Crazy

When I first used to go and watch Ken race, I had trouble identifying him as all the like-dressed cyclists flew by each lap. If it weren’t for the hair poking out of the helmet, I might have stood there the whole race failing to see the person I went to watch. Now, when Ken gets dressed for his rides, Nora knows he is about to go and starts to say bye bye. And when we see anyone on a bike as we drive around town she says, “DaDa” (or lately she’s been saying “Matt” since she knows Ken rides with Matt a lot).

The other morning Ken got dressed in his red riding “uniform” and went outside. I loaded Nora in the car for our morning errand and Uncle Ian rode up to the car window, dressed in the same “uniform” as Ken. Nora looked, waved and said, “Dada.”

One might think she just got confused since Uncle Ian was dressed in the same outfit as Ken. Maybe Nora was just having the same trouble I used to have at bike races. But really this stems from the larger problem Nora has with the times Ian and Ken are together.

It usually goes like this: Uncle Ian walks in the door. Nora stares and clings to me. Ian smiles his big friendly smile. He clearly sounds different than “dada.” But Nora stares and we can all see the wheels turning in her little head. Who is this guy that looks so much like my dad? How can there be two dada’s all of a sudden? Is this guy going to suddenly steal me away and pretend I’m his?

All of this prevents Nora from playing happily with Ian until some time has passed and those wheels in her mind have reassured her that her dad and Ian are two separate people.

And as Nora works this all out in her head, Uncle Ian smiles and laughs in his typical fashion. He took early dibs on the “Crazy” Uncle title. And as soon as Nora realizes just how crazy he is, she will be quick to welcome him instead of spending many minutes locked in her skeptical stare.

Imagine All the People

My favorite thing to watch Nora do right now is play with her dolls or her Fisher Price Little People. It is such a glimpse into her mind. Just now as we were passing the last moments before nap time, she gathered all her little people together, put them on her fingers one by one, had them converse in the most interesting babble conversation (I only understood "hi" as one of the words, the rest are a mystery), kissed each one and put them "nigh night." It is so amazing to me to see her actual imagination start to blossom in a way that I can perceive. And this kind of play reminds me that she is such a sweet baby.

And now she is napping. Hopefully for a while. Hopefully alone in her crib. We'll see. Back to school with kids tomorrow and I certainly need a nap too!

Hot Pads

I am enamored with Ken's new iphone video feature. And since I always think Nora's being cute, I always wish I was videoing it to show everyone else how cute she is. To capture her cuteness forever.

This video is of one of her new games. She takes a hot pad, places it on her leg, counts to two - "two, two", and then starts singing "row, row" while rocking and then she claps for herself very excitedly.

Enjoy!

Today it was me

I woke up at 5 today. Nora slept until 6:30.

I didn't get up or out of bed, but I opened my eyes, checked the time and then had trouble quelling the start of school thoughts that started bombarding my brain. Bulletin boards, photo copies, lesson plans (that's not important!), desk arrangement, cart building, supply organizing. The items on my to-do list seemed to go on forever. And they prevented me from sleeping "late" on one of the few mornings where Nora gave me that opportunity. Cruel irony.

I am still not ready. I will be going in tomorrow to clean and organize and to do some of the last photocopying. I have planned my lessons and placed my desks (and Ken built my cart!), but I still don't feel ready. Hopefully I will when Monday morning rolls around.

We are clearing some of the hurdles I wrote about last time. Ken went to the grocery store. Nora's diaper rash is so much better and she hasn't had another 4:30 day (writing that will surely curse me...). They started giving us more written notes at daycare to tell us what is going on with her each day. She seems to be napping at least 2 hours at daycare each day. And next week is furry animal week. And they are going to jump around in furry animal slippers! How fun!

Oh. And she's not allergic to peanut butter. They fed her peanut butter crackers at daycare and she was still alive when we picked her up.

Clearing the Hurdles

Nora ate cheetos for dinner tonight. They were the “natural” kind, but still a horrible horrible dinner. A symptom of the larger problem – we have not established our school year routine yet. Thus we have no plan for dinner each night.

We didn’t feed her the cheetos on purpose. Ken was snacking on them and thus Nora wanted them. He gave her one. I said, “oh-no,” knowing that one cheeto is never enough for any normal human being. And Nora proved to be normal, wanting cheeto after cheeto until they were “ga-ga” from dad’s bowl. So when I offered her three different choices of things at dinner, she was already full.

This cheeto dinner made a great ending to a day that began at 4:30 am. I hope that it is Nora’s teeth and the change of routine that is causing the sleep disruption. She was doing so well! I was feeling so rested! But I guess good things have to come to an end. And hopefully bad things do too.

