Dealing With It

Ugh! Ugh, ugh, ugh. What a crummy few weeks our family has had. I am not even going to dignify them with description; they were that bad. Words like "amputation" and "massive pulmonary embolism" and the like have no place in this blog, anyway. I'm just moving forward, and after this week I will get back to documenting every fun experience we have with the boys. For now I am only going to focus on what the boys are doing developmentally.

Charlie: I gave Charlie his first hair cut a few weeks ago, because the mullet/wings he was growing in the back finally became intolerable to me. Russell didn't want me to cut it, but I finally did it anyway one afternoon while he was out with Henry somewhere. I saved the hair for his baby book (which is hilarious, because while I am good at saving items for the boys' baby books, I am terrible at actually placing anything in the baby books; it's all just deposited in boxes for that mystical, magical day when I have nothing else to do and can carefully complete the baby books. Of course I'll be so old then I probably won't even remember I had babies). He looks adorable! Charlie is walking everywhere these days; I can't believe a few short weeks ago he wasn't walking at all. He is also a professional stair climber. He can now spin around and around while standing, so he has a veritable spinning repertoire, having mastered the seated spin months ago. He still isn't talking much, except for "Dada" (of course!) but he understands lots of words. Charlie has a quick smile, and he uses it often. It seems like he is going to have a little bit of an overbite, or at least I hope so, because there is no physical trait that is more attractive to me than a slight overbite. That sounds weird, so I don't usually tell people, but it's true! Charlie's favorite thing is to be picked up and carried around while he points at various objects. The carrier is then obliged to hand him whatever item he points to, after being prompted by a commanding "Eesh!" He especially loves to be outdoors, and often he stands at the front door, pointing. I am trying to get them both outside at every possible opportunity. Currently we are experiencing a wave of thirteen-year cicadas, so that adds an extra element of interest to going outside. Finally, Charlie has become quite the eater. He'll eat pretty much anything you place in front of him, provided that: (1) it isn't baby food and (2) he is allowed to feed it to himself; he insists on this (fine by me!). This has not yet improved his nighttime milk demands, as I had hoped, but HE CANNOT WAKE EVERY THREE HOURS FOR HIS ENTIRE LIFE, so in your face, life! I'm waiting him out.

Henry: I don't know enough kids who are Henry's age to have much of a point of reference, but I'm beginning to think Henry is very advanced for his age. Of course I think that, I'm his mother! But really. The things he says to me could come from the mouth of a teenager. Are all three-year-olds this mature and world-wise? Maybe they are. But I don't think so. He is currently very interested in crafts, especially painting with water colors, cutting anything with scissors (only while seated at the table!), and Play-doh. We don't ordinarily let Henry watch much television, just "Sesame Street," but over the past few weeks, what with all the illness and horribleness in our family (not talking about it), he has watched a lot of "Caillou," which is by far his favorite show now. It's about a four-year-old Canadian boy, and the parallels between his life and Henry's are uncanny - the show's creators have definitely done their homework and may even have been spying on us in our home. I had a brief talk with him yesterday about how we can't just sit around watching television all the time--as Russell told him, "You don't see Caillou sitting around watching television, do you?"--even though we watched a lot while we were sick. For the past few weeks, up until this week, the only thing Henry played with was some of Russell's old Star Wars and G.I. Joe men he retrieved from Russell's parents' house during a trip to Morristown. This week he discovered these little Lego men at Target, and that is his current infatuation. Each one costs $3 and comes in a little aluminum packet, unassembled. There are sixteen of them in the collection, and you don't know which one you're getting until you've purchased it and opened it and put it together, although really just seeing which head is in there gives it away. So far we've gotten the sailor, the Viking (!), the surfer girl, and the skater. I'm hoping the next one we get (I mean Henry gets) is the rocker guitar guy with the mohawk, but you don't get a say, you just take what you get, an important life lesson, I think. So it may be the geisha girl, or worse, one we already have, and we'll just have to deal with that.

On The Road Again

Just as I did last week, I'm writing this entry in the van, but this time we are headed in the opposite direction: back toward Morristown. We received the devastating news yesterday that in a few days, Russell's dad is going to have his leg amputated below the knee due to a diabetes-related bone infection, and we are going back to be there with them.

Monday of this week was overcast, so we joined some friends for story time at Barnes and Noble. I have no idea what the story was, so clearly it didn't make an impression on me, but I do remember it was something about recycling because the craft the kids did afterward involved cutting, gluing, pasting, and applying stickers to various recyclables collected by the B & N staff. The snack I also remember: animal crackers and milk. Perhaps for our purposes we should refer to this event as "Snack Time" rather than "Story Time." Afterward we went for lunch at Qdoba with our friends, and it was nice to see Henry interacting with two boys his own age. I made sure to mention to Henry that they are both in school already, just like he will be in August. He looked uncertain but (I think) a little interested.

