15 (months) going on 5

I swear, he thinks he’s five years old.

If anybody else has a fork and a spoon, he has to, too. He has to eat corn on the cob, in defiance of his mouthful of 7 teeth (two of which are no more than nubs).

He thinks he has to have whatever everybody else has, from toys to food; he often flatly refuses to drink milk from his sippy cup, or the plastic cup, because he wants WATER out of a GLASS GLASS like EVERYBODY ELSE.

He begs to have his teeth brushed. Yes, I said “begs.” He will actually go up the stairs on his own, and climb up on the stool and wait, howling for help. And lately he’s been trying to do it himself.

He’s learning to express his preferences through signs and by way of Julianna’s system of grunts. A sign takes him about three seconds to figure out; you can practically see the synaptic connections closing behind his eyes.

He thinks he’s five years old—except when it’s not to his advantage. Then, he’s all baby.

When an older sibling torments him (Alex through a surfeit of love, Julianna through pure cussedness…let’s be honest), the screams fill the entire three levels. He comes running to Mommy for a snuggle…but mostly because he thinks I’m too stupid to know that what he really wants is to bang on the computer keyboard. When you tell him he has to eat his vegetables and his meat before he gets a cracker/fruit/cheese/dessert—woe betide the world! Wailing commences! Unfortunately for Nicholas, he’s the third child. Mommy and Daddy are on to the manipulation game now. Temper tantrums get him nowhere. We’ve developed a tolerance for them, and if he outlasts our tolerance, he lands in his crib with the door closed.

It’s really fun to see him blossom like this. As Julianna continues her incremental quarter-steps forward, he leaps the chasm between them like Mario on a bonus. There is no getting used to the difference in the speed of their learning. Even though I know he’s tuned in to a cosmic radio wave she can’t hear and I have lost tuning for, I still can’t help shivering in wonder as I watch him learn.

Growth charts, begone! My baby’s growing just fine.

Mamarazzi Monday

Published in: on July 8, 2010 at 6:49 am  Comments (8)  
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Why My Kids Will Hate Me Someday

Someday, my kids are going to hate me. In ascending order of “embarrassing”…
#1.
‘

Alex paces when he talks on the phone. Always. Constantly.

 #2.

Masked, naked and cute

#3.

In case it's not obvious...Alex is asleep.

#4.

Nicholas (crowing & cackling): "Aha! Payback for all that "loving" when I was asleep in the bouncy seat! And you thought I was too little to remember!"

#5.

Alex doesn't remember this nap. Or any of the torment thrust upon him by his baby brother therein. Good thing I have proof, n'est-ce pas?

#6.

The Flash...er

#7.

Uh...no need for words on this one!

(Oh, if only I had had the camera ready when Julianna came prancing around wearing my underwear like a bra!)

linking up with Fingerprint Fridays at The Rusted Chain and with

Mamarazzi Monday

Published in: on July 2, 2010 at 5:15 am  Comments (12)  

Two Peas in a Pod

(or, What Happened Because of a Tire, Part Two. )

Motherhood Moments

Post-tire adventure, we piled back in the car and started down the highway again. Now Alex was the crabby one (he wanted the McDonald’s Playplace, not Pizza Hut), and this time he was the one who conked out immediately. Meanwhile, in the captain’s chairs, Julianna and Nicholas struck up an antiphonal chorus. Julianna clapped, Nicholas giggled. Nicholas clapped, Julianna giggled. Julianna squealed, Nicholas giggled. (He has such an adorable laugh.) Nicholas made raspberry noises, Julianna giggled. They stretched their arms across the divide between their chairs and shook hands, and both of them would collapse into hysterics simultaneously.

(Sorry for the poor exposure...it was the best I could get)

It was ten miles of entertainment for Mommy and Daddy, until Nicholas conked out mid-squeal and Julianna waved her empty hand at Nicholas, wailing, “Euh, euh!”

My little ones are two peas in a pod these days. As Nicholas barrels down on his big sister’s developmental age—not to mention her weight and height—they become more and more aware of their compatibility.

But of course, compatibility at this age also involves conflict. As the ranking child, Julianna must keep some measure of control. She likes to teach him…

"More"

…and lead him in chorus…

…and there’s a healthy dose of torment in their relationship, too. If he gets out of line (which means, uh…I don’t know, he looked at her funny?), she “hugs” him.

