Cerin Amroth

This morning, Nate realized that we hadn’t seen Dominic for a few minutes. He looked around the apartment and found him sitting in our bedroom between the gameshelf and Nate’s side of the bed, where a number of books have found a home on the floor. He was quietly paging through the books.

A few minutes later, I went in to check on him and found Ella, as well. Up until now, Dominic’s influence over Ella has been secluded to toys — whenever he shows an interest in a toy, she immediately says that she was playing with it. At least this time, they were sitting alongside each other and paging through books in peace.

It was the cutest thing I’ve seen in a while. Granted, I’m more than a little partial.

Ella and her friend Symon take turns riding in each other’s cars to preschool.  On my days to drive the two of them, listening to their banter in the back seat usually ends up being the most entertaining part of my day.

It was established fairly rapidly by Ella that our minivan was, in fact, a rocket ship, and that stopping at red lights meant setting down on other planets, and green lights meant taking off again, with all appropriate rocket noises.  Earlier this week the two of them decided as we approached the school that they were on Mars, and that it was therefore a Mars preschool and that all the other kids and parents were aliens.

Thursday, though, the space talk got serious, and Ella and Symon fell into a shouting match.  Ella contended that aliens lived in space, and Symon argued that aliens lived on the ground but came through space — i.e., that they lived on other planets.  I tried to strike the middle ground by saying that, while they did live on other planets, since they had spaceships they spent an awful lot of their time in space . . . but by then the kids had moved on to a different point of contention.

“There are metal camels in space,” Symon said defiantly.

I couldn’t see Ella from the driver’s seat, but I could hear her scoff and could picture her exact expression as she said “No there are not.”

After a minute or so of crescendoing “Yes yes yes” vs. “No no no,” Symon said, “Yes there are.  I saw it in a comic book.”

Ella’s first rebuttal was:  “There!  Are!  Not!  Metal!  Camels!  In!  SPACE!  No no no no!”  But a part of her realized that to get the upper hand she would have to come up with something more concrete.

“I’m taking out my binoculars!” she said.  “I’m looking into space!”  A pause.  “I don’t see any camels!”

I won’t say that Symon ceded the point, but we did pull into school shortly afterward.  We’ll have to see if they pick it up again next time.

Dominic knows how to turn the TV off and on. He’s been messing around with it a lot this week. Tonight, he used this knowledge to agitate his sister … so it’s gone to the next level.

Ella was watching a movie this afternoon as I was getting ready for dinner. Dominic started out watching the movie, as well, but he quickly became bored. He had finished his milk, so he climbed off the futon and was looking for something to do. He started by playing with Legos, but again he became bored. So he walked to the TV and pressed the power button, and he got quite a reaction.

He may not have been intending to torment his sister, at first, but he liked the reaction he got. It began as her yelling for him to turn it back on. Then, I came in from the kitchen, turned the TV back on, and moved him away. Then getting back to the TV and doing it again became his mission. I succeeded a few times in distracting him with something in the kitchen, but it wasn’t long before he went back to his original pursuit.

Earlier in the day, I asked him to turn the TV off because he had turned it on while we were playing. I never got him to respond to that request …. Now I realize I was the one who got played.

Nate has been reading Dominic books for a few months now, but I wasn’t doing it much. Since we’ve been back from vacation, I’ve been putting him to bed at night, so I decided to introduce books into his bedtime ritual.

On Monday, I grabbed a book after getting him in his jammies. I took him into the living room to say goodnight to Nate and Ella. Rather than focus on them, he kept reaching up for the book. When I got to the bedroom and sat down on the bed, he immediately reached for the book and started trying to open it and turn the pages.

In subsequent nights, I’ve taken two books into the bedroom. As soon as I’m a page or two into one book, he reaches for the other one and pages through it on his own as I continue to read the first one to him. He seems to particularly like this one book that has photos of kids from all over the world in it. He’s also partial to Goodnight Gorilla, which Ella also liked. I’m glad that he’s enjoying this new routine.

This morning, Ella was going back and forth between pretending to be one of her cousins and pretending to be her uncle Cory, their father.  Suanna was heading out the door to work.

“Bye, Ella,” said Suanna.

“Bye, Lise!” said Ella.

Suanna sighed.  “I’m your Mama . . .”

“I know, but I’m just pretending . . .”

“Well, when I’m about to go to work and I’m saying goodbye for the day, it’s nice to be called Mama.”

Ella thought about this for a moment, then said, “Bye, Ella’s Mama!”

Counting our blessings over the last 2 weeks:

1. Parents who gave us the greatest gift imaginable — peace of mind about our kids on our trip halfway across the world. We cannot begin to thank you for this.
2. Kids who are wonderfully adaptive and weather a 2-week absence with amazing grace — Dominic reportedly cried a bit the second day and stared at the door we left through, but adjusted well to grandma-cuddling the rest of the time. Ella was sad occasionally (especially bedtimes), but loved her brother extra well and enjoyed all the adventures.
3. Friends who share their lives in strange new places — Matt and Sarah were with us the whole time. They made Vietnam effortless, and Vung Tau feel like home. Cambodia and Angkor were as amazing and easy to navigate as we could have hoped (again, thanks to Matt and Sarah). Theressa, Benoy, and Dev provided an amazing home base and arranged a positively lovely oceanside resort, day at the spa, and little piece of Tolkien in the Philippines. I’ll follow these people anywhere.

