Madeleine has taken to calling Grant "Little Grant", as in, "Here you go, Little Grant."  It's usually when she's being sweet to him, and it's rather a term of endearment, I think.  This has been going on for a week or two.  Today, she had a fun variation on it.  We were outside, and I was trying to get Grant to pedal his tricycle.  He's not quite long enough to give the pedals enough umph, but he was trying.  Madeleine said to him encouraginly, "You can do it, Little Pedaler!"  I loved it! 

I guess I'm trying to get Grant to skip naps.  He is hard to get to sleep sometimes, and then will stay up way too late.  The last two days have been successful, though he's pretty tired by the end of the day.  I suppose we'll go back and forth between naps and no-naps.  I remember that Madeleine had a transition period as well.

Maybe I should go to bed.  I don't feel tired, but it's getting late. 

I'm trying to engage upon some spring cleaning.  I've started, but it always leaves me feeling a bit torn, because I want to get rid of everything but then feel like I ought to keep it...  This is particularly true of the kids' things, since I'm not sure if we'll have another baby or not.  Even if we did have another baby, we could always get more stuff if we really needed it.  Do we really want to store all the baby clothes and toys and gear for 3 years (more or less) for a child that may or may not come?  Most likely we'll only have two...  But then I had a friend who got pregnant with her third as soon as she gave away all her baby items.  Hmmmm.  That's a reason in itself to not get rid of them, as a charm against unwanted pregnancy. 

We also need better storage space for all the electronic gadgets and their paraphernalia.  Those gizmos and gadgets sure come with lots of cords and cases and whatnot.

Madeleine is really reading a lot more.  I know I've said it before, but it surprises me.  She'll tell me what things say.  She looked at her calendar and knew that her next preschool class was called "Blast Off".  No one told her; she read it. 

I'm really anti-lego at the moment.  I'm kind of anti-plants vs. zombies and anti-computer use too.  So it seems a good time to just organize my life... I do that from time to time.  I say "organize my life", but really I mean my house, I suppose.  It seems a bit overwhelming, but then I just say to do one thing, and then another thing, and then another thing.  And then it gets better and the tension is relieved.  I don't usually get it done perfectly, but it gets done "good enough".  I really appreciate tasks like laundry and dishes now, because I can finish them completely.  With organizing, one never really finishes, and there is always something else to file away or find a home for or fret about trying to get rid of. 

I used to try to write down everything possible about my kids' lives.  Now I can't manage it, and feel guilty about it, so then I avoid it even more than I would have without the guilt, perhaps.  Then I have a talk with myself and kick all the guilt out by reminding myself that things like writing or building with lego or any other hobby are completely optional and unnecessary.  Then I try to think about what would be good for my family, and go work on that, whether it be making a book with Madeleine or playing ball on the stairs with Grant or scrubbing all the dishes yet again. 

Spring is really on its way now:  it's warmer, it's lighter for longer, the seasons are all turbulent and changing.  I'm pleased.  The kids love to go outside and ride their scooters and trikes, and I like to ride the scooter down the hill, too. 

Okay that's enough of me. 

3-10-11

Ah, the poor Cougs.  They did their typical thing and looked good till the end.  Does this count as couging it?  I’m not sure, but it’s sad.  I’m glad Brian didn’t stay up late watching it.  I was really hoping his team could make him happy (for once), but I guess my team will be it for now.  It’s probably because my mom wrote “Go Huskies” on Madeleine’s finger nails with a new purple nail polish.  It was “just a joke to tease Daddy”.  Poor guy.

Madeleine wanted to paint Auntie Karen’s birthday card (happy birthday, Auntie Karen!).  She painted on Jupiter, a yellow color with a great red spot.  Then I think she did Pluto, which is always purple (it must have been in a book that way).  Then she did Saturn….  I forget the color but it had rings, of course.  Then she mixed blue and green to make Neptune (Neptune is bluish green, you know), and gave it some yellow rings.  Then Pluto needed some friends, so she made Ceres and Eris (other dwarf planets) to be with Pluto.  The dwarf planets were noticeably smaller than the other planets.  I thought the whole thing turned out great.  Then Madeleine wanted to add a butterfly to it (she had told me this before she ever started), but fussed that she couldn’t draw it.  So we got out some butterfly stickers, and that was the card.  I labeled the planets and wrote “Happy Birthday Karen” on it, along with a “Love, Madeleine”.  Madeleine can write all that out, but it’s slow and she’d already spent a lot of time on it, and it was time to be done.

Grant painted a card, too.  He’s actually not too bad at getting some water color on his brush and smearing it around the paper.  He didn’t even try to eat the paint his time, though he still managed to get paint on his face.

