Normalcy

Well hello!  Not sure if I have any readers left...it's been a very long time since I blogged last.  The thing of it is that my life doesn't seem all that blog-worthy right now.  For all the right reasons.

Things are...in a word...normal.  I have adjusted fully to doing this stay at home mom thing.  It's reached the point where I'm slightly bored with it, but I can't imagine doing anything else.  It feels like my days as a working mother are a distant, and not pleasant, memory and I'm glad they are over.  I have the utmost respect for people who are able to find a balance that works - I wasn't.  I needed this in a way that I was unable to articulate while I was trying to balance it.  My heart is with my children and my sense of responsibility to them outweigh everything else.  Everything.  They are the beginning and the end of what I feel like is important right now.  My family, and all the work of taking care of them, is the only thing I care about so it just feels natural that it is what I do.  The newness has worn off, but the happiness has not.  I am not riding a cloud of shock and surprise (that this has worked), but I when the kids start to wake up every morning, it makes me smile from the center of my soul.  I have not lost the sense that I am doing the only thing that would make sense right now - I am still 100% certain that I am doing what I am supposed to be doing.  And I am infinately grateful that this opportunity exists for me.  Many people who would make the choice we have made are not able - a fact that doesn't escape me and one that I am truly grateful for every day. 

Kelly is working her ass off trying to juggle everything.  I know that she struggles when she comes home, if the kids have had a bad day.  I am always a bit more anxious to have the "break" on those days and she is equally anxious for a "break" from her long day.  That part hasn't changed.  Evenings are still a bit rough on both of us - but I think that is universal when you have kids the ages of ours.  Work for her is busy right now and she is working hard to catch up after spending a couple of years focused on being pregnant and then having a young, breast-feeding infant at home.  This is really the first time since she got pregnant that she has been able to really start putting her energy back into work full-time and she is feeling it.  I try to make life easier at home, but I can't escape the fact that I am human and my day job is difficult.  We are working together in a way that we never have, though...making this work because we both believe in what we are doing strongly.  There is a new respect between us that really hasn't existed before.  Maybe this is the way that marriage evolve - it's been a bit of a rocky road getting to the place where we are, but much of the old stuff from our before-kids life has stripped away and we are building something from what is left.  The process, while painful for us both in different ways, has been good and will be the marriage that carries us through this part of our lives.  It's funny how, in a long-term relationship, you forget that things will need to be rebuilt and built again every time your life goes through massive change.  I had gotten very comfortable in our pre-kids life.  I just sort of imagined that we would never be different than that and so the shock of finding that we changed with kids consuming our time was difficult.  And, of course, I hate change and almost always respond negatively to it.  But change we have, and the foundation of love and friendship that has sustained us since we began has worked its magic once again.  We are building the life that we will share for the next 10-15 years.  When the kids are teenagers and start to truly pull away as they make their own way in the world, I suspect this will happen in a major way again.  I feel more committeed and prepared to deal with that, and for all the little ways we'll change in the next few years, than I ever have.  There is nobody else that I would take this journey with.

Bailey is growing up so fast.  She will be 3 in just a few weeks.  I can't believe we've made it to 3...and so friggin quickly!  She has mastered potty training.  She wears a pullup while she is sleeping, and still goes to the bathroom in it, but during her waking hours, she is a potty-trained girl.  I'm cool with the pullup at night.  When she's ready, we'll work on getting rid of it.  Potty training was easy...we didn't do anything and she did it on her own.  I'm cool with that.  It happened later than I thought - closer to 3 than to 2, but whatever. 

She adore her brother.  Adores him.  Between her and Kelly, I'm not sure that Connor will ever want for anything or be properly disaplinced.  I seem to be the only woman in this house who can deal with his tears and, for his part, he has figured that out.  He knows that I am the one he's got to watch out for when he's doing something "bad".  He looks for me when he's about to committ an infraction - and when I catch him, he knows he's in trouble.  As soon as the tears start, Bailey is right there, hugging and singing to him.  She seems to count it as a personal victory when she is able to stop his tears (which is most of the time).  She tells him to "calm down" and "it'll be alright" and pats his back.  I try to hold the tough-girl line and make his punishment stick, but even I get a bit weak when they both turn their eyes on me.  They team up in many situations, making me laugh and sigh at the same time.  I am so glad that they like each other.  It seems that their relationship will be the best kind of sibling relationship - loving, caring, friendly and mildly competative. 

For the stats - Bailey is very advanced in her development still, but it is starting to slow down a bit.  She has mastered the alphabet through letter G - which is to say that she can identify A-G in a bunch of random letters.  The other letters are still sketchy, but we are working on it.  Same for numbers 1-10.  She knows her numbers through 20, but always misses 15.  Not sure why.  We have started working on tracing numbers and letters.  My goal for her is to send her off to pre-school next September (2011) knowing how to write her name and being able to identify all her numbers and letters.  She knows all her shapes, all the colors, she can compare opposites, she can pick out the "what picture is different" in a series.  She can put together complicated puzzles without a picture to work from.  She reads a lot, making up stories using the pictures.  Her memory is fantastic - read a book to her one time and she remembers the story.  This is good - rote memorization is so much of public education.  She can count - give her a group of things and she can tell you how many, using her fingers to point to each object.  We have not yet started on basic math skills, but the foundation is there. 

