Two weekend getaways

Oy.

After our soul-and-body-exhausting trip to the beach in August, I made the comment on Facebook that a vacation with small children really isn't a vacation. And a friend of mine remarked that it's really just a relocation.

A-freakin'-men to that.

We've spent the last two weekends on the road. I don't even know how many miles we put on the minivan. Or how many snacks William went through en route. I did learn one important thing, though: it was worth it, just keeping most of the same stufff packed from the first weekend and just reloading it back into the van for the second trip.

Last weekend, David and I loaded up Matilda with Andrew, William, Diane and Aaron and set sail for the mountains of East Tennessee. David and I were invited to attend a wedding, so Diane and Aaron went with us to babysit during the wedding events. And soak up a little cool mountain air in the meantime. Well, we certainly were packed tightly into that minivan! But it was worth the close quarters. We had a lovely weekend, all the way around.

Our cabin,
















which was named "The Three Bears," had stuffed bears and bear decorations all over the place, and William had a ball looking at all of them.

And of course, so did Andrew:


















We did a lot of porch-sitting and chatting in our down time, which, if you think about it, is just about one of the most perfect ways to spend a beautiful fall day:




















Diane with William testing out the "Indiana Jones" bridge in a little park, not far from our cabin:



















And a photo of the boys together in "their" room, which was a sweet little sleeping porch right off our room:

















I should note here, however, that our cabin, while adorable in every way, was perched on top of a precipice. I don't think I've ever driven up a street that was angled that sharply before in my entire life. There are roller coasters in major theme parks that don't go up hills that steep.

Then, a few days after we returned to Music City, I took the boys and we drove down to Natchez to see my parents and brother. We took the scenic route, meaning that we drove through Birmingham and swung by my childhood home so I could show William where I grew up. It's been at least a decade, maybe longer, since I last saw the house. It seemed at once both completely familiar and totally foreign to me. I know it is horribly cliched to say this, but the house--the whole neighborhood, really--looked so much smaller than I remembered it being. The house, which is red brick, used to have yellow, then pale peach, woodwork. Now the wood parts are painted dark green, but they're a faded dark green, and there's this big Bradford pear tree in the front yard that wasn't there when we lived there. It was just...different.

Many pit stops later, we eventually made our way down to Natchez for the annual hot air balloon festival. Poor Mom. We totally took over her entire house. There was not a single room that didn't have some of our stuff in it. Bags of toys, bags of baby gear, diapers, the Batcave, shoes, the bouncy seat, snacks, and so on. We're like the human version of kudzu. And we even ousted my brother from his room, too. (He's living with her while he finishes grad school.) It was great to be there, but Mom's cat didn't look so pleased about our invasion.

On Friday night, we went to the balloon festival carnival down on the bluff overlooking the Mississippi River, and William got to ride some of the kiddie rides. His favorite was maybe the ricketiest carousel I have ever seen in my life. Every time his horse wobbled upwards on its post, I lunged to make sure I was in position to catch my firstborn, should he be catapulted off.














You can't tell from the photo, but there were massive fireworks exploding out over the river. We watched them for awhile, until the siren call of the next kiddie ride managed to lure William away.

Then, on Saturday morning, the balloons began their first race in the crisp early morning sunshine. They raced right over my mom's house, so we all dashed out into the street in our pajamas to get a look.



































We spent most of Saturday afternoon down at the carnival again. Mom and Daddy sold T-shirts, and William got me, his uncle and his grandfather to take him to ride the rides at various times. Luckily for his grandfather, there are height and weight limits to those rides. I didn't realize that on Friday night, and I made the mistake of insisting on riding some of the rides with William. They should sell Dramamine with the ride tickets, I think.

William was allowed to play one game; at $3 a pop, that's all I was going to spring for. Luckily, he won! He got a stuffed lion. I'll have to post the picture from my iPhone later. But in the interim, here's a photo of him with a couple of the hot air balloons in the background...



















You could wait in line to get in the basket and then float way up in the air (still tethered to the ground, of course). I said, after I stopped wheezing in horror at the very idea, "Um, no thanks." I like looking at hot air balloons a lot. From a distance. Where there's no possible way that I or anyone whom I love could possibly be scooped up into one.

All in all, two lovely weekends with both sets of grandparents. And of course, it's nice to be home again now, too.

Smell Like a Monster

Have any of you laughed as hard as I have over those Old Spice commercials that feature the guy who does the whole commercial all in one take? Well, the Sesame Street folks did a spoof of "Smell Like a Man" that they call "Smell Like a Monster."

I'm 36 years old, and I still love Sesame Street. My son has moved on, and he now prefers "Word Girl," which is pretty awesome. But there's just something about Grover, Bert and Ernie and all the others, you know? (He did like "Smell Like a Monster," though. He didn't get the spoof part, not having seen the original commercials, but he laughed when the clam snapped onto Grover's nose.) They'll always be old friends.

Playtime

Here's a quick photo of Andrew "playing" with his Baby Legos:















I mean, seriously, do you not just want to eat him up? I realize that I am a teensy bit biased, and all, but really.

(Seeing him in those pajamas with that particular set of toys and the Boppy behind him makes me nostalgic for Baby William, too.)

And just like his big brother, Andrew loves to gnaw on those Baby Legos (it's a Lego brand shape sorter for babies, so the shapes are fashioned to look like giant Lego pieces). I wonder if I could run the whole mess through the dishwasher....

Consonants? Check.

So a couple of weeks ago, David asked me if Andrew had started saying any consonants yet. And as I posted here, I told him I wasn't sure. Because I wasn't sure.

Well, the very next day, as if he knew what we'd been discussing, Andrew began saying "da de de da da." Isn't he so very thoughtful? So, yay for consonants!

And he blows lots and lots of raspberries, practicing the "b" sound. More consonants! I think we will have another round of enthusiastic "ba"-ing here in another month or two.

I was right!

Do y'all remember when I sneered at the expensive designer diapers that Target was selling earlier this year?

Well, I was vindicated. Cruising past the baby section a couple of weeks ago, I noticed a big endcap full of those designer diapers, with the original price slashed down to a much more reasonable "clearance" price. Of course, the clearance price was still more expensive than you'd pay for regular old diapers, even the brand-name kind. No wonder no one bought them.

I'm guessing they won't try that little experiment again.

Although I will say this....I know a lot of parents (myself included) who already didn't like the way that diaper companies put little designs on the diapers, like Pooh Bear or Elmo. The designs show through light-colored clothes. For example, in order to keep Cookie Monster's googly-eyed face from beaming through Andrew's white linen baptism outfit, I had to put a plain white onesie on him first. It would have been nice to just have a plain old white diaper. But even the lower-cost diapers like Luvs put pictures on their diapers. (Yes, I probably could have used cloth diapers which are nice and plain. I didn't. That's a discussion for another time.)

So the Pampers folk were especially missing the mark with the designer patterned diapers: they were charging MORE for something than many parents want LESS of. Tsk tsk tsk.

I love it when I'm right.

I don't remember

You know, you'd think I'd know what I was doing this time around. I've had one child already, raised him reasonably well so far, and nothing too bad has happened (well, other than that minivan-door incident, but we won't dwell on that because all's well that ends well, right?).

But here I am, on Kid No. 2, and I can't seem to remember much of what I did the first time around! My friend Mary Clare, who has a baby one week younger than Andrew, and I spent 30 minutes on the phone a couple of weeks ago, trying to remember how much baby food we fed our first kids at six months of age. I actually went back through this blog to look it up. And I'm still not entirely sure. I'll find myself mixing up a little bowl of baby oatmeal for Andrew and then studying it dubiously. "Does that look right?" I then will ask William, who will just shrug and keep slurping up his own bowl of Quaker's instant. Like he remembers.

Now David's doing it. "Has Andrew started saying any consonants?" he asked me earlier today. "Um, I don't know," I said, trying to remember. "Had William started saying any consonants by this time?" David didn't remember. I didn't remember either.

I'm reassuring myself that it really doesn't matter that much. I wrote down most of the big stuff last time, and hopefully I'll write it down this time, too. My motto in life has more or less been "If it matters, I write it down." (Which is better than my runner-up motto in life, which is "If something is stupid, I tend to say so.") I kind of wish now that I had written down even more the first kid around, but I'm glad that at least I wrote down as much as I did. Because while I may still be bumbling around with baby food, I at least have some frame of reference for some of the other stuff.

That is, if I can sort back through all the old posts and find it...

