When DD was two, we bought her her first 24-piece puzzle.  But that wasn’t until I’d gone to multiple stores to find the most suitable puzzles (fruitlessly, as I was being a perfectionist) — hoping to find 14-piece puzzles, wholesome themes, etc. .

Yes, I am retentive sometimes. 

So we sat her down and did a puzzle for her.  I think to her, it was a kind of magic — all these pieces coming together to make a picture.  She’d ask us to do it over and over.

She immediately wanted to help do one.  I carefully explained how we separate the edge-pieces, how we turn the pieces face-up, bla, bla, bla.  I’m such a dork.  I SO didn’t get it.  It’s a year later.  She still doesn’t start with the edges.  She starts with the eyes…always the eyes.  I think that she’ll be doing puzzles for years before she does it the way I instructed her that day one year ago. 

I have much to learn as a parent about how kids acquire knowledge, understanding and wisdom.

Until then, I remain a dork.

This is a Mei Tai.  It sure makes baby-carrying handy.  In fact it makes cooking or gardening in the evening very baby-friendly too.  

The one situation that it doesn’t seem to work too well for is sitting.  Oliver gets irritated being stuck in one place, where as he is often lulled into a stupor by being this close to me and having that lovely rocking sensation as I  dig a ditch or pick up clutter. 

When Kate was around one year old, I’d “work” or walk her to sleep this way each evening.  It was lovely for me to be able to take a quick walk in the evenings (and for her too, I hope).

Warning:  the following picture shows super-yummy baby yum yums. 

Kari over at Peaceful Beginnings / Our Real Village  helped me try out several and then trained me on how to use this one, spotting me as I learned to put Kate on my back.   Kari is the reason that so many women in my area were successfully able to sling or wear our babies.  Texas has her now.  Having another woman teach you how to get the baby in place and adjust everything to the baby’s (and your) satisfaction is the difference between small shops with capable staff and that baby super-mart with the inflated prices (and one sling style) …who shall go un-named.

My mei tai is by Baby Hawk .  Other baby wearing items that I would recommend are

1)  The Moby  (check craigslist for these) 
2) The Ergo

Kate’s favorite dress right now is M’s old girl scout t-shirt. 

Charm and decorum are things we encourage and actively cultivate around here.

I have no idea how she took this, but I like it.

Is this tomato staking?  Kate thought it was totally cool that Armstrong had pink tomato cages and promptly tried them on.  If only she knew!

It used to be “p0rn” and  “hot p0rn”.  

We would drive by Target where Kate clearly remembers getting the slushy-popcorn special and she would yell out, “Buy p0rn!”;  She’ll never know how she made us laugh.

Yesterday it became “pap0rn”.

Today it is “papap0rn”.  And I know that soon she’ll get it right and say, “popcorn”. 

While sometimes we figure out the first time our children do things (stand up, roll over, say ‘mama’) , we never know when the last time is that  they’re going to do some particular cute thing or say that one silly phrase that makes you smile.  And then it’s gone, never to be done spontaneously again.

Kate’s two-year-old sweetness slipped away quietly.  And while it’s been replaced by three year old sweetness, I could just kick myself for not savoring every single lovely moment that is now gone.

About once a week, I do a long slow nap prep.  I thow Kate into bed, Oliver into a play crib, and turn on taped stories that I get from the library. Kate is allowed to play in bed in a calm, getting ready for bed way.

Then the puttering begins.  I sanitize her potty; I put away her clothes that need hanging; I throw the contents of her hamper into the washing machine, and in general clean up her room.

So it goes kinda from this:

To something like this:

I may have a long way to go in learning how to manage a household, but I’m picking up new skills all the time.

You know how I’m all exhausted because my son doesn’t sleep at night?  You know how I’m not even functioning because my son keeps waking up time and time again at night to nurse?  You know how Kate isn’t getting proper parenting and the house is a HUGE mess because DS wakes up sometimes six times a night after refusing to go to bed until after 11:00 pm?  You know how I’m ruining my professional reputation because I can’t even rub two brain cells together most days?

Guess what?  Problem solved. 

Problem solved in just under three days. 

That doesn’t mean I’m back to normal yet.  But it does mean that Oliver now wakes up ONE time per night.  And he’s going to bed at a sensible time.

First, let me mention that Oliver wouldn’t take a sippy cup (or bottle).  Just wouldn’t.  I tried every couple of days, but no interest.  I should have been trying at 10:00 pm  at night.  Apparently there’s a LOT of interest for him then.  That is why he wouldn’t go down without a fight.  He was thirsty and my not-so-bodacious tata’s weren’t meeting the need.  Rome figured this out one Wednesday night after I spent THREE hours trying to get him down. Nurse, rock, lay in crib, give up, give him more food, repeat. 

Rome gave him a sippy cup.  Three gulps later he was asleep.,

Then when he woke up at 12:55 am for milk, I gave him a sippy cup of water first.  Roman could hear him gulping from across the room.  Then I nursed him back down and he only woke up three more times that night.

Next, we moved him out to the living room.  Interesting, he only woke up one time and then at the alarm clock at 5:45 …which woke him up four rooms away.  It took me two nights of this for the truth of the matter to dawn on me.  If the thirst issue is fully taken care of, and if Oliver is still in our bedroom, he still wakes up three to four times a night, though he goes down easily…and not necessarily even with nursing.  Move him to the living room and he sleeps through the night.  Hmmmm.  Why?  You see, I was expecting for him to have to get used to Momma not responding to his cries as quickly bla, bla, bla.  That wasn’t it.  He instantly slept through the night with only one wake up cry.

