A Typical Winter’s Day

Lilac Pond updates are rarely ‘occasional’ when a new baby is in the house. And why not? When sleep is rare and moments for writing hard to come by, one usually spends such moments doing chores – or playing a computer game in the hopes of relaxing for a moment or two before the daily grind begins again.

But here we are in the depths of snowy winter, and I find we’ve all reached milestones that allow us a little more breathing room, peace, and energy. (breathe in) Ahh… Enjoying it while it lasts.

Clara, now almost 6 months old, is starting to scoot with enthusiasm, trying desperately to make these motions into a crawl. Mostly, she looks like a seal slapping her way up the beach. Instead of finding a rock to sun on, however, she mostly crashes into whatever toy Eleanor happens to be playing with at the time.

Clara is thus more engaged with her the world, going from serious stares to breathtaking smiles as quick as a thought. She is fascinated by Eleanor, grins for daddy, and still has special snuggles for mom.

Clara is also a tank. By that, I mean she is a really big girl. She’s about 22 lbs. at 6 mo. This means she has out-grown her infant car seat (over a month ago); she had to be upgraded to a new style of infant carrier, since the Bjorn wouldn’t hold her; we had to get rid of the baby swing because the motor couldn’t handle the abuse of trying to rock her; and she is in 24 month clothing because her little torso is so big, but her arms and legs get a little lost in the sleeves and pant legs. A lot of rolling is required. She is sleeping reasonably well, mostly because she so exhausts herself with all her seal-climbing around and actively getting into all of Eleanor’s toys.

Eleanor, now at 2 and a half years of age, is able to play by herself with remarkable concentration. She also loves to play with people, as evidenced by a growing number of playdates with friends and cousins. She is also starting to enjoy playing with Clara. Sometimes.

Eleanor continues to be hilariously verbal. She speaks so well that often I have to remind myself that the thinking behind these fully-formed sentences is still that of a toddler mind. For example, in asking Eleanor what her daddy does for work, she replied, “He programs.”

“What does that mean?” I asked.

“He fights bugs,” she told me. “He fights and he fights and he fights them” (This said with little fists flying.)

Also, following a Sunday School lesson, Eleanor informed me that “God messed up the block tower.” I had a very hard time not laughing at the teacher’s horrified expression. The teacher corrected her politely, saying that they had learned about Jericho. Eleanor, however, took from the lesson that God likes to smash other people’s block towers.

In these mid-winter months, with the snow piling high, we often fall into predictable routines. Elliott works; the girls and I do our daily eat-play-rest cycles. In the evening, we all get together and play as a family. The next day, the routine starts again.

These routines probably look simple from the outside – they probably also look repetitive. Heck, a lot of the time they feel repetitive. But then again, I think this really is the business of life: taking care of our work, ourselves, our family, and our world. We constantly adjust, we constantly evaluate, we constantly learn and grow. If we’re lucky, we get a moment to take a breath and be grateful for it all, too.

And sometimes we don’t have time for the breath because we have to go clean up the spills in the kitchen. But that’s good, too.

And then, all at once, it happens

Sometimes, I wonder when certain milestones will be passed. I recall wondering over a year ago when Eleanor would be big enough to get into the carseat by herself. I wondered when she would start playing imaginative games and when Clara would roll over.

All those things happened today.

Eleanor wanted to climb into the car on her own and did it without help. Clara, when set on her tummy with arms under her, pushed herself over onto her back (at 7.5 weeks, wow!). And Eleanor informed me this morning that she was the mommy and I was the big girl. She then told me to watch out as the tiger was going to bite us. The relation between these two imagined scenarios is lost on me, but clearly there was enough connection for Eleanor to climb up into the chair to get her feet away from the ‘tiger-spider.’

We also pass some not-so-fun milestones as the days go by. Potty training is one that seems to drag on most miserably – sometimes with marvelous gains and other times with horrific messes – or is that misses? Either way, you get the picture. And today after Clara pushed herself over, I propped her back up on her tummy to try again, then ran to the other room to grab a cloth to wipe her mouth with. I came back to find Eleanor riding Clara like a horsey.

