Month: February 2007

Last week included a couple important firsts.
First (uh-huh, uh-huh) C. now has some teeth. As of Sunday evening, depending on your definition, she had between two and six teeth. Her two front, top teeth were the first to pop through and are very visible now. One of her other upper teeth is peeking through. Then, at least two bottom teeth had pushed through by this afternoon, although it was tough to see them. If you could get your finger into her mouth, though, you could sure feel them. One of her favorite games of late has been smacking people in the face when she’s happy. I have a feeling she’s going to crawl up and bite me in the next few days.
Then, M. had her first haircut. We were finding small rodents and birds living in her ‘fro, so it was time to hack it back a little. It was a home job, and although S. took maybe an inch off, that must have been a heavy inch because her hair looks a ton shorter now. I guess it was getting to be too much and the curls were collapsing. Now, they’re nice and tight again. All I’ll say about the actual haircut was it was pretty much a disaster. We’re not taking her to a haircut place, or a dentist for that matter, any time soon. If I haven’t posted before/after pics yet, I’ll do that soon.
Some other kid tidbits below.

C. crawls like a madgirl. She’s seriously dangerous. She covers so much ground she surprises you sometimes. I propped her up against her walker this evening, and with a little support from dad, she pushed it all the way across the room. I have a feeling she’s going to be walking long before her sister did (13 months). All of a sudden Saturday, she started clapping as well. My wife tells me that’s advanced. I’ve realized on kid #2 I can’t keep track of milestones like that anymore. Too tired, too frustrated, been there, done that. I kid, of course. It is harder to keep track because all of M.’s milestones kind of run together and when C. does something, I think, “Now when did M. do that and what is the average?” Then, I realize figuring out the answers means getting up and I stay seated.
M. has a new favorite word: sure. Or, as she says it, “sewr.” Kind of like sewer without the second E. She says it 75% of the time you ask her a question now. “You want some crackers?” “Sewr.” “You want to color?” “Sewr.” “You want to work on your multiplication tables?” “No Daddy, that silly!” The best is when she says it in a totally dismissive manner. “Hey M., you want to help daddy pick up toys.” “Sewr,” without looking up from whatever she’s doing. It’s a courtesy answer at best, a blow-off answer more likely.
She is losing some of her other funny pronunciations, which is kind of sad. Her F’s are getting much better. Occasionally, her old, mock-southern accent will kick in. She still can’t say oatmeal without sounding like she’s from Arkansas. “Daddy, can I have oat-mail cooookie?” Maybe it’s because I love that so much I reinforce it by saying it back to her. “You want an oat-mail cookie, M.?” “Sewr.”
I love her random outbursts. At a red light the other day, she said something along the lines of this.
“Oh, it a red light. When it turn green, we say “Go people!” Den the people go home to dey houses, say hi to dey doggies, dey lay down, dey close their eyes and go night-night. Yeah, people silly daddy.”
She’s also stuck on Old McDonald. She takes the melody, adds any words, and walks around “singing” it over-and-over. This afternoon she was singing something about people taking their doggies for walks, all to the tune of Old McDonald. It’s also her alarm clock. We usually let her talk for awhile in the morning, so we don’t get Angry Toddler. We know she’s ready to get up when she starts singing “E-I-E-I-O” at the top of her lungs. One morning, C. was jabbering away in her room, M. heard her, and this followed”
“OH, DAT C.! I HEAR YOU, C.! I HEAR YOU SINGING! E-I-E-I-O!!!!!!”
Finally, Saturday both girls were napping, M. getting into her third hour and C. tenuously trying to get past 30 minutes. C. either stood up and fell against the railing, or had a bad dream, but she woke up screaming. As we raced upstairs, we heard the following outburst from M.’s room:
“IT OK C.! WE’RE COMIN’ TO GET YOU! HANG ON, C.!”
Sadly, despite looking out for her sister, she was not ready to get up. When we tried, we had 30 minutes of angry toddler. You other parents of toddlers out there know exactly what I’m talking about. I’m beginning to see why people drink a lot.

