Language

Milo likes to say, over and over again, "where is it?" when he's looking for something. Then when he finds it he'll say "here it is!" I haven't really considered these sentences because he learned them all as one phrase, so it's different from putting two words together on his own, like "hi kitty" or "bye bye daddy". Yesterday morning both of the kids were playing with a puzzle and Milo can name most of the animals in the puzzle. He was looking for the duck piece, which he calls "quack quack" instead of duck, and he said "where is it?" But then he said, "where is...quack quack?" I thought that was so impressive! It is amazing to watch the kids slowly put together words and make language.

Nora is also putting words together, usually to describe what people are doing. So she will say "Mama...dishes". Or "daddy...coffee". And of course, there's her old favorite, "kitty water". Both kids like to use possessives so they will say things like "mama's water". Milo has a current fascination with belly buttons so he'll come over to me, and say "mama's...where is it?" and then lift up my shirt. Nora will inform Milo that the correct phrase is "belly...button!"

Yesterday afternoon Nora wanted to go outside so she went into the sunroom, found her coat, and brought it to Jake, saying "On? On?" So he put it on her, then she went and found her hat, and brought it to Jake saying "Hat...on?" So he put it on her, and then she triumphantly said "Outside? Walk walk?" I think she figured that since her hat goes on before she goes outside, then if she puts her hat on, then she'll go outside. So, okay, she has a little work to do on formal logic, but I still thought it was pretty cool.

Stay at Home

Right now is a great time because the school year is over and Jake's summer class hasn't started up yet. So I am now free of teaching and service responsibilities, mostly, and can focus hard on writing, and Jake is free, period! It is so awesome because he has so much time right now and has been doing all of the weeding, and lots of cooking, and of course a lot more childcare too. I guess this is a little taste of having a stay-at-home spouse. Our house is cleaner, our yard looks nicer, and things are just a little slower paced.

It is such a treat and I feel lucky to have this situation right now. I have been able to get so much more work done with Jake taking care of things more at home. It gives me a sense of the kind of advantages that people with stay-at-home spouses get to experience, and I know it's a real privilege. 

That is just part of why I am so disappointed with the recent article in Slate's new xx column, which is supposed to provide a feminist viewpoint, but really, really doesn't. Dayo Olopade, in trying to explain a NYT piece (in which the economics reporter for the New York Times chronicles his descent into unpaid bills, mounting credit, and ultimately the inability to keep up with his mortgage), places all of the blame on the guy's first and second wives. She refers to stay-at-home wives as arm candy, trophy wives, and little better than mistresses.

It's ridiculous and insulting. Stay-at-home moms are not gold diggers sitting around doing nothing all day. They actually (surprise, surprise) work. Taking care of kids all day is work. It is really hard work. (At least, I personally find it hard). Men benefit enormously from the unpaid work that wives do. Men get ahead in their careers because they are supported at home, because they don't have to worry about how the kids are doing during the day, because they have somebody to take care of the house, the kids, the dinner, the laundry, the shopping, and the thousand other details that make a household run. Having another adult making sure everything runs smoothly at home allows a person to focus on work, advance in his career, and climb the ladder. Meanwhile the stay-at-home spouse is willing to make a very real sacrifice by not spending those years building up her career.

I dislike the stay-at-home / work-out-of-the-home debates because from what I can see, moms everywhere are working their asses off, regardless of whether they stay at home. Taking care of kids is difficult, valuable, important work. People talk about the costs or benefits to the kids as if that's all it is about but guess what, the husbands benefit too. 

I have fantasized about being able to stay at home for a couple of years (which, in academics, is not an option), but I know that I probably wouldn't be very good at it. I kind of have a bad personality for it, which is something I didn't know about myself before I had kids. Jake doesn't think it would be good for him to do long-term either, but being able to do it on a shorter term is really nice. I know that I am really grateful for his ability to take care of the home front this month. We lucked into a situation where Jake could go back to school because I bought this house when I was a single gal, only taking on a mortgage that I could afford on my own. We have one more year of flexible dad time and then he'll probably be back to normal 9-5 work hours, assuming there are jobs out there in a year. So I'm trying to enjoy this now while it lasts. I think Milo and Nora are enjoying it too!