On Tuesday we went to music time at the Gallatin library, where we spent thirty minutes singing and dancing to a variety of kids' songs that are becoming familiar to us nowthat we've attended a half dozen times or so ("The Shaky Egg," "We Are the Dinosaurs," a trilogy of the ABCsong, "Row Row Row," and "Twinkle Twinkle.") Charlie particularly enjoyed singing and dancing to the music. Afterward we went to the Whippoorwill for lunch with friends. Things were a bit rough with Charlie (he had missed his morning nap), and by that I mean he screamed throughout almost the entire lunch. We had fun anyway, and I attempted to cheer the waitress up by reminding her when we left that the remainder of her day should be easier by comparison. And by tipping her nicely. As we left the restaurant for home, I got a call that a friend had gone into labor, and her baby girl arrived safely later that evening, so that made the day special.

Wednesday was supposed to be a terribly stormy day, and it was - in Alabama. Three hundred plus people were killed that day after the biggest freaking tornado I've ever seen romped the state. In Hendersonville, thankfully, we never saw more than torrential rain, some thunder, and lightning. We (well, Russell) dragged a mattress downstairs to our designated tornado hiding place, the bathroom, just in case, and there it sits as I type, three days later. Since Wednesday, I have taken Henry to use the potty approximately eight times a day with that double mattress propped up against the wall in the tiny bathroom, and it's really starting to get to me. I've instructed Russell that the bathroom must be returned to its normal state immediately upon our return to Hendersonville next week. Anyway, Wednesday morning, we got out in the rain

with our friends Susie and James, Chiara and Eva, for a tour of the Hendersonville Police Department. Henry seemed a little intimidated by our tour guide, Corporal Something Or Other (Lloyd? Floyd?), a forty-something female officer whose demeanor jived perfectly with my past career experience with law enforcement officials. She seemed, shall we say, not terribly comfortable with children. As a sort of inside joke with myself, I thrust Charlie into her arms when I needed to lift Henry up to see something, and she became flustered, which I inwardly found hilarious. He of course began to cry immediately, which she attributed to all the guns and other weapons and tools on her work belt poking him in the side. She did a fine job of showing us around the police department, though. Henry and his friends learned about the importance of not talking to strangers when parents aren't around; wearing a seat belt; and knowing how to dial 911 in an emergency. (I am hesitant to teach him this last skill just yet, because I know he inevitably will dial it in a non-emergency, and local police departments in recent years have launched an ad campaign emphasizing the importance of only using 911 for emergencies. "For urgency without emergency, call eight six two, eight six oh oh..." I'm not sure I can teach a three year old A) how to distinguish an emergent situation from an urgent one, and B) how to dial 862-8600. I may live to regret this decision, or, more frighteningly, I may not live to regret this decision, but there you have it.) After the tour, we went out to eat with our friends at Backyard Burger. (Wow, we ate out a lot for lunch this week, oops.) Wednesday evening, as the storms that had earlier hit Alabama moved toward East Tennessee, I repeatedly called my parents each time I received notification on my iPhone of a tornado warning for Morristown. They sounded increasingly annoyed with each call, but I didn't care...better annoyed than dead or maimed, I say! I later found out that both of my sisters were also calling them to alert them of each warning, so they were getting three calls per warning and there were like six warnings, so...eighteen calls? I understood their annoyance a bit more at that point.

On Thursday, the boys and I had nothing planned. Nothing! It was fantastic. We did zero rushing - we just did things on our own schedule. I love an occasional day like this. Charlie got his morning nap in, then we all went to Publix to do some grocery shopping. The only thing of note during our trip occurred while we were in the makeup and personal hygiene aisle, Henry's new favorite aisle. Henry was doing his usual, opening up lip glosses and deodorants and such and smelling them. (I've previously written about his olfactory fascination.) Our rule is that he can only open the ones that aren't sealed up with plastic, so he's not removing the wrapping and opening them or anything. My thinking is that if they didn't want them opened, they would put plastic over them. How is a person supposed to select a fitting deodorant if she can't find out what it smells like first? I don't want to buy a deodorant smell-unsmelled, then get home only to find out it smells like Pinesol or Drakkar Noir or something. So anyway, Henry has very innocently removed the lid from a deodorant that called his name, with my approval, when the only unpleasant Publix employee I've ever encountered - she's in charge of stocking this aisle, I've seen her there before - walks right past me, bends down to Henry's level, snatches the deodorant from him and replaces the lid, and very sternly looks him right in the eye and shakes her head, "No NO!" over and over. Henry quickly backed away from her and came to my side, and I could see he was about to cry. Ordinarily I would have said something sort of passive-aggressive about her to Henry - "What a grump!" in a loud voice. However, in an effort to control my temper and teach Henry about respect for others' emotions, I just said, "Come on, Henry, let's go on to the dairy aisle," then I told him that the lady was probably nice but maybe having a bad day, and that he hadn't done anything wrong. (I recently read in a parenting book that in order to teach children about the emotional complexity of humans, parents should use unpleasant people as an opportunity to point out that others have bad days sometimes, too.) We'll probably go back later and rearrange the makeup section anyway, though.

