May 31: On Friday, my co-worker, Vicki, and her son Alex came over to our house, and we had a wonderful time. Sylvia took a couple of very long morning naps, and then when she woke, she was so happy. Sleep begets sleep, and she also went down for a nice early afternoon nap. Andrew and Alex had a blast playing together. They colored and ran around the yard and practiced using the potty. I had gotten enough sleep the night before, and I just felt really good. We all made blueberry muffins, and Vicki and I got to visit for four hours…delightful.
It’s so fun to watch Andrew and Alex play together. Compared to where they were a year ago, they’re such big boys! Pictures of the last few days are in the gallery.
Making Sylvie laugh
May 31: Andrew and Sylvia were pretty cute together yesterday. Here’s a video of Andrew singing to Sylvia to make her laugh.
Lyrics to the song Andrew is singing (he’s being silly by saying the words with different starting letters):
A number 10 from Tennessee
Kissed a blueberry-beaked budgie
And after that he lay in bed
While ten blueberries grew on his head
(counts as the blueberries pop out all over the number 10)
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10
The doctor said “I have a cure
Stay in bed for ten days more.”
(counts off the days on the calendar)
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10
When that old ten felt well again
He jumped and counted one to ten
(The number ten flexes his muscles then jumps on his bed)
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10
Now, number ten will always love
All creatures great and small
But he will never kiss another
Fruit-flavored animal
(as each number is counted off, weird fruit-shaped animals pop up)
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10
10
Special instructions for people like me
May 29: I’m trying to make a fruit terrine that was featured in Wondertime magazine as I strained the jarred pineapple juice into the already strained mandarin orange juice in a saucepan, I read in the recipe, “drain the grapefruit juice into a pan.”
Grapefruit, pineapple. They’re both compound worded fruits. Too bad that pineapple contains an enzyme that prevents it from turning into a gelatin.
The funny part, was upon realizing my mistake, I started scanning the recipe, hoping to find something that said something along the lines of:
“If you accidentally purchased pineapple instead of grapefruit, don’t fear! Pat yourself on the back for attempting a new recipe, finding the jarred pineapple in the first place, and even for just navigating the grocery store with two kids! Instead of the terrine, try making the fruit salad identified below.”
No such alternative instructions were to be found. Either they ran out of space on the page or they presumed that most people would actually purchase the ingredients identified. Hmmm. Now I’m two hours from dinner and both dinners I have planned have to marinate for 6-12 hours. This may or may not be the best planning.
🙂
Pretty Sylvie
May 28: Here’s a video I took of Sylvia. I was hoping she would smile or laugh or something, but instead she’s just looking at me. A short video of my little girl doing nothing in particular:)
Andrew at two years, eleven months
May 27: While Sylvie is reaching out to touch the world in new ways, Andrew seems to be diving deep into a pool and coming out with some fascinating treasures. The things this kid says just amaze me. He’s so sweet and loving and opinionated and reticent and agreeable and single-minded and charming and tenacious. He’ll be three on June 22, and he already seems like he’s stepping out of the two’s of babyhood and into the three’s of a preschooler.
So here’s a few things that come to mind to summarize little Andrew at this precious stage of life.
- Occasionally I try counting to encourage Andrew to do what I want. (For example, “OK, hon, I’ll count to three, and then we’ll both jump up and bounce out the door like kangaroos.”) It doesn’t work. But Andrew seemed to note the technique, and the other day he said to me, “OK, Mommy, I’ll count to four, and then you’ll either blow bubbles or we’ll watch a show.”
- Since early March, we’ve been working on potty training. He figured out how to use the potty by late March, and by late April, he didn’t want to use either a little potty seat or the little donut you put on a big toilet to make it easier for kids to use. Until May, I had to remind him (read Make Him) use the toilet every two hours or else an accident ensued, but for the last several weeks, he seems to have it figured out. He’s even been wearing underpants at night for the last couple weeks. And (knock on wood) he has yet to have an accident. However, I know I’m tempting fate and need to buy a water-proof mattress pad STAT. It’s all gone pretty smoothly (other than the “NOOO I DON’T WANT TO USE THE POTTY” followed by very wet pants episode that occured in the library), and I feel good that it’s really all be led by him. He still wants me to dress and undress him, but he’s listening to his body, and I think we can put him firmly in the big boy camp now.
- Every morning, he crawls into bed to hug and kiss and snuggle Sylvie. I never knew that a little boy could loving doat on his baby sister so much.
- Sylvia’s crying (which at times has been frequent) seems to sedate Andrew. While she’s crying as we drive all the way across town, he falls asleep. Otherwise, he’s just half-lidded and kind of limp. I’m so glad that it doesn’t seem to agrevate him!