The sweet spot

Andrew will be seven months old next week. It's the sweet spot of babyhood. He's old enough to be able to really engage with us, but he's too young to go anywhere. Or to talk back to us. He sleeps through the night, and I can still pretty much drag him around to wherever I happen to be going. I do know, however, that those days are going to end before too long. So I'm trying to just enjoy him right now as much as I can.

I'm posting a few photos that I took the other night when we all got down on the floor to play with Andrew.

Augh! I just want to gobble him up when he's all bright-eyed like this:


































Hmm. How'd all those rings get on Andrew? Can you tell that this little guy has a big brother?



















If you look closely in this last picture, you can see that David's got one finger hooked in the strap of Andrew's overalls. That's so Andrew won't just pitch forward and land on his face. He's getting better every day, though, about sitting up on his own. He's much more stable than he was even a week ago.

Gross anatomy

William's been obsessed with one of David's old med school textbooks for a couple of months now. It's an anatomy book, full of pictures of cadavers and cross-sections of cadavers and peeled-back pieces of cadavers. Lovely stuff. Fabulous bedtime reading.

Of course, we did not tell William that the illustration of a skeleton that he was so carefully studying was a photo of an actual skeleton from a person formerly known as alive. Why freak him out, we reasoned. Just let him look at the pictures, and he'll eventually get bored with it.

But he didn't get bored with it. He continued to look at it and ask for explanations of the various parts. Still, we figured, why let him in on what the pictures really are?

Until one day, William hefted the book into my lap so he could ask me yet another question that I could not answer. (My standard responses are either "You're asking the wrong parent, kid" or "Hmmm. Let's see what Dr. Google has to say about this.") And as I tried to figure out exactly what he was pointing to, he said very matter-of-factly, "These are pictures of dead people."

To which I stuttered and managed to stammer out a response something like, "Uh, yes. Yes, they are."

He wasn't fazed in the least. Not in the least. Hopefully this lack of squeamishness bodes well for him as a future scientist and not as a future, I don't know, axe murderer or something.

And for the record, we bought him his own children's book about the human body. He's got a good memory. I'm not really exaggerating when I say that I wonder if he might actually be able to explain the digestive system better than I could.

And so autumn begins at last

My God, how did I get so behind again? Here it is, September already. I love September. I'm already waking up each morning in a better mood, knowing that it's fixing to be autumn.

But wow, a lot has happened. In the immortal words of Inigo Montoya, let me explain. No, there is too much. Let me sum up.

Andrew weighed 17 lbs 8 oz and was 27 inches long at his six month (plus one week) well-baby visit last Thursday, which puts him smack-dab in the middle of the growth chart. He's in the 50th percentile for both height and weight, which also means that he's smaller than William was at the same age. And here we were, all thinking that he was this giant baby. And he's really not! I'm actually pleased about this. It means that he's much more likely to fit into all of William's hand-me-down clothes for this fall and winter. Hurray! I can't wait to put Andrew in William's sweet little green grasshopper romper, the shark sweater, and all those other outfits that I have such fond memories of.

Andrew is now gobbling down baby food like a champ. He's had rice cereal, peas, green beans, squash, sweet potatoes and carrots. We start him on a new food on Tuesday. I think I'm going to go with either oatmeal or a fruit. Maybe apples or pears. So far, I've introduced everything in the exact same order that I did with William, but maybe we'll get really crazy and go with something totally wild and unexpected next. Like peaches! I like living on the edge, you know.

William started four-year-old school on Friday. Should I call that Pre-K or four-year-old kindergarten, or what? Well, whatever it is, he started it. He loooooves it. He has the cutest little teachers, all young and energetic, and a terrific classroom and they're going to be learning more yoga again this year from their music teacher. He's allowed to bring PBJs in his lunch this year, and there are several boys in his class who love to play Batman on the playground, too. I think it's going to be a good year.

Obligatory First Day of School photo:




















William also started four-year-old Encore on Tuesday. That's the school district's gifted-and-talented program for preschoolers. His schedule is going to be packed this autumn, between going to preschool five days a week and Encore one afternoon a week. I was feeling all guilty for accidentally missing the deadline to sign him up to play soccer this fall, but looking at all the schlepping I'm going to be doing anyway, that might not be such a bad thing.

Um, what else is going on with us?

I guess those are the big things. On a smaller scale....

William keeps asking lots of good questions, so I find myself spending a lot of time on Google, looking up the answers. He and I spent almost an hour the other day looking up information about the South Pole and the North Pole the other day. I don't know how much he learned, but I feel smarter already.

Andrew keeps getting more and more fun. I love this age. He's starting to really pay attention to things, he's figuring things out, and he laughs so much more, too. And the fact that he sleeps through the night reliably helps, too. :) Sometimes I like to just stare at him and stroke his cheek and drink him in. William and I both spend a lot of time telling him how adorable he is. Hopefully we won't spoil him too much.

Sitting up

And right on schedule, we have...tripoding!



Andrew will officially be six months old tomorrow, and last week, he started propping himself up in a sitting position. He can't sit like that for a really long time, though, or he starts listing over. But he's getting better at it each time, as he builds up his strength.

Remember William at about the same age? We used to prop him up with the Boppy so he could sit up and play with his toys.



I got out the Boppy for Andrew a couple of days ago,m too. He actually does better without it, but you do have to sit right there next to him so he doesn't suddenly throw himself backward and bonk his head.

I bet he'll be sitting up all on his own before I know it. I swear, every time I turn around, he's grown a little bit or doing something new. He started blowing raspberries about a week or so ago, and he loves to do that to get attention. And he's really digging the baby food. Right now, we're on green beans, but in another day or so, I'm going to give him squash. If he's anything like William, the squash will be a Big Hit.

* * *

Side note: we did not get any good family pictures at the beach this year, despite the matching outfits that I bought for the boys specifically for that purpose. Sob. But I did at least get one pretty cute snapshot of them at home in their little outfits. It's hard to set up a pose right now, but I bet it will be easier once Andrew is reliably able to sit up by himself. Check them out:

What, me worry?

I don't know how we got onto the topic of worrying, but I found myself discussing how parents worry about their children with William this morning.

We were driving home from the dentist office, and he was chattering on about Harry Potter (as usual) and asking a billion questions that I refused to answer on the grounds that 1) he needs to read the books in order and find out for himself and 2) I refuse to spoil it for him. And somehow, I was telling him that parents always worry about their kids, even when they're grown up.

William was mystified by this. He wanted to know why. I told him that I couldn't really explain why, except that parents love their children and want them to be healthy, happy and safe, so they worry about them not achieving those things. William might be perfectly safe when he's at school, for example, but part of me still worries about him.

And I found myself uttering something I never really thought I'd say.

"You'll understand when you're a parent one day," I said.

Mom? Is that you?

Really. It was her voice coming out of my mouth. Or maybe it was my dad's voice. Either way, it was like aliens took over my body and began controlling my speech. That happens a lot these days, I've noticed. I open my mouth, and rather than saying something of my own, I parrot something that my mom used to say to me. Eerie how that happens.

In fact, the other day, I chuckled over a cartoon in the paper and had to call my mom to share. (The cartoon was Zits, in case any of you are fans.) The teenaged boy says, in disbelief to his mom, something like, "So you want me to text you every time I go somewhere, even if it makes me look like a dork?" And the mom says, happily, "Yep! Thanks!" I don't even have a teenager, and yet, I totally got it. I'll be that mom in about ten years. Mom texted me back to say, "Ah yes! You just wait!"

The funny thing is that I was totally prepared to worry about my young children--I just didn't really understand that it would keep going on forever and ever amen. All new parents worry. We worry about our babies being born healthy. We worry about whether the baby is still breathing when he's alone in his crib and hasn't cried in a long time. We worry when the baby hasn't had a messy diaper in what seems like too long (can there really be a too long?). We worry about our babies hitting all the milestones on time. So yes, I worry about Andrew. But I still worry about William. In fact, I might worry even more about him now than I used to. And now I know that I will continue to do so for as long as he lives. The specific things that I will worry about will undoubtedly change. But the big ones--health, happiness and safety--will remain constant.

In fact, I even worry about my own parents a lot more these days. It's ridiculous. I admonish them to call me when they're on the road and let me know when they get safely to their destination. I may, er, even have been known to call or text and badger them until I get a satisfactory response. And um, I may even pester my husband to do the same with his parents ("Did you call Diane and Aaron yet? Did they make it to their hotel yet? Is their car doing okay? Are they all right?").

The irony. Yes, yes.

Back to sleep

Lots of people claim that babies sleep better when they sleep on their tummies. I can't speak for all babies, but that was pretty much true for William. Once he was able to sleep on his stomach, he did. From then on, until he started sleeping in a big boy bed, his default sleep position was on his stomach. With his bottom in the air.

