Wann she Baby Emma

This is what Sabine says to me every day.  She wants to see Baby Emma, meaning pictures of her on the computer.  Emma lives several states away from us, so it will be a while before we get to meet her in person, but in the meantime we've been keeping up with her daily progress via photos on the internet.  Actually, it's been a couple weeks since we've had to check in daily with Emma's photo page because thanks to Emma's mother and grandparents, Sabine's gotten her very own 3D 'Baby Emma Wall'.  In the photos there's only one picture, but now we've got five of them scattered about that wall.  I've been promising to post them for Jenny for a couple weeks now, so here they are. In the third one she's 'kissing' Emma.

 

Day 82: Her Ball

While in Cape May, we took Jacob to the arcade. At the end of the week he cashed in his tickets for some prizes. For Sabine he got this ball. For himself he got the same thing, only the bigger version and in blue. Who could have guessed that it would become the new object of Sabine's affection? She can't be without it. When she's looking for it, she'll either say, "my Bah?" or call it "green bah".

In this picture, we were playing outside at Camp just after my brother had arrived on Sunday afternoon and I figured it was about time I take a picture of Sabine with her green ball. So I said, "Sabine, let me see your ball." Little did I know she would turn around like that with a coy look on her face and hold the ball so tenderly to show it off. The instant I snapped the picture I knew it would be a classic Sabine photo. Everyone seems to agree that this is the award-winning photo from the week at Camp. Unless, of course, you count the picture (to come) of my sister falling out of the boat in the middle of the lake, but we're talking composition here, not hilarity.

Day 68: Sabine at the Beach

I have a ton of beach pictures, so it's really hard to choose. I'll just take it day by day and go with my favorite. So here is Sabine at the beach. This was the first sunny day we had at the beach. She loved it, obviously. That's the John Deere hat that Jacob passed on to her. My kids were probable the only two kids who wore a hat at the beach the whole week. Sabine loves wearing a hat, and she puts them on backwards like by herself. She says hat, actually, it's one of her few words. She has a lot of words, but the thing is five different words will sound the same and you have to be in her immediate family to be able to catch the subtle difference. Head, hot and hat all sound mostly the same.

Day 4: Set in her ways

This photo is from a couple weeks ago, but I had to post it because it's hilarious. I know some people might not find it funny to post a picture of their kids crying, but when my kids are grown I not only want to look back and see their smiling faces, I want to see the full range of their emotions. I'm an advocate of taking pictures of your kids in every kind of mood and from every different angle. I can't stand it when people take photos and aren't happy unless their kid is smiling angelically.

This was after a long romp in the mud, though I can't remember what exactly she was so worked up about. I just love the smudge under eye and Reggie in the background wondering what the heck was going on. Sabine's been doing a lot of this lately - that is to say, tantruming. I had been telling people, "She's practicing for when she turns two." Since she turned two this week, what better way to represent that by posting a picture that shows what will likely be the way she spends most of her time the next several months?

Dear Not Sabine

I can't remember the last time I wrote a 'Dear Sabine' letter. Mostly it's because Sabine is so crazy, so it's her fault anyway. She's like this toddler trapped in a 10 month old body. Haha, I just thought of something, she's like Benjamin Button, although I didn't see the movie (yet).

Sabine is just like Jacob was at this age. She is so fast - she'll be halfway up the staircase before I even realize it. Yes, she's mastered crawling up the stairs already. She has impeccable fine motor skills, picking up something the size of a head of a pin at the first try. She crawls into a room, scans the scenery and decides instantly what she can go after. And she usually gets to it. Already most of the shelves are reachable. And if there's something she can't reach she gets high on her tippy toes and goes for it. I swear once or twice I've seen her lift her body off the floor chin-up style.

Don't get me started on the things she's been putting in her mouth. It's been a real picnic. Also, she grabs at things when you're carrying her around the house. I'll be washing her hands, scrubbing the right one and all of a sudden she waving the soap dish around in the air with her left hand. Nothing is safe. All of this is too early. I'm not ready for this.

