Friday, February 01, 2013
Cheerio Necklace
William had fun today making a Cheerio necklace with dental floss. We've found "Reach" floss is the best for little hands because it's stiff enough to handle without dropping the "beads" of cereal.
"I can wear it and eat it! Mmmm!"
Thursday, December 06, 2012
William 2 year update
I just found an old draft I wrote on 10/3, and published it. I felt a little bad about it, though (which is why I had delayed publishing it at all) because it's mostly complaining about being alone with my kid all morning, and William is really a sweet, easygoing child. I couldn't ask for a better toddler if I have one keeping me company. Most of the time, he's quite agreeable and even in instances where he's not, it's all completely age-appropriate. (We're hearing "no" quite a bit right on schedule.)
He's trying harder to talk so there's less cave-man grunting and more sweet little phrases he comes up with like this one upon being caught in his first rainstorm- "Yay! Falling water!". He calls Lauren "Tee-ta" now instead of "Lo". He says "Yites!" for Christmas lights, just like Lauren did. ("Yay! I love yites!" He is obsessed with "twash" and has to close the lid of every open trash can he sees. He received a big Bruder trash truck for his birthday, which came with 2 miniature trash cans, and he plays with it every day. Also 4 more trucks.
He likes to say "I WOULD" when he means "would like to". "I would eat! I would that!" "I would cut! I would touch! I would walk! I would eat cake! I LOVE cake! CAKEY!"
At his well-visit, he weighed 36 pounds and was 38 1/2 inches tall (also I never blogged this but at 18 months, he was 36 inches and 34 pounds), which means if he stays on his height-curve, adult-William will be 6' 5"! He eats about 3 times as often as I do, and his favorite treat these days is "shaboos!" (strawberries) or else "dooce" (juice).
He loves to make stacks of blocks and to play with his cars and to take baths with "buboos" and "shahmpoo!" He wants to explore the neighborhood, and has named one of the local squirrels Julia. Her husband or son or arch-enemy, another squirrel who runs around and chases her, is called Paul.
Back to my changing feelings about being home with William, it's gotten easier in the past 8 weeks since I wrote that post, partly because I seem to sense the fleetingness of it, knowing he'll be in nursery school in July so I will have less than a year left at home with what will likely be my last baby. He's also so loving and sweet to me, and such a charmer.
A funny story about that-we were at Home Depot and he had run off nearby, when a woman wearing the same colored jeans was shopping nearby. He ran over and hugged her ankles, thinking it was me. When she looked down and he saw that it was a stranger, there was a moment of shock on his face. Instead of crying or looking embarrassed, he took a beat, then played it off as intentional and beamed a giant, flirtatious grin at her, like "how YOU doin'?"
He's trying harder to talk so there's less cave-man grunting and more sweet little phrases he comes up with like this one upon being caught in his first rainstorm- "Yay! Falling water!". He calls Lauren "Tee-ta" now instead of "Lo". He says "Yites!" for Christmas lights, just like Lauren did. ("Yay! I love yites!" He is obsessed with "twash" and has to close the lid of every open trash can he sees. He received a big Bruder trash truck for his birthday, which came with 2 miniature trash cans, and he plays with it every day. Also 4 more trucks.
He likes to say "I WOULD" when he means "would like to". "I would eat! I would that!" "I would cut! I would touch! I would walk! I would eat cake! I LOVE cake! CAKEY!"
At his well-visit, he weighed 36 pounds and was 38 1/2 inches tall (also I never blogged this but at 18 months, he was 36 inches and 34 pounds), which means if he stays on his height-curve, adult-William will be 6' 5"! He eats about 3 times as often as I do, and his favorite treat these days is "shaboos!" (strawberries) or else "dooce" (juice).
He loves to make stacks of blocks and to play with his cars and to take baths with "buboos" and "shahmpoo!" He wants to explore the neighborhood, and has named one of the local squirrels Julia. Her husband or son or arch-enemy, another squirrel who runs around and chases her, is called Paul.
Back to my changing feelings about being home with William, it's gotten easier in the past 8 weeks since I wrote that post, partly because I seem to sense the fleetingness of it, knowing he'll be in nursery school in July so I will have less than a year left at home with what will likely be my last baby. He's also so loving and sweet to me, and such a charmer.
