Milestone

Meg is no longer a baby. That's been true for some time now, but the signs are all over right now. Recently we moved her out of her Britax Roundabout car seat for a booster seat. I wasn't in any hurry particularly, but after she threw up last time due to strep, the smell was sort of imbedded in the straps and I realized I was just done. She loves her new seat. It's a Graco booster with a little pink. It's adorable.

There are other signs, too. The changing table and crib sheets are in the garage to give away. She is mostly only in diapers at night now so her diaper trash can is mostly unused. Her sippy cup to regular cup usage is about 80 percent. When properly motivated, she can pick out her own clothes and get dressed, often wearing the shoes on the right feet.

Now don't get me wrong, I am thrilled with her progress and that she's getting more interactive and interesting (and opinionated) by the day. I am thrilled that I will not be pregnant again or have another baby. But my baby is growing up and I'm not exactly sure how I feel about that.

Boo!

I have a baby board book called Baby Boo! (thanks Frances, I think it was a hand-me-down from you actually.) It's got like eight pages and 15 words in the whole thing, so I love to read it too as it doesn't take forever to get through. On one page, you ask where the baby is and on the next page, it says "boo" to a smiling baby's face. In total adorableness, Meg now says "boo" when we read it, sometimes even on the right page!

She's getting so interactive right now I just love it.

Mark your calendar

I watch Meg take two steps tonight. She can totally walk now if she wants, but right now she's still a little too tentative. It's funny, she'll take steps on her own, but if I reach out to have her walk to me, she smiles big and drops to crawl. I suppose she's not a baby anymore.

Andy, on the other hand, clearly wants to be a baby again. He keeps talking about getting back into Mommy's tummy (sorry, not going to happen). He also insisted I put the pack and play in his room so he can sleep there. So far, he has only slept there for two hours before crying that his neck hurt. He is also spending a lot of time saying, "Ga ga, goo goo, I'm a baby." I had no idea the Freudian stuff started this early.

Milestones

Meg keeps checking off the milestones and I'm loving it! Just this week, she's been starting to stand for moments at time, completely unassisted. She seems pretty proud of herself for it, too.

My girl is also getting all four of her molars right now. She was up several times Monday night and only settled down for the night after I gave her some Tylenol and antihistamine so I took her by Dr. Staats on my way to work Tuesday just for a quick look to make sure she didn't have an ear infection (it was worth $10 to know that). Fortunately, no ear infection, that moment anyway. But she does have all four molars coming in right now. The top two have broken through the gums and the other two are close. So now I loading her with a dose of Tylenol before bedtime to try to ease her discomfort.

We go back on Friday for her one year well visit. We also have an appointment on Monday with the pediatric ear-nose-throat doctor. Andy is going for a check-up and to likely have his tubes scooped out if they have fallen out already. Meg is getting an examination to set up for if we need to schedule the surgery eventually.

This and that

It's been an interesting week with the holiday, inaugural and all, so I'll just share a few gems of the week.

Meg
1) Meg is pointing. AT EVERYTHING. It's adorable. Except when she insists on pointing her finger into my mouth or eye.
2) She loves climbing the stairs and getting around my gates. She always pulls the one down off the stairs in the living room so I have an eagle eye out for that. Then this morning, she tore down my makeshift gate in the basement while I was doing something important, like Facebook. I turned around and she was half way up the stairs. Yikes!
3) We are working on some sleep readjustment, with modest success (fingers crossed, knock wood, knock wood again). I have been tinkering with her bedtime, pushing it to 7:30 in the hopes that it gets us to at least 6:00 a.m. I took her to the doctor on Tuesday to confirm no ear infection before I started work. Fingers crossed things continue to improve. Mama is tired!
4) She can stand. On her own! Not for a long period of time, but I watched her do it twice today. Walking, here she comes!
5) Oh, and to totally bury the lead, Meg turns one, on Monday. I can hardly believe it. I had to be at the hospital where I delivered last week for work and it was sort of surreal thinking I was just there a year ago in that very parking lot. I have pictures of the entrance and everything.

Andy
1) He is infatuated with Diego and loves to sing the theme song. I like Diego better than Dora, but the show is still pretty stupid. There was an episode featuring chinchilla mountain and it had some small mountain with all these little rat looking things all over the top like sprinkles. Odd.
2) I have been trying to work on positive stuff about our days. Here is a classic:
"Andy, my favorite part of the day was tonight when you and Meg were playing tit-ut (peek-a-boo) together. I loved listening to you two laughing. What was your favorite part of the day?"
"...Juice. I liked getting juice."
"...Sigh."
3) Today we went over to the creek, which was still partially frozen despite it being almost 55 today. We threw rocks at the ice. We loved it!
4) He is suddenly into bagels and insists on having them for practically every meal.