It's a Phase

They say that 18 months is a time when sleep regressions occur. For the first time ever, Milo is also struggling to sleep as well as Nora. Nora has really been struggling lately. Wasn't it just a couple of weeks ago that I said it seemed like we'd turned a corner? HAH!

Wednesday night Nora was up for 2 hours, then she threw up, then I took her for a drive to get her to finally fall asleep.  I thought she had overstuffed herself at dinner (it was a very calorie-rich meal full of tons of dairy) and had a stomach ache. 

Thursday night and Friday night she was fine. I also happened to be out of town Thursday night and didn't arrive on Friday until after they had gone to bed. Hmmm...

Saturday night she was up for another 3 hours, and could not fall asleep. She reaches a point of no return after which she is just too overstimulated to sleep. I was afraid to put her down and walk away for fear that she would throw up again. Jake took her for a drive in the car and she did fall asleep. I took her out of the car and she stayed asleep, and then halfway up to her room she suddenly woke up and started crying. I walked into the nursery and she kept crying and then she threw up all over herself and me. That woke up Milo and got him upset and crying. Nora finally fell asleep around 11 and Milo was up until midnight, which has never been like him.

On a likely unrelated note, the neighbor kid across the street has the swine flu. 

Sunday night both kids woke up, tonight already both kids have woken up. Maybe this is the 18-month old thing. Maybe Nora has a little stomach bug or something. I don't know. I think we are all getting nervous because the 18-month check-up is coming up in a few weeks and I dread getting them weighed and finding out that they don't weigh enough, once again. I hate that.

I also hate meal times, for anybody who is counting, and am also generally not a fan of waking up in the morning and seeing, in the harsh light of daytime reality, a smear of crusted puke on my chest. 

Prescient

Wet Shirts, Curly Hair, Stairs

OMG I am so tired of writing about quadratic transformations, systems of equations and inequalities, common student errors, and how to create good lessons about these topics. I'm working every night and weekend but the good news is that I should be all done by Monday! I am really earning the new basement bathroom we are going to install...someday. I guess there are things like building permits and design decisions and product purchases that make installing a new bathroom a kind of lengthy process. Who knew? But I feel good and motivated to do my consulting work. Every time it sucks I think, bathroom, bathroom.

On Sunday afternoon there was a bike race around the Capitol. Actually it lasted all day, beginning with a little kid race in the morning and ending with the pro race at 4:30. We went to the pro race with the kids and watched the bicyclists whizz around the Capitol in tight clumps again and again. It was very exciting. Meanwhile Milo and Nora had a blast running around on the grass. Then Milo, who I should mentioned was being shadowed by Jake, not me, ran out onto the sidewalk. Then he tripped up a curb and sprawled face first onto the cement. It was a real face plant and he got road rash:

I took this picture tonight, after 2 days of healing. It looked a lot worse on Sunday night. The poor kid had road rash just like the racers! My colleague organized the race and later he told me that we should have taken Milo to the medical tent because there were 6 doctors just sitting there waiting to deal with road rash cases and other mishaps.

You might also notice how Milo's entire shirt is wet. Nora's is too actually. They both thought it was a lot of fun to slurp water out of a straw cup and then let it spill out of their mouths all down the front of their chests. I didn't even realize what they were doing until I took off their bibs and saw their wet shirts.