Also, there's the thing where she follows me around non-stop. She wants me, only me, and me NOW. If someone else is holding her, that's not ok, whether I'm in the room or not. She crawls just as fast I as can walk, so she's there all the time, literally a little ankle biter. She grabs at my legs and trips me up. Needless to say, I've been pretty annoyed. But God Damn is she cute.

Then there's the thing that Jacob's been doing: He's been asking ass-dumb questions. Like completely obvious things. Or questions that I have no idea about the answer to. Today in a parking lot: Why is that man walking up that hill? I have no freaking idea. Does it look like I know that man? Why are you putting the glue in that drawer? Because that's they drawer it always gets stored in. I can't think of any good examples, but maybe your five year old is like this too? Over the weekend one of our little five year old friends, Emma, asked me if the marker she had in her hand worked, but she was already coloring with it, and it very obviously worked. "I don't know, silly, you tell me." I told her. I've noticed this about Emma before, and I'm going to have to pay attention to other five year olds because so far it appears that this is the equivalent of the two year old's constant WHY? line of questioning.

Well that's today in a nutshell, annoyance from every angle.

In need of some male time

Jacob was just listing off some of the planets he knows, "Jupiter, Mars, Saturn, Uterus..."

I think maybe he's been spending too much time with the estrogen crowd...

Following in my footsteps?

I've written before about how Jacob thinks when he and Sabine grow up they will get married (to each other) and have kids. This is a common thing for a kid his age, or so I'm learning. Anyway, today Jacob told me when he and Sabine have kids he's not going to work (meaning for pay, because we all know mothering is a shit ton of work), that he'll stay home with the kids and take care of them.

On the surface this is a cute thing to say and we can laugh at it, and know that when he grows up he's going to be some sort of super-athlete or green-living hero (or so I hope). But what it means to me on a deeper level is that he likes this thing we've got going on - me and him and Sabine at home, playing and doing housework, loving each other and learning all kinds of crazy things. He deeply values the experience of having a stay-at-home parent and wishes the same for his children.

While one could see it as some sort of twisted Oedipal complex, I think it's the best compliment a mother can get.

There's a line I've never heard before...

After Playschool today we headed to the library because after three straight days of being in the house all cooped up, I didn't think our little trio could survive another afternoon at home. Inside the library I'm picking out books to read to Jacob and he's working on a puzzle when a chatty little girl comes around the corner. She's standing there waist-high to me, talking about the videos she's got in her hand. Then suddenly it's like we're in a dark bar as Jacob comes sauntering up to the girl and says, "Sooo....did you know I'm a farmer?" This is the moment when I realize maybe Mom should take a hike and give the boy his space.

Baptizetism

...Or so Jacob calls it. Sabine was Baptized on Sunday the 28th. I'm so busy that it's taken me over a week to post one simple picture about it. Thank God my cousin was there so someone could take pictures. This is my favorite picture from that day. I was so out of it. It was really hot in there, I was going on three hours of sleep, and this was at the end when I'd just gotten the baby back and was soothing her to sleep. But this is how it is with Beanie - I'm so overtaken with my love for her that all I can do is gaze at her in astonishment while the rest of the world passes by. I don't think I was even aware a candle was being lit and apparently the thing to do was watch the candle being lit...

I'd call that overzealous housekeeping

Jacob still loves to clean the house and do all kinds of housework. Lately he's really been into doing the laundry. He asks me at all hours of the day if he can vacuum, do dishes, help with the laundry, etc. He takes it upon himself to empty the garbage cans, make the bed, use the dust buster on messes. So it wasn't a huge surprise when I heard him yell down to me in the kitchen tonight. But still the following sentence is one I never expected to hear from my four year old.

"Can somebody get me out of this freaking hamper?!"

"What?" I yelled up. He repeated it. Like I said, it should have been self-explanatory, but somehow I had to see it to believe it.

Jacob decided to take it upon himself to empty the laundry basket, but had to climb in to get the things at the very bottom. And then he couldn't get out. Hence the call for help. Click on the picture for a detailed description.

