Sexy Briar

I told Briar that I'd posted a sexy picture of her on my blog when I posted that pic of her haircut. She thought that it was this one and was all disappointed when it wasn't.
So here it is.

Soren Update: August 2010

So the good news is that Soren has been potty-trained for about a week and a half now. HOORAY! Thus far, the process has been shockingly painless. Soren knew how to use the potty, he could use it, and he sometimes used it, so one morning I handed him a pair of underpants and said, "This is it, kiddo. You're a big boy now and big boys don't wear diapers." And he took it like a big boy. Without too much protest, the child took the underwear, put it on, and more or less started putting all of his waste, plus a toothbrush, in the potty. It was like manna sent from heaven. Also, there might have been a lot of candy bribery involved.

But anyway, a few weeks ago, before his miraculous entry into the world of Bigboydom, Abraham and Briar informed Soren that little boys who put poops in diapers were yucky-- and that yucky things needed to go in the garbage. "So I guess we'll have to put you in the garbage and the garbage man will take you away," said Daddy. Soren was panic-stricken. "But Mommy needs her little boy!" he argued.

Mommy and her little boy reading The River Why...

and admiring the sunset.

We keep Soren's Legos and building blocks in his room, so he often wakes up and quietly plays by himself while the rest of us sleep. When he bores of this, he'll start calling for me. "Mommy! Mommy! I awake! Mommy! I AWAKE!" One morning I woke up to the sound of him screaming bloody murder. Certain that a recently hatched nest of poisonous spiders was rapidly decimating the skin on his face, I ran across the hall. I did not, however, find him engaged in a desperate struggle with an army of arachnid assailants; instead, he was hunched over one of his complex Lego creations. "It keeps breaking!" he told me, tears streaming down his cheeks. "It keeps breaking!" So I, still in my underwear, knelt down and helped him resolve the issue. That fixed, he went back to building. After a minute he looked at me as if to say, "You still there?' and remarked, "I didn't call for you." So I left him to build in peace.

Another morning he woke me with the following: "Mommy! Mommy! Mommy! I made a fire truck police car! Mommy! Mommmmmmmyyyyy! I made a fire truck police car! Moooommmmmyyyyyy! Mommy! Mom!mee! Mommy! I! Made! A! Fire! Truck! Police! Car! I! Made! A! Fire! Truck! Police! Car!" It took a while, but I was finally convinced that said fire truck police car was an interesting enough inticement to draw me out from under the warmth of my covers.

It was pretty cute.

This is the Fire! Truck! Police! Car! The green thing on the top is a light. He makes all kinds of delightfully creative things like this. And is it just me, or (in this picture) does he kind of resemble the crazy Sicilian guy on The Princess Bride?

A front view. Notice the wad of blankets on the floor behind him. That is where he sleeps, all snuggled up to the crack under the door. I swear to you, people, he does have a bed.

One of Soren's favorite things in all the world is gathering wildflowers. Some might refer to the ones he picks as weeds, but we know better. All summer long my windowsill has been lined with raggedy brown beautiful bouquets. He believes that if someone is picking flowers, they're picking them for Mommy. If I'm picking them, he'll ask, "Are you picking those for you, Mommy?"

Examining some little bit of something he picked out in the garden.

Soren's also begun making attempts at friendly chatter. For example, we recently went for a walk with my friend Amy and her little girl, Charlotte, who is a year younger than Soren. Charlotte, though talking, is not yet entirely conversational, and it was funny to observe Soren trying (in vain) to strike up a conversation with her. "I have a Gramma." And then, when there was no response:"I wike that fing you're holding, Charwotte. It's coo." And then, when there was no response: "My gramma's tree fell down...(pause)....My gramma's tree fell down....(pause)...My gramma's tree fell down.....(pause).....My gramma's tree fell down..."

Soren occasionally puts both his legs down one pant leg and declares, "I'm a merboy!" I should really take a photo for posterity. Or blackmail. (Insert evil laugh here.)

Soren and Grandma were talking about mice a few weeks ago. During their conversation, Grandma noticed that Soren was saying "mouses" when referring to more than one mouse. "Soren," she said, "I know it makes sense for more than one mouse to be 'mouses,' but it's actually 'mice.'"
"No it's not," said Soren. "It's 'mouses.'"
"You know that song about the three blind mice?" asked Grandma.
"Uh huh!" replied Soren, and he proceeded to sing it for her: "Three blind mouses!" he sang. "Three blind mouses!"

