Author: Sarah

The Job Box

Sarah General

We have our annual St. Patty’s Day party coming up this weekend and the house is, well, a mess. A big one. So I’ve written everything we need to do before the party on slips of paper and stuck them in a box. Carrie and I have spent all day pulling out jobs and getting them done – from organizing the mess of coats and shoes in the foyer to hanging pictures to cleaning off the cookbook stand. (One could argue that some of these jobs are not so necessary, but I’m tired of looking at the clutter!) It’s much more manageable to pull out a 10 or 15 minute chore from the box and do it than look over a very long list of tasks and try to decide which one you want to tackle first.

Unfortunately, now Carrie is a little taskmaster, as her very favorite part is pulling out another job to do!

Bathing Baby

Sarah Anna

When Carrie was too big for the baby bathtub, we switched to an inflatable duck tub. But now the girls get baths together, and that’s just not going to work with a giant inflatable tub taking up most of the bathtub. So we went out and bought a bath ring so Anna could safely sit up in the big tub and still have the freedom to splash and play. She adores baths now!

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Just Another Lazy Thursday

Sarah Anna, Carolyn

Thursdays are the only day of the week where we have no morning plans – Carrie has dance at 4:30, but I avoid scheduling anything else for Thursdays. So we have our Thursday morning tradition: pancakes! It’s gotten so I can make pancakes without a recipe. Unfortunately, Anna is not quite old enough to eat pancakes, since they have eggs in them. And sometimes she gets up earlier than Carrie, and is just about ready for a nap while I’m making pancakes…

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There’s a lot more time to fill up on Thursdays, so we do things like color, play with Little People, and play in boxes:

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Next year, when Carrie’s in Kindergarten and riding the bus, we’re not going to have our lazy Thursday mornings, so we make sure to enjoy each one thoroughly! (Every now and then we do get dressed before lunch…)

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.