Cerin Amroth

“Mama, I’m drinky.” — She informed me that, “Drinky means that I’m thirsty.”

“Mama, you’re the biggest.” — I’m not sure how this one started, but it was probably from overhearing someone say, “You’re the best.”

“My baby brother is pretty cool.”

Said before her nap – ”You should take my barrette out because it will hurt my pillow.”

“When my watch strikes twelve, we’ll go to Michigan so I can see Clara, Caleb, and Lydia.” — I think she said this before we went to Michigan in January, but now she wants to go back even more.

“Cars are not for talkin’ in. Homes are not for talkin’ in. Restaurants are for talkin’ in.” — Said, of course, whenever we’re in a car or at home, NOT when we’re in a restaurant. She’s constantly trying to come up with ways to convince us to stop talking to each other and talk to her, instead.

“No, I amn’t.” — Kids are really good at applying grammar rules consistently, even if the language isn’t.

“I’m having hard trouble.” — This is usually preceded by a strong exhalation and followed by a stomping of the foot.

Ella’s next phase of development is marked with two milestones – losing the afternoon nap and repeatedly asking why. I’m frankly at a loss to know which is worse. The missed naps lead to late afternoon tears and trauma. The past few nights have been identical scenarios. Ella is playing on pbskids.org at the time we call her to the dinner table. We have to ask her twice before she acknowledges us. Then, one of us goes over to close the laptop and give her one more chance to walk over to the dinner table. The tears start — real tears (if she keeps these up, she’ll have a career in Hollywood). If I’m in the room, she’ll come running over with her arms extended pleading to be held.

Inevitably, we’re having something for dinner that she doesn’t want to eat, so pushing the plate or bowl away happens next. We offer her veggies as an alternative, but she almost always refuses. After a few more minutes, we let her get down from her chair. She asks to sit on my lap, but I decline. Tonight actually had a different wrinkle. Because we were eating something she liked (rice) she reconsidered her hunger protest and went back up on her chair to eat. I have to keep reminding myself that it’s the tiredness talking through all this behavior and that it won’t last forever.

The other change is that she is now asking why … ALL THE TIME. It will start with an innocent enough question, but will quickly devolve to her repeating every answer you give with a “But why …” before of it. Again, I have to remind myself that this is a stage and not her purposely tormenting us. I usually go along with the routine for a couple questions and then either tell her to stop asking me or start giving absurd answers — depending on my mood at the time.

She may not have had terrible twos, but trying threes are here in spades.

This one goes out to a Nana crying “withdrawal” … 

We took Ella to get her first haircut on Sunday. We had been talking about it for weeks because the stylist had to cancel her earlier appointment. We decided it would be best if we took her to the same woman who cuts Nate’s hair. So Nate had an appointment first, and then it was Ella’s turn. All during Nate’s haircut, Ella kept telling me over and over that she didn’t want to get her hair cut. I thought she would still settle down for it when the time came … I couldn’t have been wronger.

When Nate finished, I carried Ella to the chair. As I lowered her into the chair, she made her body stiff as a board and started screaming. I got her to settle down a bit, but there was no way she was going to sit in the chair, so we went to plan B. She sat on my lap, but she still refused to hold her head still. The stylist went to get a lollipop to ply her with, but even that didn’t quiet her. Finally, Nate took over as the holder. I stood alongside talking to her and holding her hand, as she cried and kept insisting she didn’t want her hair cut.

We discussed beforehand where she wanted to go for her special treat after the haircut. She chose ice cream. No sooner did we say that the cut was over than she jumped out of the chair and happily said, “Okay, let’s go get the ice cream,” as if nothing traumatic had just happened.

After dinner, we went to get ice cream, and Ella had her first kiddy cone. She’d had ice cream before, but never her very own cone, just bites from ours. She was on a sugar rush the rest of the evening.

Lest you think the next cut will be without trauma … she’s already informed us that she won’t be doing that again. Here are a few pictures of her new do (basically a shortened version of what she had before).