It took me two nights of good sleep to figure it out.  We’ve always known Oliver is a light sleeper;  I’m a light sleeper.  And my dearest, darling, and delicate husband rarely mentions it, but I snore.  And apparently I snore alot. (Personally, I think he’s kinda in shock that the target of his romantic interests can shake the walls down, so he’d rather not mention it.  I say, “Just roll me over.”  Really.  I. Won’t. Mind.)

So let’s do the math.  I snore.  Oliver’s a light sleeper. 

I’m the one waking him up FOUR to SIX times a night. 

It was ME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Bwaaahaaahaaahaaahaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!

Disclaimers:  I moved Kate into the nursery on her third day home.  Really.  We kept Oliver in the bedroom with us primarily because his breathing patterns made us nervous.  And then we didn’t move him into the nursery because he’d wake her up.

Why do we let our kids watch princess movies?  They’re essentially all love stories, and not the kind of love that any three year old has any business thinking about anyhow.  So why do we do it?  Is it just because they are classics?  Is it because it’s easy? 

Disney essentially espouses the Greco-Roman understanding of love…that it is something that happens to you.  A man or woman is swept away.  They are hit with Cupid’s arrow; they have no choice in the matter.  He or she falls in love.  There is no stopping it.  The adult version of this is that we  can fall out of love.  There’s no helping it.  How can there be– it’s not like any decision or act of will was required when we fell into love? 

The Judeo-Christian version of love is that love is an act of the will accompanied by emotion.  If the emotion isn’t there, then we choose to act out our love until the emotion re-aligns itself with our actions.  Y’all will be surprised to hear this, but sometimes Roman has to choose to love me.  Every now and then Roman has to choose not to take offense, not to take things personally.  I know y’all are shocked, cause I’m just all that (and a bag of chips).

So am I actually undermining my daughter’s future (if she chooses to marry) or making those first marriage years an uphill battle by showing her these films?  I worry that the answer is ’yes’.  I think giving kids a naive look at what love is sets them up for feeling rather darkly about male-female relations later when they see that reality doesn’t line up with their fairytale foundation.

You know how as a parent you’re always trying to squeeze the very best stuff into your child?  You work to gently tuck the word of God into their hearts; you read them poetry, the classics of childrens literature; you sing them the musical ‘greats’ of your faith. 

I recite Gerard Manley Hopkins poetry to Kate.  I play Mozart and Beethoven and Vivaldi for the kids; but also African music and a bunch of Putumaya cd’s.  I occasionally make the kids watch ‘Classical Destinations’.  I’m sure Yeats and Keats are just around the corner.

So it was with some chagrin that I found myself delirious with exhaustion late one evening,  rocking an inconsolable Oliver, and singing the following ditty to the tune of the Colonel Bogey March. 

Yup, that’s just me trying to squeeze the very best into my kids.

When my boss first gave me his offer of 20 hours of work per week from home, I thought, “There’s no way that’s going to work.  Where would I fit it in?”  I talked it over with DH, fully anticipating saying ‘adios’ to a great company; the DH changed my mind.  Then, I thought I could just absorb 20 hours into my schedule.  I’d just make it happen.  Shockingly, I didn’t.

Then I scheduled two hours to work before the kids were up and running, and asked Rome to make his own breakfast.  I’d work the 6:00-8:00 am shift.  And then TRY to stuff 2 more hours of work in during the day.  HA!  I almost never was getting in my four hours per day. Besides that only remotely worked when I wasn’t up more than twice a night.  Otherwise, I’d just be too tired to get out of bed. 

Now, this hasn’t worked so far this week because DS is teething.  Let me translate that for you who have kids like my first child, Kate.  Oliver wakes up every hour and twenty minutes in pain and wants to nurse.  Also, he can’t nap in the afternoon because he’s too uncomfortable so he cries for a couple of hours unless I hold him. 

A COUPLE OF HOURS.

UNLESS I HOLD HIM.

Let those words sink in for a while.  And then remember what we do to torture prisoners.  Something about crying babies and sleep deprivation?

Consequently, this week I’ve been exhausted and behind in my work.  Kate has been watching too much TV and I’ve been desperately trying to ignore her so that I can get work done. Which. Isn’t. Working.  You may have heard – children don’t like it when their parents ignore them.

It’s not fair to them, and I don’t want them growing up thinking that my computer is more important to me than they are.

In comes the new plan.  Now admittedly, Oliver was only up two times last night.  And I got a 6:00 to 7:30 pm nap last night when Rome got home.  But I was up this morning at 3:50 am and started work at 4:00 am. 

Thank you God for using that natural alarm clock (read: Katie wanted something to drink), because mine was set for 4:01 am, and I can ignore that, but a crying child – well let’s just say there’s some sort of hormonal-adrenal connection.

God is faithful all the time.

All the time, God is faithful.

And that includes at 3:50 am.

The other handy thing here, is that I’ve effectively cooked the books by redefining “night”.  Therefore “how many times he gets up in the night” drops.   Watch me do statistics just like big corporations and the government.   Here’s the thing though, I can do just about anything ONCE.  The question is, “Can I psych myself out for this daily?”  Maybe if I just pretend each morning that I have to get up to catch a flight to Thailand, or Paris, or Rome.