As I’ve written earlier, routines are really important to me, and I think to Nora too (as evidenced by the 4:30 wake up). This first real week back at work is so hard because, not only am I taking Nora to daycare full days for the first week, but I am not at school for my normal routine. I have to be at different places at different times for different trainings, all of which seem pointless to me. Next week, when the kids come, my routine will be a bit more set, but I have to survive this week first.

So far Nora is a star at daycare. They told me last Friday that they hoped to have a cloning closet this week so all the new toddlers would be as agreeable as she is. She didn’t cry at all last week, not once when I left and not once all day while I was gone. She didn’t eat all of her lunch or snack, but I think she is doing better this week. And she did cry yesterday when one of the teachers was giving someone else some attention after a fall. Nora wanted attention too.

She comes home so happy it makes me happy too. She jabbers about buses and taxis all the way home in the car. She comes into the house and immediately finds something fun to play with. I wonder if I think she is so adorable just because I’ve missed her, or if she does just get cuter as she learns new things every day. Or maybe she is trying to be extra cute so I don’t hate her when she cries at 4:30 am.

Aside from the routine being all out of whack and messing with our healthy eating habits, despite her cuteness and resilience, it just isn’t the same to be away from Nora all day. Tonight before bed, Nora whimpered and said “butt.” She has a terrible diaper rash, and as I put layer upon layer of aquaphor on it I couldn’t help but feel so guilty. If she was here with me her little butt wouldn’t be so red. I would change her diaper more often since I know she is teething.

So the first hurdles of the year back at work. We will get over them just like we did last year. It is just painful having to start the journey.

Nora - Top Chef

Nora was busy cooking today. She had quite a system, with the cup and the water and the stirring. And thanks to our new iphones, we can now record all of her amazing feats!

Day One

I cried. She didn't.

That's the whole story.

RIP Summer Vacation

It’s the night before Daycare and all through the house, the mother is stressing, but not her spouse.

So tomorrow is it. Then end of my summer. And Nora will go to daycare and Ken will get his quiet house back and all will return to the chaos of normal that is the school year.

I took Nora to daycare to “visit” on Friday and I’m really glad I did. She was a bit shy at first – she clearly remembered where we were. The director just took her from me even though Nora was clingy. She didn’t cry. She sat on the director’s lap and said some unintelligible words and took it all in. After a brief visit to her new room – the “butterflies” – we went to the office to fill out paperwork. Nora left my side willingly to go and play with one of her teachers from last year who was in the office covering bulletin boards. And I breathed a huge sigh of relief.

While that has made my weekend much less stressful than if she had been a screaming mess during the visit, it hasn’t made me stress free. I am not nearly as anxious as last year. I am not shedding tears into my keyboard right now. I enjoyed my day with Nora today (despite her early waking and short nap).

But every now and then I do stop and think. Will she cry in the morning? Will the teachers understand her words? Will she nap?

And the big one – will she eat?. Can I send my own snack even if they give them snack? When will she drink her milk? She grazes all day with me and I help feed her still. She is no pro with a spoon or fork. So my biggest stress is what to send her for lunch. What will she be in the mood for? What can she feed herself?

No one can answer these questions for me right now (unless anyone cares to comment with some brilliant ideas on what toddlers eat for lunch), so I just have to tell myself that we’ll figure it out over the week, over the month and all will be okay.

Nora is a social baby – she likes other kids – as evidenced from our trip to the pool today where she said “hi” to everyone and their parents and shared toys with a 23 month old boy. She’ll be fine at daycare tomorrow. Maybe if I tell myself that enough throughout the day, I’ll be fine too. Maybe.

Our First Compromise (Maybe)

Ken says we’ve compromised – Nora and I. I don’t think she’s really capable of compromising, but it’s nice to think that is why I still have to nap with her every day. Not because I failed at Operation-Nap-In-Criib, but because mother and daughter have made the first in a long series of compromises.

The nap still traps me. I avoid the car after 11 – or I do some crazy dance, song, toy throwing in the car to keep her awake. I schedule my mornings around errands that will fit in before 11, before the danger of ruining the nap sets in.

At the start of the summer, Nora refused to sleep in her crib at all during nap time. We “fixed” that. Now she walks very willingly to her room when I tell her it’s time for her nap. She brings her baby, puts her in the crib, I turn on her white noise machine, we sing three songs, I put her in her crib and she sleeps. All by herself.

For 45 minutes.

