New Niece!

My sister had her baby! This photo was taken minutes after her water birth, which was pretty cool. All the existing cousins and siblings (4 of them age 5 and under) are very excited. She will not be spoiled at all, will she?
Welcome, little one!

Whilst Baby and Kitten Sleep

This is the new sleeping arrangement (photo taken a couple of nights ago). Only mattresses. The husband says it's all a little trailer trash for him, so maybe that means he'll agree to buy these beds sooner rather than later. (I realize I sound a little close to the hated-by-me mode of speech some wives favor, i.e, [clutching pearls at neck] "I do hope my husband lets me buy this ____!" Our decision to buy these bunk beds does not depend on wifely cajoling, but the state of our finances, shaky at the moment. If anything, I'm the more frugal of the pair of us. That said, I do like me those bunk beds.)

No crib does complicate the nap, though (oddly, and thankfully,) bed time has not been a problem. She didn't seem to mind sitting back there for half an hour or more sometimes, even if she didn't fall asleep. But now that she CAN come out, well, we've had to rethink our positions. We're going with quiet time. Today was the first full-on effort. We read books, did the bathroom thing, gave hugs and kisses, and closed the door. She was pretty darned mad. She opened the door once, but we firmly shut it again. She didn't try opening it again, but she did cry, bang on it, throw herself down on the floor (I imagine this is what she was doing). Now she is sleeping.
Not in her bed, on the floor, but still, sleeping.

This weekend we went to the water park downtown. Why don't we do this more often?

We ate lunch downtown, too, at a little ice cream and sandwich shop. The girls got macaroni and cheese, naturally.

After baths, and about a half an hour of TV watching, this happened.


Awww . . .

New Naptime Routine?

Actually, I hope not. But, as previously mentioned, Penny's sleeping has been going through some changes. Fortunately she's stopped screaming after we leave the room at bedtime, so (for that and other reasons), she is now sleeping on her mattress on the floor like a big girl.

Neither of them currently have a bed frame--Emily's toddler bed broke when I sat on it. (To be fair [to me], both of them had been jumping on it whenever given the chance for the last several months. But, also, the bed's capacity is listed at 70 pounds, which is considerably less than I weigh, and I'd been perching on it to read for several months before it broke. Still, I broke the bed.) Someday soon we will buy a real bed. Maybe bunk beds. I have my eyes on this one, but am waiting for the wallet to catch up. (We already have the two dressers shown, without the mirror, each purchased about two years apart!)

Okay, so here's Penny taking a nap today. In the family room, or as we call it 'round here, the "T.V. Room." I'm told she fell asleep while sports or sports talk television was on, rather than Hour Four of Noggin, but I cannot verify that information. She did have 45 minutes of quiet time, in her room, during which time she didn't come out, but also didn't fall asleep. Then she conked out, here.

Notice all the toys behind her. She was prepared for anything: flowers that needed water, someone who wanted to start up a soccer game, whenever and for whatever you might need a small red octopus. . . Instead she slept, for about an hour.

Sleepover!

Emily's been begging to have a sleepover for, oh, probably a couple of years. Her ambitions were fairly modest: just her cousin. My nephew is two months older, and when they're together they play and fight like siblings. She tries to make him play complicated stories with animal families, Fischer Price people, or various Barbie-like dolls, while he wants to blow stuff up, preferably with robots. And they're exactly the same size, so people always ask us if they're twins! Awww!

I keep putting her off because she and Penny share a room, Emily still wanders into our room about 50% of the time (and my nephew does the same thing at home, where he shares a room with his little brother). Maybe when you're five, I mean, when Penny is sleeping in a real bed . . . all my excuses finally were shattered when my sister thought she was in labor and I volunteered to let L. sleep at our house to save her from making the drive to school in the morning. Her husband's a pilot and currently out of town until Saturday, so she's understandably worn out (even though she wasn't in labor . . . yet.)

So, we ended up having a two-night sleepover, Wednesday and Thursday. The first night was a little rough. Penny was asleep in less than half an hour, but the five-year-olds kept opening the door, "accidentally" letting the kitten in, and then coming into the family room where we were trying to watch TV to tell us to get the kitten out. I think it was 9:30 before Emily was asleep, but L. knocked on the door to the family room (it's supposed to be the third bedroom) at 9:45, a little weepy and asked for his blanket. Which his mom forgot to put in his bag. He very reasonably accepted a green t-shirt of mine (his blanket is really one of his dad's green t-shirts) and was out in 5 minutes. I took the following pictures in the morning.


