Happy 4th Birthday, Stelly Belle.

Hey Stelly,

Well Sis, we made it to year number 4. This year has been an accumulation of small, but noteworthy changes that constantly remind me of how you have so completely shaken off the mortal coil of toddlerhood and are securely in the realm of Girl. And yes, I spelled Girl with a capital letter on purpose. Actually, to be more accurate, I should have spelled it GIRL, because you, my effervescent little creature, live your life with the caps lock on. And, if it makes you feel any better, your brother? That one not only lives with caps lock, but also while standing on the exclamation point key.

stella

So, this year you stopped taking naps. Then you started again. Then you stopped. Stopped forever, I’m afraid. Not that you don’t need one, but rather, you just flat-out refuse to take one. And if there is one thing I have figured out in 4 years of being your parent it’s that I know when I can push and when I don’t stand a chance. The first time around, there was something that told me I still had a chance. A brief glimpse of a fracture in your resolve. And so I prevailed. Briefly. Then you staged a second attack, and I could tell that this time there would be no next time. And so here we are: you, me and our new forever of inseparable one-ness.

As for the other items on this year’s “done that” list, you can now add swimming. Yes, this was the year you decided that the pool water would not actually dissolve your face, and you began what I can – with loose definition – refer to as swimming. We’re talking, full-on, face-in-the-water, flailing around like an epileptic porpise kind of swimming. It’s not exactly something that will get you a passing grade on a lifeguard test, but oh Stelly, it was so fun watching you go from a girl who wouldn’t even take a shower, to a girl who will now not only hurl herself into the deep-end without a life-vest, but will also, yes, you heard it here first, FINALLY TAKE A SHOWER! Nevermind that you stand there the whole time complaining that I am hogging all the water.

stella

And although you thought, hoped, prayed that we couldn’t dare sink any lower than last year’s maneuver of delivering you a shiny new baby brother, I have one thing to say to you: OH YES WE CAN. You see Stelly, there are going to be many times in your future where you are going to find yourself sitting in your room cursing our very existence and insisting that our life’s mission is to make yours as miserable as possible. And, let me tell you right now, that YOU ARE SO RIGHT! We started with the whole baby brother thing, then this year, waffled back and forth between either becoming vegetarians or moving into a new house. As you have become well aware, we settled on the latter. And as we drilled you on the logistics of what it would mean to move to a new house, we also tried to get your input. After asking you on numerous occasions whether or not you liked the new house, you would always reply with the exact same answer: NO! It doesn’t have any toys.

stella

But much the same way as the whole baby brother thing came with a hidden silver lining of having a captive servant whom you can order around, and from whom you can steal toys, the new house has brought a whole host of unintended treasures as well. A gigantic yard, a neighborhood teeming with potential playmates, and the mother of all perks: big cable. And, big cable means Paula Deen, and the Barefoot Contessa, and Rachel Ray. That’s right, Stelly, you are now addicted to the Food Network. And you would step over our cold dead bodies before missing a single episode of that silver-haired lady who eats butter by the stick.

stella

This is also the year we have begun having the more serious conversations about the big K. That’s right – Kindergarten. And unlike the parents who got pregnant in any month other than February or March, I don’t get to just parade on down to the local elementary school and sign you up. Instead, I am reminded of those 15 days wherein you were supposed to be here but refused to exit my body. Well, those 15 days have made all the difference. You are now on the far side of that magical date that separates the “ready” from the “not ready”. See, here’s the thing, in just about every way you are ready. You are so, so smart. You are incredibly smart. And yes, I am your mother. But it is true. You can write your name, and sound out words, and count to 100 and, can walk around the lunch table and read the name-card of each and every one of your peers – even when they can’t. In that way, Kindergarten is all you, baby. But, then I worry about your sensitivity threshold. More specifically, the side of you who still has the urge to bite the kid sitting next to you, when they ignore your warnings and insist on sitting too close to you at circle time. And when it comes down to it, every one of my instincts tells me to wait. To let you wiggle through those last few emotional phases before throwing you in with the sharks. But the thought of making you weather that extra year in pre-school is not the right answer for me either. And so what to do? WHAT TO DO? Don’t worry Stelly, we’ll get it figured out. And as of Fall 2008, you will be in the place that allows you all the greatness you deserve. I promise.

stella

You know, sweetie, I could go on and on. This year has been so big – full of so many great things. And all I can say is this: you are awesome. And even though I am quick to use the word crazy, I want you to realize that now I am using it about your brother (who, by the way, is crazy). But you are no longer that kind of crazy. And I can’t really express how much fun that is for me. And, even though you have lost the crazy (mostly), your sense of humor is better than ever. Which you’ll need once we all become vegetarians next year.

stella

Happy Birthday, Sweet Girl.

