I’m not sure when it happened, but probably sometime during that newborn induced amnesia period. But suddenly I have a full blown kid who can do things, and my tiny toddler is gone!
E shocks me daily with all of the things he can do. He’s gone from kind of humming along when we sing to sort of making sounds similar to what we’re saying, to being able to sing “Twinkle Twinkle” all by himself. He doesn’t crawl up the stairs anymore, but walks while holding the wall (he’d hold the railing, but he’s still too short haha). He’ll bring us a bottle of sunscreen and ask us if we can go outside and play.
Small children don’t understand the concept of time really. There’s either now or not now. When I wake E up in the morning, he tells me he was napping. Waiting for a play date an hour away might as well be days (so I often don’t tell him until it’s almost time). And they certainly don’t understand what it means to be late somewhere.
All that to say, grown-ups like to rush small children, and small children don’t understand why.
Sure, why not?
Right now nap schedules pretty much keep us home from 9am until 3pm. Which severely limits what we’re able to do or where we’re able to go on the weekends. It’s a lot of staying home, playing in the yard, or splitting up kids and leaving the house with just one at a time.
Which is fine. That’s the season we’re in, and I rank sleep as more important than almost everything else, so I don’t mind staying home. But every once in a while we want to do something special, and it takes a bit of creativity. Which is what we did last weekend.
Finally!
They’re much shorter, and very late, but I managed to finally put together some video summaries of the last few months. The funny thing is the fact these are so late proves why they’re so important. I was looking at videos from January and I already don’t remember these days. G has become a completely different baby, and the struggles of those early days are slowly fading away.
Holy personality baby!
I think month 6 is when things click for me. You’ve gone from generic baby who sits there and we fulfill needs, to a tiny adorable person. You’re fun now, you smile and laugh and interact. You’ll grab at our faces and try to eat our nose. You’ll laugh if I pretend to bite your hand. You still don’t give laughs away very easily, and increasingly make us work harder to get them, but they’re so rewarding when we do. Your personality is coming out more and more every day, and I love it.
I’m back at work full time again, which is an adjustment (again) but I’ve been trying to get back in the groove, and figure out everything that’s changed. One thing I noticed that’s changed, is the mural in Dewey Square. This may be one of my favorites! It’s so realistic in person and kind of surreal that it’s so large on the side of a building.
I don’t think we realized when we got pregnant with E, that we had timed things perfectly. Our parental leave ended in September, and that’s one of the easiest times to get a daycare placement, since all the kid’s “move up” to the next grade. June is not. It’s not as bad as February for example, but we still weren’t able to get a spot when we needed it. So we’ve been patching together coverage until G’s spot opens up.
Luckily we have some great family who have agreed to give up a week of their time to come hang out with us and take care of G while we work. Considering he’s almost 20 lbs, likes to pinch loose skin, and scream randomly in your face, it’s a pretty big commitment!
Okay we all know I can go a little overboard at times, yes? And sometimes I’ll admit that I’m not sure if I can actually pull off what I’ve dreamed up or not. This was one of those projects.
Almost a year ago we started talking about getting E a play kitchen. I spent some time looking at what was out there, and trying to decide what we wanted. A lot of them were pretty, but a bit plastic, and I wasn’t sure how well they’d hold up.
There are a lot of things that E gets excited about when he sees them. BIG TRUCKS, bikes, turkeys, and school buses! He also loves us to sing songs for him, and one of his most requested is “Wheels on the Bus.” He knows all the hand motions to all of the verses, and it’s the cutest thing ever.
So when I was deciding what to do for his second birthday, it just seemed like the perfect theme. I actually had more fun than I thought I would creating decorations for it, but we all know that any crafting is fun crafting for me haha.
It’s amazing to watch a toddler’s brain develop. It changes week by week, and it’s awesome to watch them learn something in real time.
