Becoming a good mom, one hour at a time
One year ago we moved into our West Linn home, which, thanks to Peeper, we still call New House.
We’ve been here long enough that people have stopped asking us how we like our “new” neighborhood, house and town. But I’m just as grateful today as I was on that first day we moved in.
When I graduated high school, a group of friends and I went camping alongside the sand dunes at Honeyman State Park. We went skinny dipping, we played drinking games, we flirted—and, gathered around a campfire, we burned the spiral notebooks and three-punch paper we had filled with notes on biology, history and literature.
As remnants of high school went up in smoke, I felt ready for a new chapter to begin.
I’m considering doing the same with our giant stability ball—because that’s apparently what I do when sleep training works.
Kiwi is powered by breastmilk.
She rolls, she giggles, she kicks, she chews on anything she can get her gummy mouth on.
She has dimpled cheeks and rolls on her thighs.
She watches her sister play, stares out the car window on drives, listens to books and turns toward any sound to figure out precisely what made that noise.
Up until last week, when Kiwi tried her first food, all that growth, activity, curiosity and learning was 100% fueled by breastmilk—magical, powerful, nourishing breastmilk. Read more
Yesterday Kiwi got a series of vaccinations. I had hoped the shots would make her sleep—after all, after the first round of ’em two months ago she got her longest stretch of shut-eye ever.
Alas, it was not meant to be.
So as I’m feeling like a braindead zombie today, I stumbled across a weekly smile link-up hosted by Trent at Trent’s World.
We must have been on the same page because this week my mom, Eric and I also tried sharing our day’s high and low at dinner. It felt a little silly, but it was nice to hear the highlights and dips of my loved ones’ days.
Here, then, are a few smiles from my week. Read more
This week something crazy happened:
My girls got big.
Kiwi ate her first food. (No, I’m not counting the snow.) She’s acted ready for weeks now, but I just hadn’t gotten around to it, and I wasn’t keen on the possibility of messing up her sleep, reflux and sensitive stomach even more. But this week we made it happen.
I had planned on pureeing sweet potatoes, as I did for Peeper’s first food almost exactly two years earlier, but I didn’t manage to cook them. So I just mashed up a banana with a fork, swirled in some breastmilk and called it good.
(Isn’t that funny how a baby’s first food is such a big deal with your first kid, and with the second one, not so much?)
Kiwi seemed more confused by the banana than anything, but she didn’t hate it! She had several bites and Peeper even fed her a few. And when Kiwi took a bite, Peeper clapped and cheered! It’ll be fun to continue to offer foods and witness her palate—and appetite—expand. Who knows, maybe Kiwi’s culinary adventures will even inspire Peeper to eat more (though I’m not holding my breath).
Peeper also met a milestone: She transitioned to her big girl bed.
“I’m showing you two, right?” Peeper asks, holding up her index and middle fingers to show how old she is. She hasn’t quite mastered holding up a half-finger, though technically she should: She’s 2 1/2 years old.
Eric and I routinely marvel at how freaking awesome she is. She makes me laugh, like when she warned Eric, “Don’t get a head wedgie!” and when she blows a raspberry and says, “You tooted with your mouth.”
In the days leading up to Christmas, Peeper kept sneaking glances out the window. “It’s going to snow soon,” she said.
Yet the rain continued, and snow refused to accumulate.
The lack of powder was even more cruel considering a huge snowstorm stopped her Aunt Amy and Uncle Luke from driving down for the holiday. At least Peeper got to see all the snow on FaceTime when we talked with my sister.
Then finally, finally, over the weekend it snowed!
I recently read my friend Deb’s post about being grateful, and her spontaneous list inspired me to count what I’m thankful for, too.
Tales from the Motherland is hosting a LinkUp for bloggers to post their own gratitude missives. The instructions are easy:
If you’d like to join in, here’s how it works: set a timer for 10 minutes; timing this is critical. Once you start the timer, start your list (the timer doesn’t matter for filling in the instructions, intro, etc). The goal is to write 50 things that made you happy in 2015, or 50 thing that you feel grateful for. The idea is to not think too hard; write what comes to mind in the time allotted. When the timer’s done, stop writing. If you haven’t written 50 things, that’s ok. If you have more than 50 things and still have time, keep writing; you can’t feel too happy or too grateful! When I finished my list, I took a few extra minutes to add links and photos.
To join us for this project: 1) Write your post and publish it (please copy and paste the instructions from this post, into yours) 2) Click on the blue frog at the very bottom of this post. 3) That will take you to another window, where you can past the URL to your post. 4)Follow the prompts, and your post will be added to the Blog Party List. Please note: the InLinkz will expire on January 15, 2015. After that date, no blogs can be added.
Will you join in? All it takes is 10 minutes!
The end of the year is the perfect time to reflect on the many, many good things in my life. I’m looking forward to 2016, but first, here are 50 small things for which I’m grateful.
I hope everyone who celebrates Christmas had a joyous holiday! Ours was the busiest we’ve ever had, but all the visitors, noise and merriment meant we made even more memories.
My family always decorates the Christmas tree with packages upon packages of tinsel—so much that visitors have said they can’t see the ornaments beneath. This year Peeper joined in the Christmas Eve tradition.
She tossed handfuls of silver strands onto the tree, making “spiderwebs” on the branches. The lower boughs still bear thick clumps of tinsel—I couldn’t bear to redistribute them more evenly. After all, having wads of tinsel is a family tradition, too, dating back to when my younger sister was about Peeper’s age.
This was Kiwi’s first Christmas. She was more interested in the wrapping paper and boxes than opening presents, though she did love the Christmas tree and its tinsel.
Kiwi had changed so much since the last time most of our loved ones saw her. The holidays are all about being with family, so it was even more special that we got to spend uninterrupted time together.
On Christmas morning, the kids dug into their stockings first. Peeper pulled out trinkets and little toys—and glitter glue.
She couldn’t be persuaded to open presents until after she’d emptied a half-dozen tubes of glitter glue on her art projects. Forget toys and surprises; give this girl some Dollar Store glitter glue!
All the anticipation, excitement and breaks in routine took their toll, though. Peeper threw more tantrums than usual, ate hardly anything and skipped naps four days in a row.
At least she worked on her Christmas song repertoire in bed.
[vimeo 150297625 w=500 h=281]
Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer from Catherine Ryan Gregory on Vimeo.
Christmas is one of my favorite times, but it’s probably good it comes just once a year. This holiday’s cheer will be plenty to get us through until next year.
“Tis the season of lowered expectations,” I recently texted a dear friend and fellow mom of two. Because in this month of hyped-up hopes and dreams of how you’d like to celebrate, the reality is it’s hard to keep up—especially when you have a few kiddos in the mix.
So this year I tried to scale back what I planned to do at Christmas with my girls.
It was hard to minimize expectations because Peeper is so into Christmas. If she’s refusing wind-down time before bed, I mention Christmas jammies and she sprints to her room. I bribe her not with candy or TV time but with the privilege of putting an ornament on the tree. She literally jumps up and down when I return from the mailbox: She wants to open “Christmas mail.” I’m pretty sure I could call asparagus Christmas trees and she’d dig in.
(Hey, that’s actually a good idea. I may try that.)
Yet when the day we’d planned to cut our own Christmas tree turned into a deluge, I said we could go to the lot instead. And when Kiwi was having a hard morning—and therefore I was having a hard morning—I suggested Eric take Peeper. And when the day got later and we were approaching Peeper’s nap time, I agreed that he should go by himself. And when it took the entire day to get the darn tree into the house, I didn’t mind (too much). And when we put up ornaments piecemeal throughout the week instead of decorating the tree as a family, I sighed but realized I could live with it.
See? Lowered expectations. Read more