Soren's getting to that age where you start to hear yourself coming out in the things he says. Some of it makes me feel a little bad, like when he calls Liam a "nuisance" or tells one of his little friends, "And don't do that ever again!" Some of it is just funny, like when someone asks him how he's doing and he responds, "Very well." Or when something surprises him and he exclaims, "Good heavens!" And some of it is good. He often give me choices: "Mommy? Do you want to walk or run? Which one? Do you want a red block or a green block? Which one?" I was particularly pleased one evening when I was feeling quite sick and Soren pulled his Lightning McQueen folding chair up to the couch where I was lying. He took my hand, saying, "It's okay. I a doctor. I keep you. I sorry you're sick. You want a story?" (He wound up climbing all over me, repeatedly asking questions about why I wasn't feeling well, what kind of bug it was that made my tummy feel sick, why a bug would do that, etc, etc, and generally not assisting in the healing process in any way, shape, or form....but the thought was nice.)

And, of course, Soren continues to offer me heaping plates of Humble Parent Pie. It really is a good thing, because if he was a wonderfully easy child, I would think I was the most fabulously wonderful parent of all time. As it is, I've decided that I'm still a totally awesome mom, I just have a really temperamentally difficult child. This confidence, however, is often dulled by blood-chilling moments in which I am struck by the certainty that all of Soren's flaws are all my fault and that I'm the worst mother ever and that he will be a serial killer someday and it's all because of me and the egregious parenting errors I'm making with him every single day, day after day after day.

But anyway. I won't get into the gory details of his more nefarious antics here, but I will state that at this point in his life, Soren spends probably 80% of his waking hours in timeout because of the pain he inflicts on his baby brother. I will also note that he kicked, shoved, and hit at least four other children in nursery last Sunday, he tackled a two-year-old boy at my work party over the weekend, and fought with a one-year-old baby over her own toys. I might further state that he throws record-breaking, breath-taking tantrums over ridiculous things like having to walk on his own two healthy legs, that he disobeys just for fun, that he has stated a preference to be held down for all teeth-brushings so that he "can thrash and cry," and that he desperately needs naps but instead spends his nap time throwing objects (toys, dirty underwear, clothing, pieces of mattress, bits of bedding, etc) out his bedroom window.

That said, I still maintain an intensity of love for this child that continues to take my breath away.

Crazy kid.

Liam: August Update

On August 13th at 5:00 PM, William James discovered that he had a body.

You should have seen the kid. He was crawling as fast as he could to one couch, pulling up to it, grinning, getting back down, grinning, crawling as fast as he could to the other couch, pulling up to it, grinning, getting back down, grinning, and crawling back to the first couch. When he tired of that, he took to rolling madly back and forth on the rug like a hot pig in cool muck. I think we got more motion out of that kid in a three-hour block than we've had from him in the first 18 months of his life combined. And he was loving every moment of it, you could tell.


Liam has kind of had a sudden burst of development overall during the past month. He switched from belly-crawling to hands-and-knees crawling. He figured out how to pull himself to a stand while holding onto furniture for support. He's even started to cruise a bit.


This is ironic because last month I finally got worried enough about Liam's development to take him to the doctor for an evaluation. The doc said he didn't think there was anything wrong, per se, but that Liam did seem a bit behind on his gross motor skills, so he referred us to the Idaho Infant-Toddler Program. The Infant-Toddler people sent a very nice lady out to our house to do an assessment. The completed evaluation read something like this: "Liam is ridiculously cute and charming. Also, he has a big head. Also, he is behind in all areas of development. Way behind. I recommend him for physical therapy and developmental therapy."


When I mentioned this to a friend of ours from Ecuador, she just snorted. "You Americans. You want all the kids to be exactly the same. Always on the same page at the same moment. Kids are all different! There is a large range of normal!" Which is basically what Abe has been saying all this time. And I also suspect that Liam is simply a take-things-at-your-own-pace kind of a guy and he'll be just fine. I certainly don't want to be one of those pushy parents who are obsessed with their child's academic performance, who follow their toddlers around with flash cards, who won't be satisfied if their kid doesn't read at 2, solve algebraic equations at 3, and compose orchestral scores at 4. I think it's a bad idea to push kids into doing things before they're ready. A very bad idea. But still.

