Our big fancy dinner
Attempting to expand our culinary horizons past establishments that include a drive-through, the kids and I went out for barbeque. C’mon, what did you expect?
They did pretty well, although Etta did attempt to break out of her highchair at least a dozen times. We had to make a hasty departure, though, when Oscar decided we were finished and attempted (twice) to make an escape with other customers. We’ll try again next week to see if we can manage to complete a meal in one sitting.
Cranky Etta
Etta has had a craptacular week. She had four vaccinations on Monday and she’s erupting a least two of her two-year molars. She’s been so uncomfortable that she hasn’t even eaten very much (unbelievable for my girl). She also hasn’t been in the mood in the past week or so to allow me anywhere near her with a camera, but since when do I ask permission?
Joy of Love – 4, 5, 9, 12
I’m such a cheat, but I’m choosing to take photos that can work for different categories in this Joy project, which I think is better than simply abandoning it altogether. Today I worked on capturing the kids’ eyes, what they wear, what I love to hate about them (as if) and their passions/hobbies. I am not posting Oscar’s photos, since I am incapable of taking pictures of him that do not have a nasty glare on his glasses. It’s really depressing. He has such pretty eyes, which are actually functional now that he has glasses, but I cannot see his eyes anymore because of the distortion caused by his incredibly high prescription. His vision is clearly more important, but I do miss seeing his eyes.
Instead you get to see Etta doing what she loves most, laughing, while wearing her (almost) ever-present hairbow. She hasn’t yet established any hobbies, so I had to go another direction here. I tried to abandon her hairbow ritual last month, but Nanny Norma reinstated the tradition. Both she and Etta are always so much more accessorized than I am, so I’ll defer to them on this issue. This is what I love to hate. I love Etta’s hair, but I’m certain that I’m messing it up, so I’ve developed this fear of it as well, which I hate. I’ll never actually hate her hair or doing it, but I certainly hate how much I worry about messing it up or not maximizing its potential (yeah, I know how screwed up that is). I love this obsession, though, with her hair products and styles, things I frankly don’t give much thought to for myself.
Joy of Love – 10 & 13 – Comfort & Routines
Oscar having his morning coffee. It really is coffee. It’s just that it’s about 90% soy milk, 2% coffee and 8% sugar. He gets a variation of this concoction once a week, usually on Sundays, but sometimes on Tuesday morning when we’re rushing to our combo OT/speech session and he hasn’t had much to drink yet. He usually doesn’t get the opportunity to toast the occasion with Papa, though.
Etta has her own morning beverage ritual, naturally. Sadly for her, hers is 100% milk. Despite her heritage, I’m holding off on the buna . . . for now at least.
This is also Etta’s spot, her special place in the house. Each and every morning she is gently placed on the right side of the sofa, where she curls into the pillows and has her milk. The spot where she has taken to looking up to the television, pointing to it and demanding “movie now” while she has her milk. She only gets her movie on the weekend, but it doesn’t stop her from asking every day. Or following up when her request for a movie is shot down by asking for a “DVD” instead.
Joy of Love – 3 – Then and Now
Yes, it’s the eighth of the month and I’m just getting to #3 in my photography lesson. I really am not a good “project” person, although there is a reason for this delay that goes beyond simple procrastination and life getting in the way.
Today’s, well, the third lesson in this project was “then and now”. Since today is exactly one year from the day when I first saw Etta’s face, obviously, she is the subject of today’s project.
A year ago I received Etta’s referral! Oscar and I were at the Anaheim airport waiting for our flight home from Disneyland and when I went to check to see that my phone was off I noticed that I had missed calls from my agency. Part of the reason for our quick trip away was that I was going stir crazy from waiting for a referral I had thought would come months ago, so it was a shock to see that I had missed the call not once, but twice. I hurriedly called my coordinator back and was just able to download this photo, which I stared at for the entire flight.
And here she is today (or yesterday, actually) . . . to say she’s changed a little is an understatement. Isn’t she the cutest little girl ever?*
*I’ll accept answers in the negative only to concede she may be tied for cutest girl ever with your little girl.
You know it’s time
to start potty training when your fourteen month old grabs your leg , says “poh poh” and starts walking to the bathroom, where you find her one minute later (after you’ve wrapped up the emergency with your other child) standing IN the toilet with a newly soiled diaper. Guess I should have listened to her.
I’m sad to say that I don’t have photos, but I thought that would be a show of poor parenting, since I would have had to leave Etta standing in the toilet while I went to get the camera. Some parents (ahem, MOM) would have simply left their daughter waiting there, thinking that their daughter’s discomfort was a small price to pay for the pleasure they’d get from the photo.