After amazing adventures, we drove back home from Michigan in 11 hours straight. It was so nice to have 2 days with nothing on the schedule except unpacking and readjusting to the Eastern time zone and life as we know it.

When we got home on Friday night, Ella went to bed within a half hour. Big D, who slept more in the car, was quite another issue. He kept running around the apartment laughing away. I finally took him to bed with me and held him down until he collapsed in sheer delight.

Ella and I had some one-on-one time today — a trip to the craft store, lunch and a game, and grocery shopping. On the way home, she kept repeating over and over again, “I want my mama. I want my daddy. I want my Dominic.” Each time, I would say, “We’re heading home right now.” And she would giggle with delight. The first words out of her mouth this morning were, “I’m so happy to be back home.” I can’t wait to hear tomorrow evening about her return to preschool.

Finally, Ella’s funny observation from yesterday. Dominic was the first one in the bathtub and still standing up when Ella was taking her clothes off. Before sitting down, he urinated in the water. Ella’s comment: “I’ve never seen pee come out of Dominic’s penis before.” Everything is a wonder to a four year-old.

Today is Sunday which means that usually we are in church. However, this Sunday is different. It’s different because Ella and Dominic are sharing the day with us. It’s also different because we aren’t in church.

Dominic went to bed early last night. He woke up at 10:30 with a slight fever. He has been congested, with a runny nose. He slept rather restlessly with MarMar the rest of the night. This morning he woke up feeling much better and the fever is gone. MarMar woke up with a headache and Gumpa woke up with a little congested. Fortunately Ella woke up feeling fine. Both Ella and Dominic ate a good breakfast. Speaking of meals we went out for dinner last night a Russ’. Ella did not want to go, but we made a deal. That went pretty well. Ella ate some and Dominic ate loads. We finally had to shut him off. As we were leaving Ella announced ” This is my favorite place to eat!” 

This morning we have enjoyed playing together Ella and Gumpa playing down and Dominc and MarMar playing up. When we did play together Dominic was getting into Ella’s space and she told him that she needed ‘more elbow room’. She told Gumpa that this is what they do at pre-school. Lunch is being prepared by MarMar so this is all for now. Hope you enjoy the pictures and that your day is going well. Love Ella, Dominic, MarMar and Gumpa.

Ella checking out groceries for Gumpa.

Our couch has become a boat to Ella. It was really loaded when all the cousins were on board.

Dominic enjoying our Christmas cards

Ella and Dominic thought they need a path to run on through our kitchen. So, they spread all of our place mats on the floor as stepping stones. I think Ella and Dominic could be standing stones.

Dominic is so useful in the kitchen. Just open the cupboard door and he is there. It looks like MarMar will have to search through the cupboards to find all of the toys.

Sharing small talk and snow

Ella so focused she doesn’t see a snowball thrown by Caleb

All ther cousins

Ella and Lydia sharing a toy

Dominic and Caleb sharing a laugh

Dominic in his own way asking for more

Ella relaxing and enjoying Blues Clues on public tv

Dominic and MarMar enjoying a morning cup of coffee

Dominic has been so much fun. He is eating  everything we give him. Last night I made chicken soup with rice and he loved it. Naps are going well but last night he woke up at 1:30 and ended up getting into bed with me the rest of the night. I think he thought I would leave because he kept rolling over and reaching for my hair. When he found it he would pull as hard as he could. This went on most of the rest of the night.

This afternoon after Gumpa and Ella went to the cousins to play. I was going to clean up the kitchen quick a minute while Dominic played. He was not quite ready for his nap. He trotted through the kitchen and saw a small toy on the floor in front of the refrig. As he went to pick it up he kicked it under the refrig. He got on the floor and looked under to see where it was and then got up and went to the toy box to get many things the same size. I kind of didn’t pay attention for a little while and then I noticed he was back on the floor looking under the refrig again. When I got on the floor to look I saw that he had  pushed several small things under there.

Yesterday when I changed him I must have had the dryer on. Later when I changed him again on the dryer top he pointed at the dial and did his little “talking “thing to me. He then made the sign for more. He repeated this a few times. finally I turned the dryer on and that seemed to be what he wanted.

Thursday evening after the cousins left for home Ella was so tired I’m not sure she knew what she was saying. I first suggested a bath with “The Dester”. She carried on for quite a while about not taking a bath. I think the bigger problem was that she would have to remove the Paraguay shirt to get into the tub and by now she had it on since she arrived here from NaNa and PaPa’s house (including the time she slept). According to NaNa she wanted to wear it all the time there also. Well I just let her make her statments about not taking the bath while I continued to run the water and get Dominic into the tub. As I turned around to throw away the diaper I was surprised to  see her naked little buns go over the edge of the tub. Things went well for a little while but the water which she claimed was to hot soon became to cold. Then she wanted to get out but when I got the towel she was not ready until I got Dominic out then she wanted to get out first. By 7PM we were down stairs for pre-bed activities which she didn’t want. She protested she was not tired and was not going to bed while sitting on my lap cuddling. Then with out worning she climb out of my lap and into the bed, laid her head on the pillow, and closed her eyes. Except for asking me to lay with her for a while that was the last thing we heard from her until 7AM.