Anniversary

4 years ago, it was a lovely, sunny Saturday and McMoose and I stood in front of our friends and family members and tried not to giggle through the wedding vows. Or maybe that was just me. I jokingly call this our "paper signing anniversary," because practically speaking, our lives didn't change much.

But then, that date allowed so many others to happen. August 31, 2008, when we found out about Luke. May 9, 2009, when he was born. November 19, 2010, when we found out about Weston. July 23, 2011, when he was born. August 31, 2011, when we bought our first house. These dates all feel so much more important to me than the one that happened 4 years ago, but still, none of them would have happened without May 31, 2008.

As silly as it might have seemed to me at the time, that sunny Saturday did, in fact, change everything.

Ten!

Weston is 10 months old today!

He is asleep right now and looks remarkably toddler-esque, lying there all sprawled out instead of scrunched up like a baby.

He decided to celebrate the occasion by growing a tooth, which I discovered yesterday when he used it to bite my finger. I mean, he had been kind of grumpy for a couple of days and McMoose and I were all, "What's up with the baby? Is he teething? Does he still have the ear infection from earlier this month? Has he been possessed by demons?" But the thing about babies is that you never do get a definitive answer to any of those questions, so we just kind of waited and voila! Tooth! Sadly, his version of a kiss is to suck on/bite people's faces, so I've had to prevent him from kissing me all day today and I. Don't. Like. It.

Oh, and about the ear infection: when we went to his 9-month check-up, I mentioned that he had been coughing for the better part of a month, but had no other symptoms and the doctor immediately said, "Oh, sure, he probably has an ear infection." To which I responded, "Huh?" Because really? Coughing as an indicator of an ear infection. Yes, apparently so. But since he didn't have any other symptoms, she wrote us a prescription on paper instead of just sending it to the pharmacy and said to fill it if we felt that he was getting worse and ignore it if we thought he was okay.  He did seem to get better, so we ignored it, which is why I was glad to see that the grumpiness of the past couple of days were due to the tooth because if it had been because of the ear infection--well...what's the statute of limitations on a paper prescription, anyway?

He now has perfect control over standing up and squatting back down without holding onto anything. In fact, the other day, he very much resembled a prairie dog: stand up, look around, squat down, crawl a few inches, repeat. But still, he's not terribly inclined to do anything about forward motion once he's standing; a fact for which I'm infinitely grateful. Because really, when he does his fast-crawl, it takes me a little while to catch up to him, even if I run...I can only imagine how fast he'll be once he's bipedal.

He is starting to enjoy some of the pieces of baby equipment that have been languishing for the past few months, most notably, the doorway jumper and the various strollers. Luke loved the doorway jumper until he started to crawl. Weston had no use for it until just the other day, when he realized that--hey, he could jump! And dance! So we put on some music and he clapped his hands and jumped and danced in the jumper and Luke and I clapped our hands and jumped and danced in front of the jumper and we all had a great time. And 10 minutes later, we went outside and the neighbor across the street, who had been mowing the lawn, informed us that our "dance party" had looked like fun. Um, awkward!

Ah, and on that note, he claps and clicks his tongue and squeals, all in response to someone else doing it first. In other words: he communicates! He also signs "More." Well...kind of. He holds his hands above his head and waves them around and yells, "Mmmmmaaa! Mmmmaaaa!" The actual sign for more is...very, very different from that. But he uses it consistently and if we ask him whether he wants more, he makes that combination of gesture and vocalization, so whatever. That's the Weston-sign for more. (In fact, one of our friends is even starting to recognize that sign because he does it so frequently. So not only is he communicating, he's communicating with people outside of our immediate family. Hooray!) He continues to say "Mama" and "Dada," and has added "Ba-ba," which is accompanied by a wave, so we're assuming it's bye-bye. And "Ba," which we're assuming is ball because he usually says it when he sees or is playing with a ball. (Luke started soccer this month. Weston is obsessed with the balls. He spends the ENTIRE TIME trying to get out of my arms so that he can go get the balls. More on that later.)