- We’ve been reading Farmer Boy by Laura Ingalls Wilder. He throws himself around the room while I read, but he remembers parts, and he asks for more and more. It makes me so happy to read a book that I really enjoy to him before bed at night!
- As the weather has warmed this spring, we’ve discovered that Andrew is quite a monkey. He’s amazingly physically aware and able when playing on the jungle gym. And he goes high and slides down poles and reaches out to step across big gaps. My philosophy is that if a kid feels comfortable, can do it themselves, and is using the equipment appropriately, then they’re probably alright. But it’s pretty nerve-wracking to watch him climb well over my head. He acts like he’s in his element.
- Many days, Andrew asks for a whole banana, un-peels it, has one bite, and wants nothing more to do with it.
- Andrew’s favorite foods are oatmeal, cottage cheese, grapes, blueberries, chicken (without anything funky or green on it), pretzels, yogurt, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, apple sauce, soybeans, cheeseburgers, grilled cheese sandwiches, popcorn, and oh, the list goes on. But nothing with fishy green things like parsley on it. Although he does love to help pick parsley from the garden as long as it doesn’t go on his food.
- Andrew loves to make up stories, and the imaginary world is very closely entwined with the real world. The best way I have of making him go along with something I want him to do is to tell him a story (jumping straight into the climax…”Suddenly a tiger jumped out of the bushes at little Andy…”) or asking him like he is a baby animal and I am the mommy animal.
- Andrew’s 2T clothes fit him, but 3T is fitting better, and I’m thinking I may jump ahead to 4Ts as I get him some summer PJs and t-shirts. He has a very long torso. Just like his daddy.
- In the evenings when we watch a “showie,” Andrew’s favorite these days is the David Attenborough Mammals documentaries. A boy after my own heart.
- Andrew has the alphabet mastered (lower case too now), and we’re starting to work on words. Just simple ones. He likes to try to make words out of his letters in the tub. “No,” I’ll say, “JKQZ is not a word.” He sometimes knows CAT, DOG, BOY, GIRL, and BOOK.
- He loves poems, and he often recites them at appropriate times. Like the other day when we came to the door, he said, “If you are a dreamer, come in.” That’s from Invitation from Shel Silverstein. Or he’ll mix up the starting letters and say, “Ittle Aaack Orner, At in a Orner, Eating is Ismas Eye.” snicker,snicker.
- And he’s sometimes still taking naps. Like today! Which allowed me to write these posts:)
So that’s my little guy in brief. He’s pretty fun these days!
Relay for Life 2008
May 27: The last few years, my brother Joe has participated in Relay for Life to raise money for the American Cancer Society. He’s working on it again this year, so if you’re interested in supporting cancer research, click below to see how you can help.
Hello all! This is Joe, Althea’s youngest brother. De Forest, the town I went to high school in, has an annual Relay For Life (an event organized by the American Cancer Society) every June. It’s a pretty big event. Team are made up of 10-15 people, and each person on the team agrees to try and raise at least $100. Then, the day of the event rolls around and everyone comes together at the high school’s track. The event runs from 6 in the evening until 7 or 8 the next day. There is a candlelight ceremony and talks from cancer survivors.
The event has been running in De Forest for 10 years or so and has raised over a million dollars since its first year. A friend I’ve had since first grade formed the team “Carpe Diem” and so I am raising money for the team. If you’d like to donate, feel free to send any dollar amount ($10 or $25 as a suggestion) as a check made out to the American Cancer Society to:
Joe Babler
4575 Dennis Drive
Madison, WI 53704
You can also donate online directly to our team.
The event will be held on June 13th.
Furthermore, I can purchase luminarias that they line the track with at the event and write “In Honor/In Memory” of anyone that you would like. It’s $5 per bag. Just send along any names that you want.
Thanks!
Joe
Sylvie at 3 1/2 months
May 27: Sylvia is so engaged and so aware…I just am amazingly in love with her! The last week or so, I find myself making regular mental notes of things I want to post about her. So here’s a stream-of-consciousness update about Sylvia.
- This little girl is strong. She’s been holding her head up well since about four weeks. She’s been standing strongly for at least a month. Of course, she wobbles all over the place, but she has been able to support her own weight since early May. I’ve had the exersaucer out for her to stand in, and she’s getting now where she can (at least somewhat) purposefully turn herself in a circle. She’s able to move toys if her hand is on them, but she still has some steps to make before she’ll be able to have the muscle and brain coordination to grab an object that she wants.
- I’ve moved her up to the size three diapers. I feel like that means that she’s a huge person now. We’ve been using disposables although I have the cloth ones right under the changing table. Maybe soon I’ll start integrating them in:) We moved up to size three when she started having “blow-outs” from both legs and the back of her size twos. Fun stuff.
