Two and a Half

I have been thinking long and hard about moving this blog to a more user-friendly/www-friendly site- and I did!

 

My new site is www.threeunder3.wordpress.com

 

I will no longer be updating this site.  Pics can be found on facebook, and my new site when applicable. 

 

Enjoy!

Julie

Parenting has a lot of options.  Breast or bottle.  Circumsise or not.  Co-sleep?  But some things are pretty non-negotiable.  For instance: if your child's face had spaghetti all over it, you would clean it.  But not just that- you would clean it with water.  End of story.  There was never an option to NOT wash spaghetti off her face.  You wouldn't use a DVD to clean it up.  Water.  Washcloth.  Soap...maybe.  You will not find Clean Child Happy Child at the library.  You will never see an entire chapter in your existing baby care book devoted to the hows, how-nots, and the whys of cleaning children's faces.  You would be lucky to come across a few sentences.  They might go something like this:

 

To wash your child's face, wet a washcloth with warm water and gently rub over dirty area (JUST LIKE YOU WOULD DO TO YOUR OWN FACE YOU MORON) until debris and discolouration disappear.

 

But other areas are not so black and white.  Take sleep for instance.  Oh the possibilities.  What works one day doesn't work the next.  Each child responds t sleep training differently.  And you and your spouse probably won't agree on one thing besides the fact that she needs more sleep.  And not sleeping has the added benefit of making you and your child and your spouse cranky, petty monsters that you can't return, and get absolutely NO store credit for. 

 

Bronwyn hasn't been sleeping well since Christmas when we went away.  Note that we haven't left our house since.  And we have no plans to either.  Not until she is firmly entrenched in a workable routine, and only for a very good reason.  I have tried a number of things to get her to stay in bed at night.  We have reinstated the nap for instance (hence why I am writing this in the middle of the day!!).  And our nighttime routine has been shortened and starts MUCH earlier.  All have been well received, except she still wants to get up sometimes multiple times in the night.  Often with a valid reason (she needs to poop/pee), but mostly she just  gets out of bed, stands in my doorway and insists I put her back in her bed.  GAH.  SO FRUSTERATING.  So last night I decided that after she had pooped and peed (separately of course- how can she DO that?!?!?) I would not leave my bed for any reason.  Even after she repeated the phrase "mommy I want to go peeeeeeeeeee" 94 times (I started counting after the first 30 or so).  Even after she tried to climb into bed with me.  Even after Bruce left to go sleep downstairs.  I kept my patience (counting is very zen fyi) and my resolve, and perservered.  But what to do tonight?  Do I stick with the same thing and ignore her?  Obviously she needs to sleep, but what is the right way to get her to do it?  And how do I find that magic combination?  And how can I simultaneously love her more than the world itself and still want to strangle the words "mommy I want to peeeeeeeeeeeeeeee" right out of her mouth?

Apparently I have been negligent in my blogging.  Thanks Stef and Mar!  So this morning, after Bruce woke up, he took Bronwyn to play and suggested (ordered) me to get to work.  I guess I'll start with an update:

Holly is now walking.  Officially.  She continues to be as charming as ever, giving kisses and hugs to show her affection, and being perfectly pleasant most of the time.  She desperatly wants to be JUST. LIKE. BRONWYN. and I am torn between knowing how THAT feels, and seeing the whole thing from an adult perspective.  Especially an adult who is so invested in both of them at once.  Bronwyn is great at sharing her toys, but not so much with the time.  She insists on a 90-10 split of my attention all day long.  So now I have a 14 month old who wants to be just like her 2 and a half year old sister, and a 2 and a half year old who wants to be just like me.  No age need be mentioned...

Holly likes to imitate the both of us actually.  She loves to pretend to wipe up spills with her special cloth, and attempt to put on all the clothes in her drawers.  Yes, she can open her drawers.  I have put a couple of things in a low play dresser for her to practice with, but occasionally she finds a load of unfolded laundry and has a heyday!!  Or worse, a pile of folded, but not yet put away laundry.  Oh the horror!  This is why we are always wrinkled fyi.  Yep, that is the ONLY reason.

