Must Love Babies

One Word Wednesdays

Cheeks.

One Word Wednesdays

Matchbox.

New Year, New List

A new year has brought a whole new category of resolutions for me: kid resolutions. This is kind of a foreign category to me. For years my list was populated with the typical "lose weight," "exercise," "make my bed every day" type self-promises, but now I have two whole new people to make resolutions for. Because I am just that much of a control freak.

So without further ado, here are my resolutions for my girls (and I say MY resolutions because my husband vehemently refuses to participate in resolution-making):

• Plan menus and cook more. Doing this means less scrambling and feeling guilty for less than stellar meals. No more Kraft singles, m&ms and a vitamin for dinner!
  
• Get organized. I seem to spend a lot of time rearranging piles when the kids knock them over, looking for misplaced pacifiers, frantically realizing we are out of size 3 diapers, things like that. Being more organized will help me spend more time with the family and model being calm and collected instead of panicked!
• Clean the house regularly. I'm sure some of you are pros at this, but I am not. I regularly choose to play with the kids or sit down and relax for five minutes instead of picking up the mop, and that needs to change. I don't need a sparkling clean house full time, but I can certainly do better than I am doing now.
• Improve upon kids’ diets, eat at 6 p.m. sharp. Caroline likes just about everything, but for the sake of simpicity, she is often fed whatever Josie is willing to eat, which isn't much. That's not fair! So we will be buying a wider range of foods for her to eat (and I'm gonna have to get off my butt and make multiple meals) including things her parents won't even touch! No need to stifle her love of grape tomatoes anymore, she'll have the most varied diet of anyone in the house. Plus they take forever to eat, and bedtime seems to be too close to the end of dinner, so making it a bit earlier will allow them more down time (and digestion time) before bed.
  
• Get more control over money. Little unnecessaries add up. That's money I could be putting away for their college, or at least for training pants.
• Get a job. Yes, I am a stay at home mom, and yes, that is very important to me. But let's face it: money is important. Not to buy stuff, but to buy options. Money can send my kids to preschool. Money can buy us an occasional mini-vacation with our family, giving the girls experiences they can't get elsewhere. Money buys admission fees to museums and zoos, organic foods, sports registration fees, music lessons, etc. Having a ton of money is so not important to us; having enough money absolutely is. So that means I have to go back to work, and try to focus on the nice, long time I was able to stay home with the girls instead of my leaving them. And that is all I am going to say about that, because if I keep going, I'm gonna cry.
• Potty-train Josie. She is finally showing signs of readiness. We are go on the potty, we are go on the potty literature, we are go on the training pants. We are still waiting on my courage to show its face. It's so funny how once the kid is ready, the mom suddenly isn't. But in this next week or two, it's go time. Literally.
• Less tv, less computer, more music. I often have the tv on in the background for noise. I don't even notice it, but Josie evidently does, because she has the State Farm commercial fully memorized. THIS IS BAD. I would much rather have her memorize the words to "Box of Rain" or even some Barney song. Electronics in general, except those required to play music, need to have a smaller role in our house. (Said the blogger on her laptop, blogging while the TV is on mute and her husband is perusing his iPad.)
• Much less cursing, none in front of kids. Pretty self-explanatory. Josie is smart enough to repeat choice things at appropriate times, Caroline just repeats everything at all times. Danger!
  
• Be positive and thankful for what I have. There are just so many dang times when I focus on the stress of having two toddlers, the messiness, the clutter, the challenges. I really need to remember the big stuff... the fact that I even have two toddlers when so many people struggle to conceive. The fact that I have TWO of them from just TWO pregnancies when so many pregnancies end in miscarriage. The fact that those two girls are (knock on wood forever) healthy and issue-free. The fact that we have a home of our own, however small and squishy. The fact that I have an AWESOME husband who is not only gainfully employed but committed to supporting his family economically and emotionally (no small feat some days). The fact that we have fabulous families and two cars that are both paid off and in good shape and a sweet dog and we live in a safe neighborhood and we have heat and clean water at our disposal and... well I could go on and on. There is so much to be thankful for, I sometimes feel so stupid for stressing over the little things. I need to keep perspective!