On Friday morning, we went to a friend's house to watch the coverage of Prince William's marriage to Kate. It was a great theme for a play date. The little girls wore tiaras, and we had tea (well, I had coffee) and lots of dainty goodies, including crown-shaped sandwiches. We had a great time playing outdoors, and while we were there, Charlie began taking the most steps I've ever seen him take! Later that evening, as he walked around the kitchen to the applause of our whole family, we pronounced him officially a walker. Our friend Kristin took these pictures of Charlie outside at the royal party:

What the boys are doing now:

Henry: Well, on Easter, the Easter Bunny came and went, and, as promised, he left chocolate and took away all the "big boy diapers," which means that Henry has been forced to do all of his business in the potty. For the first few days, he didn't do a certain type of business anywhere, but finally, when things became urgent, he used the potty, and has been doing so every day since! Henry is very helpful around the house now, and just now he set the table for us at Grammy and Grandpa's house. He continues to be nicer and gentler with, and less jealous of, Charlie, so I'm hoping the troubles we had a few weeks ago were just a bad patch.

Charlie: I already mentioned that Charlie is walking. Often, when he does, he holds his hands above his head in victory, mouth open wide and smiling, going, "Ahhhhhhhhhh!" He is very proud of his new skill, and I am even more proud of him!

An Entry Typed Entirely on iPhone!

Well, it finally happened: I missed a week of blogging. I am determined that this was a fluke and not a new trend, and I have a good excuse! Last Saturday, April SIXTEENTH, I spent Jill Time working on our income tax return. It was even more fun than it sounds, and it ended not with my filing a completed return but with my filing for an extension, which was granted and allows me another six months of procrastination time. The highlights of the week I missed out on documenting included an Easter egg hunt, a trip to the zoo with our friends Melanie and Claudia, a visit to a fire station with our friends Jenny and Parker, and a tour of a third preschool for Henry that turned out to be The One. He starts school on August 8th and goes Tuesdays and Thursdays year round. We are really excited, and I had to tear him away from the room where he will have class, which I think is a pretty good sign. Also that week, we did away with both time outs as punishment (they weren't working) and treats as rewards for good behavior; this was after I read a book called Unconditional Parenting by Alfie Kohn. It has made me completely rethink my parenting style, and I think literally every parent should be made to read it, though I haven't figured out yet how to enforce that kind of law. Anyway, it's changed the way I deal with my kids, in a very positive way, and I hope it will be the solution to the jealousy issues we've been having with Henry. So far it seems to be working, but then I've been in Morristown all week, with lots of help from grandparents, and Henry's "issues" always seem much improved when he can have round-the-clock individual attention!

Which brings me to this week: the boys and I went to Morristown on Monday to help Mamaw and Papaw Moore, because Papaw is under the weather. Grammy drove down on Sunday to help us withthe trip on Monday, and I was glad she did, because you just never know about road trips. We spent the week at Grammy and Grandpa's, and they helped watch the boys while I helped Sharonrun the cash register at the store. The nights were rough because the three of us had to sleep in the bed together, and Mr. I-Still-Wake-Every-Two-Or-Three-Hours-Like-A-Newborn was in rare form. Also we missed Russell a lot. He had Good Friday off, though, so he joined us in Morristown for Easter weekend. As I type this, we are in the car on Easter Sunday, driving back to Hendersonville. The battery of our computer, fully charged when I placed it in the computer bag a few hours ago, has mysteriously depleted ninety percent of its charge, which explains why I am typing this entry with one finger, on the iPhone. In your face, computer! In your face.

I don't know if my mood is bad right now, or if it's our family troubles, or if it's the prospect of unpacking the kids and the van and the Easter candy in a few hours, or the prospect of returning to life in a town with no family nearby, or what, but I am having a terribly hard time drumming up anything positive or funny or entertaining to say here. Maybe you should stop reading now and just wait for next week's post. You could go see what's on television. No? OK, well there was one really funny thing that happened around midnight one morning in Morristown. I could tell you about that. Picture it: it's midnight, as I already mentioned, and the boys and I have been asleep for a couple of hours. We wake up because you-know-who hasn't had milk to drink in a couple of hours. I'm exhausted because I have been sleeping with both boys for a couple of nights, so it must have been like Thursday. So I grab Charlie and cradle him in my arm so I can give him the first of the six pack or so of bottles he drinks throughout each night. Meanwhile, Henry, who is lying on the bed next to us, is crying and crying, and I have no idea why. "Henry! HENRY!!!" I hiss, "Stop crying and tell me what's wrong!" I think maybe he is scared because it is very, very dark in the room where we are sleeping. He just keeps crying. As I continue prompting him to tell me why he's crying, Charlie is refusing his bottle, which is odd. Finally, "Charlie" surprises me by saying clearly, "Mommy, I don't WANT baby milk!" In my stupor, I had inadvertently grabbed Henry and tried to feed him a bottle of breast milk, while Charlie, starving, lay crying on the bed. I shared this story with family members later, and I got the impression they found it less hilarious than I did, so it's possible a level of sleep deprivation is required for it to be truly appreciated, but I still laugh when I think about it.

