard where I could enjoy them more.  They needed to be moved before they started growing, so I took Monday off to move them.  Before noon Matt and I had dug 6 holes and moved 6 roses.  And another two holes for hydrangeas that came out of the raised flower bed.  That felt like a full day’s work.

I mentioned something about moving roses at work.  A co-worker volunteered that he’d dug three roses out of his backyard over the weekend and didn’t want to just throw them out, but had no other use for them.  Swell, I said, I can find a home for them.  I thought 3 more would be great – not a lot of work, after having moved all the other stuff on Monday.

Then Saturday morning the owner of the rental across the street started digging stuff out of the front yard of that house.  Roses.  We volunteered to take them if he didn’t have a use for them.  He told Matt he’d bring over three at some point in the day.  So, 6 new roses for free.  Nice. I’d just plant them sometime Saturday afternoon while Matt watched the kids.

Except that once the guy across the street dug up his roses, they were three clumps of three bushes.  9 all together. So, with the co-worker’s, there were 12 roses to transplant.

That was a lot of work.  And now the whole yard on the right side is dug up and has roses.  And there are a bunch on the left side, too.  Pictures to follow when my arms recover.

Where Have All the Flowers Gone?

After supper tonight the weather was still somewhat nice outside, so we decided to go for a walk.

A walk is a very complicated thing with two toddlers.  Someone gave us a bus toy.  The kids fought over it whenever we’d go outside. Nothing else compared.  It had all kinds of buttons you could push and it would make noises.  You can ride on it or hold onto the handle in the back and push it.  Their legs aren’t very long and riding it is difficult, so the girls mostly love to just run down the sidewalk pushing it.  We finally had to get a second one to stop the fighting.

So, we set out with two adults, two toddlers, and two push toys.  It was a lovely walk – just warm enough, not too hot.  The yards were full of flowers. We live in a great neighborhood where a number of homeowners have turned their entire yards into large gardens.  The kids get a kick out of pointing things out to us…seed pods, cats, pine cones, doggies, flowers, gazing balls.

We were fairly deep into the walk when Sam spied some really cool flowers growing in a neighbor’s yard.  They were a very attractive yellow.  She was taken with them.  I didn’t think the neighbor would miss one of their dandelions precious flowers, so I picked one and gave it to Sam. She was thrilled.  She pointed at another one and started to hoot, obviously meaning she wanted that flower, too.  I didn’t think it would hurt – they weren’t in any danger of running out of pretty yellow flowers at that house.  Picked the second one and gave it to Sam.  She turned around, walked over to Jessie, and handed her a flower.

Awwwwwwwww. It was so darned cute.  Very moving.  How sweet is that, thinking of your sister at that age?

So, we returned to our walk. It was a little more difficult to push the toy while holding a flower.  Jessie gave up and Matt had to carry her toy.   Sam decided she wanted to put her flower in her coat pocket. Who am I to argue with such practicality?  Actually, it turns out to be harder than you might think to keep a dandelion in a tiny toddler hoodie pocket.  If the flower was sticking out at all, it would fall out to the sidewalk.  Eventually we ended up just cramming the thing as deep into her pocket as possible.

Sam being obsessive Sam, she had to stop every couple of feet and reach into her pocket to make sure her flower was still there.  When she’d pull her hand out of her pocket the flower would fall out and I’d have to shove it back in there again.  Eventually Jessie and Matt got far enough ahead of us that they turned a corner and we missed which direction they’d gone.  Nevertheless, we carried on with our little walk, pausing every five feet or so to re-pocket the posie.

Eventually little Sam decided she’d walked far enough, stopped in front of me, reached her hands skyward, and said, “Op!”  I started carrying her and the bus back home.  As we turned the corner onto our street, she saw Jessie and Matt on the next block.

Jessie saw us and came running, all excited.

It seems that after they ditched us got way far ahead of Sam and me they ran into Bob the Neighbor.  Bob’s a great guy.  He lets his dogs out to play with the kids sometimes when we’re out for walks because the kids just love doggies. Bob has a beautiful yard with lots of spring flowers. He asked Jessie what kind of a flower her mommy might like.  Jessie just looked at him, so Matt suggested a red one.  Bob cut Jessie a red tulip. She traded up and gave her dandelion to Matt.