Curly hair:

Climbing up the stairs:

I am really struggling with Nora right now. When I'm not around, Jake and the twin whisperer report that she's pleasant and cheerful. But when I am around she literally has to be on me all the time. I mean all. the. time. If I am not holding her, she whines and cries. If I leave to go to the bathroom, she whines and cries. If I have to make dinner or wash the dishes, she whines and cries. This morning I let go of her for 10 seconds to rub my eyes, and she whined and cried. I cannot do a single thing without incurring the wrath of Nora. It is a lot of whining and crying to listen to. It is very, very wearing to listen to all of that. When I get tired of holding her, I sit down and she just crawls all over me and climbs all over me. She might venture out for 30 seconds or so to get a book or a toy, but then it's right back to my lap.

I'm starting to worry that maybe Nora is not getting enough time with me or something, and that is why she is so clingy. I wonder if she would be less clingy if I were with her 24/7? I feel like I am with her a good amount of the time, but maybe it is not enough for her? I feel kind of guilty about this. I hope it is just a normal phase and not a sign that Nora is not getting enough of me. 

Sunday Afternoon

Over the past week and a half I have written about 75 pages of material for a consulting job I'm doing, which constitutes half the job. Tomorrow my colleague and I begin the second half, which should be about the same amount of writing. The second half follows the format of the first half so I hope it'll go more quickly since I now have a template to follow. I have exactly a week to get it done, on top of grading eleven 20-page papers and oh, squeezing in a short trip to Ann Arbor.

I have been so busy, working every spare minute on this thing. When it ends, I'll then have to devote all of my energy to quickly pounding out a grant proposal that is due in mid-July, so I don't anticipate any relief until July 15.  Then I have 4 papers that I need to write and submit before the semester starts up. One of them is really minor and will be quick, one is medium sized and shouldn't take too long, and two of them are major papers and will hopefully constitute my signature pieces for tenure, if I can get them accepted.  They will take a long time. This is the summer when I should be doing my big push and working 24/7, but the kids don't let me do that, so I guess I will just do the best I can.

There are things I am letting slide because I just can't do it all. Like weeding. And diligent levels of cleaning. And re-staining the deck and the fence and the patio table and chairs. When I have free time, I have to spend it with the kids (or cooking for the kids, or grocery shopping). So I think this summer our house and our yard will just have to be a little scruffy, getting by on what Jake can accomplish. He's got his own stuff going on, so he's busy too.

In order to spend nap times working, I'm now taking the kids with me on my shopping errands and things. Milo seems to like it more than Nora. Nobody likes to be the one left at home. We're also going outside a lot, which both kids love to do. It is so nice to have good weather and be able to go out and do stuff now. When I'm with them, I'm trying to focus on being with them instead of developing a panic attack over everything else in my life. I feel like I am trying to push a giant boulder up a never-ending hill. Every year, as I inch towards tenure, the boulder gets bigger and heavier. I need to remember that this is only going to last another couple of years. It won't last forever.

17 Months

The kids are 17 months old today, and I'm outta material. But they're still cute:

I like the pictures from this past month because they chronicle a transition from winter to spring. It's finally nice outside. I haven't had much time to do, well, much of anything lately because of work insanity, so I don't have a lot to report, but I did want to mark this monthiversary. 

Nora has gone through some changes in the past month. She has really developed in her singing. Nora can hold a tune now and can sing lots of different songs. In addition to her standard Noona-focused repertoire, Nora is also a fan of "twinkle twinkle little star", "itsy bitsy spider", and "sun, sun, Mr. golden sun". Additional progress has been made in the areas of turning in circles, talking on the phone, drinking out of a big-girl cup, and taking off clothes.

I feel like we really turned a corner this past month when it came to sleep. Before I went on my two trips, Nora's sleep was still sporadic. Sometimes she would sleep through the night, but just as often (or more often) she would wake once or twice. Then I went on the trips, and when I came back, Nora was waking less. A lot less. For the past month she has slept through the night more often than not. This is the first time I can really say that since she was born. I hesitate to say that we've really come through this, but the sleeping pattern has been pretty stable for the past few weeks so I am optimistic.

