Fuzzy Love

Well, This is Trouble

Snow. Must. Melt.

Clearly, we are going a little stir crazy. It's really not the snow's fault, but the temperatures in the twenties that are keeping us inside. For the last few days Liam has only gotten to play outside for a few minutes each time we head to the car, but that's obviously not enough: he needs to run.

I was talking to my Dad on the phone yesterday while both kids had melt downs (my favorite is when they're both crying at the same time) and he suggested I stuff them in their snow suits and toss them in the backyard. Of course we have three feet of snow back there and Liam is only three-and-a-half feet tall, but whatever.

Last time I put Liam out in the snow-filled backyard he crawled to his slide (about a forty foot walk), cleaned it off, lost a mitten, went down the slide anyway, and then stood there yelling for me to come get him. Sure, it tired him out, but it's not my favorite way to do that. But it's been a looong time since my dad had little kids (and I don't think he was the one in charge even then).

So today we're off to the suburban mom's last resort for tiring out her kids on a cold winter's day: MacDonald's Play Place. I know; it's horrible. And it's going to be packed.

 

This Post is Brought to You By Pure Dumb Luck*

Olivia, due to one of those unknowable forces of nature that causes babies to wake up and cry at ungodly hours, has been awake since five o-clock this morning. Therefore I also have been awake since five o'clock this morning. This in itself is bad enough, but it sets off a very predictable chain of events that keeps us all from proper sleep, makes everyone grumpy, and can take days to break out of.

On days which Olivia does NOT start the day at five, she takes one nap. Today, she was cranky and clingy and really ready to nap by about seven-thirty in the morning. Well, Liam has preschool today and we leave at eight-thirty, so that means we had about an hour of Olivia following me around screaming whenever I set her down on the floor so I could, say, go to the washroom or put on my shoes, for example. Then she promptly fell asleep in the car.

You never know when a toddler (who really isn't fit for human company without a two-hour nap) will decide that a ten-minute cat nap in a car is all he or she needs for the whole day. Sometimes, when you gently try to extract them from their car seat their little eyes snap open and it's all over; you're stuck with little miss crankypants for the rest of the day (or at least until her father comes home, and he better not be late on these days).

So today everything was working against Olivia napping in her crib and me getting a little bit of quiet peace, which I desperately wanted today. So let me walk you through the painstaking process of taking little sleeping Olivia from the car to her crib, all done with me walking and breathing as gently and quietly as possible:

1. Unbuckle the car seat. This is a pretty quiet process and rarely wakens a sleeping baby.
2. Remove her shoes. Also quiet. It's much more fumbly to take her shoes off while holding her, and so I try to do it in the car. Today that move was risky, however, because the temperature in my garage right now is below freezing.
3. Unzip her jacket. It is too cold to remove the jacket, even in the garage (see #2), but removing a coat from a sleeping baby is extra-fumbly, so I compromise by just unzipping. The damn Velcro that is also on her coat IS noisy, so her eyes snap open. I hold my breath until they close again.
4. Remove her arms from the car seat straps and pick her up. Some fluttering of her eyelids, so I immediately get her into a sleep position, which, for Olivia, is cradled in my left arm. The eyes stay closed.
5. Now it's a pretty easy walk into the house until I hit an obstacle: the baby gate is closed. This is noisy to open, and there's more eye fluttering, but thankfully she stays asleep. At this point I start to think I'm going to make it.
6. Once in Olivia's room, I remove her jacket. This is the riskiest move of all, and I barely breathe through any of it. I lean her up against my shoulder and slowly, very slowly, pull one arm out and then the other. Her eyes snap open and I freeze! But I gently slide her back into the cradle position and she's asleep again.
7. Move the stuffed animals that are all over Olivia's bed. Normally I re-arrange the toys as soon as I get Olivia up, but because today she woke up in the dark and I don't think my eyes were really open, I left them where they lay. Now I'm cursing myself as I have to lean over side of the crib and toss them aside so there's room for Olivia to lie down.
8. Gently place Olivia in the crib. Her eyes snap open and she stares at me. All might have been well, even with this unfortunate turn of events, except for one more obstacle...
9. Remove the cat from the room. He's curled up on the rocking chair. I'd be happy to leave him there, but this cat (as perhaps all cats) hates a closed door and will immediately scratch and meow until it is opened again. He has to go. Olivia's eyes follow me as I scoop up the cat, toss him out of the room, blow her a kiss, and gently close the door.
10. Wait. One...two...three...
11. Damn it, she's crying. It looks like it's all over. I decide to give her five minutes.
12. Success! Phew. I get to relax after all.

So Olivia is sleeping, I get a few minutes alone (maybe an hour, if I'm lucky), and my patience should be restored for this afternoon. However, this hard-won nap is perpetuating the grumpy cycle. Because Olivia fell asleep at nine o'clock this morning, she'll need another nap this afternoon (if you think she should skip it, you come live with her). Then she won't need so much sleep tonight and will wake up again at five tomorrow morning.

