Not ready

I wasn't ready for this.

E's first dance recital, post to follow.

Or this.

Kindergarten Tour

And especially not this, which ambushed me from Elle's cubby one afternoon with absolutely no warning whatsoever.

Seriously, I used to mock the concept of preschool graduation. It's preschool, people. But now I'm the teary-eyed mess just thinking about my baby, ahem, preschooler, ahem pre-kindergartner closing this chapter in her life. And it hasn't been insignificant. She will be graduating with kids she's known spent 8-10+ hours a day with since she was 12 weeks old. 

Nothing bonds you like sharing diapers when your Mom forgets to restock your supply. Or comparing spit-up distances (insert proud mother-of-the-incontestable-winner face here). Or learning to share. To bite. Not to bite. Celebrating birthdays and big girl panties. Pledging to marry Nick. And Ryan. 

Hugs upon hugs upon hugs. 

We've spent almost 5 years with these kids, their parents, and their wonderful teachers. I know whether I'm on time for work based on which minivans are in the parking lot. It has become our routine, a reassuring familiarity throughout this unfamiliar chaos that is first-childom. I couldn't have asked for a better place to prepare Elle for "big school" and though she'll still be there for after-school care but it won't quite be the same. One more step toward the dreaded growing up...
So if you hear sniffling in the audience at preschool graduation, take pity on the over-sentimental mom who used to think those things were a joke...

Post-its to my girls

Dear Elise,
I love the way your eyes disappear when you give me that scrunched-up face smile.

Dear Elle,
I love the passion with which you embrace all things in life. You wear your emotions on your sleeve, and while that can certainly be trying at times, I hope you always feel comfortable pouring your heart out to me.

Dear girls,
Remember that you can face any challenge in life, no matter how big or intimidating. And remember that it's always easier with each other.

My loves,
Be yourself. If that means tutus and mismatched leggings, then so be it. I will always love you, no matter how tacky you are.

Yo, munchkin:
You're not a morning person. I get that. But maybe... just maybe... if you'd sleep in just a little longer, you'd wake up in a better mood? Or at least your Mommy might.

My beautiful girls,
Love your body. Even if you don't fit into all the things you'd like.

Dear girls,
Choose you friends wisely.

Dear little daredevil,
I love that you aren't afraid of anything. This also stresses me out. 

Dear ravenous pirannah children,
I understand that you're starving when we get home in the evenings. But I am a much more efficient dinner-maker when I don't have one arm occupied with holding the wee pirranah and the other consoling her big sister whilst listening to you whine in accordance with your respective stages of verbal development about how hungry you are.

Feed me

Dear Elise,
My current favorite thing in the whole wide world  is your eagerness to oblige when I ask for a hug or kiss.

Little ones,
Please, please. Don't grow up too fast.

My darlings,
Be compassionate. Remember to help those around you.

Dear kids,
Don't be afraid to get your feet wet. I love that you both are brave and adventurous.

Dearest E,
When I say I need to go do dishes and make lunches and clean up instead, remind me that the dishes aren't going anywhere. You won't always ask me to snuggle with you before you go to sleep.

Girls,
I don't think it's possible to be a working mom and not feel guilty about being away from your kids. But I hope you both know that at the end of the day, you are my top priority. And that you can be anything you want to be whether that's a doctor, a ballerina, a race car driver, or a princess. Or all of the above.

Sweet sweet girls,
I am so proud of you both. I would do anything in this world for you. 
Love,  Your Mommy

Elle-isms

At some point I'm going to have to suspend this segment of the blog, because pretty much everything that comes out of this kid's mouth cracks me up. Or is a dagger through my heart (see below), but I'm hoping that the teenage-esque backtalk will pass. Quickly. She continues to have an amazing vocabulary and is quite the little wordsmith. Unbelievably perceptive for her age, she asks intriguing questions and can pick up on extremely complex emotions and abstract concepts. She also is manipulative far beyond her years, and long ago I've learned to disagree with her only after cautious consideration... more often than not, she's right.

Me: Elle, what would you like for breakfast?
E (poker-faced): Green beans.
Me: Really? You want green beans for breakfast?
E: Yes.
Me: Ok....
Green beans prepared, served, and consumed.
E: Mommy, I ate something healthy. Now can I have Easter candy for breakfast?

While playing with Elle's class at pickup time, Boomer the class bunny escaped from his cage and hid under the stack of cots. In dramatic fashion, Elle starts running around the room flailing her arms as if to herald a national emergency screaming, "It's a bunny travesty! It's a bunny travesty!"