After a moment of utter panic and shouting sharply at Eleanor, who got off at once, I checked to see Clara was okay. I relayed the event to Elliott later on. He laughed, then I laughed, and Eleanor found this funny, too. Clara was the only one unimpressed, but then, she hadn’t said much when Eleanor was on her back, either. This is the blessing of her being such a solid baby – she wasn’t badly hurt.

So we all keep growing and learning. Sometimes we have nothing to show for it, and sometimes the change happens all at once.

The Rest of Summer (now with more Clara)

This year, winter simply did not want to give way to spring and so spring did not want to give way to summer. And since I spent so much of the early summer indoors being hugely pregnant, once Clara arrived, it was like  we stepped right into the middle of summer without seeing it coming.

We only had one month left of summer, really, but I think we made it count. Thankfully, not only was Clara’s labor relatively easy, I’ve felt fantastic afterward and she’s a very healthy kid. She’s also a huge kid – she’s in the 99% for weight right about now, and currently wearing size 6-9 month clothes (at 7 weeks).

On the flip side, I’ve lost a bunch of the pregnancy weight and am working out with El again to loose the rest. The result is, the family all felt healthy, happy, and wanted to get out of the house. So here’s what we’ve been up to the rest of the summer. Incoming picture spam of very cute kids – you’ve been warned.

As soon as we could, we took a long overdue visit to see Elliott’s grandparents. Eleanor loved playing with her Great-grandma Betty and Great-grandpa John, but especially their two Chihuahuas. Clara napped and ate, mostly.

We spent many an afternoon or Saturday morning at a place Eleanor dubbed “Raspberry Beach.”

She and daddy would play in the water and sand while mom and Clara chilled out in the shade. Sometimes, we all rested together before playing some more.

Eleanor loves the water. So does Clara, for that matter, who enjoys baths a lot.

But it was Eleanor who got to play in the water several times – both going to the river with Grandpa Forrest when visiting him in town, and at Aunt Kerri and Uncle Tyler’s, where the cousins had an absolutely epic slip-n-slide set up on the hill next to the house.

Eleanor (and, to a lesser degree, Clara) also got to play with the cousins quite a bit.

Here, Eleanor is playing with her cousin, Adelyn, and below, Mya, Eleanor, and Adelyn (in training pants and tiara), play with plastic-bag kites that Mya made.

We hung out with all the Cousins for Great-Uncle Gary’s birthday.

At which time Aunt Mandee made sure Eleanor spent some time in Grandma Sue and Grandpa Kim’s garden eating strawberries and getting summertime-dirty. It’s an important part of being a toddler to get that dirty, I think.

We also got to visit with Patricia, our exchange-sister, who stayed with Kim and Sue a year ago as an exchange student from Germany.

With Clara here at last, we were no longer tied to Colville. Elliott resumed working in town every couple of weeks with the company he is currently consulting with. Clara, Eleanor and I came along as well.

We spent time hanging out with Grandma Joy and also Grandpa Forrest. Both Grandma and Grandpa tend to play with the girls so much it tires everyone out.

I also took the girls on a few excursions around town. The most recent involved taking the public bus downtown. It’s amazing how different my hometown can look from the point of view of the city busses. Eleanor adored it. Clara dozed in the front pack.

Now that school has started for many members of our extended family, we’re more back to a routine, barring the erratic sleep schedule. Eleanor is an early bird of the first order. While we can sometimes get her to sleep in past 6:30am, she’s wide awake first thing in the morning. Clara, by contrast, takes much persuasion to get her to sleep before 10pm and in the morning, she wakes to eat, then dozes off and on until nearly 8am. In between, mom and dad simply try to piece together something of a sleep schedule.