I can't shake the worry that maybe there's some underlying issue that a physical therapist will pick up on while working with him. Some sort of neurological issue. Or cardiovascular problem. Or allergies. Or something. And in the meantime, I don't think it will do him any harm to have some nice person coming to play with him once a week. And while I don't want to be a hyperactive parent, I also don't want to be the parent who's like, "What? My kid's autistic? What? Early intervention would have made a big difference? What? But it's too late now? What?" (And no, in case you were wondering, I don't think that Liam is autistic.)

But anyway.....

Liam got his first haircut this month. This was a shockingly sentimental occasion for me. Soren's first haircut? I callously buzzed the hair off, swept it up, and threw it away. Liam's? Liam's I reluctantly trimmed. And I saved the leavings in a Ziploc baggie. And I labeled and dated the baggie.


I've heard moms say that they hate to give that first haircut because it makes their baby look like a big kid. By the time Soren was ready for a haircut, he already seemed like a big kid to me. He was certainly already getting himself into big kid trouble. Giving him a big kid hair cut just seemed sensible. Having our little perpetual baby reach this milestone, however, was a little more heart-wrenching. How could I possibly be cutting off these wispy soft tendrils of sweet baby tenderness? But I did it. And he looked quite handsome. Briar even styled it into a faux hawk for him.


Abraham tries to read to Liam once a day, just to see the grin that immediately lights up his face when he sees a book coming his way. He also likes to look at stories when he's alone. He'll happily babble out his own made-up words as he turns the pages.

One evening Abe was watching a movie on his computer (earphones on, because the crib is in the computer room) when he happened to glance over at Liam's bed. And there sat our naked-except-for-a-diaper baby, glowing in the dim light of the computer monitor, smiling quietly, looking for all the world, according to Abe, like a "little happy baby Buddha."

And he certainly is our little happy baby Buddha.

I sure love you, Liam.

They do occasionally play together. Nicely, even.

A Defense. And a Shout-Out.

A co-worker remarked to me today that growing up he had always found that the kids who made the best friends were those who were--how you say?--a little rough. He said that he had noticed that these people tended to be accepting, straightforward, and loyal-- while, in contrast, the "good" kids were a bunch of hypocritical, shallow, thoughtless snots who had no experience with the "real" world and were therefore incapable of coping with the realities of friendship.

As one of those people who has always (largely) been a "good" kid who ran around with (largely) "good" kids in high school, I must say I took some offense at this. And my offense to this was, in part, because of the three following friends:

Holly

Loriann

Nicholas

I have had a lot of wonderful friends over the years (here's a shout-out to Becky, who's been there as long as my memory, and Jamie, who was there through most of this stuff too), but these three were particularly important to me during the past decade

Holly, Loriann, Nick, and I bonded in high school and are still friends today. Together over the past ten years, the three of us have gone through a lot of crap together. To name some: eight high school newspaper deadlines, three stepfathers, two apostasies, five Standards concerts, several heartbreaks, one nervous breakdown, one hundred and thirty pounds gained, one hundred and thirty pounds lost, three college degrees, Christophori's Dream, hundreds of e-mails, one two-year mission, one coming-out-of-the-closet, several years of unemployment, several years of employment, two weddings, one master's degree, three births, moves to all parts of the country, and more. Loriann wrote to Nick every single week that he was on his mission. Nick sewed Holly a quilt for Christmas. Holly rubbed my back when I woke up sobbing at night during the nutso months following my broken engagement. I was there to hold Nick when he cried after he told his parents he was gay.

And as I write these things, a hundred other memories run through my mind, pictures of times that we've been there for each other, through thick and thin, through ups and downs, for better or for worse. The bonds that we've forged over time run much more deeply than those of a superficial friendship-- they have cut into the layers of soul that create family. We haven't always all liked each other...we haven't always been actively in touch...but we've always loved each other.

The question, of course, is how we were able to scratch enough depth out of our shallow, thoughtless, good-kid selves to be able to sustain our love for each other over all these years.

And the answer, I suppose, is a mystery.

