More Perfect

Indoctrinate them Young

2012-01-27T13:53:00.003-05:00

I don't remember what Steven and I were talking about prior to the exchange below, but it was probably football, politics, or school. Whatever it was, it taught Milo the transitive property.

Steven: People are idiots.

Me: Well, that's America.

Milo: America is full of idiots.

Things That Would Work If Animals Were Made of Plastic

2012-01-05T18:50:00.001-05:00

Me: So did you have science today? (Milo has had a love/hate relationship with his science class this year, I think due to the fact that he's genuinely interested in science and finds the way it's being taught frustrating.)

Milo: Yes.

Me: How was it?

Milo: It was great!

Me: Really? Why?

Milo: We made an ocean and we dumped a bunch of plastic animals into it, and then we poured oil on top and we had to rescue the animals and see which ones would live and which would die.

Me: And which animal did you get?

Milo: I got a sea turtle.

Me: And what did you do with it?

Milo: I took a paper towel and patted on top of it's shell and inside it's shell, But I couldn't really get inside it's shell because it was plastic and not a real sea turtle.

Me: And did it survive?

Milo: Yes, because I got to it quickly.

Me: So what did you learn from this?

Milo: (thinking) How to cure a fake oil spill?

Housekeeping at Six Years Old: Milo

2011-12-07T12:52:00.000-05:00

Happy birthday, my best boy.

I'm over a month late on this, of course. In honor of your 6th birthday, here's the list of careers you enumerated today while we were walking home from the subway:

- author
- illustrator
- chemist
- inventor
- tap dancer

By the time we reached home you'd taken illustrator off the list after I pointed out that you're not actually into drawing, and stated that the main thing you still want to be is an inventor anyway, the other stuff is more like a "maybe" whereas inventor is a definite. So far the only invention you've come up with is the pocket air conditioner, which frankly doesn't seem like it has a lot of potential, but what do I know.

We spent about two hours on the train today traveling to a doctor's appointment on the upper east side, during which time we covered the following topics:

- how the signs that tell you when the train is coming work
- why when two trains are traveling next to each other it looks like one train is running backwards
- the different routes one can take between Brooklyn and Manhattan
- theories on why oil and water don't mix
- the fact that you may be ready to take your first solo plane trip
- why it is fair that when you go to someone else's house and build with Legos they get to keep whatever it is you've built
- the shape of Colorado vs. the shape of Connecticut
- where Metro North runs
- why there are no sleeper cars on Metro North
- how to make hot chocolate

Most discussed at the top of your lungs during rush hour, prompting several knowing glances and "aw, isn't he cute," nods from your fellow passengers.

Love,
Mama

Mark the Date

2011-11-28T16:36:00.001-05:00

Today the kids independently decided to play a game together, set it up, and have been playing it by themselves in a separate room for fifteen minutes. Life may never be the same.

Big Kid Toys

2011-11-06T12:46:00.000-05:00

Me: (struggling to fit Tab A into Tab 12 on a paper globe toy) ARGH!! This is really hard for me to do.

Milo: What ages is it for?

Me: Must be 40 and up. Maybe I'll be able to do it next year.

Today First Grade, Tomorrow College

2011-09-08T09:15:00.001-04:00

Dear Milo,
Today you waved goodbye to me and headed off to first grade, not having the slightest idea what awaits you.

I never attended first grade, but my understanding is that it's much more like actual school than Kindergarten, with more sitting at desks and officially learning things, and it feels a little bit like a bait and switch to just casually wave goodbye to you as though you were heading back to another day of Legos and snack time in Mrs. Bookman's class. They don't let you go directly to the classroom to drop your kid off for first grade, you have to just leave them lined up outside with all the big kids, and it feels a lot like just dropping you into the abyss.

And then I went upstairs and gave Mira a big hug, and couldn't help but think about the fact that this time next year I'll be dropping her off for her first day of preschool. Which reminded me how much I hate preschool with the whole schlepping your child somewhere just for two hours and also having to bring snacks and pajamas and two tomatoes and whatnot, but that's for another time.

Milo, you had a wonderful summer. You learned to hit and throw a ball in baseball camp, you learned a bunch of stuff that I don't actually understand in chess camp, and you learned how to dive to the bottom of the pool in regular camp. You asked a million interesting questions, got pretty good at riding your bike, and started reading on your own (in part because we told you that you could stay up an extra half hour at night if you were reading). You lost interest in Pokemon, became obsessed with Gogos, got excited about baseball cards, and learned how to do a cannonball off a diving board. You trounced me in Wii golf multiple times and then graciously suggested we switch to bowling. You started playing games with your sister even though half the time she just messes up the board or demands something completely irrational. You made friends. You asked if you could sleep over at Gabriel's house for a week.

I'm probably biased, but you're just a superstar. You're the kid who tackles everything head on. The down side is that you get very upset when you aren't the best at something immediately you throw a fit. The up side is that after you throw a fit you get over it, set your mind to learning, and do it until you get it.

At least, that's the kid I sent off to first grade this morning. Let's hope the same kid comes back this afternoon.

I love you, and tell Miss Michael not to make you share a table with the hyper kid who can't sit still.

Love,
Mama

Milo at the wedding

2011-07-06T09:58:00.001-04:00

Milo at the wedding

Here is what it is like to be five and a half. On Sunday you go to a wedding because the very first nanny you ever had is getting married. You insist on wearing a tie because that is what grown ups wear, and spend a lot of time in front of the mirror before we leave looking at yourself in your tie and saying things like "I look like an old man!" and "I'm the President!"

You declare the wedding "the best wedding I have ever been to" despite the fact that you have not been to any other weddings and also assert that the food is "the best food I have ever eaten." You drink two Shirley Temples, which are "delicious!" You like superlatives.

You turn out to be a pretty good date, mostly because you are fascinated and thrilled by the entire experience. You behave yourself beautifully, you chat with people you have never met before, and you attempt to dance the hora. By 9:30 you've had it, though, and you nearly fall asleep on the car ride home.

The next day we decide to go out for frozen yogurt in the neighborhood. You take your scooter and barrel along on the sidewalk, until we scream at you to stop before you get hit by a car. Dad takes away your scooter, you announce you don't care, and you are then told you also aren't going to get any frozen yogurt. You cry hard. Really hard. It breaks my heart. You still don't get any frozen yogurt.

The next day you are off to camp, which you have announced, of course, that you "love." You come home and you are telling me about your day, about how you mastered the back float in swimming and how you drew pictures at art and how you and your best friend were playing near the slide and decided to eat some blueberries that grow near the slide. You are proud of yourself for this because your friend didn't want to eat them at first, but encouraged him and, like the wanna-be-parent you are, coaxed him into trying some and then eating handfuls. At which point I stop the story and say, "Wait, these were pretend blueberries, right?" And you say, no, no, they were real blueberries, from a bush. I ask how you knew they were blueberries and you tell me that some older kids told you they were. So the next three hours are spent calling the camp to establish whether these were actually blueberries or whether they were something poisonous that will kill you in the next 5 minutes unless we find an antidote, then calling the doctor when the camp is unreachable, and then communicating with your friend's mother just to let her know that her son was possibly coaxed into eating poisonous berries by my son.

Today the camp called to say that they had gone to look at the bush and the berries were in fact blueberries. Though we had deduced that by the fact that you woke up this morning.

Stuff Mira Likes

2011-06-14T12:03:00.000-04:00

"I wanna see I wanna see."

Here's the running monologue Mira carried on this morning, as we were paging through a magazine together:

That's a car! I love to drive the car! Oooh, ice cream! You love to eat ice cream! Turtles! Turtles go swimming! I love go swimming! There's circles. There's circles. There's books! You love to read books! Look! That's the letter T! The end. Do it again. (...and so on, for about 15 minutes)

Mira says nothing without an exclamation point on the end. She is passionate about everything, which most recently includes wearing her A train shirt and pretending to be trains with Milo, along with the list of items above and, of course, cats.

Mira Makes A Tough Choice

2011-05-24T09:17:00.000-04:00

This weekend we went to the Brooklyn Food Truck Rally where we ate lobster and shrimp rolls, dumplings, cupcakes, and Milo declared it "the best lunch EVER."

On Monday Mira's interim babysitter started - she's substituting for a month while Mira's regular sitter is out of town. Mira has met her several times previously, and she came over on Friday for a warming up session with Mira, but yesterday was her first attempt taking Mira out of the house. They got as far as the front door before Mira started to scream "wanna find Mama." I came downstairs and saw Mira holding her cat stroller (a doll stroller which now has a stuffed cat permanently strapped into it) and sobbing, clearly afraid to leave the house with this new person she didn't know that well.

"Do you want to go to story time?" I asked.

"Wanna go to story time," she sobbed.

"Okay, so go to story time and come home and I'll be here waiting for you."

"Want Mama come to story time," she said.

"I can't go to story time. I'm staying here but I'm going to be right here when you come back, okay?"

"No," said Mira.

"You can stay here," I offered. "You can stay here and I'll be here, or you can go to story time and push your cat stroller and then I'll be here when you get back."

She was the most conflicted 2 year old I'd ever seen, and I really doubted she'd be able to make it to story time after the offer to stay here, but in the end she pulled herself together, and decided to go to story time. She sobbed with the weight of her decision as she pushed the cat stroller down the street. Her babysitter reported that she stopped crying after they got about a block from the house, and proceeded to enjoy all that story time had to offer.

Milo Rides His Bike and Takes One More Step Towards Leaving Me Forever

2011-05-16T09:03:00.001-04:00

Milo learned to ride a bike amazingly quickly, with no training wheels used. I think this is because he'd already learned how to balance from using his scooter, skiing and ice skating. While running and kicking a ball are definitely not his strong suit (he got beaten in a race with a four year old girl yesterday at the gym and cried until I explained to him that I'd never beaten anyone in a foot race in my entire life, and perhaps am the slowest human being on the planet) he seems to have a knack for sports that involve grace and balance.

Oddly, he also seems to have some kind of innate understanding of where his skills lie. He begged us for a bike for nearly a year before we finally relented - we feared he was going to find it frustrating and wanted him to be a bit older to handle the tumbles and scrapes that come with bike ownership, and made him agree that there would be no crying if we did buy him the bike - but he knew what he was talking about. From the time we purchase the bike three weeks ago until this video was taken yesterday, Milo worked and worked at riding the bike until he got it. There were some tears and scrapes along the way, but astonishingly few.

There is something very symbolic and fraught about teaching your child to ride a bike. I think most people remember learning to ride, as opposed to learning to walk or talk, so most of us have it as an early child-parent memory. I remember very clearly the fear, the exhilaration of getting it, and then the pain of riding straight into a parked car because I'd forgotten how to brake. But more than that, to teach your child to ride you must take a giant leap of faith at some point and quite literally let go and let them attempt to do it on their own. I found this nearly impossible - how could I let my baby just go flying off down the street without me? Luckily, Steven was able to do it, and here's the beautiful, bittersweet result:

Words I Never Thought I'd Hear

2011-05-11T19:38:00.000-04:00

The other day I took the kids for frozen yogurt after school. We sat outside on the bench next to a woman with a Milo-aged child and a Mira-aged child sitting in a stroller. At some point the Milo-aged child recognized Milo from school, and we all struck up a conversation, the end of which was as follows:

Other mother: (to Milo) Maybe some day you and Francesa can get together and talk about what it's like to have a younger brother or sister.

Francesca: My brother is annoying.

Milo: I make breakfast for Mira every morning and I make waffles and I get her yogurt.

Other mother: (looks at me like, what the hell is this kid talking about) Really?

Me: It's kind of a recent thing. He's started making them both breakfast. We're hoping it lasts.

Other mother: (now looking at me like I might possibly be insane) Oh.

Me: Anyway, we've got to go. It was nice to meet you. (I gather up the children and we start walking away.)

Milo: What was she talking about? I like having a sister.

And now my work is done. I'd like to take credit for it, but really a tremendous amount of the credit goes to Milo, who decided from day one that he was going to figure out a way to get along with a screeching, drooling bundle of baby.

The kids get along better right now than I'd ever imagined possible Sure, there are fights to break up, and frequently screams from Mira along the lines of "Don't grab it the camera don't grab it you grab it!!!!" which usually means she's trying to grab something from Milo, but then there have been the past three mornings where the kids have gone upstairs, by themselves, and Milo has prepared breakfast, gotten both himself and Mira fed, and CLEANED UP. This has made him immensely proud of himself, and has also had the strange effect of making him appreciate Mira more.

May it stay this way forever.

Mira sings Old Man River

2011-04-24T20:25:00.000-04:00

Because Sometimes Cats Like To Take A Dip Too

2011-03-17T21:02:00.000-04:00

Milo: Are all pools deep?

Me: Most pools are deep.

Milo: But not all.

Me: Well, I guess not kiddie pools.