And the cycle continues.

So anyway, what I really wanted to tell you is that Liam made a robot this morning. We had to do something in all those hours before preschool (and the sunrise).

*Lady Olivia does not allow computer usage while she is awake except during those very brief episodes that Elmo is on television. She enforces this restriction by hanging onto my legs, screaming, and wiping her snot on my pants.

My Hometown Hath My Winter, and I Have Its*

I am very tired of our winter. It's been almost a month since I've seen the street in front of our house. We aren't playing outside very much. I've seen more than one person taking a pick axe to their driveway. I've never been so grateful for our Southern exposure. And each Monday we, along with all our neighbors, faithfully pull our garbage cans to the curb (well, about three feet beyond the curb, where the street is plowed) and wait to see on which day the pick up actually happens. Usually by Thursday afternoons our garbage is still out there and street is plagued with very happy crows. These are the winters of my childhood (except the pick axe part - I've never seen that before), and I didn't enjoy them then, and I don't enjoy them now. Usually Denver weather throws us an unseasonably hot day every other week or so but it's been a long long time since we've had one.

The Scotia, on the other hand, is having such a mild fall and winter that the dandelions were still in bloom on December 16th. That's not right.

The colder weather does come with one bonus: Olivia looks damn cute in her snowsuit** (especially when she flaps her arms to detach the mittens).

*With apologies to Sir Philip Sidney.

**We did not buy Olivia a snowsuit this year. We did buy Liam one at about this age and I think he wore it one time. So when Mark's mother offered to pick Olivia up some snow pants to go with her cute little coat, I said, "No, that's a waste; she'll only wear them once." Stupid me. At that age Liam didn't have the ability to nag me constantly to play outside. Now he does. Thank goodness for our friend Jenn who said those magical words, "Don't buy a snowsuit! We have one that will fit!"

This Feels Strange

I think I'm actually relaxed. I'm not entirely sure; it's been a long time. But no, come to think of it, my shoulders aren't up around my ears and my heart isn't racing. Wow. Here's how I did it:

Thursday evening: book club. Drank wine, ate lots of appy-type goodies, talked with girlfriends. And none of the people I don't like came (that's a whole other post, let me tell you).

Friday evening: girls night out. Drank gin and tonics and more wine, talked more with girlfriends.

Saturday morning: Mark takes Liam out for their monthly hair cuts/lunch date. Olivia goes down for a nap as soon as the garage door closes and wakes up two and one half hours later, just as Mark and Liam return. I sit on the sofa, knitting and working my way through the Tivo the whole blissfully quiet time.

(There. At least you can see what the heck I'm doing.)

Saturday afternoon: to Target. I plan to reorganize the front closet because I'm tired of digging through our personal black hole each and every day to find four little shoes and two huge ones. We get shoe shelves and hanging things and a bunch of other unrelated stuff too, since it is not humanly possible to leave Target without spending at least a hundred dollars. I clean out and tidy the front closet in very little time (ending up with a big bag for Goodwill), but find it incredibly satisfying.

Sunday morning: Mark's off to watch the football game and eat wings with a friend. The friend's wife invites the kids and I over to her house to play, which makes the day much more fun.

If my two little wild cards play along, I may sleep well tonight.

Well Isn't That Creative

Liam has used some pretty odd media in his school art projects, but this has to be the most...unique...so far. It's a marshmallow-Qtip-tooth pick snowflake, of course! And, yes, for the most part, that's how it's supposed to look. All the other kids ran out of class holding theirs proudly for all to see, but Liam, for some reason, crammed his into his backpack and so his puddle of Qtippy glue has broken off. Now, I'm enthusiastic about any activity that involves marshmallows, but Liam really didn't seem very impressed with this one; he didn't even bother to dig it out of his backpack when we got home. But then maybe he just didn't know how to put it on the fridge.

I Couldn't Help It

Which John Hughes Character Are You?

You are Clark Griswold (from National Lampoon's Vacation)! You're full of optimism and boundless energy, and no one loves a good family trip more. No one else can swear a blue streak like you either, Sparky!
Take this quiz!

And, somehow, it doesn't surprise me.

Bookworm

Every parent of more than one child says this at one time or another, and now it's my turn: I am in awe of how my children are so different from each other, and that, even at Olivia's young age of not-quite-fourteen months, her nature just so is.

When I was pregnant with Liam, Mark and I would lie in bed, prop a book on my expanding belly, and read out loud. We tried to make sure Mark did most of the reading, just because we figured the little guy (or girl, for all we knew) was getting pretty used to my voice anyway. Then, when Liam was here, we read to him the prescribed fifteen minutes a day, even when he was much too little to care. I was careful to always cuddle him, ensuring that reading brought forth the warm and cozy feelings that would make him a devoted reader for the rest of his life (of course I also cuddled him whenever he watched television, so I may have just developed a life-long lover of the sofa).