But I sure am glad we did.

Love you guys.

Abraham, Age 32

Abe texted me a few days before his birthday with the following message:

"All I want for my birthday is you."

Then, a few moments later, he added:

"And Angelina."

So I took Friday off work and we went to see Salt, starring Angelina Jolie.

The Birthday Boy with his first birthday wish.

The Birthday Boy with me doing my best to look like Angelina Jolie.

That evening the Rexburg sibs (Quentin, Caleb, and Merritt) joined the rest of us at home for a homemade macaroni-and-cheese extravaganza.

Hillary and Briar gave Abe these lovely matching "Thinker" bookends.
He was (clearly) pleased.

I gave Abe a little statuette of a daddy with a baby.


I think he liked it.

Abe and Soren blew out the candles on his Macaroni and Cheese.
(We had cake on Sunday with my family.)

And then Abe took a moment to show us how it feels to be getting old.

(Photos taken by Quentin.)

(Except for the insane one. I took that one.)

Briar's hair

Quentin dyed Briar's hair a dark red. Isn't it sexy? Also, isn't that a fabulous haircut?

Book Reviews

I told Abe that I was writing book reviews tonight and he said, "Book reviews? You've only read one book during the past two months!" Which may be true. Since I was reading it in five minute increments, I think it took me about six weeks to read Reliquary. But I checked to see when I last did book reviews, and it was March....so in the past four months I've averaged almost two books a month, which, if I must say so myself, is not so shabby for a working mom. (Abraham has probably read approximately 50 books--not exaggerating--during that time, though, so I suppose he has license to scorn my comparative reading pittance.)

On Fortune's Wheel
by Cynthia Voigt
Set in a medeival-esque fantasy land, On Fortune's Wheel tells the story of a young woman named Birle who, restless in her workaday life as an innkeeper's daughter, chances upon a young lord who is running away from his own responsibilities to the mysterious lands of the south. She swears herself into his service and follows him downriver, into all kinds of adventure. The journey (of course) is also a journey of growth and self-discovery for Birle, who grows from childhood, into a lover, and finally into an independent and strong young woman.

I liked it. Abraham, on the other hand, read it and commented, "There was no plot. Also, why did all the men have 'hungry eyes'?" To each their own, I suppose.

Quentins
by Maeve Binchy
Quentins is supposed to be centered around a restaurant-- the people who run it, the people who eat there, the life events that happen within its walls.

If Binchy had stuck to that premise, I think I would have enjoyed this book quite a bit. However, she kind of gets off on this tangent about this young single woman having an affair with an older married man, who is perfectly charming but ends up being a crook and having to leave the country with his wife and children. And the there's her suffering, blah, blah, blah. And then she hears that the man kills himself, blah, blah, blah. And then she goes to America, blah, blah, blah, and then I got bored and quit reading.

Good writing, typical quirky Binchy characters, but I just didn't find it that interesting. Could have just been my mood. Or maybe the story redeems itself at the end. But, after 400 pages, I just lost interest.

The River Why
by David James Duncan

I picked this up because it's on my sis-in-law Karen's list of most awesome books ever. And I positively adored the first quarter of this book, found it quite hilarious, and enjoyed the charmingly verbose, over-the-top writing style.

But then I got bored and quit reading.

Perhaps I am easily bored?


Reliquary
by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child

Reliquary did not bore me. Reliquary, an anthropological/scientific mystery/thriller, was actually quite fascinating, on a couple of different levels.

The book opens in modern-day NewYork, in a mild state of crisis. Several people have been violently murdered and decapitated in a way that is frighteningly reminiscent of a series of murders that had occurred 18 months earlier in the city's Museum of Natural Science (described in the book Relic). The book follows the action as an FBI Agent, a couple of cops, a journalist, and a team of scientists try to figure out who-- or what--is responsible for the murders.

So the plot was interesting and engaging--but the thing I found most intriguing about this book was that the story explored the lives and culture of people who have given up life "above ground" and committed themselves to a different sort of life in darkness, living year-round in the abandoned subway tunnels and shafts in underground New York City.

Overall, an entertaining and interesting read. Plus, you have to love Agent Pendergast.