Me
1) I went to my OB's office today. It was so odd being there. Having gone practically once a week for nearly a year, it felt like going back to high school after you graduate. The facilities were more or less the same, but it all felt different. I was also very glad to not be pregnant in that waiting room.
2) With all the sleep problems, I have inexplicably misplaced my Health Sleep Habits book that I have practically dog-eared and memorized. I have been looking for it everywhere (and even cleaning some in the process. Grrr.)
3) I have to go out of town next weekend for work. It's always hard for me to leave, but I know Bjorn is exceptionally capable and always handles everything great. I will also get a chance to look up Armando. Although seeing him twice in one month after not seeing him in more than four years may be too much.

Standing!

Meg is now standing everywhere. It's been amazing how quickly she's picked it up. I turned around yesterday to find her standing in the kitchen holding on to the kid drawer with all the sippy cups in it. She then proceeded to stand there while she took each top out, licked it and threw it on the floor.

She has also figured out how to climb the landing step on our stairs and is already turning the corner gunning for the rest of them. Although I do have one baby gate that I keep at the top of the stairs, I had borrowed the others I used with Andy from a friend who has since relocated to Missouri. I am thinking I need to invest in a couple to put at the bottom of the stairs in the living room. Otherwise, I'm going to spend my time defending against the stairs.

The Christmas march is on and I am loving watching Andy really get into it. Some things he still finds a little hokey, like the 'Twas the Night Before Christmas special from 1974 narrated by Joel Grey. I can't say I blame him. It was pretty bad. We also watched the Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer claymation show from 1964 (I know, 1964, and it still holds up). We liked that one a lot although Andy was really scared about the Abominable Snow monster to the point that he cried he was so scared. That prompted a nice talk afterwards about how monsters aren't real and it was just a TV show.

Meanwhile, I am a little confused how I'm going to pull off this Santa business. The theories just don't hold up -- I tell him the monster isn't real, but then he's to believe Santa and Rudolph are? That doesn't even touch on how to react when we see Santa in the mall. Is that the real Santa? What about the Santa that just drove through our neighborhood on a firetruck? Good thing he's not doing any logic theorems on this or I'd be busted in a heartbeat.

Hester Prynne

Little Miss Margaret can stand. Problem? She can't sit down. Last night, as we entertained Vickie and Christian on a Monday of all remarkable things, she was having trouble settling down. After Andy came down tell me, "Mom, um, Baby Meg is crying," I went up to find that she was indeed sobbing -- real tears, no less -- as her arms were stuck over the side of the crib and she couldn't figure out how to get down. It was tragically adorable. She did sort of remind me of Hester Prynne there in the stocks. Wait, did the Scarlett Letter actually have anything to do with that or am I mixing my classics?

I believe we are days, if not hours, away from the cruising stage. Heaven help us.

Catching up

With the election over, we spent the weekend catching up on chores. The son of a neighbor came and did the lion's share of our leaf raking (without asking to be paid although Bjorn did slip him some cash) because his mother said we had been too busy with the election. That or she really thought our yard looked like crap. Josh did about 25 bags of leaves and Bjorn did another 10. All that and we still have leaves on our lawn. So in an exciting weekend, we did leaves.
Planted bulbs at Margareta's.

Made a baby laugh (okay, not a chore, but how cute is this picture? Who cares if it's not part of the theme.)

Crawling.

Bjorn replaced the kitchen sink.

And the babies looked all adorable (again, not part of the theme, but how cute are they?) This isn't Meg's best picture, but I liked that both their heads were in the frame so I can see how really similar they look. Her mouth, sadly, is always open these days. I actually don't mind it being open like this because she has also discovered how to grind her teeth and it. makes. me. crazy.

Crawling and other irritating things

Meg is crawling. It is SO awesome. She gets so determined and pushes her little hands and knees forward. She is really getting places. I know, I am s-c-r-e-w-e-d. I have totally forgotten what it's like to have a little person crawling around, pulling up on random boxes and bookshelves and re-distributing the contents after first licking everything. It's adorable and amazing and all that great stuff. And also, so totally annoying.

She's also babbling up a storm. She's saying a whole lot of nothing, but she really authoritatively shouts, "Ga!" or "Ba!" I have been working no her by saying, "Say Mama. Ma-MA!," when she starts to talk to me. Andy often sits next to me saying, "Say Andy" or "Say brother." That part is all adorable. What's annoying is Andy has started calling me Mama. And it really bothers me. How weird is that? Bjorn thinks it's cute, but to me, it's like he's making fun or me. I guess I'm so sensitive that I don't appreciate a nearly 4 year old mocking me.