Yeah, like that. Involving lots of screaming and wailing from him, and a sly smile from her.

Hold onto control as long as you can, little girl. I estimate you’ve got six months, max, before he barrels past you, and starts dragging you along the path of developmental milestones.

Published in: on June 24, 2010 at 5:02 am  Comments (2)  
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And today, he walks

Motherhood Moments

Today, he stands.

Holding onto the coffee table, my unhurried child pulls up onto two little feet, flexing ten little toes more accustomed to “This Little Piggy” than to balance, and tentatively lets go. He wobbles for a second, finds his center, and starts forward: pit-pat, pit-pat. But he’s too far from the next point of support, so he sinks to sitting. And as Big Brother shrieks, “Good job, little boy!” he shows all five of his teeth in a smile that could light up Las Vegas.

Despite his small size, the doctor’s dependence on growth curves and insistence on endocrine tests, despite his meandering pace through the developmental milestones, he walks. After the spot-on-time forward charge of the first child and the eighteen-month concentrated effort it took to teach the second, my third child simply decides it’s time. And without fuss, without drawing attention, he walks.

And it warms a mother’s heart.

What is your motherhood moment this week?

Published in: on June 10, 2010 at 5:34 am  Comments (3)  
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7 Quick Takes, the Nicholas Edition

Every so often, I just have to write a Journal entry…because life is more than my own eloquence. Sometimes life is what the munchkins are achieving!

 

1. As I’ve said before, Nicholas is not a hurried child. Sometimes I have to wonder if that’s because I take a much more live-and-let-live approach to parenting him. When Alex was a baby, he got a lot more time with me sitting on the floor, teaching him to discern shapes and colors. He got a lot more concentrated “a sheep says baa, a cow says moo” time. After all, five years ago I had only one kid, and I wasn’t freelancing.

2. But I don’t really worry about this… parenting Julianna  has taught me that it’s going to happen sooner or later, and the fact that Nicholas does not have to battle his own genetics in order to learn takes away my sense of urgency. Shuts down the panic button on his behalf. After all, his big sister is still not talking. She’s barely imitating.

 3. On to the list of milestones…in the last week, Nicholas has learned to get over the lip of the bed/staircase safely and slide down on his tummy. His newfound independence is liberating for all of us, but it does mean that I no longer can count on finding him on the same level of the house where I left him.

4. This also means we have gotten away with not “baby-proofing” our second house, aside from a couple of electric plug covers (questionable in value, since most of the plugs are uncovered). I know this is heresy to most parents and ALL the parenting advice, but I mean really, have you ever tried to deal with those stupid plug covers? You practically have to have a pliers to get them out of the wall, and how safe is that? Shock yourself instead of the kid! No, we believe in keeping the kids close and teaching them to stay out of the dangerous areas.

5. Onward and upward. The really exciting news this week is that Nicholas has begun to let go—and even take a step or two independently. (At fourteen months, it’s about time!) I always thought kids learned to stand, then walk…but Nicholas is a believer in package deals, apparently. :)

6. He’s also developing his individuality—his personality, as it were. I’m enjoying watching him finally begin to bond with Daddy—he is such a Mama’s boy…I thought Alex took the cake on that, but holy cow, Nicholas wins hands down!…and you all know how heart-stopping it is to see the man you love, loving his children. Nicholas is doing some rudimentary signing, and he’s beginning to have preferences. Random things, like…he won’t eat unless he’s sitting in a regular chair. (Hahaha, I despise the high chair. I won’t eat a bite unless you put me in a chair so I can REALLY make a mess! BWAHAHAHAHA!) Two nights ago, I discovered that I could make one silly face/sound and send him into uncontrolled belly giggles. Oh, you can just imagine what an idiot I am making of myself the last two days!

Don't you just adore how babies play peekaboo? They think they're hiding, but they've GOT to keep an eye on you while they do it! :)

7. Speaking of individuality/personality…he asks to have his teeth brushed. ?????? I know—enjoy it while it lasts!

Have a great weekend!

Published in: on May 21, 2010 at 5:34 am  Comments (10)  
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Wordless Wednesday: the Mischief Man

CAUGHT IN THE ACT!

