Joey: 3 Years Old

I know I've said it before, but I'll say it again: someone needs to figure out a way to stop time, because my baby is growing up way too fast, and he is just the cutest right now. Just last night at bedtime, Joey was trying to put back together one of his little cars, and he was fending off Timmy's and my offers of help. He said to me, "Would you please stop saying that and let me fix it?" I cracked up and said to Timmy, "This is three."

We love reading books together. We read about four to six books a day, at naptime and bedtime, and anytime on request. It's supposed to be two at naptime, two at bedtime, but he can often sucker me into one more. He's gotten a lot of nice new books of late, and his current favorite is The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats. The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle is another one he chooses often, and he has it memorized, so he can "read" it to me. It's the best! I have to find a way to record him without him knowing. He really enjoys his Clifford books too. He asks the same questions on the same pages, and in response to the same answers I give him, he says, "Why?" 

Joey is signed up for the Dolly Parton Imagination Library, and he gets a new book free every month. I don't know who's more excited about a surprise book in the mailbox -- him or me. From them we've gotten The Snowy Day and The Very Hungry Caterpillar, as well as The Little Engine that Could, and a couple of others so far. 

He and I have this little game we play right before I leave the room after putting him to bed. He opens his arms wide and says, "Come here." I kneel down by the bed and he either wraps his arms around me or holds my face in his hands. Then he says, "That's not my Mama! Her face is too ... " he searches for a description that he thinks will sound funny. "... bumpy!" I laugh and say, "That's not my Joe. His earlobes are too stretchy." Then we go back and forth for a couple minutes until I say "enough" and extract myself. For awhile he was into a series of Usborne touchy-feely books called That's Not My Truck, That's Not My Tractor, and so on. Each page would say something like, "That's not my truck. Its hubcaps are too shiny." I thought it was the silliest thing, but he was mesmerized. Now it's like our little inside joke. He does it with Annie too. Annie is like a little mama to him, when he allows her to be.

For the past couple months, after it was suggested by Timmy's CCD teacher, we've been going around the table at dinnertime and having everyone share their "roses and thorns." It's intended to be a little exercise in examining our consciences -- to think back on situations we wish we could have handled better, or things we said that we wished we hadn't. In theory it's a nice, small way to help prepare Timmy for his first confession, but in practice it's been an occasion to air our petty gripes (as well as the thing that made us happy). At least it ensures about five minutes of conversation. Joey always wants to go first, and he almost always says, "My rose is fire trucks and my thorn is ambulances." 

Just like the other kids did, Joey is going through a "backseat driver" phase. He tells us to watch out for this or that person or car, and lately he's been asking Tim or me if we have both hands on the wheel. I don't even know where he gets that. Just today, while I was waiting at a light, he said, "Mama, could you back up a little? You're gonna hit that car." What?!? He also regularly asks us to turn the music up or down, or the heat. It's funny, as well as a little annoying.

We've had no more lapses in potty training, and he stays dry all day and through his two-hour nap, as long as he's gone to the bathroom beforehand. I finally got rid of the yucky little potty, and he uses the big toilet with a stool. If I'm there when he needs to poop, he says, "Would you go away and shut the door?" He wears a pull-up at night for now, but I'll try to see if I can't get him nighttime trained by the time he's 3.5. I recently read that once a kid reaches 3.5 and is not nighttime trained, it becomes a lot harder from that point on. Their bladder is trained to NOT hold it. I hadn't looked at it that way before -- that their bladders are being trained one way or the other, even if I'm neglecting to try training them at all. When I think back on my experience with the other kids, I believe that's true. We nighttime trained the girls together at the ages of 3 and 5, and Delaney was the longest to need a pull-up at night simply because we thought she'd eventually figure it out. We lucked out with Timmy waking himself up to use the bathroom at night soon after he turned 3. So if Joey hasn't figured it out by himself in the next few months, I'll have to take action. These darn disposable diapers and pull-ups make it too easy to be lazy.

And now we're off to take him to his first day back at preschool after the break. I'm hoping he takes a good nap afterward.

This and That

I've been neglecting this old blog for way too long as I wait for all the random thoughts in my head to organize themselves into something cohesive, but on this gloomy morning I give up on that.  It's time for an update.

Now that school is in full swing and has been for the last several weeks, I am feeling almost all the way settled here.  After so many jaunts around Beaufort for school, library, TJMaxx, all the nice antique stores, I no longer need to rely on the GPS.  That's always a relief because the hardest thing about being in a new place to me is feeling so lost all the time.  Every weekday morning I leave between 7:35 and 7:45, depending on the day, to take the girls to school 25 minutes away.  Every afternoon we pick leave to pick them up at 10 of 3, and most of the time I have to wake Timmy up from his nap.  The girls are taking ballet one afternoon a week.  I've joined the Y, which is just a few minutes outside the gate.  I do yoga two mornings a week there, run on the treadmill, and Timmy gets the socialization he's really wanting every time he asks me if he can go to school.  [The answer to that is definitely no, because I see no reason to spend the extra time and gas on dropping off and picking up another kid somewhere.  Next year I'll probably let him do Pre-K at the DoD school, and he'll take a bus.]  The girls will be doing soccer at the Y starting next month.