Suanna’s back at work, three days a week, so I’ve had a few days now of being Home and Outnumbered.  It has been a bit of a crazy adjustment, and the only one who is handling it matter-of-factly and without particular incident, is Dominic.  His needs remain simple, if persistent: keep the milk coming, let me sleep, and if I’m not in the mood for sleep, talk to me or hold me — or just let me stare at the ceiling fan, that’s cool too.  The particulars:

height/weight: 2 month doctor’s appointment was today.  12 pounds, 9 ounces, and I didn’t make a note of height or head circ.  Typical second child dynamic, I guess — we don’t have one of those little green handbooks for him where we write down every little stat.  He’s 75th percentile for height and weight, though.  I suspect he’s a little taller than whatever it was he was measured at, given how much he was squirming around on the table.  He smiled at Dr. Robertson — major brownie points there — who proclaimed him healthy and surprisingly alert and interactive.

food and sleep:  Still two hours between feedings during the day, though when it’s me at home giving him 4 oz bottles, he tends to go a little longer.  His longest sleep stretch is from 11ish pm to 3ish am, and then another one after that ’till 6ish.  Still takes plenty of little naps throughout the day, more often in the morning and less often in the late afternoon / early evening.  Will sleep through pretty much anything.  Since we got back from Michigan a couple weeks ago, he has shown no interest whatsoever in his pacifier.  This is kind of nice, though it does mean that if he’s moderately-but-not-seriously-hungry or just Vaguely Dissatisfied there’s not an easy fix to focus away his attention.  Fortunately the days of Full Body Digestive Strain seem pretty much behind us, so he’s rarely fussy for that reason.  He’s still a volatile spitup factory right after eating: handle with extreme care.

He loves to listen to people talk and sing.  Singing seems to settle him down quite nicely, even when I do it, which is saying something.  When he sees me he will often stick his tongue out and wait for me to do the same.  He does this cockeyed smile on just one side of his face that is very cute, if I do say so, and if he’s particularly active he’ll do his darndest to talk: “AAA-oooooo!”  “aaaaaaaar” and the like.  His responses to Ella are slowly changing, too; now he’s more inclined to watch her curiously than he is to wrinkle his brow and wonder if his life is in danger when she pokes her head around the corner of his bouncy seat.

Unfortunately, he does not like riding in the car.  If you’re going fast enough or if he’s tired enough, the trip may proceed without incident, but if he’s even a little inclined to be fussy for whatever reason, that will translate into some definite shrieking.  I’ve already had to endure a couple short drives where Dominic is yelling like crazy and Ella is insisting that I stop the car to do something or, failing that, explain to her why Dominic is crying and whether he is in pain or something.

When I feed him at night, I’m usually a bleary-eyed mess.  I take him out of his crib and into the living room and set him down on the couch while I heat up the bottle.  By the time I get to him he’s usually pretty surly and I have to work to keep him from drinking too quickly and spitting up all over himself immediately afterward.  But, if that’s worked out reasonably well, then I change his diaper and give him the rest of the bottle, if there’s any left, and it’s usually while he’s laying there on the mat on the floor in the dim light that he smiles at me and makes a gurgly “gghhhhhh” noise.

Wakes me up every time.

Before her nap today, I asked Ella if she would like me to read her one of the poetry books. (We have 3 of Shel Silverstein’s poetry collections on the shelf in her bedroom.) She agreed. I took down the first one, and she said, “No, I want the one with the boy whose left shoe is falling down.”

I vaguely remembered that one of the books had a poem about that, so I took the next one down from the shelf. She insisted that also wasn’t the one.

I took the third book down, and there it was. Right on the cover of Falling Up was a picture of a boy in the air over several houses. He was looking down at one of his shoes … his left shoe. I can’t even remember the last time I read this book to her, but I know it’s been at least 3 months.

This morning Ella was busying herself by taking all the pillows from her bed and our bed and the ones on the couch and chairs and arranging them all in the living room.  Along the way she muttered something about getting ready for “ella dot org.”