By the time Matt & Jess reached Sam and me, Jessie decided that she might need to keep the tulip. Sam noticed the big, beautiful red flower and reached out for it.  Jessie pulled it back and made it clear that it was her flower. Sam was heartbroken.  She had pulled her sad, bruised, wilted dandelion out of her pocket and it clearly didn’t measure up.  Not only did she not have a pretty red flower, but her little treasure was no longer a treasure.  She sat down right on the sidewalk and started to cry.  The crying devolved into a small fit thrown right there in the handicap curb cut at one of the busier intersections in the neighborhood. I saw at least one passenger turn around for a good look and a laugh – she had a been there, done that, glad-it’s-you-not-me look on her face.

Poor Sam.  We headed home.  Coming up the driveway I spotted a weed that I’d intended to let grow because it had such a nice flower.  I would have cut Sam one of our tulips, but some dumbass  I planted them in the shade and they bloom several weeks after everyone else’s.  So Matt picked the weed and gave her that pretty flower.  It wasn’t as good as the tulip, though.  When we got in the house she tried to trade with Jessie.  Jessie’s no idiot. She wanted to keep her pretty red tulip (which by this time had a significantly shorter stem and a broken petal). Sam was pretty sad about that.

I peeked out into the backyard, grabbed Sam and a scissors, and the two of us went out without our coats on.  We had a couple of daffodils that had just flowered (again, some doofus planted them in the shade) so I cut the prettiest bunch with the longest stem.  Sam was thrilled.  She hung onto her flowers even after she was in her jammies.  Trying to get to sleep, she curled up on my chest with her butt up in the air and her hands tucked under her, still clutching the flower.  Shortly before she conked out she handed me the flower and nodded off.

OK. So they’re a little weird.

They’ve got some peculiarities.

If you give Jessie a wet wipe, she’ll wipe her hands, her nose, and……her tongue.  I don’t know why, but every time we give her a napkin or a little soapy wet wipe, she’ll wipe her tongue off as part of cleaning up.

Sam freaks out whenever we give Jessie a time out.  Not that she gets a lot of time outs, but she does on occassion.  Sam will often get almost more upset about it than Jessie does.  The whole time her sister is gone, she’ll just say, “Jessie? Jessie? Jessie? Jessie?” and point in the direction she last saw Jessie.

Sam also insists on throwing out her diapers.  It’s bad enough she has to try to participate actively in changing them, she also gets very disturbed if you don’t let her put it in the diaper pail.

Lately they like to run around the house with a pair of knit baby pants on their heads like a hat.  Whoever doesn’t get the pants wears a furry animal face hat that came with one of their winter coats.

Sam calls Matt “Mommy” and me “Daddy” about 50% of the time.

Jessie loves to pretend she’s still sleeping. If you try to get her up in the morning, she’ll sit and chat with you from her crib right until you’re ready to lift her out. Then she says, “Bye,” waves at you, lies down with her hands tucked under her like she’s asleep, squeezes her eyes closed and pretends to be asleep.  The only way to get her out of the crib is to leave the room, close the door, and then wait outside long enough that she worries you won’t come back.

Self Sufficiency

We’ve definately hit that toddler stage where they want to do everything for themselves.

Jessie insists on putting on her own jacket. Oh, how cute, you’re thinking. Yeah. Sure.  She puts it on backwards. Then upside-down. Then her hand goes into the hood instead of the sleeve.  She spends 10 minutes turning herself into a pretzle to get it on.  Finally she holds it out and looks up and says, “Holp.”

Although, yesterday at daycare Big Girl Jessie got her first arm into the sleeve.  Yahoo!!  Success!!  Of course, when I tried to help her get the second arm in, she’d have none of that.  But at the same time, she couldn’t figure out where the rest of her jacket was. She had one arm in and the rest was hanging behind her and she had no clue where to find it or how to get a second arm into it.  She was pretty proud of herself for getting one arm in though.

