We made it in. The move went without a hitch. The house is great. Now we are doing the whole UNpacking thing and trying to keep the kids alive while doing so.

The dishwasher holds more than my old one.

The rooms are painted the colors we chose.

The bathroom fixtures are not far from what I would have chosen myself.

The kids now have their own rooms.

Our living room is not overwhelmed by both a TV and a computer (each are in their own separate rooms).

But the best part, you ask? The best part is that at approximately 3:15 school lets out, and at that time ALL of the school buses go by our house heading to the school parking lot and back out again. And at that time, you can find Sam, sitting joyfully in the living room window eating his snack and yelling, “Look! Look! ANOTHER one!” And that, my friends, is a great investment. (Pictures to be posted later because Flickr is being annoying.)

I will say, however, we have not a window dressing to speak of, and no intention of doing anything about that until the weekend. The neighbors are getting to know us quite well.

And sorry for the comments being down over the weekend - my brother was moving us to another server and, of course, I didn’t know there was a problem because our computer wasn’t hooked up. Hope all are well. I’ll read blogs again soon, I hope, once we are functioning. I think I have like over 200 posts on bloglines . . . heh, heh.

Labels: House, Pictures, The Big One

Today was your last day of being two.

(birth)

We went to the zoo, and you helped me push the stroller around.

(Halloween - 5 months)

We rode the train.

(crawling, first vehicle obsession)

You ran around with your friend and chased the geese.

(sick day)

You told me about nine times that tomorrow you wanted “chockat cake . . . with FWOSTING! And Thomas!”

(your sense of humor)

You had a tantrum about eating at the dinner table. I explained that we eat at tables.

(playing in the pool at Mimi and Poppy’s)

You pointed out that the train table is also a table, and that it also has two little chairs . . .

(your first steps)

Dinner was at the train table tonight.

(walking on your own)

As I put you to bed you told me you loved me “so much.”

(my favorite picture of you)

I told you I loved you so much too.

(Christmas - 19 months)

I told you that you were my big boy. You said Yes.

(second birthday)

And I asked you how you got so big, how it had happened so fast.

(Halloween - train engineer, of course)

You wanted to sleep with your “favorite cars: owange O twuck, bwue wace car, and big wed wace car,” as you have every night for the past three weeks. You always list them for me, despite the fact that I have known which are you favorites this whole time.

(first day of school)

I told you that “tomorrow when you wake up, you’ll be three.” How did this happen?

(last week at the carnival)

You fell asleep, snoring and exhausted from your last day as a two year old, with my hand rubbing your head, your arm slung over your eyes, and telling me that you really like cake . . . and pudding too.

Labels: Birthdays, Pictures, The Big One

I awoke to rain and a toddler who refused to go to school. I knew the latter was crucial since said toddler would not be getting out of the house due to the former, so I started the long process of getting a writhing child out the door in a timely fashion. He’s usually very excited to go to school, so this was a little weird to me. He was adamant that he was not down with school today, not cool with walking to the car, and generally just “vewy angwy!”

And you know me - I started to wonder what awful thing had happened at school that made him so upset about going. Had a classmate been mean to him and the teacher didn’t help? Had he gotten into trouble and no one told me? Had he gotten hurt?

So as we drove there I continued to ask him why he didn’t want to go. I started talking about how they would get to go to the “big room” to play instruments since it was raining outside, and then he yelled, “No! I NOT want to pway Duckduckgoose!”

“Oh, did you play Duck-Duck-Goose at school?”

“Yes. It raining and I NOT want to pway.” Aha, so on rainy days they not only go to the big room for instruments, but also for games. That was a relief.

But then, about four seconds later, I started up again - Wait, why does he hate Duck-Duck-Goose so much? Does nobody pick him as the goose? Is he always the first one “out”? Do they put him in “the pot?” Oh God, they shame him and make him sit in the pot so that all the other kids can sit around him in the circle and stare at him because he was out first. He’s already having sport-related school anxiety! He’s going to hate gym. He’s going to have stomach aches on Field Day. He’s going to be like my brother and run himself into a wall to break his arm so that he can get out of P.E. because a shattered ulna feels better than the shame of being a non-athlete . . .

“You put your hands on the heads and I NOT want them to touch my head.”

“What?”

“I NOT WANT THEM TO TOUCH MY HEAD!”

“You mean you don’t like Duck-Duck-Goose because they touch your head? It’s not because of the part where you have to run around the circle and get chased and sit in the pot if you are out?”

“No, that a wittle fun. Running part is fun. I just not want them to touch my head.”

” . . . Ohhhhhh.”

When I picked him up two hours later I looked in the window to see Sam happily sitting in a circle with his hand stuck out so that the kid who was the ducker could walk by and tap him high five style - “Gooooooose!” - and Sam running and laughing around and around the whole room as the teachers tried to direct the two boys to at least head in the general direction of the circle, which had really spread out into something more like a line. There was no “out,” no “pot,” and absolutely no shame.

Labels: Learn More Every Day, Tales, Talking, The Big One

Sam and I have been playing a lot of Candyland lately.  He caught on remarkably fast, seeing as it’s his very first board game and all.  But after a while I started to notice something a little…odd.

Here are some examples of some of the cards I was allowed to draw during our recent game.

