Closet Ghosts

We just cleaned out the girls' closet. I should have done a before and after, but just imagine, if you will, all those cubbies filled with miscellaneous stuff: blankets, winter hats (!?), a jumprope, various costumes, shoes that were too small, baby monitors, breastpump (in a box), baby sling (in a box), candle holders, and toys that no one felt like putting away. Also imagine those two tiny floor spaces under the clothing racks filled with boxes of clothes that are too small. Those boxes, and a few extra filled from the closet-pruning, are now sitting in the living room, by the front door, waiting for Daddy to take them to the garage. And picture the racks so full of clothes that all half of them stuck out sideways. The small clear box in the front is the new costume box: it even has a lid!

Emily's school uniforms are on the bottom left side. I will take pictures of her in one--the first day of kindergarten is tomorrow!

I've always known this, but damn that closet is small. Note to self: Figure out how to increase closet space before puberty hits. Make it part of Five Year Plan. (P.S. Start working on Five Year Plan.)

As soon as the kids saw me taking a picture, they insisted on being in it. So here are the two closet ghosts (Emily's idea: that's why she's doing "spooky" moves with her hands.)



Finally, I present a picture of our breakfast. It is a German Apple Pancake, recipe from Cooking Light. I was inspired to take pictures of home-cooked food by my friend from Eastwestwood. Our usual breakfast is cereal and cut-up fruit. And it will probably continue to be, especially after school starts tomorrow and mornings will once again be rushed and hectic. At any rate, we had fun making it. Penny tipped in the nutmeg and the cinnamon and helped whisk. Emily did eggbeaters, milk, sugar, and helped me arrange the sliced apples.
Unfortunately, neither of them liked it once it was cooked. They made those scrunched up "Yucky, Mommy" faces and I couldn't convince them that it was a) like eggs with apples and sugar (Penny loves eggs) or b) apple pizza (naturally, they both love pizza). Nor did reminding them of all the yummy things we put in it half an hour before, many of which they sampled at the time, persuade them. Emily did eat a few bites, mostly to get at the powdered sugar. Hubby gave me a similar face, maybe more like, "Do I really have to?" when he got up.

Well, I thought it was yummy, and I will just have to eat it myself!

New Header Background Photo

I have to give credit where credit is due. My husband took this picture in 2005, which was a scary year for hurricanes in general. July. The hurricane was Dennis. We had high winds and minor damage (tree limbs in the road) in our area (SW Florida). A month later was Katrina, of course, putting these little problems into perspective. He tried to drive down to one of the beaches (the one closest to our house at that time ~1 mile away), but the sand from the banking dunes had blown into the road. He stopped and took a picture, then backed up and drove home. At least that's what he told me he did.

So that I like to think of that picture as the road to the sea. Or the road to the Gulf, at least. I cropped the dashboard and windshield out of it, finally got it the right size, and I don't have to worry about copyright. Thanks, Honey.

Sleepy Time Woes

First, let me gaze upon how beautiful my sleeping babies are:

Yes, they're both thumbsuckers. And yes, I realize this photo is close to two years old. And yes, that's our bed. At naptime, which was a rare event for Emily at age 3, which is likely why we took the picture. And Penny has the bassinet behind her, so she couldn't roll off the bed. (All safe-parenting questions answered?) I was scanning through my photos and realized I haven't taken pictures of the kids sleeping in quite a while. Except for this one.

And, yes, in this one, only Emily and Daddy are sleeping. We're not technically family-bed people, although Emily makes forays into our room in the middle of the night about 50% of the time. And about 90% of the time, we're too tired to do what you're supposed to do: Walk the kid back to her own bed.

Penny, on the other hand, as mischievous as she looks at what I'm guessing is before 7 am, sleeps in her bed all night. Part of this is the fact that she's still in her crib and, besides a scary incident at about 15 months (before I removed the crib bumpers), does not or can not climb out of it. Part of it is that we wised up on our second stab at parenting and never brought her into our bed. Even when she was nursing at night, I fed her and carried her back to her room. Ah, my own space. Well, except for the (then) three-year-old next to me. Arrgh!

