No More Nummies

This post should have happened three weeks ago, but better late than never! Penelope is done with her pacifier. It started with a particularly rough night when I had to go into her room about four times to find her pacifier for her. I decided the next day that we were done. She went to bed without it pretty well, cried a bit, but then slept. She napped the next day without it a little less happily. The second night she went to bed and then was crying, "I'm not a big kid! I'm just a baby! I need a nummy!" It was pretty adorable and also heartbreaking.

But she made it. We spent a week in New Jersey at Christmas without the pacifier, two long car trips there and back, we've been home for a week now still with no pacifier.

Of course, she grows and changes every day, she's talking more, she's thinking more, she has commentary while we watch television shows together, she has food preferences, she's thinking about letters and numbers and colors just a little bit more. Everything has been kicked up a notch in the last month or two. I guess it was just time to move on from the pacifier.

Childhood

Penelope became a child today. I'm not sure how this manages to sneak up, but it does. Today is the day the switch flipped.

Maybe it was teaching her to play hide and seek this morning, when I told her to go into the kitchen and count to three, but after walking straight into the kitchen, she counted to ten instead. And then we played hide and seek for half an hour, taking turns while she giggled and gave herself away every time.

Maybe it was the way she walked into the house after coming home from the library, pushing the front door closed behind her before walking into the dining room, throwing her lunchbox on the table, climbing up into a chair and unlatching the box to finish her lunch before taking a nap. She closed it back up when I insisted, clicked both latches closed, and carried it up to her bedroom to have a little more while we read a book, sitting side by side on her carpet.

I definitely saw it when I woke her from her nap, she smiled when she saw me and spit the pacifier out into the bed without me asking her to do it. When I asked if she wanted to go to Luna's party, a smile broke out on her face and she told me she needed her lunchbox and a juice box. I suggested she also needed shoes. She said it's "not too cold outside," and that she "didn't need to bring a sweater." She then marched out the front door while I hurried to get shoes on my own feet and grab my things.

And then tonight, she played for hours with Micah and Luna. She helped them to color various projects Luna got for her birthday, she followed them around playing some kind of imaginary games of house and superheroes. They ran around in the dark, each with a tiny LED flashlight, her trailing behind and fully immersed in the game. When the big kids climbed onto the trampoline, she walked across the pitch black yard, came into the house and asked me to help her up onto the trampoline too. And when it was time to leave, she gave Luna a hug and told her "Happy Birthday!"

This house holds no more babies. And that's okay. She still snuggled up against my chest while I sang Twinkle Twinkle Little Star before putting her to bed. I'll hold on to that as long as possible.

Swinging

Micah learned to pump yesterday. He was so proud, that he told everyone who walked past at the playground, "This is my first day swinging all by myself!" He experiment with sitting on the swing, swinging himself while standing on the swing, moving his legs in the opposite direction while propelling himself with his body, and moving his legs in a circle motion kind of like swimming, though he did tell me that was way too hard. He got so excited that he fell off the swing at one point, basically laughed about it, and then climbed back on. He swung continuously for over an hour before it was time to take Penelope home for a nap. When that time came, he asked if he could stay at the park while I took her home, but we settled on going home, getting lunch, putting her down for a nap, and then heading back out to the park. After lunch, I asked if we could go to a smaller park that was closer to the park, Micah said he would go to any park with swings! So we walked to the park together, I brought some crochet, and he swung on the swing for two full hours, stopping for a couple drinks from the water fountain but swinging right through a light rain and finally deciding it was time to go home, take a hot shower, drink some hot cocoa with marshmallows, and snuggle on the sofa while watching a movie. I guess the rain had made him cold. :)

Broken Bone

We are about halfway through our first broken bone now. Penelope fell while climbing a ladder at the park with the sitter. It took 48 hours before the ED finally diagnosed the break because at our first visit, they only xrayed her elbow and forearm, not listening when Michael said it seemed like her shoulder that was actually hurting. When he took her back two days later, we thought it must have been a collar bone break, but it turned out that her arm is just broken very high on the humerus. No need for a cast because it's too high for that to be reasonable, she's been living life very happily with an ace bandage securing her arm in place. We've been to the playground, she's jumped on the trampoline, we've gone to the beach twice, it doesn't seem to have slowed her down at all. I think that like Micah, Penelope must have a pretty high tolerance for pain. Even the first two nights when the arm was not restricted and she cried out if we picked her up under the armpit, she was sleeping almost through the night, with only a single wake up each night. Since the moment that arm was bandaged, she hasn't complained at all, and we haven't given her any pain medication. Lucky us that it wasn't any worse, but I'm sure it won't be the last injury our kids sustain!

Penelope-isms

Down-the-stairs
Up-the-stairs
In-the-side
Out-the-side

Mama: What happened to Dada's car today?
Penelope: Dada car broken!
Mama: Then what happened? Where is Dada's car now?
Penelope: At Bruno's house. In a garage.

My do it?
Obie Bob
Go in ah swimming water?
Go in ah sandbox?
I ready get up!
I ready nap.
Mama comin'?
My fan beeps.
No my fan beeps.