Sam was a real piece of work Tuesday night. It was bath night.  She was the first one out and I got her dried off while Matt rinsed Jessie and got her out.  Her pajamas and the diapers were downstairs, so I carted her little nakey self down to the living room (bathtub is upstairs).  I should just mention we don’t have curtains in our living room.  It’s probably a good thing the neighbors moved out over the last weekend and the new ones from California still haven’t arrived.

As I was assembing Sam’s jammies and diaper and put her on the floor to get her into them, she grabbed the diaper.  They’ll do that occasionally and play with them, wrapping them around their necks like stoles.  This time was different. It was clear she was going to attempt to diaper herself.  I sat back and watched. 

First she took the diaper and opened it up. For those of you whose last experience was with cloth diapers or those old plastic disposables, it’s a whole new world out there.  The new disposables are thin little things, folded very flat.  They have lovely gathers near the legs. The front and back velcro-esque tabs are nicely folded into the diaper.  She didn’t pull the tabs out, she just unfolded the main portion of it. Then she set it on the floor. Then she adjusted it a smidge.  And another little adjustment.  Then she patted down a corner (I’ve mentioned she’s obsessive, haven’t I?).  Then she picked it up and moved it over two inches. Then she adjusted it again.  And then she tried to lie down on it.  What happened was that she lay down next to it.  She looked over to her right and got a funny, frustrated look on her little face.  Sigh.  And she got back up.  Picked up the diaper.  Adjusted it. Moved it, patted it.  Lay down.  Next to it.  Got back up.  Took a good look at the diaper.  Pulled out the tabs.  Stretched it out a little. Set it down.  Got annoyed that it wouldn’t lie completely flat (remember those gathers at the leg?).  You could tell she was sure that was the source of her trouble. She’d set the diaper down and by then it was trying to re-fold itself, so the back would lay flat, but the front would come up in the air. Then the front would be flat on the ground, but the back would stick up.

Finally I asked her if she wanted Mommy to help.  She stuck her little hand out in my direction and said, “nnnnnnnnoooooooo!” (She has a very long, nasal no)  I asked her if she was sure, I could just hold the diaper while she got on it.  She stuck one finger up in my direction and said, “nooooooooooooooooooooooooo!”

Back to putting the diaper on the floor. Adjusting. Adjusting again. Laying down next to it.  Getting up. Straightening the diaper. Finally turning the diaper over so that the outside was facing up instead of the inside. Straighten that out. Again.  Just a little bit more to the side. Etc., etc., etc.

I let her do that for quite a while.  Matt was quite sure she’d pee on the floor before she got a diaper on.  I wasn’t too concerned about that.  It’s not like she’s a rodent without a bladder, after all.

Finally, it had gone on so long that Sam was frustrated and over tired.  I offered to help and she just started saying no and screaming. She wasn’t about to admit defeat, but she was almost too tired to keep going. I picked her up and tried to put the diaper on her but she was screaming so hard and flopping about so much there wasn’t anything I could do. I finally had to pick her up and cart her over to the changing table and just slap the diaper on her as she sobbed.  She was just a puddle of sad humanity by the time I got to the pajamas.  I kept telling her how good she’d done trying to get it on, but she wasn’t buying it.  All she knew was that she’d had to give up.

But just think of how much fun it could be to get them to change their own diapers!

Blah, Blah, Blah, Blog

It’s gorgeous outside today.  I should be out there cleaning the rust off the Schwinn. The salt this winter (and my neglect) were not kind to the steel.  It looks pretty decent except for the totally rusty wheels and the very rusty chain. 

I could be baking cookies so that I’ve got something to snack on this weekend. 

I should be out doing yardwork – it’s been neglected for the past two years and there’s plenty to do, even though I got a lot done this weekend while Matt took the kids to the mall. 

Instead, I’ve flung wide the living room windows, parked myself on a chair, and am blogging.  I’m using the fact that the cats are very needy and hovering around as an excuse to sit and do not much of anything.