So, Penny night-weaned and slept through the night earlier, fell asleep on her own at bedtime, and waved bye-bye happily from her crib from around the time she could sit up. Not that we haven't had minor rebellions since then, but we've always been able to maintain the same routine and get back to bedtime bliss pretty quickly.

Oh, but now she's two.

Now she can say things like, "More books, more books!" in a desperate, weepy voice. Last night she even sobbed through the second to last book and the last book in anticipation of the time when the light would go out and the parents would leave. This from the child who actually toddled/trotted/pranced to her crib at bed- and naptime to our delight and (false) pride at our awesome parenting skills. Now she pulls out all the excuses: "Jammies on?"(she loves to change clothes) "Pee-pee?" "More books!" A couple of nights ago, she convinced us to leave the lamp on, but when she still wasn't asleep 30 minutes later, we had to turn it off (to renewed screaming).

(They have a nightlight in their room and the door is open to the light in the next room.)

She screams. And whenever anyone comes back in to tell her to calm down, to find out what she needs (we try to minimize these trips, really), she demands to kiss us. "Kiss, kiss," she says, through her tears. "Huggy, huggy." How can you resist this, even when the tiny lips are covered with the liquid snot of her angry tears?

She will get over it. We will get over it. We will probably put off that "big girl bed" thing for a bit longer, though, because I'm really over angry two-year-old by 8 pm.

Watching Enchanted with Emily

Here is some dialogue between us.

Emily: What happened to her [the-little-girl-in-the-movie's] mommy?
Me: I think her mommy died. So now her daddy has a girlfriend.

(later)
E: Who's that?
M: That's the daddy's girlfriend.
E: I thought that was the evil witch.

(later)
E: Is she [Amy Adam's Giselle] going to be his girlfriend now?
M: Maybe.

(at the end, after Patrick Dempsey and Amy Adams seem to get married)
E: Why does she need a mommy anyway?
M: I guess she misses her mommy. And she likes Giselle.
E: No, I mean him. Why does he need a mommy?
M: The daddy?
E: (annoyed) Ye-es!
M: Well, I guess he didn't really need to get married again . . .
E: But he wanted to. He didn't need to, but he wanted to.
M: Ye-es.


And Penny danced. She was naked and she danced.

Toys

Is it wrong that I am happy that my 5-year-old daughter prefers playing with these

rather than these?

Actually I don't have a problem with the little farm stand with the farmer girl cashier, but I had to lean Barbie-princess-with-pink-plastic-bustiere against something to take her picture.

And maybe I should have a problem with the fact that Emily flirts with a double whammy of political incorrectness by liking knights and Indians with equal enthusiasm. I swear I did not stage that picture.

Seriously, I don't want to bias my daughters in one way or the other. Well, that's at least partly true. When she says she hates princesses, I know that's mostly because I complained about the poor quality of writing in the ridiculous Disney princess book (which has been permanently retired). I've also railed aloud against people who refer to their daughters as little princesses. She wants to please me, I get that.

This is actually the second Barbie she's received, but I put the first one in the top of the closet. She got it as an exchange gift in her 3-year-old preschool class--which means it was bought by the parents of another 3-year-old. Why?

I'll probably give it to her someday, if she seems to want it, but I wasn't ready for Barbie's presence in my house when Emily was 3. She's 5 now, so it's harder to sneak toys away from her.

I mean, I had a Barbie, and I turned out okay! Except for the fact that I now hate Barbies.

Okay, enough with the commentary. Here's a cute one with Penny, who does like the girl dolls. Even if she will no longer use her real smile for the camera.

Snail, (Missing) Teeth, Hair

Three days ago, after a daily rainstorm, Emily found a snail in the driveway. We were heading out somewhere, which is pretty much the only time I go outside on summer days. She said, "Look, Mommy, I found a snail." I probably said something like, "That's nice, Emily. Get in the car." My parents were arriving at the same time, dropping off something or picking up Penny or something I can't rememember, so I must have decided to make a pretense of interest by walking back to where she was standing. I asked if there was a live snail inside, and she turned it over to look.