Our practically perfect day
I had planned on taking the kids to the aquarium over the long holiday weekend last week. Since I had to work instead, we headed there this morning. It was a ridiculously beautiful day at the coast today. We arrived and there were hundreds of harbor seals out, although the kids didn’t seem to notice. They looked a lot like rocks and weren’t making any noise, so I could see why they weren’t terribly impressed.
They thought the aquarium itself was far more fun. We saw nemo, sharks and an octopus and star fish. We went to see the jellyfish presentation, during which my children decided the presentation was supposed to be interactive. Oscar kept yelling “JELLYFISH . . . JELLIES . . . JELLLL LYYY FISH!!!” each time a new variety of jellyfish was shown and Etta would run from our seats to in front of the screen (below it, of course) to dance for the audience. The actual jellyfish exhibit afterward was a bit of a letdown, I imagine (for everyone, not just my kids).
After we’d been there a while, Etta said she wanted milk. Oscar reached down to her and patted her shoulder and said, “‘s okay . . . Donalds,” which means “it’s okay, we’ll go get your milk at McDonalds.” Nice.
Oscar even did me a favor and pushed Etta back to the car – the entire way back to the car. I hate paying for parking in suburban areas (I’m cheap), so we always find the free parking up the bike trail, and may I say, my son must be in great shape. He must have pushed that stroller close to a mile. Every time I would try to take over, he’d just push harder. His occupational therapist is going to be very excited about his “heavy work” today.
Our day would have been perfect, but our nemesis, Sensory Processing Disorder, made a somewhat dramatic appearance. Oscar used to hate sand. When we went to Playa del Carmen a year ago he would scream even if I would carry him across the beach. He can stand it a bit more now, but there was a lot of sand and tiny rocks on the bike path back to our car. Oscar would convince himself that he had rocks in his shoes and sit down and yell for me to help him. I’d clean out his shoe and wipe down his feet, showing him there was nothing in his shoes, but he could not register it. It made for a long walk to the car, but he made it on his own without a meltdown, so that’s definite progress.
And, after all that, we managed it home (our second almost two hour car ride today) without anyone crying, including me.
Fun with SPD!
Good clean fun
I think they’re starting to genuinely like each other.
When they’re not trying to kill one another, that is.
War
Oscar has declared war against me. Just me, apparently, everyone else is safe. Why would he do this, you ask? It looks like it’s all because I make him talk.
Remember how I was bragging last week about how Oscar finally “got it” and could say “I want” X? Well, Oscar’s made it pretty clear since that day that he does not want to say “I want” X. He wants to say X and only X and I’d better give him X when he says it or all hell will break loose. I’ve been all Super Nanny consistency on him from day one and I have not given in, but as you know, I’m not the only authority figure in the house. Nanny Norma will give in to him when it comes to food.
The rule is that if Oscar wants a certain food he has to say “I want” [that food]. No big deal, right? It is a big deal, of course. I know it is very difficult for him to actually say those words and he not only has to enunciate them, which is tough, but he also seems to have a memory retrieval issue so that just makes things more difficult for him. But, this is not going to resolve itself without constant practice, so I prompt him to practice. Norma prompts it, too. I’ve seen it. It’s just that she’ll give in after a few attempts and give him food. She remembers Super Skinny Oscar, and she does not want to go back there.
This has led to a fairly big issue in our house these days. When we go down for breakfast, Oscar now looks at me and points to the door, basically telling me to get out. Obviously, this is not going to fly, so I give him his cereal [the aim here is to get him to talk, not to starve him into submission] and stand my ground and start with the questions. Do you want yogurt, do you want toast, etc. All he will say to me at meal time now is NO. Well, NO, and then he’ll turn to Norma and say whatever food he wants that I haven’t listed (eg., “No, soup”). She’ll say “Oscar do you want soup?” and he’ll say “NO”, not because he doesn’t want soup, but because he knows that he’s supposed to say “I want soup” now.
To get away from this hangup, I let him say “soup, please” instead of the entire sentence, but that just creates the same control issue for him, it seems. He’s refusing to say that, too.
I had started to think that he was doing this because he really couldn’t remember the words I and want, but that possibility was eliminated today at speech when Oscar said to his speech therapist “I want” X exactly when he was supposed to even before she visually prompted him. Honestly, it was sort of annoying. I explained what was happening and she said it was pretty common, especially with kids with oppositional issues (and boy are those showing themselves these days 
).
I suspect that this is a combination of him telling me that at home he shouldn’t have to work as hard as he does at therapy, a bit of Norma undermining the message of consistency, Oscar mimicking his sister (who is the Empress of No-land these days) and possibly my pushing him to work too hard at all of this. I’m not sure what the answer is, but for the time being, we’re going to stick with the consistency approach (and I’m going to push Norma more on that so we’re consistent all day long). Why? Because “I want” Oscar to start talking.
