Month: February 2009

Birthdays and Princesses and Crawling, Oh, My!

Sarah Carolyn, Family

Today is my Dad’s birthday. We didn’t get a chance to see him today, although Carrie did get to wish him a happy birthday on the phone. Happy birthday, Daddy!

In other news, it was “Pirates and Princesses” day at school today. The kids got to wear a costume to school, so Carrie spent the day in her Belle dress. The also had a treasure hunt with a map in the school, which sounds like it was a lot of fun.

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Finally, Anna has started crawling. She’s been doing the “commando crawl” for almost two weeks now, but today she finally coordinated getting her tummy off the ground and moving her hands and knees without collapsing. She can’t go far or fast yet, but it’s time to start rethinking the tiny toy containment strategy…

Fun with Lenses

Sarah Carolyn, Photography

I have had a digital SLR for more than 5 years, and I’ve barely ever used any lens on it but the one it came with.

This afternoon it was almost warm and since Anna was napping Carrie and I decided to hang out outside for a while. On a whim, I dug out the telephoto lens that I used on my old film SLR – and with the smaller aspect ratio of the digital camera, it winds up being a super telephoto lens.

This is one of my favorite shots from the afternoon:

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I think I need to play with my camera and my (very) small lens collection, because this is the sort of photo I’d like to be able to take on purpose, and often.

4.4 Years Old!

Sarah Monthly Updates

Dear Carolyn,

I don’t know where the months go – I feel like I’m writing one of these letters to you every day. At the same time, as you’re getting older, not that much changes from month to month…

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Sleep has been slightly better. I’m almost afraid to type that, but your bug phobia (which morphed briefly into a ghost phobia earlier this month) seems to be abating, and bedtime doesn’t involve quite so many bug (and ghost…and at one point ogre) checks.

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I think part of your willingness to go to bed more easily has to do with your room. I finally got my act together and found you a real bookcase and – combined with a Rose Petal Cottage that Target had on sale after the holidays – I made you a little reading nook. Honestly, there have been several nights when I’ve gone in to check on you before I go to bed and you’re curled up in your cottage with the book you couldn’t quite finish before you passed out.

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In the process of moving things around in your room, I wound up moving your old book and toy bin shelves into Anna’s room, along with several of the more baby appropriate toys…which didn’t go over as well as I’d hoped. Luckily, you decided that trashing Anna’s room with those toys is at least as much fun as trashing your own room with them! But it was a good reminder that even though you look and sound and act so grown up a lot of the time you’re really, truly, only four.

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Sometimes I can actually see the conflict in your heart about growing up. You want to be so independent and do things all on your own – and you’re getting so good at doing things like getting dressed, getting your own glass of water, and pouring your own cereal – but in the next breath you want me to baby you and do everything for you. All I can say is that those conflicting feelings? I have them too. I love to watch you change and grow, but I will always miss the sleepy warm baby snuggled into my shoulder that I used to rock every night.

Love, Mommy

Shadows and Light

Sarah Carolyn

We went to the museum today. One of Carrie’s favorite parts was actually in the planetarium, where they had a huge screen and colored lights set up to show how cyan, magenta and yelow light could combine to make the other colors.

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Carrie definitely had fun making her colorful shadows dance!

I think we’ll stick with the children’s museum for a few more years, though. While it was a mostly enjoyable trip I felt pretty stressed with all the much older children who were there. Many were not well supervised and there were several times that Carrie got shoved out of the way by older kids while she was patiently waiting her turn to look at or do something. I never know what to do in that situation…if their “responsible” adult is standing right there and doesn’t say anything, I kind of feel like I can’t say anything either.

I am slightly jealous that she got to go in to the planetarium show featuring Stomp! with Sammy and Lisa while Anna and I stayed outside, but really, Anna needed a bit of quiet down time by then anyway. I’m sure there will be many more planetarium shows in our future!

Bumbo Baby

Sarah Anna

I found a used Bumbo seat on craigslist a week or so ago. Anna seems to like it, and it’s especially useful when we take Carrie to dance class – I don’t have to either carry a stroller down to the basement or juggle holding Anna while changing Carrie into her dance things. I just carry this very light seat down with us and plop Anna in it.

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Somehow I can’t see it lasting for too long – she can already lean all the way over and get at stuff on the floor – but if it gets us through to when Anna can stay on her feet when put down for a bit that will be good enough.

Anna’s First Valentine’s Day!