The night before last was a long one.  Jessie woke up in the middle of the night barfing.  Matt got her up, cleaned her while I changed her sheets and did some laundry, and when I got back upstairs they were both sitting in the recliner in our bedroom.  Jessie started barfing again, I grabbed a cloth and caught it (I’m all about minimal mess) and then Matt started yacking. Bitch that I am, rather than showing sympathy, all I said was, “Don’t you dare!”  I thought it was the smell making him sick, so I rinsed out the rag in the bathroom and came back in, took Jessie, and then let him go yack.  It was a long night with very little sleep.

And of course, by the next day, they were both better.  We’re all pretty tired, though. Even though we all slept all night last night, it really takes longer to catch up on sleep that I remember it taking twenty years ago.

The kids are getting bigger. They seem less and less like babies every day. Every-so-often I’m looking at pictures from last year (the screensaver on my laptop uses pictures on my hard drive, including all the kids’ pics) and I’m amazed at how small and young they were.

We’ve definately hit the independent toddler stage, especially with Jessie.  She refuses help with anything and everything.  After watching her try to figure out how to get a coat on for five minutes, we’ll step in and do it, but any sooner than that and there’s quite the protest.

Still trying to break them of the pacifiers.  They’re doing pretty good without them at daycare, even during naptime, except that the day before Jessie got sick, both girls really needed them at nap again. 

We’re trying to break them of their bottles at night, too.  We give them a little bottle of milk, 3-5 ounces, before bed.  We tried a while back reducing the amount of milk and then offering them a second bottle of water if they were still thirsty.  That worked, and we got them down to about an ounce or so of milk when Jessie ended up in the hospital. After she got out we were all desperate for sleep and comfort, so they went back to 5-6 ounces of milk again.  We haven’t been able to reduce that amount since.  Jessie especially will finish hers, hold out the empty bottle, look at you with an adorable smile and say, “More, peeeeeeeese!”  Who can say no to that?  So, I sent Matt out last weekend to BabiesRUs with instuctions to come back with newborn nipples.  I thought if we put the really slow flow nipples on the bottles and they had to work at them, they’d be less comforting and more of a pain in the a….. They haven’t really objected, but it’s taken them longer to work through their bottles this week.  I’ve kept the toddler fast-flow nipples on the water bottles, so maybe those’ll be more appealing at some point.  Matt also got newborn pacifiers, but we haven’t brought those out yet.  Something tells me those’ll not be accepted as quietly as the newborn nipples.

Work’s been crazy busy lately.  Our office (in particular, two of us plus a new person we hired to help) has to review just about all of the projects funded with the recent stimulus money. Plus, HUD recently gave the state a bazillion dollars to deal with the foreclosure crisis and those projects all need to be reviewed.  The projects aren’t coming in quite as fast as I expected (although the increase is noticable) but everyone is calling to find out what they need to do and anything that’s complicated and has been sitting on the back burner for the past several months (or years) is suddenly a crisis as everyone is trying to get projects “shovel ready” before summer. Since it’s been so hectic, I haven’t felt much like blogging after we get the kids to bed. I’m exhausted, mentally and physically. Plus, with the time change, the kids have been getting sleepy later and later as they days get longer.  The last couple of days we’ve been unable to get Sam to sleep.  Finally, whoever is trying to put her to bed asks her if she just wants to go to bed. She nods yes (as if to say, “you idiot, I didn’t think you’d ever catch on!”) and we stick her in bed.  Normally, if we’d do that, she’d get to bed, realize just what we meant by that, and start screaming to be picked up and held until she goes to sleep.  The last couple of nights we’ve stuck her in bed, told her it was night-night time, and she just laid down, tucked her hands underneath her, stuck her butt up in the air, and went to sleep. 

I had planned to ask the parents out there how one transitions from getting a baby to sleep to getting a bigger kid to sleep.  I don’t know, maybe not all parents hold their babies to get them to go to bed.  We somehow got started doing that when they were quite little. We’d give them a bottle, hold them until they were sleepy and then put them to bed.  At some point they’d get to bed and pop back up begging to be held, and in the interest of expediency (and not having them scream until their sibbling woke up) we’d pick them up and hold them until the fell asleep.  At some point this devolved into us just giving them a bottle, holding them until they fell asleep, and then sticking them into their crib for the night.