After listening to me struggle to answer one of her frequent unanswerable life questions, "Mommy, I'm puzzled."

Walking by the recycling bin in the office at daycare, Elle stops me abruptly. "Mommy! Let's put my old coloring books in that box so they'll turn into new ones!"

Eating dinner, Elle picks up her cornbread muffin and asks, "Is this a carbohydrate?"

Frolicking with the wildlife in our yard: "Are there man-bugs?"

Upon seeing a picture of a fireman in a book we were reading, "Look Mommy, it's an infinity helper!"
Me: A what?
E: An infinity helper! We talked about those at school.
Me: Oh, you mean community helper?
E: No, infinity helper.

Me: after a particularly arduous morning trying to get Elle ready for school including innumerable meltdowns, fits pitched, and culminating in E swatting at me: "That is enough. Do that again and see how much trouble you'll be in"
E: You do that again and see how unloved you'll be.
sidenote: please please let my 4 year old teenager grow out of her backtalking phase soon.

After being forced invited to attend Jay's race, "Daddy, you need a boy."

Playing a board game in which she was instructed to change the word to make the sentence make sense:
Me (with emphasis on the word she needs to change): The man likes to roll in the mud.
E: The man likes to roll on the carpet.
Nice, Elle, nice. I think they were going for pig, though. She acted offended that I thought her answer was hilarious.

I was pushing Elle and a friend on the swingset at my Dad's house when the other girl's mom asks her to come inside because she might get sick in the cool air (it was 75 degrees). After a short argument ensued between the girl and her mom, Elle shouts out: "Don't worry! It's ok... it's ok. My Mom's a doctor!"

Mommy, I need you to cut out three families. Ours, Nick's, and Gracie's. And lots of Christmas trees. And don't forget Gracie's dog. This is for my play, "The Tale of the Leaning Tree". She proceeds to tell me the plot of this sordid tale which involves the aforementioned families visiting a Christmas tree farm and laboriously going through the tree selection process. Nick and Gracie's family are mesmerized by the huge giant lush trees and each choose one of these beauties to take home. Elle on the other hand, sees a leaning "scraggly" tree and with great compassion, decides she want that one, much to Mom and Dad's surprise. Their conversations are sprinkled with comic relief thanks to the antics of paper Elise, who likes to climb/fall off the trees and hide in various location throughout the Tree Farm. Elle convinces her family to take home the leaning scraggly tree and they decorate it and sing O Christmas Tree and deem it the best tree ever. Santa comes that night and is so impressed with Elle's goodwill toward her coniferous friend, that he leaves her an enormous amount of toys. The other families, by comparison, receive sparse gifts. Particularly Nick's family who did not get to sleep on time on Christmas Eve. The script ends with Paper Dad gushing over his new Christmas tools and... well... Elle can't think of what Paper Moms might get for Christmas.

Munchkin Meals

I confess. I'm a little neurotic about feeding my babies well. By no means do I do this perfectly. But I figure that while I'm in charge of what goes into their little bodies, it might as well be as healthy and nutritious as possible. For us, this meant breastfeeding for one year (a little longer for Elise), delaying solids till 6 months, and focusing on fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and protein with limited sugar and processed foods.

I'm pretty staunchly anti-juice so milk and water are the beverage staples in our house. And lest you think my poor 4 year old is deprived, I have relaxed these standards for Elle as she's gotten older. There are definitely desserts, treats, and convenience foods. 

Picnic in the park: organic chicken nuggets, baked fries, apple slices

But my theory is that introducing them to a nutritious balanced diet from the beginning will (hopefully) make them healthy eaters for life. We also are believers in feeding our kids what we eat from a very early age-- no separate meals of noodles and hot dogs. And it has worked incredibly well. Both girls have an extremely broad palate, devouring vegetables from asparagus to brussels sprouts, noshing on crab cakes and mussels, snarfing exotic spices and slurping almost-too-spicy-for-me salsa as if it were soup. 

Bowl one. 

Bowl two. I kid you not. 

The only thing I have to complain about is that my kids love food a little too much. As in have a total meltdown because it is taking me 5 minutes to prepare breakfast. Or have a similarly dramatic meltdown when the 5th serving is all gone. 