A funny story about that-we were at Home Depot and he had run off nearby, when a woman wearing the same colored jeans was shopping nearby. He ran over and hugged her ankles, thinking it was me. When she looked down and he saw that it was a stranger, there was a moment of shock on his face. Instead of crying or looking embarrassed, he took a beat, then played it off as intentional and beamed a giant, flirtatious grin at her, like "how YOU doin'?"
Wednesday, October 03, 2012
A Vignette of my Mornings
Some days it's easy to play with William and get my work done while keeping him playing nearby and happy and everything falls into place. That happened yesterday. Oh wait, that's because I was out of the house, at my office without him for 4 hours! Other days, like today, he just seems to want some kind of interaction that I'm just not into, like wrestling or throwing a football. And he has to involve me in everything, he can't seem to just stack blocks by himself or zoom trucks around unless I'm participating. I feel bad for him that he's stuck with me and not a "sportier" mother who's more into balls and things with wheels and dirt and worms. (And then start thinking I can't wait for Lauren to get home from school so she and I can do something "girly".)
He's not talking much-he has his words, but mostly those that describe all of the above interests: "ball, truck, bus, BIG BIG ball, bird, bug, mud, dirt, fleurs, plants, rocks, red, blocks, car, I go, I fall down, whee, wow, all done, puzzle, hot, water, dog, strawberry, and shoes." And the favorite catch-all: "Eh". Cave-man talk.
I guess what I'm realizing is we're both getting ready for him to spend time at preschool. I might not be ready to pay that bill every month, but I'm ready to have a little space, otherwise, I get so exhausted here trying to keep him happy and then put him down for his nap, that when he is finally asleep and I have time to do my work (new job assignment at the office, by the way, so even more that I should be keeping track of), all I want to do is rest and not take apart the code on some web page I might get interrupted from halfway through. (So I do it in the wee hours of the night instead, and the next morning I regret staying up so late.) I head to the fridge and eat the "grown up" things I can't consume in front of him because he'd want some and would point and "eh, eh!" at me and do his caveman growl/whine because I wasn't sharing any chocolate, coffee, spicy foods which he would insist on trying and would then look horrified, spit them out and indignantly accuse me- "hot!"
Though we do have lots of little moments of giggling happy, sweet times. And bits of comedy. He tries on other people's shoes and clomps around pretending to be Daddy or Mommy or Lo. When he wants to leave the house, he can't say "let's go", so instead he charges into my closet, tugs on the sleeve of one of my pink shirts-always a Brooks Brothers dress shirt-pulls it down and drags it over to me, pulls me by the hand and gives me that look that means "let's go for a walk". .
There are tantrum moments. when he badly wants to go outside and charge out into the street to chase a truck, and I stop him from himself by bolting the front door with the deadlock where he can't reach it (he can rip the childproof door knob cover off), and he rages at the injustice of not being allowed FREEDOM to just run around by himself. And I feel bad for our neighbors who have to hear this. If I were that single, childless neighbor getting to sleep in on my day off, I'd be hating me and my screaming kid right about now. Today when this happened, I let him have his little tantrum (shutting the windows) and then after a few minutes when it died down, I distracted him by doing a puzzle with him 3 times in a row. Each time we finished, we clapped and shouted "YAY!", high-fived, and then he did the sign language for "more".
But wow, that half hour on the rug took every fiber of my being, to sit and focus on the puzzle with him and talk about it and not reach for my laptop or call someone on the phone or read a magazine. Because WOW, being present with little kids can be BORING. And I know, there are people reading this who are OFFENDED that I admitted that, people who desperately want children, who feel THEY would NEVER be bored with the wonderful magical mystery of every second with their precious child that they love so much.
But the reality? After I've read "My Truck is Stuck" for the two thousandth time, and had the same argument about why it is not a good idea to wear a long-sleeved sweatshirt on a 95 degree day, even if this sweatshirt does have "ya, ball. wed." on it, my mind does wander on to other things that I love so much...