So awhile ago--I don't remember exactly when--Andrew started sleeping through the night. He's done it off and on for awhile, but then he started doing it fairly reliably a few weeks ago. Sure, we'd get one of those nights, here and there, when he'd need rebinking (read: re-insert the pacifier into mouth of squalling babe) a few times, but they were starting to decrease.

Then he started rolling over onto his tummy. Now his latest trick is to roll himself over onto his stomach, fall asleep, squirm around in his sleep, and then wake up on his stomach. He seems to have forgotten that he can roll back onto his back, so he thinks he's stuck. And oh, that makes him so mad! One night last week, I was jolted out of a sound sleep by the sound of frantic baby cries. I limped as fast as I could into Andrew's room, and there he was, on his stomach, sideways in the crib, with both leg hanging out between the slats. No wonder he was mad!

He's doing better again. He does seem to like sleeping on his stomach. Just not waking up on his stomach. So I'll be really glad when he remembers how to roll back onto his back without assistance again.

The Romanian Orphanage Crib Strikes Again

Remember when I said "so far, so good" about our beach trip?

Yes, well, that was before it stormed and stormed and stormed the rest of the day on Friday. So everyone had to stay inside, rather than get to run around out on the beach. And then we got caught in ridiculous traffic for nearly three hours in the mountains on the way home, which resulted in my throwing in the proverbial towel and convincing David to get us a hotel room in Knoxville for Saturday night.

Guess what showed up in our hotel room? That's right. Another Romanian orphanage crib*. This time, Andrew got the Romanian orphanage crib experience. And like his big brother, he was not so amused by it. Every time he rolled over, he got arms or legs tangled up in between the cold metal bars.

And then he woke up screaming--SCREAMING AT THE TOP OF HIS LUNGS LIKE HE'D BEEN SHOT--around 1 a.m., and I couldn't convince him to quiet down there for awhile for love or money. David was hyperventilating. Even William, who sleeps like the dead, woke up. The screaming echoed around and 'round those concrete walls in an impressive way, like the acoustics in a European cathedral. This was after we had sat in our minivan for hours upon hours all day AND stupidly taken the boys to eat hamburgers at Littons in Knoxville at 8:15 at night. It was, to put it mildly, perhaps not the most relaxing evening of our lives.

(*And of course, I took pictures of Andrew in the crib! You knew I would. Unfortunately, they're on my iPhone. So I'll have to post them later.)

From earlier in the week, when things were a little more sane:

William doing triangle pose at the beach:



Me and Andrew at sunset:



Dee Dee helping William try to boogie board:





Andrew and his daddy:



I'll post some more photos soon.

Beach babies

This is our last day at the beach, so I thought I'd take advantage of a temporary lull in the action to say hi to all my readers.

Hi!

This was our first big family vacation as a family of four. So far, so good. We loaded down the minivan like we were going to be hiking up Mount Everest, in anticipation of just about anything that could possibly happen. It's amazing that David could still drive it, frankly. Nothing like travelling with small children and all their gear!

We've had mostly good weather. It stormed one morning, and then it rained briefly today, but that's about it. Andrew's only been out to the beach a couple of times, but I don't think he minds. William, on the other hand, has had a ball, playing on the beach. Even I have made it down to the beach a few times, with my gimpy leg. I was wishing that we hadn't rented an oceanfront beach house with the longest possible walk to the beach, but I've managed to do it. Darn stairs, though. The walkway goes up and down, up and down, up and down. Ugh.

Next year, I want to rent a house that has a shorter walk to the beach. Okay, yes, I hopefully will not have a broken ankle next summer, but I will have a one-year-old that I will have to schlep to the beach, along with a five-year-old and all the necessary gear. Man, I'm tired, just thinking about that.

I'll post pictures soon. Wish us luck on the journey home tomorrow...we're going to need it...

Solid food...so to speak

Look who got to eat some tasty rice cereal on Wednesday night!



Yes, we allowed Andrew to have his first dalliance with solid food. Well, if you can call runny rice cereal "solid." I'm sure it's violating all sorts of laws of physics to refer to it as "solid." It barely stays on a spoon.



Is this the universal baby "I don't know about this stuff" expression or what?



Actually, this might be a better example:



Yeah, look at all that delicious rice cereal just oozing down his chin. Nummy.

We made Andrew the same promise that we made William: it really does get better than this. Really. And soon. Sure, maybe pureed peas aren't the creme de la creme, so to speak, but there is some good stuff coming. I mean, Cheerios are coming in a few months. I still eat--and enjoy--Cheerios to this day.

We're going to have to start working on the sippy cup soon, too, though. I need to refresh myself on the boot camp techniques that worked with William and see if Andrew will buy into them, too.

Mama Lou

My grandmother, Louise Huntley Moore Larson, passed away this morning. She was 92.

She had major surgery earlier this week, and she just never was able to bounce back. She held on for awhile, but ultimately, it was just too much for her. She died around 11:30 this morning in her hospital room in Vicksburg, with my grandfather by her side. And my uncle, aunt, mom and brother were there, too. Unfortunately, my dad was en route, so he wasn't there; however he'd been with her all week, so he had had a chance to be with her when she was still conscious.

You've probably heard me refer to Mama Lou before, and of course, there are pictures of her on this blog. She got to spend time with William a number of times.






































He attended her ninetieth birthday party, and she was present for his baptism. I just wish that she'd gotten the chance to meet Andrew, too...especially since some of us think he resembles Grandaddy Bill.

I'm still feeling sad about her passing away, so I'm not going to write too much more about it right now. I'm just going to tell a short story about something that happened when I was a little girl.

I was probably about three years old, and I went to stay with Mama Lou and Grandaddy Bill for a few days. One day we were going somewhere, so Mama Lou put me in the car. But somehow I managed to lock the doors while she was still outside the car. So she stood there, staring at me in disbelief, while tugging and pulling on the car door. She tried to coax me to unlock the door, but either I didn't understand what she was trying to get me to do, or I didn't want to. She was upset, and then I got upset, and then we both sat there, on opposite sides of the glass from each other, and sobbed and sobbed and sobbed at each other. Grandaddy Bill eventually came and saved the day.

We've laughed about that story countless times over the years, especially a couple of years ago when William locked me and David out of the beach house. I'm sure it wasn't that funny at the time, but it got progressively funnier over the years, like many family stories do.

Mama Lou had not been in very good health these last few years, and there were times when her memory would fade in and out. But when she was feeling good, she was still the same old Mama Lou. I talked to her a couple of months ago about Andrew, and she sounded weak but otherwise the same as I've always known her to sound.

I will miss her.

Let's roll

I know I'm not supposed to compare my sons. I know, I know, I know. They're totally different people who will do things on their own timeframes when they're ready, and it doesn't matter if they do things alike. Blah blah y blah.

But let's face it. We all do it, even if it's just in benign ways. For example, it doesn't matter to me if Andrew does things at the same age that William did things, but part of me just sort of expects them to be similar anyway. So it still took me a little off-guard (in a pleasant way, of course) when Andrew suddenly decided to start rolling over yesterday. William rolled over for the first time shortly before he turned six months old, but Andrew won't even be five months old until Saturday. And yet, there he was, rolling onto his tummy, right there in front of me. "Hey, he's ahead of schedule!" was my first thought. Ahead of William's schedule, sure. But I guess Andrew figured he was ready, and his schedule is the only one that matters to him.

Actually, it was kind of funny. I put Andrew down on his quilt in the front room. He was lying on his back. William was sprawled out on the floor next to him, playing with his iPod. Then I left the room to go check on the tomato sauce that was simmering on the stove. When I dragged myself back into the room a few minutes later, Andrew was somehow on his tummy.

"Hey, William, did you do that?" I asked my elder child, gesturing to his baby brother. "Andrew's on his tummy. Did you help him roll over?"

"No," William said, still glued to his iPod. "He did it himself."

"Are you sure?" I asked again. "He was on his back. Are you sure you didn't help him roll over onto his tummy?"

"No, Mommy," William said again. "Andrew rolled himself over."

Because William, like many four-year-olds, can be a little bit of an unreliable narrator, I was still skeptical. I flipped Andrew back onto his back and sat down at my desk. A minute or two later, Andrew casually rolled over onto his stomach, and I squealed in delight. William looked up from the iPod and began to smile and laugh at Andrew, too. We both made a big old fuss over him, and I rolled him back onto his back to see if he'd roll over again. And good-natured baby that he is, he indulged us again. I even got him on video once.

