Up

This is what I hear all day long from the mouth of my babe. Miles is totally obsessed with the stairs in our house and constantly wants to go up. If we're downstairs (which is the majority of the time) he's crawling around the proximity of the stairs like a prowling shark, muttering "up. up. up." As if there's nothing else to do on our whole first floor (besides nearly every toy/activity we own.)

If it's not time to go upstairs, I gently remind Miles "no up" and he will collapse in a pile of sobs like I just murdered his puppy. The amusing thing is that he listens to me most of the time, and if I say "no up" an invisible shield appears at the bottom of the stairs that prohibits him from going further. This is obviously very upsetting to him, because I have honestly never seen a sadder show (even in all of the drama queen Lilah tantrums.) After he comes to from his crying coma, he'll look at me with the plainest face and say "up." And the cycle repeats until eventually I pick him up and put him somewhere else, away from the stairs. Well, try to pick him up anyway, because in his rage over being removed from the beloved staircase, he becomes a very stiff, slippery, flingy thing that I can barely keep a hold of.

After forcing poor Miles to do something other than stalk the staircase, I find a reason to go up just to appease his desires. When it's time to go make our way upstairs, he can barely contain himself, and literally shakes with excitement before clomping over to the stairs, laughing the whole time.

It's quite obvious that the stairs hold a very strong power over Miles, giving him access to the most exuberant joy and his deepest sorrows. His whole world revolves around "up" and "no up." His passion for the stairs has provided me with a lot of entertainment, and enlightened me to his desire to climb, but also probably for his need to have a change of scenery.

Cha Cha Cha Changes

I feel like my kids change so quickly and constantly that I have a hard time nailing down who they are at the moment. I stay home with them, and they still just change so fast, I can't possibly keep up. Every week I find myself thinking "who are you going to be this week?" There's a million versions of Miles and Lilah and I feel like I'm always drawing straws on their personalities. Sometimes I get lucky and both kids are the best possible versions of themselves, other weeks I get the short end of the stick. Usually it's somewhere in the middle, Lilah might be more energetic and hilarious, but more dramatic and whiny too. Miles might become more independent but also more clingy.

I start to feel really drained by such massive amounts of change. Once I finally get something nailed down, ways of dealing with whiny Lilah she quickly becomes aggressive Lilah, and all of the methods and strategies I had become so proud of are useless. I feel like I can't ever get a leg up. I don't know why this seems new to me. In my years of teaching, my classroom was always about as schizophrenic as they come. Every day there was a different life force that I had to become accustomed to in about 0.5 seconds or risk drowning in chaos.

I did learn a thing or two from those teaching years but it feels different with my own kids. I guess maybe it's that I become attached to certain versions of my kids. I'm not one of those people who wants to preserve my children in baby form. For me, the older they are, the better, but there is a certain level of innocence, not dependent on age, but life exposure, that I want to hold on to. Every time Lilah becomes subjected to one of the many downfalls of having a sibling, I feel like she loses a part of her innocence. Every time Miles has to forgo a cuddle so that I can tame his maniacal sister, I see a shard of his youth fall away. I definitely want my kids to get older, but I don't want them to become hardened. I have to realize that change is part of experimentation though, not a reflection of my parenting. As my children learn more, they start playing with who they want to be, testing physical and emotional boundaries.

As I write this, I am feeling like it's really neat that my kids go through a daily metamorphosis. In the moment though, it's draining and annoying. I guess maybe that's because I'm rarely the best possible version of myself either. My kids are probably rolling the dice with me too, the same as I am with them. It's always an adventure to see what random combination of personalities come up each day and what we can make from it.

Beuh

Miles has spoken his first official word. He's said some random stuff, but nothing consistent enough to give it the label of "first word." He may have said mama a few times, but he doesn't look at me and say it, and once I think he said dada, but I can't be sure. What is completely clear coming out of his mouth though, is Beuh, as in Bill, the cat. His favorite cat (we have three.) For the past few days he has done little more than crawl (clomp) around the house at full pace shouting BEUH! BEUH! BEUH! BEEEEEEEUUUUUUUUHHHHHHH! He says it when he's looking for the cat, when he spots the cat, when he touches the cat, when he's thinking of the cat. I am pretty sure he said it 1,304,326,678 times today and he's getting really good at it. Very clearly articulated for a 10 month old.

You can tell I'm not a first time mom because I'm not the least bit hurt that Miles' first redundant utterings are not mama, or less importantly dada (haha!) I'm just pleased that he's saying something, because by the time Lilah was 10 months, I'm pretty sure she was saying nearly 10 words fairly clearly. She's a linguistic marvel though, so I really don't ever compare. I'm also glad that his first word isn't one of the many obscenities Lilah's been shouting lately.

Speaking of Lilah, she's come up with some pretty good ones lately. Our poor cats. Miles chases after Bill all day shouting and Lilah has taken to running around, chasing the cats, screaming "For crying out loud!!!!!" at the top of her lungs. I guess she gets the pun.

My favorite was yesterday though when I was clearly annoyed at her for repeatedly taking Miles' toys, and my voice was showing my irritation. She said "mama I don't like it when you talk to me like that." Well too bad kiddo. I'm not made of wood. After asking her to leave Miles alone for the one millionth time that day, I was doing good to just let my voice to ONLY sound mildly irritated! In my mind I was screaming. Out loud I was clenching my jaw as I spoke in a subtly annoyed tone. So my response? I could have come up with many but I left it at "I don't like it when you take Miles' toys. It's frustrating." She just shrugged and moved on like she was glad we had our little talk.