When she’s up, however, Clara is more active and alert every day. She’s quite the talker (what a surprise!), babbling and cooing to any face she sees. She is not happy when left alone, however, so unless she is fully sacked out, she wants to be held or spoken to. Basically, she wants in on the action, and will holler very loudly to let her preferences be known.

Eleanor constantly wants to hold, kiss, and talk to Clara, especially when Clara is sleeping or otherwise ignoring her. My hope is that as Clara gets older, she and Eleanor will be able to play and talk together. No doubt they will, but at present, they both want to play and talk to mom at the same time.

One of the biggest challenges at present, is that Clara is nursing and Eleanor is potty-training. Both breastfeeding and toilet training require sudden attention at unpredictable times and for an unpredictable duration. I often find myself setting Clara down on the floor to scream while I dash off to help Eleanor, only to find a mess waiting for me. I often wonder if Clara’s insistence on not being put down is due to this phenomenon. Sadly, Clara can always nurse a little later, while messes are made in a second.

However, I remind myself that this maniac pace is  life. This is what it’s all about: diapers and potty training and snuggling and trips to the beach and dirt under the fingernails from playing in grandma’s garden and naps taken after being tired out when playing with grandpa or the cousins and baking peach cobbler with mom. And tiring as it is, it’s wonderful.

Clara Day by Day

If you look back at our first week with Eleanor, I blogged about her every day. The fact that I have not done so with Clara is not because I lack the desire to do so. It is, of course, because I have almost no time to sit at the computer, much less try and write coherent sentences and then add pictures to the post and upload it. I spent the first week with Eleanor just hanging out in the living room on the recliner. I also wasn’t feeling so hot, and it took me a while to recover from labor. So me and the laptop had plenty of time to record Eleanor’s every movement and every family member that stopped by.

This time around, I’m feeling great, which is wonderful in many ways. I’m able to get around, I’m back walking every day and waiting for my follow-up appointment to get back to joining El for our Crossfit routine. I’m slowly putting the house back together and trying to gear up for a fall routine of productive days: regular home meals, playdates, house cleaning schedule, fun times with the girls, and (hopefully) time to write. I also hope to sleep regularly. This may sound ambitious, but I figure aiming high is a decent place to start and we’ll evaluate and adjust from there. (If you didn’t already know this about me, I thrive on organization, and failing true organization, I thrive on trying to attain organization.)

Of course, feeling well also means I’ve jumped right back in to being full-time mom, which means Elliott has jumped right back in to work on his end. He’s been working a LOT, poor guy.

And this ‘jumping back’ – or rather, jumping forward, since having 2 kids means the dynamics and challenges have forever changed – means what I get done has changed tremendously.

My first order of business, of course, is to watch over the girls and keep them safe. Second order is to keep them fed. This is hard to do at times, as Clara is quite the little gourmand, and prefers to eat slowly and with many pauses. She’d make an excellent Frenchwoman, but in the meantime, this can mean mom (and Eleanor) are often waiting on her to finish her meals.

Third order of business is sleep, which we’re working our way into a rhythm, trying to get Clara to get as much of it as possible, Eleanor to maintain her schedule, and mom and dad to not completely forget about it amid other things.

Fourth order of business is food for mom and dad, namely, family dinner, which can be hard to arrange and carry out given that 3-5 pm is the time of day that both girls seem to lose all patience with the world. Or maybe that’s mom. It tends to happen all at once, so it’s hard to tell who starts it.

Anyhow, we usually get dinner on the table in time for dad to come home, quite hungry, and after we all get re-fortified with food, we have time to play and THAT is truly the nicest part of the day: time together as a family.

So in all of this, mom might get a moment to bring a basket of laundry upstairs or take one downstairs. And if, by some miracle, both the girls nap during Eleanor’s naptime, I often crash, too.

But some days, I stop to write – like right now, when I’ve got a swaddled, napping Clara on my lap and I’m trying not to rest my elbows on her face while I’m reaching over her to type. And yesterday, amazingly, I managed to take a cat-nap, read a chapter of my book, and then also wrote on my fiction project all before Eleanor and Clara woke up. Amazing, I tell you.

