Baby Dolls, Teddy Bears, and Teething Rings

Audrey has always loved having things to snuggle. Ever since she was a baby, she would fall asleep clutching things. Usually soft things.

But really, anything would do.

She has a sweet pea doll that she loved so much that we had to make sure she had an extra one at Grandma's, and we had an extra one at our house, too. Until she realized we had two. Then she had to have them both.  She loves to carry her sweet peas, a blanket, and a pillow around the house.

Recently, there has been a strange development. A couple of weeks ago, Lydia was hiding in our storage ottoman, and Audrey climbed on top of it. Lydia quickly flung it open, throwing Audrey off. She was not able to get her arms out in front of her in time, and her forehead broke her fall on the wood floor with a horrible thump. Her forehead immediately swelled up with a ping-pong ball-sized lump,l and she had a really nasty looking purple and yellow bruise for quite a while. The night it happened, she complained that it hurt, so I gave her some children's Advil and let her hold a little ice pack we have that fits in a pouch on a stuffed horse.

Ever since then, she has insisted on sleeping with the horse. If I can't find the horse, she asks for, "Nother ice thing," and a teething ring will suffice. She freaks out if she wakes up in the middle of the night and can't find her ice. Tonight she got mad at me because I brought her one that wasn't frozen. "Dis not cold!" I have tried to convince her to just snuggle her sweet peas, especially when she complains that she's cold, but she won't have it. In fact, she insists the sweet peas are not in her bed, but on the floor by her bed. She wants the ice instead. I'm hoping she'll grow out of it pretty soon, and have told her it's just plain weird to sleep with ice, but she shows no signs of giving it up. Every night she remembers and she asks for her ice. I suppose there could be stranger things to sleep with? Right?

Little Updates

Lydia
Tonight for dinner we got a rotisserie chicken from the grocery store. We generally don't eat meat at home except for fish, but every once in a while, we make an exception, like corned beef last week for St. Patrick's Day and a chicken today because the cupboards are bare due to Jayson being so busy with taxes and me being gone this past weekend. We needed something quick, so the chicken was a good idea.

The girls love meat when we do have it, and as we were eating, Lydia said, "Mmmmm! I just love chicken when it's dead."

Audrey
Audrey has an attitude. She gets mad when people don't do exactly what she want when she wants. If I ask the girls to clean up their toys, Lydia will usually oblige, or pretend she didn't hear me. Audrey will cross her arms, look me right in the eyes, and say, "No." Then she might give those arms a little shake and say, "Hmmph." We have made a game out of clean-up, though where we pretend they are robots and I give them their robot orders in a robot voice while holding my arms stiffly at my sides and tell them exactly what to do. ("Robot Lydia. Please pick up that book and put it on the shelf.") Audrey will sometimes get into it, but Robot Audrey doesn't follow orders very well.

The other day, I was driving somewhere with the girls. Audrey said something and Lydia told her she was wrong and Audrey looked out the window and said quietly and full of rage, "Don't talk to me." I'm really looking forward to the teen years with her.

Charlie
Charlie now says Daddy, Lydia, and dog. She also waves and gives high fives. She will not, however, say "Mommy." Lydia and Audrey both said, "Hi" for their first words. I blame Jayson. I think he's coaching her all day long to say "Daddy," and to just stick her tongue out and spit when she sees me. She does give good kisses, though. Nice, big, open mouth ones that start with her tongue plastered to your face and end with her biting your cheek.

Where Has She Heard That Before?

The other day, the girls seemed to be fairly occupied playing in the living room, so Jayson and I went upstairs to the bedroom to... put away laundry. Come on. Get your mind out of the gutter. This is a family blog.

The laundry situation is pretty chaotic around here. Jayson does not do laundry. He does pretty much everything else, but laundry is one thing he won't do. Mine is bathrooms, and I think that's a fair trade. We average about four to five loads of laundry per week. I try to do a couple loads during the week, the rest on Saturday, and then fold on Sunday. Sometimes it gets put away into drawers immediately, sometimes it sits in the baskets for a while. So, we had a couple baskets that had been sitting awhile that needed to be put away.

One bonus of putting the clothes away is that I found the missing Roku remote in the bottom of my basket. I had been folding clothes on Thursday night and I'm pretty sure that's when Charlie put it in there. Missing remotes are something that enrages me, so I was pretty happy to finally find it on Sunday. After it had been missing for less than a day, I was already telling Jayson that I was going to order a new one, but luckily Lydia reminded me we could watch Netflix on the Wii and I didn't have any shows in my Hulu queue, so I calmed down a bit and decided to wait a few days, like Jayson suggested.

So, on Sunday evening as we folded clothes, we could hear Lydia and Audrey chattering away, but Charlie was mysteriously quiet. Jayson yelled downstairs, "Hey, Lydia, what is Charlie doing?" Then we heard Lydia let out a loud sigh and scold, "Mommy. I don't know WHY you leave your things out where you KNOW Charlie can get them. UGH!" Jayson peeked downstairs and yelled back up to me, "You need to get down here." I went downstairs to see Charlie happily spreading the quizzes and tests of three of my classes all over the living room floor. She seemed pretty proud of herself. I apologized to Lydia and promised it wouldn't happen again.

Hula Hooping Hilarity

Jayson had a bowling tournament last night, and the girls and I were getting a little restless, so we went to Target. It's our happy place. Lydia found the hula hoops and begged me to buy one. Then she tried to do it and I was surprised she could actually keep it going for a while. So, I considered buying it.

Then, Audrey gave it a shot and her technique was so incredibly amazing that I decided we had to buy it just so I could show Jayson. So, we got it.

Here are the girl hooping it up this morning.

Lydia first, with her long introductions that she now has to do for every single video.

Audrey. Really. I don't think you're ready for this.

Charlie gave it a whirl too.

Our Kids Watch TV. It's OK.

We are not parents who outlaw TV for our kids. There have been many times when turning the TV on saved my sanity. If we just went grocery shopping and have a whole carload of groceries to unload as well as lunches to prepare so everybody can eat and the kids can get their naps in at a decent time, sometimes the easiest thing to do is just say, "Go turn on a show while Mommy and Daddy get things put away and get lunch ready." We don't want them making a huge mess with crayons and dress-up clothes right before lunch and naps, we just want to quickly get things in order so we can get tired, cranky kids down for naps.

We let Lydia watch a show during her quiet time. She gave up naps shortly after turning two, so now when the other two nap, she lays on the couch and watches a movie or show and every once in a while will fall asleep. Often one of us lays with her. We also let the girls watch a show before bed. It has become part of our routine, and they know that after their bedtime show, it's bedtime. We snuggle up on the couch under a blanket and watch our show and it's really nice just sitting down and relaxing. We also read books every night before bed, but TV is nice for relaxing as well. TV is considered a privilege in our house, and it can be taken away for bad behavior.

At first, we weren't sure how to handle the TV situation. We weren't sure how much was too much, or what shows were OK. Lydia has developed a taste for Scooby Doo, Phineas and Ferb, and SpongeBob, which aren't my favorites (OK, SpongeBob makes me laugh sometimes). We generally kept PBS on as much as possible.

Then one day, shortly before Lydia turned four, she was in my office after school while one of my AP Statistics students was taking a test. The student brought his test to me to ask me about one of the hypotheses he had written down. When he walked away, Lydia looked at me and said, "I know what a hypothesis is. It's an idea that can be tested." Thank you, Dinosaur Train! I started to realize that I didn't need to feel guilty for letting her watch TV. She was actually learning some good things from it.

Lydia is also a very dramatic child with a full imagination. She frequently used to watch TV shows, and then tell a story about it with her as the main character. It was funny seeing what she would come up with. Well, funny until she told my mom about how she has two moms. She told her that one died, so now she has a new one. No thank you, Cinderella, Snow White, and all other Disney princess movies. I also once overheard Lydia asking Audrey, "Audrey, if you were a robot, you would tell me, right?" After further investigation, I discovered she got the idea from SpongeBob. Audrey has also started to get into TV and will sing along with songs on Barney and imitate some of the things the kids do.

I do see TV shows helping the girls learn and expanding their imaginations. We definitely don't watch TV all day long, and we restrict certain shows, but TV is not evil. I love watching TV. I also love reading, running and biking. I'm OK, and my kids will be too.

What NOT to Do After the Kids Are in Bed

A few nights ago as Jayson and I were starting to fall asleep, we both heard some rustling on the roof. In what is a great testament to both of our dispositions and imaginations, Jayson insisted some THING was on the roof or perhaps even in the house, and I told him it was probably just the wind. (Another great testament to our dispositions and imaginations was the first time Lydia ever slept through the night and Jayson woke me up and asked, "Should we go check on her?" and I, in my sleep-filled bliss, said, "Nah. If something happened, it's too late now." Yes, this man went on to have two more kids with me.) Anyway, back to the story. Jayson ended up going outside with a flashlight and came back to bed to tell me it was a raccoon, but it had ran away.

Cut to tonight. I was upstairs rocking Charlie as I gave her a bottle before bed and I heard the rustling again. After I got her down, I ran downstairs to tell Jayson the raccoon was back. He went outside to look around, and returned to tell me the raccoon was indeed on the roof again. We both looked at each other, trying to figure out what to do next. "You should shoot it with a BB gun. If we had one," I suggested. Jayson lovingly thanked me for the wonderful, oh-so-helpful suggestion. Then he disappeared to the garage. A few minutes later, he returned with two softballs and told me to get my shoes on and hold the flashlight for him.

So, we went in the back yard and I shined the flashlight on the raccoon and we watched it go over the roof to the front of the house. We ran around to the front, and I spotted the raccoon to the side of the roof. Then it just kind of bobbed down. "It's gone, but I don't think it went to the other side," I told Jayson. He grabbed the flashlight and walked to the side of the house and waved me over to see the tail of the raccoon hanging out the louver vent on the side of the house, right above Charlie's window. He pulled his arm back, preparing to throw the softball, and I offer him some more very helpful advice, "You better have good aim and don't hit the window." He hesitated for a minute as we watched the raccoon disappear into the roof and the flashlight caught its beady little eyes as it stared back from us from inside our house. While we stood in the snow outside in the dark and watched it. We looked at each other again. "Let's call an exterminator."

Snapshots

Two short moments from the day...

When I was at work, Jayson told me to remind him to show me Lydia's "new move" when I got home. So, while the girls were eating dinner, I asked him to show me the move and he waved me into the living room. Then he proceeded to lick his pointer finger, stick out his hip, and touch his finger to his butt cheek while saying, "Ssssss." Yes, apparently, Lydia has picked up some sass. Jayson too.

Tonight Audrey sat on the potty and started to pee and then for some unexplainable reason, leaned back on the seat, spraying the bathroom with pee. I screamed, "Why are you doing that!?!?!?" and she cried. I tried to ask her why she would sit back like that, but she was all upset about me freaking out about the pee spraying all over the bathroom that she couldn't answer me. I hope it was a one-time thing.