Here's what Henry and Charlie are up to right now:

Henry has begun calling us "Mom" and "Dad," so I guess he'll be getting his driver's license soon. He also continues to utter phrases that came straight from my mouth, which always takes me aback. "Mom, listen, I need to tell you something," he'll say seriously when he really wants my full attention. He has been protective of Charlie this week in Morristown, though again, I am hesitant to ascribe this to anything more than his having received lots of attention in Morristown. Still, it was nice to see! He had a really good time searching for Easter eggs this week with his grandparents, and one day he dyed eggs with each of his grandmothers separately, unbeknownst to the two of them.

Charlie is saying "Quack," "Bye bye," "Yay," and "Shh." When Russell was still in Hendersonville this week, and we were in Morristown, Charlie was very clearly saying "Dadadada" to him over the phone. One night we all slept in bed together, and I was saying, "Shh shh shh shh," to try to get Charlie to sleep, and he started saying it, too, and giggling. Then he and Henry would take turns saying it and giggling. Charlie has come up with a "move" of his own, totally unprompted: from a sitting position, he spins himself around 360 degrees, over and over, pausing between spins to acknowledge the applause and smiles that inevitably follow. "I ask you," he seems to demand, "could walking draw more attention than THIS?"

Some photos from our week:

But not loud like a train!

Holy whirlwind of a week! The things I had planned for us at the beginning of this week were distinctly different from the things that actually happened to us this week. Monday started off windy, but when has wind ever kept us from anything? Well, there was that one time the wind was so strong that...nope, never. Henry and Charlie and I headed out to Lowes' garden center to poke around. I pictured us exploring and discussing different species of plants and trees and flowers in a very fun, educational way, but instead we spent the bulk of our visit playing around and in the fountains. (This is not the diversion from our plans I mentioned a few sentences ago.) I pointed out to the boys, "Hey! Trees! Lowes sells trees! Did you know there were stores that sold trees?"because I kind of have a thing for trees (see the Arbor Day post from the "Henry Times." I think I did a post about that?), but Henry and Charlie only wanted to focus on the fountains, so we did that instead. It was getting very windy outside - I heard two male Lowes employees telling the older lady at the cash register in the garden center to "keep an eye on this weather," so we headed indoors to check out bird feeders. We ended up purchasing a Venus fly trap and a third hanging plant for our kitchen, some bird seed for our existing bird feeder, a bluebird house, and some garden gloves for Henry. Oh yeah, and some Swiss chard seeds, because Henry wanted seeds and that's what we had eaten the night before. As we checked out, we noticed the sky had opened up, and we were in Lowes with nary a poncho or an umbrella. The cashier offered to watch the boys while I went to get the van, and although she seemed perfectly nice, we decided to wait a minute for the rain to slack off, then make a run for it.

By the time we got back home, unpacked our purchases, changed clothes, had lunch, and downloaded a weather radio application for my iPhone (can't keep the actual radio in the bedroom during nap time - WAY too loud! This way I can get a silent notification on my phone if bad weather is headed our way) it was nap time. As we began our nap, we were under a tornado watch, but this is hardly unusual during springtime in Middle Tennessee. Charlie had opted out of his morning nap, so he was TI-RED. It was more difficult than usual to get him to go to sleep, which meant it took Henry longer than usual to go to sleep, but finally they dozed off. About twenty minutes later, I got a call from Russell. Now, Russell ordinarily would never dare to call during nap time, so I knew this was serious. Simultaneously, I got a bright red notification from the iPhone weather radio: tornado warning! This was what Russell was calling to tell me. Sumner County was under a tornado warning. It is a testament to my insanity where sleep and nap and schedules are concerned that I then actually posed this question: "Should I wake the boys and take them downstairs?" Russell quickly brought the situation into perspective for me, and I woke the boys and got them into the downstairs bathroom. Just as I did, we heard very loud sounds that didn't sound like a train. (I remember that because my first thought was, "Whoa, that was loud!" and the only-slightly-reassuring thought that followed quickly on its heels was, "But not loud like a train!" which I chose to interpret as incontrovertible proof that we were not experiencing a tornado.) I told my half-awake boys, "Stay here!" (Henry: "But I don't need to pee!") as I darted to the front door to look out the window. There I noticed three things: (1) it was raining very, very hard, and horizontally; (2) the standing trees in our front yard were blowing sideways; and (3) not all of the trees in our front yard were still standing. That was the loud sound: two thirds of one of our Bradford pears, the tree providing our yard with the most privacy from the street, had snapped off in two separate pieces. The picnic table was buried underneath it somewhere, and Henry's sand table had been moved, its cover gone. I took this in at a glance, then

