Skipping Town

At Target yesterday, I was buying Lucia some socks when she announced loudly, “I WANT A PRETTY DRESS. A PRINCESS DRESS.” I bought her a ruffly $5 skirt, which she is wearing today over her pants. “I’m a princess! I’m a ballerina!” she said this morning. I felt the first stirrings of a long-dreaded princess phase today. But it’s hard to sustain that dread when that ruffly skirt, and Lucia’s happy prancing, are so cute…

This weekend, thanks to the kind offer of a friend of Molly and Ian’s, we spent three days in Bethany Beach, DE, at a lovely house just steps from the beach. Somehow, all six of us—Molly and Ian, Andrew and I, Mom and Dad—managed to be free for this weekend, and we were all looking forward to it immensely. Andrew and I planned to leave early Friday morning. In the wee hours, however, Greta threw up after nursing. Around six-thirty, she threw up again. For some reason I decided she must then be hungry, so I gave her a piece of toast, which she promptly threw up. We hadn’t showered or packed the car, and I was already covered in vomit. We knew Greta was the latest victim in the crazy bug that had already gotten Lucia, Andrew, and Robert. Greta was falling asleep on my shoulder by nine, so we decided to set out anyway. Then our third-floor bathroom sink, which usually leaks, began to gush water, and Andrew tried to wrench a bolt, but made it worse, and it was rapidly filling a tr...

Last weekend was our block party, which was a lot of fun. It’s pretty elaborate—everyone donates money, brings food, etc. Some people play music. And the organizers always rent a bounce house for all the kids. When we arrived, of course the bounce house was the first thing Lucia noticed. It was full of shouting, bouncing kids. I was certain we’d go nowhere near the bounce house this year—most of the kids on our street are school-age—but Lucia immediately declared that she wanted to go into the bounce house. I took off her shoes, and then she crawled up the ramp and squeezed into the bounce house, where she jumped a few times with a huge grin before scrambling back out. She did this a few times, testing the waters, and that was that: she was in for good, and we nearly couldn’t get her home. She bounced; she held hands with another little girl and bounced; she did somersaults. She screamed and squealed. It was mania in there, but she loved it. Greta continues to be an insanely good ...

Dear Little One, You’re growing up. Over the past month or so we’ve weathered quite a few storms, featuring wall-shaking meltdowns and a terrible dose of sibling rivalry. For weeks, your usual affection for Greta disappeared and was replaced by pushing, hitting, kicking, toy-swiping—all manner of awfulness. It was heartbreaking to see you act that way, so out of character; and heartbreaking to see its effect on Greta, too. Knock on wood, it seems the worst has passed. For the past couple of weeks, you’ve been back to your usual self—fun, giggly, funny, full of chatter and songs, and, most importantly, fond of Greta once more. The meltdowns have been so rare I can count them on one hand. What flipped the switch? I don’t know for sure. I read a book called Siblings Without Rivalry that gave me some ideas for how to lessen some of the frustrations you understandably feel with this tiny baby who’s crawling through your stuff and then putting all your toys in her mouth. I’ve tried...

Today was Lucia’s first day at nursery school. Or preschool, or co-op preschool, or whatever it is they call it these days. This was a huge decision, one Andrew and I have been debating for a few months now. We thought the decision had been made for us—by June, when we moved out here, the places we researched were all full. But I made a few queries, put us on a couple of waiting lists, and then finally found an open slot at a very small co-op nursery school that I’d heard about from both new friends and neighbors. After a tour and a nice talk with the director, we made the leap. “Leap” might be a bit too dramatic a description; it’s just two days a week, two and a half hours a day. Still, it’s her first experience with a group of kids without me around, so it is a big deal for sure. I stayed the whole time today, not because I didn’t think Lucia could handle it but because we hadn’t officially enrolled; I’d agreed with the director that we could attend the first day to be sure t...