Look out, birdies...your food supply is in peril!

Oh…you want to see the culprit?

Okay, then.

The bird feed thief dances.

Published in: on May 19, 2010 at 5:10 am  Comments (4)  
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The Microphone Hog (a multitasking post)

Today’s Motherhood Moment comes to you from the floor of the Missouri House of Representatives.

I don’t talk politics very often here, because frankly, I find the system flawed and self-defeating, and political discourse inevitably makes everyone angry. But we actually have a connection to politics in our family. My mother has been a state representative for eight years, which means she is term limited out as of tomorrow, when session closes.

For the past five years, every spring I have taken the kids to Jeff City to visit Grandma at the Capitol. Every year, she introduces them on the House floor at the start of the day’s session and makes them “honorary pages” for the day.

Well, this year, with two walkers and a wiggler, it was not easy to corral the kids in the wings of the House floor. Alex wanted to climb on the base of the marble columns and go around and around them; Julianna wanted to take off on her Miss America schtick, and Nicholas just wanted to explore. He condescended to be held by his grandma, who took him out onto the floor with her and stood at the microphone, waiting for the speaker to acknowledge her.

“Lady from Randolph, for what purpose do you rise?”

“Mr. Speaker, I would like…”

And at this point, Nicholas thought, Hey, what is that thing? That looks totally awesome! So he grabbed the mic and shoved it away.

Mom pulled it back and started again. “I would like to…”

Shove. Chuckles begin rippling through the hall—which is really saying something, because if you’ve never been there, you might not realize that nobody ever listens to anything anyone is saying. They just all carry on their own conversations in the wings until the speaker bangs the gavel and tells them all to shut up. But I digress. At last, Mom just decided she had to do the best she could. It sounded something like this over the PA system: “I would (mumble mumble) my grandchildren (mumble mumble) Alex, Juli (mumble mumble)  and Nicholas, with their (mumble mumble) Kate.”

“Looks like you have some good help there,” the Speaker said, and everyone applauded—including Nicholas:

Look how proud of himself my little microphone thief is!

So I’m going to break all the laws of blogging and tack on another topic to the end of today’s Motherhood Moment. Today’s You Capture theme, over at I Should Be Folding Laundry, is “yellow.” And if I didn’t have these pretty pictures to share, I would just let it go…but I do have pretty pictures, so here you go:

(That is my home-grown tulip there, victim of Christian's overeager weedeating)

Sorry it's out of focus, but these are such pretty daffodils, and it's raining too steadily to go take more...

Irises need no introduction...but I'll introduce them anyway. When I was a kid, every May we would sneak a cut crystal basket vase full of irises from the garden into the house. And then they would magically appear on the table on Mother's Day morning. Two years ago, I thinned Mom's irises and brought some of every color to live at our house.

What is YOUR parenting moment of the week?

youcapture 4-1

Published in: on May 13, 2010 at 5:55 am  Comments (15)  
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Moments

How do I choose the moment? It was a week of moments.

There was this one:

Alex--PLEASE pay attention to the baby you're holding and not your sister, who is perfectly capable of going down a slide by herself!!!

…and this…

Sunday night dinner. ;)

…and this…

How many little boys can you fit in a car seat box? And how much fun will they have therein?

…and there were the birthday moments…

This was half a second BEFORE Nicholas tried to grab the flame.

…and this one…

Wait a minute! This is MY birthday cake! What are you THINKING, Grandpa?

Nicholas has been up at night A LOT lately. There have been times when I really thought I was going to lose it. Thank God for a great husband who actually woke up twice in one night and took kid duty while I was conked out (with earplugs) (drugged on Benadryl) with a cold! I swear, if the kid doesn’t poke through half a dozen teeth in the next few days, me and God, man, we’re gonna have some words.

But then there was this moment:

See how proud he is of himself?

The moment in which my baby began signing “all done.” On the first attempt to teach it to him. And retained it, too—he signed it spontaneously last night, and I nearly fell over.