headed back to the bathroom, where Henry was asking, "What's wrong, Mommy?" "Nothing!" I cried frantically, "Everything is fine!" I must have seemed a little concerned, though, because Henry decided at that point that Charlie was scared. "It's OK, Charlie, I'll hold your hand." (This really happened.) Once the storm was over, we went back to our naps, figuring we would deal with the whole tree situation at some later point. After all, all we'd really need was someone to remove the downed tree (we ended up getting our lawn guy to do it) and a replacement tree (Lowes sells trees!) and about twenty years for the tree to mature enough to provide the shade and privacy once offered by the Bradford pear (our grandkids will enjoy it!).

Tuesday we had plans to go into Nashville to have lunch with some of my old friends and coworkers, who would be meeting Charlie for the first time. These plans actually came into fruition, and we had a great time, but little did we know it would be the last social event of our week. (Our week's schedule had been a teensy bit too full, anyway, and I foresaw lots of rushing around with tired boys on my hands: Wednesday morning we planned to visit a fire station with our moms' group; Wednesday afternoon we would go to a birthday party; Thursday we would fly kites at the park with the moms' group; Friday we would attend another friend's birthday party and tour another preschool for Henry.) On Tuesday afternoon we got news from Russell's family that his grandfather was very ill, so we decided to make a trip to Morristown the following day. Wednesday was a relatively normal travel day; you know, six hours of packing for the trip, three hours of trip - normal. Thursday Russell went with his parents to visit Papaw Woody at a hospital in Oak Ridge, and the boys and I spent the day with my parents at their house. Grammy and Grandpa hid Easter eggs for Henry outside, a "test run," and blew bubbles with him in the yard. Charlie mostly spent his time exploring every inch of the house (he's totally unaware of ever having been here before, and at any rate, he wasn't able to explore the house before now) and harassing the cat. On Friday morning, Grandpa made blueberry and strawberry pancakes for us outdoors on his grill's griddle, then we blew more bubbles and looked for dandelions. At lunch we went to Russell's parents' store, where we hung out with them and Aunt Carrie and Baby Dylan for a while. In the evening, Aunt Wendy and Uncle David came for a visit, and we all went to eat Mexican food for dinner. Russell's grandfather's condition took a surprise turn for better, and he was moved from the ICU to a regular room at the hospital. We have plans to stay in Morristown until Sunday if he continues to improve. So, it wasn't the week we had planned, but it was a week with family, which we always, always, always welcome!

Ahhhhhbless you!

We went to three fun play dates this week - Monday, Wednesday, and Friday - so I was required to devote a relatively small amount of brainpower to finding ways to occupy the boys. A welcome respite, I'll be honest. Wednesday's play date was special because it was our friend Cindy's annual Congenital Diaphragmatic Hernia (CDH) party. Our friend Claire is a CDH survivor, and we are always happy for a reason to celebrate her. Everyone was to wear turquoise in observance of the date, but only I was able to do so, as the boys don't own a single article of turquoise clothing. I dressed Charlie in blue and Henry in green (or maybe it was vice versa), my calculations being that blue + green = turquoise, but I'm not sure the other partygoers picked up on that. Probably they just thought, "Wow, she took care with her own dress but not her kids'! How festive!"

On Tuesday, we toured another potential preschool for Henry. This one is a for-profit, secular school, and it costs twice as much as the church-based one we toured last week. Unfortunately (for the school) I was not twice as impressed with it. The facility itself was obviously newer and more expensive, but the assistant director did not impress me - we stood at the front desk for ten minutes before anyone appeared in the window, though I should add that we were more than ten minutes late for our appointment, so maybe we were being punished? - and the teacher to student ratio was higher than I would have liked. In the classroom we visited, there were like eighteen three-year-olds with one teacher (who appeared to be about 25 years old) and one teacher's assistant (who was maybe 19 years old). They were seated at tables of four or five kids each, so at any given time, two or three of the tables were unaccompanied by a teacher. Many of them looked lost (I thought), and I mentally inserted Henry at one of the tables unattended by a teacher, and that was when I decided this was not the school for us. Now, I know he won't be able to have a teacher holding his hand all the time (he actually asked me the other day, "Mommy, will the teacher hold me?"!!!), but I would like to see him in a classroom with fewer students. After we left our tour, we met friends at the little walking trail next to the library and enjoyed the beautiful weather, playing in a dried-up creek bed that Henry pretended was the ocean. It was a good thing we got out that day, too, because the rest of the week was cool and intermittently rainy. On Tuesday night, my parents (Grammy and Grandpa), fresh from their trip to Israel, spent the night with us. They brought the boys toy camels and donkeys, and shirts with a screen-printed Elmo which read, "Shalom!" We were glad to have them back safely, and when they left the next morning, Henry said, "I hope you come back soon!" We are planning a trip to Morristown over Easter, and he asks every day if it is Easter yet.