- She wants nothing to do with her swing. In fact, I should probably give it back to my friend. She starts “singing” the moment I put her in it.
- On the other hand (and I almost feel like I should whisper this so as to not break the spell), she’s not so angry in her car seat any more. After that long, horrible ride home from the Twin Cities a couple weeks back, our driving experiences have been nearly pleasant. I’ve been bringing a soft blanket-y toy for her to hold, and we’ve done several across-town trips without any crying. This is dramatic. This is stunning. I would be so happy if she got over the carseat=torture idea.
- She rolled over twice…with assistance. Late last week, I had her in the middle of the bed on her tummy and she rolled into the mattress valley where I sleep. She’s getting squirmy-er and more interested in being mobile each day.
- She adores her brother…and her dad. Andrew loves to hug and kiss and wildly embrace and “dance” with Sylvia. She has a large tollerance for his physical demonstrations of love, and I can tell from how her face lights up that she things he’s just the bees knees. We tell him to watch her face to see if she’s OK with what he’s doing, and that seems to work pretty well. When he makes her cry, he gives her soft kisses and says, “I’m sorry, Sylvie ba-dilve!”
When Bryan comes home, Sylvie’s face lights up, and both her dimples jump out. She’s doing the open-mouth grin when she’s really happy. And seeing her dad makes her really happy! - She’s waking up a couple times in the night. Usually I feed her around 10:30 before I go to bed. Then she eats at 1 and 4. The last few days, she’s been sleeping a bit later…maybe 7 instead of 6. Then she’s usually awake for an hour before taking a two hour morning nap. She’s been sleeping in her crib except when I’m too exhasuted in the night to nurse her in the rocking chair and bring her to bed instead. While I’m still kind of tired some mornings, she’s pretty good about eating in about 15 minutes and then going straight back to bed.
- I use two white noise machines to help her sleep. For naps and when I put her down at night, I usually nurse her and then lay her down awake. I turn on Mom’s sleep sheep with the waves sound and then I turn on the noise machine that I bought just for her. She often falls asleep without a peep. It helps that she’s using a pacificer.
- She’s wearing a wide range of sizes of baby clothes. She still fits in most of the 0-3 month, although they are a little snug. 3-6 month fit her well, and she can wear quite a few 6-12 month items. This is the heyday for adorable little baby girl clothes! I’ve just started putting her in pajamas at night. Before this, she just wore her clothes because it seemed silly to change her again.
- Sylvie doesn’t spit up. She’s probablly urp-ed about 10 times ever. Sometimes she gets kind of drooly, but that’s mostly when she tries to fit her fist in her mouth.
- Sylvie cries most when she feels she has been offended. Like if I bump her on something or I don’t repsond to her cries fast enough or I ignore her when she asks to be removed from the @#$% car seat. When she is offended, she cries really gustily. It can be a little breath-taking
- If we’re walking and she’s in the front carrier, she’s almost always happy.
- She’s happily passed around to loads of different people. As long as she’s not too tired or hungry, she’s an amazingly social and radient little person.
So that’s a little picture into Sylvia at 15 weeks.
Three years later
May 27: I’m glad Maretta and Kyle got married on Memorial Day weekend. It gives us a new association with the weekend, and I think that’s a good thing. The last several days, I keep finding my mind floating back to Memorial Day weekend 2005, when Mom was first diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.
I no longer am stuck reliving and thinking through those last weeks of Mom’s life. For almost six months after she was gone, my brain was doing some sort of a backward coping thing…I thought back each of her last weeks obsessively, most especially the really hard conversations, the gut wrenching shifts. I think that at the time we just had to do what needed to be done and there wasn’t really the time or space to be sad or reflect too much. So I reflected afterwards. It was kind of a relief when my brain decided it had worked through, say the week of August 6 enough and we could move back to the week of July 30. Then I got back to the end of June, and these days, I don’t think about last summer much at all. I find I can think about the bigger picture much more. For quite a while, I couldn’t even really remember or focus on memories before Mom got sick.
On the Thursday before Memorial Day, 2005, Mom went into the doctor to check on what she thought was a bladder infection. She called me from the hospital at work and said, “I’m in the hospital, but don’t worry…they’re just checking on what I think is a bladder infection. You and Bryan can stop by this evening if you’d like.” The next day (May 27, 2005) when they did a catscan, they started using the word “mass” to describe a blockage that they found in her pancreatic duct.
I remember climbing into bed next to her before one of her tests, and I asked if she was scared. “Not scared,” she said. “Just sad.”