Skills Training Manual for Treating Borderline Personality Disorder
by Martha Linehan

I read this one for work (I manage the office at a mental health agency) and found it to be quite interesting. I'm a big fan of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), and the hottest new variation in CBT is a treatment approach known as Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT).

Martha Linehan is a psychologist who found that the "unrelenting" emphasis on change in CBT was ineffective in treating women with Borderline Personality Disorder, who needed a more balanced approach that emphasized both validation of emotional experience and the development of skills to overcome self-defeating behaviors. She describes her overall therapeutic approach in this book, but largely emphasizes the skill-building portion of the treatment, which describes how to teach the following skills: mindfulness, emotional regulation, distress tolerance, and interpersonal effectiveness. I like her approach because it is very practical, but also very warm.

I'm constantly chasing people around the office with copies of this book in my arms, begging them to read it, so if you're interested in this sort of thing, I'd definitely recommend it.

(Note: I also read Suzanne Collins' Hunger Games and its sequel, Catching Fire. I'll review those when I've read the third one, Mockingjay, which will be coming out at the end of this month!)

On Swearing

(With apologies to my mother, who raised me better than this.)

My co-worker Laura often remarks that it doesn't matter if you say "dang" or "damn"-- the intent behind the word, she argues, is the same--so you might as well just use the actual swear.

She's wrong.

And I'm not saying she's wrong because I believe that swear words are somehow intrinsically bad. On the contrary, according to the Gospel of Me, there's nothing wrong with swear words, per se. I don't believe that God plucked a handful of choice words out of each of the living languages, declaring, "These words will I make evil, that the users thereof may be hewn down and cast into the fire." Cuss words are simply words, combinations of phonemes that, by no real fault of their own, have been cast out of the upper-class lexicons; that, through the complex webbing of a language's history, have come to be viewed as a little more crass, sharp, or inappropriate than other sound combinations. Not the sort of words that ought to be brought out at nice dinner parties. Not the sort of words you'd use in a job interview. Not the type of words you'd bring home to your mother.

So while it's unfair, I'm going to go ahead and assert here that there is a real difference between saying "Oh, shooty," and "Aw, shit," even if you mean essentially the same thing.

Why? The answer lies in culture. Language is about communication; communication is dependent on interpretation; interpretation is dependent on culture. So if the culture in which you function dictates that one way of expressing something is more acceptable than another, word choice-- even when expressing the same idea--will affect the people using and hearing it in very different ways. A speaker's "core intent" (the primary purpose of the communication) is only one small component of communication; a more essential consideration is the way this intent is expressed, particularly since "peripheral intent" (other, less essential, motivations for the communication) often emerges in the subtleties of word connotation.

For example, if a lady in Wal-Mart has been standing, for the past twenty minutes, right in front of the hair dyes you want to quickly peruse, your intent in communicating with her would be to get her to step aside for a moment so that you might quickly take a glance, select the "Dark Mahogany Brown," and get the heck out of the hair care aisle. You could communicate this core intent in a couple of different ways, depending on your peripheral intentions. For example, if you wanted to display your irritation, you could tap your foot impatiently and say, "In case you haven't noticed, I'm WAITING!" Or, if you were hoping to shame the woman, you might holler, "Move your big fat ass, lady!" Or perhaps you wanted everyone involved to feel like they'd been bathed in rainbows and butterflies at the end of your interaction. If this were the case, you might politely nudge your way in and say, "Excuse me, could you please schootch over a teensy weensy little bit while I take a quick gander at the Loreal hair dye products? Thanks! Thank you! Thanks so much! Sure do 'preciatecha!" The core intent of the three previous statements was the same, but in the varying expressions of this intent, three very different messages were sent to the oblivious hair-dye row blocker.

Or, say that one of your three roommates has contracted a stomach bug and it's fallen to you to explain to the other two that the bathroom needs to be kept clear in case of emergency. Depending on your peripheral intentions, you might choose one of the following ways of expressing this:

a) "Please know, darlings, that one of our dear companions has found herself with some digestive issues and will therefore need to be given unfettered access to the rest facilities for the next several hours."
b) "Try to be as fast as you can in the bathroom! Jill may need to run in at any moment!"
c) "Jill has the shits! Stay out of the can!"

