Althea, Bryan, Andrew, and Sylvia
Nov. 27: We’ve finished an amazing Thanksgiving feast created by LuAnn. MmmmMMmmm good. Sylvia really enjoyed the food – especially the pumpkin pie!
Here’s a video of the kids on this fun holiday.
Andrew’s poem (from preschool) goes:
“The turkey is a funny bird, his head goes wobble wobble. And just one thing he says is gobble, gobble, gobble, gobble!”
Happy Thanksgiving!
Nov. 26: For reasons not clear even to me, I have not spent the last hour outdoors enjoying some beautiful Texan weather. Instead I’ve been catching up on photo editing and uploading. It’s an obsession, I tell you!
Anyway, the result is that there are now photos from throughout November in the gallery. Enjoy!
Nov. 1-21 and Nov. 22-25.
Nov. 26: Sylvia is a sick girl. She was up most of the night on Sunday and Monday nights…two teeth were coming in, and she was one very unhappy camper. She’s now the proud owner of a top left front tooth. She’s also almost got a forth tooth on the bottom. Once that comes all the way through, she’ll be up to six teeth.
She started running a fever on Sunday night. Between that and a runny nose, I thought she just had teething side-effects. However yesterday Andrew got a runny nose, and during our travels yesterday, Sylvia lost her voice. She’s in good spirits, but now she has a cough and lots of nose-running. And no scream.
This morning she fell and bonked her head, but when she went to scream and screech, nothing came out. Silence. Short “waahh waaahhh” <silent scream> quiet “wahhhhh wwaaaaaahhh” <silent screech>
I couldn’t help but smile a little in relief.
When we had breakfast this morning and she tried to screech in protest at the slowness of the service, no sound came out. She can still babble and goo, but her upper register has been temporarily put out of order by her cold. I’m trying not to enjoy it too much. That would be mean:)
Nov. 25: We’re happily writing to you from Texas. It’s calm, it’s relaxing. And our day of travel wasn’t bad. Sylvia did very well. She only cried for a few minutes here and there (once when the arm rest fell and clonked her on the head). Andrew’s a rock as a traveler.
And now I’m off to Walgreens to purchase new toiletries. Oops.
Happy Thanksgiving!
Nov. 24: We woke up to a beautifully snowy neighborhood. Each twig on each branch of each tree is etched in snow. It’s beautiful.
It was nice to wake up to a beautiful sight, because last night was not a good one. Sylvia spiked a fever last night after she went to bed, and she was up (I think) every 45 minutes or so all night long. Bryan did some long stretches with her, we brought her into bed with us, and in general, we tried to do everything we could to ease her pain. Poor girl. I think this may be teething related, but we’ll see. If she recovers by the end of the day, we’ll chock it up to one of the two teeth that are coming through. Otherwise, we may have a sicky girl on our hands. Andrew was blowing his nose this morning too…
Also, Andrew has something he wanted to add:
“Daddy, it snowed. Daddy, are you thinking that you see snow at your work? Yes. I do. Daddy, I like you. Daddy, Andrew, Mommy.”
Nov. 24: Sleep has been rough for my dear Sylvia. My assessment of the situation is that she doesn’t want to miss the party. She tends to go down for her naps alright, but then she wakes up after a half hour or an hour. She wakes up crying, and while she can barely keep her eyes open, she wildly moves her body in an attempt to keep herself up. I try nursing her back to sleep, rubbing her back, singing to her, shushing her, rocking her, etc. No go. I try leaving her to cry but checking on her every five minutes to soothe her. No go. I try leaving her to cry for a half hour straight. No go.
She knows her mind, this girl. And when she makes up her mind about something, she’s not one to be moved. When she was little she didn’t like her car seat and had an extraordinary ability to make her disdain known…crying up to hours at a time. I hold my breath when I think about how this determination may manifest itself in an 18-month old or a 2 1/2 year old!
In an ongoing attempt to find a sage who can help me lull my little girl into naptime dreamlands, I recently checked out about 10 sleep books from the library. It’s amazing how much some of these authors oppose each other. It’s like the Force vs. the Dark Side. Attachment parenting vs. Sleep training. It makes it a little daunting when they both threaten how ineffective and harmful the others’ approach can be.