You can assume they pretty much all looked like this.

Here are some of the cards Sam “happened” to draw.

Again, you can assume they pretty much all looked like this.

In case you can’t tell, this is a stack of all of the “special cards,” all of which were “his.”

And here’s the “pile” we were drawing from, where he directed each of us as to which card we could pick up.

And here is the face Sam makes when he knows he’s being “naughty.”

Labels: Pictures, The Big One, Toys

The other day, in a moment of awesome maturity, I called my husband and held up the phone so that he could hear the sound of both children screaming for several minutes. They were sort of trying to outdo each other…well, Sam was trying to outdo Robby, and Robby didn’t like it. Anyway, I’d been listening to both of them scream and cry with absolutely nothing I could do about for about ten minutes. Finally I just started laughing at the ridiculousness of it and called him, you know, just cuz. We couldn’t even hear each other.

Sam has been sick this past week (again!), and it makes him very clingy(understandably so). When he gets like this he sometimes just wants me to hold him and let him sit on my lap. Somehow, this act has acquired its own name because he asks to do it when he’s upset and needs to calm down. Now, when he wants me to pick him up and put him in my lap he walks around saying, “I need Mommy to chill me out.”

Chillin’

Labels: Mommyhood, Pictures, Talking, The Big One

We went to the playground today, the four of us, and tried to get in some play time before the HUGE freaking rain cloud overtook us. Both the boys were on the swings, and then Sam went off with his daddy to climb and slide. I was left alone with Robby, just the two of us. Once I looked away from Sam walking away toward the big curvy ladder, and once I’d warned my husband to help him because Sam wasn’t wearing good playground shoes and might slip, I looked back at Robby. And looked. It was just us, and the feeling was so foreign. And all of a sudden I had all these flashbacks of when Sam was very little, how we did absolutely everything together, just the two of us. That’s how things were for the first 27 months of his life. And I told him telepathically, I’m sorry. I’m sorry this is the first time I have pushed you on the swing without being distracted. I’m sorry I can’t tell you when this will happen again. You will never know what it is like to share me with no one else. It is something you will never comprehend. And I’m just really, really sorry. He just continued to smile at me.

Do you ever just feel like you’re not very . . . present? Lately I have just been completely overwhelmed. It’s constant. I’m listing things to do, and we are spending every free moment trying to take care of something, some project, some packing, some phone call, some something. I know a lot of it is due to the upcoming move, but a lot of it also is just the difference in having more than one child. I never feel calm or in the moment. If a time comes when both children are content I feel I can’t just be there with them. I need to go make lunch, go return a phone call, go pee. Because if I don’t take advantage of that moment, then I may be making lunch while being screamed at by a baby to pick him up, talking on the phone while being pestered by an almost three year old to get him some scissors, holding the door shut while, well, you know.

There’s just never a moment to just be with them, especially not one on one. Sam is tough right now. Most things are negotiations, warnings, battles. It feels like that’s what we’ve been doing now for about six months. The other night he was running down the hall laughing and singing a song he’d made up himself. I was behind him, watching, and I just thought, that’s right: Sam is fun and sweet and happy. Why does it feel like he is never happy anymore? But he is, it’s just happening when I’m not paying attention because that period of calm for him makes me feel like I can move on to something else. He and I don’t get much time together for just us anymore either. Lately I have felt like I hardly know him. He has all of a sudden turned into a boy who can talk to me and tell me what he wants, yet I feel I understand him less than when it was just the two of us, and he couldn’t speak a word.

The past six months . . . I don’t know where they’ve gone. I don’t know what we’ve done with our time together, or where I’ve been. I haven’t really been here. I’ve just been moving, trying to function, trying to get things done. I hope tomorrow I can stay with them when that moment of contentment comes and tell them, telepathically, you guys are it. You are the center of my everything. I am here with you both. I am going nowhere else, but staying still.

Labels: Learn More Every Day, Mommyhood, The Big One, The Little One

My mom, Mimi to the boys (Meme? Memi? We’ll have to decide on that) just left this morning after a one week visit. Many of you may remember her from this escapade, and some of you may know who she is without realizing it - she’s the lurker located in North Carolina that reads all your blogs (sorry mom, but you’re just such a LURKER!).

I was worried about how Sam would take her leaving. He’s very attached to her and has pretty much had her undivided attention this whole week. When she left he hugged her goodbye and gave her some kisses, told her he loved her, and then he walked away and went back to playing with his cars. I thought it was a bit abrupt. Honestly, I expected a tantrum. I realized that he just didn’t really understand that she was leaving for good. I figured I’d see his real response in a few days when she still wasn’t back.

About two minutes after my husband and she left for the airport, Sam went looking for “Mimi’s hairbrush.” When he couldn’t find it I explained to him that she had to take it home with her so that she could brush her hair, would he like his comb? Well, he flipped the eff out. He wanted Mimi’s hairbrush NOW. And then he started crying. We sat on the couch and talked about what a nice visit we had with her, how we both really looked forward to seeing her again after we move into our new house.

He still kept insisting that he was just upset because he wanted her hairbrush. It must be so hard to have such strong feelings that you don’t understand and can’t explain.

Hope you had a safe trip back, mom. Thanks so much for the visit.

Labels: Learn More Every Day, The Big One