This N That

There are a few things I want to get down before I forget them, but they're not really worthy of a whole post themselves. Sorry if this is boring.

Charlotte:

• She says "me-mote" for remote
• She constantly talks about going to Aunt Heather's to climb, Grandma Denise's house to see Quinnie, and having Aunt Katie and Uncle Garrett taking her to see the kangaroo. What kangaroo? (None of which is going to happen anytime soon.)
• She's staying in bed at bedtime! This is amazing!
• She is very interested in gender. Usually it goes something like this "Baby Jimmy is a boy, and Daddy is a boy, and Tigger (Grandma LeAnn's dog) is a boy, but Rommie and Mischief (also Grandma LeAnn's dogs) are girls. Quinnie is a girl and so is Mommy."
• She's started to get mad. A lot. I was getting a little worried about it so I brought it up to Daniel. His response was, "Well she is part of the family and my family's default emotion is mad." I thought that was funny.

Greg:

• He is quite possibly the world's stinkiest baby. Not in the way you'd think though. He is always wanting to be swaddled when he sleeps, which is still most of the day, and it's hot. So he sweats. And stinks.
• He never wants to sit down. He is always wanting to stand up. He hooks his little feet onto anything that could give him leverage and pushes until his body is rigid.
• Everyone says he looks like Daniel now. I now think he looks like my dad.
• His favorite toy is the shower curtain.
• He LOVES his sister. When she's around he's always watching her. I wonder when she'll notice.
• We moved him into his crib to share the bedroom with Charlotte. This is AWESOME. In no way have the even bothered each other.

Dan:

• I can't wait for this month to end! Not that next month promises to be much better, but at least he'll be closer to home.
• For future reference, if you're calling home because you want me to know you're going to be late, but I don't pick up, the proper thing to do is to leave a message. If you don't leave a message, I will then spend the next 2.5 hours until you call me back worrying that what was really going on was that you were kidnapped and you were sending me an SOS to call the police to come find you. When I try to call you back and you don't answer because you're with a patient, it just leads me to believe that you are gagged and tied up and I really need to go get help. That's the way my mind works. Because that type of thing happens all.the.time.
• How exactly do you function on so little sleep?
• I'm so glad you and Charlotte will be going to the Cardinals game on Thursday. I think you guys will really have fun with each other.

Me:

• I've made an exercise goal for myself. I'm exercising for 100 days and at the end I'm buying myself a new outfit. Pretty awesome huh?
• Because I'm 7 I made myself a sticker chart to track my exercising progress. Yes, stickers are a great daily reward for myself because I'm cool like that. My favorite are the foil stars. Do you remember those?
• My mom is coming this weekend to visit and I'm so ridiculously excited.
• I cut out my new quilt kit a while back and started to sew it together yesterday. I wasn't paying enough attention to seam allowance though so now I have to unpick everything I sewed yesterday. Great.

Logic

Charlotte and I have four or five conversations that run in a constant loop throughout the day. Here is a sample of my least favorite:

Me: "Charlotte please don't do that."
Charlotte: "But I can."
Me: "I know you can. I'm asking you to please not."
Charlotte: "I will."
Me: "Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop."

I'm not entirely sure how to impart the idea that just because you can do something doesn't mean you should.

Give Away

Not mine. I have nothing worth giving away at the moment. My cousin Hilary though is a very talented artist. She has an etsy shop and is having a give away. You should go check it out.

Magical

I got tired of seeing that last post at the top of the screen when I looked on my blog so I thought I'd post something a little more fun. When she was visiting us Grandma LeAnn bought us a year membership to The Magic House. I think living in St. Louis is going to ruin me for the rest of the country. There are so many awesome kid things to do here (which are free or really cheap) and The Magic House is no exception. Thanks to our membership we will be getting photos like these for the rest of the year:

Charlotte is taking a ride in Cinderella's carriage.

Here she is driving what I think is some sort of pretend delivery vehicle.

Coping

So third year is hard. Not last month. Last month was a breeze. I kept hoping that the month would never end. Which basically means that it was over in an instant. This month slammed into me and keeps right on going with a seemingly endless marathon of coping. It's like summer skipped right past fall and landed me in the middle of winter. (That analogy only works if you're not talking about the climate of St. Louis. In St. Louis summer is a season to avoid. Don't ever vacation here in August. You might just die.)

I recently read a good friend's post about his hours during third year and what he's doing and they are what I imagine my husband to be doing right now as well. All I can say is that he's gone. He'd be here, with me and with our children, if he could, but he can't. Right now we are sacrificing with the faith that it will be worth it in the end. Mostly I think I'm doing just fine. Mostly I think we're coping well.

And then.

Then Charlotte wakes up from her nap asking, begging, for me to get Daddy. What a joke right? Now, when he can't be here, she's finally decided that she prefers him for some things. Not only that, we can't try to call him because he doesn't get great reception in the hospital and he might be too busy to talk anyway.

Then we're with a group of other women and children with spouses in medical school or residency. They're all talking about what their husbands are doing. The conversation is light and fun. Suddenly I'm thinking about Daniel being gone and having to put the kids to bed by myself three days in a row and I start to get choked up a bit.

Intellectually I know many other families go through similar situations. I also know that many families go through much tougher challenges. That doesn't change the coping that has to go on in our family when Daniel-the husband, friend, dad, lover, joker, and anchor-is gone. We hope he is energized about what he's doing and learning. We love to see him take the next step towards our collective goal. We also miss him.

I Bet You're Jealous Now

So this is the post wherein I make you all wish you could be me. Just letting you know. Today we went with some friends to pick blackberries. Here are the photos of the day.


We started out the day bright eyed and bushy tailed and on the bus to the blackberry patch.

Then we picked and ate and picked and ate the blackberries.

Charlotte didn't quite understand being gentle while picking so mostly she smashed the blackberries in her little hands.
She also managed to get quite a few in her mouth and all over her face. I'm not sure if you can really see it in the photo, but she did mange to get blackberry in her right ear.

After my kids get up from their naps I'm calling my friends to come over and make freezer jam with me. It's gonna be great.

Getting Better

The last few days Charlotte has actually asked me for things politely without needing to be reminded. It's been amazing. Not every time, but to even have it happen on its own has been a little relief. Then today we went and visited her best friend and the two of them are doing SO MUCH BETTER about not fighting. Charlotte still has a way to go, but I can see a definite improvement. That's comforting.

Also, Greg has decided to start putting things in his mouth and grabbing for toys within reach. He's getting so big! It's exciting. Pretty soon we'll have baby slobber on everything!

Growing

Daniel says he can't remember ever having growing pains. I do. I remember laying in bed one night when I was young and my legs just aching with them. Does anyone else remember having those? When I told my mom about them she let me know that it was happening because I was growing so fast. That's why when I learned about how sometimes people cut their bones and then use screws to have them grow back longer I just cringed. That would be so painful.

I feel like the last three months of my life I've had a different sort of growing pain. I feel like I can literally feel myself growing in my abilities as a mom, and sometimes it isn't pleasant, but always it amazes me.

I worried about not being able to love my second child as much as I do my first. Honestly it didn't happen right away. Now though, I feel the love I have for him opening up in my heart like a huge well with no bottom. An eternal capacity to love him. He can coo and sit and loves to have me hold his hands to stand up. He's learning to laugh and it's so funny to watch him try. He is always looking around for his sister. He is amazing. When I see him I think to myself, how could anyone not absolutely love him?

I'm also being pulled to see how much I can get done in a day. This sounds a little shallow after talking about my love for my son, but it is significant. At times it really has been a confidence booster and at other times one of the most discouraging parts to my day. I can accomplish more today than I ever could when Charlotte was 3 months old. I have a greater capacity than I thought. I know this because each day has more activities and tasks than I can get done. Every.day. I have learned to pick and choose what I will be doing.

I'm growing in my ability to lovingly discipline my daughter. I desperately want her life to be puppies and rainbows and sunshine and I want to be the one that gives her every good thing that she will love all the time. In reality that can't happen and I have to be the bad guy sometimes. And I hate it. Also, I hate when I'm not successful at it-when the only thing I accomplish is making her cry and me angry. This is where the painful part of growing comes in. I'm getting better at it. I'm finding things that work and things that do not work and knowing that I'm getting better feels really good.

Along with disciplining my daughter my life is pulling me toward more self discipline. Confession: My life requires more self discipline than I currently have. I wish I could get up before my children so that I could use that time for myself productively. I wish I could continue to be productive all through the afternoon. I wish I didn't get angry so easily (or at all really). Unfortunately that isn't happening right now. SLEEP is way more important than any of that at the moment. I do see that little by little I am able to tuck in things I want to get done between things that I have to get done. I am also getting better at controlling my actions and words, even when I'm frustrated. I'm getting better. Not every day. Actually most days are tiny steps backward than forward, but I do see the forward movement and it makes it worth it.

So even though I sort of feel like two kids are stretching me farther than I am able, when I have enough sleep and energy to stand back and look at the situation I am ever so happy with it. My children, by just being themselves, are helping me to become the person I want to be.

A New Gem

We went to the St. Louis City Garden today and it is awesome. If you can you should go there. Next time we go I'll remember the camera. And I'll remember to not leave my glasses there.