She is big for her age - she's wearing size 5 pants (not 5T...just 5) and 4T shirts.  It's weird - the reason she is wearing size 5 pants is because the girl has ASS!  Seriously - she's got a full, juicy bottom.  It must have come from the donor, because mine is...well...not that.  So, we end up cinching the waist of her pants so they don't fall down and rolling them up twice, just so the pants will fit her bottom and her hips.  She is skinny - but not in that tiny-girl way.  She's got a pretty muscular body and she is tall.  Of course, we'll get her official stats at her 3 year old well-baby check up, but we think she weighs right around 36-37 pounds. 

Connor is a different beast all together.  Where Bailey was always easily distracted, Connor is as focused as a laser when he wants something.  He fixates on what he wants, trying method after method to get it.  He's sharp - smart - hard to distract.  Often, the only thing that will break his determination to get something or do something is outright scolding and physical prevention.  Which leads to complete meltdown.  It must be very frustrating for him.  A good example are the chairs.  Connor loves to sit in chairs.  We have two kid-sized tables.  One downstairs where I often feed them breakfast and lunch and a second princess table up in Bailey's room.  Both have two chairs.  And both command his fascination and attention.  But it's not just that he wants to sit in the chairs - he wants to stand.  And once he determined that this is what he wanted to do, there was no stopping the child.  He figured out how to do it quickly and then came the process of trying 100 times to make it happen.  Of course, it's not safe for him to be standing on  little chairs.  Not only is it just bad practice, but those little chairs are not balanced and he'll fall over (which would suck).  So, in comes Mommy and Momma to stop him from doing it.  Over and over and over and over and over again.  He never gives up.  Every time he tries.  Every time we stop him.  Every time we stop him, he throws a fit, only stopping the fit when he gets back to the chair and starts to stand up again.  It's maddening!!!!!  He is so persistant it's ridiculous.  And he gets so, unbelievably angry when he is prevented from getting his way.  Seriously - he's miserable.  He throws fits the same way.  He does everything the same way.  He's persistant.  He finds something and just keeps at it, over and over again,  until he's mastered it or accomplished it or whatever.  No amount of distraction will work.  He's focused.  Laser-focused.

His stats - he's right on track.  In almost every way, Connor is "average".  LOL - it feels like saying that is almost an insult, but honestly, it's actually a bit of a relief.  With Bailey, the task has always been providing her with ways to use her skills safely - when she's only 3, but smart enough to be 4, it's hard to find activities that are suitable.  Connor is exactly opposite that.  He's developing just as expected of his age.  He's just over 13 months and he's saying a few words (Momma, Mommy, Bailey, Pitter, Ball, No) but communicating in other ways as well.  He points, he grunts, he "shows".  He has 7 teeth - three of which just came in last week.  He's physically the size that should be expected - wearing 18 month clothes with some 24 months thrown in for good measure.  He's sleeping through the night, but still waking around 4-5 AM for a bottle, then back to bed for a few hours.  He's still drinking breast milk - about 10-15 ounces a day.  He's a particularly finicky eater - if it's not "firm", he won't eat it.  He is a carb-boy - he prefers bread to just about anything.  He refuses all forms of fruit and veggies.  Just flat out won't touch them.  He'll eat pasta, sandwiches, chicken nuggets, waffles, pancakes, mac and cheese (are you seeing the trend??).  It tough because I feel like he's not getting what he needs, but our doctor has reminded me what I already knew - you can't force a child his age to eat anything.  He's begun  using a fork and/or spoon at every meal.  He knows how to use it, but most of the time just holds it and eats with his fingers.  But we provide it to get the habit started.  He sits for one book at a time, not really paying attention yet.  But, when he wants to pay attention to something, nothing can break his concentration.  He plays indepependantly in a way that Bailey never did (and still doesn't).  He will go off for a half hour at a time and amuse himself in the playroom.  He is comfortable being alone - and other than the occassional "check-in", he is a pretty independant child.  He loses his shit completely when he's hungry or tired, though.  Late afternoons, right before dinner, are particularly rough with him.  He doesn't deal well with the combination of hunger and starting to get tired.  Dinner around here is at between 5 and 5:30 and starting at around 4, he's hard to take.  He's clingy and whiny, but gets angry when you interact with him.  Poor kid.  He's a drama-boy, just like I've always wanted.  Nothing with him is light - he's pretty hardcore about everything.  But, he's so sweet that it's easy to overlook. 

Well, this has gotten very long and the kids are going to wake up.  I'm off for now!  More later...