And so it is with swearing. You might be saying essentially the same thing with a swear word or a swear substitute, but you express different things depending on which one you choose. "Goldarnit," for example, might mean,"I'm in pain, I'm angry, but I choose to remain within accepted cultural conventions in expressing my pain." "Goddammit," on the other hand, could communicate something like, "I'm in pain, I'm angry about it, and I'm willing to forgo social and/or religious norms in order to fully express my outrage."

And what if your intent in communicating is purely to shock and offend all within the range of your voice? You're not going to use a swear substitute: generally the point of using a swear substitute is to keep the offensiveness down to a minimum. If you're with a group of people you don't know well, you're more likely to describe a bad day as being "crappy," rather than "shitty." However, if you are with a group of people whom you think could stand some lightening up on the prudishness, you might intentionally choose to describe your day as "shitty" and then gleefully go on to describe the "stupid bastard" in the supermarket parking lot who took up not only two but three parking spaces with his "big-ass" pickup truck, watching with delight as your audience squirms uncomfortably and flushes a little red.

Another thing to consider is that a speaker's intent in using the same words or phrases will vary, depending on the recipient of the communication. If I were to flip off a stranger who had just cut me off in heavy traffic, he would probably interpret my communicative intent as being something along the lines of, "F--- you, you jerk." And I, knowing that the stranger would probably interpret my gesture in this way, would probably mean it that way. On the other hand, when I flip off my husband, he knows that what I mean is, "I'm annoyed with you right now and know that you will find this gesture to be both slightly offensive and somewhat amusing. So by flipping you off, I am simultaneously expressing frustration and diffusing a potentially tense situation through the use of humor." I know that he knows this, so I use the gesture without the intent of communicating its more...traditional...meaning.

And of course there's the possibility that you're spending time with a group of people to whom swear words--and not substitutes-- are the accepted norm. So if you stub your toe and say, "Oh fiddlesticks!" instead of "Oh damn!" you are using your choice of language to both express discomfort and differentiate yourself from your peers, perhaps sending a message of rebellion or snobbery.

And even on a more subtle level, I would assert that there is a difference between swearing and swear substituting even when you're alone. You're all alone, you drop a glass, it shatters, and you make a linguistic choice: "Son of a gun!" you might shout-- or, if you are more linguistically rebellious, you might holler, "Son of a bitch!" As a speaker trained to recognize the difference between a "swear word" and a "non swear word," your choice of language when alone says something to yourself. It might be an almost microscopic psychological difference, but the difference is there.

So there you have it, bitches. Swearing and swear-substituting are different-- but I wouldn't say that their primary difference is a moral one. What changes the morality of a communication is the emotional/psychological impact the choice of language makes on both the speaker and the listener. But I could go on about that for another ten paragraphs, so we'll leave that discussion for another day.

Soren: July 2010

Soren has entered the Phase of the Question. I'll be pushing him along in the stroller and it's just one million questions a minute: "Mommy, what's that tractor doing? Why is it doing that? What's construction? What's construction for? Who's that man? What is he doing? What are those lines on the road? Who painted them there? Are they going to get spanked? What kind of bird is that? What's its name? What's your name? What's Daddy's name? What's making that noise? What's the machine? What's it doing? Why is it doing that?"

I always thought I would find this phase irritating, but instead I find it electrifying. Soren is so aware right now, so alive to everything around him. Learning is an adventure, a pleasure, and his mind is so open to new ideas. We spent one snack time cutting grapes and pieces of cheese into various shapes and then moving them around to create new shapes. He was enthralled by the fact that two triangles make a square, that two squares make a rectangle. He loved finding that you could cut a grape in half one way and make a circle....or in half the other way to create an oval. I've also been trying to check out books from the library that coincide with his interests: he was all obsessed with water pipes for a while, so we got "The Magic School Bus Visits the Waterworks." He saw a volcano on Dora the Explorer, so we checked out a book about volcanoes. He was curious about llamas, so we found a book about llamas. We thoroughly examine and question each item on the page.

One night while we were singing Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star, Soren stopped me and asked, "Mommy, what's 'are'?"
"Um.... 'Are' means that some things exist.'"
"What does 'exist' mean?"
"Er....'Exist' means 'to be.'"
"What does 'to be' mean?"
"That, my son, is a question for the ages."
Pause.
"'For the ages!' What's 'for the ages'?"