Today three years ago, I was just beginning to read about pancreatic cancer. It’s a horrible disease to learn about. I remember thinking, “This can’t be happening,” over and over. At one point, Bryan came over while I was reading, and I remember showing him some of the charts of median life expectancy. He didn’t believe it. It was just too terrible to comprehend. I recall reading this exact passage:
Median survival from diagnosis is around 3 to 6 months; 5-year survival is much less than 5% With 32,180 new diagnoses in the United States every year, and 31,800 deaths, mortality approaches 99%, giving pancreatic cancer the highest fatality rate of all cancers and the fourth highest cancer killer in the United States
amongst both men and women.
The upside of our story is that Mom got over two good years after diagnosis. I was eight months pregnant when she was diagnosed, and Mom lived long enough that her grandson remembers her. We had so many good times in the last years, and I’m grateful that we all had time to say goodbye. But it still just totally and completely sucks. And this weekend, which I always think of as the turning point between spring and summer also became in our lives the turning point between “ordinary” and “coping with cancer.”
I’m glad that it’s now also the weekend that Maretta and Kyle got married. It’s such a lovely time of year.
Is this what normal feels like?
May 27: Andrew is napping this afternoon. Sylvie woke up just as I was putting him down, and she is now rather happily perched on my lap as I type. It’s nice to be able to type and kiss bald baby head at the same time. I’m sitting here in the relative quiet and feeling a sense of a new existence. Like I’m at the ocean’s edge, and the tide all went out and I’m seeing that the starfish-filled tide pools are a very different landscape from the waves that were present a few hours ago. Life post-wedding; life with two kids; life not going to work at Gathering Waters; life being a full-time mom (with no immediate wedding planning) in the summer.
Yesterday (Memorial Day) I really unwound. Bryan was Mr. Accomplishing, mulching garden beds, cleaning the gutters, staining planks of wood to make a picnic bench. Me? I read a Barbara Kingsolver book and sorted through bags of 6-12 month clothes, pulled out 0-3 month clothes that are too small, and in general re-organized Sylvie’s dresser and closet. I should mention again that I LOVE baby clothes. I love touching them and folding them and creating new outfits. And I love putting them on my little ones. I think I decided to dive into clothes because it most certainly did not need to be done. And I wanted to do something that I didn’t need to do. The last couple weeks have been quite full of prioritized lists, so it felt good to pick an off-the-list task. Plus, I now have new things to put on my sweet princess pottywottykins.
My co-worker Pam goes back to work today. Her daughter Mercy is a week younger than Sylvie, and so her first day back at work makes me quite aware that I am not going back to work. I’ve got to say, though, that while I miss seeing my co-workers and thinking critically and having conversations that don’t involve kids and doing work that I really think makes Wisconsin a better place, I don’t really miss my job. It’s summer, and I get to be outdoors with the kids and have Andrew give me big hugs and say things like, “I’ll love you forever, Mommy.”
Last night I wrote up a list of meals to make for the week, and this morning the kiddos and I went to Woodman’s. They are remarkably good shoppers, and Andrew is even tending to leave the house cheerfully (AMAZING). Sylvie is happy in the front carrier, and we happily shopped together, purchasing over $200 worth of food. Good heavens, I must be crazy. On the other hand, I’m making lots of meals that will have leftovers, and I’m not eating out much for lunch any more. Because I am slightly compulsive and type-A, I made a Woodman’s shopping list laid out like the store is to try to streamline the shopping process. Feel free to copy and use yourself if you’d like. These are the kinds of things I do when I don’t have a job:) Oh, and my dad made a very similar list when I was a kid, so I come by it genetically.
Heather and Michael and Evelyn were in town for Maretta’s wedding, so I got to see them all, if only quite briefly. I’m going out to DC in August for Kacy’s wedding, and I’m hoping to spend significantly more time with them then. Evie is soooo cute and tiny. Just one month old:)
My stream of consciousness is faltering, and Sylvie would like me to interact with her now. The muffled explosions emanating from her nether regions may need to be dealt with on the changing table as well. Have a happy summer!
Fist set of pictures from the photographer
May 25: We’ve gotten to see quite a bit of the bride and groom today. This morning, we met at Terry’s and watched as they opened up their wedding gifts. I have a sort of post-race euphoria going on. Seeing everyone so content and glowing is a real treat.
This afternoon, our little clan went to a local park to attend my friend Sarah’s birthday party. We brought several of the table boquets from the wedding reception, and it was fun to get to share their prettiness with more people.
Maretta and Kyle stopped by our house a few minutes ago. They spent some time getting things from Dad’s house and then went to visit Michael and Joe. They’re being quite generous with their newly-wed selves:) Tomorrow they head up to St. Paul to spend a week honeymooning in their own new apartment.
Late last night our photographer, Dick Baker, sent me a big, early set of photos from the wedding. Thanks Dick! You can find them in the gallery.