Yes, L. had to sleep in a hot pink sleeping bag.

The next night everything went more smoothly. We put Penny to bed first and read the older ones a chapter book (Nate the Great and the False Clue) in the living room. Penny was asleep by that time, and the five-year-olds were asleep in probably half an hour with only one or two requests for water, etc. For sleepovers on school nights, not too bad.

Emily wanted me to post this picture of her making a speech at a podium. The podium is really the cat's scratching post, which he has, shall we say, seasoned (christened?) so it's supposed to be on the porch, and some cardboard packing material from a game. I caught her doing this and asked if she wanted me to take a picture. Of course, Mommy!

Oh, look, and there's her school uniform. Fourth week of school, but hey, better late than never.

Artists in the Making

Tonight Penny brought me a drawing.

She identified those lines at the bottom as legs and that stuff in the middle as eyes, nose, mouth, and ears. And, she said, tracing the outer edges of it with her finger, "circle."

She has only recently started doing this or maybe I have only recently started noticing. My mom said she's been doing "eyes" and "nose" and "mouth" for her on the chalkboard for a few weeks, after getting some help with the circle.

I remember photographing Emily's first drawing (that I noticed!), also on the chalkboard, ours, at 2 years, 4 months (Penny is 2 years, 3 months). I was struck by the similarity.

Emily was apparently more into hair (she drew hair like this, straight up in the air, for a while) than legs.

Maybe all kids start out drawing this way; probably they do. And Penny is always watching Emily draw and scribbling (but she's a lefty!) on her own paper while doing so. Emily now draws like this.

I loved to draw as a kid, all the way up through AP Art in high school, when I realized I had some skill but not a whole lot of vision. There were artists in my class, and I wasn't one. This was self-realized and I was okay with that (by then I wanted to be a writer!). I'm not going to pull a My Kid Could Paint That, but I do hope they keep drawing, even if it means my printer paper has to be replaced a bit more often.

Synchronicity

This I could live without.

While I was typing that last blog post (approximately 2 hours ago), Penny was apparently pooping on the floor. I say "apparently" because no one saw this activity. I thought I caught a whiff of something, but ignored it for some reason.

We heard the toilet flush, scanned the room to see only one child, the older one, still in the room and rose as one to find the younger. She had emerged from the bathroom and was standing with what can only be described as a triumphant look on her face, unclothed from the waist down, next to her plastic potty chair. Beneath her feet, smeared into the aluminum border between carpet and vinyl tile (and into the carpet and on the vinyl tile), was, well, what you might imagine.

My husband rushed into the bathroom and said, aghast, How many wet wipes did we have left? Yesterday we had to pay a plumber to remove gobs of wet wipes enthusiastically flushed down the other toilet. (I think they removed them through the roof vent!) $122.50. Fortunately, I think we only had one or two left just then. Now we have none.

So, I took the carpet/tile, the husband took the bathroom and the child. We're not sure how this all went down, the exact sequences of events, how her hands and underwear stayed relatively clean, but smears seemed to follow her progress into the bathroom, and we will probably never know.

But perhaps I should stop posting about excrement while no one is watching Penny.

Possible Side Effects

of Kittens:

1) Scratches, with or without blood loss, on legs, arms or other available surfaces for jumping, climbing, or clinging while trying not to fall.

2) Extra Laundry, due to preference for bathmats (both!) or pile of old neckties (why were they on the floor, exactly?) over litterbox. Likely to be short-lived (we hope!)

3) Plaintive, Pitiful, Surprisingly Angry Noises in the night, if doors are shut to avoid 1) and 2).

Seriously though, I felt like I was potty training two children for a couple of days there. Little Mittens also seems to adore my husband, possibly the least enthusiastic supporter of the "Let's Get a Kitten!" campaign. I mean, he likes cats and all (he says), he just doesn't like them in his face, on his lap, or (especially) re-opening old scratch wounds on his legs.

The kids are having fun, though. They're a little skittish, but that could either be their ages or their memory of previous Grumpy Old Cat taking occasional swipes at them.

He's adorable, though and, so far, hasn't scratched me. Ha! Enjoy the new slide show.