On Thursday, we had the morning to ourselves, and after trying and failing to get Charlie to take his morning nap, we headed to Target. We looked around at a leisurely pace, spending probably an hour browsing through the store in our standard pick-up-an-item-of-interest-for-each-boy,-deposit-it-wherever-we-happen-to-be-when-interest-is-lost,-and-repeat fashion. I will most definitely go to shopper's hell, if it exists, for these habits (once I was in the grocery store with my mother-in-law and suggested that we just put an item back on the nearest shelf, rather than in its rightful spot, and she gave me an odd look and said, "Oh no, we don't do that," which made me wonder if something might be seriously wrong with me), but it's just too exhausting to heave ourselves around in that big red shopping cart and go back to return all those items to their designated places. We looked at action figures in the toy section, we checked out arts and crafts in the arts and crafts section, buying Henry two glue sticks he desperately needed, we perused shower curtains and bath mats for the upstairs bathroom, we bought a picture frame, we bought the ingredients to make oatmeal chocolate chip cookies later that day (having just that morning sworn off sugar "for good this time"), we picked up a small bean bag chair for the play room, then thought better of it, wondering if we really had the space. Finally, we went to check out, and Henry said, "Mommy! Will you get Elmo for me? I was sitting on him." Henry was in the big part of the cart, the cart part, and he had brought an Elmo figure into the store with him, then dropped it into the cart when something else caught his attention. I looked underneath him, shifted the brown sugar and oats and chocolate chips around - no Elmo. Did I mention the cart is red? The same shade of red as Elmo? And it has Elmo-sized holes all over it? Elmo apparently had abandoned ship at some point on our journey. So what else could we do? We heaved the cart around and retraced our steps, calling out for Elmo. Henry mused that he was probably crying somewhere. I knew which path to follow because of the conspicuous items that littered the aisles where we had been. The search took us probably twenty minutes, but there was no sign of Elmo, and eventually we had to admit to ourselves that he was probably lost forever. Henry took it well, and we returned to the checkout line to load our items onto the belt. As I removed my purse from the platform beneath the cart, I noticed a red object interrupting the symmetry of the cart's lines: it was Elmo! He was with us all along! I mused that he was probably laughing down there the whole time, the smug little bastard, and I glared at him, returned him to Henry, and we all went home. We made cookies later that afternoon, and they were delicious!

Quickly, quickly, as the end of Jill Time is drawing nigh: What the boys are up to this week:

Charlie: Charlie will hold the phone up to his ear now, chubby little elbow pointing forward, and try to say "hello"!!!! I could not be more excited about this if he had actually invented the iPhone. I've also caught him saying or trying to say "ball," "dance," "night night," "mama," and "dada," and he is definitely saying "bye bye"! It's like all of a sudden, in the space of a week, he is getting the talking thing. He is eating solids better now, in no small part because I borrowed a book of blender baby food recipes from a friend. Apparently, he likes solids, he just doesn't like solids that taste bad! Anyway, he is still drinking WAY more breast milk than advised by any source, anywhere...not sure what to do about that. He currently enjoys a bottle at 8:00 p.m., 11:00 p.m., 2:00 a.m., and 4:00 or 5:00 a.m. And by "enjoys," I mean "demands," as in "accepts no substitute." Dr. Johnson, our pediatrician, says this is merely a bad habit which simply needs to be broken, and then he will sleep. Illuminating advice! Charlie has discovered that he likes to "help" me unload the dishwasher. This involves reaching in, grabbing anything knife-like and potentially deadly, and slicing it through the air before I can stop him. He then steps back to get away from me and bumps his head on the drawer that is open at head-level (Charlie's head), after which I pick him up and comfort him, then set him back down, and repeat until the dishwasher is empty. Another pastime he enjoys now is holding his hand immersed in a glass of cold drinking water; I think it may be some sort of endurance test he's doing. Maybe he will be a runner like I used to be!