Dance party in the rain after school

The girls seem happy at school.  Annie was the one I really worried about the first few days when she'd say things like, "I don't like school" and "I don't want to go back."  But now when I pick her up she tells me about her friends, trips that they're going to go on, all kinds of things.  She reads to me every night from the books her teacher sends home, and I don't have to remind her to do it.  She's doing great with sounding out words, and starting to recognize sight words, and I can tell her confidence is growing.  She'll say to me, "I bet I know how to spell ___."  And then she'll say the letters and get most, if not all, right.  Tonight at her teacher's open house, I got a look at her math journal, where she solves problems by drawing pictures.  Her teachers told me that she talks a streak to the other kids but still doesn't want to talk to them or any adults. Oh, Annie.  We've got to fix that.  Delaney likes school pretty much too, and is always cheerful at drop-off and pick-up.  Aside from her 20-minute reading requirement, she usually doesn't have any homework.  It is so nice.  No more long afternoons at the table with a timer.  I quickly learned to save every bit of writing and art that makes it home in her folder, whereas last year I needed to be a lot more selective with what work of art or writing exercise was worth keeping.  At this school they have a policy of not using much paper, and they will creatively find ways to avoid printing lots of paper.  I approve of that 100%.  At a volunteer orientation I was told about how one deck of cards replaces 2000 math worksheets.  Yay for fewer worksheets and not having to be Delaney's jailer every day!  Although, as Tim pointed out, it does make it harder to know what she's learning at school without the paper trail.  It was a big change to go from the chunky binder and paper overload last year to this year with the emailed (vague) reports that say she's doing well, and every now and then a math handout or picture she drew that makes it home.  The math so far is fairly easy addition and subtraction, so not yet where she was at the end of last year.  Lately she's been telling me a lot of South Carolina facts, such as the state bird is the carolina wren and the state butterfly is the tiger swallowtail.  They went on a walking tour of downtown Beaufort a few days ago to look at landmarks and got to handle the little crabs who live by the water.  I don't doubt that a lot of learning is taking place, but I think once I start volunteering, I will get a much better idea of it.

I've joined the Officer Spouses Club for the first time ever since becoming a spouse.  Living here on base, it was like 'why not?'  Their president is the first person to reach out to me back when we were still looking around and trying to decide where to live.  She lives right down the street from me and her teenage daughter is now my kids' babysitter, and they love her and so do we.  I was invited to eat with their dinner club that night back in February, and they were all so welcoming.  They have a few 'sub clubs' that I've joined: dinner club, playgroup, book club, and I may or may not join the wine club.  I do like my wine.:)  So now I'm on a friendly wave, hi and chitchat basis with several of them, but it's too soon to tell whether any real friendships will come out of this for me.

I like our new parish even more since we started going to the 9:30 a.m. Sunday Mass at the Air Station 20 minutes away instead of the quiet little Saturday evening Mass here at Parris Island.  I like how many young families I see walking in the door (the pews are far from being filled up, but still).  I would really, really like to get to know some of those families more, but beyond a few introductions (thanks also to my friend in the OSC who is active in that parish) that hasn't happened yet.  I know I'm partly to blame for that because once Mass is over, and then CCD which lasts until noon, all I want to do is get home and take a break.  There was a picnic starting at noon a couple weeks ago and I told Tim I couldn't even imagine a picnic at noon -- swatting at flies and making small talk when all I want is to eat and nap.  I am not good at the mingling and socializing stuff, even when there's time to kill between Mass and CCD, and then during CCD.  It's a strange paradox: I like people but I don't want to make any of the effort required to get to know them.  I just want to skip to the part where we see each other and go, "Hey!"

Sending Daddy off on a trip

Tim travels frequently with this new job, about two weeks out of every month, give or take.  I am back to doing a lot of solo parenting during the week, but at least he's almost always home on the weekends.  I'll take have him traveling a couple weeks a month over him being gone months at a time on a deployment.  When he's here, his office is about a block away from where we live.  I thought that his being so close would mean that he'd be home a lot more in the afternoons/evenings, but that hasn't been the case.  If he's able to get home at a decent time he'll tell me in the morning, "Text me to remind me to get home by 5."  Most of the time he's home just in time for dinner at 6 which is later than I'd like.  Sometimes he'll just tell me not to expect him for dinner, he has catching up to do, he'll get there when he gets there.  At our last duty station he had the 15-minute commute, but when he was around, he was home easily in time for 5:30 dinner most nights.  Having him so close and his days still so long is not what I expected, but that's OK, I know he's got to do what he's got to do.

This next paragraph was originally a long-winded and whiny paragraph about how Tim had to go right to work immediately after checking in here and never had a big chunk of time to devote to getting things done around here before he started being gone a lot, blah blah.  And how we can't decide whether to paint or which color to use, blah blah.  How I ordered new curtains and I'm worried I'll hate them when they get here.  And how I have no decorating sense at all and I've been begging my sister Anna for ideas, which she has been happy to give.  And how we still don't have enough furnishings to fill these big spaces, and I don't know when it will ever look the way I want.  Reading through it was very boring and tiresome.  I truly am grateful, despite the challenges it poses, to have all this space in a house.  I would rather have this problem than the opposite problem!  One of these days I'll get it the way I want it, or at least mostly, and hopefully I don't drive Tim too crazy in the process.

One bit of miscellany that I'm a little late in sharing: A few weeks ago I got a text from Jessica, whose house was the first playgroup we attended here.  It was very strange, out of the blue: "Are any of you allergic to poison ivy?"  I replied, "Not that I know of.  Why?"  She said, "I just found Delaney's crab in a patch of it."  I let out a whoop of joy, thanked her (and silently St. Anthony) and within a short while Crabby and Snappy were reunited.  Delaney was very ho-hum about it -- I guess she'd already moved on -- but it makes me smile to see the two of them sitting on her bed.  Sometimes it's the little things that bring you the most joy.  And yes, I realize sometimes the little things become way too big of a deal.

When the conditions are just right -- me, him, the couch, his Wuddy (Lovey) and his thumb -- he'll snuggle up with me.  It's the best!

Another thing I'm happy to share -- my bubba is already nighttime potty trained!  It took a couple years and a whole other process to get the girls nighttime trained, but he already keeps his pull-up dry 99 times out of 100 on his own, less than two months after daytime potty training.  I'll use up this last package of pull-ups I have, and then I'm done buying those too.  For the first time in seven years, no diapers or pull-ups.  Imagine that.

Timmy turns 3

Timmy's birthday was very low-key and un-exciting, in keeping with our family tradition that if you have a July birthday and it happens to fall on a PCS (permanent change of station) summer, then you get the short end of the stick.  But like his big sister before him he was unfazed, and I believe every bit as happy as if I'd been able to throw a party and put real thought and effort into all the details.  When he bounded into the kitchen first thing in the morning and I said, "Happy birthday, Buddy!" he said, "Thanks!"  Here's a video of us singing happy birthday to him after dinner.

One thing I did take time to do that I pat myself on the back for was to order this custom-made birthday truck shirt from Tim's cousin's Etsy shop.  I love how it turned out and since he loves trucks and being 3, he wears it proudly.

What is there to say about Timmy as a newly-turned three-year-old?

-  He loves to converse with us constantly, and he's always asking questions and telling us things.  He has SO MUCH to say and he speaks very clearly now.  He doesn't mispronounce much anymore, but we love what few things he does and enjoy them while they last.  It's very endearing the way he still pronounces "Delaney" as "Duwaney."  When he has to say a lot of words at once he still garbles them just a bit.  For instance, "I spy with my little eye something that is green" becomes "I spy my little eye sumfing green." 

He catches me thinking out loud as I am wont to do sometimes, and he says, "Hold on a second. Who are you talking to right now?"  

He doesn't want to accept "I don't know" as an answer.  A conversation we had in the car recently went like this: "Mama, what's the name of this song?"  "Um, I don't know, Bud."  "Just tell me," he insisted.

-  As of two-and-a-half weeks ago he is potty trained.  I thought for sure he would be my difficult one because when I attempted with him at 2.5, I had no success at all.  And he showed no signs potty readiness at all since.  He would happily sit around in a wet or dirty diaper all day, it never bothered him a bit.  He never sought privacy to do Number 2 either.  So I kept putting it off until once we got all moved in here, we had nothing else going on, and Tim kept saying to me, "Shouldn't we be thinking about potty training him?"  I gave it another shot on Friday, July 11.  We went cold turkey no diapers just like I had with his sisters.  He had two pee accidents that first day, both times while he was wearing the little Cars themed tighty-wighties I'd gotten him for the occasion.  Tim had the idea he might do better without undies on, I agreed, and after that he was good to go.  I think being bare under his clothes gave him more awareness of what was happening with his body, and he immediately started using the potty without prompting.  After a week went by he chose to use the real toilet, telling me he was too big for the little froggy potty.  OK!  I was pretty shocked at how easy that was.  He wears a diaper at naptime still, and usually keeps it dry.  The one he wears at bedtime is very wet by morning.  I guess that eventually we'll go through a separate process of nighttime potty training like we did with his sisters. 

- I was just looking through his update at age 2.5.  We've come a long way in a few short months!  6 months ago he was still in a crib that he wasn't even climbing out of yet; and he was still in diapers with no end in sight.  Shortly after that update he began climbing out of his crib -- of course -- so Tim converted it to a toddler bed.  Once we got here Tim discovered that a part the bed needed as a crib or toddler bed had gone missing in the move.  He set it up as a full bed.  So now he's in a big big boy bed.  He looks a little lost in the middle of it but he likes it.  

- Timmy is very much a people person.  He insists on having his window down every time we go through the guard gate because he wants to greet the Marine there and hear him/her greet him back.  He welcomes every opportunity to meet someone new and tell them his name and age, and ask them questions.  He's so used to the positive attention he gets that he has learned to expect it.  He will stare at a person until they smile at him.  That might make a few people uncomfortable but most seemed charmed wherever we go.  I know this stuff used to make me uncomfortable before I had kids of my own.  I might have given them a little smile or said "how cute" and hoped they were done looking at me.  Would you believe I was not all that into kids before I had mine?  True story: The first time I had dinner at Tim's parents' house and met the family, our older nieces were all age 3 and under.  To impress me (I guess?) they all screamed at the top of their lungs as we sat at the table.  I sat there in my LOFT twinset that had never seen a drop of spit-up and was appalled, and it showed.  They probably all thought, 'She does not like kids.'  I wanted to sink into the floor.  Now I have three champion screechers of my own, but they know not to do it to me too often or for too long because I really CAN NOT stand it.  I put my hands over my ears and run from the room.

Timmy wanted to order his ice water all by himself so I coached him as he waited in line and then as he asked politely for the water.  The gentleman helping him asked me if he could buy him a donut, and I think it would have made his day (the man's), but I said, "No thanks, I already got him one.":) 

- He is not all sweetness and charm.  Like any kid his age he sometimes wants to test his boundaries at times and find out if I really mean what I say.  He seems to know when my guard is down, and when to push his luck, i.e., opening the fridge when I've told him he can't have a snack or demanding things in a whiny voice. A fun time out can quickly become painful when he starts loudly demanding to go home.  I can easily see how an adorable two or especially three-year-old becomes a tiny tyrant.  He needs a firm no and he needs to be reminded that he's not in charge.  I think Tim and I do a good job of this because in general he is a sweet boy and very pleasant to be around.  He does really well as long as he's on his routine and he gets his nap every day.  He deteriorates badly when he's tired, and post-lunch/pre-nap is prime time for moodiness and tantrums.  All of my kids have their moments but it is so nice when family or friends mention how well-behaved they are.  It lets me know we're doing something right -- either that or we're just extraordinarily lucky.

- He and his sisters play really well together for the most part, even though Annie loves to pick on him.  They've taught him to think everything "booty" or "bum"- related is hilarious.  They get frustrated with him sometimes because they'll have their stuffed animals arranged a certain way for a game they're playing; and then he'll run them over with his dump truck.  Repeatedly.  So there's a lot of "Timmy, if you can't play nicely with them you'll have to go to your own room to play."  He's going to miss them when they start school in a couple weeks but doesn't mind his own company either.  He still likes to put his cars and trucks in lines, and he'll have them talk or even sing, it sounds like, as he moves them around.  Delaney is the one who is nicest to him and he is a lot more affectionate with her than with Annie.  For Annie, picking on him is like an itch she has to scratch.  She obviously loves him and thinks he's cute like the rest of us do, but at the same time he annoys her.  She's probably thinking, 'Stop being so adorable.'  

- This is random, but it needs to be recorded somewhere in the blog: Sometimes when he's sleeping he makes a noise like a siren, like a tonal noise that starts quietly, builds up to a crescendo and dies back down.  It makes sleeping in the same room with him difficult, but it's not loud enough to wake up the whole house.  Come to think of it, that's the same kind of noise I made while I was in labor with him.  Connection, possibly?  I wish I knew how long he's been doing it.  I don't remember him ever doing it the 5 + months he roomed with me after he was born.  Hmm.

- We're taking him for his checkup in two days, and I will update here with his stats.*  I already know he's only gained three pounds since last year but he's definitely gotten taller.  He's looking very svelte now, especially without that diaper.  He eats like a typical three-year-old -- that is to say, poorly.  He's a picker.  He hasn't eaten a vegetable in the longest time, and no matter how small I make his servings there always seems to be a lot left over when he's done.  But he loves whole milk

That's about it!  Phew - I'm glad to be done with kid birthdays for awhile.

* Timmy is 30.86 pounds and 38 inches tall -- 42nd percentile for weight and 65th for height.  It's funny how important percentiles still are to me.

Annie at 3 1/2

The three months since Annie's last update have been good, I am glad to say.  Back in August I recall I had mainly three worries about Annie: mood swings, constipation and how she would handle preschool.  At the moment I don't have any concerns about her.  She is a sweet, affectionate and funny, sometimes strange little girl who makes us smile more often than not.

The things that stand out most about Annie to me right now are her mostly grammatically correct sentences spoken in the cutest little voice ever, and her budding sense of style.  The latter she did not get from me, that's for sure.  I wouldn't think to put multicolored stripes and houndstooth together, but Annie doesn't think not to.  And it suits her.

As far as mood swings go and "Sweet Annie vs. Terrible Annie", I have seen a lot of improvement.  Her worst isn't as bad as it was, and it isn't as frequent.  I'm not sure why this is.  Maybe she's benefiting from having Delaney at school all day and not having to compete with her as much.  When the flare-ups happen, they usually happen after Delaney gets home.  Come to think of it, when the flare-ups happen, they are just as much her sister's fault as her own.  At that point in the day they're both tired and hungry.  Maybe her two mornings a week at preschool, which allow her to spend a few hours with her peers away from us, are also helping.  Maybe she was just going through a phase that she needed some time and growth and development to get through.  Maybe all of the above.  Whatever it is, we are all benefiting from a more mild-mannered Annie.

More about preschool:  She goes two days a week from 9 to 12.  She has 9 classmates and two teachers.  She has never cried at drop-off time, not even in the beginning, but it took her awhile to get comfortable.  For several weeks she was silent from the time I left her at the classroom door to the time I came back to get her. One day I came back to find one of her teachers completely frazzled because of an incident involving Annie. "You've got to get her to start talking!" she told me.  She went on to explain how Annie had silently endured the harassment of another student -- I don't recall exactly what the kid was doing, but he wasn't keeping his hands to himself and he was making her uncomfortable.  They happened to notice it and make him stop.  I was shocked to hear this and said, "This is not at all how Annie is at home.  She talks all the time.  She harasses her brother and sister!"  I was also told that Annie was not eating her snack at snack time.  She was just sitting there.  I know how my Annie likes to eat so I'd ask her about it and she'd say, "I was too tired."  The teachers seemed to think that she would warm up eventually, and I waited and hoped.

A few months later I would say she's enjoying school a lot more.  She is interacting with the other kids now.  She mentions conversations she has with them, although I think she is still content to observe for the most part.  She is always telling me about Kenny Lee, the boy who is always getting into trouble.  Her teachers tell me she's eating her snacks now, as of the last month or so.  When I'm waiting in line at the classroom door, I can see her in the circle at the back of the room dancing with the other kids to the goodbye song.  Her teachers often tell me she's had a good day.  I've observed a change in her in other settings as well.  When we go to someone's house she's more likely to leave me alone and go play with the other kids.  It used to be she either stuck to me like glue or picked a spot, like a rug, to sit on and stayed there the whole time.  I am so glad to see her having fun and coming out of her shell.

Lovey is in a vacuum sealed bag on a high shelf and has been for well over a couple months.  There was one last scare where I thought we'd lost it and then I was like, "That's it."  I had to put Lovey somewhere safe because at that point it meant way more to me than it did to her.  I was going to be the one brokenhearted if that thing never turned up again because it is such an important piece of her babyhood.

Annie still naps every afternoon for a couple hours.  Sometimes she asks me to clean off her toes before she'll go to sleep.  That's because when she wears Crocs or another pair of mary jane style shoes without socks all morning, her toes are all grimy when I ask her to take them off and get in bed.  I get a wet washcloth and clean her toes, and she says, "Don't forget to clean inside."  She means between the toes.  I do and she laughs and laughs, and I say, "Annie, you only made me do that because it would tickle, didn't you?"

I never knew anyone who loves to be tickled as much as she does.  Often she'll say to one of us, "Tickle me and squeeze me."  Then she laughs, shrieks, writhes and giggles until she's breathless.  It looks like pure torture, but when we stop she says, "Again."  We get tired of tickling her long before she gets tired of being tickled.

She is the worst eater of all our kids, and that's not saying much because they are all bad eaters.  It's amazing to me how healthy she is, considering that she eats only two food groups -- beige foods and raisins.  Thank goodness for the raisins that keep her regular.  If she decides she doesn't like them anymore, I'll have to resort to hiding powders in her food and drink again.  

She's turning into a great big sister to Timmy.  If I have to leave them at Play Date or at the child watch room at the Y, I tell the people working there, "Annie's a good helper.  She'll help you take care of Timmy."  And she does.  She follows him around and plays with him.  He's so much happier with her around.  I love to see the relationship between the two of them developing.

I just remembered that it's been a year since Annie spent the night in a hospital with breathing problems.  That was a crazy tough couple days.  I was remembering as we were driving to the Ball, how I followed the ambulance down those same streets, and how she, Timmy, and I all spent the night and next day together in that itty-bitty hospital room.  It's still hard to believe she ever got sick enough to make a doctor think she had RSV or pneumonia.  She hasn't had a single wheezing episode since so God willing, we've seen the last of it.  I still have the inhaler and a couple refills in case.

One last thing:  I know this is supposed to be just an Annie post, but I have news about Annie and her sister both.  They are officially nighttime potty trained!  Back in May, I posted about my frustration with the nighttime wetting, the new cloth training pants, and the constant laundry being generated by both.  Did that really happen only six months ago?  That same month, we began taking them to the potty every night about 10 p.m.  By August, they were both dry the majority of mornings, to the point where the occasional wetting was a real shock because it had been so long since the last.  We stopped using the training pants at least three or four months ago.  Then in the last month or so, Tim stopped making Delaney go when she didn't want to go in the middle of the night.  (By that point, it had become exclusively Tim's job to take them.).  She was dry in the morning.  Then he decided over a week ago to not bother taking either of them before he went to bed.  They've been dry every morning since!  The cloth training pants are in a stack in Timmy's closet waiting for it to be his turn.  They don't know because I don't want to make a big deal out of it (other than an occasional "good job!"), but I am very happy and proud of them both.

Annie at 3 1/4

It is helpful in any situation to know which Annie you're dealing with: Sweet Annie or Terrible Annie.  It can change in an instant.  I hear her door open when her nap is over, and I hold my breath, not knowing which Annie is padding across the floor, and what she's going to want.  She's been finding herself in time-out a lot lately because of being defiant.  Sometimes I don't know what to do with her.  She can be so difficult.  She is moody and petulant, and her sudden screech of rage makes me cringe.

I still say she's better at 3 than she was at 2.  Tim disagrees, thinking she's worse now, but then I tell him, "You weren't there last summer when she took off running during Mass!"  At 2, she could not be reasoned with at all.  Now she has boundaries, and I know I'm dealing with a little girl instead of a monkey.  In fact, when we're out and about is usually when she's at her best, most obedient and charming self.  We get smiles everywhere we go.  People think she's an angel.  So in that regard I'm kind of glad she saves her worst behavior for us at home.  And I do know that her worst could be much worse.  She is overall a great kid, even though her bad moments can be so memorable.

Not pictured: when taking turns was no longer working out, and the frog nearly lost his life in the ensuing dispute between the sisters

She loves to watch "bee-dee-os" on my phone.  Her favorite seems to be the one from the end of vacation bible school, when all the kids were singing a song.  Interestingly, she can't see herself in the video -- she was hiding behind another child.  But she can see Delaney in the front row jumping and singing away.  She also likes a video I took of Timmy playing with the recorder that Auntie Karen gave her for her birthday.  In the video, Timmy plays with it for a few seconds, and then she (Annie) swoops in to take it, growling through clenched teeth, "Eeeet'shh miiiiinnnne!"  Then the video ends, probably because I scolded her after that.  I don't know why she likes to watch such an unflattering video of herself, but I hope that when she sees it and chuckles at it, she's realizing how ridiculous she's acting.  So far I see no sign that this video is inspiring her to change her ways.

But sweet Annie?  Sweet Annie is the best.  I want to squeeze her.  She is so easy to get along with.  She shares.  She speaks slowly and thoughtfully.  She puffs up with pride when she successfully writes a number. She says things like, "Mama, you look very pretty."  She brings up memories that start with, "Remember, a long time [ago], we went to the store, and we got new straws?"  She always wants to help in the kitchen, something I'm sorry to say that I'm almost never enthusiastic about.  She'll pull her little stool over, and she loves to pour ingredients out of a measuring cup into a bowl.  I'm always baking delicious things, so she gets to do this all the time (haha).  She always wants just a "tiny piece of pizza dough" so she can play with it and eat it.

She's carrying Lovey around again, as of just the last couple of weeks.  She went months without it.  This is my fault.  She asked for it one night, and I could have said I didn't know where it was, but I didn't.  I got it down from its hiding place.  There's no harm in it.  She sleeps with it and sometimes bring it for rides in the car.  She doesn't take it out of the car when we go out, that's my only rule.

After her recent ventures with vacation bible school and swim lessons, I feel confident that she's going to do just fine in preschool, even though she's very timid in those kinds of settings.  It will be good for her.  She'll go to the same preschool Delaney did, just two mornings a week starting after Labor Day.  We drive by her school often, and I always say, "There's Annie's school!"  I'm glad that she gets to start preschool in a place that's already familiar to her, from when we took Delaney there three days a week last year.

She's very particular about how she dresses and how she wants her hair fixed.  She only likes "pretty dresses."  She won't even wear skirts, and at first I tried cajoling her into wearing them because she has such cute ones, and I hate to see them not get worn.  But for the most part I have given up on that, and getting her dressed is now a cinch.  I follow her to her closet, she points at the dress she wants to wear, I get it down for her, and she puts it on.  Her favorite dress is her "fruit dress" pictured below.  Her favorite way for me to fix her hair is in two braids.  She's never happier than when she puts on this dress, I braid her hair, and she picks out some pretty shoes.  I predict in a couple months, she'll be be wearing lots of dresses and leggings, and shoes with buckles.  Maybe she'll pick a favorite and want to wear it every time she goes to school.  If that happens, I'll either complain about it and beg her to wear something else, or I'll just have that outfit clean and ready for every Tuesday and Thursday morning.  Or both.

Annie's favorite ensemble, complete with two braids.  I've gone back and forth about Gymboree over the years because of their prices.  But I LOVE this dress, and it's been worn and played in by two children, washed and dried countless times, and shows no signs of wear whatsoever.  

I'm hoping that this fall we see more Sweet Annie and less Terrible Annie.  For my part, I've been trying to remember to pay attention to her when she does good things, and to give her a word of praise or encouragement whenever possible.  She wants to be a good girl, a big girl, and a helper.  She gets frustrated easily, and she doesn't want to play second banana to either Delaney or Timmy.  With Delaney in school every day, she should have a few more opportunities to be the big kid.  Not that she doesn't have the opportunities now, but I think that a lot of the time, she feels like she has to compete with her big sister.  It's exhausting sometimes, the way the simplest, stupidest things, like who gets to shut the car door, can escalate into fights. Maybe she's worried she'll be forgotten if she doesn't throw an occasional fit.  She's a physical girl, so I try to remember to give her a hug from time to time, just because. 

Here's a sort of strange thing about Annie that I only add here because this knowledge could come in handy some day.  Whenever she tells me she's cold, it means she needs to poop.  This just started within the last few months.  It's odd.  She'll argue with me that she doesn't have to, but sure enough, she does every time.  So there's that.

I might be jinxing us here, but I also want to mention that Annie has woken up dry in the morning for so long that I've lost track of how long it's been.  Two months at least.  She and her sister have started wearing undies to bed.  And now that I've said it, there's going to be a big bedwetting incident.  But at least it seems we've moved in the right direction.  We still get them up to go to the bathroom every night before we go to bed.

This little girl might drive us crazy, but we sure do love her.

Cloth training pants -- because I didn't have enough to do

I have no business even writing this post.  I have so much laundry to do.  More laundry than ever in my life.  I have only myself to thank for it, too.  After  2+ years of using disposable pull-ups at night for the kids, I've switched to something reusable.

I got so fed up with buying the pull-ups, running out of them, and buying more.  Even the Target brand ones were expensive, only slightly cheaper than the name brand.  It was costing $1 a day, and since they are every bit as absorbent as a diaper, the girls slept on comfortably after wetting at night.  I could foresee years of buying these things for the kids, and them never learning how to stay dry.  Delaney is almost 5, for goodness' sake!  Like Delaney, Annie potty-trained with very little fuss, and her rare daytime accidents are typically the result of clumsiness (difficulty removing clothing or perching herself properly on the potty).  When I saw she was following right along in her sister's footsteps at night, I thought there has to be more I can do.  Disposable training pants did not always exist, and our mothers and grandmothers made do.  But isn't it rare for children's nighttime potty learning to lag SO far behind the daytime?

After a day or two of research, I chose Bummis training pants.  The reviews were mixed, but from what I could tell, they would meet my expectations.  They can be machine washed and dried on any setting.  They are just absorbent enough to be able to contain some wetting, while allowing a child to be feel wet when they pee.  They look poofy, but have a comfortable flannel lining.  They are only for nighttime, so the look of them doesn't concern me.  Some of the reviews had warned, "Not for nighttime use" or "not for heavy bedwetting", but again, this is supposed to be a training pant, not a diaper.  I bought only four because they are kind of expensive -- about $12 each -- and I didn't know how they would work out.

The girls were a little perplexed as to why I was suddenly making them put on puffy, unflattering, gender-neutral training pants.  They missed the pull-ups that fit like underwear and had pictures of princesses and unicorns on them.  But they took it in stride.

After about two weeks of using these, I have to say these training pants are doing exactly what they're supposed to do.  But these girls don't seem any closer to being consistently dry throughout the night.  I am so frustrated.

They had a so-so night 1, with both of them a little damp, but sheets and pajamas still dry.  Night 2 was a disaster, with both of them soaked head to toe.  After that, I tried two more measures that had been suggested by friends.  No water the last two hours before bed.  If they ask for water, they get a sip, literally a sip.  Tim and I take them to the potty before we go to bed ourselves.  I knew that this would be an investment of a lot of time and effort, but would pay off when these kids obtained bladder control all night long for the rest of their lives.  They had several dry, or mostly dry nights each, and I was feeling very optimistic.  I told Tim, "We're on the right track!"

Then, starting three nights ago, it's been soaked beds every night for both of them.  I don't know if they're sneaking out of their beds and chugging water in the middle of the night or what.  We've been offering incentives for keeping dry, and I believe they both want to stay dry.  I don't know where all that pee comes from. They both use the potty every night before bed, and they get nothing more than an occasional sip of water after lights out at 7 or 7:30.  Then we wake them and  take them to the potty around 10:30 or 11 when we go to bed.  It's always surprising how much they have to go.  One night, I was really dismayed when we found Delaney already soaked when we came to take her to the bathroom.

These training pants are my first foray into any kind of reusable diapering.  I figure, I'm a stay-at-home mom, I can handle it.  But I'm having to learn how to cope with daily, sometimes twice-a-day bed-changings.  Then there's the smell of stale pee on both of the girls, because even though I wash the pants with hot water and dry them on high, they are still a little damp in the crotch where the two layers of terry padding are.  (The dryer is an HE dryer from six years ago, and I think its efficiency comes from not being quite thorough.)  The first couple times that happened, I dried them again, this time on the "express" setting, on high for 25 minutes.  Then I realized, this experiment is failing miserably. My energy usage is probably triple what it was, and a dollar a day for pull-ups is nothing compared to this. In an attempt to save a little energy, I now take the slightly damp training pants out of the dryer and hang them up outside.   But they never lose the stench.

The other day I had a few sheets, a few towels, and two or three of these training pants in a load.  They stank as they came out of the washer, even the towels that had not even been involved in the accidents.  Stupidly, I moved everything into the dryer, and the within a few minutes, the odor of urine was filling the house, and probably the neighborhood too.

I thought to myself, maybe some vinegar in the fabric softener dispenser of the washer will work.  I had Tim buy white distilled vinegar at the commissary today, and I refused to tell him what I was going to do with it.  He's worried that I will ruin our HE washer with my cockamamie ideas I get from the Internet.  I will do a little Googling and make sure that it won't hurt the washer.  I may just dilute some vinegar in a bucket of water, and just soak the pants before washing them in the machine.  But time is of the essence when I only have four pairs of these things total.  I have to have a second pair to change them into, so all four pairs need to be ready to go every night.  I refuse to fall back on my emergency stash of disposables.  I can't give up, I'm committed!

It was so much easier to throw a wet pull-up into the trash.  Why did I do this to myself?  How long until it gets better?

A Day in the Life: Spring 2012

A Day in the Life:  Monday, April 23, 2012

I've always enjoyed reading Laura's Day in the Life posts at Navigating the Mothership. When she posted the heads-up for Day in the Life this time around, I decided to finally jump in with my own.  I've shied away from it until now because I can't help but think that my chronicle of one day's events would be insufferably boring to everyone else.  I still think that's true, but I'm going to participate anyway because it's fun.  Besides, this "day in the life" project fits in well with my overarching theme.  Right now I've got a cup of coffee and hopefully an hour-and-a-half left of naptime.  So here goes.

4:00 a.m. Timmy yells for me and I drag myself to his room, nurse him, change his diaper, go back to our room and collapse in bed.  This has been an exceptionally bad night, and it's not even Timmy's fault.  I just couldn't get to sleep until 1 for some reason.

7:57 a.m. The noises in the house finally wake me out of my exhausted slumber.  I have no business sleeping in today, but that's exactly what I've done.  Tim has already gotten up with the girls and fed them breakfast.  At some point prior to waking up, I vaguely remember him kissing me goodbye.  Now there's no more time to waste.  This day is starting, with or without me.  I heave myself out of bed.

If I hadn't taken the time to jot this down and leave it on my nightstand, I would have never remembered.

8:00 a.m. Timmy's up, so I nurse him and get him dressed.  I eat my bowl of Kashi Heart to Heart, drink my orange juice, and seek out clothes and shoes for the kids.  We have to leave by about 8:40 to get Delaney to school.  There will be no time for drinking coffee and checking email and Facebook.  If I weren't still in a daze, I'd be panicking. 

8:25 a.m.  I do hair last -- Annie's first, Delaney's second, and mine not at all.  There is no time left.  The way you see me in this picture is pretty much how I looked all day long.  Like hell.  I ran a brush through my hair and put some concealer on to try to hide the shadows.  I know I should wake up early and put more effort into my appearance, and sometimes I do, but it was definitely not happening today.

8:42 a.m. We leave for Delaney's school, right on time.  Along the way, I hear Gotye's "Somebody that I used to Know."  I hear that song every day at least once.  It hasn't gotten old yet.

9:15 a.m.  I'm hosting our little bible study this morning, and I'm happy that Tim and I cleaned up last night.  The house looks nice (too bad I didn't take a picture of that!).  I really enjoy our Monday morning bible study.  It's a great way to start the week.  We talk, laugh and commiserate about all kinds of things while our kids play on the floor.  And bonus, since we're at home, Timmy can take a nap.  

11:33 a.m. I have to wake Timmy up so we can leave and get Delaney.  He was still sound asleep when I went in there.  I hate to wake a sleeping baby!

12:04 p.m.  Annie's been in a grouchy mood for two days straight by this point (Tim says she's PMS'ing), and she is at her worst at noon even on her best day.  I dread preschool pickup with all my heart.  I still resent that the only reason I picked this preschool for Delaney was because of the afternoon carpool that the preschool director assured me would be in effect when I toured the school last winter.  Then, during the parents' orientation this past August, she announced that due to construction of a new church, one entire parking lot would be off limits for the year.  And that would mean no carpool.  

That means that for the entire year, I've been dragging all of my kids in and out of the school twice a day three times a week.  Unloading tired, hungry kids, one of whom is an infant.  Walking across a parking lot.  Going in the school, up the stairs and down the hall.  And trying to dodge other people's tired 2-year-olds who sometimes halt in the middle of stairs or doorways and refuse to move.  (sigh)  Only a few more weeks until we're done for the year.  Hopefully the construction will be complete by the time Annie starts going there two days a week in the fall.  *Fingers crossed.*

During the five minutes it takes us to go in and out of this building to either drop off Delaney or collect her, about 85% of our little mishaps occur.  Here is Annie after she ran straight into the bumper of our car.  I say, "That's what you get for not watching where you're going!" and hustle her in the door.  Oh, for the good old days when you just left your kids in the car when you needed to run in somewhere quick.

12:28 p.m.  I send my tired, hungry girls outside to play while I make lunch as fast as I can.  But they want hot dogs.  And the water is taking forever to boil.  I should just microwave them, but Tim's anti-microwave ways are rubbing off on me a little, and I wait for the water to boil, certain that boiled hot dogs will be better than microwaved ones.  I should know it doesn't matter because they'll only eat three bites anyway.  

12:47 p.m. In the time it takes to make these hot dogs, we're falling apart.  I'm short with the kids.  I'm just so ready to have them down for their nap.  I realize I forgot to eat anything since that bowl of cereal, and now I'm ravenous.  I'm also very tired and my frustration is mounting.  The girls are fighting and Timmy's fussing in his chair.

Those two grilled cheese sandwiches are mine.  Told you I was starving!

1:02 p.m.  At last lunch is over.  I take pictures of the wreckage.

Timmy scrounges up a banana.  Finders keepers!

1:07 p.m.  We're so close to nap time, we can do it!  More meltdowns ensue.  Annie is upset first because I won't read as many pages of her horribly written and tediously long Little Mermaid book as she wants me to; and a few minutes later, because Timmy pulled her hair.  I have no idea why Delaney has underwear on her head, but I'm sure it made perfect sense to her.  I love that the wall quote, "Wake every morning with the thought that something wonderful is about to happen," is in the background.

"But I didn't want him to pull on my hair!" (sob)

1:13 p.m.  I made it!  I nurse Timmy and lay him down, send Delaney upstairs for "quiet time," and catch up on email and Facebook.  The mess in the kitchen is not going anywhere.

My Tot Clock -- $50 well spent

1:24 p.m.  I'm not the only one who's having a rough day, it seems.  I read an email from Tim, filling me in on what I missed while I was catching up on my beauty sleep this morning.  Apparently, Annie pooped in her pull-up at some point during the night or morning.   Then while removing her pull-up, she dropped two  "Raisinet-sized poops" on the floor that Tim had to clean up before rushing off to work.  At least they were solid!  Then he left without his water bottle, and has had nothing to drink all day.  Good times!    

1:30 p.m.  I crawl back into my still-unmade bed and stare at my eyelids for about an hour.

2:30 p.m.  Part two of this day begins!  Refreshed from my nap, I make the bed and attack the kitchen and living room.  I put some laundry away.  I feel much better once I've reined in the chaos in this house.  Then I make a cup of green tea.

3:13 p.m. Annie and Timmy are up.  I feed and change Timmy, give the girls a snack, and send them out to play.  Annie is still grumpy.  I make her go out there anyway, hoping the fresh air will improve her mood.  I bring my tea outside and sit in a folding chair on the driveway.

"Look, Mama, you have mail!"

4:04 p.m.  It's kind of chilly and windy.  None of us is liking being outdoors much.  I declare mandatory fun outside to be over, and the girls watch Dino Dan upstairs in the playroom while I check email again, hoping to see something from Tim saying when he expects to be home.  I am losing what little enthusiasm I had for this afternoon, and it is dragging on already too long.  But he is so busy these days, he doesn't have much time for email.  He's actually happy about that.  Better than being bored on a ship.

4:38 p.m.  The girls have moved on to coloring.  I start on dinner, optimistic that Tim will be home by 5:30.   

5:24 p.m. At last I see the email that heralds Tim's arrival!  Hard to believe I once waited 10 months for him to come home.  I can barely make it through an afternoon now.  Dinner is almost done, and its garlicky aroma wafts through the house.  Life is good again.

5:32 p.m. In comes Tim.  He is a tad dehydrated but otherwise no worse for wear.

5:45 p.m. We all sit down to dinner.  We talk a little about our days, but mostly, we are too tired to talk.  We just eat.  I have a headache right between my eyes.  I just can't wait to get these kids to bed.

6:23 p.m. Tim tells me a story about someone from work while he loads the dishwasher.  The girls are picking up the playroom so there are no interruptions.  I love hearing his work stories.  After dealing with kids all day, I'm fascinated by the foibles of grownups.

6:46 p.m. The kids are in the tub, and the end of this long day is finally in sight.  

6:58 p.m. Bath is over.  Annie "kirks" (the girls' new word for "burp") and up come some diced tomatoes from dinner.  It's just a little bit and she seems fine afterward.

7:03 p.m. Tim is reading the dreaded Little Mermaid book again.  It wouldn't be so bad if it weren't so long, and the plot is terrible.  The beginning is all about how Ariel and the new girl, Coral, both like human things.  Then abruptly, the book is all about how Coral is too clumsy to put cymbals together in the orchestra.  It turns out that just like Ariel, she's a good singer!  A-ha!  Sebastian never even had her audition for a part in the orchestra, just randomly assigned her, like 'Here, you look like you should be able to handle a pair of cymbals.'  Ugh.  Too bad it's Annie's current favorite.  Delaney picks one that's short and sweet: In the Small, Small Pond by Denise Fleming.

7:15 p.m. Ah... Kids are all in bed finally.  I'm too tired to even enjoy my free time.  Tim packs his lunch for tomorrow.  The girls carry on for about 45 minutes, and Tim yells at them a couple times to go to sleep.  The two of us park our butts on the couch and watch American Pickers.  No mutual footrubs tonight.  I scarf down a few handfuls of Raisinets and drink chamomile tea.

9:30 p.m. Timmy wakes up and I'm happy to go nurse him because moments before, I'd been debating whether I should wait for him to get up and eat one more time before I went to bed myself.  I am so tired and that headache is not going anywhere.  So I feed Timmy and am in bed by 10.  I end up getting an unexpected gift: 8 straight hours of sleep.  Timmy doesn't wake up until 7 the next morning.