Skipping Town

We spent all last week in New Hampshire, a nearly eleven-day getaway that was truly the calm before the storm that is the next three weeks. Although both Lucia and Greta returned to their characteristic New Hampshire ways and rose god-awfully early in the morning (Greta reliably by 5:00am; Lucia by 6:30am), there’s something peaceful about rising with the sun up there, with nothing but quiet outside the windows, and the occasional pheasant in the yard. We spent all the time we could outside, sitting on a blanket with Greta while Lucia played in her ball hut, splashed in her pool, and enjoyed new discoveries from the barn—this time, a rocking-horse-type object. Lucia was particularly interested in the frogs this time, and we spent lots of time down at the pond, where she dipped her toes in the water and tossed clover and weeds to the frogs that were merely inches away. Sometimes, they’d leap at the plant, mistaking it for a bug, which thrilled her. One time an earthworm oozed o...

Dear Littlest One, Seven months! Every month I’m amazed that you’re not a tiny tiny little infant anymore but a growing, curious, active little baby. You’re sitting up on your own now, though I still won’t leave you sitting by yourself since you tend to do the occasional face-plant or tip-over while reaching for a toy. You are eating food, and loving it—rice cereal, sweet potatoes, avocado, squash, peas, and pears so far. You still gaze intensely and longingly at “real” food, though, and I know these purees aren’t going to stay around for long. You have your first tooth, bottom-center left—it broke through the surface a day or two before your seven-month birthday. You’ve been fussier than usual (still not very fussy), so I knew something was going on. And you’ve entered that cute phase where you approach any object with a monster-ish open mouth, ready and willing to gobble up, or at least chew on, anything in your path. Your raptor screeches are epic. I’ve never heard an...

One of the reasons I love Park Slope is that it’s full of families. You can’t walk two feet without kicking a (thousand-dollar) stroller. Kids and parents are everywhere, and I’m sure I’ll never find an equal to this baby-raising community. Friendly conversations, commiserating smiles—it’s all great. But along with this massive collection of families is chaos and overcrowding—and I’m not even talking about schools, which is too far off in our lives to be a Reason but is certainly among the most important things driving us away from New York. Anyway, again I’m talking about playgrounds. It’s just too much. There are just too many kids. It’s overwhelming for me, not to mention Lucia. A playground nearby, which was being renovated for the past few months, opened this weekend; we’ve braved it twice, but it is just insane. It looks like some sort of gigantic event is going on—a kiddie rock concert, or something—but it’s just a regular day. I’ve gotten wimpy now that I have two kids; th...

I haven’t been keeping up with my Reasons posts, but believe me, every day I write them in my head. Whenever I trip over something, or can’t find a place to put something, or experience something in the neighborhood that annoys or frustrates me, I tell myself I need to write about it on my blog. That hasn’t happened. I’ll try to be better, starting today. Park Slope is an expensive neighborhood. And yet it is still full of trash. Some of it is just par for the course with city living, like the bags piled by the curb on trash day. But sometimes those bags break, spilling trash all over the sidewalk. When you have a toddler who likes to spot things on the sidewalk and add whatever it is to whatever collection she’s building, this is just not going to work. I look forward to not having to walk past bags of garbage when we move to the suburbs. On one particularly outrageous morning at the playground, the playground workers hadn’t yet arrived to empty the trash cans and do a genera...

Today was a gloomy, rainy day, and Lucia and I spent a fun hour this afternoon painting for the first time. She loved it: dipping her brush in the paints, rinsing it in a cup of water, drawing on various sheets of construction paper. At one point, I went into the bathroom, and she followed me as she always does; but as soon as she entered the bathroom, she exclaimed, “I have painting to do!” and ran back to the living room. Andrew got home from work late, and Lucia and I were already in her nursery, reading stories. But I asked her if she wanted to show her paintings to Daddy, and she was just so excited—she ran at top speed into the living room, and I could hear her excitedly showing Andrew each of her masterpieces, jabbering incomprehensibly about using a paintbrush and rinsing it in water and putting paint on the paper. Pretty cute.

Dear Little One, You’re now closer to three than you are to two—a scary prospect, both because you’re getting so big and because I’ve heard terrifying things about the terrible-threes. We have our terrible-two moments, undoubtedly—your screams are so piercing that they leave my ears ringing, and your irrationality (you want to get back in your crib! no! you want to get up! no! etc.) is exhausting. Fortunately, these episodes aren’t too common, and for the most part you are delightful to be around. You’re still a skinny little thing—I can see your ribs—but you’re growing, already into 3T clothes (mostly because you have long legs and a long waist). I still worry about your eating, though you’re long past the stage where I can trick you into eating more just by reading books distracting you in other ways. You’ll eat, or you won’t, and there’s not much I can do about it. You aren’t particularly picky, though we haven’t tested you much. Sometimes you decide you like unexpected t...

This weekend, Mom and Dad came for a quick visit, and we were fortunate enough to be able to arrange to show them our new house. Andrew and I were so excited for the trip—we hadn’t visited the house for many weeks, and no one besides us had seen it yet. We were anxious to show it off, and eager to hear confirmation that we’d made the right choice. When we arrived at the house on Saturday morning, our broker wasn’t yet there, but cars were in the driveway. People approached us: the owner’s daughter, son, daughter-in-law, and grandson. They were at the house to do some work and packing and hadn’t known we were coming. It felt like an illicit meeting, pre-closing: should our lawyers have been present? were we trespassing? There is something inherently odd about the process of turning a house over to a new family, particularly when the house in question has been lived in by one family for so many years. Even if selling is the right or only thing to do (as it seems to be in this case, ...

We had visitors last week—Andrew’s sister and dad were here last weekend; his dad stayed on for the week; and then this past weekend we drove up to New Hampshire to open the house and enjoy our first blissful weekend away from it all. We were there only from Friday afternoon through Sunday afternoon, and a good bit of the first day was spent opening the house (i.e., Andrew and his dad cleaning out unmentionable awfulness while I sequestered the girls outside), but we still managed to take in some of the peace and rest we love so much. We were outside nearly the entire time we were there—Lucia remembered lots of things from last summer, and though it was too cold to get out her swimming pool, she still got to swing, collect stones and dandelions, play with her ball hut, and ride around in her car and tractor. She could not have been any happier running around in the grass. Greta chose to celebrate our stay by beginning to sit up on her own for very long stretches (usually until she...

Lucia has made it her job to sing “Twinkle Twinkle” to Greta every time she goes to sleep, two times a day for naptime and then again at bedtime. This means she spends a lot of time hanging out with me while I nurse Greta in our dark bedroom. I always sing to Greta while she nurses: a few renditions of “By and By,” then on to “Great Big Stars,” finishing up with “Rainbow Connection” and “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” before I begin rocking her to sleep to “Sleep, sleep, sleep sleepyhead…Sleep, sleep, snuggle in your bed…” Once Greta stops fidgeting and starts getting drowsy, I put her down in her crib. This is Lucia’s cue to grip the top of the crib, hoist herself up so she’s standing on the mattress and looking down at Greta, and sing “Twinkle Twinkle.” When she’s finished, we both say “Shh…shh…” and leave the room. Except leaving the room is not always easy. Because Lucia must hang out while Greta nurses, she’s taken to bringing a selection of snacks and toys with her into the...