And of course, y'all know me. I had to text my family, post it on Facebook and generally use modern technology to make a nuisance of myself, letting people know about my genius baby who can roll! over! all! by! himself! (See? Here I am, doing in here!)

Later on, he rolled from his stomach to his back, too. I haven't captured that one on film yet, but he was practicing some more this evening, so perhaps that will come soon.

My only concern: this doesn't mean that he's going to crawl earlier than William did, too, is he? Because that would be very inconvenient. I'd kind of like him to stay stationary for awhile. Because of course we all know that kids are all about being convenient for their parents.

Mom, why don't you have more pictures of me?

The boys, all dressed up for church yesterday:





Yep, we all went to church yesterday. Diane came out here to drive us in the minivan, since I still can't drive. I'm grateful to her. I'm getting tired of this whole broken ankle thing, though. It's been five weeks, folks. Five looooong weeks.

Anyway, I had to take a few pictures of the boys in their nice clothes, particularly Andrew, since I have already fallen into one of the best-known traps of the Parent of More Than One Child. You may also know it as the "Mom, why did you take so many more pictures of my older sibling?" phenomenon.

Oh sure, I had great intentions of being the exception to the rule. I started out strong, too. I took dozens and dozens, maybe even hundreds, of photos in the first month or so after Andrew was born. I even put a bunch of pictures from Andrew's first six weeks or so into an actual album. I mean, wow, right? I didn't put photos of William into an album for, er, years.

But then inertia set in. Plus, the broken ankle kind of hobbled the whole effort (no pun intended...mostly). Every time Andrew was doing something cute, I'd be stuck on my butt, wondering if he'd still be doing that cute thing, whatever it was, by the time I hoisted myself up on the crutches, hobbled into the other room to get the camera (it was always in another room), limped back and then managed to get the camera out and ready to take photos. Boy, I'm panting a little bit right now, just remembering how much effort it took.

I did get lucky a few times, of course. But mostly, it was a challenge that even I, the shutterbug ordinaire (can't call myself a shutterbug extraordinaire...gotta set myself some goals, you know), couldn't overcome very often. Plus, there are only so many pictures you can take of a baby in a stroller in the same place in the same room. Although you have to admit that the ones I took last week really are amazingly cute. Right? Right??

I even took Andrew to Sears to have a portrait taken. No small task, given that I also brought William along, ostensibly to help baby-wrangle but mostly because I didn't know what else to do with him. But then, just like my mother had to do 30mumbleyears ago with me and my little brother, I ended up inviting William to be in the photos with Andrew. Okay, but I should get a pass on that. The pictures of William and Andrew together are gorgeous. They really are. And I got some good solo pictures of Andrew, too, so it wasn't like there are only pictures of the two of them together.

Anyway, now that I'm more mobile, I am renewing my vow to take more pictures of Andrew so that he doesn't whine, in 20 years or so, that I have so many more pictures of his big brother than I do of him. I probably will still have more pictures of William, but I'm going to try harder to make sure the discrepancy isn't too great.

But really, I can't resist taking some photos of both boys together. I just can't. They love each other so much, and it just makes me happy to see them like this. Those are the sorts of moments that make this parenting thing all totally worth while.

Reading time

Remember how I read "Charlotte's Web" to William after the baby was born? I enjoyed it so much that I wanted to read something else out loud to William, but I hadn't found the perfect book yet. I tried to read "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" to him, but it just didn't appeal to him. I'd have thought that a book about a boy who wins a trip to a candy factory would definitely appeal to my sweet-toothed kid, but apparently not. (Too weird, maybe. The book, I mean. Not William.)

Well, as it turned out, the answer presented itself recently. David bought the new Lego Harry Potter video game for the PlayStation, and William was enthralled by it. This was no shock, given his long affinity for wizards, magic wands and castles. A boy who goes to school in a castle! Sign him up! But as he and David played the game, it occurred to me that William had no clue who all the characters were or what was happening in the game. I thought he might like to hear the story so the game would make more sense.

So I pulled out the first Harry Potter book and made myself hoarse because every time I finished reading a chapter aloud, William wanted me to keep going. We sped through that book, which is over 300 pages long, in just over a week. He immediately demanded that we start reading the second one as soon I finished the last page of the first one, in fact.

Yes, a fair amount of the story is going right over his head. But he's thoroughly enjoying it. He definitely understands that Harry and his friends are the "good guys" and that Voldemort is the "bad guy." And he's already asking how they defeat Voldemort. I'm like, "Um, don't hold your breath. That's in the last book, about 4,000 pages from now, kiddo."

I admit that I was a little hesitant at first to begin reading the Harry Potter books to William because a major part of Harry's story revolves around the fact that Voldemort killed his parents when he was a baby. (I'm not giving anything away here, am I? You've had a dozen years now to read the first book, so I won't feel too bad if I spoiled it for you.) I fretted that that was too scary for a four-year-old. I mean, it's one thing when a talking spider dies in a book. It's a whole other thing when a little boy's parents are murdered, you know? I didn't want him to worry that something is going to happen to his own parents. But William seemed to understand that it's just a story. He's always had a pretty sophisticated (for his age) grasp of the concept of something being "pretend" or "make-believe." And the fact that I keep repeating, "It's just a story now, okay?" probably reinforces that, too. He nodded in understanding when I explained that Harry's parents loved him so much that they protected him from Voldemort, and that seemed to satisfy him. He didn't seem to extrapolate from Harry to himself, which was a relief to me.

William also has announced that he'd be in Gryffindor, not Slytherin, because he would rather be like Harry, not like the Slytherins because they're "the meanies." Good call.

This was only maybe the second time I'd reread "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" since William was born. And it's funny how, as I was reading aloud, I kept having these thoughts that had never occurred to me before. I felt like Mrs. Weasley, fretting over how Harry's relatives never gave him enough to eat--the poor starving little boy. And they didn't even fix his glasses or give him a birthday cake. Sniff. And when we reached the scene where Harry sees his mom and dad in the Mirror of Erised, I actually had to pause for a minute and collect myself. William may not get upset about the poor little boy who loses his parents too much because he has no real context for that. But as a mother, I could barely stand the thought of this boy missing his parents so much and not even being able to remember them. I need to remember what I keep telling William, I guess.

"It'sonlyastoryit'sonlyastoryit'sonlyastoryit'sonlyastory."

Sniff. I really am getting to be an old softy, aren't I?

Not to be left out, Andrew's been doing a little reading of his own:





As long as the pages taste good, it's all fine with him!

I'm sorry. I can't hear you through all the quiet around here.

Oh, the noise. The noise!

Right now, the silence in my house is deafening. I'm sitting here in my makeshift study, and the baby's asleep in the stroller in the family room. I just sent William out with his Dee Dee to see a movie. The cicadas were tuning up outside a little while ago, and the air-conditioning was humming, along with the dryer. But everything is quiet and still now, save for my fingers, snapping along on the keyboard.

Hear that?

That's the sound of nothing! Nothing at all! Isn't it glorious?

I'm especially grateful for the quiet right now because it means the baby is getting a morning nap. I've heard for years about how it's so much harder to guarantee naps for your second child because you're always having to yank them up for a nap and throw them into the car so you can go pick up your older child. But as it turns out, being housebound doesn't really guarantee a nap for your second child either. Not when the older, noisy first child is home, too.

Because what happens is like this:

I feed Andrew from the comfort of my armchair in the family room. I notice that he's nodding off, so I lurch sideways and deposit him as carefully as possible into the stroller. I recline the back of the stroller so he's more or less lying down and pop his binky into his mouth. His little eyes close.

An instant later, William, who is upstairs in the playroom, receives some type of sonar-like message that hey, his little brother is asleep! He immediately abandons his quarry of Legos and races downstairs to the family room. He gathers speed and noise as he runs, like a steam engine. By the time he reaches me, he is whooping at a decibel level illegal outside of most rock concerts.

I bare my teeth quietly at him and hiss, "Ssssssh! Your brother is sleeping!" And William, to his credit, does stop hollering. For about three seconds, that is. Then he begins growling and yelping as loudly as he can, almost like he can't hold back the noise that has gathered inside him. He does this in irregular intervals, while I hiss and chastise him through gritted teeth, in the interims.

The baby, of course, can't sleep through this. His eyes fly open. He wriggles sideways and begins mewling. He's tired. He desperately needs a nap. But he cannot resist the powerful urge to see what his beloved older brother is doing. He cannot bear to miss out! He begins to fret. And so we miss the window for that nap.