Yes, I really am posting at 12:20-something AM. I’m not doing it to show off, the way I used to send e-mails late at night or early in the morning in my Corporate Hack days (To the day I left the Big C Corp, there were a few people in high places that I would run into occasionally who would point at me and say, “This guy works crazy hours!” And this was at a company where crazy hours were mandated. Boy, did I have those fools fooled!). And I’m not doing it to make up for my recent run of minimal postings. No, I do it because I’m up and there is news.
This is the rare night when I’m working on my bimonthly editing gig and an article for class at the same time. With about 1000 inches of snow on the ground (Or perhaps slightly less, but still the most snow we’ve received since I moved here) and two kids keeping me busy all day, it’s a late night oil night. So I’m sitting here, tapping away on the keyboard when I hear M. on her monitor. She is really cranked up good, which is unusual. I go running up and S. is leaving her room, not terribly pleased.
“She doesn’t want me, she wants her daddy. She said, ‘Daddy get my cubers.’”
Holy creature of habit! That’s what a little freak my oldest daughter is. When she wakes up in the middle of the night, tangled in her sheets and blankets, daddy must be the one to come get her straightened out. Thank goodness I’m not traveling anymore. I can’t imagine what would happen if I was off in Portland or Phoenix or LA.

We heard that worst of toddler words today. “Why?” I don’t even remember the context, I just know I was asking M. to do something while cleaning C. up after her breakfast and M. looked at me with big, two-year-old eyes, and asked, very matter-of-factly, “Why?” It was so unexpected that I just ignored her rather than using any of the numerous defense strategies I’ve thought up. I’m sure I’ll get many, many chances to practice them in the near future.

I’ve not gotten around to doing a full kid update for awhile because they’re both doing so much that it is hard to remember everything. So a few quick updates, mostly on C.. This weekend, her two upper, front teeth pushed through her gums. Her lower two teeth look to be close behind. Beyond all the pain they go through, I really don’t like the teething process. When babies start getting teeth, they have that awkward period where they look like little demons with parts of teeth sticking out here and there. They’re much cuter when they’re all gums.
C. also graduated to pulling up on things over the last ten days. She had become a world-class crawler, able to get anywhere she wanted in the blink of an eye. Then, one day, I walked by her bedroom and there she was, standing up in her crib, holding onto the rail and waiting for someone to come and get her. They grow up so fast!
She’s a funny kid. We’ve been extremely fortunate that, much like her big sister was at the same stage, C. is mostly good-natured and happy. She loves to play, and now that she can chase her sister a bit, she’s having extra fun. Sleeping is mostly good. We reverted a bit last week when teething woke her up in the middle of the night, but for the most part, we’re working on four weeks of solid sleep through the night from her.
M., on the other hand, seems to wake up once or twice each night. I’ll go in to check on her.
“What’s wrong, M.?”
“I want my cubers.” Or, “My cubers, daddy!”
We’ve tried to teach her to pull her covers, er, cubers up on her own, but I guess she prefers to cry until we come and do it. Another reason I can’t wait for spring.
Potty training continues at a slow pace. We’re not pushing her, and some weeks she is interested in sitting on the potty, if only for long enough to get one of her reward stickers. She’s peed a few times, but nothing more solid or consistent from her. In fact, I bet she hasn’t been on the potty for a week. We’ll continue to slowly work on it until it gets warm, then S. claims to have some tricks that can get her on board quickly.
She’s also a funny kid, when not driving us crazy with her toddler moods. At least ten times a day she’ll say something that makes us laugh out loud. Yesterday, after she woke from a nap, I was changing her diaper, which was rather foul. Trying to make conversation to distract her, I asked, “Did you take a nap?”
“Yeah.”
“Do you feel better now?”
“No, I yucky.”
I wasn’t sure how to respond, so she continued the conversation without me.
“Daddy, I wanna see the yucky poopies. M. wake up and make yucky poopies. They yucky, daddy.” I was fully aware of how yucky her diaper was without her pointing it out 60 times.
She’s also repeating things we say to her. One of my favorite phrases when I’m disciplining her is “I told you…” Naturally, she uses it right back at me at other times.
“Daddy, I told you…”