Madeleine and I have been on a major Plants vs. Zombies kick.  She loves the Zen garden and I play the games to get money and new plants for her garden.  I’ve done it so much the last few days (we got it for the PC, so there is lots of extra stuff to explore) that when I am half-asleep I get such weird thinking and all my life is somehow converted into video game  scenarios.  I can’t explain it really well.  It’s strange.  But I’m half asleep.  I think it’s about Grant and then I wake up and realize it was just plants vs. zombies.

I’m actually getting a bit tired of it, which will be good.  I got enough money for Madeleine to buy a mushroom garden in the morning, and now I’m typing a bit.  I really need to type a bunch more, but I’ve just been firing peas at those zombies instead.  Madeleine loves to watch, though she’s funny and tends to run away and hide because she gets scared. 

Both of the kids are really maturing.  I’ve really noticed it recently in both of them.  Madeleine is reading books quite well, now.  She can read them like a kindergartner or first grader,  getting through a lot of pages using the words she knows and surmising the rest.  Now if I could just get her to remember the word “them”, it would make the book she got from the preschool Children’s Museum class go so much better….

Grant talks a lot more now.  His current favorite phrase is “help me”, and he says it way too much.  He’ll say it as an expression of dismay, even if he doesn’t need help.  Sometimes I think he says it just for the fun of it.  I’m sure he’s figured out he gets lots of instant attention if he calls out “help me”.  Brian and I were discussing how we didn’t remember Madeleine saying “help me” that much, and then I remembered that she always said “help you”.  I would ask her if she wanted me to “help you”, and she would repeat what I had said, without changing the pronoun.  Then the phrase took on a life of its own, just being “help you” instead of “help me”. 

This reminds me that Grant has started saying ‘reach!’ the way Madeleine did, when he wants to get something but is too lazy to get it.  Well, often he can’t get it, but sometimes he just doesn’t want to make the effort.  We still love to make fun of how Madeleine used to put her arm out and say “reach!”without even trying to get to the object.

I suppose I need to go to bed.  I had a nap, and then some caffeine (we went out for Karen’s birthday:  just to Eatza Pizza because that’s where the kids like to go, but still I guess it was better than being alone on one’s birthday), so I wasn’t feeling too sleepy.  I was also pumped up on basketball and zombie killing.  But now I think it’s time, and 7 a.m. will be here sooner than I think.  Or…. A crying kid will be here sooner than I could wish.

Good night!

March 1, 2011

Since we bought the ipod touch, I’ve been playing a bunch of games on it.  But it’s really starting to make me feel like I’m wasting time.  I haven’t been motivated to build much lately, even though I’m in the middle of a project.  Usually in the middle of a project I feel like a fire is burning inside me, and it will drive me relentlessly till I finish.  I think I felt that up to the point that I gave up on making the tile floor better (http://www.flickr.com/photos/eilonwy77/5453996532/), and then I ran out of steam.  And got excited about the thrill of the ipod.  But as I said, it’s starting wear on me as a waste of time.  What’s funny, now that I think about it, is that building things never felt like a waste of time, even though it could potentially be argued that it’s just as frivolous as Fruit Ninja or Plants vs. Zombies.  But in the end I have something more to show for myself, something more than a new high score.  At the very least the results are appreciated by more people, I guess.  I suppose one could argue that human creativity is a good thing, and so building is a greater good than swiping my finger across a screen.  In the end it makes me happier, and there are other benefits:  I feel smarter again, and I make friends and have a fairly encompassing hobby. 

We are trying out Carbonite to backup our computer, but wow, the upload is going slow.  About 2 gigs a day, so it’ll take months to get everything backed up.  But it will be better than not being backed up.  And every file it uploads is one more file protected in case of a sudden crash.  This computer is used for so many things and seems to be struggling.  I really expect it to die at any time.  I’ve tried copying our photos and videos onto DVDs, and have succeeded with many of them, but lately I’ve had formatting troubles and we’re always getting new things to back-up, and this will just be better.

Brian is really good at protecting us, making sure we have good insurance for everything and all our papers in order in case of tragedy, etc, etc.  He called up our insurance agent to quiz him about all the specifics of our home insurance, and the agent said it was a pretty rare sort of call to get.  By my sweet husband sure is prepared.  I’d be rather scattered without him.  We definitely have our different strengths and weaknesses.  Technology troubles drive him crazy, so I tackle all those kinds of things.  He calls people on the phone, and I handle all the computer stuff.  He makes sure the cars are in order, and I make books with our kids.  We’re definitely specializing in our strengths.

