Dreams & Bubbles

Tonight Becca (our neighbor) had a pasta party for her field hockey team. We had about 25 high school girls in the backyard at the bonfire. Your father felt uncomfortable tending the fire without me or Becca's mom there with him. He said he didn't want to be that "creepy weird guy" hanging around high school girls. I told him to get over it. In 13 years this will be our lives. He has a daughter who will have her friends over to our house.

For the past few days I have been thinking a lot about 'teenage Nora'. I know we won't be all Gilmore Girls but I'm still excited to see the woman you will become. Will you play sports? Be in the drama club? Will you still be a girl scout? I'm saying still because it will not be option in elementary school. We are a girl scout family. That's just the way things are. Maybe you'll be into riding horses or dancing. Or singing. Or better yet robotics!

Oooooooooo the possibilities.

Is it bad that I couldn't get rid of some of my favorite college clothes? I packed them neatly away for you. Just some t-shirts, fun prints, a dress or two. Things you will probably not wear but for tonight I can dream. The future is wide open and it's fun to dream.

You are obsessed with blowing your own bubbles. Most of the time you only get one or two since you blow too hard. During this bubble blowing you concentrate so hard. I can see into the future. Your facial expressions like that of a girl so much older, so much wiser. And for a fleeting moment my dreams come to life in front of me. Then the delicate bubble pops and you are my year old tot again.

Life is really only fleeting moments that float away and disappear as fast as they come. As much as I try to hold onto bubbles, they always pop in my hand and disappear.

Beware of Silence

I have not been updating lately. There are two very good reasons: 1. School started and my life exploded with meetings and failing technology and needy teachers. 2. Daddy went away on business leaving me without our digital card reader for the camera. Plus I was doing the single parent thing all week. All meals, all pick ups, all drop offs, all clean ups, all bath times /bedtimes... you name it, I did it! I would never want to be a single parent!

Let me share with you a little nugget of wisdom I learned this week. BEWARE of SILENCE. If its quiet, something is amiss. I learned very early in the week as I was juggling making dinner, taking care of the pets, cleaning up from a hectic morning. You were underfoot the entire time needing juice, a snack, me to open your crayon pouch, pick you up for a snuggle. Doing all this around a hot stove and sharp knives was difficult. But no accidents. Praise the Lord! You and I sat down to dinner, we chatted. We ate. We stared off into space.

Exhausted, I began the clean up. Dishes, pans, sticky trays and bibs. I was in the kitchen when I realized, you weren't bothering me. No Nora underfoot. Huh. I listened. I heard you "singing" in the other room. Hmmmmm. Maybe I shouldn't mess with a good thing. I continued on with the dishes until I needed to wash out your dinner cup. I asked you to bring me your cup from the table. A moment later you come toddling in with it. I take it and with a side glance I notice something odd. You toddle off and I follow you back to the stairs where you were sitting with a balloon and a permanent marker! You had not only colored the balloon with the marker, you also colored your outfit (ruined) and your body. Clearly you had pushed a chair over to the table, climbed up the chair, on top of the table to the center where we have keep some pens, markers, pencils. You choose the one marker you KNOW you not allowed to use... climbed down and sat on the step, pulled the cap off and began coloring.

By 6:30pm we were in a bath and I was scrubbing your art off your body.
Now I know when I don't hear you or see you... the odds are you have gotten into something you shouldn't. Toilet paper dunked in the toilet water, aquafor cream all over the side of your crib and changing table. Any other time you play loud with your toys, trying to engage anyone around. Now I know when it goes quiet.... I better go get the paper towels.

It doesn't look so bad:

Better View:

Did you notice the mark on the face? It was one of three!


Here you try and hide the marker behind your back. As if you weren't already caught...


Let's take a moment to mourn your "Busy Bee" outfit. I tried. Permanent marker. PER-MAN-ENT. Sigh.

Planes, Trains, Motorcycles and Dinosaurs! Rawr!

I'm not sure when you started showing an interest in vehicles. You love toy cars, planes, trucks, motorcycles, trains. Anything on wheels that goes. I could deal with this. Bought a few cars and trucks etcetera. Fine. You love to roll them around the wood floors. Push them, crash them, line them up.

But then you began to like dinosaurs. It started with, "what does a dinosaur say?" You would respond with a resounding "RAWR!" Ok that's cute. I bought you a very scary looking dinosaur at a consignment sale for 50 cents. Because it was 50 cents.

I thought you would never really play with it. For one it is frightening looking.

Exhibit A:


Second, dinosaur play is not as intuitive as rolling a car on the ground. Apparently, you also know what dinosaurs do.

Exhibit B:


You did not learn that behavior from Barney!

In the waiting room of my doctor's office on Friday, you were quite the sight. Cute little girl in pig tails crashing cars together and a dinosaur destructively stomping through it all. A lady commented, "girls make good truck drivers too!" Girls make even better engineers...

You can choose any career you want though. No gender stereotypes will stop you. They haven't yet and as long as I'm around you will pursue whatever your interests are without reservations.

I guess I'll have to start learning those 'saurus' names pretty soon.

17 Months and Counting

So you had your 17 month old "birthday" last week. I'm behind on life. I haven't even fully unpacked from California yet!