Not today, folks! Well, maybe later today. But not for now.

Ah, silence.

______________

The Very Serious Andrew:



Seriously. I wonder how much longer he'll actually fit in the Bumbo seat. Look at those chunky little legs!

Happy Fourth of July, 2010 style

Happy Fourth of July, everyone. As a friend of mine posted on Facebook today, I am extremely grateful to be living in a country where I can vote, worship as I choose, pursue happiness and voice my opinion. I don't have too much trouble at all with that last one, as of course you all well know by now!

I was trying to explain to William what Independence Day is and how it got started, but I don't think I did a very good job. He just thinks about it being a giant birthday party for our country with fireworks, and I guess that's just fine for a four-year-old. We can get into the American Revolution when he's older. Unfortunately, given my broken ankle, we won't be doing anything particularly exciting for the holiday. I just can't imagine going to a fireworks celebration out in the community with a broken ankle, let alone with a baby and a broken ankle.

Speaking of the baby (and you knew I would!), I wanted to also note that this is our first Fourth of July as a family of four. Andrew is now a little more than four months old now, and according to the pediatrician's office, he weighs 16 pounds and 3ounces and is roughly 26 inches long. That's about the 75th percentile for both. Pretty good sized boy I've got here, huh? I put him in the Bumbo seat to take his picture this morning, and I realized that he may not fit in it for too much longer.

A new entry in the "most ridiculous baby item" category

Procter & Gamble has announced that they're going to be launching a line of designer diapers. Cynthia Rowley has designed a line of 11 different patterned diapers that will be for sale at a major premium.

Are they kidding? No, strike that. Are they INSANE?

They say they're planning to sell a box of two dozen of these super-duper ladidah diapers for about $15.99. That's SIXTEEN DOLLARS FOR TWENTY-FOUR DIAPERS. Really. That is complete and total utter insanity. Know why? Well, of course, I'm going to tell you why. Newborns can rip through as many as a dozen diapers a day (a bad day, granted, but still). Older babies might go through five or six, maybe more, depending on how many are messy and how often they pull the old "poop in a fresh diaper" trick. So if your baby uses six diapers a day, you will use up a whole pack of those designer diapers in four days.

Also, hello, most babies are wearing clothes over their diapers most of the time. So the only time you would even see these designer diapers is if the baby is only wearing a diaper. That's all fine and all, except that I always dress my child before I leave the house. (Yes, we've all seen those mothers wearing muumuus in Wal-Mart with their babies dressed only in a saggy diaper. Fine, whatever. I don't aspire to that.) So the only time the fancy label would be visible is when I'm home alone with my child! So wouldn't that completely defeat the purpose of putting overpriced designer diapers on your child, which is to impress other people with your taste/spending power/utter stupidity?

Ah, but what if you genuinely just like the pattern on the diaper, you might be asking. After all, one of the patterns is supposed to be madras plaid, and we all know how I feel about madras plaid. I love it nearly as much as I love seersucker, which is evidenced by my children's wardrobes (and er, my own. One day I'm going to convince David to wear madras plaid or seersucker. It may take a long time, but I am going to try really hard.). But if you really like madras plaid, as I do, why not just buy a pair of madras plaid shorts or bubble for your son or a madras plaid dress and matching diaper cover for your daughter? You know, things that you can wash and they can wear again? Ragsland and Kelly's Kids have tons of this stuff. If those cost too much--and please, if you think those cost too much but are willing to fork out $16 for 24 diapers, you clearly need to reexamine your spending priorities--then check out Old Navy or even a consignment sale for the gently used stuff. I once bought a darling Ragsland john-john outfit for William at a consignment sale; it was madras plaid, still had the tags on it, and cost all of about $15. That's a dollar cheaper than those diapers, and he wore that outfit at least ten times, and Andrew will wear it one day, too.

Sheesh. Just when you think you've seen it all, they come up with something even weirder than you thought you could imagine. But I think it's hard to top designer diapers, particularly designer disposable diapers.

Like I needed another challenge

Oh yeah, William threw up this morning.

Apparently, the universe decided that I needed another challenge or something. I apparently had gotten too adept at managing two young children on one foot, so the universe decide to throw me a curveball. Or maybe a Tim Wakefield knuckleball.

Except that unlike the pitch from the Red Sox pitcher, I had no idea this was coming. William told us this morning that his tummy hurt, but we figured that he just needed to go to the bathroom. I started wondering if something was wrong, though, when he curled up on the sofa and quietly watched "Sid the Science Kid" and "SuperWhy!" without uttering a word, even dozing off a bit. Then, he asked me to turn off the TV, and he rolled over on the couch and went to sleep. Very very uncharacteristic of him, as we all know.

A little later, he woke up, sobbing and feverish. I cowboyed up and dragged myself up the stairs to find the thermometer and some medicine. But while I was doing that, I heard William cry out, then heard a patter of feet, and then...SPLAT. He had made a valiant dash for the bathroom but didn't make it all the way there.

And let me just say, I feel safe in assuming I'm the only person I know who has ever had to clean up a large pool of vomit off the floor while balancing on crutches. Does anyone remember that old kiddie game show "Double Dare"? Well, if you do, consider my little feat an example of a prime Double Dare Physical Challenge. I finally got a crying William to drag a footstool over to the center of the hall and used that to clean up the mess. Then I hobbled over to the kitchen, stuck the can of Lysol into my shirt (which I had tucked in, so it would act as a makeshift pocket) and then Lysoled the heck out of the hallway, bathroom, and anything else in the vicinity.

William was just pitiful, poor thing. You know how he has kind of a sparkle that lights him up? Being sick just extinguishes that light. He goes from being bright and shiny to just wan and gray. It breaks my heart.

Oh, and did I mention the nosebleed he had, too?

A friend came by to drop off a casserole (God bless her) around noon and made a Walgreens run for me. A dose of Tylenol later, and William was feeling much better. In fact, he went from being an inert lump in a pile of towels on the sofa back to a normal little fellow almost before my eyes. Actually he sat next to me, almost a dead weight, for awhile so the medicine could sink in, and we watched a landscaping show on HGTV. Then the Tylenol kicked in, and he popped up and demanded a popsicle, then some crackers and a banana.

His eyes are brighter this evening, although he's not 100 percent yet. But he hasn't thrown up again yet, thank goodness, and he's in good spirits. Hopefully he'll have his sparkle back tomorrow...

A four-year-old and a four-month-old

Guess who turned four months old today.

I know, I know, it's so hard to guess. That's right. Andrew James Wyckoff. Four months old. These four months went by so quickly, much faster than my pregnancy with him did.

I can't provide all the vital stats on him yet. We're not taking him to the pediatrician for his four-month well-baby check until next Thursday. But I can say that he seems to be thriving. He's all round and chubby and pink and, as I always say, delicious. He's a happy little guy, except when he's hungry, tired, or bored--and who can blame him for getting a little grumpy in those situations? I get grumpy when I'm hungry, tired and bored, too.

Andrew loves his big brother, too. When William kisses and hugs him, he usually
grins a big toothless gummy grin...well, until William gets too enthusiastic. I guess this is the sort of thing that makes second children tough. They have to survive their older siblings. I can't tell you the number of times I've heard other parents say, "Oh, don't worry about him/her. He/She's got an older brother." Like, enough said. I guess it's a universal thing.

I promise to try to do better about posting the little developmental things about Andrew as we go forward. I know I haven't done as much of that with him as I did with William. But I really am going to try. For example, Andrew is trying so hard to roll over onto his tummy these days. He gets all the way over on his side, all curled up into a comma, and then he hangs out. Meanwhile, we all wait with our breath held, waiting to see if he wobbles over onto his stomach. Usually, it would only be a matter of about a half centimeter before he would tip over, but he just hasn't given into it yet. Maybe soon. In the meantime, he's just teasing us. I'm glad that I did write down all the stuff that William did, because there's no way I'd remember enough details to be able to compare.

How are we going to do this?

Well, here I am.

I'm home alone with a broken ankle. Okay, I'm not totally alone. Andrew is here with me. But Mom went home this morning, and William isn't due home from summer camp for another two hours. Andrew's great and all, but he's not really much help around the house. It is All Me right now.

It's a little scary.