Doesn't he look so handsome and ridiculously grown-up?

Soren's been into girl stuff lately. He likes for me to paint his toenails, he enjoys applying chapstick, and he often begs to wear my clothes. This somewhat perturbs his father, but I'm not overly concerned. He's simply imitating what he sees--the poor child does live with three women-- and I'm not one enforce arbitrarily created gender stereotypes. His peers and cultural experiences will take care of that, I'm sure. And no, we haven't yet checked out any library books about transvestites.

Soren woke me up one morning by calling from his room, "Mommy! There's a baby in my belly!" I opened the door and saw this.

The bubba also really enjoys music. I've mentioned before that he loves to sing. He also loves to listen to music with grandma: Songs for Toddlers; Peter, Paul, and Mary; Abba; Neil Diamond. He likes to "play" Grandma's piano and does so with a surprising amount of expression. And he connects with music on an interesting level. For example, when he hears a song written in a minor key, he'll ask, "Mommy, is it dark in that song?"

Funny stuff he says/does:

Nano (aka Uncle Quentin) taught Soren to say, "Open Sesame," and Soren says it all the time. Sometimes when we ask him to say "the magic word," instead of "thank you" he'll say "Open sescapee!"


Soren is obsessed with people's full names and makes sure to remind me of my own several times daily. I also engage with him like a child and play a game in which we repeatedly tell each other that we're crazy. It's wildly entertaining to him, and it goes something like this:
Mommy: You're crazy.
Soren: No, you're crazy.
Mommy: No, you're crazy!
Soren: No, YOU'RE crazy!
Mommy: Nooooooo......YOU'RE crazy!
Soren: No, you're crazy!
Mommy: No, YOU'RE CRAZY!
(ad nauseum)
And if I say "No, you're crazy!" before he can say it, he'll collapse into fits of laughter, remarking, between giggles, "We're laughing! We're laughing!"

Modeling my Scenic River Classic 5K t-shirt.

He has also become delightfully responsive to verbal affection. I'll say, "Oh, you're my sweet boy!" And he'll respond, "You're my sweet girl!" I'll say, "Will you be my little boy forever and ever?" And he'll say, "Yes! Will you be my little girl forever and ever?" Sometimes I'll swoop him up in my arms for a cuddle and, before I can say anything, he'll say, "You're so cute!"

He's also taken to remarking on the weather. "It's a beautiful day," he'll say, or, "It's not going to rain today."

Soren loves his Grandma. I would also love anyone who always let me have my own way.

Soren's new favorite person in all the world is our next-door neighbor Koen, who is but a few months his senior. Koen's family moved away for about eighteen months, but when they moved back, it was like Soren and Koen had never been apart. Soren ALWAYS wants Koen to come over. And when Koen does comes over, they spend the bulk of their time fighting over toys. Even so, they're usually both distressed when play dates come to an end. One day when we were taking our leave at Koen's house, Koen's mother Katie suggested that Koen give Soren a good-bye hug. Koen did so, and then Soren grabbed Koen by the cheeks and planted a gigantic wet one right on his lips. Koen was horrified, said, "Yuck!" and began frantically wiping at his lips and trying to spit off any remaining kiss particles.

You can almost hear him screaming, "NO! IT'S MY TOY! DON'T TOUCH IT!"

So anyway. Soren is real cute. I love him. Except for the naaasty poopy diapers, I wish he could be three forever. The end.

Brothers

I'm not gonna lie: my children do not really like each other. Soren decided that Liam was Satan's spawn the first day he laid eyes on him, and his opinion has not wavered far from that original assessment. Liam would probably be more apt to develop a friendship with his big brother were he not terrified that pain-- or at least yelling-- might result from any contact they make. But right here on my blog, in full color, I have captured my two children passing a few peaceful moments within close proximity.

Media really can bring us together.

Liam: July 2010

Liam continues to be Liam. I worry a bit about the fact that, at sixteen months, he is not even pulling up to pieces of furniture, let alone walking. But he's still our little darling. As I started this post, I realized it sounded a bit little a personal ad, so that is how I shall post it.

Baby, 16 months, seeks companion, 9-18 months, for parallel play.

SWM, two feet tall, thirty pounds: chubby, cuddly, jovial, sweet.