Every time I think I’ve readjusted to the typical experience of a child developing, Nicholas wows me again. Probably because Julianna continues to require such concentrated, continuing attention to learn anything. I confess that over the last week, I have been doing some low-grade fretting about Nicholas’s propensity to bend books backward and do a whole-hand grab instead of turning pages. But he’s an independent little guy, and takes great exception to hand-over-hand—the staple of teaching Julianna. And then yesterday, we sat down to read a book and he turned the pages, one-fingered, exercising his newfound ability to point. With his right hand, at least; his left hand is still a little uncoordinated.

And as Nicholas sits contentedly in my arms and stares out at the greening world, his face quizzical as he watches a flock of starlings buzz across the sky, I remember what I always said about Alex. The typically-developing child is tuned in to some celestial aerial in the sky. They’re hearing signals that we big important grownups have long since tuned out. They absorb learning from the air around them.

And that’s a great moment to be a mom.

Photobucket

Published in: on March 25, 2010 at 5:35 am  Comments (7)  
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Nicholas, Day 364

Well, baby boy, here you are, on the cusp of a year. 365 days ago, I was waddling rushing around the house trying to get two children packed for a few days at Grandma and Grandpa’s, and two adults packed for a few days in the hospital. 365 days ago, we still hadn’t decided what your name was.

 That very night, your daddy went to the hospital. By the next morning, this was you:

Within two days, you had your own groupies. We came home to sick children—and utter chaos. And for the last year, as you grow, chaos has remained the rule of law in our house. But baby boy, have no fear. You hold your own. Throwing sippy cups and dropping food, with an eye on me to see if I’m paying attention…examining everything that can be filed (movies, CDs, books, Tupperware lids) and endlessly testing gravity…trying hard to keep up with your big brother and your big sister…rest assured, you make your mark on the world, little man.

Besides, you are the reason we get to have cake ONE TIME during Lent every year!

Published in: on March 18, 2010 at 5:28 am  Comments (1)  
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Partners In Crime

My baby is definitely not a hurried child. No, Nicholas is milking his babyhood for all it’s worth. At 11 months and 20 days, he has one tooth and crawls on all fours…unless he’s in a hurry, in which case he still thinks army crawling is the fastest way to get around.

He’s little enough (meaning he’s still nursing) that I still have to take him with me when I’m gone for long periods of time. A couple of weeks ago, that meant that he got some extra face time with Grandma in Jeff City when I had a meeting about the Children’s Therapy Act.

Too bad nobody loves me!

After three years of fighting for every milestone, as we do with Julianna, it’s a neverending source of awe for me when things just happen. They may be later than they were with my firstborn, but still, they happen. Nonchalantly. No fuss. Just, “Oh, I think today I’ll fold my hands when I hear you say, ‘It’s time to pray.’” Just, “Oh, I think I’ll start cruising the furniture today.”

Not so many months ago, the sight of his big sister was enough to make Nicholas scream in sheer terror. He still screams at her (and at his brother), but only when they’re lavishing an excess of love on him. He likes his personal space. At all other times, he thinks his big siblings are the coolest thing ever—and clearly, put on the earth to be his personal stand-up comedians.

In Julianna’s case, the feeling is mutual. It’s so funny to see how she tries to hold him like a baby, treat him like a baby, when he’s well on his way to being bigger than she is.

And I, as Mommy, stand off to the side and marvel. Because you see, as Nicholas catches up to Julianna developmentally, I get to watch two of my children make the same milestones at the same time. Right now, they are both high-jumping into a new plane of language comprehension. Julianna is learning to respond to instructions: put this in the trash, please, and carry your plate to the table. Nicholas isn’t at that level, but he, too, abruptly began showing his ability to process and respond to commands. As in, Nicholas, no touch!

In fact, in some ways Nicholas is already ahead of Julianna in speech issues. He experiments with far, far more sounds than she does, and says them far more regularly. Of course, in other ways she’s ahead of him—in deliberate imitation (everything comes out “muh” whether it’s supposed to be boo or ball or moon or mom or dog or dad, but she’s trying) and in responding to yes or no questions and making choices. This “he’s ahead-she’s ahead” dynamic means that they are incredibly well-matched right now. I am planning a scrapbook page called “Partners in Crime.” Here’s a preview.

Who, us? Pull books down? Never! It must have been that evil Big Brother.

Rattling the cage

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Published in: on March 9, 2010 at 8:14 am  Comments (5)  
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