Madeleine is an interesting girl.  So prone to completely falling apart at the slightest setback.  She loses it and screams and runs away to hide and “think” or something.  She often says, “then I’ll just think!!!” and runs away screaming, even if there is nothing to think about.  Our computers weren’t working well this evening (Internet Explorer stopped working on both of them with the same error message, and I was befuddled), and I told her I couldn’t fix it now (I’d tried, but nothing was working) and I was going to eat my dinner, so she ran away screaming and saying she’d think about it.  Think about what?  I had offered to let her watch pony videos (from youtube) on the ipod touch, but that wasn’t a big enough screen for her.  Was that what she was thinking about?  No, not really.  She just says that.  It’s like pouting.

What are some other things that she’s lost it over in the last day or two?  She really screamed when I suggested that we have her birthday party the day before her actual birthday, so that Uncle Matt could come to the party too.  She really really had to have her birthday party on her actual birthday.  What else?  We make a big tent in the bedroom upstairs, using the crib and a cardboard table to make a large dark expanse.  Madeleine always insists on having the clothes basket tipped over to be the kitchen, but today she didn’t want it like that.  But she left and Grant got it to put it in its spot, so we put it there.  And when Madeleine came back she screamed and screamed about not wanting it there.  Well, sorry, but today it’s Grant’s turn to have things his way… you can have them your way next time.  Then there was screaming at my mom’s house, because I was in the bathroom and my mom stopped flying paper airplanes up the stairs for Madeleine to shoot down.  Madeleine went off to pout somewhere or other. 

Oh, and today my mom called on the phone and I was talking to her, and Madeleine really had a hard time with that.  Suddenly she was super thirsty and kept badgering me telling me that, then blew bubbles with her slobber and came at me whining and slobbering, and I held her away with my hand, with my finger tips digging in a bit because she kept trying to slobber on me.  I told her to stop, and then she ran away screaming to the closet to think, I suppose.  Shortly after this incident we went downstairs, and Madeleine got the pink heart post-it notes out.  She was writing on them, and told me proudly that she had written my name on it.  And she had, writing “mommy”.  Then she wanted to know how to spell “love”.  She tried three times to make the L correctly, each time getting a new post-it note out and re-writing “mommy”.  The third time she asked me to write “Love, Madeleine” on there, because she had “made it” for me.  I kind of got the feeling that it was a note to make things happier between us after the fiasco with the phone.

There were more screaming fits; I can’t even remember them all.  Various fits about needing help to go to the potty – oh yeah, a huge one when we came home.  She wanted me to help her go to the bathroom (though she can do it by herself) but I was watching Grant play outside on his Plasma Car scooter, and told her to get Daddy, but she didn’t want to and there was a bloody murder fit.  Wow.  There sure are a lot, now that I think about it. 

But she’s so fun, too.  And says interesting things.  She was throwing another little fit because there wasn’t enough soap in the dispenser; after the small amount of crying and fussing, she said the soap was like “Ceres”.  It took me a minute:  “Ceres?”  She said, “The planet, Ceres?” and I said, “Sirius?” thinking the star, but then she said the dwarf planet Ceres:  the soap drop was like the dwarf planet Ceres, because they were both so small.   Oh wow. 

Yesterday there was a lot of wind.  Then when Grant went to bed, we looked out of his bedroom window a bit.  Then he said some words that were all separate, but related to each other:  “tree”, then “blow”, and “wind”.  I think he said “hard” at some point too.  He was very clearly remembering earlier in the day when we looked out and saw the wind blowing the trees.  It’s not quite a sentence, but there are definitely multiple words working together to convey meaning.

He also loves to count things.  We read books, and he’s always pointing at things in the pictures and demanding, “Count!”  And we count just about everything.  He can sort of count his body parts too, at least the ones that number in the 10s or in the   2s, or in the 1s I guess, so pretty much he can count it all.  He’s sooooo freakin’ cute when he’s saying “one … two!!!!” with such enthusiasm.  I was telling Brian this evening that Grant is just fantastic.  Completely fantastic.  He was even pretty fussy for him (he was tired), and I still just thought he was so fantastic.

I’ve been fretting a bit lately about life and death and God and bringing children into a cruel world, and all that stuff.  But I’m getting pretty tired, and I don’t think there are too many answers to be found that I don’t already know, at least not too many that I’ll find this evening.  So – maybe I’ll just go to bed.  That’ll help with feeling better tomorrow.

Good night! 

Grant had a nice 3-word sentence today, but I'm not really sure what he meant by it.  We were on the pool table at my mom's house, where I change his diapers, and he was pointing up at the fancy hanging light, and then said, "Mommy do light."  Now you'd think that would mean to turn it on, but that didn't really make sense, because he normally doesn't want to turn it on, and he wasn't over by the switches, and he was more just commenting about the light I think. 