Henry: the funniest thing I've noticed about Henry this week is the new fake sneeze he does. I know it's fake because instead of sounding like "Ahhhhhhchoo!" or something similar, it sounds like "Ahhhhblessyou!" and it cracks me up every time. He thinks "bless you" is part of the sneeze itself, not something you say after the sneeze. Get it? That's funny. He has been kinder to Charlie this week, and with less bribery. There is a certain bodily function that Henry still refuses to perform in a toilet, and every time he feels the urge, he tells me, I put a diaper on him, and he goes behind a chair - Henry: "I need my privacy!" Russell: "You know a good place to find privacy? In the bathroom!" - and then I change his diaper. So, we've devised an ingenius plan by which the Easter Bunny, when he comes to bring the eggs and candy and grass, will take away Henry's diapers, thereby forcing him to use the potty when nature calls. It's foolproof! Henry has already begun trying to reason his way out of this. Henry: "We'll have to buy some more diapers!" Me: "The Easter Bunny says we aren't allowed to buy any more." Henry: "You said the Easter Bunny couldn't talk...?" Me: (Long silence) then, "The Easter Bunny is taking away your diapers. You'll have to use the potty." We'll see how that goes...

Eesh!

I have other plans for Jill Time today, so this post will be shorter and less detailed than usual, and with no pictures. (Now there's an enticing indroductory sentence!) I want to focus more on what the boys are doing at this point in their lives, rather than what we did each day of this week, so I'll just hit the highlights. On Tuesday, we toured a potential preschool for Henry. I was pleased with it, though I have nothing yet to compare it to, and I put down a deposit to hold a place for him there in the fall; we do plan to tour other schools before we make our final decision, though. Henry seemed to like the school well enough - he was very interested in the toys inside the classrooms, and the playground - but I think touring schools makes him nervous about being away from me. It makes me nervous, too! On Wednesday, we went to a fun Dr. Seuss party at Melanie's house. The boys went dressed as characters from Wacky Wednesday, naturally, because (A) it's our favorite Dr. Seuss book and (B) we're naturally wacky. I guess (A) is a function of (B). Henry was outwardly wacky in that he was wearing a backwards Hawaiian shirt, two different color socks, and two different shoes. Also, his hair, which is longish, was gelled into a stiff mohawk which remained mostly aloft until midway through the party, when it began to list and bend in awkward (wacky!) ways. Charlie's wackiness was limited to wearing two different color socks and a sign on his back that read, "I'm wacky." Not the most original costume, so he asserted his wackiness behaviorally while we were at the party by slipping and bashing his forehead on the hardwood floor (he still has a bruise) and by screaming his head off while I took Henry to the restroom. On Thursday, Charlie had his one-year checkup with Dr. Johnson, who persists in worrying about the hugeness of Charlie's head. This is despite the fact that we already put him through a CT scan to rule out head abnormalities, which he passed with flying colors. Other than that, he is doing swimmingly. He weighs 24 pounds and nine ounces, and developmentally he is splendid (which of course we already knew). On Friday, we went with our friends Christina and Maddie to the Adventure Science Center in Nashville, which was fantastic, and out for pizza afterward. When Henry and Maddie parted ways at the end of the day, she gave him a hug and a kiss, and as we walked away, he said, "I love Maddie." (!!!) Friday night, we took the boys to a children's ballet performance at the old Palace Theater in Gallatin, and they both enjoyed it. At the end, Henry got to go up on stage and learn some ballet moves. He didn't perform them on stage as the other kids did, watching instead, but he did try them out when we got home.

Charlie is going through so many changes right now, and I need to write them down before they pass us by. His main verbalization is something that sounds like "Eesh! Eesh!" This utterance is usually accompanied by pointing (also a new development), and it means, "I want that!" He has become a little...testy lately, not as laid back as I once thought he was. I think this is explained by his impatience to learn everything and frustration at not being able to make himself understood with language. I should teach him some sign language to help alleviate his frustration, but I have not done so...Henry and I did glance through a sign language book the other day and mention teaching Charlie some signs. Charlie loves to have Russell or me hold him while we walk around, letting him point at things hanging overhead, then lifting him up to touch them - light fixtures, fans, plants, anything hanging up high. He is not walking yet, although he has taken a few steps on several different occasions. He seems content to crawl when he is really intent on getting somewhere, but I can see in his eyes that he wants badly to walk. Charlie is learning to hit back when Henry comes at him, and I am not discouraging this! (He'll have "a character forged from conflict," Russell said.) I don't want them hitting each other, and it is a constant battle to keep Henry from hurting Charlie, but I do want them both to learn that it is OK to defend oneself when one is attacked. Charlie continues to be a terrible sleeper. I know it's not his fault, but he truly is atrocious at sleeping. I feel myself on the verge of a deep depression when I consider that he is now past the one-year mark and still waking every two, or at most three, hours every single night. Every single night! For over a year now! How am I still functioning? My mantra for the first year of his life was, "Just get through the first year," because after a year, Henry had begun to sleep, if not through the night, then at least in five- or six-hour stretches. Now I don't know how to cheer myself on...it's less heartening to say, "Some day he'll sleep through the night," but that's all I dare say now. I've stopped complaining about the issue to friends, because I know they get tired of hearing the same old whining, and I get tired of hearing it myself. But I am so very exhausted all the time, and so short-tempered. Arrrrrrrrggh. Charlie is a doll, though, such a joy to have around! I just wish he would sleep. Why won't he sleep? I keep asking myself what I'm supposed to learn from this situation, but I'm not coming up with much. Maybe I'm supposed to learn that there are some things I can't control, but OK, I've got it now, thanks, universe. Got it. Lesson learned. Check. Let's move on to another, less insanity-inducing lesson, shall we?