So how is Clara doing, day by day? Well, she’s doing great: a wonderful (if slow) eater, a good sleeper, and a generally inquisitive outlook. She’s growing well, and we look forward to seeing how she grows up – both physically and in personality – in the months to come.

Ah. I hear Eleanor coming down the stairs and Clara is starting to stir. Time to try and get in a load of laundry before trying to think up a dinner while sitting outside watching Eleanor play in her kiddie pool and trying to keep her from splashing me while I nurse Clara.

In spite of the complicated nature of juggling 2 kids and helping one’s spouse get in as many work hours as possible, I have to say: It’s worth it. It really is.

Sisters

It’s funny how the questions one gets asked when baby 1 comes home differ so much from the ones with baby 2.

With baby 1, we got asked things like “How’s she sleeping?” and “How are you sleeping?” “How’s she eating?” “How are you adjusting?”

I like the questions for baby 2 much less, frankly. For example, today, Elliott and I were asked “So, are you going to keep trying for a boy?”

I indignantly posted this comment to my facebook status, only to receive immediate and overwhelming replies to the effect that this kind of comment is in good company, and certainly not the most stupid or insensitive out there. Apparently, once you decide to have more than one child, you become instantly game for speculation by any passing stranger. “Are you going to have more?” “Haven’t you already had enough?” “Aren’t you getting too old to have kids?” “Aren’t you sad you don’t have a boy/girl?” Etc., etc., etc.

Funny how people can’t just wish you well and have done with it.

Anyhow, I digress.

One question I have gotten a LOT though, is “How is your first child doing?”

That question is a tricky one to me. On the one hand, I think it is very sweet that people who know Eleanor are wondering how she’s doing and looking out for her. Going from being the only child to being the big sister is a strange transition, especially for a 2-year-old to undertake.

On the other hand, while I don’t begrudge the interest in Eleanor’s well-being, it does highlight that for first child, everything revolves around that first child. There are all those pictures of the first child, those new clothes and toys and stuff for the first child.

For the second child, we whipped out the old baby stuff and cleaned it off. For the second child, there are some solo pictures, but just as many with big sister in them. And for the second child, there really is no time when it’s “just them.” Even the questions about her well-being inevitably come around to questions about her sister, too. The first child, it would seem, made us into parents. The second child, it feels, has turned us into this more complicated state of affairs that I want to call ‘family.’

So when people ask me about Eleanor, I am glad of it. I just also sort of wish that the focus didn’t immediately stray from Clara – since it is her time to be new to the world. I guess people assume that when you’ve gotten to baby #2, you’ve got the basics of sleep and such figured out and they move on to other queries. Or maybe they’re just assuming you aren’t getting any sleep at all and don’t bother to ask.

So how are the sisters taking to each other? Well, Clara is too sleepy to spend a lot of time thinking about Eleanor, but when she does stay awake for a few minutes together, Clara seems to enjoy smiling at Eleanor and watching big sis’s high energy twirling and talking.

As for Eleanor, she really wants to play with, pat, and kiss Clara, though she does seem to treat Clara rather like a fancy toy. It must be hard to understand that Clara is, in fact, a little person – one who will be increasingly autonomous and yes, disruptive as the days go by.

In the past few day’s transition, we have seen some moments of frustration and attitude from Eleanor, who is usually very well-behaved, but I can’t say I’m surprised. Nor can I say that her moments of acting out are really all that bad. Said bad behavior is not tolerated for an instant, of course, but if I’m honest about it, it’s really rather mild.

But rather than give you my impression of the transition from baby-of-the-family to big-sister, I thought I would finish this blog post with Eleanor’s own words about her baby sister, and let her answer the question of “How is Eleanor doing?”

I’d ask Clara for her opinion, too, but she’s still napping.

****************************************************************************

Me: Eleanor, how are you doing?