Tidbits

I caught Penelope "reading" a book for the first time about a week ago. Her interpretation of Click Clack Moo was, "Moo. No milk. No milk! NO MILK! NOOO MILK!!!!! Splash." Read the book. It's a great interpretation!

Micah learned to tie his shoes last week. He wanted to wear lace up shoes and I suggested he try to tie them before I did it for him. He came down frustrated that he couldn't do it and I started to explain it to him while I watched him tie the first knot. "I can never find the hole!" he said. He was trying to make "bunny ears" and one of the ears goes through the rabbit hole. I told him he didn't have to make bunny ears, he could just fold the laces over and tie them the same way he had just tied the knot and it was a complete breakthrough for him! He can now tie his shoes!

Michael built a huge sandbox in our backyard, filled it mostly with sand we got for free from a neighbor, and now that the weather is warm, we also put up the little pool. Between those and the garden full of strawberries, plus the mulberry tree that is great for grazing and for climbing, our backyard is a blast for these kids! Penelope asks to go in the swimming pool or the sandbox the moment she wakes up in the morning. She mostly swims nude so that we can get her onto the potty quickly. Micah spends hours in the mulberry tree trying to find mulberries he's overlooked. It's so amazing. They are so amazing. 

Yesterday was Micah's last day of kindergarten. Not particularly eventful, but he had a great year. I cannot believe that it went by so quickly. Of course, I remember standing on the front porch, taking photos of him on his first day. I remember the horror of that first week when he thought he wasn't good at school. The incredible response from his principal who quickly moved him into a wonderful classroom where he was able to be his happy and maybe too wacky self. All the little morning performances he participated in... 

Last, but not least, Micah has his first loose tooth! I'm not going to have babies for long, am I?

Another Beautiful Day

I've been struggling the last week or so. Feeling like I'm failing at giving both kids what they need, helping Penelope learn the basics while also challenging Micah to learn and grow. I often find that I'm so exhausted by it, I would rather just let them play by themselves while I cook or clean or play cellphone games. And I've been feeling really guilty about all of that.

Yesterday, though, was wonderful. Micah is on spring break, so I had both kids while Michael had a busy day at work. We got up, ate some breakfast, I sent Micah up to get dressed and he DID. That's a huge win all by itself, for the record. We went to Einstein's to buy some bagels and each of the kids had a chocolate milk for the car ride to Trader Joe's. We did our grocery shopping for the week and Micah only asked for a few special treats, most but not all of which I gave in to. When we got home, Mac and Harper were out front and we played in the front yards for about an hour. We took Penelope and Harper down the street to see the garbage men, they showed the girls how the garbage truck smashes the garbage and shared some freshly baked cookies that a neighbor made for them. Micah worked on a project on the front porch that involved gluing some string and pieces of wood together. We went inside to pull together some food and supplies for a trip to the park and then walked with Mac and Harper up to the Farmhouse playground where I briefly played hide and seek with Micah (he's an excellent hider, I must say), Micah learned to climb on top of a new piece of equipment and decided to eat his lunch there, and the highlight for Penelope was Mac pushing her on the swing, something that I was not allowed to do. We had some snacks, got a bit of a sunburn, and generally enjoyed ourselves. When we got home, I let the kids play on the porch for just a little while, Penelope was serving Micah some imaginary food from their play kitchen and both of them were coloring on the porch with chalk, and then I put Penelope down for a nap. Once she was down, I turned the tv on for Micah, watched one show with him, bowed out of the second, and then worked on Penelope's quiet book while he played in the back yard. When Penelope woke up, the three of us took a very slow walk around the block and then she and Micah played in back together for a while. Around 5pm, I started prepping for dinner and got the grill going. They played on the front porch while I moved things outside for a front porch dinner. They played with the radio, trying to see if they could find the baseball game, helped set the table and move chairs, and when Michael came home we had a nice meal: Steak (hotdogs for kiddos), grilled sweet potatoes, and salad. After dinner, Micah turned on the radio and worked on his dance moves on the front porch, always a good time! A little while later, he screamed that poop was coming out the top of Penelope's diaper and I took her up to change her and get ready for bed. She had dumped some sand in her hair in the back yard, so she took her first solo stand up shower and loved every second of it. She just kept filling and dumping cups of water, she was great about having her hair rinsed, and when she heard Micah coming up the stairs, she begged for him to join her. I think she quickly realized that having him in the shower was actually not fun at all since he completely blocked her water access, so we wrapped it up and I put her to bed. Her current favorite bedtime books are The Hound From The Pound and the Katz book which I think is called Doggies (counting and barking). Michael came in as we were reading Hound from the Pound and she insisted he sit down with us, so the three of us read together for a while. After she was down, I got Micah out of the shower, dressed him in Pajamas, and the two of us ate ice cream sandwiches on the front porch while reading one the chapter books we've been working on, the second Sisters Grimm book. Then I put him to bed too and while I did a little calming breathing with him after we finished reading, he fell asleep before I even left the room.

Solid parenting day. Basically no complaints. I hope we have a lot more days like that one was!