Skipping Town

One of the funniest things about a three-year-old is the urgency they feel about absolutely everything. There’s no differentiation between things that matter and things that don’t. Everything matters. I was thinking and chuckling about this yesterday when Lucia left the lunch table to go to the bathroom. Here was her monologue, delivered in a loud, frantic voice as she sat on the potty: “Mommy! Mommy. Don’t eat my sandwich. Don’t let Greta eat my lunch. That was a lot of pee-pee! That was close. Mama—the toilet paper is almost gone! I need my blankie! I have a stuffy nose! Don’t eat my sandwich! Can I have more pear? Watch Greta so she doesn’t eat all the pear! Mommy! I’m finished! I didn’t wash hands! I’m still hungry! I will check one thing and be right back to sit down!” This is pretty much her pitch for most of each day. Just all-out, all-in investment in minutia. She just urgently delivered a speck of dust to me at my desk (this is Quiet Time) so I could throw it away.

Dear Little Miss, What a little person you are now, and what a lot of naughtiness you’re discovering. You have discovered that “no” exists for you as well as your sister, and you have discovered your ability to defy that “no” and keep doing what you want. You like to stand up in your high chair. You like to rattle the cabinet doors under the kitchen sink. You like to stand up on a chair at the little table. You like to stand on the bottom step and rattle the baby gate. You like to turn your milk bottle upside down and shake drops of milk everywhere. The list goes on. You are very unlike Lucia right now. You are unafraid of strangers, for the most part; today I took you both to Whole Foods for a story and craft hour, and you kept running off, approaching strangers, climbing onto a motorized handicap cart. Lucia was immersed in adding glitter to her construction-paper snake, and you kept reaching onto the table and grabbing anything within reach; all the kids there seemed t

When we moved in, our house was pretty much left as nice as it could be. Everything was freshly painted, and the wood floors had been refinished. There wasn’t much the sellers could do about the ancient kitchen or second-floor bathroom, which need to be gutted. But you got the sense that they’d done what they could to make this house appealing to people like us—ready to fall in love with a real gem of a home, and willing to put in some work. Then…you get to the attic. There, you get the sense that the sellers just threw up their hands and prayed the rest of the house would carry its deadweight. The attic is kind of a mess. There’s one really great wooden room, billed as a bedroom and ideal for an office or playroom someday, once it gets insulated. There’s a large raw storage space. There’s also a guest bedroom and guest bathroom, and it’s in these rooms that Rochester would have found ample comfort for his insane wife. The guest bedroom is a DIY project for another time, so I’l

We have no DIY experience. We own a small toolset, a drill with a cord, and a cordless drill. That’s it. Our house came with an elaborate workbench in the basement, along with a large selection of nails, bolts, and other misc., but it has yet to be used for anything but piling things on top of. I say all this by way of introducing the next few posts I’ll write here, highlighting the DIY projects we’ve completed so far. I’ve taken lots of before-and-after pictures, but I haven’t yet put them together. So, here we go, with DIY #1: The Sleeping Porch, which we undertook at the end of the summer. “I didn’t expect this part to be so…difficult.” If we’d been featured on the HGTV show Renovation Realities, this comment from Andrew would have flashed onto the screen, immediately after an arresting image: Andrew and me in our painting clothes, winter scarves tied tightly around our mouths and noses, the “sleeping porch” we were attempting to renovate barely visible in a swirl of whi

It's been much, much too long since a post on my blog has had anything to do with skipping town. Of course moving to the suburbs was a town-skipping of sorts, but definitely not in the original spirit of this blog. Now that we're in the 'burbs, with two little chicks running around, I should really just go ahead and rename this blog "NOT Skipping Town." The weariness you may hear in that observation has little to do with my overall happiness and most to do with the simple fact that I miss those travelin' days. It's been well over three years since I've left the country. Lucia and Greta's passports are stiff and new, bearing no sign that we've planned all along to take them around the world. Andrew's been to Germany and India and Mexico for work, so his passport looks much less neglected. Now that we're deep into winter, when we barely leave our house let alone the country, the idea of new places and new challenges seems more faraway t

We got snow two weekends ago. A lot of it. About fourteen inches, in a great white blanket over our yard and driveway, making our property look magical and highlighting all the lovely places where the girls will one day build snow hideouts and forts. Lucia was absolutely thrilled with the snow. We went outside, all four of us, a couple of times on Saturday and Sunday, and she had so much fun shoveling, building a "stump" of snow, climbing in snow piles, eating icicles, making snow angels. It was quite cold all weekend, but she didn't seem to notice and stayed outside with Andrew long after Greta and I retreated inside. Greta, for her part, was not so thrilled. Bundled in her snowsuit, Andrew shoveled out "pens" for her to walk around in--the snow was far too deep for her to navigate--but she would simply stand there forlornly, uninterested in playing. She liked going into the playhouse and looking out the little windows, but this was pretty much it. Next yea

Dear Little One, How funny you are these days. Full of funny voices and funny dances and funny walks. You find silly things hilarious, like making up nicknames for Greta—“Hi, Banana Pie! Hi, Chocolate Pie! Hi, Wall !” Few things make you laugh as much as screaming and laughing with your sister. It’s not all fun and games, of course. You’re three. You’ve always had hoarding tendencies, which are becoming more pronounced now that Greta wants some toys as well. I thought I could avoid such squabbles by making sure I had great quantities of things, like Squinkies; when there are so many Squinkies, obviously there are enough for everyone. Not so. You now want all the Squinkies. You want both spinning flashlights. Greta got a pink corduroy cat from Gra and Pop-Pop for Valentine’s Day—she’s coveted your beloved cat for a while—but now you want her cat and yours. There seems no way to win this. Perhaps there never will be. You seem very self-aware these days, and clear about your

These days, it's mealtimes that really highlight how different Lucia and Greta are. As longtime readers of this blog know, Lucia's eating has always been a vexing part of our lives--though now, at three, that's mostly all behind us. She likes a lot of different foods, still loves fruit, wildly loves carrots, and drinks a ton of milk. Still, if given the choice between eating and doing pretty much anything else, she'd forgo eating. It's just not interesting for her. She sits at the table but gets distracted; lately, she breaks up the meal but claiming she has to go potty, where she then retreats for a while, singing songs (though she does, eventually, go). More often than not, she'll eat a satisfactory amount; and after dinner, she then gets to choose a beloved dessert. Most nights, just before heading up to bed, and even if she's eaten a decent dinner, she asks for a banana and eats about half. Somehow, getting a "new banana" has become part of the

Lucia's current favorite things to play with are her Squinkies. Of course, they are therefore Greta's most coveted objects as well. She's gotten much better about not putting small things in her mouth, so I let her hold the Squinkies now--that is, when Lucia lets her. Scoring a Squinkie or two is Greta's mission whenever they come out. Last weekend, when my parents were here, Lucia was carrying the Squinkies around in a tupperware container and put it down momentarily on the piano bench while she went off to do something else. Greta was across the room, but when she spotted the unattended Squinkies, she toddled over as fast as her little legs could go, thrust both hands into the container, grabbed two fistfuls of Squinkies, then beelined for my mom's lap, where she threw herself into a protective crouch, her fists hidden under her body and her head tucked into her chest, guarding her prize. It was truly hilarious. Both girls will be receiving some new Squinkies fo