You Stop Blogging for a Couple of Weeks

And you get back, and you’ve got two completely different kids.

(Well, that may have been because I left them in the grocery store for a few minutes, and someone swapped.  Hmmm).*

Anyway, the grocery store is what I want to talk about.  Can I introduce you to the new order of things?

It means that I  have more space for groceries, and a better than usual chance that my groceries are going to get slightly smushed by Margaret HELPING, Mommy.  HELPING.

*True story – I had gotten them both wrangled into the cart and had done my shopping and then realized that I hadn’t actually brought my purse in.  So I went to the help counter and asked if I could leave my groceries while I ran out with the kids, and the nice lady came out from behind the counter and said to just run out, and while I was gone she plied my kids with stickers and games of peek-a-boo.  It seems fairly safe.

Times and Places

Margaret is nap-averse.

I mean, there are times that she will imagine considering thinking about taking a nap, but the planets have to be aligned and someone has to be making it worth her while.

And that means that nap time can be a little fraught.

Anyway, the evening of the day on which she refused to take a nap, also managed to acquire a marker and color on herself and the walls, she had a bath.  And while in the bath, she got two washcloths, called one a pillow and one a blanket, and announced that she was having a nap.

Isn’t she sweet?

My Big Girl

As we speak, Margaret is upstairs at my school, going to daycare like she’s been doing it all her life.  I’m on the last 10 minutes of my lunch, then I have 25 more minutes of Latin to teach, my planning period, and then we go off to a playdate.  Margaret’s life is a whirl of gaiety.  So is Ellie’s, but she’s smaller, so it’s less noticeable.

Anyway, a few nights ago, the weather was such that we felt that going to the park by Leo’s office was a feasible sort of a thing to do, and so we did it. 

Margaret is so competent, it terrifies me.

And you see that beanstalk thing next to her that that boy’s legs are on?  She went up that too, although she was less competent at it.  But in a few weeks, she’ll have it. 

And she can hang from the monkey bars all by herself. 

Mea Culpa

We have not had a post for ages, and the reason for this is that I have been driving and driving and driving and then in crazy overtime mode trying to get my Latin course up and running.*

But now, for better or worse, school has started, so I intend to do a little more writing.**

For now, just to keep you all interested, a photodocumentary of Ellie’s introduction to solid foods.

Suspicion.  Deep suspicion. This is the first time in the high chair, and it’s weird.

This is tentative interest.  Notice how her eyes are narrowed.

The first approach.  Still not certain, and wary.

Tongue out; interest is piqued.

Processing, and still very concerned and dubious about this whole thing.

Reaction:  All the carrots belong to me.  In my mouth faster, woman!

Here!  Give me the spoon!

Seriously, Mommy.  N.O.W.

Since then, she has demanded two meals a day, at lunch and dinner, and has accepted nothing less.  If she’s not given them when she wants them, she takes matters into her (fortunately mostly inept) hands.

And when I finally get my spoon out, she is very, very ready for it.

*See?  Mea culpa makes sense.  Yes it does.

**This is paradoxical, but I promise that it makes sense.

Rocks

Margaret has been throwing rocks.  This seems a little unfair.  We spend all day saying that she shouldn’t throw x, y, or z, and then we take her off for a little fun rock throwing to let off steam.

There’s a contradiction in there somewhere.

Anyway, she has taken to throwing rocks like a duck to water.  She’s very hard on herself, though, because when the rock doesn’t make it to the water, she says “that wasn’t very good,” but we won’t let her get that close to the water, because it will have deleterious effects on her footgear, so we’re kind of hamstringing her. 

But, you know, it burns energy, what will all that running up  and down and picking up rocks and ranging up the beach and bending and just walking around on rocks.

Ellie seems unimpressed with the whole enterprise, but that’s just because she wasn’t being allowed to put the rocks in her mouth.

Om Nom Nom

Ellie is cutting a tooth.  Loudly, and with much lamentation.  And this means that she will eat anything she can get her little fists around, although she much prefers it when she can get her fists around my fist.

I was beginning to feel a little soggy.  So I pulled out Sophie the Giraffe, who has the most hair-trigger squeaker in the history of rubber giraffes.*

Ellie liked it, and so she took it with her to Brent’s house last night for Hannah’s birthday.  I barricaded her in a chair (she’s been learning to sit up, the clever turnip), and she gazed in some trepidation, giraffe clenched in her jaws.

And then she switched to the moose, but was no less worried.

There’s a lot to frighten a baby of sense over there, since I’m not sure that my children’s cousins are completely certain whether they belong on the ground or hurtling through the air.

*A long, sad tale, I feel sure, but not one implicated in the present story.

Lessons?

I wonder when we can start piano lessons for Ellie.  Today she rolled herself over to the edge of the blanket, and found a very small piano.

So, of course, she started to play.

I said to Margaret in a very excited voice, “Look, Margaret, Ellie is playing the piano.”  Margaret responded – in the same excited voice – “Yeah!  Can you stop her?”

So Ellie can now get into Margaret’s stuff.  Oh dear.