Nora continues to love climbing stairs, being held by Mama, playing with the calculator, and going outside. Yesterday I told some folks about how Nora's word for calculator is "calculalolalolalo" and my grad students started cracking up over the fact that she even knows the word for calculator. "What does she have, baby's first calculator?" I said, "no, it's just an old TI-83" (it's not like I gave her a new calculator to play with, sheesh). Nora loves things with buttons, and calculators and cameras hold a special draw. They're almost as fascinating as my computer.

This picture above is one in which Nora is triumphant because she managed to beat us to the bathroom and plunge her hand in the kitty water. Nora wins again!

Nora is getting definite ideas about how things should be. In the morning when I come into her room, she wants to be picked up and held and given her bottle...but it has to be on her terms. If I try to just pick her up right away she'll say "No!" and fall down, scrambling away from me. I have to sit in the glider, with the bottle in my lap, looking all cozy until finally she invites me to pick her up. If it's not her idea, it's not going to happen without some tears.

Nora continues to reject 90% of the foods we offer her. She must have inherited this inclination from my side of the family. Maybe she is a super taster, who knows. It continues to frustrate me. She's got her own opinions about thins, what can I say.

I will say that Nora does new things every day that impress me. For instance, just today she got really angry at Milo, took a block and whaled on him, banging him on the head over and over again. Okay, that didn't impress me in a good way, but it was definitely a surprise. She also surprises me on a daily basis with all of the word associations she makes. She sees me putting on my glasses and hat and she'll say "bye bye mama". Or she'll notice something from a book and then mention it again in a different context later on, causing me to have to pause and think through the connection. Nora notices every little thing. It's fun to watch her grow and learn every day.

Milo's favorite interests continue to be, in order of importance to him, 1) Daddy, 2) Ball, and 3) Kitty. He also enjoys outside. Look at this perfect throw that Milo has perfected! He is getting really good at the overhand throw and he loves to toss the ball back and forth.

Below Milo is wearing some red boots and having fun clomping around in them. 

Milo has developed his own set of new skills in the past month, which includes knee walking, belly button locating (on all of us), and food tossing (at ever greater distances and velocities). 

Milo continues to be very interested in the kinds of toys where you fit shapes into holes. He is pretty good at it, but when it is hard he gets frustrated very easily. I totally see myself in him at those times. Milo works hard with his toys. He sticks out his tongue and concentrates and solves problems. Milo is a problem solver.

Today Milo solved a common ball problem that he experiences, and he was so proud of himself. He has two favorite indoor balls and both are pretty large. He cannot pick them both up at the same time, and this really bothers Milo. He hates having to choose. So today Milo got frustrated because he wanted to take both balls at once from the sunroom into the living room, and he couldn't do it. Finally he got down on his knees, tucked the smaller ball under his arm, and then walked on his knees into the living room, rolling the larger ball with him as he went. I wish I had a video of this moment because his grin was enormous and it was so obvious that Milo was just thrilled with himself over what he had done. 

It is hard to emphasize properly how much Milo loves Jake. The kids have definitely decided that I am Nora's and Jake is Milo's. Tonight I was alone with the kids as Jake was off doing something, and I swear Milo must have asked for Daddy about 30 times. 

Milo has developed an interest in the potty.  He likes to watch as we dump poopy diapers into the toilet and then he'll say "bye bye poop" as we flush it. Both kids can tell us that they have pooped, but neither one seems to announce it before the great event. Milo does enjoy talking about the potty and sometimes sitting on the potty just for fun. I suppose at this point I should start to do something about this, like buy a bench for the large potty and buy a small potty just for them (yuck), so that he can continue to indulge in this interest. I don't expect it'll lead to any actual potty training for another year or so, but there's no harm in letting him have some fun with it.