So, I’m wondering – does everyone do that? And at some point do you just start sticking them in bed?  Can you get a little toddler to go to bed without having some kind of bottle first?  The last night or so we’ve started reading books to them while they’re working on their bottle as some kind of transition to perhaps reading books to them instead of giving them a bottle. (Cute as all get out - after I’d read Old Hat New Hat to Sam about 10 times, she took it from me and read it back to me in Baby Babble) But, I don’t know that they’re going to go for just being stuck into a crib and read to at some point.  I’m ok with putting off the removal of the bottle until they move into toddler beds (which’ll probably be some time this summer when Jessie gets big enough to get out of her crib).  Not having ever discussed this with anyone else, and not having time to read parenting books, I have no idea what other parents do to get their kids to bed. They seem to be getting older and I’m wondering if it’s time to break them of their bottles, but what do I know? Any suggestions from anyone out there would be very welcome. This is all complicated by the fact that we’re trying to avoid having the toddler-who-is-being-denied-a-bottle scream in agony. Not because we think they can’t scream themselves to sleep, but because from experience we’ve noticed that if one of them screams it tends to keep the other one awake and then they get po’d and they start screaming and pretty soon the cats get worked up and the next thing you know you have 6 life forms in the house screaming and near their wits end.

The Battle of the Binky

Pacifiers.  Nuks.  Pacies. Plugs. 

Arrgggghhhhhhhhhhhhh!

Our lives revolves around them.

About a year ago, Jessie got her pacifier stuck in her mouth. I’m not sure who was more terrified by that, her or me.  I panicked and we decided that we’d make them go cold turkey – no more NUKs.  Of course, the person who had to bear the brunt of our hasty decision was Rachel at daycare.  She calmly pointed out to us that while the plastic part had gotten stuck behind Jessie’s gums (this was pre-teeth), it came right out, it was too big to be swallowed, and it had a couple of air holes cut in it so that she wouldn’t suffocate.  And then she mentioned that the alternative was that she’d start to suck her thumb and when we wanted to wean her from all of that, it would be much easier to take away a pacifer than to take away her thumbs.

We’re reasonable adults. We were persuaded.

So, a year later, we’ve got two kids who are getting older and yet still have plastic rings in their faces.

It could be worse.  They could be in school and still sucking on them. They’re only a year and a half.

And yet, they’re getting older.  They’re starting to talk.  They’re getting more active and more interested in everything around them.  Surely they could be happy without sucking on some piece of plastic.

We’ve got them somewhat weaned. They don’t use them at daycare any more.  When we drop them off, they’ll take the pacifers out of their mouths and hand them to us.  We’ll put them in the cupboard and they stay there all day (except at naptime).  In exchange, they get a little piece of graham cracker (hey, they gotta have something – breakfast isn’t served until after they’ve been there about an hour and a half).  When we pick them up, they run right to us, give us enormous hugs, and then Sam runs right over to stand by the cupboard, finger pointing at it, and shouting, “May-may-may-may-may” (Actually, her word for it is somewhere between “may” and “mee” -hard to spell). She’s not going to get her coat on or leave until she gets that binky back in her cake hole.

Once they get home they have supper, then they play for a little bit and then take a bath and go to bed.   They’re pretty tired when they get home. They can eat without the binky, but after that, they really want it because they’re tired and crabby. Really crabby most days.  Now they’re associating sucking on the binky with something they do while they’re at home.  And for the most part we’ve been too tired ourselves on the weekends to provoke the meltdown tantrums that would come with a pacifer weaning project. We have been taking them away any time we go to the store or  someplace like that for quite some time, though.

