From 1/19/11

My daughter is crawling. She is extraordinary. She started off shifting forward just a bit and then would plop herself down on her bottom. She has this lovely way to sit with one leg half up and then the other tucked underneath her. For all her inexperience, she never topples backward. She has this incredible ability to stay balanced when her center of gravity is pretty close to the floor☺ Now, she likes to walk and walk with her hands grasping her parents or the closest adult. She enjoys when I roll my tongue and stick it out at her. She laughs when we laugh. She really likes when we chuckle. It’s adorable. She is growing like crazy and moving up and up in her sizes. Her routine for going to sleep is very ritualistic. Luke wraps her up in her red and black blanket and she puts her finger in her mouth and slowly allows her head to the side. Her poor little finger has a few sores on it because she so frequently sucks on it. I sing to her very often. We’ve set up the new foam floors in the office and in the kids room. Luke has allowed us to bring some toys upstairs so we have a set of toys in the office and her book box in the bedroom. Quinn continues to enjoy his evening routine of pillow nights and wrestling. He allows me to partake now and again, but mostly, Dad is the preferred sport. Quinn describes him as being the strong one. Quinn comes home with necklaces every day from school. He will often have three hanging from his neck when I come home from school. The poor lad can’t detetmine if he needs a nap or not each day. He can do incredibly well on some occasions and other days, can sleep for 3 hours. He likes to sleep with a variety of toys and he hides them under his pillow; you can fit a good dozen srae wars action figures under a single pillow☺. Quinn can fall asleep to Many Moons; Luke considers it the go-to book to get him down. We read the Wemmick book the other day and he now talks about being a wooden person. It was an interesting concept for him to pick up that they weren’t human, but instead they were wooden—he asks lots of questions lately about what’s happening in the pictures and how it connects to the text. I read to him from Ranger Rick the other day. It was fun to give him some non-fiction. Of course, he did not count that as part of our reading routine. At times, he likes to read to himself but when I suggested that to him after the chameleon article had nearly put me to sleep he said that I was the reader, not him. It looks like we’re going to go ahead with pre-school. Something tells me that he can move forward… it’s going to be scary, obviously, to set our little one on the path to k-12 education, but holding him back also seems not to honor where he’s at. It will be difficult to move beyond his safe space… having fear for him and him being fearless… My mom thinks that he could do it. I think that intellectually he could do it. My reservation was about the physical activity and the principal I chatted with from EXPO said that the playground is really open and about racing around without rules. As long as the judgement didn’t happen or social ostracization then I would be cool with it. It doesn’t seem like there will be a school that meets all the qualities I want for him, but I need to settle for the best possible package. Just writing about this makes me want to hurl—and also to tuck him under my arms and protect him from the world. Kindergarten might well be 11th grade for the overall significance.

Quinn came home from grandma’s today after a sleep over. With beauty and kindness, he loves his grandmother and accepts her wholly. I could wish to be so kind and accepting. He loves that the townhouse life means really high drifts of snow by grandma’s house. He doesn’t mind church with her and likes her church family friends, Kyle and Kyra. My daughter is crying while I type this even as her father tries to put her to sleep. I nursed her well and she should be good to go. The night time routine with Lily is interesting. The young one is not as actively preferential in the evening as Quinn was when he was a baby. He had to nurse to go to sleep.

Lily just had a series of bursts of energy. She helped to re-organize the videos downstairs. She loves puling herself up on things and is so confident and curious. She likes to hold herself up against the corners of doors. She loves to chew on items that make a crinkly sound. Quinn’s fruit snacks and granola bars are favorites for them both. Lily likes to eat fresh fruit and she is wildly curious and jealous of the food that we can eat that she cannot. The pasy few nights she has been all about eating a big meal before she goes to bed. Sadly, this hasn’t translated yet into sleeping the night through. I imagine that this will take until the summer, but making predictions about Lily is a bit silly. She exceeds my expectations all of the time and is enduring to the end. She is durable and forgiving. She deals with Quinn’s “affection” really well and doesn’t get too fed up. I’m not sure if this will last for always because she may want to claim some of the toys he will not currently share with her☺. She got the toy room door closed in her face, albeit gently today, because Quinn wanted to keep her away. To be fair, with the thousands of legos in that room, it represents a choking hazard to the extreme. We have yet to baby proof things really well, but are sticking with observation as the key. She can easily pull herself up and can crawl a goodly distance so we can’t assume anything and can’t leave her alone. She has a really magnificent smile.

My son likes to cuddle a great deal. He likes to he held close. The other night, after going without Mom attention for a bit, Quinn was all about grabbing ears. He had to go beyond his elbow affection☺. The boy loves his Ritz crackers, by the way. We know that he’s never going to eat the cheese in his lnchable and that’s cool because it’s not very cheese-like.

My son’s little toes are still more adorable than I can say. Lily has small little feet and are adorable and perfect. Baby feet may be the most amazing things ever. Her fingers are so long; her tummy is soft, her arms a beautiful puggy. I wish my memory would allow me to hold the pictures in my mind of holding these precious babies in my arms. They are exquisite in their happiness, in their innocence and in their love for luke and I. Being a Mom to them and seeing how they need and love me—those are the most important things in life. My children are incredible blessings to me. They ground me and show me at my most vulnerable, my best and my worst. I spoke with cutting to Quinn today. I spoke with him with impatience. I wish I had all of my energies times 2

Luke and Juliet were over today with their parents Carolyn and Chris. It was actually a lovely visit and fun to see the kids running around. It was further proof that having additional children would be dizzying, but the kids playing together actually provides some freedom for adult conversation. We did the breakfast thing for lunch and enjoyed the Star Wars pancakes and two lbs. of baacon☺ Lily had her first bacon today☺ she liked it, as is the family way. The two guys are outside shoveling right now. I love Quinn’s desire to be outside helping, even if his shoveling is less precise and helpful than he thinks☺ The point is he’s out there with his Dad and wants to help. The kids did pretty alright today getting along. Quinn had some sharing challenges and Luke had some leaving challenges. The fellas are still outside shoveling. My son is still adorable in his winter cap from Nana. She bought it for him when he was two and it still fits his funny little head.