Milo continues to be a little ham. When his grandparents were here, both kids had great fun pretending to be little babies and crawling instead of walking. Milo just cracked himself up over this. He likes to show off for people, once he is done being afraid of them. He's a social little guy, I think (who knows where he got that from). 

All in all the kids are becoming simultaneously more fun and more difficult every day. They do new things all the time, they learn new words, and they develop new games and jokes that are great fun. At the same time, they fight like the dickens, they run away from us and refuse to do things they don't want to do, and they thrash about and yell when they don't get their way. It is challenging and tiring, but man am I glad that it is now and not this time last year. It's way better now.

Bucket List

Kid-related remark: I read that cheerful, outgoing 12-month olds can turn into shy, clingy 18-month olds. At Christmas Nora & Milo hung out with their paternal grandparents and they were fine. Yesterday and today, however, was a different story. Both kids cried like crazy every time their Grandpa came into the room. Nora wasn't too thrilled about either one, actually, and she stuck to me like a barnacle the whole time. She was like one of those monkeys that ride around clinging on their mother's back. If I tried to lift her off of me, my shirt would come with her, stuck in her tiny grip. Milo eventually got to the point at which he wouldn't cry around Grandpa, but he watched him like a hawk the whole time. He was incredibly wary. In time, the kids warmed up a little, but it was definitely different from how they were 5 months ago.

The rest of this is non kid stuff, so if you're here for M&N updates, you can stop reading.

So our neighborhood has, like, tons of actual neighbors and stuff who are fun to hang out with! There's always stuff going on, like block parties, and weekly softball games, and on Sunday morning there was coffee and doughnuts in the park for Mother's Day.

In this vein of community connectedness, one of my lovely and delightful neighbors has organized a regular gathering of 5 of us women, all who live within a block of each other, to get together and read a book about creativity and being an artist and getting unblocked and all that sort of thing.

Yeah, my head did kind of cloud up at that point because honestly I don't think of myself as remotely artistic or creative in any way. I am practical. I am literal. My feet are on the ground and my head is busy making 5-year plans and extended budgets and calculating exactly how many hours of consulting I need to do to build a basement bathroom so that my mother can stop having to brush her teeth in the midst of cobwebs and the lack of actual walls surrounding the toilet.

Jake is the artistic one. He's the one with an eye for design and beauty. One time he rejected a potential car due to the lines created by the rear passenger windows. Apparently they were ugly. It sort of boggled my mind that anybody would a) notice something like that, and b) care. It's a car, for crying out loud. Who cares whether it's pretty? What matters is how well it will run and how reliable it is and whether we can fit two carseats in it and how much it will cost. Jake is the one who draws and paints, or he did back when we actually had hobbies. Jake's the one who takes about twice as long to get ready to go out as I do, and as a result he generally looks twice as good as me. He's the one with the artist's eye and the creative spark, and I'm the one who is apparently fine driving ugly cars around, because honestly, it's just a car, it's not a painting.

As a child I always hated the directive to "be creative". To me that meant that I had to think up something that nobody had ever thought up before in the history of time, and that's a lot of pressure. I always felt like I was bad at being creative, and that's how I see myself to this day.

So at first I thought that this creative circle idea was not for me, but then I started thinking about the ways in which I am actually creative, even if I don't identify as such. The work that I have to do for my job is deeply creative, especially the research and writing part. I am not writing stories or poetry, but I am writing about the knowledge I've developed as a result of designing studies. So I think that kind of work can count as creative work...at least, it feels like it is. It definitely feels like I birth every article I write.

Of course I have this blog too. I don't really count it for anything, partly because I'm writing for an audience of, like, 5 people, but even if it were just a journal for my own eyes it's still a creative act. I guess. Like I said, it doesn't really feel like it counts, but I guess I can decide that it counts, right?

In that spirit I headed enthusiastically into the Creative Circle tasks. One of our tasks was to create a list of 10 things we wanted to do before we died. Piece of cake, I thought, and I started writing immediately.

1. Get tenure. (Duh).

2. Run a marathon.

3. Uh....

At this point I got totally stuck! I couldn't think of anything else that I felt like I really wanted to do before I died. I mean, there are lots of things that would be nice to do, pleasant to do, but I was having a hard time thinking up things that I would regret not having done in my life. This was something of a revelation.

I think this is pretty great actually because it reflects my general feeling of contentedness about things. I've always been pretty driven and goal-oriented and I had a lot of goals to achieve, and at this point I've actually done those things and it turns out it's pretty awesome! I'm pretty much set. I don't really feel like there is anything missing. Even if I don't get tenure, I think that'll be okay too. There are other things in life besides this job.

Eventually I forced myself to come up with 8 more things, some of which are pretty lame, but hey, it's good to have goals in life.

3. Watch my kids grow up. (Kind of a cheating one.)

4. Celebrate my 50th wedding anniversary. (Another cheating one. These are lame. Better come up with some better ones.)

5. Get to know my sisters better. (That'd be nice.)

6. Get published outside of math-ed. (In other words, write something for publication that's not a professional piece but a personal piece.)

7. Re-learn the guitar. (This was something I loved and sacrificed on the alter of academia and parenthood, which is silly.)

8. Live abroad again. (This is one of those "it'd be nice" things but I don't feel like I'd be hugely disappointed if it never happened. But I learned so much from my time in Japan that it'd be cool to do it again. Not necessarily in Japan, just anywhere.)

9. Try drugs when I'm 85 or 90. (This sounds like a joke but I actually think this is a good idea. I would kind of regret never having experienced the amazing things that can come from hard core drugs, if people's stories are anything to go by. It sounds pretty awesome. I've never done it because I don't want to take the risks, particularly the risk of screwing up my brain. But when I'm 85, honestly how much will there be to lose? At that point I'll be heading downhill anyway.)

10. Accept my body. (Mental energy spent on worrying about how I look is such a waste. This is one of those obvious ones, I guess, that is easier said than done.)

So that was my list. We also had to make a list of 10 things we would do if we won 100 million dollars. One thing that struck me was that we all talked about how we would improve our houses but nobody talked about moving out of the neighborhood. There are neighborhoods nearby that are fancier with bigger houses, but I'm pretty sure they don't have softball in the park every Wednesday night. Community must make us all happier than big fancy houses.

Little Things

Other people have told me that they wish they had stopped to record the little things their kids did when they were young, so here are a couple that I want to make note of.

-- Yesterday Nora and I were looking at a book of shapes and we came upon a diamond. I said "diamond" and she started singing "twinkle twinkle". It took me a minute to figure out the association!

-- Milo likes to say "oh shoot" and then laugh like it's the funniest thing he's ever heard. I know this came from me occasionally saying "oh shit" when I drop something or make a mess, so it's definitely time to clean up my language. (I've been converting it to "oh shoot" for him. Are kids allowed to say "shoot" these days?)

-- We have a bowl of water for the cats in our bathroom. For some reason the cats don't like to drink water from their bowl in the basement, and they MUST have the bathroom water bowl. The kids love to dunk their hands in that bowl or dump the water all over the bathroom, so we usually place the water bowl in the bathtub. Whenever it is time to go upstairs, Nora will excitedly climb the stairs saying "kitty water, kitty water!" over and over again. It is so funny that you can see their nefarious intentions because they're narrating their plans to themselves.

-- Milo loves to do "tricks" where Jake will turn him upside down and flip him over. He'll say "trick, trick" over and over again until we do it, and sometimes he'll flip his head backwards in anticipation of the trick. Milo's other new amusement is to walk on his knees. Nora will watch Milo do this and then say "walk walk...knees."

-- Nora calls her bunny "buddy" and her word for butterfly now is "buddy...fly." There's always a pause in between the buddy and the fly.