Turkey burger, zucchini sauteed with a little soy sauce, crackers/goldfish

I'm always interested in what other moms are feeding their toddlers, so I thought I'd document a culinary day in the life of mine.
So here is a typical day of eats for my 15 month old:

Breakfast appetizer: We usually start with a handful of cheerios or banana to calm the tempest that occurs if I can't serve breakfast IMMEDIATELY.
Breakfast: Egg, turkey sausage, greek yogurt

Snacks and Lunch packed for school (I am super happy that they still let me pack her food at daycare-- not quite ready to embrace the poptarts, corndogs, and froot loops yet-- shudder):
Mini-quiche with spinach
Filet mignon, grilled asparagus, grilled corn (off) the cobb*
Cantaloupe

Dinner: Pork tenderloin, broccoli mac and cheese with whole wheat noodles, cocoa roasted cauliflower
Blackberries for dessert

*Lunch isn't always so fancy. We happened to have leftovers this day. Other common packable items include veggie quinoa biscuits, black beans, frozen veggies (peas and carrots are her favorite), fruit, oatmeal, deli meat and shredded cheese, hummus or almond butter wrap. 

Plus various quantities of:
Mulch, crayon, tiny toy parts, paper, booger, Chapstick, dirt, and her sister's hair. 

15.5 months

Dearest Elise,
Just so you don't look back on your mom's blog posts and get a big head thinking you were the world's easiest baby, I feel obligated to give an accurate update of the past few months of your life. Apparently I raved about your happy, smiley, contented demeanor one too many times.

At around 13 months, you turned into Grumpy McCrankypants. For no apparent reason. If you weren't sleeping or eating (still your favorite activity), you were fussing. Heaven forbid if I tried to put you down. But even incessantly holding you wasn't enough. It started with a couple of mild-to-moderate illnessess, but even with full physical recovery you remained grumpy. You cried when you woke up in the morning. When I got you dressed. While I made breakfast. When you finished the food. When you finished more food. When I finally decided you couldn't possibly still be hungry. When I dropped you off at school. When I put you in the carseat to take you home from school. While dinner cooked. When dinner was gone (repeat breakfast sequence). When I gave you a bath. When I put you to bed. Various points during the night. I racked my brain for what could be wrong. I did daily physical exams. I gave you Tylenol and Gas-X empirically. I checked a urine sample. I debated bringing you to work with me for a full-body ultrasound (having a doctor mommy is a dangerous thing). I wondered if you had places to go and things to say and were just frustrated that you couldn't walk or talk. I scrutinized your gums to see if there were any impending ruptures. I hugged and held and rocked and soothed and bounced and snuggled and sang and read and held some more.

And after about a month (yes, that long!), it started getting better. You did ultimately get 2 molars, so maybe that was it after all. Now, at 15.5 months, you are back to your happy smiley self. You are sleeping a little later in the mornings, usually waking up around 6:30. You are pretty adamant about having breakfast immediately, pointing to the door and then down the hall and downstairs saying "Dat! Dat! Dat!" But other than your pervasive impatience for food preparation time, you are generally pretty happy. 

You are starting to protest more when your sister takes toys from you, but overall are incredibly tolerant of her abuse companionship.

You love books, singing, and dancing. When we finish reading or singing to you, you nod your head vehemently to let us know you want to hear it again. You have a similarly adamant head shake for "no", primarily in answer to the question "Elise, are you ready for bedtime?". Whenever you hear music of any kind, you dance in the most adorable way.

Your words remain few. Mama and Dada are spotty. Uh-oh and Dat! make up the bulk of your conversation. I think you say bubbles? And maybe Duck. When I ask you what a cow says, you grin and say "Coooowwwww" which sounds like some hybrid of Cow and Moo. It's delightful. You can show me your tummy, your head, your toes, and my nose (not your own, for some reason). The paucity of words is strange to me as your sister was speaking in sentences by 16 months. I realize now that she was a total freak of vocabulary nature. You understand most everything that goes on, however. I think you're just taking it all in. And in our household, that is no small task.

You took a few steps around 15 months, and since then have done a little more walking.... typically under duress. You're a smart cookie, and I think you'd prefer to ride on a sky-high Mommy mobile (sky-high being a completely relative descriptor). Lately you've been walking a little more, and I think you will adopt that as your primary mode of locomotion in a couple weeks. At least by kindergarten.

You love love love food. Of pretty much all types. In massive quantities. You love splashing in the bathtub, scribbling with markers and pens, and playing outside with your sand and water table. You still don't like dogs. Although strangely enough, you adore Boomer the school bunny as if you two were kindred spirits. 

Your hugs are the best. I love nothing more than your sweet chubby arms flung around my neck. I forgive you for totally stressing me out for a little stretch there. But now it's documented so when you are a rebellious teenager and think you're perfect and I'm the belligerent one... remember the roles were once reversed.

I love you, my little E.