Pics to prove I’m not actually torturing the kids . . .
Oscar trying to pull Etta around. It was a little tougher for him than it was when Hailey was doing it.
Oscar also built a train track and found a big train at kids’ club the other day. The boy’s an engineering genius.
Oscar and Etta Go Shopping
Etta’s first visit to a store where she was not locked in a cart, stroller, baby carrier or someone’s arms.
Hypocritical much?
Etta has been able to climb up the stairs for months now, but she’s been extremely reticent to make her way down the stairs on her own . . . until this weekend. It seems that her New Year’s resolution was to become truly mobile, without any exceptions. She’s now figured out how to get through the baby gate, climb upstairs, get her toy (or whatever else she fancies (today it was her backup bottle we keep upstairs in case of emergency)), slide on down the stairs and shimmy through the baby gate again. Pretty impressive, no?
Notice anything about Miss Etta? I’m not pointing to the bottle, which is funky looking only because she’s been shaking powdered formula around in it (although it looks a bit dicey in there). There’s something else . . .
Etta got her ears pierced today. I had so many conflicting thoughts on this, but I’m really glad I had it done. I think we all know that I look to Angelina and JLo for all of my parenting advice, and since they’ve both pierced their girls’ ears, I said let’s do it. Our pediatrician said it was fine and we went to the woman she recommends (she’s known as “The Baby Piercer” around here, seriously). Etta loves the earrings and I think they’re adorable on her. What girl isn’t adorable in (conflict-free) diamond studs?
She didn’t utter a peep when the actual piercing happened. Not even an intake of breath. The only thing she wasn’t into was having a stranger mark her ears with a pen. She did cry a bit at that, but Oscar intervened and said “it’s okay, okay” a few times in a very soothing voice and showed her his new “itsy bitsy spider” app for my phone and all was well. It was incredibly sweet.
Sure, my last post was about watching my baby turn into a little person all too quickly. But that doesn’t mean that I’m not going to push her into age inappropriate behavior like wearing pierced earrings and starting ballet lessons as soon as possible. I’ll just hold off on the bigger stuff, like the matching body art I’m planning on having all three of us get when the kids are older. Let’s face it, nothing says “forever family” quite the same as matching tattoos.
My baby girl . . .
is not such a baby anymore. Nanny Norma has been saying it for months now, but I have kind of refused to accept it. Of course it had to happen, but it just feels so fast. But then again, she did come home eight months ago. Yes, eight. It shocks me, too. I was putting together a photo album for this year and actually gasped when I saw these pictures.
And now? Now, at 14 months, she’s fully mobile, walking, running, climbing and even pushing furniture around so she can climb up to get things she’s not supposed to have. She talks like a two-year old, with a huge vocabulary. She told me this morning she wanted yogurt, then a cracker for breakfast, and then washed it down with the juice she demanded requested. She walks to the bathroom and says “poh poh” and tries to lift her leg up to climb onto the toilet. Nanny Norma doesn’t want to start this process until she’s two, but I think we’re going to get cracking pretty soon.
When she gets dressed in the morning, she likes to assist with clothing selection (preferably a dress) and very clearly let’s me know which shoes she wants. She has a pretty impressive shoe selection and she likes to mix things up a bit, not wanting to wear the same shoe for more than a few hours. Here’s a glimpse at some of her pink-toned shoes (there are, of course, others in her closet, including other colors, naturally). The sequined ballet flats in the back were awesome when she was just learning how to walk, but snagged on everything, so they’re a bit bare at the toes now.
She’s also very much a girly girl. She likes to brush my hair. She says “hair” all of the time, and pulls at her curls. I’m always playing with her hair and putting lots of product in it (although a stylist yesterday told me that I might not be putting enough in it – that it needs to be “greasier”). She likes to wear her jewelry all of the time. I got her two sterling bracelets for her first birthday. One pearl and silver and another with her birthstone and silver, with blocks that spell out her name. We now have to keep them both on her at all times. She has a fit if we even take them off for her bath. I’m a bit concerned, since she’s starting to get to be too big for one of them. I guess I might have to order another. I am fairly certain that this next year will include a lot of additional girly stuff.
After being oblivious to all of these signs that my baby was becoming a little girl, how did I finally let the reality of her growing up come into my consciousness? Men. Etta has always been a bit of a flirt with men, especially men of my age, but the other night we were out and ran into a male friend of mine. When I interrupted her conversation with my friend by snapping a picture of her captivation, my precious little baby went from this . . .
to this . . .
in the blink of an eye. This really does not bode well. At all.
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Etta’s Hats
Where I’ve Been