-- Milo is starting to get the hang of possessives. Last night he kept grabbing for my drink and I said "that's mama's drink" and then he said "mama's. mama's. mama's" over and over again. Then this morning Nora was playing with a car and Milo said "Noona's." Nora does it a little differently. If Milo is playing with the car Nora will say "Mino...car."

-- Both kids are starting to want to take off their clothes now and then. They can get their socks off and sometimes their sweaters or sweatshirts. We haven't gotten to pants yet, thank goodness!

Bananas!

Tonight I let Nora feed herself some pureed bananas with a spoon and this was the result. The picture actually doesn't capture the true mess, the fact that her entire face, both arms, and all of her hair was covered with bananas. At one point Nora actually seemed to be using her spoon as a comb, smearing bananas all through her hair. When the spoon wasn't effective enough, she switched to her hands (which she had dunked in the bowl).

This was way beyond any washcloth, so after dinner we just hosed her off in the sink. Admittedly, Nora was not a fan of this approach, but it got the job done.

Touch

I remember back when the kids were mostly portable lumps who didn't move around very much, I would carry them places in the sling, and total strangers would come up and ooo and ah over them and then do things like touch their hands and their faces. This used to bother me, especially if the toucher had a cold, but even in general I didn't want random strangers touching my babies. I think I even wrote about it here once.

Well, time to eat my words. A couple of weeks ago I was at a professional conference and I gave a talk as part of a symposium organized by a colleague at another university. He and his wife have a 6-month old boy, and his wife is also in our field, and so they were able to bring their baby to the conference and trade off baby-minding duty.  (As an aside, oh, the luxury of having one baby, where you can do things like that.) 

Anyhoo, I was talking to the mom after our symposium and her baby was there in the stroller and he was soooooo cute. He was definitely an extra-cute 6-month old. Most 6-month olds are cute, anyway, and he upped the cute factor by a notch or two. In the course of a 5-minute conversation I had to actually physically restrain myself about 8 different times from touching him. Each time I made an almost involuntary move to maul that cute little baby, like maybe I would just take his entire fist and shove it into my mouth, that's how cute he was, and each time my hand was halfway to him when I remembered not to do that. I was like that former Nazi from Dr. Strangelove who had to use his left hand to restrain his right hand from making the sieg hail gesture. 

So now I have a little more understanding of those rude strangers who used to touch my babies. I guess it's natural. It has me thinking about how we all love to do this to babies, to touch them and cuddle them and kiss them. We're not allowed to do it to other adults, we've socialized those impulses away, so the very natural human urge for touch and contact is largely forbidden in polite society. But we're allowed to break those rules in certain circumstances, like for babies, or if everybody is drunk. Not the babies, of course. They're not supposed to get drunk.

I Like It!

Oh, so tired. My entire day at work was filled with meetings and teaching, with no time left over for actual tenure-achieving work. My colleague and mentor landed a potential consulting gig, and because he is very generous he got me in on the deal. I have had a number of consulting gigs on the side over the years and every one has come through him. So anyway, today we finalized the contract and the tasks we'll do and it adds up to a ton of stuff over the next 3 weeks. It's going to be intense but the money is very good, so it's worth it.

This weekend was gorgeous so we spent most of it outside with the kids. I bought a sand and water table and we put it together and then put sand into it. Milo is somewhat interested in playing with the sand, but not all that into it, and Nora won't even go near the sand, much less touch it. She hates getting stuff on her hands. Also, every time she falls down or sits down when she is outside, she calls for me to stand her up again. She won't get up by herself because that would require touching the ground with her hands, which she doesn't like to do.

Both kids love to splash water so I will have to fill the other side with water once I caulk it. It currently leaks.