Milo: For cats?

You Can Get Anything You Want At Milo's Restaurant

2011-03-07T19:50:00.000-05:00

Me: Hey, Milo, you know what street I was on the other day?

Milo: What street?

Me: Whitehall Street!

Milo: Oh yeah?

Me: Do you know what happens on Whitehall Street?

Milo: Yes. You get injected, inspected, neglected and selected.

Milo Skis

2011-03-03T09:43:00.003-05:00

Milo Skis

2011-03-03T09:41:00.000-05:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ETy5wItathE

Housekeeping at 24 Months: Mira

2011-02-28T12:20:00.000-05:00

Happy birthday, beauty!

This year you grew from a baby into a toddler. You learned to walk, you learned to talk, and you learned to put on Milo's backpack and gloves (pronounced glubs), kiss everyone goodbye and pretend to go off to school.

You are still a force to be reckoned with. It took you a while to learn to walk, but now that you're doing it you're like a battering ram. You pick up speed and just go. The other day you walked with me from 17th St. to 8th St., and then halfway back. The only reason you finally agreed to go into the stroller was because I forced you into it so we could be back in time to pick up Milo.

You have an amazing sense of location, or direction, I'm not sure which it is yet, but yesterday we were walking past 12th St., and you started yelling that you wanted to go play with Elliot, your friend who lives on 12th St over a block away from where we were standing - you knew which corner to turn down to get to Elliot's house. Then the other day as we were a block away from the synagogue you started insisting that we were going to Hebrew School to pick up Milo, and screamed bloody murder when I walked us by the synagogue instead of going inside.

You are still passionate about your books, and you have them all memorized. You like to sit and read them, reciting all the words, and occupying yourself for sometimes up to half an hour at a time. You are also obsessed with your older brother, insisting he feed you at breakfast despite the fact that you are perfectly capable of doing it on your own, and banging on the door when he's in the bathroom and yelling "Raro! Where are you!" You have also picked up some etiquette from him, including phrases like: "Don't grab," "No pushing," and "AAAIIIEEE!!! NOOOOO!!! THAT'S MINE!!!"

You also love animals, particularly Oscar, who you follow around the house yelling "Snuggle, Oscar!" at, and any and all dogs on the street, each of whom you pat on the head and say, "Nice dog" to.

Some of your favorite things to do: go places, including the car, Fairway, the pool, the car wash, the gym, music class, Hebrew School, Milo's school, down the slide, and the generic "take a walk." You love to snuggle (I live in fear of the day you stop saying "Snuggle Mama on the couch?") tickle and be tickled, and do summersaults. Some of your least favorite things to do: anything you didn't think of yourself, and eating dinner.

Here are some pictures from your birthday, during which you repeatedly insisted that the candle be turned on again, sang yourself happy birthday multiple times, and then acted like you could not believe your good fortune at getting to eat cat cake.

You are delicious, my little organic chicken.

Love,
Mama

Understanding Milo

2011-02-25T08:00:00.000-05:00

Milo: May I please have some hit-in-the-face juice?

Me: What? Oh, you mean fruit punch.

Me vs. The P.S. 10 Librarian

2011-02-10T10:19:00.000-05:00

Milo: What's the other groundhog's name?

Me: What other groundhog?

Milo: The other famous one?

Me: Punxatawney Phil?

Milo: No, the other one who lives in Pennsylvania.

Me: Punxatawney Phil.

Milo: No, the OTHER famous groundhog!

Me: There is no other famous groundhog.

Milo: Yes there is.

Me: Who told you there were two?

Milo: The librarian.

Me: Well who do you think knows more, me or the librarian?

Milo: The librarian. Because she knows about the other groundhog.

Me: The other groundhog that doesn't exist?

Milo: It does exist!

Me: What else does your librarian know about that I don't know?

Milo: She knows about the presidents.

Me; Oh yeah, what does she know about them?

Milo: She read us a book about one of them.

Me: George Washington?

Milo: No. The 16th President.

Me: Abraham Lincoln?

Milo: Yeah!

Me: So what did you learn about Lincoln?

Milo: I forget.

Me: Did you learn that he freed the slaves?

Milo: No.

Me: Did you learn about the Civil War?

Milo: No.

Me: Did you learn that he was born in Kentucky and lived in Illinois?

Milo: No.

Me: (long pause) Did you learn that he wore a big black hat?

Milo: YES! He wore a big black hat and he kept his papers in it!

Me: What?

Milo: Yeah, it was funny, because he kept his papers in his hat.

Me: So that's what the librarian knows? That Lincoln kept his papers in his hat?

Milo: Yes. And about the other groundhog.

Me: Who doesn't exist.

Milo: It does!

When You Turn Two You Become A Person

2011-01-30T10:31:00.000-05:00

Me: Mira is going to be two soon.

Milo: Will she be better then?

Me: What do you mean? Like a better human being?

Milo: I mean like better. Better to play with and not screaming so much.

Me: Well, eventually.

She's A Walking Racket

2011-01-18T10:03:00.000-05:00

Mira's vocabulary has really exploded in the last month of so. Yesterday in the car she said "I dropped the glasses," which seems so ridiculous that I thought I might be hearing things except for the fact that she then repeated it about 15 times in a row. Milo always got the pronouns wrong, saying "you" instead of "me" or "I", but Mira gets it right about half the time. Some phrases are always "you" like "help you" when she wants help, or always third person like "Mira does it" when she wants to do something herself. But when she constructs a sentence about herself that she's never heard before she tends to use "I." How she understands that she's an "I" and not a "you" at this age is beyond me - maybe when she gets older she can explain it to me.

One of her favorite activities is talking about what we did today (which both she and Milo at the same age called "do today"). Sometimes she wants to talk about what we did today at 9 o'clock in the morning, at which time there isn't a whole lot to recount beyond, in Mira's words, "first you got up" and "then you played."

So basically between the two kids it's a nonstop racket around here. This morning Milo commented that it was nice and quiet now that Mira had left the room.

"Yeah, suddenly you and I are the quiet ones," I joked.

"That's right," he said, completely seriously. "We're the quiet ones."

"She's a walking racket," I added.

Why They Don't Let 5 Year Olds Vote

2011-01-17T11:51:00.000-05:00

This morning Milo and I had a long conversation about Martin Luther King and who he was and what he did, which concluded with my explaining that today we even have a black president. This then led to the following conversation:

Milo: So anyone can be president?

Me: Pretty much anyone.
Milo: Could I be president?

Me: Well, we've never had a Jewish president, but maybe you could be president.

Milo: All the presidents have been Christian?

Me: Yes.

Milo: Rock Obama is our president now, right?

Me: Baraka Obama. Yes.

Milo: Is he a good president?

Me: He's alright. He's a lot better than the guy we had before.

Milo: Who was that?

Me; George Bush

Milo: He was a bad president?

[long explanation involving my feelings about George Bush]

Milo: Are presidents always boys?

Me: So far. A woman could be president but we haven't had one yet.

Milo: Yay boys!

Girl

2011-01-10T12:49:00.001-05:00

IMG_0410, originally uploaded by HAVANA19.

A few weeks ago we went to get Milo a haircut at a place that had a dress up box filled with necklaces, clothing and handbags. I helped Mira pick out a few selections, and this is the result.

She likes to play all kinds of dress up at home, sometimes pretending to be Milo going to school (wearing his backpack and his coat) or pretending to go to the market for apples and eggs (usually involving wearing one of my grandmother's old evening bags and a pair of gloves) or sometimes even pretending to be her vision teacher, schlepping a big bag of toys.

Things Milo Can Email Directly To His Shrink

2011-01-07T19:59:00.000-05:00

Over the holiday break Milo had a homework assignment, which basically boiled down to: get your mother to build you a boat. In theory this was about teaching the kids about physics and what sinks and what floats. In practice this meant that the day before the week-long vacation was over, the Sunday afternoon before, in fact, someone asked me how the boat building was going, to which I replied, "What?" This was then followed by an hour of looking up on the internet how to build a boat out of household items, relief when Milo chose to do the boat constructed out of sponges and toothpicks over the one constructed out of multiple layers of popsicle sticks, panic when the store didn't cary the right kind of sponges, and a feeling of craftiness when I figured out how to glue multiple pieces of sponge together to approximate the right kind of sponge.

The next day Milo seemed happy about his boat, and I felt pleased that I had managed to send him to school with a sponge boat that at least wasn't made out of Brillo pads and diapers. The day after that they tested the boats (apparently other parents were similarly surprised to discover they were supposed to spend their vacations building their children boats IN ADDITION to celebrating holidays, visiting relatives and surviving a blizzard, so they had to push The Great Boat Floatation Experiment back a day). Milo came home and announced that his boat sank, while the popsicle stick boats had all floated. But worse than that, apparently some child had come in with a boat that, from Milo's description, sounded like a to-scale replica of the Santa Maria, complete with sails and "S.S. [Child's Name]" written in gold ink.

"How come I didn't get a boat like that?"

"Well, because we only found out about the boat thing the day before, so we just had to do what we could," I answered, though this wasn't totally honest. If you'd told me I had a month to build Milo a boat I wouldn't have built him the Santa Maria. Mostly because I think it's stupid. He shouldn't have homework assignments for things he can't do himself.

So, Milo, I'm sorry you ended up with a non-boat-maker for a mother. On the other hand, you got a writer who is documenting all her mis-steps so you can conveniently direct your shrink to these blog entries in twenty years. Sound like a good trade?

Housekeeping at 60 Months: Milo Turns Five

2011-01-05T10:34:00.000-05:00

Dear Milo,
Two months ago you turned five and we said good bye to little kid Milo and hello to actual real kid Milo. You can read now, you're learning to swim and play soccer, you have friends, you go to a gigantic public school just down the street, proudly sporting your personalized backpack, carrying your homework and your lunch, just like a real kid. It's mind blowing.

This year your birthday fell on Election Day, which meant you had no school, so dad and I decided to take off work and treat you to a day in Manhattan. We gave you a choice between going to the Statue of Liberty or going to the Empire State Building. You chose the Statue of Liberty, but only if we could go to the top of the crown, and it turned out we couldn't get tickets for the crown, so we compromised on the Empire State Building. It was a really fun day for everyone - we were all glowing with the ease of being with a five year old, not having to worry that you might suddenly throw a temper tantrum (not that you were ever a big temper tantrum thrower), that we might run out of diapers, that you might need to be rushed home for a nap, that you might suddenly and irrationally decide to scream. Even you seemed to acknowledge the big boy responsibility of being taken into the city, and you behaved beautifully.

We took multiple forms of transportation, naturally, in honor of your birthday, including, the F train, a bus, the R train, the 5 train, and the 6 train. This was probably the highlight of the whole day for you, with the possible exception of the birthday cake sundae you got at Dylan's Candy Bar.

For lunch you ate your Japanese noodle soup like a pro, and only had to be told twice to stop bouncing up and down.

You are an amazing learner, and you especially have a love of language. You're always interested in learning new words, and you try to use the biggest words you know. You've learned some French and some Hebrew this year, and your Hebrew school teacher pulled me aside one evening at pick up to tell me that you had, in her words, "completely smoked the rest of the class" in a letter identification game you'd played.

You've started writing emails, but you get frustrated when you don't write every letter perfectly. Unfortunately Yahoo! underlines misspelled words in red, and you are constantly calling me in to tell you what's wrong with whatever word you've typed. I'm always telling you to just try your best, your email recipient will understand, because I want the emails to come from you, not me, but you always argue that it's wrong and you don't want it to be wrong.

On Tuesday and Thursday nights dad has started going to the gym, so you and I get to have dinner just the two of us, and we always have great conversations. You're just a joy to talk to. Last night we had the following talk, which I think illustrates pretty much everything one needs to know about you at this age:

Milo: Mrs. Bookman gave me a time out today.

Me: Why?

Milo: Just a short time out. A tiny time out. For picking my nose.

Me: Well, you shouldn't pick your nose, but why did she give you a time out for it?

Milo: You shouldn't pick your nose because it spreads disease, but I couldn't help it, and she kept having to tell me, "Milo, wash your hands," like a hundred times.

Me: Ah, well okay, I can see how that could be annoying. Just try not to pick your nose. Use a tissue.

Milo: I know, but there are too many rules.

Me: There are a lot of rules.

Milo: You're not supposed to touch anyone at school And your not supposed to pretend to play with guns or weapons.

Me: Right, I can see why they would have those rules at school. It's okay at home, though.

Milo: And it's okay if you pretend to play with guns but the teacher doesn't see you.

Me: Well...

Milo: Why do they have to have rules?

Me: Because if they didn't have any rules you'd have 600 kids in your school all running around hitting each other and pretending to shoot each other and it would be chaos.

Milo: Not the girls. The girls don't pretend to play with guns.