Here's my set-up: I'm sitting in the big arm chair in the family room, with my foot propped up on a pillow on the ottoman. Andrew is sitting in the Peg Perego stroller next to the ottoman. He's not a big fan of having to hang out in the stroller, but it reclines, so it's his only option for getting a nap right now. I can't stand up and lift him in and out of the Pack'n'Play or the swing, so the stroller is it. I've got the laptop here, with the house phone and the cell phone next to me. On the advice of my friend Kimberly, Mom bought me an apron with deep pockets, so I can carry things when I'm crutching around. We put a plastic tub of diaper-changing supplies behind my chair, so I can get out and change Andrew on the floor; I've got a footstool back there, too, so I can hopefully get up and down by using that. I can push the stoller into the kitchen when I'm on crutches, as long as I don't get too ambitious or move too fast. And I think I can get down on the ottoman and get Andrew out of the stroller and down into the bouncy seat by the coffee table. This will be much easier once I can put some weight on my foot, but I think I can manage until then.

Everything's just going to be a little more time-consuming and complicated than it usually is.

Whew. I remember feeling a little bit (okay, a lot) of cabin fever after I got home from the hospital after having a c-section. A few days at home, and I was ready to get out again. I have now been inside my house for almost a week. I've actually been housebound longer than I was when I was post-op then. Because at least then I could go out and get the mail. I'm not about to navigate our front stairs on crutches. So, here I am. It's miserably hot out there, so I guess I'm not missing much. I'm feeling a little guilty because I had hoped to do all this stuff with William this summer, to make up for lying on the bathroom floor in front of the toilet for so much of last summer. But this summer, I'm just stuck in the house.

A couple of friends have offered to come by tomorrow to visit, and I'm going to take them up on that. Mary Clare actually offered to come by early this afternoon, but given that today was her first (half) day back at work after finishing maternity leave, I really wanted her to go home and be with her family. I think I can make do until Diane brings William home. Then we'll wait for David to come home from work.
Tomorrow will be another adventure. It will be my first day without Mom here to help me get up and about. We'll see how it goes. What's really scaring me is the thought of next week. Next week, William doesn't have summer camp. He'll be home all day with me and the baby. It will be me with my bum leg and the baby who can't sit up by himself yet but weighs at least 15 pounds and my bouncing-off-the-walls four-year-old. Good times, huh?

I'm still feeling grateful that I didn't have to have surgery, and I'm still relieved that Andrew didn't get hurt. But I'm starting to worry about how long I'm going to have to stay off my right foot...how long I'm going to have to do all this. If I knew it wasn't much longer, I think I could feel better about coping in the short run. As David said, we know this is temporary. I just don't know how temporary, and that's the problem. Y'all know me. I like to have a Plan. Plans need more definite paramaters than this. You know, like an end date. This is my OCD kicking in, I guess.

But hey, at least Andrew finally fell asleep in the big stroller. Hopefully we can make this work...at least until we don't have to anymore.

Baptism photo

Photo of the boys from Andrew's baptism!



Didn't they all look so handsome? I am very proud of my boys. Please note that William is holding the special candle that they gave to us from the baptism ceremony. No, he didn't get to hold it until after I blew out the flame.

I'll post more pictures from the baptism when I can. My foot hurts because I can't keep it propped up when I'm using this computer, and it's been a long day anyway. Also, I need David to chaperone me while I crawl up the stairs, and he's ready for me. Maybe tomorrow I'll feel like sitting here at the desk and posting some more photos.

My first (and hopefully last) broken bone

I would like to encourage all of you women out there to start working on your upper body strength immediately. Go to the gym and do some triceps exercises, or get some cans of soup and start doing biceps curls at home, or better yet, start rowing. Or all of the above.

Why? Well, you never know when you are going to have to drag yourself up a big long flight of stairs. Multiple times. Like for instance, the flight of stairs in my house, which has 17 steps. Seventeen tall steps.

That's how I'm getting back and forth between the first floor and the second floor of my house these days, thanks to a broken ankle that has severely curtailed my ability to get around. As in, I can barely get around at all. I've got a big heavy boot on my right foot but I can't put any weight on it, so even with my crutches, there's only so much I can do. Heaven forbid we have any kind of emergency while I'm in this state.

Let me start at the beginning for those of you who haven't heard the story yet.

We had Andrew baptized on Sunday at our church here in Nashville. It was wonderful. My father-in-law, who has been ill, was able to be the presenting elder for Andrew, and it was Aaron who carried his baby grandson out into the congregation during the service. William walked down off the stage and joined them to help introduce Andrew to all the church members. The sight of Aaron carefully navigating the center aisle with Andrew in one arm and holding William's hand with his other will surely stay with everyone who saw it for a long, long time. The pastor who baptized Andrew leaned over to me and told me what a beautiful image it was. It really was. We're not allowed to take photos in church, so I stared as hard as I could to burn the image into my brain. Since Daddy baptized William, it was really nice to have Aaron involved in Andrew's baptism.

Afterward, we had a family luncheon at our house. After dessert, David passed Andrew over to me so I could go feed him. I took Andrew, turned around and fell over the open dishwasher door. Trying desperately not to fall and slam Andrew's head into the counter, I somehow managed to twist and contort and fall to the ground with him in my arms. However, I managed to twist and contort and break my right ankle on the way down. Scared to death that I'd catastrophically injured my son, I screamed and cried in hysterics. I pulled Andrew away from my chest, and I saw that he was wailing, which I dimly registered was a good sign. David took Andrew and examined him, while I remained on the floor and....well, freaked out about Andrew. Others immediately got ice for my foot and propped it up on a pillow. When we saw how swollen my foot was and I couldn't put any weight on it, we realized it was time to visit the ER.

Long story short, I have a spiral fracture of the right distal fibula, or a frature in the smaller of the two leg bones down by my ankle. The ER doctor put a boot on it and sent me home with instructions to elevate it and stay off of it. A subsequent visit to an orthopedist yesterday resulted in a new, better-fitting boot...and instructions to elevate my foot and stay off of it until I go back for another appointment in about two weeks.

So I'm more or less immobile. Right now I'm sprawled here on a chair in the family room with my booted foot propped up on a cushion. My friend Del posted a line from "A Christmas Story" on my Facebook page today: "Randay lay there like a slug. It was his only defense." I can't even tell you how much I feel like Randy right now...only without the heavy snowsuit. My poor mother is now waiting on me hand and foot, almost literally. I can hobble around on the crutches, but I'm not very good at it, and I've also managed to strain a couple of muscles in my chest from the effort and bruise the insides of both arms from the armrests of the crutches. Also, I can't get myself up and down the stairs except by sitting on my bottom, like a hesitant toddler, and dragging myself with my arms. It's slow and awkward. I'm trying to only make the round trip once a day so as not to completely wear myself out. (Hence my instructions at the beginng of this post.) Taking a shower is also an adventure. Mom's out looking for a stool or chair we can put in the shower so I don't have to stand on one leg and try to wash my hair. It's one thing to pretend to be a flamingo on dry ground; it's a whole other thing to attempt to do it in a slipper shower, you know?

Anyway, the good news is that I won't need surgery on my ankle. I won't have to worry about feeding Andrew formula from a bottle for a few days while taking pain medication for the surgery, either, which was actually much more of a concern for me than the actual going under the knife part. He's had exactly one bottle in his whole life, and he's never had formula, and I was dreading the thought of having to introduce both at the same time to him. Longtime TPinaP readers will remember the, um, adventures that we had in getting William to take a bottle when he was a baby, and I just couldn't imagine doing that right now with Andrew, not when I'm already a little stressed out from my injury. So I'm trying to get by with plain old Motrin or Advil for pain relief instead of a narcotic as it is, so I won't have to pump and dump. (If you don't know what that means, just be glad. Anyone who's ever uttered the phrase "there's no use crying over spilled milk" has never tried to pump breastmilk, let's just say that.). Most of the time, it's okay. I asked David last night if it was normal that my ankle was hurting, and he looked at me like I was nuts. "Um, yeah," he said. "You have a broken bone!" Heh. Yeah, that's right.

The challenge from here on out is going to be trying to be a mom. I can't walk. I can't drive. We're not sure when I'll be able to do either, but it'll probably be at least a few weeks. I might be able to put my foot down for balance in another week or so, but we don't know for sure. It will depend on how fast I heal and what I can tolerate. Diane is going to help as much as she can, and a couple of friends have also offered to help out when they can after Mom has to go home on Monday. What I could use is a dumb waiter. You know, one of those devices in old hotels and houses where you can stick something in a little compartment and then lower it up and down on a pulley, almost like a mini elevator for your stuff. I could put Andrew in that, and lower him down to the first floor in the morning and then up again in the evening, while I haul myself up and down the stairs with my arms. (I'd better get some fabulous arm muscles out of this.)

Or a magic wand would be good, too.

This is my first broken bone, incidentally. Hopefully, it will be my last!