Eleanor: Momma, I wanna pat the baby and kiss the baby. (pause) Baby, you have crazy hair, baby. It’s so pretty.

Me: Eleanor, how do you like having a sister?

Eleanor: Mommy, I’d like to take her shirt off. (mom asks again) Momma, I want to put her hat on. (mom asks again) Yes!

Me: What does Clara do all day?

Eleanor: She goes, “ehhhh, da-da-da.” (stops to kiss Clara) She has eyes! It’s one, two!

Me: Are you helping mom and dad?

Eleanor: Yes. Pickle all helping with baby. Shh, sh, sh! It’s okay baby. She’s big!

Me: Is it fun having a baby at home, or is it frustrating?

Eleanor: It’s frustrating. It’s frust-er-ating. I want to sit right here. (perches on edge of couch)

Me: How are we going to help Clara get big and strong? What will you teach her?

Eleanor: I’m getting a kleenex for her.

Me: Anything else you want to say?"

Eleanor: Mommy, we need a draw pen. (wanders off find the art supplies)

The Wonderful Things About Clara

It’s hard to make either observations or predictions about a child’s personality when that child is newborn and only 3 days old. Still, I can’t help but try and do so. I love to observe Clara and wonder if some of these early traits will become lasting ones, or just give way with time and maturity.

At any rate, here are a few notes about her sweet little self so far:

* Clara is really quite mellow. The only time she gets cranky is when first disturbed from rest (which she returns to as quickly as she is able) and when hungry and kept from feeding for over 3ish minutes. (She’ll put up with being distracted for only a little while before insisting on grub.)

* Clara is eating and sleeping well. In fact, she’s sleeping SO well, I’ve occasionally had to wake her to feed her because mom was getting uncomfortable.

* When alert (between those long naps) she is quite alert and remarkably active. Last night, at day 2, she and Eleanor were having some tummy time together. She actually started raising her head. Not sure if that’s common for a nearly 2-week late child, but it was impressive to me.

* Clara loves to cuddle. While she will sleep alone for a time, Clara’s clearly preferred place to be is anywhere snuggled up to anyone.

* Clara ‘talks’ a lot – with little snuffling noises that are just too cute, in my opinion.

* Clara’s hair is definitely on the light side, and those who meet her all speculate about just how blonde/red it is going to turn out.

* I think Clara looks a fair-colored mix of mom and dad. Other verdicts have been that’s she’s the spitting image of mom and a virtual twin for her sister (who is also a fair-colored mix of mom and dad).

* Our first week at home has been far more to the mellow, hanging out side, and Clara seems quite content with it. With only sleeping and eating habits to comment upon (I leave out the pooping habits), I hazard a guess that she is showing signs of being relatively mellow and peaceful, but with her own considered opinion on certain matters. And that is something she would have in common with the other members of her family.

She’s Here!

Clara Margaret was born August 1 at 1 in the morning. Clearly, she wanted to be an August baby, and decided to wait patiently until that date.

At 10 days overdue, mom was waiting less than patiently, but baby/nature knows best. Clara took only 2 and 1/2 hours to be born after we reached the hospital and the delivery was smooth, med-free, and relatively fast.

As soon as she arrived, Clara stared around intently at everyone and everything. She didn’t cry much, and focused on eating and snuggling. She would not sleep long if left alone in the hospital bassinet, and would snuffle and then cry until snuggled against a warm body. Once she was snuggled up though, she was (and is) content to doze happily.

Clara was soon had a lot of visitors, all wanting to welcome her to the family. (Big sister, Eleanor, spent the night with grandma Sue, who had come over to stay at our house when I realized I was, finally, truly, really this time, going into labor).

As for mom, I am feeling well enough, if a little sleepy. Mostly, I am feeling profoundly grateful for a healthy baby, a healthy self, and the support of a loving family. I am looking forward to the challenge of being a parent of two with a little trepidation, but also with excitement. Family is truly one of the greatest blessings in life, and I am thrilled that we have added to ours with beautiful little Clara.