A couple of weekends ago I decided it was time.  We cut little holes in two of the NUKs so they wouldn’t hold their shape just right.  Got that idea from one of the other moms at daycare.  Her little boy bit a hole in his when he was getting teeth and never wanted anything to do with it after that.  Sad for us, Jessie never even noticed the difference.  Sam did and threw a fit. She was really angry at that pacifer and threw it repeatedly, picked it up, stuck it in her mouth, then threw it across the room again.  Finally after a few hours she just stuck it in her mouth and got over it.  So much for Plan A.  Plan B involved dipping the pacifiers in lemon juice.  That was a miserable failure, too.  Jessie didn’t notice at all. Sam made a really bad “bitter beer” face and almost wrinkled up her nose into the back of her head.  But after several sucks on it she was ok with that and went on her merry little way.

Plan C was implemented last Sunday. We just took the things away from them and told them they didn’t need them.  Sam kept saying, “may” but was easily distracted and wasn’t too put out by the loss of her best bud, the binky.  Jessie on the other hand had several sad little meltdowns, screaming, hitting, kicking, disolving into a heap of limp saddness.  I just held her and was pleased to discover that I was able to outlast her.  Eventually she’d calm down and then go back to playing.  They got the pacifers for naptime, but afterwards had to give them up.

It went far better than expected.  The kids are WAY cuter without the binkies.  They’re more active.  They talk more.  They’re just more engaged.  It’s great.  It was a bit easier because they’re kind of outgrowing them naturally. They’re getting bigger and I know there is a bigger size of the NUK than what we’re currently using and the current ones just are a little too small for their mouths.  Jessie will often be running around and drop hers out of her mouth and carry on as if she doesn’t even notice it.  Until she does notice that she has an empty hole and then runs back to find it. Sam will pull it out to talk, then pop it back in after she’s said something.

We’re not completely free of the danged things, but I think we’re getting close.  We’ll take it a little at a time until they just don’t need them any more.  In the meantime, hopefully we’ll be able to get some more pictures of the kids without the ubiquitous plastic mouthpieces (see previous post).

Pics!

I realized it’s about time I post some pics of the kids.  Here are a few from the phone camera.

Sam and Jessie playing with some lint rollers. Really, I don’t know why we buy them toys. They’d rather play with household stuff. You should see them with our swiffers.

We’re working on our sharing skills. We have a long way to go.  Neither kid really wants to share anything.  We’ve got a nifty toy that has all kinds of doo-dads on it, and the top comes off (thanks, Marci!).  They love to take the top off and sit in the tray.  They’d prefer not to have their sister in with them.  Snapped this one of Sam trying to hold her own against Jessie.

We’ve got a couple of old cell phones that still “work.” (i.e., we haven’t lost the charger yet)  Kids figured out what they were for right away.  Here’s Sam making herself right at home with one of them.

This was cute, too. Sam’s sitting on a plastic bucket in the upstairs hallway, reading through an issue of Twins Magazine.  She was pretty serious about it, too.

We remarked today that the wagon was the best thing we ever splurged on.  We got home from daycare today and I had to make supper yet.  For the longest time the kids absolutely HAD to have supper immediately after walking in the door or Western Civilization would end.  Now, they’re pretty good for a few minutes if you can find something with which to entertain them.  So, we get home on the bikes, get them out of the bike trailer, stick them in the wagon, and Matt pulled them around the block while I made supper uninterrupted.  Unfortunately, after they got back, Jessie let us know that the ride was not nearly long enough and put up a loud protest.  Couldn’t get her to eat until we promised another ride after supper – but only if she was good and ate her supper.

Here they are in the wagon.  No, we don’t think it’s a dangerous activity and make them wear helmets.  We got two helmets last summer when we got the bike trailer because you’re supposed to have helmets on the kids in those things.  We couldn’t get them to wear them last summer because even the smallest available ones were way too big.  After a few rides in the trailer, I decided that only lawyers think it’s necessary for kids to have helmets in those things and we stuck them in the garage and forgot about them. The helmets, not the kids.  Anyway, the other day Jessie found one in the garage and insisted on wearing it and put up quite the fuss when we told her to take it off.  So, when we went for the wagon ride, we just let her keep it on.  Sam had to have one too, because, well, of course she had to have one.  Anything one does, the other has to do, too.  However, Sam freaks out whenever you put it on her head (she has the same problem with sunglasses), so she wanted to take it with but not wear it.  Yes, the kids got their dork gene from their mother.