Sarah Firsts

(I’m aware that it’s technically the day after Valentine’s Day…)

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Yes, that is a shirt with a sheep that says “I (heart) ewe”. A Christmas gift from Uncle Dan and Aunt Genevra. Though I would totally have bought it myself if I had seen it! After all, that’s what mommy knitters do!

Would you believe this little girl has been mistaken for a boy every. single. time. she’s worn this shirt?!? What, only boys can wear green?

Old School Valentines

Sarah Carolyn, Kid's Crafts

This morning I sent Carrie off to school with her hand-made Valentines:

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These can be summed up in one word: MESSY. Good gracious, I think I’m going to be finding glitter from these for the next several months! And I think I’d get card stock for next time. We used construction paper, pre-cut heart doilies, little heart confetti bits and glitter, but the amount of glue involved caused the construction paper to curl a lot. Maybe card stock would stay flatter?

I traced the hearts, Carrie cut them out. I applied the glue, she stuck on the doily and added more glue on top to help the confetti and glitter stick. Oh, and before the whole messy gluing bit I wrote the recipient’s name on the back, along with “Love,” and Carrie alternated between writing “Carrie” and “Carolyn” depending on her mood. Except for one or two that are signed “Carriolyn” because she just couldn’t decide…

Seven Months Old!

Sarah Monthly Updates

Dear Anna,

Today you are seven months old. That sounds so much older than six months, though of course it’s not really that much older! It’s been quite a day – Mommy’s car has gone over 50,000 miles and we refinanced the house. You had your first breakfast out today – you were so proud to sit in the restaurant high chair like a big girl!

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You’ve entirely skipped pureed food. You hate it. (Except peas.) But the pears and peaches you spat out like we were trying to poison you? You love them as little bits of cut up canned pears and peaches. I’m trying to convince myself that nutritionally it’s not much different, since they’re just canned in pear juice. Your favorite foods are now: freeze dried apple bits, puffed rice cereal, bits of canned pears and peaches, diced cooked carrots, and bits of banana. I’m struggling to find other finger foods that are age appropriate – I guess maybe we could retry sweet potatoes and squash cut up instead of mashed.

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You are also on the move. You roll, pivot and inch yourself forward. And new as of today: you get all the way up on your hands and knees and rock back and forth. Your big sister did this just days before learning how to crawl, so I bet you’re pretty close. You can sit in the “tripod” pose for a while before you fall over, and you love this new way you can play with your toys.

You still don’t babble. At all. But I’m about 99% sure you’ve signed “milk” a few times – although you don’t do it all that consistently yet. I’m not too worried about the babbling, as you are a very vocal baby and definitely respond to sounds. Actually, I think you’re starting to connect words to people and things. If I ask you where “the big sister” is, you look around until you find Carrie.

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Sometimes it seems like you’re growing faster than I can keep up – I just finally got all the 3-6 month clothes out of your dresser and put in the 6-9 month clothes…and some of those are already too small! And we installed your new convertible car seat and put the infant seat away. You love your new seat! Whenever anyone looks at you in your new seat you grin at them like “Look at me! Look how big I am!” Same with the “new” stroller that lets you sit forward and look out at the world instead of just laying there and watching me. You just seem to really be blossoming and loving every minute of becoming a big girl. Seeing how much you enjoy every new thing makes me look forward to all the new things you’ll get to experience in the next few years!

Love, Mommy

Procrastination.

Sarah General

Yep, that’s right, six weeks of posts just suddenly appeared in your RSS reader (all 5 of you still reading this, that is.) I could blame it on the kids, or I could blame it on playing Animal Crossing for a bit each night, or I could blame it on the knitting…

But the reality is that I’m just too good at procrastinating. I could blog on time. Honestly, I do actually write the posts out on the day they say they’re from, for the most part. But then sometimes the posts need pictures and the idea of finding the camera, taking the pictures (if they’re not already taken), finding the card reader, importing the pictures, editing them, uploading them and putting them in the posts? Not so appealing.

And then what happens? I get disgusted with the lack of updates and finally decide to just bite the bullet and do all the posts at once, which involves piecing together which pictures were really meant to go with each post (and deciding that some just don’t need pictures after all) and then all the photo editing, which altogether takes much longer than it really needs to. (And that last sentence was really much longer than it needed to be as well.)

However, since this blog has become my children’s baby books – as the likelihood of those ever getting done is slim-to-none – I need to be better about maintaining it. So, maybe we’ll call it a Valentine’s Day resolution? (Not that it’s Valentine’s Day yet…I’ll just start early for once.)