Me: Okay, you'd have 300 kids running around pretending to shoot each other and screaming and jumping on chairs ...

Milo: ...and throwing books...

Me: ...and standing on their heads...

Milo: ...and running screaming down the halls and looking into all the classrooms...

Me: ...right, and you'd never get to learn anything. Like how to read.

Milo: Right.

You are my best boy.

Love,
Mama

What A Difference A Brother Makes

2010-10-26T13:10:00.000-04:00

Mira has started stringing together random words and spewing assorted two-word phrases she's picked up from Milo. She's got a vocabulary that only someone with an older brother could. Some of her recent words and phrases:
Light saber
Excuse me
Stop it!
Dinosaur
I'm full (which Milo says to punctuate the end of every meal, and which Mira says randomly when she's eating)
High five

Her favorite verb at the moment is "see." As in, "See? Bus!" or "See? Yellow!" Interestingly, both Milo and Mira learned the color yellow first.

And she either has a wicked sense of humor or the makings of a budding control freak. This weekend we were all sitting at the table eating bagels (or buggles, as she calls them) when she started standing up in her high chair. We told her several times to sit down, and when she finally did there was a chorus of "Good girl," all around the table. For the next ten minutes she decided to reenact the drama, by repeatedly standing up, saying "Sit down!", sitting down and then cooing, "Good girl!" Whether this was done to show us who's the boss, or because she thought it was funny we'll never know.

And in other news, Milo has taken a great leap forward into questions that are either unanswerable or require a lot of thought. Like, "What's a stock?", "What's court?" and "Where did everything come from?" He currently has a habit of repeating questions that is enough to drive any adult to call a mandatory 20 minute silence, but he can also be great fun just one-on-one, holding hands as we walk down the beautiful fall streets, talking about where we all came from.

The annual apple picking photos

2010-10-09T18:30:00.001-04:00

DSC_5006, originally uploaded by HAVANA19.

are now up on flickr.

Yom Kippur As Explained by a Four Year Old

2010-09-20T10:47:00.000-04:00

Milo: Why are we leaving temple?

Me: You seem like you've had enough, but we can come back later if you want.

Milo: We can come back later?

Me: Yes, it goes on all day. Some people spend the whole day in shul.

Milo: Being good and sorry?

Post-Kindergarten Debrief: Week One

2010-09-18T21:13:00.001-04:00

For the die hard blog fans, here's Milo's take on his first week of Kindergarten. And yes, halfway through the interview he stands on his head while still being interviewed.

The highlights: he learned a new song, got lost during a fire drill, and the best part of the day is ... lunch.

Part 1

Part 2

What Big Brothers Are For

2010-09-12T18:58:00.000-04:00

Yesterday we were in the park. Mira was walking with her stroller when she tripped and fell over. Milo went over to her and helped her up. And just for that moment, it made everything worth it.

More photos up on Flickr.

How It's Going To Be

2010-09-07T19:46:00.001-04:00

When you wait six to eight months for something to happen, sometimes you're surprised when it actually occurs. Mira started walking last Wednesday, more or less. She just up and decided to walk. On Thursday - THE NEXT DAY - we drove across the entire state of Massachusetts to escape Hurricane Earl. We stopped at a rest stop to buy drinks. I stood there, Mira standing at my side, trying to find a Diet Coke that wasn't 463 ounces, when suddenly I turned and noticed she was gone. I found her about three seconds later, after a mad dash through the rest stop. She'd walked out of the convenience store part of the rest stop and was headed toward Cinnabon. And just like that, now she walks. To Cinnabon, apparently. Keep in mind that the day before SHE WAS BARELY WALKING.

There's no stopping her now. I took her to the gym yesterday and she did an entire lap on the quarter mile track, then walked home five blocks. While at the track she attempted running. I had to try hard not to laugh when she discovered about ten steps later that running was not yet for her, and face planted on the rubberized gym floor. I mean, come on, she learned to walk three days earlier and was now planning a short run? Who does that? Mira, apparently, who is unlike anyone I have ever met. I feel like I keep saying this, but the girl is a force of nature. It's hard to believe that in just eleven short years we'll be having a screaming argument about whether or not she can have a cell phone. Oh, good times ahead.

Mira Walks on the Beach

2010-09-04T18:34:00.001-04:00

Mira Walks on the Beach, originally uploaded by HAVANA19.

Apparently Mira was waiting until we got to the state of Massachusetts to start walking. Here she is, taking a long, contemplative stroll in Provincetown, MA. She started walking a few days ago and has refused to sit down since.

The Obvious Conclusion

2010-08-18T13:20:00.000-04:00

Anyone less sleep deprived and not suffering with the flu probably could have figured out how this would all turn out before I even purchased the stroller, but it wasn't until I saw what was actually happening that the inevitability hit me in the face. Back when Milo was Mira's age, he longed for a doll stroller to push around the playground, a fact that I documented here. We now know that this is because Milo is 4 going on 40 and if he sees an adult doing something, he wants to do it. He used to covet other children's strollers, he would stalk them at the playground and rush in to grab one at the moment of opportunity. I refused to buy one because, I don't know, it seemed stupid to lug around a second stroller that wasn't really a stroller and anyway we've got enough pieces of plastic crap around the house already.

Then, the other day, I read on one of the albinism boards that it helps visually impaired kids learn to walk outside if you give them something to push, which helps teach them about how to anticipate dips in the ground, etc... Mira had already proven that she loved pushing her actual stroller, and will do so for blocks at a time, so I went out and bought Mira a doll stroller, which is lighter weight then her stroller and I hoped might give her the balance and security she needed to begin to walk on her own for long stretches of time.

It was Sunday so we made a big family excursion of it, allowing Milo to bike to the park for the first time, with Mira in her stroller with the doll stroller tucked underneath. When we got to the park I demonstrated the doll stroller for Mira, and she promptly picked it up and tried to walk around with it while holding on to my hand, which completely defeated the purpose of the entire exercise because now not only was I walking around the park holding on to Mira's hand, but her other hand was carrying i large unfolded plastic stroller that kept bonking her in the knees.

Milo, in the mean time, had declared that he was sick of riding his bike and asked if he could take a turn with the doll stroller, since Mira clearly didn't know how to use it properly. Mira gladly relinquished the doll stroller in favor of what she really wanted - the actual stroller - and we spent the rest of the time at the park with Mira pushing her stroller, Milo pushing the doll stroller while pretending to talk on a cell phone, and Steven pushing Milo's bike while I steered Mira's stroller. People walking past us were all sizing up the situation and smirking, as they saw how badly our plans had gone awry. Of COURSE this is how it played out - why I would have thought anything different I chalk up to the fact that I'm not currently functioning on all brain cells, combined with that ever-present parental hope that just this once you can make your kids behave the way you want them to.

And now, I leave you with this, which just proves that all you ever need to know about a person you can tell by the time they're nine months old:

More pictures from a trip to the new Imagination Playground at South Street Seaport up on Flickr.

Mira's First Joke

2010-08-18T12:53:00.000-04:00

Before going to sleep every night Mira goes through a long list of saying good night to everyone, with kisses, including Steven, Milo and Oscar. The other night she said her good nights, thought for a minute, and then added "Goodnight, Bus!"

Housekeeping - August 2010

2010-08-11T14:10:00.000-04:00

We've been back in Brooklyn for nearly two months now, enough time for Milo to become re-obsessed with the subway, and for Mira to pick up her very own bus fixation, and definitely long enough for me to finally sit down and write an update.

Mira, you went through a difficult stage while your teeth were coming in over the past past month or so, and for a while we feared for your personality, but in the last few weeks you've cheered up and are starting to become your very own person, as eventually I guess we knew you would. You like to talk about buses whenever possible. You hopefully say "go on the bus" or "take a bus", both pronounced as all one word, when awakening in the morning and at nap time, ever optimistic that we might suddenly decide to take the bus. You also insist that all cars and trains are buses, and your favorite book right now is Don't Let The Pigeon Drive The Bus, because you can chime in with "bus" at all the right spots.

You're also at the point where you can anticipate a sequence of events. You always follow "all done" after dinner with "brushteeth" followed by "GoodnightMiloGoodnightDadGoodnightOscarGoodnightMama."
Yesterday you saw me carrying my purse and started yelling "go! go!"because I guess you realize that the last thing I do before I leave the house is pick up a purse, and when you came home from the gym you yelled "shoe off!"

You still hate walking, though you're doing it a little more these days, but your preference is definitely to walk with someone's pinkie gripped firmly in your fist. And your love for Oscar has never been stronger. For Oscar you will stand up, walk a few steps, all so you can tackle the cat and lie down on top of him. You think he's your own personal mattress. You also like to push, particularly Milo, and one of your favorite activities is hurling things across the room. We're going to have a super fun time when you're old enough to get time outs.

Milo, it's been bittersweet to watch you at camp this summer - I guess I'll forever see the baby you were hidden under the child, and eventually the adult, you'll become. You've become completely and utterly obsessed with Silly Bandz, the latest, dumbest fad to hit the under-12 set. You trade Silly Bandz with your friends, you compare them, you count them, and you talk about them so much that we had to make a rule that there would be no more conversations about Silly Bandz in the house. And yet, when given the choice of which Silly Bandz to purchase, you went without hesitation for the transportation themed ones. I guess you can't deny your genetic heritage.

I think that, if given the choice, you would spend the entire day on assorted forms of public transportation. The other day you and I were transferring from the A train to the F train, when I accidentally jumped onto a train heading in the wrong direction. When I realized my mistake, we got off at the next station and caught a train back to where we'd been originally. "And now," I joked, "we can get back on the A train and take it one stop and then get off and come back and get on the F train again."

I wasn't sure if you were even going to be able to follow the logic, and if you did, if you would think this was an awesome suggestion and cry if we didn't do it. Instead, you doubled over with laughter.

"And then we can get on the A train to Queens and get off and get the F train to Brooklyn and then get off and get the A train in Queens and get off and buy a house in Queens!" you giggled. We laughed together about that one for a long time.

Love,
Mama

Mira Update

2010-08-09T19:06:00.001-04:00

Well, it only took 17 months to achieve, but here you go:

On the other hand, she's been able to do this for weeks now:

So, there you go. She's going to do it her way.

What's the Oppositie of a Nickname?

2010-07-21T08:23:00.000-04:00

I am getting in the habit of not saying anything on here because there is too much to be said.

In the mean time, while I sort out my thoughts, a new gem from Milo last night...

Milo: There was someone new at camp today named Grahams.

Me: You mean Graham. His name is Graham.

Milo: Yes. But they call him Grahams for long.

Mira Counts to Ten

2010-07-14T20:50:00.001-04:00

Strawberries, Anyone?

2010-06-10T19:00:00.000-04:00

More pictures up on Flickr

I'm Probably Slightly Biased But ...

2010-05-20T21:29:00.001-04:00

... she's winning the adorable prize around here at the moment (and trust me, the competition is fierce).

And in other news:
First sentence: "More cup."
First steps: Today!

A few more pictures up on Flickr.

The Circle of Hell Reserved for Special People

2010-05-12T12:40:00.000-04:00

Me: So who do you want to go to the Special Person Picnic? Me or Dad?

Milo: I want you to go.

Me: Okay. I'll go.

Milo: Would you love to go?

Me: Well ... [actually, Milo, the idea of going to see you and a bunch of other four years old sing "A, You're Adorable", followed by watching the other mothers all out-mother each other at your class picnic, combined with my general loathing of other people and the fact that despite the repeated requests from the school I have chosen to bake nothing for your picnic means that not only would I NOT love to go, but in fact makes your Special Person Picnic sound an awful lot like the third circle of hell, not to mention the fact that I'm personally offended as a working mother that your school decided to not only take away two of the precious few hours that I am PAYING them to watch you by demanding I participate at an event at 2:30 ON A WEDNESDAY but that they have so over-hyped it in your little mind that there is no way one cannot attend, and am even more appalled by the fact that they think it makes it working-mother-friendly to call it a "special person" picnic, as though if I, your mother and obviously the person the school thinks should attend, cannot come because I have something more pressing to take care of, like, say, WORK, that naturally you have a whole host of other "special people" in your life who are not only dying to hear a bunch of five-year-olds sing "A, You're Adorable" but ALSO available at 2:30 on a Wednesday, not to mention how infuriating it is that your school is blind to the fact that by forcing me to do something int he middle of the day they actually TAKE AWAY from the hours I would spend with you doing things that I might actually enjoy ] ...um ... look, I always want to have a picnic with YOU, right?

Milo: Yes. So would you love to go?

Me: No. But it has nothing to do with you. It just ... isn't my thing.

Milo: I bet Dad would love to go.