Tidbits of Life

It’s been a fun week.  The kids seem to be healthier…somewhat…it can be hard to tell when they can’t talk.  Mom and Dad are getting over the tail end of whatever bug went around.  Sam took the opportunity of being sick to forget how to sleep through the night.  We hope we’ve got her back on track – she’s slept through the last two nights all night. I’m sure I just jinxed that by putting it in writing.

It’s fun to watch their language skills develop.  They could say a couple of words a few months ago.  Then they stopped saying them (except for “oh-oh” and “hi!”) for a while.  Then all of a sudden they’re trying to say everything.  Of course, most words they can’t say the whole word yet, so you have to guess what they’re saying.  It’s not unlike listening to my Dad when he used to mumble.  ;o)  They can do the first sound of most words and that’s it, so there are a lot of things that have the same word.  Context helps a lot.  A lot of time they’re satisfied if we agree with them and nod. 

Some things they have their own words for and we have no idea where they came from.  They say “may” when they want their pacifiers.  For a while Sam would sign more when she wanted more of something (we’re thinking someone at daycare might be teaching them the baby signs).  Sam also says “mah mee” alot.  We have no idea what she wants, and she clearly wants something. It’s equally clear that she’s not meaning “mommy” when she says it. We’re trying to correct her and every time she says it we point to me and say, “that’s mommy.”  Now we’ve got a whole “who’s on first” routine that goes with that.  Sam says, “Mah mee.”  Someone points at me and says, “that’s mommy.”  Sam then points at Matt.  One of us then says, “That’s daddy.”  Sam then points at Jessie and one of us says, “that’s Jessie.”  Then Sam gets a big giggly grin, waves at Jessie, and says, “hi!”  like she’s meeting Jessie for the first time. It’s crazy. It’s the same thing every time and she never gets sick of it.

Charlie’s started a new routine.  Matt was about ready to get rid of the little guy because he can make a whole lot of noise at very inappropriate times.  Once everyone is in bed, Charlie gets lonely and starts to meow for someone to come out into the hallway to play with him.  We spend a lot of time trying to get him into the bedroom to quiet him down.  Matt threatens him with homelessness. I stress out (after all, I don’t get rid of Matt just because he leaves his honking big shoes in the middle of the landing to the basement stairs and I keep tripping over them…).  This past week one night Charlie started up with the noise.  As usual, I tried to get him to come sleep with us in bed. I’d been trying this for months and he refuses to get into the bed when we’re there (although the bum sleeps there all day while we’re gone).  For some reason, he took me up on my offer, snuggled up for a little bit, then went to sleep down by my feet. He’s slept there every night since then.  And he’s been quiet.  In the morning just before we wake up, instead of running out into the hallway to holler as loud as he can until I get out of bed, he just comes bounding up the bed to curl up with me for a while.  It’s like having a whole new cat.  Too bad he didn’t do that during the cold winter, when I could have really used a good footwarmer.

Sam’s developed “a thing” lately.  She wants nothing to do with me if Matt’s around.  She screams, she cries, she throws a fit if I’m holding her and begs Matt to pick her up.  I’m trying not to take it personally.  Still, it’s hard to see one of your babies reject you.  Jessie still thinks I’m all that and a bag of chips.  I’ll take what I can get.

We picked up a wagon for the kids this week.  The sidewalks in our neighborhood are very uneven and were making a mess of the stroller’s wheels.  Somedays it’s just too much to pull the kids behind the bike.  We’ve been taking them for walks, which is nice and tires them out a bit before bed, but if only one of us is home, that’s not an option for killing some time because they tend to walk at vastly different paces and are prone to wandering off in opposite directions.  Our street is way too busy for that sort of thing.  So, we got a wagon and now just one of us can take them out for some fresh air (and a little peace, quiet, and sanity) whenever we want.  Matt works again on Saturday, so I plan to give it a good test if the weather’s good.  It’s the little things like that that make it all managable at this point.