Quick photo of Andrew being adorable

Seriously, how cute is this picture?



I know! Andrew adores being changed, weirdly enough. You put him down on the changing table and he just lights up. He wriggles around and smiles and giggles. So I snapped this picture right around the time that David was getting him ready for bed the other night.

Isn't he just delicious? Andrew, I mean. David's pretty cute, too, though.

Nighty night? Not so fast...

So. Tired. So. Freaking. Tired.

I read an article a couple of months ago that said that people who don't get enough sleep have a harder time losing weight. The threshold was something like seven or eight hours of sleep per night, on average.

Ha HA! I laughed so hard at that, I nearly fell of my chair. When was the last time I got seven or eight uninterrupted hours of sleep? I'll tell you. It was about a year ago. Because once I became pregnant, the All Day-All Night Ugliness set in at about five or six weeks. And that meant that I was nauseated and/or puking at night. And then, even after that lessened (read: got a little better but did not go away entirely), I had to get up and use the bathroom four or five times per night. And no, that's not an exaggeration. That lasted throughout the whole pregnancy. Then I had, you know, the baby. That was in late February, and well, here we are. No wonder I'm not able to lose the rest of this baby weight. No wonder these pounds are stubbornly clinging to my hips and stomach and waist--and well, everywhere, let's be honest--no matter how many miles I log on the treadmill at the Y. My body's too stressed from exhaustion to let go of the pounds.

Now, to be fair to Andrew, he did sleep through the night a few times. He's done it at least eight or nine times, in fact. It wasn't reliable at all. You couldn't predict it. But after a couple of rocky nights in a row, usually he'd throw in a really good night, just to keep us from completely going insane. The trouble is, he's not doing it anymore. About ten or twelve days ago, he started doing this horrible multiple-times-per-night-wakeup routine.

It goes something like this:

Andrew goes to bed in his crib, approximately 9 p.m.
Andrew wakes up, crying, approximately 12:15 p.m. [Last night, it was 11:40. But I digress.]
Jennifer or David stumbles down the hall to give him a binky and returns to bed.
Andrew wakes up again, crying, approximately 1:30 p.m.
Jennifer and/or David attempt to rebink him, which lasts approximately 20-30 minutes.
Andrew objects again, around 2 a.m.
Jennifer nurses him.
Jennifer puts him down in his crib again, around 2:20 a.m.
Andrew wakes up, crying because he's spun himself around in his crib and now his head is wedged up against the crib side, approximately 3:30 a.m.
Jennifer spins him sideways and rebinks him for good measure, then flops back into bed.
Andrew is mad again, 4:45 a.m.
David and Jennifer both wake up and hope that he stops crying on his own accord. No such luck. One of them goes in there to deal with him.
5:40 a.m.-ish, Andrew's ready to eat again. Often, he's also mad that his feet have gotten stuck in between the slats of the crib rail.
Jennifer nurses him from the comfort of her own bed, and they fall asleep together.
6 a.m. David gets up and gets in the shower.
6:10ish, William makes the first of a half-dozen entrances into the room to see if everyone's awake and ready to talk to him.
The baby stays mostly asleep until about 7 a.m., then begins wiggling incessantly.
William continues to pop in and out, slamming the door loudly after himself.
Jennifer finally gives up the ghost and stumbles downstairs for a Diet Coke, between 7:15 and 8 a.m. depending on when she has to get up anyway.

Sephora is now selling Yves St. Laurent's vaunted Touche Eclat concealer. I saw it yesterday. It might be worth the $40, frankly, to cover up these ginormous dark circles that are now taking up half my face.

Everyone keeps telling me that this, too, shall pass. Yeah, it's the mantra of all exhausted mothers of new babies. I just wish it would go ahead and pass already! I remember when William was a baby and still not sleeping through the night, and another mother told me that she dearly loved her baby, but she'd love him a lot more if she didn't have to see him so much during the middle of the night. And I knew exactly what she meant. I'm sort of feeling that way myself right now. I loooooove Andrew. Want to eat him up with a spoon. But oh, I'd love it if he'd give me a night off here and there...

Compare and contrast

People around here are always saying how much Andrew looks like William. At first, he really didn't, but as he gets older, I can see more of a resemblance. They'll never be mistaken for each other, but you can definitely tell they're brothers.

Here is a Compare and Contrast for you.

Andrew, today, at three months (and one day):



William at three months, July 22, 2006:



I tried really hard to get Andrew to smile so the photos would be more comparable, but he wasn't interested. He really is a smiley little guy these days, but well, you can pose a baby but you can't make him smile on cue.

Looking at these pictures, they don't look that much alike here. I have some other photos of these two in similar poses and outfits in which they resemble each other more. I'll post those another time.

Three months

Today is Andrew's three-month birthday. Happy birthday, little man!

I'm not sure how three months passed so quickly. I guess time flies when you're not puking anymore.

We did not do anything particularly special today. I took the boys to the YMCA so I could work out. They both went to the children's area, which William adores and Andrew doesn't seem to mind. That's about the extent of our day. I did some work. William watched "Word Girl." Andrew slept in the swing.

Really, I can't believe that three months have gone by since I gave birth to Andrew. It seemed like William's first three months lasted much longer. But then, I was living in 29 Palms then, and it was summertime and blazingly, eyeball-searingly hot, and time just seemed to pass more slowly then anyway. These past three months have passed in a quick blur of hauling everyone back and forth to Westminster, honestly. Preschool, church, committee meetings, etc. I've joked in the past that I ought to have a cot set up somewhere in the church, and well, I'm only halfway kidding sometimes.

But seriously, three months just went by, snap, just like that. Andrew's outgrown most of the three-month clothes and is well on his way to wearing six-month outfits. He's been sleeping in his own room now for a couple of weeks. I'm about ready to return the cradle to Shab and all the maternity clothes I borrowed to their rightful owners. Three months, done. What's that expression about how the days are long but the weeks are short? The three months really did fly by.

Stay tuned. I hope to post some compare-and-contrast photos of William and Andrew soon....

William's Word Nemesis

We have found William's word nemesis.

It's "ravioli." It has all the sounds that he has trouble with: R, V, and L.

It sounds like "wabb-ee-oo-wee" when he says it. He can get the "v" sound if he slows down and is careful, which improves it to "wavv-ee-oo-wee."

It's pretty cute, him enunciating as carefully as he can. He can get the "r" and "l" sounds better, too, if he takes the time, but he usually doesn't. I mean, why bother? Usually, he's only saying "ravioli" if we're having ravioli, so there's context working for him.

For the record, the school district's speech pathologist wasn't worried about these little articulation issues when she evaluated him earlier this spring through the gifted-and-talented program. She said it's pretty normal for a child his age, and she expects them to resolve as he gets older. I know that I had trouble with the "l" sound myself as a little girl; I used to call myself "JJ Warson." And I eventually outgrew it, so I'm not worried about William, either.

Maybe I'll just serve a lot of "wabb-ee-oo-wee" and let him practice...

P.S. I have a word nemesis, too. And I'm 35. My word nemesis is actually a phrase nemesis. It's "lawn mower." I can't seem to quite say "mower" right, unless I say it very slowly and exaggerate it. I say "lawn more." However, I think this may be a Southern thing. Sort of like "bold shrimp."

All things tend toward chaos

I was talking to another mom at the mall today, and when I was admiring her teeny little ten-week old baby daughter, I noticed something. Everything that the mom had for her baby matched...or at least all of it coordinated. The pink-and-white flowered (and monogrammed) diaper bag coordinated perfectly with the lace-edged pink blanket. The baby's outfit matched her hat. The outfit and the blanket and the hat all looked lovely and coordinated against the backdrop of the tasteful charcoal gray infant car seat and stroller. Even the mom was dressed in a lovely outfit that seemed to go perfectly with her child; she wore a really pretty white tunic, with dark jeans, silver sandals and silver jewelry.

By contrast, Andrew's set-up was a total hodgepodge. He was wearing a sweet little Kissy Kissy romper printed with sailboats, but it clashed jarringly against the brown, aqua, and cream polka-dot-and-stripe pattern of his car seat. Which in turn did not match the black Snap n' Go stroller frame. He did have a nice little white blanket, but geez, how hard is it to throw a white blanket on your baby? And then he had his pacifier clip, which is white-and-blue. He had everything he needed, but he sure wasn't going to win any style points. Or, should I say, I am not going to win any style points, since I was responsible for all of it. Oh yeah, we haven't even gotten to my ensemble. I was wearing an orange t-shirt, khaki cargo pants, and green sandals. Not even delicate pretty sandals, either. No, I was wearing my big old clunky Keens. And my glasses, which are scratched. Of course.