Me: Well ... [if I had to pick one person on this planet who would find the Special Person Picnic more tortuous than me it would be your father...] ... um .... you can ask him. but I think he's going to feel the same way. But, you know, I'll go and be your special person if you want me to. Or, what about Jessica? Maybe she can be your special person? I bet she would love to go [especially given that I would be paying her to do so.]

Milo: Okay. Jessica can be my Special Person!

Housekeeping at 15 Months: Mira Edition

2010-05-07T11:02:00.000-04:00

Dear Mira:

Next week you'll be fifteen months old. How that happened I have no idea. You are nothing if not an intense little person. Lately that has expressed itself primarily in tantrum form - your face turns bright red, your feet start kicking or making rapid circles, and you scream, letting fat, angry tears rolling down your beautiful cheeks. For what seems like months and months you have teetered on the edge of walking. For a while you were zooming everywhere with your walker, but you had some kind of falling out with it about a month ago, and now only hands will do. You insist on toddling around holding on to two secure hands, and will throw a complete fit if forced to walk one-handed. The most ridiculous part about this is that YOU CAN WALK BY YOURSELF. The other day in a toy store you weren't paying attention and stood on your own for at least two minutes, until you noticed no one was supporting you, whereupon you promptly fell on your tush. Yesterday I walked you around the back yard with you barely holding on to each pinky. And yet you refuse to take a step on your own, and shriek like you're being stuck with pins if forced to do so. You would rather collapse into a sobbing heap on the floor than take a step on your own. This bodes supremely well for your teen years.

On the other hand, your saving graces are your continued love of snuggling and your verbal skills. Yesterday I opened up the pantry to figure out what to make you for dinner and you went, "Hmm," as though you too were trying to decide what to have for dinner. You can say baby, oatmeal, banana, cheerio, bird, door, up, dinner, leaf, choo choo, bath, shoes, toes, sunglasses, eyes, ball, barrette, off /on (pronounced "off" and "floff") and phone (for some strange reason pronounced "cheese") and you know a wide range of animal sounds. You can point to assorted body parts on command, and I swear sometimes just to be difficult you call me Dada and Dad Mama. You also think the appropriate response when Milo says, "No, Mira" is to scream "NOOO" back at him. Occasionally when someone says "no" to you you will pay attention. Those are good days.

You are also obsessed with stairs. You like to go up and down up and down. I tried to show you how to crawl up and down so you could do it on your own but you had no interest in that. If you can't walk up and down like a grownup you want no part of it. You know your own mind, and you let everyone else know it too, that's for sure.

Stay strong, organic chicken. As if you had any other choice.

Love,
Mama

Just Call Me Benito

2010-04-21T11:26:00.000-04:00

Me: Dad and I are going to start packing this weekend. We're going to do ten boxes on Saturday. How many boxes do you think you can do? One box?

Milo: Two boxes.

Me: Okay, great.

Milo: But we're going to do other stuff too, right? Like work and other usual stuff?

Me: What do you mean?

Milo: It's not just going to be like packing packing packing all day and nothing else.

Me: No, of course not. We'll do other stuff. We have to go to the market, we'll go the farmer's market, we'll have time to play or take a hike or something.

Milo: Are we going to pack the food up too?

Me: No, we're going to eat the food. Then when we move one of the first things we'll do is go out and buy food for the new house. Actually, we'll go to Fairway. Do you remember Fairway?

Milo: No.

Me: We used to go there all the time. There were boats and a train out back and you could see the Statue of Liberty.

Milo: Yeah, I DO remember that!

Me: So we'll go there.

Milo: And will we have time to see the boats and the train?

Me: Yes, definitely.

Milo: Why do they call it the Statue OF Livery?

Me: Li-BER-ty. Not Livery.

Milo: Why do they call it OF Liberty? Why not just Statue Liberty.

Me: Well, "liberty" means freedom, so it's a statue that reminds us how lucky we are to be free. They could just call it Liberty Statue, but I guess they were trying to be fancier and call it the Statue OF Liberty.

Milo: Liberty means freedom?

Me: Yes. In some countries people aren't free, and they don't get to go wherever they want and do whatever they want.

Milo: They're not free?

Me: No. In some countries they have a dictator who tells everyone what to do.

Milo: Are you my dictator?

I'm Not That Mother

2010-04-16T10:55:00.002-04:00

One of these days I might just print up a t-shirt for Mira that says "I am not wearing sunglasses because my mother thinks its cute." In general I am not into treating Mira like she's my own personal doll, although I do have to admit that I've enjoyed dressing her up more than I ever thought I would. But still, I am not the kind of mother who would force my 14 month old to wear sunglasses because they look cool. I mean, are there mothers like that out there? Apparently, because wherever we go people comment on the sunglasses. Mira has been called a baby movie star, a baby celebrity, and repeatedly pointed to with comments like "Hey, check out the baby in the sunglasses!" and "Ooh, that baby has sunglasses!" and "Wow, there's a baby wearing sunglasses!"

It's not that big a deal except for the fact that I am pretty much the opposite of the kind of mother who would buy baby sunglasses. Which is to say I guess I'm more worried about how it reflects on me than how it reflects on Mira. But Mira's not the one who has to deal with the other mothers at preschool pick up.

And speaking of preschool pick up, man am I glad that soon we'll be done with private preschool for Milo and on to public kindergarten, where I am praying they will not send home notes like, "Remember wacky sock day next Tuesday!!" or "Please bring in an empty coffee can three Thursdays from now!!" or, my personal favorite, which I found one day recently while cleaning out the car, "MILO, please bring in two tomatoes for our Thanksgiving feast." What did they do without those two tomatoes?

Preschool has been far too much work for me. I'm all about being an involved parent when it counts, which is to say, when it comes to spending time with my child and not sticking him in front of the television for hours on end. What I am bad at/not remotely interested in is being an involved parent when it comes to school. Isn't that what I pay the school for? If they need two tomatoes can't they just charge me the extra three dollars in tuition and get their own motherfucking tomatoes? They know where the supermarket is, no? Or are they too busy making grasshoppers out of Popsicle sticks to run out and buy provisions for their own stupid Thanksgiving feast.

And I'm pretty sure this accounts for the note that got sent home the other day. On the piece of paper where they always print up a little story about what the kids did that day, scrawled in green highlighter pen, were the words "DON'T FORGET PICTURE DAY TOMORROW." I am about ninety percent sure this was directed at me personally. Just so we're all clear: I have been identified as the working mother who is too busy to remember to send her kid to school in a freshly laundered button down shirt on picture day. I am the mother who cannot be counted on to buy tomatoes. I am the mother to whom the other mothers say things like, "I assume you're not going to the music and gym demonstration that the kids have been working really hard on putting together, thereby permanently scarring Milo for life, right?" To which I can only respond, "There's a music and gym demonstration?"

To recap: I'm not the mother who dolls her kid up with sunglasses. I'm not the mother who remembers to bring in tomatoes. I am the mother who considers it a major triumph on the days that I do remember wacky sock day, pajama day, or to send in a shoe box. And I'm the mother who runs meetings with Fortune 500 companies so we can pay the rent, who works after dinner almost every night so I have time to spend with the kids during the day. I'm just trying to do the best I can here.

Things Mira Will Do

2010-03-10T09:15:00.000-05:00

Steven and I both love to ski, and we started teaching Milo to ski last year. As we've skied together this year it's been hard not to wonder if Mira will be able to ski, because the kid seems to love flinging herself down the slide, and is clearly athletic, but if you don't have great depth perception and can't see that well, it seems like skiing might not be for you. But apparently that's not the case.

Milo-isms

2010-03-08T11:02:00.004-05:00

Milo comes out with a laugh-out-loud Milo-ism every day or so. Here are a few recent ones:

Me: What dinosaur is this?
Milo: Ridiculodocus.
Me: (checking box) Um, I think it's diplodocus.

[power goes out during a recent snowstorm]
Me: Oh no, it's a power outage.
[power comes back on]
Milo: And now it's a power innage!

Milo: I want to listen to some music.
Me: What do you want to listen to?
Milo: The Steven Shaklan song.
Me: What song is that?
Milo: They sing, "Steven Shaklan"
Me: I don't think so.
Milo: Yes they do.
[we eventually establish that the song he is talking about is SexyBack]
Me: OK, you tell me where you hear that.
Justin Timberlake: You see these shackles, baby, on display.
Milo: [triumphantly] THERE!

Mira: Housekeeping at 12 months

2010-03-02T11:37:00.004-05:00

Dear Mira:
When you complain that Milo had regular monthly updates for the first three years of his life and you had, like, two, I will point out the fact that Milo had the good manners to sleep until at least 6:30, ensuring that I was well rested enough to put multiple words together coherently, whereas you like to mix it up, sometimes waking at 5:45, and sometimes sleeping until 7:20, successfully ensuring that I am always too tired to document anything about your life. And because you're so erratic, I don't even get to enjoy it when you sleep past 6:30 because I'm up wondering if you've somehow managed to suffocate yourself and that's why you didn't wake up with the sun.

So there. It's your fault.

On the other hand, you can also take full credit for all the words you already know. Because while I had all the time in the world to talk to your brother about everything under the sun when he was your age, with you I'm just happy to enjoy the silence when it's just you and me. Despite that, you've learned how to talk on your own. You say: cup, eyelash, cat, Milo, Da Da, Mama, attack, yell BEDTIME at the appropriate place when we read you "Ten Minutes Till Bedtime" and do the intonation for "Goodnight Moon." If someone happens to say "By Bye" anywhere within a ten foot radius of you, you immediately wave bye bye, and you also make your feelings known about your babysitter by waving bye-bye to her when she walks in the door, and then attempting to impale yourself on my ribs.

You continue to be a force of nature. You don't just walk with your walker, you race down the hallway as though you're some kind of baby Olympics. You don't just put something down when you're done with it, you throw it was far as possible. You don't just say no to something you don't want, you hit it, fling it, or scream at it. You don't just get angry about having your arms forced into sleeves, you throw a full on foot-stomping, body shaking tantrum. But you also love passionately: you snuggle deeply with me and Dad, think Oscar is your own personal body pillow, and attempt to follow Milo wherever he goes.

And maybe some day you'll let me sleep late enough to write you a longer post.

Love,
Mama

Mira Turns One

2010-02-16T22:06:00.002-05:00

Happy birthday, beautiful girl.

Mira's eyes are looking great, and I will have an update shortly.

Click through for more pictures on Flickr.

The Beautiful Universe

2010-01-29T13:53:00.002-05:00

When Mira was first diagnosed I found it heartbreaking that she might never see the breathtaking beauty of a starry night sky. So this just made me immensely happy.

The Kid Loves Books

2010-01-29T10:18:00.003-05:00

Mira's eye surgery is scheduled for next week. We've heard wonderful things about the surgery, which will correct her strabismus, head tilt and hopefully dampen her nystagmus, all of which combined will improve her vision a great deal. She's starting to cruise now, but she's wobbly and I wonder if some of that is because the strabismus is affecting her depth perception. Other than that, I find that I frequently forget she has any vision issues at all, because she manages to find all the wires and light sockets just like any other baby.

In any event, if you read this blog, please think good thoughts for her on Wednesday.

More new pictures up on flickr.

House Hunting Lexicon

2010-01-19T13:00:00.003-05:00

We have been house hunting for about two months now, and I've become fluent in Realtor-ese, so I thought I would put together a handy Realtor-to-English dictionary:

"The school is improving" = Only three people were knifed there last year.

"It just needs a few cosmetic repairs" = The entire house may collapse in upon itself while we are standing here.

"It's a really safe location" = The house is across the street from a police station.

"So convenient to the subway" = The A train runs below the basement.

"This is really an up and coming area" = There is a hipster coffee shop in between the OTB and the check cashing place.

"Don't you love the retro-70s vibe of this place?" = The stairs are collapsing.

"Don't look at the rental as an owner, look at it as a renter." = Some renters are perfectly happy to live without a stove or a bedroom that fits a bed.

"The garden is really special." = The garden has a tree in it.

"You might have to negotiate with the person renting the top floor." = The renter on the top floor has barricaded herself into her apartment and food is being delivered directly to her fourth-floor window via step ladder.

"Hostile tenant situation" = The tenant is about to set fire to the house.

But Is It An EVIL Teething Biscuit?

2010-01-14T11:32:00.003-05:00

This video illustrates pretty much everything you need to know about Mira. She throws things, and then, when scolded, snickers knowingly. This is in part why we have begun calling her Destructo:

Today I Am A Man

2009-12-23T13:06:00.002-05:00

For Milo's first Hanukkah he got a book that had pictures of the Maccabees holding spears in it, along with the story of Hanukkah. He wold point at the picture and say, "mop" because, in his one year old mind, all adults should be holding mops at all times. Now Milo is four, and things are different. This year marked the first holiday season that he is really cognizant of, you know, stuff, and it has been a learning process for us all.