“Did you just say Ella dot org?”  I asked, somewhat incredulously.

“Yep,” she replied.

After a few more moments she was ready.  “OK, daddy!” she said brightly.  “Stand over here.  Right here.  OK.  Now, click the mouse, and draaaag it over to this pillow!”  I stuck out my arm like I was holding a mouse and pretended to click in the air.  It felt pretty wooden but it was apparently good enough for her; for the next few minutes she reveled in taking the role of the disembodied voices she hears from the computer from pbskids.org or wherever else, and making me click and drag every which way.

Yesterday was my first day back in the office after 8 weeks of full-time maternity leave (can’t believe it’s been that long). I was actually looking forward to it, to a certain degree, mainly because I knew that I would still have 10 weeks of part-time leave — 2 days off per week. To be honest, full-time maternity leave was starting to make me a bit stir crazy. One day blending into another left me feeling disoriented. I definitely would have been running back to work a lot sooner if I didn’t have Nate at home with me. I’ve said it many times, and will continue to do so, there’s no way I could do what he does. (As a matter of fact, these days he’s not sure he can do what he does, but I’m confident he’ll get into a rhythm in no time.)

Surprisingly, Ella didn’t cry or fuss when I told her it was time for me to go. I suspect this is, in part, because I talked with her about it the night before. At the time, she thought it made the most sense for her to go to work with me and Dominic to go to the bookstore with Daddy. In the morning, she didn’t mention this arrangement. She just continued pretending that she was at the swimming pool with her cousins.

The transition to work wasn’t too difficult. Reading the Washington Post, NY Times, and Kaiser Daily Health Policy Report, as well as listening to NPR have kept me up to date with the big news. I didn’t make it through all my emails yesterday, but several meetings and conversations helped me catch up with where things were. I love what I do, and a promotion just before I went on leave has me eager to take on new responsibilities. And it was good to see friends and colleagues, as well. I’m grateful, though, to be off again today to spend more time getting to know Dominic and playing with Ella. They’ll both benefit from some more individualized attention, and it will also help ensure that Nate doesn’t give me a letter of resignation!

The highlight of the day yesterday was definitely my homecoming welcome. I opened the door and saw Nate, Dominic, and Ella waiting for me at the top of the stairs. Ella greeted me with her usual yell of “Mommy” and open arms for me to pick her up. Dominic gazed at me for a moment, and then gave me a full smile of recognition. Nate smiled in relief. Priceless.

This morning, Ella has the board from her Chutes and Ladders game propped halfway up on a chair, folded, as if it’s a laptop.  Her play for the past half an hour or so has consisted of:  returning one of our existing DVDs to the mailbox or the post office, then pretending to log onto Netflix and selecting a DVD (her most recent choice: “Scary Veggie Tales”), then waiting by our mailbox to see if it has arrived.  (“Daddy, Scary Veggie Tales is not here today.  Maybe tomorrow.  Don’t worry, daddy, it’s not worth crying about.”)

Ella expresses her love for Dominic in many different ways. Here are a few:

Nicknames — Dom, Big Boy, Big Buddy, and (my personal favorite) Sweet Dom.

Hugs and Kisses — She especially likes to do this when I’m nursing. She tries to envelop us both in her arms at once.

Rocking his chair when he cries — She is always quick to try this, but is also quick to tell us that we should do it.

Playng with him — She has entertained him with Pez dispensers, “read” books to him, and (just this morning) pretended to feed him snacks.

Singing to him — She likes singing Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star and Itsy, Bitsy Spider, especially when he cries in the car.

Reassuring him — “Oh Dom, I like you just the way you are.”

We’ve addmitedly encouraged some of this, but it hasn’t taken much effort.

Me: “OK, Ella.  You have toys all over this apartment.  After your nap today, we’re going to have a big picking up.”

Ella: “Who’s coming over?”

(There wasn’t actually anyone coming over, so this led to a discussion of how we keep the apartment clean even when it’s for just us.  She treated this news with some skepticism, perhaps not without reason.)