Sand Shower and Meatloaf

Why is it that Lilah is perfectly content taking a shower in the sand pit at the park, pouring sand over her head, all down her body, getting sand in her eyes, in her mouth, ears, who knows where else? But the second I try to pour some water over her head she screams like I'm murdering her. Seriously, sand has to be so much more painful than a little water in the face. Right?

My baby loves meatloaf. Miles is a champion eater so I don't know why I'm shocked, but there's something funny about him chowing down on meatloaf. He's not really a huge fan of fruit or any of the sweet stuff, but the boy can easily clear a slice of meatloaf and a sweet potato in one sitting. It's actually exciting to me to have a good eater because now when I take the time to make some yummy, healthy food, I know it will actually get eaten (instead of Lilah just mutilating it with her fork without actually taking bites...)

Stop Yelling At Me Minels

The only time I ever hear Miles upset is when the sun is in his eyes, or if he thinks I should be shoveling food onto his plate or into his mouth faster than I am physically capable... He's got this surprisingly loud and angry sounding shriek, which is funny because it's the opposite of what you'd expect from him, being such a mellow guy usually. Whenever Miles starts into his sounding off, Lilah always tells him "stop yelling at me Minels." She's always super calm when she says it too, but still seems put off that he's being so loud. Funny, because I'm pretty sure he learned how to produce such a diva-esque shriek from her...

Where have the days (and the food) gone?

I've been on a bit of a hiatus from the blogging. Not on purpose, just got super busy and by the end of the day I don't have any energy left for reflecting. Need to get back on the bandwagon though. There have been many hilarious moments unrecorded these last few weeks.

My sweet Minels is a human garbage disposal and this arrangement has been tedious the last few months with keeping on top of making his baby food. Now he's moving on to table food and it's working out nicely. Lilah will generally eat anywhere from 10-50% of any given meal, and now I don't have to throw any of her leftovers away or consuming them myself. I have Miles, who reliably eats all of his food, most of Lilah's, some of mine, and if anyone else is eating, he'll eat some of theirs too.

Not only is Miles becoming quite apt at devouring everything in sight, but he's also pretty skilled at breaking into any container, getting into any bin, knocking over any basket. His favorite thing to tip over is Lilah's shopping cart, which practically holds the contents of her entire play kitchen. Obviously, that's why it's his fav, it provides the largest mess payout. And it drives Lilah crazy.

While Minels is busy eating and knocking stuff over, Lilah's content to be a total smart ass and screaming banshee. At any given moment you can either find her telling me what's what ("Actually mama...") or throwing the world's most passionate fit. Both of which are terribly amusing to me or incredibly infuriating, depending on my mood.

So nothing's new in these last few blog free weeks. Some new additions are Lilah's abandoned potty baby (thanks to her practically potty training herself, then changing her mind on that whole ordeal) and Miles' mouth full of toofers (necessary equipment for letting Lilah know when she's roughing him up too much.)

K, trying to get back on the blogging train. We'll see how I do!

Goals and Teeth

Lilah's been a mess lately. Between nap changes, Jade being out of town, and being a typical toddler, she's just been completely nuts, and her and I were in a real rut with our communication. I realized that maybe I was focusing on too many diversion tactics, too many strategies for avoiding melt downs, so I narrowed the scope this week. My goal was to identify feelings. Identify my own feelings out loud to Lilah before they became intense, and to help her identify her own feelings before they became too intense. It's really incredible how successful this was. There wasn't one major blow up all week, all were avoided through talking about how we felt before it became a crazy struggle. Lilah still had her typical toddler tantrums, but nothing that escalated. Each time she was able to calm down easily when I started trying to talk her through her feelings. By the end of the week Lilah was becoming fairly proficient in telling me when she was feeling angry or frustrated, and pinpointing the reason why. One time she was mad because Bill (the cat) wasn't standing close enough to her. One time she was mad because he was too close. It seems like a lot of her frustration comes from her being so particular. Hmmm...wonder where she gets that from?

In Minels news... Poor guy. His stories are always at the end of the post. It's more like he's the exclamation point of the day though, not an after thought. Miles is working on five new teeth, all at once, which has put him in quite a miserable state, and for a child that is never miserable, that's saying a lot. It's harder to see him so sad because he's never upset. My independent little guy has been so clingy all week. It seems like today we've finally gotten him over the hump though and he seemed to be feeling better. Miles has started cruising all over the place, but does it sparingly. He has to really want something, and if he does, he's moving fast. Usually food is the motivator, but this week he's shown pretty big interest in the bath water. He HAS to be in the bathroom to watch the water pour into the tub, and he'll jet from Lilah's room to the bathroom so fast you hardly notice he went anywhere.

It's fun to see the things that spark his interest because he's usually so contemplative. Lately the Minels' Favorite Things list includes: bath water, food (Pirate's Booty especially,) the metal lunchbox, playing catch, chasing Lilah as she runs around the house, and head butting.

Since I wasn't great at blogging this week, here are some highlights:

Lilah played a game yesterday where she threw imaginary cakes up into the air. The point of the game was to sit around and watch the cakes until the timer beeped, then we could imaginary eat them.

Miles had fun playing catch. I would throw the ball into his lap and he'd laugh hysterically, then pick up the ball and hand it back to me. Compared to Lilah's antics, this highlight could appear boring, but Miles is seriously the sweetest baby and so much fun. Remembering him cracking up while we played this incredibly simple game was such a highlight of my week.

Lilah: Can you do me a favor?
Jade: Sure, what kind of favor?
Lilah: A pink favor.

What???

Me: Let's put on your jacket.
Lilah: ACTUALLY it's a sweater.