This and that

Apparently my kids don't understand the concept that "fall back" daylight savings is the good one where you get to sleep an extra hour. Instead, they seem to believe they can stay up later and wake up earlier. Good times. So in lieu of a decent post, here are the highlights:

• Meg can crawl. No, not fast. Yet. But she gets up on her knees and actually ooches forward.
• Meg doesn't seem to answer to Meg, or even Baby Meg, but her head turns for Margaret.
• Andy is obsessed with a book we found on the shelves about Professor Poopypants. It's a chapter book in the Captain Underpants series. In Googling it for this post, I found the Professor Poopypants Name Changer. My name is Flunky Toiletsniffer. You're welcome.
• Bjorn has been working hard on this election for Obama. He was up until 3ish last night walking a route and putting "Vote" doorhangers throughout Fairfax. The cooler thing is he took a 17-year-old neighbor and her boyfriend to get a route, too. (When I typed that, it somehow seemed sketchy taking a teenager and her friend out at midnight, but it really isn't. Promise.)
• I got a job working the polls today at my local elementary school. It's a non-partisan job. I get to stand outside the school and hand out sample ballots. Then after the polls close at 7, I get to help as they add up all the numbers. I'm actually pretty excited about it. I hope it's not totally lame.

Clapping

Meg is clapping. Well, clapping is sort of a stretch, but when you clap at her, she smiles and brings her hands together. I think Bjorn and I spent half an hour going back and forth with her this evening practicing her new trick. It is beyond adorable.

Andy, on the other hand, had a monster of a meltdown earlier today. We started off the day with good intentions. The four of us took off for Great Country Farms in Bluemont, Virginia. It was about an hour from our house and had come highly recommended from a friend. The visit out there was good. We rode the hayride (although it was more like a wooden-seated ride) to the pumpkin patch where Bjorn picked a nice big pumpkin for carving and Andy picked a small green one, you know, since green is his favorite color. We watched the pig races. We fed the goats and the peacock-esque animals. We ate kettle corn.

On the way back, we stopped to get a late lunch and Andy exploded. It started over soda. He first said he wanted juice, then soda, then soda in a specific cup. After his outburst, I dragged him outside (gently, of course) and explained that if he kept crybabying, we would leave. He caught control of himself and we went back in only for it to take about 30 seconds for him to do it again. Clearly, the guy was exhausted. We got him out of the car where he proceeded to shriek, cry and attempt to kick and hit me at the very thought of having to leave the restaurant. Once we got home, I had a talk with him. He said he was sorry and then laid down for a three hour nap and woke up a changed boy. We have since talked about how it's not nice to act like a jerk (I'm not sure if that's the right word for it, but I used it anyway) and because of earlier, no TV tonight. That didn't make him happy initially, but he's now quite content working on his puzzles.

I swear, just when I start to feel like I've got a handle on these guys, they do something to throw me off and keep me on my toes.

The swing of things

Well, it took about 30 minutes to be back into the swing of things. After lots of hugs, it was back to the regular feeding, bathing, playing sleeping schedule. Bjorn even said that it would not take as long as I liked to be back to normal. He was right. And that's good and bad. The good part was feeling like I hadn't missed too much. The bad part was I felt exhausted from the week and didn't really get a chance to recover before I was back at work. It's all good though.

Both kids have colds right now. Meg has a pretty good cough and runny nose, but generally she seems to feel okay. Andy has a milder cough and runny nose that he likes to wipe on his shirt no matter what I say.

Meg is really moving around these days. I put her on the floor and within seconds she's somewhere else. She's not crawling per se, but she pushes herself backwards and pushes and rolls herself from side to side. My days of letting her play on the floor quietly while I work on the computer are dwindling, I can tell.

It's all very exciting and yet it's all happening so fast. Since this is my last baby, I want to savor it (well, the good parts anyway), but I love that every day she gets closer to really interacting with us. And I just melt when she beams at Andy and he pauses long enough to do a dance for her. On the other hand, I look forward to the days when they can truly play together (well, until they fight and demand intervention). There are also so many fun things to do with older kids, like zoos, hikes, parks, ponds, slides that a 20 pound baby just doesn't get and that I can't enjoy or participate in really while lugging her around.

Above is a picture of the Red Sox/Indians game I went to, as obviously taken with my cell phone camera. The fun part was the Red Sox clinched the playoffs with their win so it was an even more exciting game than usual to attend. Good thing it was exciting because I was so tired I nearly fell asleep in the 8th inning.