Now that E can officially say his name, he’s using it all the time. Of course he won’t just say it, he’ll beat his chest like an ape and yell it out loud. He’s also learning how to put sentences together, and it’s so fun to watch. The other day he dumped out his box of blocks, and they were all over his playpen. I held my hands up to my face and said “Oh no! What a mess! Who could have done this??” He looked up at me proudly, slammed his chest with his hand and goes “E DID IT!” I’m not sure what’s better. The brutal honesty, or the cuteness overload.
Two. TWO. TWO?????
Have you really been here for two full years?
I feel a little bad that this year is starting with so many changes, but I’m sure you’re going to be absolutely THRILLED with all the upcoming visitors. I have a feeling you’ll be a little less thrilled with my maternity leave ending. For whatever reason, you’ve decided that you need to be attached to me at all times. You want me to put on your bib or lift you out of your high chair or clean your hands. You want to be in my arms, carried everywhere, in my sight, with me, at all times. You ask for me the minute you wake up. And lately that’s been fine, since I’m always home. But tomorrow you’re going to wake up, and I won’t be here, and it breaks my heart to know how unhappy you’ll be. Because I live to make you happy and hear those giggles.
Didn’t I just post one of these? This month FLEW by. I wish I could say it’s because you’re sleeping, but nothing is consistent there. We actually started out the month with you sleeping through the night and doing GREAT, but then you started rolling and hit your 4 month sleep regression and everything changed. You can’t really roll from your belly to your back, so that makes you incredibly angry in the middle of the night, and you’re still trying to figure out what to do with your hands. So we’re all tired. So tired.
Every time I pick E up at daycare, I think that there has to be an easier way. I lug G in his carseat, which is heavy and hurts my wrists and back. I get into the room and am swarmed by toddlers who all try to climb in on top of G, or rock him like crazy until he cries. Then when I’m at the car with both kids, I try to hold E’s hand while I maneuver G’s carseat into the car. It’s not pretty, and it’s super hard on my back. I’m just not strong enough.
I see other mom’s use their stroller, but that seemed like a lot of work too. But today I finally decided to try it. I clicked G into the stroller, and headed to the door. Oh. This is harder. I had to type in my code, open the door towards me, move the stroller out of the way and then try to hold the door open and get the stroller through the door. For three doors. Phew.
These days…
E has been dumping all of his toys into an empty laundry basket, and then crawling inside. He’ll sit in there and play with his toys or read books for longer than he’ll do anything else at this point. Every time I try to clean it up during the day, he’ll come home from daycare and within minutes he’ll be back in that basket.
You’ve done a lot of growing this past month, and I finally feel like I can say that I know you a bit. While you’re getting more and more content playing alone, you’re still happiest hanging out in our arms. When I do set you down to play, you’ve started to bat at toys and grab a few even. You’re getting frustrated that your hands don’t work the way you want them to, but you get so excited when you actually grab a toy.
You suck on everything, especially your fingers. You often have at least three fingers in your mouth at a time, and recently you’ve started sucking on your arm. Whatever you can get. (And when you can get one of our fingers, you go for that too!)
A few random stories that I want to remember, but aren’t really related beyond that:
…..
E has a new(ish) teacher in his room, and he has slowly but surely winning her over. She’s pretty quiet, so it’s taken me a bit longer to get to know her, and get a read on her. She was asking me a few questions about him recently which left me wondering if she was worried about his speech. I was talking to Tom about it, and mentioned that she kept asking about what he can say, and seemed surprised that he couldn’t say his name. To be clear, Tom and I aren’t worried. But the conversation led me to believe that maybe she was.
I saw it stopped at the cross street ahead, and started hoping. As it slowly pulled out, I got excited and sped up just a tiny bit. Pretty soon we were side by side on the road, me purposely matching their speed, and it hit me. Wow we do weird things for our kids. Still, I called out to E and told him to look out his window, and got exactly the reaction I was looking for. “Bus! Bus! BUS BUSBUSBUS!” Yes, I was in the passing lane, speed matching the slow transit bus on the drive home from daycare so my son could see his latest obsession.