Jacob is D) Not sure what he thinks of our country's current economic situation

When the phone rings at our house now, there's a 75% chance Jacob will answer it. It's getting harder for me to, you know, get up. And also, Jacob is really good at answering the phone.

Tonight the phone rang and he jumped up to get it. He had to say hello three times before he got a reply. Then he "Yes." Then "Six." And giggled, held the phone away from his ear and told me, "I'm pretending I'm six years old!" He put the phone back to his ear, then punched a number on the key pad, listened some more, answered something aloud, punched another number.

I had a hunch what was going on so I ran upstairs to get the other extension. I picked up just in time to hear a recorded voice say "What do you think of the United State's current economic situation?" Then it listed four choices and Jacob punched the number four. Eventually the recording must have caught on and decided it was wasting it's time because Jacob told me they stopped talking.

So I have found the answer to telemarketers. Follow my advice and let your kids screen the calls for you. It's fun for them and you!

Full Circle

My mom likes to tell the story of when I was three and out of the blue one day I asked "Who is going to bury the last person to die?" You know, like humans would die off and one day there wouldn't be any left, so the last remaining person would be without a burial. This was a pretty philosophical question for a three year old and it just goes to show that some parts of our personalities are there from the beginning; I am still that way, always asking the deep questions.

So now, at 27, I'm back to thinking that's going to happen - there'll be a day when humans won't be around. I think we're a failed species, and that the failure started to happen somewhere around the agricultural revolution. It's only a matter of time before we branch too far away from how humans were intended to live, to keep on living. I just hope when that time comes that we don't bring down the whole of the Earth and the rest of its inhabitants with us.

What got me thinking about all this right now is the letter that came in the mail yesterday. We got a new microwave in November, and in January it stopped working. I called Emerson to get a replacement, as there is a one year warranty, and they gave me trouble. Finally I got someone to agree to send me a replacement (the fact that it's easier to replace something than fix it is a whole other topic) but they wanted me to send a $15 money order for the shipping cost. Yeah right. It's their fault the microwave crapped out after two months. I kept calling until someone gave me the answer that I wanted.

So I did what they said, cut the cord, wrote a letter and mailed it in. They say it could take up to four weeks for the new one to come. That was three weeks ago. The letter came in the mail yesterday telling me that my request has just been processed and it will be two to three weeks for the microwave to come, but that if it hasn't arrived in six weeks to please contact them about it. That is such crap. It could conceivably be more than two months and I might still not have a microwave.

Do you have any idea how often American households use their microwaves? Try taking it away and you'll probably realize that you use it several times a day. On one hand I'm happy having to make do without, and a microwave is certainly something that people a generation before didn't have the benefit of. But on the other hand I'm just pissed at this company and the way they are handling this. I almost wish it was something truly necessary that had broken because that would give me the right to get really angry about it.

All of this gets me thinking about technology and how dependent we are on it. How if all the technological things that make up the very bones of our existence should ever break down, the human race pretty much would stop dead in its tracks. I'm convinced that someday the internet is going to crash and with that most of our existence will be gone - it's scary to put so much stock in something we have very little understanding of (at least I don't understand how it works). It's the reason that I still do math in my head when I have the time, or refuse to get cable, or try to understand the technological intricacies beyond what I need to know to make something usable to me. I don't ever want to forget how to use my brain.

I saw something advertised on TV after LOST last week (the one hour of regular TV I watch all week)...it was a special about what will happen when humans do finally die off...how the other species will take over the world, all our precious monuments will start to crumble, etc. And while I was intrigued, I wasn't enough to actually watch it because I'm definitely not happy about what I think is going to happen. I mean, why am I having another child to be brought up in a world that is unhealthy?

But on a daily basis now I must field questions about these topics because my four year old is obsessed with death. He's making stronger connections everyday, asking harder questions. He knows now that everything and every person will die - that that is part of the cycle of life. A couple weeks ago Jacob put an arrow through my heart when he vocalized my deepest fear. He asked in a meek voice, "Mommy? Someday am I going to die?" Then yesterday, the fear that is equally as immobilizing, "Mommy? Are you going to die?" Yikes. I told him no, not for a very long time. "But Gordy died." What he meant by that is that my father died when I was a young, so what is stopping one of his parents from dying before he's grown up. That is the question that I'd been holding my breath for.

