Lists and Nonlists

In spite of having two children who sleep reasonably well, I am unreasonably exhausted.  But my children are also wonderful and deserve to be documented, so here we go:

Walter

• The other night, he sang a "Daddy, I love you!" song, while flailing his arms and legs and poking Sean with a fork. This is pretty much what being two is all about.
• He says "Sally" now instead of "Tally." 
• Last week he started asking "Why?" He's been asking "Why not?" for quite a while.  I don't think he's entirely clear on either of those concepts, though.  Still, it feels like a milestone. 
• The day after Thanksgiving we broke out the play dough and he played for two hours straight.  He would have played longer if we hadn't stopped him and made him go to bed.  It was amazing.
• He loves to cook and bake with us.  He loves to dance and sing (at daycare he evidently spends a lot of time dancing and singing in front of the mirror) but he's also still quite shy (and, annoyingly, camera shy ... not a lot of good video lately.) He loves books and blocks.  He's kind of off puzzles, for the moment. His imaginative play is getting more and more creative; lately, he's been imagining all sorts of interesting scenarios involving cookies (cookies stuck on the ceiling. cookies being baked by spinning on the ceiling fan, etc.)

  

  Walter's amazing playdough flower

• He's constantly singing, either real songs or songs he's making up or fabulous itsy bitsy wheels on a happy birthday bus mashups.   He likes speaking nonsense language and making funny noises.  One of our favorite games is when I say, "Baby Sally says ..." and Walter imitates one of her noises (usually "Ah!")
• I spend a lot of time with Sally, so we're always on the lookout for ways Walter and I can have time together, just the two of us.  Walter calls this a "date-venture."
• Walter is incredibly bonded with Sean.  When he leaves the room, Walter runs after him saying, "Daddy, where are you?" 
• We decided to go low key on the potty training for now, because of all the transitions and upheaval in Walter's life (new sister, Mama who's been recovering from surgeries, etc.)  He's wearing pull-ups during the day and pees in the potty quite often at school and at home.  Not sure when or how we'll make the jump to big-boy undies.
• We've all had colds, off and on, the last few weeks.  Walter's had the worst of it, with very bad coughing fits at night.  But when I took him to see Dr. L, both tubes were out of his ears and both ears looked great ... no tubes and no infections.  This could mean he's grown out of his chronic ear infections and won't need tubes put back in.  Moreover, Dr. L said "You're doing an amazing job with him.  What a sweet boy!" He is indeed. 

Sally

Sally with her Aunt Nicole, standing 

The list format doesn't work well for Sally ... she just doesn't "do" as much as Walter does. But she does everything a three month old should do, and then some. She holds her head up, sits up (with some propping, of course) and jumps and stands while we hold her (she has amazingly strong legs.)  She rolls from her belly to her back and from her back to her side. 

She doesn't spend much time at all in the bouncer, so last night I tried putting her in it to see what she'd do.  She immediately figured out that she needed to kick the monkey or the toucan to make the lights and sounds turn on.  Tonight, while Sean was holding her, he made a whistling sound through his nose and she reached up and grabbed his nose.  She also reaches for her toes, and for my watch and my wristband, and most especially and fervently, my hair.  She does a lot of grabbing and pulling of my hair. It's wonderful. I love feeling how strong and persistent she is. 

I worry that we're not actively working with her on milestone type-things the way we did with Walter. But she seems to be progressing pretty normally and well.  What we lack in age-appropriate stimulation I think we make up for in adventures (more toddler than baby appropriate, usually, but she seems to really enjoy looking around and seeing new places and people) and lots and lots of face time.  She gets held and talked to a lot.  And cuddled a tremendous amount.  Any baby that gets cuddled this much is going to be just fine. 

She gets cuddled a lot at day care, in part because she doesn't eat while she's there.  They've made some progress on getting her to like and want the bottle, but still no actual drinking yet. I've been going in midday to nurse her and/or leaving work early so we can start the evening nursing early.  It makes me crazy with worry but everything seems to be fine: she's reportedly quite happy at day care, she's growing, she fills diapers.  She even sleeps through the night.  So we're OK, but I'm hoping she starts taking a bottle soon.

A friend asked recently about Sally's personality.  Again, it's hard to say, because hers is definitely evolving on a different level than Walter's.  She's very, very sweet.  She's snuggly and overall very happy.  She gives big smiles (no giggles yet, but I think that's coming next.) She's talkative and has a huge range of incredibly expressive sounds.  She startles easily when she's awake but can sleep through just about anything (this is a very good skill for a baby in our house to have.) She's curious and doesn't mind being held by new people, though she still has a preference for me (I'm the only one who can feed her, currently, so this preference makes a lot of sense.)  I feel very deeply connected to Sally, like she's still doing handstands on my left hipbone. 

The rest of us

• Hank is doing well.  He's mostly with us now after staying for quite awhile with my parents after Sally was born. His quality of life is much better when he's staying with them: more walks, more dog park, more on-time meals, fewer small children to fret over.  But he seems to love us, and God knows we love him.  Our house is sad and lonesome when he's not here, and Walter asks about him all the time, missing him.  He's a good dog. 
• Sean is tired, stressed out about our finances (two kids in daycare ... it is not a good thing, friends) and still managing to be the most wonderful parent and husband the world has ever seen.  Tonight I played with Walter so he got to hold Sally for awhile, which I think helped with the stress. 
• I am tired. I'm stressed, too, but more about having clothes to wear to work and less about finances. I'm surrounded by bins of clothes, hand-me-downs from my mom, which I could potentially wear if I ever have the time and energy to go through them.  I need to go shopping for some basic things and haven't had a chance to, yet.  And I'm not on great terms with my body.  I had a terrible gallbladder attack a month ago that sent me (and Sally, and a good friend from church) to the emergency room late at night.  That was followed by gallbladder surgery, which took place right after Sean's parents came to visit, we threw a big 2 year birthday party for Walter, and hosted a big celebration for Sally's baptism.  I found out that narcotic pain killers make me depressed (a fairly common thing, I'd imagine, for a depressant to do) and also that having an infected incision which then becomes an open wound in the middle of my chest does not help with the depression.  Today the wound is mostly healed and I am mostly feeling better. Depression is an odd thing for me, these days. I am full of happy hormones from nursing and general happiness from my interactions with my wonderful family and congregation and friends.  I laugh a lot, I genuinely enjoy myself.  But I can't shake the tired feeling, even when I get a good night's sleep.  And I feel ... frumpy.  Physical activity is probably the answer, and now that my incision is healing up, I'm thinking about ways to work on feeling better.

Key to the feeling better plan: spend as much time as possible with these goofballs