As I said in my last post, he likes to play catch. He also likes to play "Minnow," which is a game that he and Luke invented. There's an inflatable pool in Luke's room that's filled up with little balls to serve as a ball-pit and they both "swim" around in it. Weston is the minnow and Luke is the shark or duck or bear or whatever he wants to be that day. And he likes to empty containers--toy boxes, the laundry basket, and if left unattended for a fraction of a second, the trash can in the bathroom. (As a result of which, he is not left unattended, ever, unless the bathroom doors are closed. The cats, who have water bowls in the bathrooms, are not pleased about this.)

He is hopelessly fascinated by the toilet paper roll, wires, and the aforementioned trash cans. Oh, and these little bells that we try to keep away from him, but that he stuffs into his mouth at every given opportunity. He also really enjoys the cats. (The cats do not really enjoy him. Nor are they pleased that HE really enjoys THEM. Surprisingly, neither of them have scratched him--a rather impressive feat of self-control, given the fact that he frequently chases and climbs on them before I can stop him.)

He climbs. Everything. He loves going to the playground now because he has figured out how to climb the slide and then slide back down on his belly. In the past, I'd put him in the carrier on my back and he'd watch from up there. Now, as soon as he sees the playground equipment, he starts throwing his body around like an angry catfish, clamoring to get down and get to the slide.

I'm enjoying all the babyish things about him even as he becomes more like a toddler with every passing day.

Play!

Once Luke learned how to crawl, he spent most of his time exploring the apartment--on his own. He would come back and check on us every now and then, but other than feeding time and sleeping time, he preferred to wander around on his own.

You can understand my surprise, then, that Weston likes to play. With US. His current favorite game is to throw a ball back and forth and he actually takes turns with it and thinks it's a fabulous game. I found myself sitting on the floor, throwing the ball to him this morning and thinking, Huh. So this is what people mean when they say that their kids want them to play with them.

It makes me glad that Weston is the second born because his older brother loves playing with him. Granted, their version of playing frequently results in wrestling and rolling over each other and climbing on top of each other, but Weston is learning how to hold his own and Luke is learning how to be gentle.

(The cats are very pleased that they're not bearing the brunt of this wanting to play stuff.)

I remember Luke going through a period when he got really good at crawling and he would start crawling around the crib in the middle of the night. Usually, he either found himself a different spot, lay down, and fell back asleep, or he bumped his head on the sides of the crib and woke up. Like many of the other unpleasant stages, I had forgotten about this one.

I remember now, of course, because Weston is smack dab in the middle of it. Except that this time around, the crib has been serving primarily as a place to hold clean laundry until I can get around to folding it and the baby sleeps on a mattress on the floor.

So instead of bumping into the sides of the crib, if he's alone on his bed, he bumps into the walls. The nightstand. He crawls off the mattress and sits by the door. (He has learned, you see, that a lot of times, if I'm not in bed with him, it's probably because I'm still downstairs, so he whines and crawls to the door and sits there, squinting at it and holding up his arms and moaning like a zombaby.) He sometimes crawls into the bathroom. I don't know why.

All of which is better than what he does if I happen to be in bed with him, which is to climb on me, find a spot for his head, and fall back asleep. Which then means that, uh, I have 21 pounds of sleeping, drooling, snoring baby perched precariously on me and if I move, he's likely to wake up. Or he tries to nurse, but since he's asleep, ends up latched onto my arm or my face. There are few things quite as disconcerting as being woken by a baby who is drooling into your ear canal. *Shudder*

I am very much looking forward to the end of this phase. Except that somewhere, in the bleary recesses of my memory, I seem to remember that after this phase comes the one where the baby starts to--heaven help us all--WALK in his sleep. 

Crawling Toward Toddlerhood

I know toddlers. Really, I do. They get into everything, they're crazy curious, they have no sense of boundaries. I KNOW toddlers.

But Weston is not a toddler. For one thing, he doesn't toddle. For another, he's still a sweet baby. Or so I thought.

On Saturday, McMoose was working in the yard and Luke was asleep, so I decided to do some sewing. Weston was crawling around, examining various toys and tasting every speck and dust bunny on the floor. In other words: it was a typical Saturday afternoon.

Of course, I got caught up in my sewing and after a few minutes, realized that Weston was being very...quiet. And playing very independently. And not chasing any cats or pulling on any wires or trying to get to the DVDs. In other words, he was acting quite unlike himself. So I walked over behind the ottoman that he was sitting beside and found, to my great dismay, that in the less-than-five minutes that he had been sitting there, he had pulled up the grate on the heating vent and was busily stuffing toys down the vent. Awesome.

We pulled up several trucks, balls, and a feather, and then couldn't reach any farther. I'm pretty sure we got everything and I'm hoping really hard for that to be true.

I guess it was around this time that Luke started doing things like unrolling the toilet paper and pulling door stoppers off the wall, so really, I shouldn't be surprised, but really? Are we here already? Ah, infancy, your stay was so fleeting.

Thrilling Threes!

My oldest child turned three on Monday--an age I always associated with being a "kid" instead of a baby or a toddler. Can it be that I have a kid now instead of a baby and a toddler?

 I went back and read my posts on this blog from last May and I remember those days so clearly; it's nearly impossible to believe that an entire year has gone by. And yet, in the space of that year, Luke has had such very important transitions in his life--from being the only child to a big brother, from living in an apartment to a house, from having his best friend with him all day, every day to seeing him for a few hours a couple of times a week. And yet, with all the changes over the past year, he has continued to be such a sweet and joyful soul.

Now, I'm not going to lie and say that the past year was all sunshine and roses. For so long, Luke was so easy that when he reached his first boundary testing stage about six months ago, it threw me for a huge loop. There were tears--his and mine. There was bad behavior on both our parts. There were days, weeks, when I watched him have multiple tantrums a day and wondered who this unfamiliar person was and why he looked so much like--and yet, acted completely different from--the child I had known for two-and-a-half years.

But then, the miracle of three happened. I know we're only a couple of days into it, but really, for the past month or so, he has been slowly transitioning to three-ness. He has had fewer tantrums, and the ones he does have are usually traceable to hunger, tiredness, or a lack of exercise. He's better able to verbalize his plans--first I'll do this, then you do this, then I want to do this--and more willing to accept reasonable explanations about why parts of those plans might not work. Of course, we still get a whole lot of, "But I waaaaaannnnt to," when we tell him he can't do something, but most of the time, a reminder to speak nicely and an acknowledgement that yes, it's hard to be patient suffices to mollify him.

He has taken so well to being a big brother this past year. Even though I sometimes feel bad about the decrease in parental time, energy, and attention, I think that he sees his baby brother as the very best thing ever. At least once a day--and often, more frequently--he says to me, "I like this baby. We should keep this baby." A couple of weeks ago, when I told him that I loved him, he replied, "When I were a baby, I loved you, but now, I love my baby brother the most."

He's a pretty physical kid, in that he likes to run and wrestle and run some more. The best tactic to keep him calm is to make sure we're getting plenty of outside time, so we frequent parks and playgrounds, take walks and bike rides around the neighborhood, pull the cushions off the couch and jump on them. When we forget to do these things, even for a day or two, the result is that he tackles his friends and sits on his brother and chases the cats, who then complain loudly about the inhumane (infeline?) treatment.

Even as I look back and wonder about how quickly his infancy and toddlerhood have passed, I am excited about the big kid he's turning into--the kid who loves to explore and who looks forward to every outing with his friends; the kid who is learning to be more independent, even as he still asks to be carried or to sit on our laps while reading. He is such a combination of baby and big kid, all rolled up in a ball of energy and I am very much looking forward to watching him be Three.

What We've Been Doing

There's always a rhythm to the year--some months are predictably slow and others go racing past. April was one of those racing-past ones. It started off with spring break--and yes, I know it's strange that I would mark time by referencing spring break, considering the fact that I am no one in our family is either a student or a teacher in the school system. However, it was spring break for Other Mama, which meant that it was "spring break" for us--I tried not to plan very much during that week so that we could just roll with the plans as they unfolded. So for us, spring break was marked by some living room camping, a picnic, lots of dinners with friends, naps at Other Boy's house, yummy lunches, and just a few lovely, long-awaited days of being unscheduled.

And then, of course, the car accident happened and my car (aka: the ONLY vehicle that can accommodate our entire family) was out of commission for a week and a half, so we had a rental car. I don't know about you, but my car feels like an extension of myself and other cars just feel so very...foreign. I have to think extra hard about how wide to swing into a parking spot and whether I have room to do a u-turn and whether I'm fully within my lane and, and, and...suffice it to say that I was very glad to get my car back at the end of those 10 days. (However. The rental car was much newer and now, my car seems kind of...old...and rattley. Boo.)

During that week, my dad visited, and so we had another slow, unscheduled week during which we frequented Indian restaurants and parks and I got to actually run a series of errands in one trip because each errand did not require me to drag both kids in and out of the car. Between spring break and having my dad around, what I realized is this: life is so much easier when there is another adult available during the day. Someone who can hold a baby, or get a drink for a toddler, or just someone to talk to during the lulls of the day.

Then, we were home for a few days, which we spent cleaning and doing laundry and packing, and then, the kids and I went to my mom's house for a week. My mom and step-dad recently bought a new house and as soon as I saw this house, I knew I needed to go stay for a while because it is right by a walking trail. By which I mean that you can walk out of their backyard and onto a lovely, paved trail. It was amazing. I spent the whole week not driving anywhere because (a) I didn't need to (hello, TRAIL!); (b) they live in a suburb of Washington, DC and that is one of my least favorite places to drive; and (c) I was still nervous about driving after the accident. So it turned out to be the perfect vacation destination. Except, of course, it was the very opposite of a vacation because there were no breaks to be had for a week. Normally, there are things McMoose does with the kids in the evenings: plays with Luke, holds Weston, shows Luke how to cook, bathes whoever needs a bath, puts Luke to bed. Except that McMoose wasn't there, so all of those tasks fell to me and holy cow, I did not realize how very helpful it is to have McMoose around until he wasn't around for a week. However. It was balanced out by the fact that we played in a dog-free (and therefore, poop-free) backyard, walked on the trail, saw some deer on the trail, found a great park and community center at the end of the trail, went to the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum, and got to eat all the Indian food we wanted. And didn't have to clean or cook or do laundry. Yes, that was nice.

We got home last weekend and have spent the past week getting ready for Luke's birthday party--and how can it be that it's already time for another birthday party? So the past week has been filled with discussions about the menu and decorations and the guest list and the games. Last night, in particular, involved a great deal of cooking and cleaning and baking and cake decorating and this morning, a gaggle of preschoolers and their parents came over to play and eat and celebrate with us. And oh, what fun it was. I'm pretty sure the size of our house changes according to our needs. It seems cozy and just right when it's just the four of us here, but at the same time, it can accommodate eleven kids and their parents and siblings without seeming over-crowded...or at least, not to me. We had a great time and now, the party is over, the cupcakes have been devoured, and two happy children are resting.

Here's hoping that the rest of this month might go slightly slower than the last.

Processing

Over the past month, Luke and I have been talking a lot about carseats, seat belts, driving carefully, following the rules of the road, etc. We talk about this stuff anyway because he is so interested in all things related to vehicles, but it has certainly come up a lot more in the weeks since the crash. And I have to say, if only the world worked the way it does in his imagination, life would be ever so much easier.

Right after the accident, we had to get new car seats for the kids. Luke sat rear-facing until a couple of weeks before Weston was born and the new seats can accomodate much larger rear-facing kids, so I asked Luke, somewhat jokingly whether he'd like to turn back again.
Luke: No, I don't want to.
Me: But if you did, you might be safer. See how Weston didn't get hurt at all in the crash?
Luke: Yes...but next time, just don't crash into another car, Mama.

Every time we get to a stop sign, he says, "Stop, stop, STOP, STOP, STOOOPP!!!! There's a stop sign!" Of course, he starts yelling this as soon as he spies a stop sign and he has good eyes when it comes to this stuff, so I usually have to listen to it all the way down the road as I approach the stop sign. It's made slightly better by the fact that afterwards, he says, "Thank you for stopping at that stop sign, Mama. That was very nice."

When we see ambulances or fire trucks on the road, it has always been terribly exciting for him, but now, he has a back story for the experience. The other day, a firetruck flew by us with lights flashing and sirens screaming and Luke narrated the following story: "That firetruck is going to a car accident. Two cars went crashing in together and the Mama in the car said, 'Oh, my, our car is broken. Let's call the firetruck.' And then, the firetruck will make it rain from the hose."
Me: The firetruck makes it rain, you say?
Luke: Yes. If there's no fire, firetrucks can make it rain instead.
Me: Why do they do that?
Luke: ...because they're firetrucks...they have to do something with all that water, don't they?