He's not talking much-he has his words, but mostly those that describe all of the above interests: "ball, truck, bus, BIG BIG ball, bird, bug, mud, dirt, fleurs, plants, rocks, red, blocks, car, I go, I fall down, whee, wow, all done, puzzle, hot, water, dog, strawberry, and shoes." And the favorite catch-all: "Eh". Cave-man talk.
I guess what I'm realizing is we're both getting ready for him to spend time at preschool. I might not be ready to pay that bill every month, but I'm ready to have a little space, otherwise, I get so exhausted here trying to keep him happy and then put him down for his nap, that when he is finally asleep and I have time to do my work (new job assignment at the office, by the way, so even more that I should be keeping track of), all I want to do is rest and not take apart the code on some web page I might get interrupted from halfway through. (So I do it in the wee hours of the night instead, and the next morning I regret staying up so late.) I head to the fridge and eat the "grown up" things I can't consume in front of him because he'd want some and would point and "eh, eh!" at me and do his caveman growl/whine because I wasn't sharing any chocolate, coffee, spicy foods which he would insist on trying and would then look horrified, spit them out and indignantly accuse me- "hot!"
Though we do have lots of little moments of giggling happy, sweet times. And bits of comedy. He tries on other people's shoes and clomps around pretending to be Daddy or Mommy or Lo. When he wants to leave the house, he can't say "let's go", so instead he charges into my closet, tugs on the sleeve of one of my pink shirts-always a Brooks Brothers dress shirt-pulls it down and drags it over to me, pulls me by the hand and gives me that look that means "let's go for a walk". .
There are tantrum moments. when he badly wants to go outside and charge out into the street to chase a truck, and I stop him from himself by bolting the front door with the deadlock where he can't reach it (he can rip the childproof door knob cover off), and he rages at the injustice of not being allowed FREEDOM to just run around by himself. And I feel bad for our neighbors who have to hear this. If I were that single, childless neighbor getting to sleep in on my day off, I'd be hating me and my screaming kid right about now. Today when this happened, I let him have his little tantrum (shutting the windows) and then after a few minutes when it died down, I distracted him by doing a puzzle with him 3 times in a row. Each time we finished, we clapped and shouted "YAY!", high-fived, and then he did the sign language for "more".
But wow, that half hour on the rug took every fiber of my being, to sit and focus on the puzzle with him and talk about it and not reach for my laptop or call someone on the phone or read a magazine. Because WOW, being present with little kids can be BORING. And I know, there are people reading this who are OFFENDED that I admitted that, people who desperately want children, who feel THEY would NEVER be bored with the wonderful magical mystery of every second with their precious child that they love so much.
But the reality? After I've read "My Truck is Stuck" for the two thousandth time, and had the same argument about why it is not a good idea to wear a long-sleeved sweatshirt on a 95 degree day, even if this sweatshirt does have "ya, ball. wed." on it, my mind does wander on to other things that I love so much...
Monday, October 01, 2012
Thanking my BlogHer12 sponsors
As I mentioned in the last post, I went to BlogHer'12 in NYC at the beginning of the month. In the blogging world, some people are lucky enough to have corporate sponsors who pay for portions of their trips. In exchange, the companies get publicity for their products.
Well, my conference lodging and meals were sponsored this year, and the sponsors don't have a web presence and aren't even listed in the phone book, and don't need any publicity from me at all. My aunt & uncle, who are some of the nicest people on earth, were my innkeepers.
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Uncle Fred picked us up in Newark on Monday, and drove us back to his house (after stopping at the Bear Mountain zoo, where William made friends with a swan.). He and Aunt Marguerite spent the week in a friendly "favorite relative" competition with my parents. The pinnacle of this was a photo they emailed showing William eating not just one ice cream cone, but two at once!
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They chauffeured, cooked, cleaned and did our laundry and watched William while I was at the conference. On Thursday night, they drove in with me for the Expo Hall portion, and took William to Aunt Andrea's apartment around the corner, then drove me home. On Friday and Saturday, Uncle Fred woke up at 5:00 a.m. each day to get ready and drive me to the train station.