I'm giving him answers, but it's really tough because I'm still trying to figure out what I believe. So I give him the answers that I wish were true in the hope that maybe someday I'll start to believe my own words.

Oh Goodie

Marisa (my niece) came over to play, by Jacob's request, after school today. They actually play really well together these days, whereas in the past I would describe their relationship as a love/hate one. So all went well for three hours and then my sister showed up to bring Marisa home. And since my sister is more of a child than the other two combined, that's when the knock-knock jokes started.

Jacob hasn't really had a lot of experience with this type of humor so at first he was all, "Knock-knock huh?" And then in no time flat it went from virtual non-knowledge to, "Knock-knock"
"Who's there?"
"Orange banana Jacob banana orange Mango table banana banana banana orange Stacey Jacob book waterbottle banana...." And on and on until he'd listed everything in sight.

So now all I'm gonna hear out of his mouth is stupid knock-knock jokes that I have to pretend to find funny. Let the games begin.

What ifs...

"Mommy, will we still have these doggies when the baby comes?"

"Yes."

"But what if they start rough-housing and run over the baby?"

"Well we won't leave the baby on the floor."

"Well what if the baby is in the crib (we don't even have a crib) and Mango comes in and starts growling at the baby?"

"I don't think that will happen."

"Well if it does happen, I'll come in and start blowing my train whistle at Mango to get her out of there. Cuz I take care of things like that."

A conversation in the car today...

"Jacob, want some kids' music on?"

"Nah. Just some Bob Dylan."

Dear Jacob: December 2007

Dear Jacob,

I've been procrastinating this monthly post again. Ironically, the thing that has finally brought me to finish it is the fact that I am currently postponing finishing the essay for my grad school application (what's that you say? Yes, I am crazy).

While I've been procras- tinating, you've suddenly become an adult. You let the dogs out at will, the house cleaning has continued, except now you don't even ask us first. Help yourself to stuff in the fridge, open the shades in the moring, turn on the TV without asking, unlock the front door - and if I didn't have a baby lock-knob-thing on it you would be letting yourself out of the house, and probably into the car and down the road to the store!

You love getting dressed and are very into being neat these days. You tuck in your shirt, put on a belt, brush your hair. You've been telling me you need your hair cut, even after you've just been to the barber shop with Papa. That's your thing with him. You guys also play barber shop a lot in between hair cuts.

Although you like getting dressed by yourself in the morning all big-boyish, the putting away of the clothes needs some work. When you undress your clothes either end up in a hidden corner of the house, or if you have a direct target when you're taking them off they get thrown in the face of the person standing nearby.

You won't leave the damn dogs alone. You have to intervene when they are rough- housing with each other. You think Mango is attacking Ginger and you tell her she is bad. I tell you to stop and you just stand there with your fists clenched at your sides, ready to pounce. You groan a little that you can't beat her up and stare with this evil look on your face then run past her, skimming her side and almost knocking her over. Then you scream and tear around the house. What the hell?


I guess I can't blame you for the some of the recent behavior. I don't know what's gotten into your father, but sometimes he'll pull such stupid stunts in front of you that all I can do is stare at him and wonder how he could be so dumb. I'd made a pie recently so Daddy got a can of Reddi-Wip at the store to go with it. Well long after the pie was gone, the can of whipped cream was still in the fridge. You and I were in the kitchen baking or something and in walks Daddy, goes to the fridge, pulls out the can, tips his head back and starts to squirt it in his mouth. I tried to cover up the act, but I could tell it had already made a heavy impression. So what did you do with the new-found material? We had some friends over just a couple hours later, and just as everyone is sitting down to have dinner, you walk into the room and up to the table with the top of the can of Reddi-Wip stuck in your mouth. Or how about the other day when you were getting ready for bed and Daddy retrieved a pull-up (yes, you are still wetting the bed at night) from the bathroom, walked up to Mango and stuck it over her head so she had to walk around with it on like muzzle. Sometimes I feel like a single parent in a two-child household.