Last week, I decided it was time: Lucia’s hair had crossed the line from wispy and charmingly uneven to rat’s nest. The back was actually matted beyond the help of any comb. So I took her to a kids’ salon for her first haircut. I expected screaming and hysteria—such has been her near-three-year-oldness for the past few weeks—but she did splendidly. She wouldn’t sit down in the firetruck-seat, and she wouldn’t let the cape get near her, but she was calm and unafraid during the haircut and loved the little barrettes the stylist put in her hair at the end. She loved the lollipop she got afterwards even more. A big success. Before... After (coloring at the hair salon)...

Funny stuff comes out of Lucia’s mouth these days. Here are a few favorites: “Mama, are we stuck?”: She asks this nearly every time we’re in the car, and it means, “Are we lost?” Clearly she’s picked up on the pitfalls of driving around a new town with someone with no sense of direction. I am, obviously, often lost. “Can I have some-a one-a your water?”: This means, “Can I have some of your water?” She hasn’t quite picked up on the differentiation between “some of” and “one of” (as in: one of your chips, one of your grapes, etc.). So she just says both. “I want the poopie chocolate!”: This is a family favorite. In an effort to encourage Lucia to do #2 on the potty, I bought her some M&Ms—different from her standard chocolate-raisin reward. She gets M&Ms only for #2. She clearly understands the different types…just not quite the right way to ask for them. “Mama, that’s not your seat!”: Again with the driving. We drive a lot these days—a not-unexpected thing ...

More summer recapping... We made four trips to NH this summer. I believe I wrote about the first trip, when we faced mice and ticks and etc in abundance. On our next trip, we were joined by friends from Brooklyn, who gamely braved the “rustic” conditions and enjoyed our laidback, do-nothing, grill-every-meal way of life out here. We returned once more in July to join Andrew’s family briefly; and then spent the rest of the weekend with Katherine and Patrick. And we returned from our latest trip yesterday, feeling rested and happy despite getting in very late and not getting much sleep the first night. It was wonderful to be there just as the seasons are turning; the Black-Eyed Susans and daisies from our last trip were gone this time, replaced by acres of goldenrod and lots of mint gone to purple-flowered seed. We couldn’t go down to see the frogs in the pond because bees had built a nest on the dock; but Lucia loved pushing her doll in the swing in the apple tree, and Greta wa...

I haven’t been blogging as much this summer as I should have. And so, now that summer’s over, a brief recounting of some of the highlights: A Trip to Fairport At long last, Andrew, the girls, and I traveled to Fairport, NY, in August to visit my grandmother and aunt. The visit was long overdue, and though the drives up and back were not easy, we survived (barely, on the return trip), and were glad we went. We stayed in a suite at the Hampton Inn, and the girls did fine. Both enjoyed the free breakfast in lobby each morning—Lucia always chose a waffle, and Greta was introduced to the wondrous world of Cheerios. We played in my grandmother’s yard and on the porch and even went to a family reunion, which was unfortunately cut short by a rainstorm. I thought it would be strange to return to a place where I spent so much of my childhood with my own children in tow, but things have changed so much—the state of my aging grandmother’s house, my grandmother herself—that it seemed fitti...

Greta is growing up by leaps and bounds these days. The biggest change of the past week is that she will no longer eat anything from a spoon but yogurt. I’d been feeding her multigrain cereal with pureed veggies for part of her dinner, which she’s always loved—and then, one day last week, she saw the spoon   approaching and dramatically turned her head away, her nose in the air, craning her neck and pressing her lips together. Same thing with the mashed tofu and banana that she used to love—a tossed head with eyes squeezed shut: Please, madame, get that filth away from me. She will now eat only regular food, with her fingers. Rice, broccoli, pasta, beans, cheese, bread, carrots, fruit, mac and cheese, sweet potato cubes. We’ve left baby food behind. We are, however, still nursing four or five times in twenty-four hours. And I’m supposed to wean her in two months? Greta can also now wave goodbye. She waves with her whole arm, like a marionette, and she’ll wave as long as yo...