Compare and contrast

Jane at 3 months:

Audrey at 5 months:
Maggie at 8 months:

Quiet time

Janey has been waking up at 5:30 am lately. I nurse her and she goes back to sleep...but I don't. So I get up and enjoy a bit of early morning all by myself. It is my favorite time of day. The house is wonderfully quiet, the light is dim and the tea is hot, imported from England (thanks Laurel!) and full of caffeine. Sometimes I read. Sometimes I get on the computer with good intentions to work on the new fiction project I've started. But quiet time is brief; by the time I've brewed the tea, booted the computer and answered a few emails, it's time for the big girls to make their appearance.

Today it was Maggie first, who bounded out here a few minutes ago with a huge grin. "Good morning Mommy," she sang. She looked around and exclaimed, "I'm the first kid up! Mommy, excuse me Mommy, will you please get my cup of milk? And I'll check the banana section to see if there are any nice big bananas today. Yep! Here's a banana for me! I'm going to peel off this banana sticker and wear it on my shirt. Mommy, excuse me Mommy, will you please open the top of my banana so I can eat it? And Mommy, will you hold my banana while I go to the bathroom? And then can I please watch a show, and can I pick it, and can it be Miss Spider?"

Oops, and now I hear Audrey calling for help from her crib, and Janey's happy sounds are morphing into lonely fusses. Quiet time is most definitely over.

Snoo...

Mommy, my dressed myself

35

Today is my 35th birthday. I can hardly believe that's my age. A 35-year-old woman with three children--doesn't that sound like a real grown-up? Is that really me?

For gifts I got two bouquets of flowers, pajamas, a necklace, a Nordstrom giftcard and a bottle of wine. Hmm. Those sound like suspiciously grown-up gifts. More evidence.

I didn't plan very well, so I ended up having a bowl of cereal for dinner (finished approximately 30 seconds ago). Oops. I guess I should have planned for some decadent pizza and ice cream. Maybe I can manage it this weekend instead.

Maggie reads!

Yesterday, Maggie's preschool teacher told me that Maggie really read for the first time. She's been learning phonics, knows all the letters and sounds, and often guesses at words that she sees. But yesterday she was looking at some words at school and sounding them out, and suddenly started "getting" it. She read all these words and then wrote them down. That night she read them to Robert and me again. She loves doing it and thinks it's really fun.

Playground

Yesterday I took the three girls to the playground by myself for the first time...and it was totally fine. I was worried it would be hard, but Janey slept most of the time and the big girls had a wonderful time playing on the equipment. Audrey stopped my heart a few times with her daredevil antics, but she's much better than she used to be.

Nature walk

My smart friend Gina insists it is possible to take three children on a successful walk, so today I tried it. As usual she was right. I put Janey in the bjorn and instructed Maggie and Audrey to keep close. They each had a plastic bag to fill with leaves and twigs they found along the way. What with all the meandering and gathering, it took us over half an hour just to circle the block. When we got home I gave the girls paper and glue to make collages.

Audrey's:
Maggie's:

Best quotes from the experience:

From Maggie, five minute into the walk: "I'm so tired, and I miss my TV."

From Audrey, five minutes into the collage: "Maggie glued my tummy."

From a stranger, who stopped his car and rolled down his window: "Now that's a good mama!"

Playtime

Space launch

Self portraits

Jane is three months old

In honor of Janey's 3-month birthday, I made a photo montage of her day.

Spooky

It's still September, but Halloween costumes are in the catalogs, candy is in the stores, and little pink ghosts are wandering about.

Tricycling ballerina

Audrey in braids

Maggie's view of things

Backyard

After the dentist and the indoor playground (including a picnic lunch), I thought the girls would take a long nap for sure.

Nope.

Instead, I found myself pulling every trick out of my mom bag to get through a very long afternoon. We made collages, played games, read books, danced, had a tea party with real (decaf) tea, and played for a long wet time in the backyard.

We even filled up the water table with bubbles:

Maggie discovered she could make a "fountain" with the garden hose:


Janey and I kept our distance from the splashing:


Our next door neighbor is building a new house from the ground up. It's noisy but interesting:


This counts as a bath, right?

Teeth

Audrey: She had her first dental check-up today. I sat knee-to-knee with the dentist (a really nice woman who looked about 22 years old) and Audrey laid back on our laps and opened her mouth wide for the exam. She took it well and her teeth are fine except for a little plaque.

Maggie: It was Maggie's second time at the dentist. She had a much more extended visit with x-rays, cleaning and a longer exam. She has a pre-cavity in one molar, so I have to take her back in a couple weeks to have that tooth sealed. She hated the x-rays but did pretty well during the rest, as long as I stayed close and held her hand.

Me: I received a stern admonishment to clean the girls' teeth better. The dentist told me (with a straight face!) to have the girls lie down on the floor so I can sit behind their heads and dry brush their teeth thoroughly and floss in between all their teeth. Then Maggie should get up and brush her own teeth with toothpaste, while I brush Audrey's teeth with toothpaste and then wipe off her teeth with a washcloth. Twice a day. You should all be impressed at how seriously I nodded and agreed that yes, of course I would do that, while inside I was saying "ha ha ha isn't the little dentist lady funny?"

Jane: My 2-month-old baby appears to be getting her first tooth already! I'll keep you updated on this new development.

Robert: I let him worry about his own teeth.

In memory

Maggie & Janey

The fate of Fenwheel

Last May, Maggie started talking about an imaginary friend/brother named Fenwheel Heaven. I first blogged about it here. She has continued talking about him almost daily all these months, but today when I picked her up from preschool she told me in a very sad voice, "I don't really have a brother. I was just pretending about Fenwheel." I told her that I knew she was pretending, but it was okay and she could keep pretending if she wanted to. I then tried to find out why she was saying this (I thought maybe someone gave her a hard time at school), but she didn't want to talk about it anymore.

Audrey, though, may have picked up the torch. For the last few weeks she has been talking about him too: "My brother has a purple telephone," "My brother Heaven has a dog." Just tonight at bedtime Audrey was talking about him and Maggie didn't seem to mind, or at least she was ignoring the subject. I wonder how much longer he'll stick around.

Huntington Gardens

Cute Audrey

I need to document some of Audrey's latest cutenesses:

We are having an ant infestation, which is fine by Audrey. She is talking to them ("Hello, itsy spiders!") and inviting them to walk on her hand and join her in a tea party.

When she finds a bump on her skin, imagined or real, she shows it to me and calls it a "beetle bite."

She and Maggie each got new doctor's kits recently, and Audrey takes her work seriously. She often comes after me with the tweezers in one hand and a clamp in the other, saying "I get your thorns out. I get your thorns out, Mommy."

The other day we passed a Chevron station that has the World's Ugliest Fountain: a small pool of water with a sprinkler head sticking up in the middle. Audrey excitedly pointed at it and said "Dat's a pond, Mommy! Dat's where the ducks go to swim!"

Back to school

A mini pictorial that encapsulates Maggie's attitude about going back to preschool:






Audrey had a matching back-to-school dress, but much to her disappointment, did not go to preschool with Maggie. She is desperate for preschool, but her Mommy isn't ready for it yet! We might start her in January when she is 2 1/2.

Keeping cool at the museum

Out for gelato

4 years old