I'm being lazy since I went back to work and including pictures from our trip to the dog park with Owie. We went to the Culver City dog park the first day we were in L.A. It had a two-tiered water fountain. One for people and one on the ground for dogs. At first you played in the dog fountain since it was on your level, but then Aunt Molly lifted you up so you could take a long drink out of the people fountain. I thought the pictures captured you in the moment very well.

17 months is not that different than 16 months, except you have remarkably increased your ability to mimic. Mimic games, mimic speech. If I say a word you can repeat it exactly but you don't necessarily remember it for future use. We're working on that. "Open" is a new favorite and you use it correctly without prompting. You also love the number 2 and love counting... 1, 2! You even try to hold up two fingers. Now when you jump in the pool or go down a slide I say: "1,2,3, GO!" and you wait for it and get the biggest smile on your face as soon as I start counting. You follow two or three step directions. You love to play perfection and will even put some of the pieces in their proper places. Everyday you mimic new behaviors. I guess this is the stage where I have to be aware of my actions and words.
You are a joy and an active creature that loves to empty out boxes, bags and drawers. Junk from my purse or gym bag is just strewn across the floor. At first I was blaming the dogs. Nope, its all you!

17 months, wow! We are so grateful you are happy and healthy and growing!

Disneyland Birthday

Today was my birthday. It was a horrible day starting with the 1am teething wake up call from your fever riddled body to the school wide network crash at 7:30am and 1st day with students to 5pm traffic jams. The day was just one disaster after another.

I came home to Daddy and you over at the neighbor's house. Together you were making dinner for all of us: Belgian waffles with whipped cream and strawberries. Yum! It was a bright point of my day :) Did I mention that no one at work wished me a happy birthday? And that another staff member had a birthday today also and she got a bunch of balloons, card and cake. No one even recognized me at all. Sad.

But then I remembered Disneyland. We went not even 2 weeks ago, seems like months. My mom picked me up a FREE button that declared it was my birthday. A Disney "cast member" wrote my name on the button so everywhere I went people exclaimed, "Happy Birthday, Meghan!" I was always taken aback thinking... how do they know my name? And it isn't my birthday yet. But then I remembered the button. I eventually took it off after I got annoyed with people constantly wishing me a happy birthday. Funny. Maybe I could've become annoyed today... we always want what we don't have... only to discover it wasn't really what we wanted in the first place.

Today was awful with a few shining moments. Disneyland was full of shinning moments with a few awful ones. You are my constant shinning moment. Teething and all. You were cranky during my birthday dinner and I had to hold you. As you were burning with fever and I was snuggling you back into slumber... as your chocolate hands and mouth are leaving sticky residue on every limb of my body, I can't help but be extremely humbled and grateful for you and Daddy. Having you as a daughter is worth a lifetime of bad birthdays.

Tasty

One of our gardens has exploded with black eyed susans. It happens to be the state flower of Maryland. Now I know why, it spreads like crazy. Mental note for next year: thin out the flowers before they take over again. You along with our backyard bees are in love with the flowers. I brought out the camera to snap a few shots. I show you how to smell flowers. I thought you were mimicking me but when you turn around, I saw you were actually eating the black center of the flower. Yuck! Someone mentioned to me afterwards that I should have called poison control to make sure the flower wouldn't make you sick. To tell the truth, I never thought of it. I was just so surprised and taken back that you would eat it!

This situation is sort of like parenting. Not what I expected but way more entertaining then I could've ever imagined!
Lots of gardening notes for next year, such as not planting so many pumpkins! We are in the midst of planning a pumpkin picking party to get rid of the 20 or so pumpkins we have growing in the back garden.

Fall is almost here!!!

International Friends

It all started in the Santa Monica McDonalds.
It was lunch time on a random Wednesday and we were not in the mood to battle the crowds. McDonalds was close and convenient. There was a very large group of Asian women and their daughters close to us.
I really don't know what happened. You approached their block of tables and smiled and waved.

Whoosh.... the girls swarmed you. I look over and you are surrounded by these girls and they're trying to touch you, grab you, get you to smile and clap. They were completely infatuated with you. Nonni, Nonna and I just watched in amazement as you obliged each request. You performed but you also enjoyed yourself. You wanted to talk to them, allow them to touch your hair, hands, face.

Not that unusual, huh? Well these girls and their moms were from China and the extent of their English was "hi" and "bye." Then a mom is kneeling next to you putting on the smallest bracelet I have ever seen. It's red rope with a charm on it. The mom said, "from China." You can see on your wrist in one of the photos. Some of the moms snapped some pictures of you with the girls which all of you posed for but I couldn't communicate well enough to get the girls to pose again. I should have asked you to help me.

The Chinese girls caused such a raucous that the McDonalds almost shut down. The girls were squealing and laughing and so were you. People stopped and watched this exchange. It was quite a mob scene. I have no idea what made the Chinese girls go absolutely nuts over you. About 10 minutes went by and their tour guide came to pick the group up. All the girls waved goodbye and you reciprocated.
Nora, you truly don't discriminate against people. Those girls, for that moment, were your best friends. You were completely open, willing and excited to interact with them. If only world leaders could take a page out of your book...

Look at the bracelet!