Seriously, with the dogs. Stop. Already. If Mango even comes near you and you freak out. You ball up your little fists and get as close to her as you can before I shriek your name at the top of my lungs. You know what this is? It's sibling rivalry. Ginger is like the dear, sweet old aunt that lives in the in-law apartment off to the side of our house, and Mango is like the annoying little sister that won't go away.

It's a good thing you're not going to school because you would be the smelly kid. I used to blame it on your iron supplements and wave away the smell explaining to outsiders that you had your iron that day. Um...since your doctor visit this month and him telling us we could ease up on the supplements, I haven't been giving it to you that much. You stink even on non-iron supplements days and the only excuse I have left is that you are your father's child.

And here are some direct quotes for your future enjoyment:

You: "Why aren't we in a talking mood today?"
Me: "I don't know...maybe because we were at that party and it was so noisy and now we just want a little quiet."
"Yeah...I wasn't in a talking mood at the party. All those people were asking me those (choosing your words carefully) darn-it questions!" Darn and darn-it are your current all-purpose, parent-approved swear words.

When you have to pee, you go to the "batroom". You can't pronounce the 'th' sound yet, but I think it is so cute how those kinds of words come out.

Recently a Bob video got over with, you jumped up, turned off the TV, then just started talking about Bob. "Oh...hm...Bob's gotta pick up some supplies today. Yeah, Pilchard just....hm...well the other day Pilchard came in and the door was all messed up so she went through Bob's supplies so she could fix it." All the while you're pacing back and forth, motioning with your hands, bobbing your head around with this cute little expression on your face. And I cannot describe it well enough!

There's so much to say about you - my heart is full of things to say, as well as things there are no words for. It's as if being pregnant has filled me to the bring with maternal feelings; like my heart is being stretched in expectancy of the new baby on its way. To me, the most fascinating part of having another child is the phenomenon of loving the second child just as much as the first. I've never understood how that can happen. I certainly believe it from knowing mothers of multiple children, but I'm excited to witness the evolution for myself. It seems the process of this heart-growing has already begun, and incidentally, it is you who has most helped me get to this point. I feel the realness of this baby most strongly in your already welcoming love for it.

Love,

Mommy

The things that come outta his mouth.

Last night we were getting ready to leave the house and Jacob wanted a certain winter hat. "You know, the one with the meatball on the top," he said motioning to the top of his head. I knew what he was talking about but it was an odd way of describing it, especially for a vegetarian. I searched and searched but couldn't find it.

I asked Jacob if he knew where it was. "Uh...I musta left it in with Pilchard's cat toys."

"So like, where would one find Pilchard's cat toys?"

"Oh, they're probably all mixed in with Scruffty's leashes."

And if I only knew where Pilchard and Scruffty kept their things I might just discover the land of missing objects.

Zach doesn't have to paint this morning, nor does he have to go to work. It's rare that he spends a whole day at home with us. At 9am Jacob sat bolt up in bed and yelled, "Zachhh!!" Zach didn't answer right away so Jacob said, "This is interesting, Daddy said he was gonna stay home all day today!" Then Zach came upstairs and Jacob was so friggin happy to have us both there in bed with him. He wrapped one arm around each of our necks and wouldn't let us get up for 10 minutes.

He was so excited that even when the ambulance siren blared by, Jacob waved his arm in the air and said, "Ah...I'm not gonna answer that one."

Two can play that game

"Mommy! They will fire me and I'll lose my job if you keep making me go to all these playgroups! I can't go to playgroups anymore because I have to go to job sites. I won't have a job anymore."

"Jacob, there might be someone at the playgroup who can help me fix my computer, so if you don't come with me right now, then you won't be able to check your e-mail to find out when and where the jobs are to begin with, and then, you will surely be fired for not showing up!"

And that was the rationale that finally got him out the door today...