He and Aunt Marguerite took great care of their grand-nephew, to the point that William burst into tears when they left the room, even while I was there. They kept him entertained by endlessly reading "My Truck Is Stuck", and took him on William-tailored adventures, including seeing planes at the local airport, throwing stones in the river, visiting several playgrounds, attending a birthday party complete with a clown, and seeing lots of trucks up close. And one visit to a police car whose driver gallantly turned on the flashing lights for William.
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This year I didn't do much partying after the sessions, I could have, I'm sure my aunt & uncle would have come to get me at the train station at whatever hour I wanted, but I didn't really feel like it. I felt like going back home, to their house. And I am so happy that William had this week to love them even more and to feel at home with them, too!
I can never thank you enough, Aunt Marguerite and Uncle Fred! I would name a building after you, but that's been done before. ;) So here's a blog post dedicated just to you. Thank you a million times for this and the countless other nice things you've always done for me, my whole life! Love and miss you lots!
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Thanks, Dannon Oikos yogurt!
Well, my conference lodging and meals were sponsored this year, and the sponsors don't have a web presence and aren't even listed in the phone book, and don't need any publicity from me at all. My aunt & uncle, who are some of the nicest people on earth, were my innkeepers.
.jpg)
Uncle Fred picked us up in Newark on Monday, and drove us back to his house (after stopping at the Bear Mountain zoo, where William made friends with a swan.). He and Aunt Marguerite spent the week in a friendly "favorite relative" competition with my parents. The pinnacle of this was a photo they emailed showing William eating not just one ice cream cone, but two at once!
.JPG)
They chauffeured, cooked, cleaned and did our laundry and watched William while I was at the conference. On Thursday night, they drove in with me for the Expo Hall portion, and took William to Aunt Andrea's apartment around the corner, then drove me home. On Friday and Saturday, Uncle Fred woke up at 5:00 a.m. each day to get ready and drive me to the train station.
He and Aunt Marguerite took great care of their grand-nephew, to the point that William burst into tears when they left the room, even while I was there. They kept him entertained by endlessly reading "My Truck Is Stuck", and took him on William-tailored adventures, including seeing planes at the local airport, throwing stones in the river, visiting several playgrounds, attending a birthday party complete with a clown, and seeing lots of trucks up close. And one visit to a police car whose driver gallantly turned on the flashing lights for William.
.jpg)
This year I didn't do much partying after the sessions, I could have, I'm sure my aunt & uncle would have come to get me at the train station at whatever hour I wanted, but I didn't really feel like it. I felt like going back home, to their house. And I am so happy that William had this week to love them even more and to feel at home with them, too!
I can never thank you enough, Aunt Marguerite and Uncle Fred! I would name a building after you, but that's been done before. ;) So here's a blog post dedicated just to you. Thank you a million times for this and the countless other nice things you've always done for me, my whole life! Love and miss you lots!
.jpg)
Friday, August 03, 2012
BlogHer 2012, you jealous?
It is really great to be here, but not for the reasons you'd expect. More on that later, but for now, this photo for Desiree, to show one of the less desirable aspects of NYC in August. I'm on the train coming back to my aunt & uncle's house as I post this.
If you just met me at BlogHer, feel free to comment here and say hi. I will write more when it's not by painstakingly pecking on my phone!
Thursday, July 26, 2012
Italian Mama
I was just posting to my cousin Antonio's Facebook wall, and thinking about family and connections and celebrations. Tonio's mother is my "Aunt Anne" who is really my mom's cousin, so we're second cousins but being Italian, we just say "cousins". In our family, you wouldn't get introduced as, say "this is my mother's cousin's stepdaughter" which is who one of my "cousins" actually is! When you're in, you're in.
It's funny, I'm only 1/4 Italian, which thins down to only 1/8 in Lauren's blood, but if you ask her what her cultural background is, she 'll proudly say "I'm Italian!" because it's the most fun part. It's the side that throws big elaborate meals with her favorite cheeses and pestos and lots of laughter and grown-ups drinking wine and talking in big boisterous voices with lots of hand gestures.