And then she wakes up and cries and doesn’t stop until I go and get her and bring her to my bed and sleep with her. And she sleeps for another hour or more. With me. In my bed. Mostly while holding onto or lying on my arm to make sure to prevent me from reading.

I found this “compromise” doable. I had my 45 minutes of freedom. I needed a nap myself most days, and it’s really nice to sleep next to a tiny, nice-smelling baby (when she isn’t thrashing around).

Would I have liked to have the whole 2 hours to myself, yes. But at least now I know that Nora still makes some of the same faces she did when she was asleep as a newborn. She makes a very annoying squeaky sucking sound with her thumb in her mouth while she sleeps. She hates to have covers from a bed even brush against her toe (but she has to fall asleep with a blanket on her?). And she is immediately happy when she wakes up with me next to her. And when I accepted the compromise I was too. Most days.

Lesson Plans

At the start of the summer I walked Nora out of daycare for the last day and wondered how I would possibly keep her entertained all day. At daycare there are two or three adults, eight of nine other children, lots of toys, tons of activity. Sure, I had spent many a busy weekend day with Nora, but I didn’t really feel confident that I could successfully fill our days in ways that would please both her and me. I wondered in my first blog, what do you do with an 18 month old all day?

I think I attacked my summer days with Nora much as I attack my days in my classroom. I needed a “lesson” plan. We had our routine that made me comfortable – confines to work within. I wonder how much Nora realized the routine. I tried to vary our activities enough to keep both of us interested. I tried to be patient and loving and kind even when I was tired. Being a mom is a lot like being a teacher. And I learned that being with one toddler is as tiring as being with 100 teenagers who I get to send home at the end of the day.

Nora and I settled into a routine pretty quickly. We would wake up, eat breaksfast and watch Elmo, take a walk and visit the chickens down the street, the “doo doo’s” as Nora calls them. Then we would play outside and inside until about 9:30 and then we’d go on some sort of outing – park, shopping, errands. I tried my best to keep her awake on the car ride back, came home, ate lunch around 11:30, read a book or two and started nap time around noon (more follow up on naptime in another blog…). In the afternoon we would go swimming or to Gymboree or to run around in Mimi and Papa’s at first empty house. Then we’d come home, eat dinner, play and go to bed. Writing it that way makes it sound so easy…

What entertains a toddler generally changes every 10 minutes, sometimes every 2 minutes, but I found some things that Nora generally enjoyed and were no-fail entertainers in every mood.

Stickers. For our plane ride I bought Nora a book of reusable Elmo stickers. It seriously entertained her for an hour on the plane. No joke. It was the best 8 dollars I’ve ever spent. The book said it was for ages 3 and up, but I got it anyway since we would be right there with her. The key is the reusable stickers. They are thick and don’t rip and, just like they claim, you can reuse them many times. When we got back from vacation Nora invented the game of sticking her stickers to the floor and to herself. Since they are reusable they don’t stick places you don’t want them to. If it weren’t for stickers I would have gone crazy many days. I love stickers!

Water table. In April, Ken’s parents got Nora the water table I had been looking at for her. It seemed like the perfect toy for the Texas heat. And I was right. It is a great compromise to the pool since you don’t have to commit to a swim diaper and all that jazz, but she can get wet, put rocks in it, splash, play with toys in it. This was a daily activity for us. And you can tell from the photo that five months after getting it, she still loves it as enthusiastically as she did on day one. That’s not true of many of her toys.

Shoes. Nora, as mentioned in an earlier post, is a shoe lover like her mama. Each evening and some morning she would change shoes and walk around the house in laps looking at her feet. The key was to hide a pair of her shoes for a while, bring them out as new and exciting, and then she would want to walk around and stare. She also loved to walk around in my shoes. This was pretty difficult and dangerous, but she managed pretty well.

Picture Books. Nora’s vocabulary is exploding. I was keeping a list of all her words, but now it’s up to 52 and she says so many new things every day that I can’t keep up with it anymore. I credit this to some of her picture books. Today in the car she said, “taxi.” If we lived in New York that might not be a big deal, but we don’t see that many taxi’s around my part of Austin. She learned this from one of her picture books. And she loves to sit and read them. She had all the animal sounds down and some tricks with animals that don’t make sounds.

Then there’s all the normal stuff – the crayons, the tickling, the chasing, the dolls and puzzles. And there are the times that the only thing she’ll do is cling to me and refuse to be “entertained” by anything, even stickers.

And, perhaps best of all, were the times when Nora just entertained me. There were many of those – she’s a pretty funny little girl.