Not only was there a live snail in the standard size snail shell (maybe an inch in diameter--seems to be standard around here, at least in my highly unscientific survey), there was also a tiny, tiny snail perched on the flesh part of the bigger snail. Here is a very bad picture: minimal ability to focus and zoom in the Canon PowerShot, apparently, or I didn't know which setting to use. At least you get an idea of size, though. This was after we put it down in the mulch and leaves. (The little snail is just to the right of the big snail.)

Needless to say, much excited conversation about baby and mommy snails followed in the ensuing car ride to wherever we were going. We looked up snails once before when we found one while raking leaves, and I was pretty sure snails' reproduction was unusual. It is. So there's really no explanation for why the baby snail was sitting on the adult snail or any reason to assume the adult was the mommy (or more correctly, parent). Pretty cool, though.

And a week ago, somewhere in the middle of the car ride home from North Carolina, Emily said, "I think my tooth is getting looser." Again, a nonchalant response from me. She lost her first tooth at breakfast (eating an apple) about four months ago, which was pretty early (age 4 1/2) and we made a big deal of it. This second one had been loose since shortly after that. Every once in a while she'd say, It's looser and I'd wiggle it. At any rate, right after that statement in the car, she took a bite of her apple and then handed me the tooth. I had to put it in my wallet.

Today, I finally took a picture of it. You can see the one that fell out in the spring has almost been replaced by its adult tooth.

You can also see her hair cut, so cute, and what a relief for me. The battles over combing out the snarls, ponytail or no pony tail, screaming and running away (mostly her): all in the past.

Penny also got a trim to get the bangs out of her eyes. This series shows her making her silly "cheese" face and then deciding she didn't want her picture taken after all by well-timing her foot right as the camera flashed. And finally, a natural smile.

Or maybe she's practicing her soccer kicks. She walks around with that little (badly-needing-to-be-inflated) soccer ball saying, "My soccer ball" and last night, "Emily, come on, play soccer ball with me." Daddy's been watching the Olympics. Emily is going to play pee-wee soccer in September. Penny pays attention.

Sand and Sun

Ah, vacation . . . a chance to rest, relax, and take lots of pictures of the kids having fun. Well, I did rest some, try to relax (why is this so difficult?), and failed miserably at taking any pictures past the first day. I will post one video of Penny jumping off the side of the pool to her grandmother. This action was repeated multiple times that morning and the next day (with me) until she figured out she preferred to turn around and scoot herself backwards over the side, with or without someone standing there to receive her.

[video will go here, but blogger is having trouble with it right now]

From a cinematic standpoint, it's terrible: out of focus and veering all over the place. That's mostly because the sun was so blindingly bright and I had to just aim it generally at what I wanted to film. I think it could be viewed as a representation of how Emily feels marginalized by her little sister, but that's probably more my guilt imposed on the scene. I did take one of her swimming, too, but it's even less focused than this one. Other pictures are the kids with their young, attractive aunt and uncle (my husband's siblings). This weekend served as Emily's follow-up birthday party ('cause who doesn't need two birthday parties when they're five?).

Next year, the in-laws promise, we will be meeting somewhere closer than 12 hours from where we live. Have I mentioned that we live 10 minutes from the beach ALL YEAR LONG? Since the in-laws paid for the whole thing (except a few grocery runs), I can not complain too much. And temperatures at the Carolina shore are decidedly more temperate (and less humid) than at our beaches.

Also, an anecdote to make you think twice about swimming in any public pool. You know how the packaging on the swim diapers you buy for your infants and toddlers warn that they are not designed to keep fecal matter from leaking during swimming (and that, in fact, no product does this)? Well, my child pooped in the pool. I wasn't sure she had (even though she had made The Face), so we kept swimming. As soon as I picked her up to take her inside (a necessity because she refused to walk in on her own two feet), I knew. I had to hose her down in the shower inside the apartment while she screamed the entire time as if she were being tortured. And then I had to clean the shower floor. So I suffered, too. I win a Bad Mommy award, I know. But I imagine this happens more than we'd like to think. I, for one, didn't go back in that particular pool, hypocrite that I am.