Last night I was feeding Nora something new, and she was really into it, so I said "you like it!" She then repeated back to me "I like it!" Both kids are putting together more and more words to make phrases. Milo has said things like "mama's umbrella" a couple of times. He's also constantly saying "where is it?". This morning one of the kids' toys was singing a song about bread and Nora heard it and then said "Bread? Bread?" She then ran over to her booster chair, said "eat!" and "up!" and then proceeded to enthusiastically eat a whole bunch of pieces of those cheddar bacon muffins I made a week ago. The very same one that she has refused and thrown overboard oh, 50 times in a row.

Kids are fickle. That's all I can figure out.

Here are some action shots. Nora is taking a stroll and Milo is doing an interpretive dance with the ball. 

One Step Back

Nora threw up again tonight. I didn't see it coming. I don't think I overstuffed her, because it was only at the end of the meal that she decided she didn't want any more, and I stopped feeding her at that point with a couple of spoonfuls left. She had some banana bread, some broccoli and cheese soup, spinach and potatoes with brown rice, and some pureed bananas. Then I gave her a cracker which she didn't want, and I gave her some Cheerios which she happily ate. Then I was eating a chocolate cookie again, like the other night, and I gave Milo some, and so Nora wanted a piece so I gave her a little bit. It was right after she ate that piece that she suddenly started crying and then she threw up her entire dinner.

Le sigh. It is impossible to fatten up this kid if she throws up her dinner. So she went to bed with an empty stomach, of course not wanting anything else after that. I don't think I overstuffed her, because I just offer her finger foods at the end of the meal and if she's full she won't eat it. 

The other time that Nora threw up was also after I'd given her a little piece of some chocolate something I'd been eating after dinner.  In fact that was a couple of months ago and tonight was the first time since that other time that I had offered her anything like that again. So I would say she is allergic to chocolate but she has had things like bread or muffins with chocolate chips in them and been fine. So maybe it is this store-bought paraffin type chocolate that is the problem? Or maybe it's just a coincidence. Obviously I won't be offering her anything like that again any time soon. 

It is hard to fully convey how completely defeated I feel when one of the kids throws up their dinner. All that work down the drain. They're never going to gain properly at this rate.

Typical Friday Afternoon

This afternoon, as in 4 p.m. on a Friday, I had one of the most annoying meetings ever. We have these meetings about once a month and it involves me and my colleagues and a bunch of old guys from another department who wear pocket protectors and blackberries on their belts, and we have to sit around for an hour and a half and listen to them go on and on about content knowledge and how smart they are and how dumb everybody else is and basically by the time these meetings are over I want to rip somebody's head off. Today was especially like that. 

Oh, it is such a breath of fresh air to come home after all of that nonsense. Milo and Nora both wanted me to identify everything in the world to them once I was home. What's this? What's this? What's this? What's this? Fridge. Knee. Trash can. Wall. They just kept searching for things to point to or touch, asking me "what's this?". When that got boring the just started identifying things themselves, showing me the stuff they knew. Eye. Nose. Socks. Belly. Pants. Sweater. Button. Backpack. Etc...

Then at dinner, I couldn't believe it, but Nora actually asked for more of something! She was eating peanut butter with yogurt, and wanted more. She was actually hungry! It was awesome. After dinner I had a cookie that was kind of melty (chocolate) and Milo got interested in it, so I gave him a piece, and he went wild over it. He totally loved it and got chocolate smeared all over his face. 

Here's a picture of the kids, I don't know why Milo looks so weird in it, but anyway Nora is reading a book about shapes which is one of their favorites. They can identify some shapes. Milo likes to bring books over to us and tells us "read!" Then he'll walk away and pick his own book, and sit down with it. He likes to read his book while we are reading our books at the same time. 

When it was time to go to bed I said "who wants to go night night?" and both kids raced to the stairs, laughing with glee.  I have no idea why that's their favorite thing ever, but they love to go upstairs and get ready for bed. Hopefully this weekend it'll be nice enough outside that the kids can play on the patio while Jake and I start to get it ready for spring and summer. It's been a cold spring so far, so I'm getting a late start on planting things.