Enjoys flinging sand across the sandbox, splashing in the bathtub, hearing stories read aloud,

playing pat-a-cake, cuddling, trying new foods,

and examining objects from all angles.

Does not enjoy waiting for bottles.

Companion must be willing to accommodate occasional play-time naps.


Please text if interested.

No Room Service. Need Sleepy.

If you asked me to pinpoint the single topic that has caused me the most stress as a mom over the past couple of years, I would have to go ahead and point an accusing finger at sleep.

It all started when I was in labor with Soren....for three days. I didn't sleep for two straight nights, and let me tell you, that does something to a person. Especially a wound up, slightly neurotic person like myself, whose brain responded to the sleep deprivation, not by sleeping, but rather by kicking into overdrive, counting frantically by 7s, 11s, or 18s, and refusing stubbornly to calm down enough to get some decent rest. Soren, being a newborn, was waking up at least every three hours at night to nurse, so my nights (and days) went something like this: get baby to sleep, lie awake in bed for 1 1/2 hours, sleep for 1 hour, wake up to feed baby for 45 minutes, lie awake in bed for 1 1/2 hours, sleep for 30 minutes, wake up to feed baby for 45 minutes, etc, etc, etc. It nearly drove me to the brink of madness, and I must say that I am DEEPLY grateful that we were living with my parents at the time, because they were there to shine light into my muddied, confused consciousness by taking the baby and making me sleep during the day. Otherwise I might have (completely) lost my mind.

But this is a digression. I meant to write about my children, who are horrible sleepers, and whose horrible sleeping causes me much angst. From the very beginning of their lives they have been awful sleepers: up at least every three hours for the first six months of their lives, refusing to sleep through the night until they were....until they were...okay, let's not lie: neither of them sleep through the night. Soren generally does okay, but he has nightmares a couple times a week that require mommy's comforting presence-- and Liam still thinks he's a newborn, waking up two or three times a night for a bottle.

This causes me some discomfort, for sure. But even worse, I worry about what it's doing to them. You see, in my desperation to find some rest for the whole family, I've done a lot of reading on sleep: Sears, Pantley, Weissbluth, Ferber, Babywise-- and while none of these books have succeeded in assisting my children in sleeping through the night (I'm telling you people, some children will scream all night long for weeks rather than giving up and falling asleep) some of them have scared the pants off me. Ol' Dr. Weissbluth, in particular, gassed on and on in his book about how sleep deprivation is the root of all childhood problems: behavioral issues, ADHD, academic problems, emotional issues, developmental delays. The man has done a lot of research on pediatric sleep and now has me thoroughly convinced that sleep plays an essential role in all aspects of a child's development.

So when I put Soren in his room for his nap and he spends two hours throwing things out the window and putting on every article of clothing that he owns, I worry. Especially when he emerges from his room with dark circles under his eyes and a penchant for throwing hurricane tantrums, I worry.

And when Liam, at age 16 months, is still waking up twice a night for a bottle and napping for only an hour or two during the day, I worry. Especially when he fusses all the day long for no reason and is barely army-crawling, I worry.

I know other parents who don't worry about sleep at all! Whose kids stay up with them until ten or eleven, who sleep in 'til nine, who don't always take naps, and who do just fine. Whose kids will sometimes just randomly fall asleep....sitting in the high chair, driving in the car, playing with toys.

My kids, on the other hand--if they don't fall asleep at eight, sleep through to seven, and get a decent nap during the day--are little wrecks. Liam gets all whiny and twitchy and tic-y; Soren behaves like the ill-begotten bastard child of Animal and the Tasmanian Devil. And heaven forbid either of them should just drift off on occasion because they were tired...oh no. They have to be carefully primed and prepped in order for sleep to occur. Because when my kids are tired, they don't slow down...they just get crazier and crazier. If we put them to bed too late, they have a tendency to stay up all night counting by 18s. (And by "counting by 18s," I mean screaming and/or grinding one's own feces into the carpet.)

So I worry constantly about sleep...if my kids are tired, if they're ready for a nap, if their behaviors and issues are rooted in chronic sleep deprivation. It's honestly an issue that makes me want to stop at two children. The very thought of dealing with this yet again makes me want to lie down and weep hot, bitter tears.