Bronwyn has fallen in love with Dora the Explorer.  When she isn't watching Dora, she is pretending to BE Dora.  When she isn't pretending to actually BE her, she pretends her dolls are Dora.  We reinact and reinvent countless episodes of Dora daily.  Her favourite is Ice Cream Truck in Trouble.  I recently found it on DVD and purchased it immediately.  Maybe we'll get a respite if she can just watch the darn thing.  She makes Holly be Swiper, which works out incidentely, since Holly is always trying to take Bronwyn's toys!!  And finally, when Bronwyn needed new socks, I broke down and bought Dora socks when we were in Walmart yesterday.  On the bright side, Bronwyn can recognize and name at least 8 different shapes, can count to 11, and recognizes more than half the alphabet.

Baby Brulie III is doing well too.  Getting quite large actually.  S/he is about a foot long and 2lbs.  S/he is a strong kicker, but neither girl is too interested in that part.  Mostly they just think my belly button looks funny and want to know when the baby will get here.  Bronwyn barely even asks that anymore.  It is like she doesn't really care about a new brother or sister, and figures my new shape is just a part of me, like my earrings, or Bruce not having any hair.

 

In other news, we decided to renovate the basement.  My parents came over last weekend (Happy 5th Anniversary to us, btw!) and my dad, Bruce and Ben tore out the kitchen, took down some walls, rerouted the electrical and made about 100 trips to Home Depot.  The basement is now in ruins, but the general shape is beginning to emerge with Bruce's continued effort during the evenings.  Hopefully the carpet will be installed in the next few weeks, and the walls need to be up and painted before that.  Then it will just be finishin touches and we'll have a brand new rec room downstairs, as well as an enlarged Master Bedroom, new guest room, and a third baby's room upstairs.  All in all, a better use of the space.

 

Well, I hope that eases my conscience for a bit, but now I have to go make pink cupcakes for Valentine's Day (don't ask).  But before I go, I will leave you with one more story that highlights the need for discretion in our conversations around toddlers:

We went to McDonald's the other day and I got the girls a Happy Meal to share.  The toy was a small white poodle which Bronwyn immediately confiscated (and played with for all of 3 days but enough about the short timespan of excessive toys).  Bruce came home and saw the toy, which Bronwyn was making cry.  Apparently the dog was sad but we couldn't figure out why.  So while I offered suggestions as to how we might make the dog happy again, Bruce asked Bronwyn, "do you know what I would do, if that were MY dog?". 

 

Bronwyn immediately replied, "shoot it?".

I can't remember if I wrote this story or not, but here goes:

 

Over Christmas, Bronwyn was playing with these four Christmas Trees that stacked inside each other.  Bruce's Uncle John asked her which Tree was the Bronwyn Tree.  She pointed to the 3rd biggest tree.  Intrigued, we asked her to identify the Holly Tree.  She pointed to the smallest Tree.  Finally we asked her to show us which Tree represented Mommy and Daddy.  No pause, she showed us the biggest Tree and declared it to be Mommy, and the next biggest was Daddy.

 

Hmmm...

 

Did she see me as more important, or just bigger (shudder) than Bruce?  More important we figured.

 

Fast forward 6 weeks:

 

Bronwyn: Come play with me mommy.

Me: Ok, what should we play?

Bronwyn:  I be Dora, and you be Boots, k?

 

HUH?!  Now I'm her SIDEKICK?!?!?

Well, yes, there has been a significant gap in my written life.  Thank you to all who have reminded me...

The real problem is that I compose these great blogs in my head, and then forget all about putting them in words.  Or, more realistically, just don't bother.  I started writing like this for me anyway, and so once my thoughts have been separated, sifted, and ordered in my head, it becomes secondary to actually write them down.  The fun part is over.  Plus, I always make up a catchy title that rarely translates outside my brain.

 

Today I had another OB appointment.  This baby is pretty big, as my doctor is overly fond of reminding me at each monthly visit.  He chuckles like it is his own personal joke.  Funny, sir. 

 

Christmas was a time of memories, to be sure.  Harder than I expected, and the girls still haven't recovered.  Next year will be different.

 

I have resumed my quilting.  It is time to actually quilt this sucker together, and I am really looking forward to learning how to do this last part.  It would have happened today only Bronwyn decided that she would rather sit by herself on her bed all afternoon than stay in the church nursery during Bible Study, so we left early.  A shame that we couldn't put the quilt together on the big tables, but a huge victory for me in the never ending mother-daughter Battle of Wills.  I win so infrequently these days...

 

There was a funny story about Bronwyn that I was supposed to record here, that Bruce has been bugging me about.  But, like most things these days, it has left my brain.  Perhaps I will find it in the kitchen or under a pile of dirty laundry.  But if that is the case, don't hold your breath.