He's such a chatterbox these days.  He's always telling me about a "loud air plane!" or "one two light!" (there were lights shining into our dark bedroom).  Today he was counting eyes and ears with my mom, and he's so cute saying "one two!" 

(Now he's screaming because he had a chapstick he was trying to eat and Brian took it away.  Maybe he's tired?  That'd be nice.)

Perhaps I'd better go and take care of him....

but -- we got our new ipod!  yay!  complete with case!  please don't break!

Madeleine and Brian are in bed, and Grant and I are watching the Gonzaga - St. Mary's game.  Well, I was also playing Fruit Ninja on my poor broken ipod  (the screen!  it's shattered!  -- but it still works).  Grant had been out in the other room playing.  Then he came to me saying "bee", which is short for "wild naked ba-bee (baby)", which means he's taken his diaper off.  Then he said "pee", which means he wants to go pee pee in the bathroom.  He doesn't actually do it, but just sort of pretends.  So I took him there and sat him up on the potty chair, and THEN I realized that he'd already pooped.  A lot.  And it was all over everything.  All over him, all over me, all over the potty chair....  He had it all over his body, his shirt... his legs... I got his shirt off and it was on his back.... hands.....  my clothes.... oh no.  Yuck!  I asked him where his diaper was, and he pointed to the duplo area and said "there", but it wasn't there.  When I finally got him cleaned up I asked again where it was, and he went to the kitchen garbage can and said "there!", which is better than it could have been.  I checked, and there was quite a lot of poop in it.  I'm still a bit worried that there are bits of poop around the house...  I picked up a suspicious thing off the carpet... and was really disturbed when I went back to the bathroom and saw the terrible mess on the potty chair....    ugh. 

Okay, so no one but me wants to hear about this, but... yuck!  Grant will go around saying "wuck-oh!!!" (yucko) over and over enthusiastically.  I don't think he gets that yuck is not so good. 

Did I mention that Grant said "down here" as one of his phrases?  And on the way to my mom's he said "big truck", and then when we got there I'm fairly positive he said "grandma home" and then "go" (you can sort of put it together to say that we went to grandma's home).  My mom told me some longer phrase he repeated today, but I can't remember what it is.  Perhaps my mom will remind me. 

I kind of have a lego project I'm working on, but I'm not that excited about working on it.  I just hardly have any completely free time to concentrate on it, and then it's easier to just play games on the ipod touch.  I suppose that's because it's new, but it's also frivolous.  Well, isn't lego frivolous too?  It feels slightly less frivolous, probably because I'm creating things.  And I get attention for it, which is...  a positive, I guess?  It gets my pride involved, which can be a bad thing.  I can get really mopey at times about it, if my pride has taken a beating.  It's one of my weaknesses. 

It'll be nice when Al and Ellen come back.  They watch the kids and give me free time, and I think much of my prior building was done on those Mondays when they watched the kids.  It's so nice to have time to be alone and non interrupted.  Grant loves to come eat my pieces, and Madeleine wants to help me, but it has to be done her way, and it's just not working well.  And I feel guilty if I push my kids away to do something frivolous, so -- it hasn't been happening so much lately.  I probably wouldn't think much about it, but I was on such a roll for 6 months or so, and I feel like I ought to keep it up.  Maintain my reputation or something.  But it's all frivolous, and ought not to be a source of guilt or stress.  Or disappointement.

While I was writing this Grant was eating applesauce, and made a big mess.  He's quite an expert at making big messes.  An expert, I tell you.

Now he's going around turning on all the lights.  And demanding I help.  And now he wants up.  I better go and be with him. 

A few more two-word phrases from Grant:  "truck game", "Daddy home" (he says this whenever he hears Brian in some other part of the house, even if it wasn't right when he came home from work; he said it today when Brian left for work)...  there are more, I think, but I don't remember right now.

He loves to count, though he doesn't say much around 6 or 7.  Yesterday Madeleine counted to 8 and then stopped, and Grant said "nine, ten!"  He also loves to say "Mine!!"  He really likes to call my iPod touch "mine!"  Madeleine will often say "mines" instead of "mine", because of the whole grammatical pattern... you know, all the other possessives have an "s" on the end, so it's yours, ours, his, hers, theirs, its.... but then it's "mine", no "s".  So in this one thing Grant says a word better than Madeleine (though his understanding of the language is much less). 

I see a few snowflakes falling down.  The last two months have been really warm and fairly nice, but I guess we're going to get one last little hurrah of winter. 