Love,
Mom

Porter: The Cute vs The Angry

Hey McGoo,

Big surprise, but I managed to miss my arbitrarily set, semi-regular post wherein I tell you how adorably cute you are and relate my amazement at how you can elevate angry to a level not commonly found in nature. Otherwise known as The Cute and The Angry, respectively. So instead of me telling you about The Cute and The Angry at 18 months, I will be doing it at 20 months. And later, when you are relating to your therapist how you can only find your happy place by hiding under your desk at work, you’ll think back to this moment and know why.

In our household, your 18-month birthday meant one thing: cheaper child care. Meaning that, instead of going obscenely over-budget every month, now we can just go grossly over-budget. Although the day-spa we send you to really does a very nice job of fanning you with palm fronds and catering to your infinitely short fuse, I still find it somewhat depressing that our monthly child-care costs rival the GDP of a medium-sized country. I guess this is nature’s way of preparing us for the high-priced, private college tuition you will be draining from our account in about 16 and a half years.

Aside from becoming less expensive, you actually have been showing us signs that maybe, perhaps, OH GOD PLEASE, your actual communication skills might be developing enough to begin diffusing The Angry. Don’t get me wrong, there is so much more to you than The Angry. But buddy, I hate to be the one to break this to you, but the reality is that you have gotten quite a reputation for using tantrum-theory as your go-to method for conflict resolution. Generally speaking, The Angry results from one of the following two scenarios: 1) You don’t get what you want, 2) No one will make the air stop touching you. Both are equally explosive, and both take a significant amount of diversionary tactics and bribery to diffuse.

Let’s take for example yesterday, when I had to endure an endless barrage of The Angry because I would not give you some of my coffee, and in an attempt at reconciliation, offered you some trailmix instead, only to be yelled at all over again because I wouldn’t let you carry the entire bag around the house with you. This is my life. My life where I do things like cut the crust off sandwiches and bribe you with candy. The kinds of things that, in another life, I would have judged with all the harshness of a person who hadn’t had her will broken by a toddler. Wait, make that a toddler and his smarter-than-her-own-good older sister.

Because of your intense desire to do EXACTLY what your sister does, we have had the volume of our lives cranked up to 15. On a dial that only goes to 10. The simplest of issues – without fail – digress with a true grace and elegance. Which is none. We have pretty much given up trying to make you drink from a cup with a lid. It usually works fine for a little while, but eventually you are guaranteed to get distracted or lazy and eventually drench yourself and your surrounding area with milk, or juice, or whatever other consumable you have convinced us to give you. You won’t sit in a booster seat, high chair or any other appropriate height accommodation unit. Instead, you stand. You stand in the bathtub, you stand at the kitchen bar, you stand at the dining room table. Little did I know that when I requested your father construct us a dining room table with benches, I was, personally, sealing my own fate. Dinner in our household consists of all four of us sitting on one side of the table with you pacing up and down the length of the bench, stepping over and on us whenever you decide you want to pick off someone else’s plate. And, usually you are doing it all shirtless because I can’t get you to wear a bib, and it is easier to clean spaghetti sauce off skin than it is to clean it off a beige polo shirt.

But no matter how much of The Angry you unleash, I can now say the following words: We, as a household, are sleeping. All night. Almost every night. It is a beautiful thing. I am sorry there hasn’t been more fanfare, more ticker-tape, more tequila-themed celebratory dinners, but it is one of those things you don’t want to say out loud, lest you permanently jinx it forever. And this Coke machine, it rocked. Sleeeeeep. No Sleep. Sleeeeep, No Sleep. Then, there was a week, and another, where I would dare to go to bed at the scandalously late hour of, say, TEN O’CLOCK gambling that you wouldn’t be up 3 more times throughout the night.

And it gets better. Better than sleep, you say? Oh yes, better. In the last month or so you have begun communicating with real, live actual words. The kind that the rest of us use. The sweet beautfil words that will form the bridge between The Angry and The Cute. And more and more come every day. Enough, that I have a blindingly optimistic hope that The Cute will become the over-riding theme for all posts to come. And rainbows and unicorns will be the new theme of this site. And all my words both in print and in real life will be shades of pink and purple. And the glorious harmony will reign supreme! Ahem.