I hope you all have a ton to be thankful for as well, and while there is nothing wrong with lamenting once in a while, we should use it as a tool for self-improvement rather than a complaint board whenever possible. Hence, the New Year's Resolutions! I have ten more just for me, but the list above is much more important. I hope to accomplish them as the year rolls on!

A Christmas to Remember (for Mommy and Daddy, Anyway)

Last year at Christmastime, we had just relocated from Massachusetts to Virginia, were in a rented house we were in negotiations to buy, everything was in boxes, Josie had not eaten a full meal in two weeks due to a lingering flu/difficulty adjusting to her new house, and we were all freezing because of an icy combination of a much colder than usual December and no insulation in the house. This was the extent of Christmas morning:

Thankfully, the kids were only 19 months and 6 months at the time, so they didn't fully realize what a slacker Christmas it truly was.

What a difference a year makes.

This year, first and foremost, we shopped for a real, live tree and decorated it with what Josie calls "ormants" and "kwiss-mass wights." As expected, the girls thought the decorating was a game: one ornament on and two off. These shots look like the girls are delicately placing ornaments on the tree, but they are actually pulling them off while we shout, "no, leave it!!!" for the 7th time in the background.

At last the tree was done!

(Josie calls the bows on the trees "butterflies.")

The girls further geared up for the holiday by watching their nightly "Christmas Show." This is a little 10 minute On Demand video under the Baby section that they are obsessed with:

It is also responsible for teaching both girls "Jingle Bell Rock" and "Sleigh Ride." Both their versions of the former are below, though one child might be - er - slightly tone deaf. Only time will tell.

                                                 3 stars

                                            um, 1.5 stars

Christmas Eve

Then came Christmas morning, and with a little coaching, the girls quickly turned pro at opening gifts. Between grandparents, aunts, uncles, Mom and Dad, and of course Santa, the girls had WAY more than enough. At their young age, too much can be a bad thing (plus no one likes spoiled shorties), so we are taking some gifts out of rotation. That way they appreciate what they have out, and in 2 or 3 months when they are starting to tire of what they've been playing with since Christmas, we can rotate in the ones we hid away and it'll be like Christmas all over again!

Paint!

Barrettes!

The M&Ms were a huge hit

The girls got some lovely gifts, but the coolest part was definitely seeing how excited they were about Santa, the tree, the lights, etc. I don't think they got the whole concept of Santa coming to the houses of good little boys and girls, but they liked him as a "character" in the whole Christmas event. It felt like they just began to understand the spirit of Christmas and all the fun stuff that goes with it. It helped that we got to see all our family over the holidays, that made it extra fun! But we loved seeing the girls begin to develop a sense of some of what "Christmas" was. It made us realize that things will only get more and more fun as they get older! Hope everyone had as great a Christmas as we did!

One Word Wednesdays

Nosebleed.

One Word Wednesdays

Ornaments.

One Word Wednesdays

PJs.

One Word Wednesdays

Jumping.

Those Terrible, Traumatic, Torturous Twos

This blog might be called "Must Love Babies," but no one said I had to love toddlers.

My friend Karen loves toddlers, two year olds in particular, and she has a motto: They're not "terrible" twos, they're TERRIFIC twos!

I have a motto, too, it's called Punch Karen in the Face.

See the sweetness? Look out, it's a trick!

My oldest daughter, Josie, who is about to turn the big 3-1 (in months), doesn't know it but she is thisclose to being sold to the gypsies. She is killing us. I know, the terrible twos and I should have been expecting it and all that, but oh the humanity. She is a ball of emotional barbed wire right now and she's blowin' like a tumbleweed through our tiny house every single day. You have to constantly be on the lookout, ready to jump out of the way when she comes rolling into the room.