The kids love watching My Little Pony videos.  We have a whole playlist with 16 episodes of the new pony show on youtube.  I rather like it too.

Grant's here trying to get my attention, so I guess I should give him some. 

Happy Valentine's Day!

I just came to write down a few two-word phrases that Grant is using these days.  They include:  more pop, more milk, play ball, red car, green ball, e e e e go! (really "ready set go" but sometimes he does better than others), ooooh dark. 

There's more but I can't think of them at the moment.

We made Valentine's cookies and cards today with Madeleine and Haley.  Grant sort of looked on, and then took a nap.  We rode scooters down the hill outside and made a big tent in the bedroom.  Right now Grant's out there playing in the hamster cage we made for his Zhu Zhu pet that he got for his birthday.  We used DUPLO to make it a nice home.  Then we used DUPLO to make a nice pony cage with toys for the ponies.  And now the ponies have a garden and two trailers to be their houses, too. 

Anyway, it was a passably nice day.

Now Grant keeps destroying his hamster cage and asking me to put it "back!" "again!"  Now he says "yay!" from the other room... perhaps he fixed it himself?

Anyway, here I go!

Grant loves balls, and was hauling the big ole basketball up the stairs by putting it on a step and then climbing up, putting it on the next step and then climbing up.  I said he was going to be such a ball player, such a baller... and then Madeleine said, "... and I'm going to be a flower girl!" 

It's true, she is going to be a flower girl for Joe and Karen's wedding.  But it was so funny.  Brian said yes, she's going to be a professional flower girl when she grows up. 

We went to dinner with Karen (hit up the McD's), and made some plans to return to Seaside next summer.  We had fun, and now that I have an iPod Touch and play Plants vs. Zombies I keep remembering how we went last summer and Karen had her iPod Touch and was playing that very game, and how I just wanted to be back there, relaxing, sitting on the balcony, watching the ocean, playing my game.  Ah.....  I thought maybe we could go to a different town, but Brian really likes Seaside because it has lots of activities for kids, which is true.  And I do like it too. 

Also, Grant invented the "Yay, Tree!" game today.  He and Madeleine would throw a ball into a tree, and if it stuck, they would say, "Yay, Tree!"  (Grant came up with that first, of course.)  Then I would have to try to get it out.  Fun fun!

Time to go get Grant so Madeleine can go to bed.  So -- toodles!

After the vomiting, Grant was awake a lot last night with a fever.  So we both too a long nap this afternoon, and now I don't know if we'll ever go to bed.  He's been so attached to me all day, nursing almost constantly.  Right now he's actually two feet away, eating pretzels (some of the first solid food he's been willing to eat).  Since he's happy with me right here, I will try typing a bit.  He's watching My Little Pony videos on YouTube.  He loves them.  I think it makes Brian cringe a little, but they're his favorites right now.  Madeleine adores her ponies, and it has rubbed off on Grant too.  Another favorite thing for him to do is to grab her ponies and run to the other room with them, shrieking in glee.  Madeleine is shrieking in dismay, and it gets pretty loud and chaotic very quickly.  Madeleine has taken to roaring at Grant:  if he comes close to her and she thinks he's going to be trouble, she will open her mouth wide and yell "ROAR!!!!" as loud and ferociously as she can.  It's her alternative to hitting him.  Sometimes it deters him; sometimes he cries (if he's tired); sometimes he carries on as if he didn't even notice.  I know Madeleine had used her roaring technique in the past, but it has taken on renewed life and strength lately, much louder and more ferocious than in its previous incarnations. 

Grant can say a ton of words now, and is starting to sometimes put two words together to make more of a message.  They're not really sentences, but he's getting closer.  He can repeat a lot of the words that you ask him to say, especially if they're 1 syllable.  There are some two syllable words he can do now, too, though.  One cute phrase that makes me happy is when we turn off the lights and it gets dark.  He loves to say, "Ooooooooooh....   dark!"  It's so stinkin' cute.

The kids also play the "score basket game" now.  That's what Madeleine named it.  It's a lot like basketball, but also not like basketball.  The kids go to the very top of the stairs and Brian sits on the landing with a laundry basket or two.  The kids throw balls down the stairs and try to get it in the basket, and Brian (or I) throws the balls back up to the top.  It's lots of fun, and sometimes a player decides to go sit in a basket instead, adding an extra level of complexity to the game.

(As I type this, Grant has a bouncy ball and is throwing it at me and the keyboard.  Maybe he wants to play ball.... which is a good sign, since he's not wanting milk, like he did all day.  It's probably a bad sign he's perked up at 11:30 p.m.   Isn't it supposed to be bedtime??)