For myself, I think I’ve developed a hybrid.
I think that new babies should get whatever they want. If parenting is a dance, then those first couple or few months, I’ve been really happy letting my babies do the leading. Then around three months through like six months, my little babies have seemed sturdier, and needs have started shifting to wants. Rythems are established, and routines can start to be instituted. It was around this point, that we started Andrew on his nighttime routine, which we keep to this day. Then as the tiny baby gets older…up to a year or more…it seems like more and more of the leading of the parenting dance should be done by the parent. When my babies get to decide too much, they end up not being very happy. Being a good leader means paying a lot of attention to your partner, but you’re the one deciding where to go and when. My kids do well when they know they don’t have to worry about who is in charge. They know it’s me. They can test me (oh, they test me!), but I think they are relieved to find that the boundries of their world are strong and consistent.
The sleep books talk about a lot of different sleep topics, like with sleeping through the night. Sure I would LOVE to sleep through the night, but it really isn’t too big of a deal to me that Sylvia is still waking once or twice. When she wakes three or more times, it’s a big deal. If she’s still waking once or twice in three or four or five months, I may feel like it’s become unacceptable…but it’s a transition. I like it best when it’s a smooth transition.
The main techniques that I’m picking up on from across all the books are:
Yup, that’s it. But nobody can really tell me what to do when Sylvia wakes up after a half hour nap screaming and won’t go back down. Oh well. She’ll grow out of it eventually!
So that’s my stream-of-consiousness brain dump on sleep.
Good night!
Nov. 23: Sylvia has been having a good time puckering up her lips and blowing “raspberries.” She loves it when we do it back at her. Here Bryan caught her (and Andrew) demonstrating this new trick on video.
Nov. 23: I’ve been going to Curves gym now for about a month, and it’s going really well. I’ve been going three or four days each week at 6am, and I’m home by 7am. The work-out gets my heart-rate up, and it gives me a lot of energy, but I have yet to feel sore or do much sweating. [That’s in serious contrast to my time at Monkey Bar gym which I loved, but which leaves you unable to climb stairs, lift a coffee cup to your mouth, or get up from a chair while you’re getting started!]
Here are my favorite things about going to the gym:
So far, I’m really happy with my membership with Curves. Hoping it continues to be a fun thing to do!
Nov. 21: It is so interesting to start to get a real sense for Sylvia’s growing temperament. I’m very hesitant in general to put labels on people because I think it can be limiting. I don’t want to pigeon-hole my kids, and I don’t want to come to any conclusions about their temperament that could change the way I interact with them and inadvertently push them into some kind of mold. That said, I spend a lot of time thinking about their growing personalities, and I think I can safely make some statements about the way they are today. Not to say that it won’t change next week, but some things about those two are very true for them right now.
For example:
The other night when Terry, Tom, my dad, Michael, and Lisa came over for supper, we were talking about Andrew. Terry said that if he had to describe him in two words it would be strong-willed and meticulous. Other words that I can think of for him are organized, imaginative, self-assured, bouncy, focused, contemplative, kind, determined, mellow, and loving. (By the way, if anyone ever wants to play “Describe your child,” I’m in! I’ve discovered that I love hearing other people think about my kids in this way!! Add your own thoughts to the comments here if you’d like to join in right now:)
Sylvia is a very different little person. For example, I would not describe her as mellow. Spirited seems more up her alley. And joyful. Energetic, spunky, engaging. She’s got some fierceness in her that she expresses by loving things intensely or being extremely displeased when things don’t go her way. And while Andrew can certainly be strong-willed at times, I’d give that adjective more to Sylvia. She has a lot of wonder…it’s so nice to watch her sit in the yard and stare at the trees and plants for hours. She is strongly tuned-in to the people around her. And she loves faces. Would that be described as personable? The other night, Lisa described Sylvie as spontaneous and spirited. I’d add boisterous to her list.
And I’d go on, but she just woke up from her nap! Coming, my little free-spirit!
Nov. 21: For your listening pleasure, here are Andrew and Bryan with “A, B, C”