Lauren's Nonna's Nonna came from Italy. The family recipes we make the most are from that side. My great-grandparents came here over 100 years ago but they're the most recent immigrants in our lineage. We still have cousins that live in Parma, we visit and correspond with them. There is a town named after the family (or the family was named after the town, we're not sure!) I've been there twice and I've been welcomed into their home both times. Lauren longs to "go back". (She was there in utero.)
We have food words we use from Parmigiana (the dialect my great-grandparents spoke). We say "boo fa" which means to blow on something when it's too hot, and "poo cha" which means to dip the bread in the olive oil. We have a song in Parmigiana that my grandmother used to rub my eyes and sing to me, about the rain. I've never seen any of this written down. I don't know how to spell the words. Our traditional foods for the holidays are (to me) much more interesting than "American" fare. Lasagna at Easter, not ham. About 10 different kinds of antipasti. And all of those desserts, would make my mouth water just to type about!
If you have an Italian mama, you never go hungry. Italian mamas love to see chubby little babies and love to kiss cheeks. I've got a lot of (especially male) grown up cousins who still live at home. Or bring piles of laundry to their mamas on weekends.
I never thought I would turn into one, but now when I look at those little chubby cheeks and KISS them and KISS them, I think "Lauren, William, you can still live with me when you're thirty, that's just fine! Mangia!"
It's funny, I'm only 1/4 Italian, which thins down to only 1/8 in Lauren's blood, but if you ask her what her cultural background is, she 'll proudly say "I'm Italian!" because it's the most fun part. It's the side that throws big elaborate meals with her favorite cheeses and pestos and lots of laughter and grown-ups drinking wine and talking in big boisterous voices with lots of hand gestures.
Lauren's Nonna's Nonna came from Italy. The family recipes we make the most are from that side. My great-grandparents came here over 100 years ago but they're the most recent immigrants in our lineage. We still have cousins that live in Parma, we visit and correspond with them. There is a town named after the family (or the family was named after the town, we're not sure!) I've been there twice and I've been welcomed into their home both times. Lauren longs to "go back". (She was there in utero.)
We have food words we use from Parmigiana (the dialect my great-grandparents spoke). We say "boo fa" which means to blow on something when it's too hot, and "poo cha" which means to dip the bread in the olive oil. We have a song in Parmigiana that my grandmother used to rub my eyes and sing to me, about the rain. I've never seen any of this written down. I don't know how to spell the words. Our traditional foods for the holidays are (to me) much more interesting than "American" fare. Lasagna at Easter, not ham. About 10 different kinds of antipasti. And all of those desserts, would make my mouth water just to type about!
If you have an Italian mama, you never go hungry. Italian mamas love to see chubby little babies and love to kiss cheeks. I've got a lot of (especially male) grown up cousins who still live at home. Or bring piles of laundry to their mamas on weekends.
I never thought I would turn into one, but now when I look at those little chubby cheeks and KISS them and KISS them, I think "Lauren, William, you can still live with me when you're thirty, that's just fine! Mangia!"
Tuesday, July 24, 2012
The tail end of summer: adventures thus far
We're more than halfway done with summer break, which seems crazy! The reason it's so short this year is that LA Unified decided to move the start date to August 14th. Last year they started the 2nd week of September. So everyone has 3 weeks less of summer. They say they're doing it to keep high school, middle school and elementary school on the same schedule, and they want high school to get out earlier so that students will have more time to prepare for national standardized tests-AP, SAT, etc.
What this has meant for us is a rather condensed summer. Lauren spent the first week of it at Camp Nonna & Poppy, swimming and enjoying herself. William and I were there for the first 2 days of that, then I came back to go to work, and she remained there the rest of the week. My parents drove her to a halfway point from their house in San Diego, we met in Orange County and drove her home. She did not want to come back.
Then she had 3 weeks of STAR camp which she absolutely LOVED. We decided to go car-free as much as possible and walk or bike to the school. The trip there and back became one of our favorite parts of the day. What a luxury, to be able to walk to school every morning! (Instead of the 20 mile round-trip drive we do during the year!) The campus was just over a mile away. I wish it was our our home school, I would send her there in a heartbeat.
We signed her up for one week of "Supercamp", which was just the fun stuff, nothing academic, and 2 weeks of summer school-classes in the morning, fun stuff in the afternoon. All 3 weeks at the same campus. Every morning I would drop her off and watch her scamper over to her friends with excitement, (Meanwhile, William was thrilled each morning to run over to a cage full of basketballs and kickballs, and try to shoot a basket, climb on the "big kid playground" and to try desperately to pass for a 5-year old so that he could join the camp, too!)
The 2nd week of camp, I dropped her off as usual and at pickup, I asked her what she learned at summer school. "Oh, we didn't really do anything yet, probably they'll start the learning part tomorrow." The next day, she went on and on about the science project they had done, and begging me to please enroll her in this school, which was so much fun, much more interesting than her school. Third day, I asked her again what they had studied, and this time "I don't want to talk about that, Mommy!" and she told me instead all about the game of Capture the Flag, and the storytelling class and the nice kids she sat next to. On Thursday, they went to an amusement park.
On Friday, we were running late so she missed circle time and the kids had already broken into groups and gone off to the classrooms. One of the directors said "Oh, hi Lauren! The Supercamp kids are over this way." When I said "No, she's in Summer School", the woman got a funny look on her face. I then realized why Lauren was having so much fun at "school"-she had been cutting class! Turns out, they had been marking her absent at Summer School each day, and handwriting her name on the attendance sheet at Supercamp. The camp staff was mortified when they figured out what happened, and they gave me a partial refund (because Summer School costs more).
Evidently, the first day, Lauren went to sit on the same bench she'd been sitting on the week before, and no one caught the mistake. By the time she realized what happened, she also realized that if she could get away with it, it would be much more fun to stay where she was. So, age 6, her first experience cutting class!
What this has meant for us is a rather condensed summer. Lauren spent the first week of it at Camp Nonna & Poppy, swimming and enjoying herself. William and I were there for the first 2 days of that, then I came back to go to work, and she remained there the rest of the week. My parents drove her to a halfway point from their house in San Diego, we met in Orange County and drove her home. She did not want to come back.
Then she had 3 weeks of STAR camp which she absolutely LOVED. We decided to go car-free as much as possible and walk or bike to the school. The trip there and back became one of our favorite parts of the day. What a luxury, to be able to walk to school every morning! (Instead of the 20 mile round-trip drive we do during the year!) The campus was just over a mile away. I wish it was our our home school, I would send her there in a heartbeat.
We signed her up for one week of "Supercamp", which was just the fun stuff, nothing academic, and 2 weeks of summer school-classes in the morning, fun stuff in the afternoon. All 3 weeks at the same campus. Every morning I would drop her off and watch her scamper over to her friends with excitement, (Meanwhile, William was thrilled each morning to run over to a cage full of basketballs and kickballs, and try to shoot a basket, climb on the "big kid playground" and to try desperately to pass for a 5-year old so that he could join the camp, too!)
The 2nd week of camp, I dropped her off as usual and at pickup, I asked her what she learned at summer school. "Oh, we didn't really do anything yet, probably they'll start the learning part tomorrow." The next day, she went on and on about the science project they had done, and begging me to please enroll her in this school, which was so much fun, much more interesting than her school. Third day, I asked her again what they had studied, and this time "I don't want to talk about that, Mommy!" and she told me instead all about the game of Capture the Flag, and the storytelling class and the nice kids she sat next to. On Thursday, they went to an amusement park.
On Friday, we were running late so she missed circle time and the kids had already broken into groups and gone off to the classrooms. One of the directors said "Oh, hi Lauren! The Supercamp kids are over this way." When I said "No, she's in Summer School", the woman got a funny look on her face. I then realized why Lauren was having so much fun at "school"-she had been cutting class! Turns out, they had been marking her absent at Summer School each day, and handwriting her name on the attendance sheet at Supercamp. The camp staff was mortified when they figured out what happened, and they gave me a partial refund (because Summer School costs more).
Evidently, the first day, Lauren went to sit on the same bench she'd been sitting on the week before, and no one caught the mistake. By the time she realized what happened, she also realized that if she could get away with it, it would be much more fun to stay where she was. So, age 6, her first experience cutting class!
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