Last week Milo got to go on his first business trip, accompanying me to Hershey, PA. When we checked into the hotel, on the seventh night of Hanukkah, he stopped in the lobby and cocked his head, listening to the music, which, of course, was assorted Christmas music.

"Why are they singing about Christmas?" he asked angrily. "It's Hanukkah!"

Well Milo, because all holidays are not created equal.

"It's going to be Christmas soon," I explained. "And people get excited about it."

"Is Christmas tomorrow?" Milo asked, as though this would be the only reasonable explanation for the hotel to play Christmas music.

And then there is Santa.

"Am I on the good list or the bad list?" Milo asked me yesterday.

"What?" I asked, buying time.

"There's a good list, for good guys, and a bad list, for bad guys," Milo explained. "Am I on the good list?"

"There isn't really a list," I said. "People like to pretend Santa keeps a list of good kids and bad kids."

We had discussed Santa earlier in the week, when I accidentally tuned the car radio to a station playing Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer and started singing along, so I knew he was familiar with the concept.

"This is a funny song," I'd said to Milo, who was in the backseat.

Milo listened for a minute and then ask, "Why is it funny?"

I was about the try to explain irony when the song got to the line 'you may say there's no such thing as Santa...' and I heard a gasp from the back seat.

"THERE'S NO SUCH THING AS SANTA???"

"No," I said. "There is no such thing as Santa."

Silence.

"What do you know about Santa?" I asked.

Milo thought a minute. "Presents from Santa," he said.

"Yeah,"I said. "Well, there isn't really a Santa." And then I followed this astounding announcement with something that I knew would be even harder for Milo to comprehend. "And you can't tell your friends," I said.

"Why not?" he asked.

"Because their parents told them there is a Santa. So, you know, just don't talk about it with them. You can talk about it to me and Dad, and other adults, but not your friends."

"Santa you only talk about with your parents," Milo said, clearly filing it under Things One Only Discusses With Parents, along with other topics like interesting things he can do with his penis and pooping.

"Right," I agreed, figuring this classification would do the trick at least temporarily.

Steven told me that a few days later he and Milo were having dinner with one of Milo's friends when the friend's father started holding out the Santa carrot to get the kid to behave. Milo glanced at Steven, as though debating whether or not to inform this friend that there was no such thing as Santa, then smiled knowingly and kept it to himself.

And then there was the explanation of Hanukkah, which came one night when we were reading the book about the Maccabees and their mops.

"So, there were the Greeks," I said. "And they wanted the Jews to be Greek."

"Why?" asked Milo.

I don't know, I wanted to say. Because religion makes people do crazy things? Because as long as there have been Jews there have been people who want there to not be Jews? Happy Hanukkah!

Then yesterday came the final right of passage. We were standing in Dunkin' Donuts, purchasing a box of munchkins to make up for the fact that Milo had to spend an hour of his school's Pajama Day in *gasp* regular clothes due to a miscommunication, when some guy smiled at Milo and said, "Merry Christmas."

And for the first time in his life, I thought I saw Milo seethe. I could see the wheels spinning in his little brain as he struggled to find an appropriate response. Aw, I thought, baby's first true Jewish struggle. Because there is not a Jew out there who has not wrestled with the appropriate response to "Merry Christmas." Do you just suck it up and respond with your own Merry Christmas? Do you make a point of insulting someone who is just trying to be pleasant by informing them that you don't celebrate Christmas. Do you go noncommittal and just say Happy Holidays?

Milo opted for another choice, one only available to four-year-olds. He stared evenly at the well-wisher and said nothing, leaving it up to me.

"Thanks," I said to the guy. And then I paid for my donuts.

Batman Takes A Business Call

2009-12-23T12:24:00.000-05:00

Happy Hanukkah

2009-12-15T11:15:00.000-05:00

Stop Me If You've Heard This One ...

2009-12-04T17:02:00.002-05:00

Milo: I wish I had thirteen mothers.

Me: What would you do with thirteen mothers?

Milo: One would play with me and I would let the others talk.

Stupid Human Tricks

2009-12-02T19:32:00.002-05:00

Mira has reached that stage where she's able to perform a few things on command. She now waves bye bye, claps her hands and says YAY, and also does this:

Also, she imitates Harpo Marx:

And finally, she cracks herself up. Not on command, but a pleasure to watch:

Swinging Children

2009-11-22T18:30:00.000-05:00

New pictures up on flickr.

Housekeeping: Mira at Nine Months

2009-11-13T13:34:00.006-05:00

Dear Mira:
In honor of your turning (almost) nine months old I thought I would give you your own update. You are in the midst of an absolutely delicious phase.

As long as you have a pile of toys and someone sitting near you, you're content to sit for almost an hour at a time just picking up toys, chewing on them, talking to them, exploring them, giggling at them, and then, when you're done, flinging them to the side and moving on to the next one.

And then after that you want to cuddle. You love to be held, to sit on my lap while we make silly faces at each other, to bury your head in my shoulder, and to rest your head on my chest when you get tired.

You continue to adore Milo, imitating him whenever possible, shaking your head, mimicking sounds, trying to grab whatever toy he's playing with. Yesterday Milo said, "Ta da!" after doing something and a few seconds later we heard a tiny, squeaky "ta da!" come from you. You have also been heard to say "cat" several times, but refuse to do it on command, so we can't be a hundred percent sure. But it is looking like "cat" is going to be your first word.

We thought you were going to be an early crawler, but so far you seem more interested in sitting. You can kind of scoot around on your belly, and when you see something you really want you roll to get it, but no actual crawling as of yet, which frankly is just fine with me, because when you become mobile you're going to be an absolute terror.

You are generally smiley and happy, except when someone leaves the room and then you throw a temper tantrum. You hate being left, even if it's by Oscar.

You had a rocky start with solid food, but everything changed when you discovered yogurt. You don't like the sweet stuff as much as the savory - you wrinkly your nose at mashed banana, but will gobble up peas and brown rice, which I guess bodes well for your cholesterol levels.

And you love music. When anyone does anything that sounds even remotely like singing you'll start to bop back and forth, like you're getting down with your bad self. It's hilarious.

We visited your opthalmologist earlier this week, and he confirmed what we'd already suspected: that your vision has improved tremendously. You're able to see greater distances now, sometimes even making eye contact from several feet away, and we're hopeful that things will continue to improve. But even with less-than-perfect vision, you are just like any other nine-month old. But so much better, because you're mine.

Love,
Mama

Happy 4th Birthday, Little Chicken

2009-11-02T15:27:00.004-05:00

This morning Milo burst into our room at 5am asking if he was 4 yet. We told him not for another two hours. Just kidding. We told him yes and go back to sleep. Then at 6:30 we went into his room and sang him happy birthday while he bounced up and down on the bed with glee. This is the first birthday he's really anticipated in any meaningful way, and it was full of nervous stomach aches, fights over Batmobiles, an insane cake and tons of presents.

And Milo, just so you can never say I didn't do stuff for you, I present to you your cake:

SO THERE. Dinosaurs, a waterfall, chocolate rocks, fish jumping out of a pond, LAVA for god's sake. Now hopefully you'll forgive me for that time you got left at school last week. Oops. Well look, we can't all be perfect, but at least some of us can try to make it up via pastry.

We met Milo's first real friend this weekend, a little hyper-articulate girl named Taylor who is as into cars, Batman, and bossing people around as Milo is. When asked if she had a dog or a cat, Taylor replied no, she had a little sister. Which seems like the kind of thing Milo might say.

It is just impossible to believe that four years ago today I was enduring the tail end of an interminable labor, and that they end result was Milo. It's like something that happened to someone I once knew, in some other place, with some other kid. Because now here you are, beautiful, intelligent, and asking when you're going to be five.

Happy Birthday beautiful boy.

Love,
Mama

Picture Perfect

2009-10-26T10:59:00.002-04:00

This has been quite a photogenic month up here. Tons of pictures up on Flickr:

Talking With Ghosts

2009-10-19T11:07:00.002-04:00

I suppose I am lucky in that the only dead people I know are my grandparents. Of course there have been a few others along the way, but they are the only ones that I was very close with. What you don't learn until someone close to you dies is that your relationship with that person continues, long after they've ceased to call you on the phone.

Sometimes I think that I talk to my grandmother more now than I did when she was alive. I hear her voice in my head at least a couple times a week, telling me what she thinks about assorted things, commenting on the way I'm wearing my hair, the way I'm dressing my child, or they way I'm living my life. I hear her so clearly sometimes that it's hard to imagine I'm not having an actual conversation with her. She comes into my dreams as well, so vividly that on more than one occasion I have woken up intending to call her, only to remember that she doesn't live here any more.

She would have taken so much joy in my children, and whenever I watch them do something adorable I always feel a tiny tinge of sadness that she didn't live long enough to get to enjoy them.

Milo is named after my grandfather, who was pretty quiet in life and who almost never speaks to me in death. He was famous for breaking into World War 2-era songs after dinners and and other, less-appropriate times. I grew up with these songs, so it seems only fitting that I pass on his songs to my kids. Here is Milo singing one of his favorites. When Milo sings it, I can hear my grandfather's laughter in my head. He would have really enjoyed this:

Let Me Grab Your Face

2009-10-13T16:39:00.000-04:00

...and other pictures of the kids up on Flickr.

The Joys of Being Milo

2009-10-05T19:31:00.002-04:00

Oh, what I wouldn't give to be Milo for just a minute. On Sunday we drove to a farm, picked out a pumpkin, got scared by some turkeys, had a picnic lunch that involved Pringles, came home and took naps, baths, ate dinner and went to sleep.

I asked Milo what good things happened that day. His response: "It was all good."

The Scary Part

2009-10-02T13:38:00.005-04:00

Milo: Some day can we go in a parachute?

Me: Um, probably not. The only way to go in a parachute is to jump out of a plane

Milo: How do you get in the plane?

Me: Well, the plane is on the ground, and you get in it, and it takes off, and then when it gets up to a certain point in the air you step out of the plane with a parachute on your back.

Milo: [Thinking for a moment] I think the part where you step out of the plane might be a little bit scary.

Me: I think you're right.

And the Answer Is ...

2009-09-24T14:35:00.001-04:00

...negative! Mira does not have HPS. Let the celebratory drinking begin.

Why FedEx Should Be My Health Care Provider

2009-09-15T19:23:00.006-04:00

We are trying to get Mira tested for Hermansky Pudlak Syndrome, which is an extremely rare condition that includes albinism as one of the characteristics. We have no indication that she has it, but it's the kind of thing one would like to know about one's child for the future. Because it's so rare, and because they haven't yet isolated all of the genes that cause it, the only way to test for it is to FedEx a blood sample to this guy in Minneapolis who, I guess, spends all day looking at blood samples. Unfortunately, this is completely outside of standard medical practice because it doesn't involve, like, a referal, or a copay, and therefore is impossible to do.

Day One:
Call Qwest Diagnostics and ask if it is possible to walk out the door with a blood sample. Qwest says no, they will only send blood to their lab. Politely thank them and hang up.

Day Two
Call pediatrician and schedule blood draw. Offer to email instructions from Minneapolis guy to them. Learn that pediatrician's office does not have email.

Day Three
Visit FedEx to learn about how to overnight blood. Have the following conversation:
Me: I need to overnight blood.
FedEx: Did the lab give you a container?
Me: It's not going to a lab. It's going to a guy in Minneapolis.
FedEx: You have to have a special container.
Me: I don't have one. Can we make one?
FedEx: Well, sure. Just put it in a ziploc bag with some newspaper. That will be $50 - thanks for your business!

Day Four
Visit Pediatrician. Show them blood draw instructions. Have the following conversation:
Nurse: We don't have the equipment for these instructions. You need to go to Qwest.
Me: Qwest will only send the sample to their labs and they don't do this test.
Nurse: Let me call them and find out the code for the test.
Me: They don't do the test. There is only one guy who does the test and he is in Minneapolis.
Nurse: Let me call our special connection at Qwest and see if they can do it.
Me: They can't do it. Only the guy in Minneapolis does it.
Nurse: Why don't you just go to him then?
Me: To Minneapolis?
Nurse: Oh. Let me refer you to a geneticist.
Me: The geneticist will not do the test. Only the guy in Minneapolis does the test. Why don't you call the guy in Minneapolis.
Nurse: Are you sure I can't get the code from Qwest?
Me: He's really nice and I'm sure he's there. Why don't you just call him and find out how to get him the blood?
Nurse: I'll need to talk to the pediatrician. Did he refer you to the guy in Minneapolis?
Me: No.
Nurse: [Nodding head as though this explains everything, and clearly I am a lunatic who just wants to have my infant daughter tested for rare genetic conditions for fun.] I see.

A few hours later the pediatrician's office called, apologized, and said they had spoken to the guy in Minneapolis and would figure out how to eventually do the blood draw. In the mean time, we wait...

