Fourth of July Tidbits

Things have been so busy around here that I haven’t had time to keep up with regular blog posts. Hence this little list of tidbits.

The Pool

We’ve joined the Maplewood pool, which, according to everyone I’ve talked to, is what everyone does during the summer. “Have you joined the pool?” “You have to join the pool.” “Everyone goes to the pool.” So we, too, joined the pool. (A little technology aside, for readers twenty years from now to chuckle over: The first day we went, intending to just check things out, we were surprised by the fact that no day passes were available; so I did the whole registration on my iPhone and showed them the email receipt to secure our entrance. That whole process would have been unthinkable even five years ago; it will seem archaic, what—next year?)

Anyway. Lucia loves, loves, loves the pool. It’s actually a pool complex, all outdoors, consisting of four pools: a real diving pool with two platforms, an Olympic-sized lap pool, a kid pool going to about three feet deep, and then a kiddie/baby pool that gets no deeper than about a foot. This is, of course, where we spend our time, and it is wonderful. There are two water-shower-sprinkler things, and some little fountains that shoot up. Greta, too, has been having a great time splashing and kicking like a tiny maniac. Few things are cuter than a tiny baby with swim-wet hair. The challenge, of course, is making sure we go enough to get our money’s worth—which means I need to go during the week with the girls. It’s been daunting enough just loading everyone up to get to Whole Foods. I think I can do it, though, and it seems like the ideal way to spend some of our long summer afternoons.

Greta

Greta is now crawling. She started doing a real crawl—as opposed to just scooting around on her bottom, or doing a lying-down-sitting-up-lying-down inchworm maneuver—last week. She doesn’t go very fast or far yet, but she is crawling, and she is also very, very, very determined once she sets her sights on something. She will crawl methodically toward her target (Lucia’s bibi! a pile of screws and bolts!) again and again, each time seeming certain that this will be the time I won’t scoop her up and place her back out of harm’s way.

Today, on the 4^th of July, her third tooth broke through—she has three all in a line on the bottom now, and her wide, toothy grin just got toothier. She is just too cute. But she’s breaking out of her easy-happy-mellow-baby stage and getting a little feisty, too. When I (or, more often, Lucia) take something away from her now, she gets angry and lets us know it. She does not like the fact that she is too little to play with some of the things Lucia likes, like tiny plastic counting bears or small super-bouncy balls. Her greatest thrill is when the stars align and she and Lucia find something to play with together. This morning, both girls were doing puzzles. Well, Lucia was doing puzzles. Greta was chewing on the pieces. Still, they sat there together, surrounded by puzzles, and it was pretty cute. Little People are also a frequently shared toy, though somehow Lucia always ends up with about fifteen of them while Greta gets just one, which she chews on determinedly while Lucia pushes her cache around the room in the Little People schoolbus.

Lucia

Lucia is really into keeping tabs on what’s going on. When I’m fixing Greta’s dinner, she’ll say, “What’s she HAVING?” It’s not enough to tell her she’s having sweet potatoes. “I want to SEE them,” she’ll demand, and I have to show her the food cubes in the bowl. When she came downstairs this morning, she saw that we’d relocated a small rug from the office to the front hall. “That goes in the office,” she instructed. She’s quickly learning her way around the new house and seems happier day by day.