To any outsider, it may not seem much. The gist of our conversations with you consist of you saying something that we can vaguely understand, us repeating back what we think you want, with you giving us an affirmative “Yeahuh” or the usual “NOOOOOOOOOO!” For example, last night at dinner there was this exchange:

You (screaming): “NOOOOOOOOOO!”
Your father: “Porter, would you like more milk?”
You (screaming subsiding): “Yeahuh”
Your father: “In this cup?”
You (calmly replying): “Yeahuh”
Your father: “Are you going to spill this one too?”
You: “Yeahuh”

See? Not much. But to know where we are coming from, it is like witty repartee amongst friends. You are at a place now where we can get you to attempt a repeat of just about any word we ask, and I have even gotten you saying “yeesssssh” instead of “Yeahuh” to everything. It is such clear and tangible progress, and something that is helping me on those days when I worry that instead of making the “Bring on the Cute” t-shirts, I will be needing to commission a “Save me from The Angry” tattoo.

I took a couple of video clips showcasing some of your cooler tricks of late, because really, with you, it is all about The Cute.

Anatomy Lesson

Zoology Practical

Indoctrination

The rule of thumb for a kid’s party guest lists is ‘Age +1’. Our formula goes something like this: ‘Age +10 +All the adults you can think of’. There. That should do it. Fortunately, not everyone on the guest list could make it, and we, therefore, didn’t look like complete hedonists. Well, except for the two pitchers of sangria. And the beer. And the two grey haired ladies standing over the sink eating the liquor-steeped fruit from the sangria. But other than that, it was your completely typical 1st birthday party. With tacos.

Although we were scheduled for rain, the skies miraculously parted, and I am left thinking that my children each have meteorological super-powers due to their ability to conjure perfect birthday party weather. But then, it’s not like it would have even occurred to this bunch that rain might have actually been something that would slow them down. Mostly, they seemed to enjoy eating fistfuls of refined sugar (Stella actually hid a secret stash of gummy fish under her pillow), dodging and weaving between all of the adults and playing on the behemoth, adjustable teeter-totter that Steve forged from a beam with the dimensions equal to that of a mid-sized car. (The quotable comment from this particular project being: “I am either building a teeter-totter or a trebuchet – I am not quite sure yet.”)

Us? Small-scale? Yeah, we don’t roll like that.

porter
(click on image for full set)

Happy 1st Birthday, Porter McGoo!

Well Buddy, today you officially turn one!

porter

I am excited, amazed, a little sad, but mostly just plain old proud that you, me, your dad and your sister have all made it through this year with appendages still attached and sanity within arm’s reach. There were some moments there when I really thought one of us was going to snap, then some miracle would occur: you would sleep through the night, your sister would extend a kind gesture, your father would ply me with liquor, Dore would call to offer a Stella-sleep-over. In every instance – just in the nick of time.

When people ask me about you (and they often do), I tend to hedge a little. You have put us through one of the most rigorous sleep boot camp programs this side of the Equator and it, therefore, is always the first thing that seems to come out of my mouth. But then, I am always quick to follow that up with a comment about how ultimately easy going and good-natured you are. And cute. Have I mentioned the cute? Oh God, where do I begin with the cute.

porter

I had always thought that if I had a son, I would find myself not knowing what to do or how to relate. After all, my experiences to-date do not involve Y chromosomes. As it turns out, this was one of my more significant miscalculations. From the moment you were born, I felt an immediate and overwhelming closeness to you that can only be matched by how I felt when your sister was born. Except here you were; my son. All I could think was how lucky I was to get to experience it all over again with you, my one and only son. I am reminded of this on a daily basis when you give me a belly laugh, or use your I’m-talking-to-the-cat voice, or wave and say good-bye (A-Gah!). You make it so easy, little man.

Being that you won’t be reading this for a while, I feel it is my duty to take this time to inform you of a couple of things that you may find unbelievable later. The first thing is that you adore your sister. Yes, really. You will be appalled to know that one of your favorite pass times is to follow her around from room to room, having to endure her increasingly torturous tendencies, and be regularly told that you can’t play with your own toys. The one-sidedness of your relationship doesn’t seem to phase you in the least. You would follow her to the ends of the earth, and knowing her, she would most likely lead you there. Most recently, you made it clear that you are no longer interested in your standard-issue tippy cup, but rather insist that you have the kind with a straw…just like her. And when it comes to these kinds of things, you won’t take No for an answer.

porter

Another couple of things that I think you may find interesting are your love of broccoli, your complete obsession with carrying around the remote control, and your borderline addictive behavior when it comes to loitering around the toilet – all things that I am sure you will thank me for bringing up during future pre-date interviews.

I guess what I am trying to say is this: This year was about so much more than just developmental milestones and reports on sleep and teething. It was about the four of us becoming a family, and realizing how much more fun, full and enriched our life is by you being part of it.

porter

Happy Birthday, McGoo!
Love,
Mama