In summary: FedEx 1; Health Care 0.

Housekeeping: September 2009

2009-09-14T13:41:00.003-04:00

Dear Kids:
Now that there are two of you I seem to have half as much to say. Probably because I'm exhausted. Mira, you are not the sleeper your brother was at this age. This has taught me a number of things about both of you. First, Milo, from the day you were born you wanted to know what the rules were so you could follow them. Your thoughts around sleeping were: crib? Okay! put me in it! How long should I sleep for? Is 12 hours good? Okay! You want three naps? Sure! Three naps it is!

If Mira has an internal monologue about sleep at this age, it is this: I will do what I want when I want, and the rest is your problem. After six months you are finally sleeping in the crib for your naps and at night, but what happens after we put you down is anyone's guess. Sometimes you sleep through the night, other times you wake up, find yourself on your belly, and are so angry at the injustice of it all that you complain for anywhere up to two hours afterward. On the other hand, you, like your brother, will lie in the crib and talk to yourself for up to half an hour. Your nanny thought this was the strangest thing she'd ever seen, but having lived with your brother for almost four years now, I assured her that that's just what our babies do.

Mira, you are not exactly the calm, collected baby your brother was. You know your name and respond to it immediately, and you also like to try to shove the cat in your mouth. You laugh all the time, but you can also get fussy and crabby if you're not doing exactly what you had in mind. Like, for example, if someone puts you on the activity mat when you had planned to be standing up. Your favorite toy right now is the jumperoo - I swear you're going to launch yourself into outer space from there one of these days. And your favorite person, of course, is Milo. You light up when he comes into the room, and will giggle with him for minutes at a time. You also think you can crawl, and have a tendency to get pissy when it turns out that you still can't. The other day you rolled halfway across a room just to get to Milo. So, I guess you're a problem solver too.

Milo, you went through a rough patch there, but now that you're closing in on four (I cannot believe it) you've become a charming, delightful boy. You also respect authority, so we're going to have to work on that. The other day I took you to the dentist. At first you cried, but after some prodding you got through the entire visit without trying to bite the dentist, which is what happened the last time I took you. The dentist told you to stop sucking your thumb and, amazingly, the next morning you woke up and declared you were not going to suck your thumb anymore, which I thought took a lot of resolve for a little kid. By midday, we were in the car and you leaned your head back into your car seat, ready to suck.

"Mama," you said. "I really want to suck my thumb."

Aw, baby's first lesson in self-restraint, I thought. I offered you a mint instead. You finished it and said, "I still want to suck my thumb."

"That's up to you," I said. "I can't make that decision for you."

"If I suck my thumb my teeth are going to break and we'll have to go back to the dentist?" you asked.

I clarified that your teeth wouldn't break, but that you would probably need braces and that it was generally bad for your teeth and yes, there would be a lot more visits to the dentist.

In the end we agreed that you would suck your thumb for two minutes, and then you would stop. Which you did. That seemed to qwell your thumb sucking demons for the time being. So in summary: respect for authority and highly addictive personality. Let's hope you don't grow up to join a cult.

You are also just such a little boy these days. You're into Spiderman, Batman, dinosaurs, skeletons, and are always asking about who shoots bad guys. Except when you're pretending to be a waitress and talking about how much you love flowers. So, you know, you're sensitive too. And clean. Just when I thought we were over your love of mops and brooms and cleaning supplies, you asked me if you could use the dust buster. One afternoon I occupied you for hours by suggesting you sweep the leaves off the patio. This was awesome for both of us.

We're exahusted over here, but you guys make it worth it. And some day I am going to wake you both up at 3:30 am just for the hell of it.

Love,
Mama

Well If You're Going To Get All Semantic About it

2009-09-09T09:41:00.002-04:00

[Milo spends about five minutes running a loop around our rectangular coffee table.]

Me: Why are you running in circles?

Milo: I'm not running in circles. I'm running in squares.

Camera Shy

2009-09-02T12:13:00.001-04:00

Mira has started saying MAMAMAMA and DADADADADA. We tried to capture on film, after she'd been babbling for about 20 minutes non-stop, and this is what happened:

Why Did the Goose Cross the Road?

2009-08-19T20:10:00.001-04:00

Me: Oh wow, look, there are geese crossing the road!

Milo: I guess when geese want to cross the road they just walk across the road by themselves.

Me: What do you mean?

Milo: Because they don't have hands, so they can't hold hands to cross the road.

You're Lucky You're Cute

2009-08-11T19:52:00.004-04:00

I have been a single mom since Sunday, as Steven is out of town, and as a result Milo and I have been spending far more time together than usual. For the most part he has been driving me completely insane, because for the first two days he was sick in bed with a fever and a croupy cough. His appetite, however, was perfectly healthy and I think for the most part he was bored. So every ten minutes I'd hear "MAMA!" from his room.
"Mama, I'm hungry."
"Mama I want eggs."
"Mama, did you remember to put salt on the eggs?"
"Mama, these eggs are too hot."
"Mama, now the eggs are too cold."
"Mama, I don't want eggs actually. I want candy."

Even so, there have been a few Milo gems here and there. Which is pretty much what keeps me from chopping him up into little pieces, or just walking out the door and leaving him to fend for himself.

Gem #1: The Theory of Fruit Punch
Milo: This flavor is called fruit punch?
Me: Yes.
Milo: I think that's because to make it they take the fruit and punch it together.

Gem #2: The Theory of Teeth
Milo: OW! I bit my cheek.
Me: You do that a lot. Why do you think that is?
Milo: I think I have unusual teeth.

Remember When Everyone Was Named Jennifer and Amy?

2009-08-05T20:12:00.002-04:00

A List of Some of the Names of Milo's Classmates:

Bjorn
Hudson
Dakota
Sage
Kaelyn
Charleston
Samantha (3)
Quinny

Sad News Update

2009-08-03T11:43:00.003-04:00

In my last post I wrote about Milo's dream playdate with Sophie. I feel the need to mention that two days later her father, Steven's close friend, was involved in a horrible freak accident. I usually have something biting to say about everyone, but even I never had a single not-nice thing to say about Sasha or, for that matter, his entire family. He is just a genuinely sweet, lovely person, his wife is equally lovely, they are great parents and they have adorable kids. We've been thinking about him every day, many times a day, and wake up every morning hoping for good news.

The Moppets Take Manhattan

2009-07-28T13:32:00.005-04:00

This weekend we first went to the Orange County Fair for corn dogs and cheese fries, and then went to Manhattan for dirty martinis and soup dumplings. And that pretty much sums up the nation.

In Manhattan we rode the subway, ate good food, and visited the Museum of Natural History. Every time we go to the natural history museum with Milo it is a completely different experience than the time before. I thought Milo would finally be old enough to really be interested in the dinosaurs, but it turns out he's still not there yet. Mostly he wanted to push all the buttons on the interactive displays, and run through the museum. I think we pretty much ran through the entire dinosaur display, and then did two laps under the whale in the ocean life exhibit. For her part, Mira snoozed through the dinosaurs, woke up and smiled at passing strangers for a while, and devolved into screaming as we got to ocean life.

I asked Milo which one he liked better, Cold Spring or Manhattan and he replied, "I like Manhattan."

"What about Brooklyn?" I asked. "Remember when we lived in Brooklyn?"

"Yeah," said Milo. "But I like Manhattan."

That's my kid.

Milo had a dream playdate in Central Park with his friend Sophie while Steven and I took Mira to visit a pediatric ophthalmologist who specializes in treating kids with albinism. And not to bury the lead, but the doctor gave us great news about Mira. Her condition, he feels, is very mild and her vision could be as good as 20/40. We won't know until she's old enough to read an eye chart, but he was extremely optimistic.

"Don't worry about her," he said. "You don't need to do anything special for her. Treat her like a normal baby. She is a normal baby. She's gorgeous, and you should just enjoy her."

Oh doc, you say that to all the babies.

Click through for more pictures.

Because I Do Nothing All Day But Eavesdrop On Three Year Olds

2009-07-22T21:33:00.004-04:00

Me: So today at camp did you talk about how people walked on the moon?

Milo: Yes, you heard?

Oops, I Did It Again

2009-07-22T18:28:00.003-04:00

[Britney Spears song comes on the radio.]

Milo: What's the name of this song?

Me: Um, I think it's Hit Me Baby One More Time.

Milo: [Aghast] You're never supposed to hit a baby!

Housekeeping - July 09

2009-07-21T19:33:00.003-04:00

Dear kids:
I feel like this month we all started to get into a groove of being a family of four. Up until now it's mostly just been trying to get through each day, but this past Sunday we all just hung out together in the living room, Steven and I read the paper, Milo played with his toy airplane, and Mira entertained herself on the activity mat and it was lovely.

Mira, you always have a smile for Milo, and Milo, you are just dying for your sister to be able to play with you. You're patient and loving toward her, you let her drool on your toys, and today when she rolled over for you you beamed with genuine excitement. Mira, I can't say how relieved I am at your rolling capabilities. While there aren't supposed to be any developmental delays with albinism, I can't help but feel like, man, if this can happen WHAT ELSE is in store for us. So I'm thrilled that you rolled right on schedule. I'm a little less thrilled that you look like you're also about ready to pick yourself up off the floor and crawl any minute, but I guess I'll take early crawling over the alternative. You also already respond to your name, usually with a big beaming smile.

Your napping, on the other hand, is driving everyone in the house insane. We tried to let you cry it out last week and you went for 3 straight days with no nap. You are one strong willed little baby. You want to be rocked to sleep with a boob in your mouth and that's that. No compromises, no napping in the crib, and everyone else can go to hell. I sort of get the sense that your first sentence is going to be I WANT IT I WANT IT I WANT IT. Followed by NOW PICK ME UP.

Having a baby in the house only highlights what a big boy you have become, Milo. After all those months of wishing you would be a little more self sufficient, these days I find myself wishing you were a little needier. I never realized that the amount you need me is the inverse of how much you can do for yourself. And that along with that comes a little distance, a little criticism, a little waning of that fierce, all-encompassing love you had for your parents when you were younger. Two-year-old Milo thought that Mama knew everything, lit up when I walked into a room, needed me as much as food and water. But three-and-a-half year old Milo says things like, "I need a little privacy," and "You're wrong." Three-and-a-half year old Milo has a bigger world, filled with other kids and teachers, of which I am just one part. I suppose this is parenthood, raising you right so you don't need me anymore, but it's bittersweet. And sometimes I miss that wonderful feeling of being your everything.

But on the other hand, these days being with you is like being with a real person. I took you to hear some music down by the river this weekend, and was amazed at how easy it was. We talked about the band and the boats on the river, and a lot about whether or not two girls sitting near us would share their hula hoops with you. You ate dumplings, declared the dipping sauce too spicy, and then you ran off to dance. For a minute you couldn't find me in the crowd when you turned around, and I saw tears gathering in your eyes. And I waited an extra second before running over to reassure that I was right there, savoring the delicious feeling of being needed by a little person once again.

Love,
Mama

Early Forays into Art Photography

2009-07-12T18:46:00.001-04:00

Milo is always asking if he can use my camera, so we let him. He took a picture of Mira:

Click through for more kids on Flickr.

Everyone Needs Someone

2009-07-03T18:13:00.001-04:00

Milo: We always have fun together.

Me: Of course we always have fun together. You're my kid.

Milo: I'm your kid?

Me: Yes.

Milo: And you're my grownup.

Housekeeping: June '09

2009-06-22T19:24:00.003-04:00

Dear Kids,
The last few months have been rough going for us all, I think, between Mira's diagnosis, the economy, and the general chaos of living in a house with two small children, but I feel we're coming out of it now and settling down into the new normal.

Mira, I don't want to turn this blog into a diary of your condition, as you're so much more than that, but I should at least note that this month you were evaluated by the Early Intervention people. Our taxpayer dollars at work. We cleaned the house before they came because when people from the state come over to evaluate your children you really can't help but escape the nagging feeling that they are also evaluating you and your parenting and your housekeeping and writing down little notes like, "Unidentifiable object moldering in corner of living room." But the good news is that Mira, you are right on target developmentally with everything, and you're even able to track objects now, although it is still tougher on you than it would be on a kid with normal vision. You're a lot different than Milo was at this age: quieter, more into tummy time, easier to make laugh, less drooly.

This month you found your feet, and you like to do that classic baby pose where you grab your toes and rock back and forth -- rolling over seems to be pretty close for you. Your single defining characteristic at fourth months of age, though, is your need to have something in your mouth constantly at all times. You have been known to suck on your hands, toys, shirts, other people's hands, arms -- pretty much anything within your mouth's reach you will attempt to latch on to.

Case in point. We put you in the Bumbo chair this week and after surveying the options...

... you quickly located the closest thing to attach your mouth to:

At first we thought you'd fallen over, but no, you'd just found something new and different to suck on.

It is also worth noting that you are a stunning baby:

Now, Milo. You haven't been the easiest this month. One problem has been your insistence that you be the boss of everything. Four thousand times a day we hear you ask, "When will I be the boss? Am I the boss of Malcolm? I want to be 37 so I can be the boss." Sometimes I just wish you could enjoy being a kid more instead of always thinking about what you're going to do when you're an adult. Not that I can't related -- I'm pretty sure that's how I spent most of my childhood too.

You are always full of questions, and always trying to figure out how things work. Today I took you into a pet shop and we saw a little aquarium that had one of those plastic fish with a moth that opens and closes and little bubbles come out. You watched it for a moment and then said, "I think there is a little tube in there and water comes out of it and it makes the mouth open and the bubbles comes out." I took you and hugged you and said, "I think you're right."

Your funny mispronunciations are fewer and farther between, but when they occur they are funnier than ever. After your first day at your new school you announced you had a friend named Crisp.
"Chris, maybe?" I asked.
"No, I think it's Crisp," you said. I assured you that it was not.

And your new words are bigger and more abstract. You've started trying to work the word "realize" into more sentences. The other day I heard you mumbling, "Just forget it," to yourself. Then when I picked you up at school your teacher said to me, "How does he know the number 90?" Turned out you'd read it off the side of a matchbox car. "He likes numbers," was what I said to the teacher. I didn't tell her you also figured out how to write your name, my name, and dad's name, that you can read a little when forced to, and that you can tell at a glance how many dots are on a domino. You keep us on our toes, little chicken.

I love you both,
Mama

Mira Laughing

2009-06-17T11:37:00.002-04:00

Milo is desperate to be the boss of someone. We've told him maybe he can be the boss of Mira, so he tried it out and she laughed at him:

Also, "Oh pickle face" is apparently a laugh riot:

Buzz Lightyear and His Sister

2009-06-08T10:09:00.001-04:00

Working on a monthly update. In the mean time, here are some new pics:

When I Grow Up I'm Going To Be An Old Woman

2009-05-20T13:33:00.003-04:00

Me: What do you want to be when you grow up?

Milo: What do I want to be?

Me: Like, you have to do something when you're an adult. Like you could drive a train or fly an airplane or be a doctor. What do you want to do?

Milo: When I'm a adult I'm going to use very sharp scissors.

...and later ...

Milo: When I'm a adult I'm going to say to myself, "I want some peanut butter and then I'm going to just go and get myself some peanut butter."

A Taste of the Insanity

2009-05-12T14:50:00.002-04:00

Milo demonstrates his "kid moves", followed by Mira putting on a smile show for the camera.

Housekeeping: May 2009

2009-05-07T13:22:00.002-04:00

I'll begin by saying that April '09 is a month I am glad I will never have to live through again. Let's start with the fun stuff:

Milo, this month you started to learn about winning and losing. I bought you the game Hi Ho Cherry-O back in March, which is a game I remember enjoying as a kid. It involves placing little plastic cherries onto a tree, and then seeing who can get all of them into the bucket first, which is determined by a little spinner with numbers on it. Sometimes you get to take four cherries off your tree and put them into the bucket, and sometimes you land on the dog and have to take cherries out of the bucket and put them back on your tree.

For the first few weeks you had the game you mostly just liked to play with the cherries and the cards and the spinner, but then suddenly last week it all game together for you and you started actually playing the game, taking turns, and not cheating. The first time this happened, we were playing together and I won. After I announced that I'd won and the game was now over you looked at me quizzically, as though you didn't understand what this whole winning thing meant.

"Now I get to do the victory dance," I said, hoping to illustrate the value of winning, and I got up and danced around singing"I won! I won!"

At which point you burst into tears and said, "But I wanted to win!"

"Of course you did," I said. "It just happens that I won that game."

"But I wanted to win it," you sobbed.

"That's good," I said. "And maybe you'll win the next one. Want to play again?"

You calmed down and said that you did in fact want to play again, so we played again. Unfortunately as fate would have it I won the next three games, and you promptly cried, but on the fourth game, thank God, you won.

"Now I get to do the victory dance!" you cried happily, at which point you stood up and, embellishing on my modest victory dance, began running around in circles yelling "I WON I WON I WON" at the top of your lungs. This was absolutely adorable, and unfortunately is absolutely something we're going to have to correct at some time in the near future, before you start taunting all your peers with your victory dance every time you win something. But nonetheless, you are now addicted to Hi Ho Cherry-O, and we play it all the time. Sometimes I win and when I do you always say, "Maybe I'll win the next game." And when you win you do your ostentatious victory dance. You're a sore winner and a good loser and that's the way it should be.

Now, on to the less good news. This month we found out, Mira, that you have a rare genetic condition called oculocutaneous albinism, which means that you are very blond (which we already knew) and may have some vision impairments, the extent of which won't be clear for many months. The good news is that you are able to see something; the bad news is that you're probably not going to have great eyesight, and it won't be correctable. But on the other hand, the other good news is that the only thing that is affected is your eyesight, and you are perfect in every other way.

It turns out that when you get a bad diagnosis for your child and you tell other people, the first thing these other people tell you is about someone who has it worse than you do. So this month I've heard story after story of 11 years olds with terminal liver cancer, babies with genetic conditions that cause their heads not to develop properly, and on and on and on. While it's true that things could be a lot worse, I'm here to tell you that hearing about other people who have it worse doesn't help. What did help recently, oddly, was something Michael J. Fox (of all people) said on The View yesterday. He was talking about living with Parkinson's disease, and someone said how hard it must be for him to get up in the morning, to which he said something along the lines of, "Every day when I wake up, I don't have a choice about whether or not to have Parkinson's, but I have a lot of other choices."

While I am still hoping, Mira, that your condition will turn out to be so mild as to barely affect your life, I am also hoping that regardless we will be able to raise you with the right attitude. You'll be treated the same as Milo, and we will expect the best from you. With a rare genetic condition to use as material for your college essay, I am fully expecting you to get into Harvard or Yale. And thus far, you are a wonderful baby. You're smiley, calm, and beautiful. You sleep through the night (well, your night, which unfortunately ends at 5:20 AM, but then again you're only 2 1/2 months old), you think your parents are funny, and lately you seem to think that sticking out your tongue is hilarious. You talk a lot, though not nearly as much as your brother did at this age, thank god, because I don't know if we could take the racket. Seriously that kid never shuts up. And yesterday you rolled over for the first time, although it might have been an accident, and you acted like it was no big deal.

I'm proud of both my little chickens, both the original recipie and the new all-organic chicken. Let's hope we have nothing but good news in our futures.

Love,
Mama

2009-04-29T19:41:00.003-04:00

We've been going through a tough month over here. I'll update everyone soon. In the mean time, latest pics of the kiddos:

Milo Sings the Four Questions

2009-04-12T20:50:00.001-04:00

Night 2:

Night 1:

Mira Smiles

2009-03-29T19:14:00.000-04:00

And more new pictures up on Flickr.

Milo & Mira

2009-03-29T14:59:00.000-04:00

Deep Thoughts, by Milo

2009-03-18T20:32:00.005-04:00

Some recent questions Milo has asked:

On nature: "Where do crickets sleep? Do they have little leaf pillows and blankets?"

On nursing: "Does milk come out of your finger too?" and, "What else can you make?" I was desperate to answer, "jellybeans" but refrained.

On food: "How do they get the apple juice into apples?" and, "How do they get the peanut butter into peanuts?"

And finally, my favorite comment of the week: "That cheesecake isn't for kids, its for people." Because you are right, the opposite of "kids" should definitely be "people."

Housekeeping For Two (40 months; 3 weeks)

2009-03-09T11:13:00.005-04:00

Dear Kids,
I seriously can't believe there are two of you now. I guess there's no turning back from here. But that said, this month has been wonderful (as wonderful as something involving a newborn can be). I feel like my family is finally complete, whole and perfect - a feeling I didn't even know I was waiting for until now.

I am tired, and sometimes it feels like I'm just working on a children's assembly line -- read book, do today, sing song, put to bed, feed next child, sing song, put to bed -- but it's good.

Milo Pilo, I know this has been one of the hardest months you've lived through in your short life, and you made me proud. You've acted out, of course, sometimes taking up a Labrador-like stance in front of me while I nurse your sister and chanting "MAMA MAMA MAMA MAMA", which is three-year-old code for "STOP WHAT YOU ARE DOING AND PAY ATTENTION TO ME FOR THE LOVE OF GOD," you cry when Dad drops you off at school, you ask me every night if we can do something special the two of us the next day, and it has been hard on both of us, but even so there have been no tantrums, minimal jealousy, and I think that you've handled the change exceptionally.

This month you became fascinated with big words and words with multiple meanings. Some of your new words: conversation, boring (which you don't yet understand), perhaps, and fragile. The other day I asked you if you'd gone to see the trains with Dad and you said, "I doubt it." And then the other evening when we were driving in the car we had the following exchange:

Milo: Music, please.
Me: Let's just enjoy the quiet right now. No music.
[pause]
Me: So did you have fun at Malcolm's house?
Milo: I want music.
Me: No music.
Milo: [long sulking pause] So, what were you asking me?

I'm not sure what tense that is, but I was impressed. And then yesterday I told you I was going to get a massage, and we had the following exchange:

Milo: A collage?
Me: No, a massage.
Milo: What's a massage?
Me: [rubbing Milo's shoulders] This is a massage. Where someone rubs your shoulders and your back.
Milo: Why don't they scratch your knees?

And Mira, I can't say there is a tremendous amount to write about regarding a three-week-old, but I'll try. You continue to be a champion sleeper - you did a six hour stretch last night, woke up to eat, then went back to sleep for another three hours. It's still a little weird and creepy, but I guess I won't complain. When you're awake you're alert and calm, and you're already talking up a storm and making all kinds of sounds that seem to indicate we're going to have a house full of people who never shut up.

I have to say that there is something very special about having been a little blond girl and now having my own little blond girl to raise that makes me extra into you even at such an early age. You are already working on a smile - we've seen glimpses of it in your sleep -- and you have your strange, specific desires and needs, like having to latch on just so in order to nurse, preferring sleep to food at the moment, and the same love of bright lights that your brother had at your age. I'm looking forward to what the coming weeks bring.

Love,
Mama

New Siblings

2009-02-25T19:29:00.003-05:00

More pictures up on Flickr.

Mira's Birth Story

2009-02-20T12:07:00.005-05:00

As with Milo's birth story, this will probably be of interest to a limited number of people, but it's of interest to me, and this is my blog, so here it is.

On Sunday morning, Mira's due date, I woke up at 6am with very mild contractions - so mild that I thought I might just be willing my own uterus to contract because I was so sick of being pregnant. Also I'd thought it would be kind of cool to have both kids arrive on their due dates. I tried timing the contractions but they were so random I got the sense that I was imagining them more than actually having them. I'd been preparing for the birth with Hypnobabies, a set of CDs that teach you self hypnosis techniques, so I put my earphones on and listened to some Hypnobabies (which Steven and I had started referring to as Hypno-crack because it we'd both found the CDs put us into this drug-like state where you lose time and have no sense of what is going on around you) in the hopes that it might make me go into labor. So it's me, everyone else sleeping, and the hypno-crack for an hour or so until Milo woke up and came into our room.

I spent the morning resting, listening to the hypno-crack, and trying to will myself into labor. At around 11am Steven and I decided to take a walk to try to get things moving. We drove down to Little Stony Point and walked around, took some pictures, and managed to totally put an end to my contractions.

At that point I decided, ok, forget it, no baby today, I'll do other stuff. So I came home and puttered around -- sterilized baby bottles and pacifiers, had lunch, then Steven made a fire and we sat in the living room and played Boggle for a while.

Some time that evening the contractions started up again, but again they were mild and so un-timable that I barely paid any attention to them. By 10PM, thoroughly annoyed with my uterus, I took half a Unisom and went to bed. Three hours later I woke up with more contactions. I rolled over and went back to sleep for another hour, until the contractions became too frequent to ignore. At that point I woke up Steven, told him the contractions had started up again and that I was going to do more Hypnobabies, and that I'd let him know when things got interesting.

By 3AM things started to get interesting. Steven started timing contractions and they seemed to be coming every 7 minutes or so, and lasting close to a minute. They were still not painful, but the intensity had definitely picked up so we called the doula, who asked if I wanted her to come over. I said I wasn't sure, because things had been so stop and start all day. I said maybe I'd wait an hour and call her again and she agreed. Twenty minutes later she called back and said she'd changed her mind and was coming over now. I believe my response was, "Thank god."

Ten minutes later she walked in the door, and my labor immediately slowed down. Awesome, I thought, clearly I am incapable of being in labor with anyone else around. I sat on the birth ball for a while, still listening to the hypno-crack, but the contractions refused to pick up. The doula suggested we get into bed and lie down, which sounded like a fantastic idea. Shortly after that the contractions picked up again, and they started getting more intense. The doula massaged my back and did pressure point stuff as each contraction came. In between contractions I would get up, sip water, and go to the bathroom. I'd been having bloody show all day, and it was increasing as time went on. With Milo I hadn't had the show until I was at least 5 cm dilated, so my feeling was that things were progressing rapidly, but I wasn't sure.

Sometime later the contractions started becoming painful for the first time. Until then it had just felt like an intense tightening, as though someone was wrapping me up in a gigantic rubber band and squeezing hard, but now the contractions began wrapping around into my lower back. The doula asked if I was starting to feel it in my back, and when I told her I was she said that meant the baby was moving down and things were progressing. It also meant I was done with the hypno-crack. At that point I couldn't concentrate on breathing and relaxing any more, and I started yelling a little during the contractions. Around 5:30 I got loud enough to wake up Milo. I heard him get up and go to the bathroom, and suggested we move downstairs because I didn't want him to see me in labor. The doula seemed a little puzzled by this, but I think she understood once we got down to the bat cave that is our downstairs guest bedroom.

We lay in bed there for a while as the contractions got more and more intense, and I got louder and louder. I am not one for yelling in pain, but this was something beyond pain. The waves were almost exactly like the experience of being on psychedelic drugs. I could feel each wave building, and knew that there was nothing I could do but hang on and try to make it to the other side. Somewhere around 7AM I burst into tears. I just felt like I couldn't do it. I wanted so much to avoid pitocin, to get to the hospital ready to push, but I had no idea how far along I was, how much longer this was going to continue, and I just wanted the pain to stop.

The doula asked if I was crying because I was afraid of how the birth was going to change my family.

"No," I said. "I just don't think i can do it." I waited for one more contraction to come before I told her I was done. I'd had it. I wanted an epidural.

"Let's go to the hospital," I said.

She asked if I wanted an epidural and I told her I did. My contractions were still only 7 minutes apart, and she said she thought the odds were good that they'd take one look at me and start pitcoin.

"I know," I said. "I know, I know, I know, and I don't care. I think I'm farther than 5 cm, and I just want this to be over."

The doula went upstairs to tell Steven we were ready to go, and in the space of the time between her going upstairs and coming back downstairs I could feel my contractions slow down. When she came back into the room I told her I'd changed my mind.

"I just said the word 'hospital' and my contractions slowed," I told her. She laughed, and later repeated this back to me, as one of several oddly witty things I'd said while living through the most intense experience of my life. So she went back upstairs, told Steven forget it, and came back downstairs. Five minutes later my contractions picked back up even stronger than before, and I changed my mind again.

"I'm done," I said. "Really, really, done now. Let's go. I want to go now. This second."

We got organized and walked toward the car. Ont he way to the car I had another contraction, leaning up against the side fo the car. And then an amazing thing happened. Instead of my labor stalling out once we got into the car, it picked up. On the twenty minute drive to the hospital I had 6 contractions. At that point I entered another dimension. I heard Steven talking to me but I had no idea what he was saying and I didn't care. I worried that my yelling would make him drive off the side of the road, I worried that I might throw up, and I did my best to stay focused on the wonderful, delicious epidural that was waiting for me at the hospital.

Steven pulled up in front of the hospital and, without waiting for him, I opened the door, got out of the car and marched straight into the lobby, pauding inside the doors for another contraction. I heard Steven yell, "Maternity!" to the people at the front desk, as I leaned against the wall through another contraction. I stared at the elevator doors at the end of the hall, wondering how on earth I was going to make it all the way down there. Suddenly someone was at my side with a wheelchair. I looked at him like he was insane. "I don't want a WHEELCHAIR," I snapped. At the time Steven thought this had something to do with my not wanting to associate the labor with illness or wheelchairs or something, but in fact I couldn't fathom the idea of sitting down.

Moments later the doula was at my side and we kept walking down the hall. I saw a woman at the end of the hall staring open mouthed at me and realized I probably looked like I was out of my mind, sweaty and yelling, staggering down the hallway holding onto my body pillow (which for some reason I had grabbed as I walked out of the car, thinking, well, I'm at the hospital, I'll want my body pillow later). The doula and I got into the elevator and I had another contraction. As it ended the doors opened ont he second floor and someone else got out. I noticed no one had pushed the elevator button for our floor. I looked at the doula and said, "What floor are we going to?" and we both started to laugh for a second because it was so ridiculous. Somewhow I realized we were on the right floor, and we walked out and into the maternity ward.

I pushed through the double doors, had another contraction at the admitting desk, and announced I wanted an epidural as soon as humanly possible. I heard the people at the admitting desk murmuring that they'd have to check and see how far along I was, at which point I thought, are you people serious? Do I look like I'm not actually in labor?

Then we were in the delivery room and they were checking me. I was 8.5 cm. The doula beamed, Steven beamed, and I suddenly didn't know what to do.

"Do you still want the epidural?" the nurse asked.

"Yes," I said.

"Are you sure?" said the doula. "You're almost there."

"I still want it," I said.

"OK," said the nurse, "then lie down on the table so we can get your IV started."

"I can't lie down," I said. "Is there something else I can have with no IV?"

There was a brief discussion of other options, during which I had more contractions and had a hard time following the thread of the conversation. I remember asking the doula if she thought it would be another 20 minutes until I was fully dilated, or another 2 hours. "It's not going to be another two hours," she said.

"What about the tub?" I asked. Everyone agreed this was a good idea, and we started filling up the tub. Steven said something about the nurses thinking that by the time we got the tub filled up I would be ready to push. As the tub filled I got into it and immediately felt relief. The pain in the front of my uterus subsided. The water felt heavenly. Time passed, things were said, contractions came and went, I felt that I was pushing a little. What felt like hours later, but in reality was another twnety minutes, the nurse asked if I was ready to push.

"I have no idea," I said, "I'd LIKE to be ready to push because i just want this to be over."

She helped me out of the tub, checked me again, and found that I was now nearly at 10cm. I'd dilated 1.5 cm in twenty minutes. No wonder the contractions felt so intense. Suddenly the doctor was in the room, I was up on the table, and she was asking me to push to get the last little bit of cervix out of the way. Then one more push, the utterly ridiculous sensation of ANOTHER PERSON'S HEAD coming out of my body accompanied by an unfathomable level of pain, one more push, and Mira's head was out.

The cord was wrapped around her neck so I was asked to stop pushing while Steven and the doctor had some conversation about how she was going to cut the cord now but he could cut some other cord later, at which point he was like, look, do whatever the hell you want, and I was lying there thinking, are you seriously having a conversation while I am lying here in front of you with another human being half out of my body? Then one more push and out came the rest of her. And in that instant, as though a switch had been flipped, the contractions stopped, the pain stopped, and I was just me lying naked on a table.

"You have a mini-Me," I heard one of the nurses say, and moments later there she was, lying on my chest, little red-faced, fat-nosed, white-blonde Mira.

Extreme Drinking

2009-02-06T09:38:00.001-05:00

Me: Milo, what did you think about that root beer float?

Milo: It was extremely yummy.

Housekeeping at 39 Months

2009-02-02T19:12:00.003-05:00

Dear Milo,

This is in all likelihood the last solo blog entry you'll get ... I guess we'll have to see how that goes. This month you've started to get interested in sports. You went skiing, you began to spontaneously stand on your head, and you invented a "new way to get into bed" that involves being upside down.

And here you are learning to play tennis:

On the other hand, you've been a little teary as of late -- quick to say no and equally quick to burst into tears. I guess we're all just a little tired of waiting for your sister to make an appearance. Nearly every day you ask me when the baby is going to get here.

I'm tired too, so I'm going to keep this short, but remember you will always be my best boy.

Love,
Mama

Song of the Second Child

2009-01-24T16:44:00.006-05:00

Dear Baby M,

So by this point when I was pregnant with Milo, of course, I'd already started a blog and was writing in it daily. I hate to tell you, you're probably not going to get the same treatment. I don't really see how I'm going to be able to write even monthly updates on two children, let alone analyze the minutiae of your infant existence. That said, here's what 36 weeks pregnant looks like with you:

With pregnancy #1 there is a tendency to translate every little quirk, every swoosh and kick, into a personality trait. I know better this time around. But even so, some of the differences have been interesting. With your brother I had a text book pregnancy, I sailed through every test, he was always positioned properly, not a thing to complain about except for the 2-day labor. Because obviously he is the GOOD KID and you are ... well ... more difficult. How's that for slotting you right into the yawning crevasse that will define your place in the family for the rest of your life before you're even born?

With this pregnancy it has been one thing after another. Spotting at 18 weeks that turned out to be nothing. Failing the first gestational diabetes test before passing the second one. You were breech until 32 weeks. My belly measures small even though you measure perfectly. And now you are sunny-side up, which means that if I can't get you to flip into proper baby position in the next three weeks I'm going to have another long and arduous labor ahead of me, possibly even topping the long and arduous labor I had with your brother.

Baby M, you're not even born yet and you already can't sit still and are doing things your own way. The midwife laughs every time she checks your position. You are the only fetus they've ever met who refuses to get into the fetal position. On Thursday you were spread eagle, lying on your back, instead of curled up like the bundle of joy you're supposed to be. I've been feeling one foot in the middle of my belly and one foot all the way over on the side and thinking, how is that even humanly possible? Am I about to give birth to an orangutan?

On the other hand, the biggest difference for me about this pregnancy is that this time around I know what I'm getting in the end. With pregnancy #1 I always felt a little doubtful that I would really have a baby at the end. It seemed much more likely that I'd get a fish, or a toaster, or some kind of alien being. Another living, breathing human being just seemed too absurd to be true. But this time around I am pretty certain that's what I'm going to get. Another human being who will be her own person, unique unto herself, who eventually will walk and talk and tell me I don't know anything.

I can't wait to meet you.

Semantics

2009-01-13T15:13:00.002-05:00

Me: (To Steven) Do you want to go to the Indian restaurant for lunch?

Milo: Is that where you go to eat Indians?

Little White Lies

2009-01-06T11:27:00.001-05:00

"I am going to wear my F Train shirt to school today, is that okay?"

"No, you wore it yesterday."

"But today is train day."

Housekeeping at 38 Months

2009-01-05T10:11:00.004-05:00

Dear Milo,

This morning you ran into our bedroom and said, "Okay, this is the deal."

Clearly you had been cooking up something in your little head.

"What's the deal?" I asked.

"How about this deal. I can wear my F Train shirt for a little bit now and then I'll change it before school."

You little negotiator! After I stopped laughing, I explained that you could wear your F Train shirt to school as long as you wore it over a long sleeve shirt.

"I can wear my F Train shirt to school?" you asked.

"Yes," I said. You have a series of shirts that flash that you are not allowed to wear to school, primarily because they are hideously ugly, but also because they're distracting and all the focus of every other three year old in your class would be on your shirt.

In other news, yesterday you went skiing for the first time:

This had all the makings of a disaster -- long lines, getting lost on the way, getting to the slope just as it was time for lunch, stiff boots, constraining ski pants, and cold snow. But you loved every minute of it. Every time you got down the slope you demanded "More. Again. Faster this time. Faster than that."

How you even knew that you wanted to go faster was beyond me, since you're generally a pretty physically risk-averse kid. You can only climb into your car seat after much prodding, and generally do it in an amazingly ungainly way. And yet when it comes to sliding head first down a mountain, you want to go faster.

That said, the ultimate goal of learning to ski, as you saw it, was getting to ride the chair lift. This was in no way surprising. You repeated several times that your plan was to learn to ski, get bigger, and go on the chair lift. Although what one did at the top of the chair lift remained unclear to you.

You continue to show a love of weird food. At a Korean restaurant the other day you asked if you could eat a fish eyeball, and then promptly did so. Whenever you see something unfamiliar you ask to try it. Sometimes this includes a whole jalapeno pepper, spicy kimchee, or raw garlic, so we have to keep an eye on you at restaurants.

And as always, your interests are primarily trains, trains, and trains. Oh, you like planes too. You have a little Jet Blue plane that you have begun insisting needs to hear music whenever we get in the car so it can dance. You've also started making up your own songs and stories this month. You have a favorite story you tell about the Chocolate Boy who ate too much chocolate, and many, many original compositions about trains. Your music tastes remain eclectic. The other day I was scanning the radio stations in the car when you asked me to stop on a station playing Bohemian Rhapsody. Later on I put on Bob Marley and you announced that you hated this song. You then proceeded to list all the songs you do like, just in case I'd forgotten (Car Wash, Proud Mary, You Can Get It If You Really Want, Maybe Baby).

As always, I eagerly await to see what other deals you cook up in mornings to come.

Love,
Mama