Together, we looked like the Before picture in a Before-and-After photo spread for a makeover feature in a women's magazine. Some editor would be slapping little black bars across our faces.

This might have bothered me a few years ago. However, at some point, I had to come to terms with reality. And for me, reality is the fact that I am just never going to be all perfectly turned out. I'm never going to be one of those women who never has a hair out of place (good Lord, no, not with this hair). I'm never going to be one of those women whose clothes are always neatly pressed, without any wrinkles or strings hanging off. I may start out looking nice and neat in the morning, but eventually my true self wins out, and I start looking a little frazzled.

I am about to do something fairly unusual in a parenting blog. I'm about to talk about physics. My reason will be very clear, however. You see, in physics, one of the laws of thermodynamics posits that all things tend toward chaos. That about sums me up in a nutshell. Really, I'm okay with this. At some point, you have to accept the truth about yourself. The truth was out there. And for me, the truth meant wild hair and the odd Diet Coke stains on my shirt.

And for better or for worse, I am passing this little, er, characteristic on to my children, too. For example, I have big messy hair. William has big messy hair. Probably, Andrew will have big messy hair. I tend to spill food on my clothes. William tends to do the same. I'll hazard a guess that Andrew will eventually do it, too. You can see where I'm going with this. My poor kids never had a chance. David may be all nice and neat and orderly most of the time--and he really is, it's pretty amazing--but in the universe, chaos tends to win out over order, and that's how it seems to be developing for our offspring, too. Granted, Andrew can still blame me for anything right now--he's not choosing his own outfits, after all--but I think the handwriting is on the wall, just the same.

No, I'm just never going to be perfectly turned-out, no matter how hard I try. And neither are my kids. Luckily, they're boys. People seem to have lower standards about these things for boys. And whew, I'm kinda glad. I'd feel a little bad about setting a daughter up for that life... at least, until she was old enough to come to terms with it for herself! Maybe people will think that it's charming in my boys. Or maybe they'll marry someone one day who can reign it in...a little bit.

School's out

Today was William's last day of three-year-old preschool. Wow. It doesn't even seem possible that the school year is over. And it really doesn't seem possible that he's through with his first year of preschool.

And yet, today, when I picked him up, he climbed up into the minivan with all this end-of-the-year stuff. His spare set of clothes. His school photos. A large envelope of art projects. A little treat (bubbles) from his teachers.

I guess my having a baby in February is probably responsible for my feeling like the year just sped up all of a sudden. I mean, Andrew is twelve weeks old today. How did THAT happen? And yet, he is. And William's finished with three-year-old preschool. He has a two-and-a-half week break before summer day camp starts.

Insert cliche here about time flying, yadda yadda yadda.

Somthing I've started doing recently is musing over what I remember about being William's age. My memories are rather vague between the ages of three and four; undoubtedly some of what I remember is probably just things that my parents have told me. But I can remember a lot more about my life, more clearly, starting at about age four. I remember moving to Birmingham, just a week or two after my fourth birthday. I remember racing into my new room and bouncing on the bed. I remember starting kindergarten at our church a few weeks after that.

I wonder if William will remember all the things that he's experiencing now. Will he remember what it was like when he visited me in the hospital and met Andrew for the first time? Will he be able to tell Andrew one day what life was like when Andrew was a baby? Will he remember the flood? Will he remember playing Batman on the playground with his buddies in preschool? Will he remember the bouncy house at his birthday party? Or will his memories be supplemented with my memories, with the stories that we will tell him, and with photographs?

I guess that's why I write these things down.

Speaking of writing things down, I posted this little exchange on Facebook yesterday, but I thought it was funny enough to preserve for posterity here...

William: "Do you know what tofu is?

Me: "Yes."

William: "It's a Presbyterian's favorite food."

Me: "Oh yeah? Tofu? Are you sure?"

William: "Yes, because Presbyterians don't eat meat."

Me: "Hmm. Are you sure you don't mean vegetarians?"

William: "Oh. Yeah. Vegetarians."

Me: "What do you think a Presbyterian's favorite food is?"

William: "I don't know. [Pause] Carrots?"

Big Kids

When I was pregnant, I optimistically thought I'd give the whole baby-wearing thing a shot, at least some of the time. Knowing that I wanted to try out a couple of different kinds with my soon-to-be-second-child, a friend sent to me a couple of her slings. She'd given up on using them with her daughter and wanted someone to get some use out of them.

Now, I did try carrying William around in a ring sling for a little while when he was an infant. But he rapidly got so heavy that it hurt my neck and shoulders. By the time he was about three-and-a-half months old, I'd given up on the fabric sling altogether and only occasionally deployed the (sturdier) Baby Bjorn.

But I figured that my second child might not be as big or as heavy as William, so why not give it a second try?

Ha. Ha ha ha ha ha!



See, even Andrew's laughing at that! Ha, ha, funny Mommy! She's so naive and optimistic!

Just for kicks, we weighed our younger child last week. In a diaper and onesie, Andrew weighed...wait for it...15 pounds and four ounces. Now, David is quick to add that Andrew had just eaten and may have had a slightly wet diaper. But still. I know people whose babies didn't weigh 16 pounds until they were a year old, and our kid's going to weigh 16 pounds (or possibly more) by the time he's four months old.

Good grief.

So naturally, people look at Andrew, see his (admittedly quite adorable) chunky little body and chubby arms and legs and figure that he's older than he really is. They tend to ask me, "How old is he?" and seem to expect me to answer, "Oh, he's almost six months old" or something to that effect. (He also holds his head up better than a lot of babies his age. He's so Advanced! He's so Above Average! Call Garrison Keillor!)



So when I say, "He's eleven weeks old," they tend to blink. "Really?" they say, with a slight shake of their heads in disbelief. "Wow..." No one has actually said, "Are you sure?" to me yet, but I can hear them thinking it. For the record, I'm pretty sure how old he is. I was there, after all.

Yes, I grow big kids. I don't know what it is, but I grow big kids. You might not know it to look at David and me, but we have Big Kid DNA in us somewhere.

I took this picture of Andrew snuggling on his daddy's chest for a nap this afternoon,

and it was not lost on me that they may not be able to do this too much longer. He may be too heavy pretty soon. He's already about too heavy now for me to do this. When I was pregnant, I had a belly full of baby compressing my lungs. And now that he's on the outside, if I have him lying on my chest, he compresses my lungs that way, too. Ooof. I'm not sure, actually, how David managed to sleep this way.

Aw, but Andrew's such a sweetie pie, I promise. There's just more of him to love.




Speaking of big kids, you all know that my actual big kid turned four last month. But with all the other stuff going on (hello, massive flood), we just got around to taking him to the pediatrician for his four-year well-child appointment. He is wonderfully healthy, fortunately, and doing just fine.



And yes, William is big, too. For the record, William is a little over 41 inches tall and 42 pounds. That puts him in about the 75th and 90th percentiles respectively for height and weight. Which is about where he's been most of his life, albeit a little higher up on the curve in both categories this time. No surprises there.

Me and my gigantic, albeit adorable and wonderful, boys:


But all joking aside, I'm glad that both my boys are healthy and happy. I may joke around about how big they are, but I'm really lucky that both of them are thriving. Too often, I hear about babies who aren't so big and healthy, and I always have a moment where I think about how thankful I am for my children's good fortune. I could be sitting by an isolette in a NICU somewhere, and thank God that I'm not. If I get a little backache from carrying around a heavy baby, well, that's just not that big a deal in the greater scheme of things.

Happy Mother's Day

Yes, we survived the Great Nashville Flood of 2010. Yes, we know how extremely lucky we are. Our little subdivision somehow escaped the floodwaters, even though most of the rest of our suburb was underwater. On the whole, Nashville will never be the same, and after seeing what the flood did to this whole region, I don't think I will be quite the same, either. I've never seen such devastation in person before.

More on that later. (Or if you want to read more about it now, go over to my other blog.)

For now, I just wanted to wish all you mothers out there a Happy Mother's Day, with a special heartfelt wish to my own mother. (To Judi: Happy Mama's Day. I love you. Thanks for being my mommy and putting up with me all these years. Love, me.) And to my mother-in-law, thank you for doing such a good job raising your son so that I would have such a terrific man to marry.

Me and the boys today, in front of my dogwood tree, which I've decided is going to be the official Mother's Day photo spot:



And a quick shot that I got before we left for church. I wanted to make sure I at least attempted to get some pictures of them while they were both still relatively clean: