EYYY-YAAAAAAAA!!

Josh usually does the bath and bedtime routine for both kids these days, but tonight he had some work to get done and he's been on his own a lot with me traveling for work, so I offered to put Dash down to bed.  I read him his stories and tried to put him in his crib but he immediately got hysterical, crying and screaming and standing up in his bed ("standing baby" is known around here as bad news.  If the kid is sitting or laying down, there is some hope of calming.  Standing baby is rarely calmed, we find).  He kept shouting over and over "Eyy-yaaaaa!  Eyyy-yaaaa!"  I was dumbfounded.  This baby is usually such a happy guy and so glad to get in his bed to sleep.  Then Josh came to my rescue and told me that after stories, Ella always comes and gives Dash a good night kiss. Sure enough, Ella ran in, gave him a huge hug, and said "Night night, Dashy!"  That was all the little dude wanted.  He hugged her back, smiled through the residual sniffles from his frantic outburst, and happily let me put him in his bed where he drifted off without another peep.  The bond these two have these days is so amazingly sweet I can barely stand it.

Saying night night to the backyard before bed.

Two mysteries solved

As Ella has gotten older and more independent, we no longer keep her in our eyesight every second of every day.  This means that she often plays by herself in different rooms and does a lot of tasks herself without our supervision. I view this in a very positive light; not only are we done changing her diapers, but she can go to the bathroom entirely on her own these days which is certainly A-OK with me. However, two mysteries have been plaguing me lately and I have finally connected them to Ella and her more independent world.

First, whenever Ella goes to use the bathroom, she is gone for a long time.  Like 5 or 10 minutes long.  This is a lifetime for a four-year old.  Since she almost always has to go potty while we are in the middle of a meal, it is pretty common for her to leave the table when everyone is half-finished and to return after we're done.  I cannot possibly imagine what takes so long, especially since she hasn't yet discovered reading on the toilet. 

Second, the cup I keep next to my bathroom sink tastes terrible!!  No matter how often or how well I wash it and rinse it, it always tastes like soap.

Well, wouldn't you know that I recently went into my bathroom to see what was taking Ella so long, and I found her on her stool vigorously pumping hand soap into my water cup. She told me gleefully that she likes to wash things for me ("with soap!!").  This apparently extends to my toothbrush, various combs and brushes, and even the sink itself.  But apparently my cup is very very dirty and needs a LOT of soap.  

Both mysteries solved. 

Half birthdays

When I was growing up, my parents started the tradition of celebrating half birthdays with my sister and me.  I think the celebration came about when, as rather small children, we found the wait in between our actual birthdays to be just too long.  So we started baking round cakes that we would cut in half and then enjoy as a half birthday celebration.  Conveniently, my sister and I each had a very good friend (sisters themselves) with birthdays at the same time as us.  Big sister S was 3 days older than me and her little sister E was 1 day younger than my sister.  So we would make a full cake, cut it in half, share one half with their family, and keep the other for ourselves. 

My parents still like to celebrate half birthdays with us, most notably last year when they showed up at my house with half a cake they had actually purchased in that form (apparently Weaver Street Market will sell you half a cake.... who knew?) and completely surprised me. I had forgotten it was in fact my 33.5th birthday, and as a busy mom to young kids and thus little attention ever actually on me, I was especially touched by the surprise. 

Dash's one and a half birthday rolled around last week, and I think the spirit of summer overtook me in my planning as I made the day an even bigger deal than his actual birthday.  I took the day off work!  We went all the way to Raleigh to the super awesome children's museum!  We had lunch out with Josh!  We had a full-on dinner party on the porch that evening with friends and family!  And, of course, we had cake!

Since we have no friends with perfectly timed half birthdays to his, I had the conundrum of how to bake half a cake from, well, pretty much all cake recipes intended to be full cakes.  I finally settled on baking one cake round (which I then cut in half to make a half-moon half cake), and then making mini cupcakes with the rest of the batter to freeze for future moments of extreme chocolate need.  The half cake was adorable and the half birthday boy quite enjoyed that we all sang happy half birthday to him.  We sang it several times in fact since every time we stopped, he grinned, clapped, and said "Mo! Mo!"

The half birthday boy

Half birthday fun at Marbles Museum in Raleigh

 

Wadee

No matter where he is in the house, when Dash hears me open the laundry closet, he comes tearing around the corner and down the hall to the laundry area yelling "Wa-dee! Wa-dee!" (wa-dee being his word for water).  He loves to watch the window on the washer as it fills with water and he also loves to push the buttons on the washing machine.  I'm working on teaching him to be helpful in putting clothes into the washer or transferring them to the dryer, but so far, he is much more interested in pushing the buttons on the machine to get the 'wa-dee' to start coming in.



Trying to get in with the wadee

Clean

You know what never gets cleaned around here?  My car. I really like having a clean car but with two kids who frequently eat snacks on the go, smear muddy shoes on seats as they climb in, and bring home glitter-shedding craft projects, my car is pretty much always a mess these days.  On the list of things that need to get done to make our household run, though, cleaning out the car or even just washing the outside is about at the bottom.

So for Mother's Day, one of my gifts was a complete detailing of my car by our friend K's company. K and his truck come to my house and detail every inch of my car inside and out. Josh set up the appointment, took out all the extraneous stuff from my car (no small job), and arranged his own schedule so that he took the bus to work, leaving me his car for the rest of the day so I didn't have to put the carseats back into mine after K was done.  This was pretty much the perfect present for me.

Last Day of School

Friday was the last day of school at Ella's preschool.  This is her second year at Beth El Preschool and we have just been so happy there, both from our perspective as parents and clearly from her perspective as a student.  It's a small school, only four classrooms, and it just radiates warmth and creativity and free expression and kindness.

I took a picture of Ella on her first day back in the fall and then again today.  I can see in the photos how much she has grown and changed in the past year.  I don't see it day to day or even month to month as much now that she isn't a baby, but she is clearly so much taller, leaner, and just more kid-like now than she was back in September. These pictures make me smile, too, because so clearly some things never change - our favorite dresses are still by Tea and her hair, well, it's still just crazy.

First day in Early Preschool, Fall 2011

Last Day in Early Preschool, Spring 2012

A few weeks before school was finished for the year, Ella told me that there was going to be an End of the Year "Ice Cream Social Party".  She was super excited although pretty unsure on the actual logistics. 

Me:  What will we do at the ice cream social? 
Ella:  Ice cream social PARTY.
Me:  OK, what will we do at the ice cream social party?  Will we eat ice cream?
Ella: <wide-eyed with wonder> I don't know!  Do you think we will?

The last week came along all too quickly and all of us parents showed up to the ice cream social PARTY to enjoy, yes, ice cream, and an adorable performance of the childrens' favorite songs from the school year.  If you haven't seen 12 four year-olds wiggling and giggling and pretending to be boa constrictors, well, you are missing out.  It was funny and sweet and adorable and just made my heart so full that Ella has been in a classroom full of such love and joy all year.  As one mom said, these kids are just plain buddies.  As an end of the year gift for the teachers, I had photobooks printed filled with photos of each of the kids with quotes from them about their favorite things about the school year (best quote "We almost every single day have different kinds of crackers!") and with many pictures of the class in action that one of the teachers took throughout the year.  As the teachers unwrapped the books, the kids swarmed around them and proceeded to pore over the books in a giant heap on the classroom floor.  I invited parents to order their own copies as well, and Ella has been reading hers in bed every night since it arrived.  It's just precious to see - it takes me back to the hours I spent with my high school yearbook at the end of my senior year of high school and that feeling of reliving the fun through the pictures and stories.

 The classroom always has awesome art and projects by the kids on the walls, the windows, and hanging from the ceiling.  Here's the butterfly garden on the ceiling from the last week of school.

 Ella and some pals singing their favorite songs from the year
at the end of the year "Ice Cream Social Party"

She's a wily one

Tonight at bedtime, Ella, Josh, and I were discussing the furniture in her room.  We had determined that she needed a bedside table with a lamp and a place to put her water cup, her books, and the other things she likes to have nearby at night.  I was thinking out loud about how we could arrange her room so that she could have a table next to her bed, and I was saying that I didn't know how much space she'd have to play if we moved her bed to another spot with more room for a table.  Ella looked at us and said "Well, you could, you know, just get me a bigger room?"  I laughed thinking she meant we needed a bigger house and she, very seriously, with her head cocked to the side in her oh-so-Ella way, said "You know, you could take this room and I could, you know..." and she subtly pointed downstairs, clearly implying we should (obviously) move her into the master suite and move ourselves upstairs to her little room.  She's a wily one, that Ella.  She made it seem like SUCH the obvious solution to our problem.