For the most part, this has worked. Liam will not go to sleep without at least three books read to him, which is getting trickier as he ages and the books get longer. It adds up to about thirty minutes a day, which used to be sixty when he napped (a moment of silence for the afternoon nap, please). Sometimes he flips through books by himself and a couple of mornings a week he beats us into Olivia's room (which isn't that hard, really) and "reads" picture books to her through the crib bars (which is pretty damn cute, let me tell you). But it is a rare day that Liam will bring a book to me at any other time of day and ask to have it read. Maybe it's just the age or maybe it's just him; time will tell.

Olivia, on the other hand, is a bookworm. I know this already. She carries books around, she drops them on our laps, she whaps us with them if we don't start reading them quickly enough, she even sleeps with them. She carries my books around and flips through the picture-free pages. I've even caught her "reading" the Pottery Barn catalogs that show up every other day. And, being child number two, she got the shaft again. Did we read to my belly when she was in there? Nope (although many times out loud to Liam, and I suppose little fetal-Olivia didn't know the difference). Did I read board book after board book to her in those first few months of life? Of course not. Did it matter one little bit? Apparently not.

Maybe that's why flak is delivered down upon us from, let's say, a slightly older generation (that'd be yours, Dad) when they hear about the things we do to turn our children into music- dance- sports- academic- prodigies by way of toddler tumbling classes and Baby Einstein videos. Not that I don't want to keep trying some of that, but I'm learning that a whole lot of what they will be, they already are.

It is so amazing to me that Mark and I can deliver forth these unique and interesting little people that I'd almost like to make another one or two. Almost, but not quite.*

*I loved being pregnant (except the throwing up part) and I loved nursing (except the giant boobs part), but I also quite enjoy not being pregnant and not nursing. But then Olivia was weaned less than two months ago and the novelty hasn't worn off yet.

The Dark Side

I never ever thought I'd do this, but we bought a fake Christmas tree. I have been growing increasingly frustrated with our Christmas trees over the past few years; they just haven't been living up to the trees I remember from my childhood. Part of that, of course, is because Olivia repeatedly strips the bottom three feet of ornaments until the branches are practically needle-less and the tree skirt has disappeared beneath a carpet of them. And the needles travel with my sticky children until I find them in such unlikely places as Olivia's crib and the master bathtub. But still, there's no denying that the type of trees available are different from those on the east coast: these don't seem as fragrant or as thick. Of course we also don't buy our tree on Thanksgiving weekend, so maybe all the good ones are gone by the time we show up.

We took our tree down just three days after Christmas because, against all reason, I had begun to hate the poor thing. I hated picking up all the  gifts to vacuum each and every day just to find more needles within minutes of putting the vacuum away. I hated digging my way underneath to water it, just to dribble on the gifts now matter how hard I tried not to. And I just hated how it looked, for some reason. The gaps on one side and the branches too low. These things used to be part and parcel of the whole tree experience for me, which I loved so much as a child that I tried to save a small bunch of needles in a bottle so that I'd have that smell in the summer time. But of course they all dried up and turned brown sometime in January and I sadly threw them away.

So we got a fake tree. It's a really beautiful tree; normally it's quite expensive but we got it on super sale, of course. The lights are built in (that's the part that convinced Mark: he'll never have to do the tree lights again). We almost backed out when I asked how long it will last and the answer was, "With what this tree is made of, it will be here long after we're all gone." Yikes. But then we got it anyway. The box went straight to the basement crawl space and part of me thinks we might forget we have it next year. I guess we'll see how I feel about it then.

And while we were browsing the post-Christmas-we're-now-into-January-and-this-stuff-must-go-NOW sales we found four (that's a family) snow people for the front lawn. We're going to build an army. That's what you do on the Dark Side.

Just What the Doctor Ordered

Project De-stress Katherine is underway and going well. My plan for 2007 is as follows:

1. Start knitting obsessively again. Not only does the process calm me, the planning of new projects provides pleasure and distraction. Plus, I really need to spend more time sitting down. (Presently up: Ariann)
2. Join a gym. I did belong to the 24-Hour Fitness near our house, which has lots of great classes and a good set-up for child care, but I quit when I was pregnant with Olivia because I no longer wished to get off the sofa. Now their Sunday morning yoga class is calling me again (so, sadly enough, is their Groove Dance class, which may be the most ridiculous thing I've ever done).
3. Drink more. Thank you so much for all the calls and messages, especially when those messages came with offers of a night out drinking (or, in one case, a suggestion to just drink more at home). I accept.