Henry! Henry is also changing rapidly. Today, for instance, he learned to cut with scissors. I'm pretty sure now he is going to be a lefty, like my sisters. He's displayed an interest in dancing, and for some time now, he has enjoyed watching "The Lawrence Welk Show," then emulating the tap dancers he sees. We went to a park last week with playground equipment manufactured circa 1978, and there were these concrete stairs to nowhere...about ten stairs up, a foot-wide platform on top, then ten stairs back town. Henry climbed up to the top of them, then, unexpectedly, proceeded to tap dance his way back down! I got it on video tape, and it is truly a sight to behold. Henry has more self awareness than many adults I know. He met a new friend the other day and after we parted ways, he said, "He's quiet like me, Mommy. I'm quiet sometimes. I'm shy sometimes." He seems a little concerned about being shy, which is probably a reflection of my being concerned that he is a little shy, and so I told him that I was very shy ("painfully shy" according to my kindergarten report card) when I was little, and he beamed at that and looked relieved. We practice talking and being friendly to others when we are out, and I think that is helping his confidence. When we were at the coffee shop drive thru today, he said hello to the barista and asked her her name! This was a huge step, and I could tell he felt proud of himself. I haven't spent much time trying to teach Henry numbers and letters - I feel like that is what preschool and kindergarten are for; now is for playing! - but somehow he has learned them. I think from "Sesame Street." I loaded some educational games onto my iPhone this week, and one of them is a letter identification game. To my surprise, he knows how to identify almost all of his letters! Ditto for shapes. So I guess that limited, tightly-controlled television policy we have is not a bad thing. Thank you, "Sesame Street"! I've brainwashed him into believing that commercials are evil (which they are), and so when we watch something we've taped on television (almost exclusively "King of the Hill," which we watch once a day, in the evening) and a commercial comes on, he screams, "NO!!!! Commercials!! NOOOOO!!!" That's my boy!

Week of March 13 - Part II - Celebrations!

Thursday was St. Patrick's Day, and we went to our friend Megan's house for a party. The gorgeousness of the weather that day surpassed even that of the previous day, and we got some great pictures. The boys had a great time playing outdoors, and Henry made a new friend, Sam, who we are excited about. He seems temperamentally similar to Henry ("He's quiet like me, Mommy! I quiet sometimes.") Henry reminded me of his dear old Dad, clowning it up to impress the ladies that day. The girls were attempting to play jump rope, and he kept running headlong into the rope, disrupting the game and making them giggle (then making them giggle more by flopping down dramatically on the ground).

Friday was Charlie's big day...one year old! We didn't do a lot of celebrating that day; mostly we prepared for the party we had planned for Saturday morning. We went to Publix to buy provisions for party, and while we were there, we did tell every single Publix employee we encountered that it was Charlie's birthday. This won us A) lots of congratulations and B) a balloon for each boy from the man in the produce section. An hilarious moment came when he went to inflate the first balloon with helium and it burst with a loud bang. Henry and I laughed, Charlie looked startled, then laughed, too, and I screamed, "I'm hit!" when a piece of the balloon landed in my hair. The Publix man looked embarrassed but was good natured about it, as all Publix employees are about all things. It's kind of scary, actually. Friday night, Uncle Matthew, Aunt Carrie, and Baby Dylan arrived, having driven 300 plus miles just to attend the party.

Mamaw and Papaw Moore came Saturday morning in time for the party, having made the same journey, and our Sumner County friends arrived at 10:00. The weather was glorious, for an incredible fourth day in a row, and the kids were able to play outdoors after we ate. We sang happy birthday to the baby of the hour, and he seemed pleased. We gave him his own little cupcake to make a mess with, and he did, smearing it on his tray, on a little ball he had been holding, on his shirt, and in the general vicinity. He tasted the cupcake but did not eat much of it, giving me hope that Charlie did not get the sugar-is-crack-to-me gene that Henry and I, but not Russell, share. All in all, I think he enjoyed having a birthday party, and we enjoyed celebrating him. Here are the pictures: