Best song ever?
“Twinkle, twinkle, twinkle . . . Star
Hm-hm hm-hm hm-hm hm
Sky
Twinkle, twinkle . . . Star
Orange!”
Oscar’s first song - August 31, 2010, 9:14 PM
Life as a full-time (stay at home) mom
Before going out on maternity leave, I totally expected that I would spend more time blogging while I was out. Clearly, I would have more to blog about – entire days spent with the kids, with all of the photo ops that would naturally afford, would certainly lead me to write more. Turns out, that’s not the case.
I had forgotten one important fact. My life is sort of boring. Yeah, sure, staying home all day with the kids is fun for us, but who really wants to read about my attempts (failed) to teach Oscar to dress himself?
Or my daily campaign to keep my son out of my girly products?
Or my fading dream of raising a boy who appreciates good food?
Or my periodic reminders to myself that this leave is actually supposed to be for me to bond with Etta (which really is silly, since anyone who meets her bonds with her immediately)? Kidding, of course. You don’t see as many pics of Etta only because (1) she’s usually sitting or crawling on or over me, (2) we’re not accompanied on our outings with a photographer or (3) instead of snapping pics at home, I’m usually dropping the camera, asking “what is that in your mouth? no, no, you can’t eat ____.”
And, if I don’t blog about those things, there really isn’t all that much left to write about. Swimming lessons (for Etta, since Oscar is finished with that – bye bye swimming)? Our daily walk to see the train? The mystery illness that hit everyone in the house over the course of the past week? My trip to the FedEx office to apply for Etta’s visa to visit Thailand? I’m telling you, my life is chock-full of excitement. Here’s hoping our day tomorrow will be blog-worthy. . .
My water babies
I was all set to post about my children’s love of water today. Both had just come off of great swim lessons over the past few days and Oscar had been practicing his moves in my big pool-sized tub. Then I went and screwed around with perfection and rescheduled Oscar’s lesson for this afternoon, since he and his sister had back-to-back hearing tests this morning. Big mistake.
We got to the pool (me, with video camera in hand to document his amazing progress) and Oscar was psyched to jump in the pool, but Teacher Liza was late, so we sat there for 15 minutes in the sun and Oscar started to doze. When she got there, he wanted nothing to do with her or the pool, but as any good parent who had shelled out the extortionate and obviously non-refundable private lesson fee would do in this situation, I threw him into the pool with his teacher anyway. Not a good call. He worked himself up so badly that he actually threw up a little in the pool. Yeah, I couldn’t believe it was happening either. So, I got him out of there and we went home where he took a nice two hour nap.
When we went to go get dinner later, I asked him what happened at the pool and he said “bye bye swimming.” When Oscar says bye to something, that’s usually the end of it unless he follows it up with “hi”. Like, at night he’ll say “bye bye train” and then follow it up with “hi train”, “bye bye Etta” and then “hi Etta”, “bye bye milk” and then “hi milk”. I tried to get him excited about his next lesson by telling Etta about the fact she was going to go swimming in the morning. Pretty awesome mom, huh? Intentionally sparking jealousy among the kids? Don’t worry, it didn’t even work. His reaction? Bye bye swimming.
I’ve decided not to push it for the time being. I paid for the private lessons. If need be, I’ll hop into the pool with the instructor if that gets him over this hump. I just don’t want to create a situation where he hates water (least of all since we’re about to embark on a vacation where pools will be a highlight of every stop). I’m sure we’ll figure it out.
Since I don’t have any cute pics of swimming babies, I’ll just post a few from around the house today.
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Etta’s Hats
Where I’ve Been