Oh

Meanwhile, in all the drama associated with mouth issues, I totally forgot to mention that Meg can now officially roll over from her back to her stomach. I thought she did it last weekend in that she was back on her stomach from her back when I turned around, but Andy has been known to try to "help" her roll over and he didn't convincingly tell me he didn't do it. Then last night, I watched her do it twice. Go baby!

Milestones

Two milestones this week:
* Meg can consistently flip from stomach to back. She can also consistently sit on her own. She is going to be into everything before I know it. I guess I need to read up on babyproofing. It's been a long time since I worried about what Andy was inadvertently going to choke on.
* Andy has mastered the tricycle. We've had one for ages, but he never really had much interest in it. His new school has several on the playground so he's been watching the other kids and getting into riding the bikes there, which made him more interested in the one at home. This week, they even had "Bring Your Bike to School Day," which he loved. Today after work, I pushed Meg in the stroller while he rode his bicycle around the cul de sac. Last week, he was slow and seemed to lose his footing a lot. Today, he was so fast, I had to really push myself to keep pace with him and even then he beat me. Tomorrow I will wear better shoes. I am excited about this development as it means we can start talking walks again. Even if we just walk in circles to the end of the block and back, it's nice for all of us to get some fresh air. And nice that I don't have to either push two kids or carry Andy once he gets tired of walking.

Jesus Loves You

I've been going to church lately and taking Andy to Sunday School. Thanks, I do feel pretty virtuous about it. What's odd though is despite that, I didn't really expect Andy to come home and ask this, "Mommy, do you love Jesus?" Crikey. The right answer, of course, is to say yes, but since I'm not particularly religious, it feels a little disingenuous. For the record, I did say yes, and that made him happy. He then started singing "Jesus Loves You."

Part of me is amazed by this. Seriously, he's gone to Sunday school maybe three or four times. He spends most of that hour looking in the aquariums in the room, doing puzzles, playing with the other kids and asking for more juice at snack time. When did he have time to learn anything? The good news is that this Christmas, when I tell him it's Jesus' birthday, he probably won't try to tell me, "No, Mommy, it's Santa's birthday."

And in bigger news this week, Meg rolled over by herself over the weekend. Jennifer witnessed her roll from tummy to her back. I'm not sure it was entirely intentional, but I don't care. She's now proven she can do it. Now she can happily not do it again until she's ready to crawl.

Moving along

Andy is moving up to the three-year-old room at school this week. Yes, he's already three, but when he started at his new school, he wasn't as confident with the toilet training so they thought it best to keep him in the two-year-old room until he was ready. I was fine with that. It's a smaller class and the teachers seem really nurturing. With potty training mostly figured out (the glorious moment last Sunday at the DC United game in the broiling heat when he decided to crap in his pants aside), he's now ready for the transition. I was nervous, but he's taking it like a champ.

I like how they do it. They bring him over for a few hours during the day for circle time and playing in the morning with the older kids and then returning back for lunch and a nap with his old class. That's how it went yesterday and he did great. Today, he did so great that he didn't even go back to his old class at all. He was having so much fun when I showed up that he cried when it was time to leave. I'd say that's a good sign.

Meg is also growing up before my eyes. I looked at her the other morning and I swear her face is somehow fuller or rounder than the day before. It was just so, so babylike somehow and less infant/newbornish that I had to stare at her for a few minutes and soak it in. She's just so beautiful and round, like the picture of the Gerber baby. I swear sometimes I look at her and think to myself, "You? You were once inside me? That's just crazy."

And while she's getting bigger, she's still not rolling over which has me slightly paranoid. On the one hand, I'm glad she's not mobile yet. Once that happens, this little blissful like of being able to put her down and know she'll be there in five minutes when I get done wiping Andy's butt will be over and I'll have to improvise ways to keep her contained. That said, isn't five months a little on the late end of rolling over? Perhaps she's just not in a hurry to get anywhere yet.

To whom much is given, much is expected

Congratulations to Mark and the Robinson Secondary School graduating class of 2007.

Mark your calendars

It's official - Andy can open doorknobs. His days of quietly staying in his room until we come to get him are over, I'm afraid. He's been able to open doors for a while, but I think it had never really occurred to me to get up and out on his own. He's been getting until fairly early, like 6:45 a.m., all week and yesterday he didn't like waiting for us so he just got up, opened the door and came into our room on his own. Today he waited for Bjorn, but I have a feeling he's not going to be content staying in there for long.

I need to get out and those door locks, but even that is short-lived as sooner or later, he'll be potty training and need to be able to get up in the night. Sigh. He really is growing up, isn't he?

Meanwhile, for all you other Thomas lovers out there, they have issued a recall of some of the red trains because the paint is toxic. Take a look here. Fortunately, I don't think we have any of these (for once, it pays off that I have restrained myself from getting the whole set!)