As I type, she is fake crying in her crib, trying to get either me or her father to come in, at which point she will request the "black pillow" (no such thing exists in our house). We will tell her to get over it, re-tuck her in, and leave. She will fake cry again and when we go in, she will indicate her pacifier is behind the crib. We will retrieve it and re-re-tuck her in. She will cry again and this time she won't like the Christmas lights that are glowing through her closed curtains. Or maybe she will insist we close the door, and when we do, she will insist we keep it open. Or maybe she will be hot, or cold, or thirsty. Or maybe she will want the stuffed animal dog that sits on her bookshelf, and when we give it to her, she will realize she really wanted the stuffed Clifford the Big Red Dog, and when we switch it out for her she will remember she actually wanted the stuffed animal dog that sits on her bookshelf.

She has temper tantrums and throws herself on the floor and turns herself into a rag doll when you try to pick her up. She doesn't want her sister to have ANYTHING; every single toy, book, stuffed animal, crayon or anything else that is remotely fun is HERS and even if she is buried under every other toy in the house, if she sees her sister about to touch the last lonely unclaimed toy, she throws a fit because don't you people get it?? It's HERS!

She will only eat chicken nuggets, yogurt, fries, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, pancakes, bacon, blueberry waffles, oatmeal, french toast, some fruit and salty snacks. She refuses any food that could be construed as anything other than what I just listed. If you try to get her to eat other foods that any normal child would BEG FOR (like grilled cheese, macaroni and cheese, candy, cookies, ice cream, you get the idea) she says, "no? ok." and you better believe the conversation is over.

She is destructive. She is less interested in playing with the hundreds of items that make up her play kitchen, that would be boring! She wants to systematically trash the kitchen by flailing her arms back and forth in the vicinity of the kitchen until there is nothing left on any surface. Then, instead of playing with the pieces or picking them up and replacing them, she simply leaves the room. At some point, you decide to pick up each individual piece and lovingly replace it in its rightful spot, foolishly thinking modeling the desired behavior will adjust her perspective. What you don't realize is that your arch enemy must be spying on you around the corner, laughing dismissively on the inside, and within 90 seconds your little 2.5 year old tornado will be back, destroying what you have just painstakingly recreated.

mmmmmmm puzzle pieces

She chews on the corners of her books. She rips pages out, then hands them to you and says, "mommy fiss it (fix it)." You do. You tape it perfectly back in place. She smiles sweetly, sits down with her new fissed book, and rips out a different page.

She tells you no when you give her a directive, she selectively ignores you, she undermines your authority by requesting time out, she runs away from you, she kicks at you, she throws the things you ask for on the floor as if to say, "there ya go, there's your precious sunglasses, go get 'em if you want 'em so bad." And then when you go to reach for them, she stomps on them. (Ok, I made that last bit up, but it honestly wouldn't surprise me if she tried that one, too.) She's mean and cruel and exasperating and exhausting.

Just when you are ready to throw in the towel and spend the rest of your life drunk and oblivious on the couch in your bathrobe while she does whateverthehellshewants, you do something smart for the first time in all this chaos: you attempt to seek understanding.

This is what I did. I googled "my toddler is making me want to kill myself crazy" and I got a bunch of hits that were actually helpful. I have decided to include a few light reading links for anyone else who may be going through toddler hell:

How to Discipline During the Terrible Twos

Handling the Terrible Twos, Threes, Fours

Why Are Two-Year-Olds So Difficult?

Getting Through the Terrible Twos

There is some good info in those articles, as well as some piece of mind. I don't know about you, but it makes me feel validated (read: better) to know that it is NOT just me or my kid, that others go through this exact same thing. Even just that knowledge buys me a little bit of patience when dealing with Josie. But the biggest thing I took away from reading these articles is that NO, she doesn't hate us and she doesn't just want to make our lives wretchedly horrible; she is really going through something that is just as hard on her as it is on us. That her fits are really internal struggles. That she does want to make us happy but she also wants to make herself happy, and those things might clash and she doesn't know how to handle it yet. Empathy is going to be my best weapon in fighting these battles, I think.

Which is not to say I have it all the time. I am still working on remembering to be "understanding" when Josie is trying to kick me in the face in a rage of hot tears, but hey,  practice makes perfect.

Maybe I'll have perfected it by the time she turns three. Just in time for her sister's turn.

One Word Wednesdays

Post-Thanksgiving.