Fast Like a Christmas Tree

I found this while I was downloading videos off our Flip, and I had to post it here. It's a video of Will and Uncle Kai from our Christmas in New Jersey, and it basically illustrates why it's so tough to leave after a week of this, all the time:

Catching Up: Will Goes to Preschool!

That's right--my firstborn has started preschool, three mornings a week.

We started by spending an hour and a half there together a few weeks ago. He went by himself the next day, and it was so odd to drive away without him. It had nothing to do with trusting his teachers (I do) or feeling like it wasn't the right decision (I don't); it just felt like the baby monitor was out of range, and instead of toggling the channel switch back and forth to get better reception, I was just...leaving. With no window into my son's life. It was weird, and when it bordered on unsettling, I'd repeat (out loud): It's good for him, and it's good for me. It's good for him, and it's good for me.

On his second Monday, he was unusually cranky, but I chalked it up to tiredness and transition. Then I got an email from the director asking if it was normal that Will had fallen asleep on her floor for a "morning nap." Oh. Not normal, no, so I picked him up early, and soon afterward my mother's intuition detected that he might have an ear infection. HAHA! Just kidding. He clutched the left side of his head and said, "Mommy, my ear isn't feeling better!" We went to the doctor, where I paid fifteen dollars for the (totally wonderful, but still) pediatrician to confirm Will's self-diagnosis, and then we got Baby's First Amoxicillin Rx, and that was that. He was cleared to go for the rest of the week, and he warmed to it and is having a great time.

That's a Toy Story backpack he's sporting--he is officially "into" Buzz, Woody, Jessie and the gang, although his loyalty has recently been tested by what he calls "Cars Movie!" He will sometimes get so excited at the mere idea of it that he'll jump around yelling "CARS MOVIE! I KNOW JUST THE ONE! WHAT IS LIGHTING-DA-QUEEN DOING, DADDY? CARS MOVIE!"

(He also has taken to narrating his toys' actions as if they were characters in a book. For example, the other day he was hopping a little stuffed dog around, and I heard him say, "Ah-choo, the puppy cried." Seriously, like he was reading a story about the dog.)

(Last thing, I promise: Will says "I love you so MUCH, Mommy!" exactly like that. With the emphasis and upward inflection on the MUCH. I really want to capture it on video, but in case I don't, I need it recorded here because it is my favorite thing ever.)

Catching Up: Finn's 1st Birthday Party

This video is courtesy of Auntie Ceci:

We celebrated Finn's birthday (almost a month ago, closer to when his birthday actually HAPPENED) at MyGym, and it was a total blast. 

I'll be doing more Catching Up posts as the days go by--it makes me sad when I'm not keeping up here, and it almost invariably means I'm not keeping up with my one-line-a-day books or my kids' baby journals. Things are not getting any less busy, so I need to stop using that as an excuse if I'm ever going to write here regularly again! 

Finny Turns One

My Finny turned one today. Although I've been referring to him as a one-year-old for almost a month, it still startles me that now it's real.

I haven't written here for a month. It's been too crazy, and I'm writing in my new one-line-a-day journals for each kid, and I never have time or access to type during the day. Or night. I'm too busy because my boys are SO. BUSY.

My hope was to make this post all about my younger son, but the reality is, Finn won't have the same undivided blog attention that Will enjoyed. So...this is what Finn's been up to (and what his big brother's been doing, too):

We went to Edaville to ride the steam train.

We celebrated Christmas in Boston...

 we celebrated Christmas in New Jersey.

 Finn dive-bombed cousin Brendan!

 He got tickled by Grandmom.

Will went ice skating for the first time!

 Back to the birthday boy: we celebrated early in Jersey.

 Will triked with Finny on the back, and then:

 they switched places.

 We survived a two-plus-foot blizzard.

  With Nan and Mamp.

And Finny turned one.

ONE.

He's a wonderful boy with a great personality. Easily amused, quickly indignant, rapidly distracted. He's begun to say (versions of) "Up" and "Baby" and "Please." Unlike Will, who sits up after a nap and starts in with the questions, Finn takes thirty minutes to wake up. In that time, he crashes into my chest, nuzzles my neck, rests on me while he regains his land legs. He's constantly working on how to be even more mobile, which can be...inconvenient.  

But he's dimpled and chubby and busy and happy and still my little baby--no matter what the calendar says.

Pants on Fire, Self-Fulfilling Prophesies, and Peter Pan by Proxy

The other day, Will asked his sitter, Maggie, if they could play with the "small toys" (choking hazards).

"No, we have to wait until Finny takes a nap. Otherwise he might put them in his mouth and that would be bad!" she explained.

Will looked at his baby brother (BARELY a baby; eleven months old today!?!?), then back at Maggie, and said, "I think Finny is tired."

**********

I don't think there are a lot of people who LOVE feeling unmoored, but I still probably land somewhere way, way, way over on the "HATE IT" end of the spectrum.

However, I unintentionally give myself a hard time about how bothered I am by it. I'm constantly trying to talk myself out of feeling stressed, as if it isn't taxing to a) not know where you'll be living in 2011, b) not know where one kid is going to preschool or what you'll do to fill the other one's days, and c) feel like you want to do some more work in your field, although you can't see a way to add more work into the daily schedule of motherhood.

I'd like to spend some time on a project I first developed three years ago while heading up my Intervention & Assessment classroom. It's an important idea for a curriculum that's desperately needed in our high school classrooms, and I've seen the need for it firsthand, and...I just feel way too out-of-the-loop to know how to jump back in. And there's the time issue, which is kind of a huge one.

Anyway, I'm putting this out there in the spirit of that Secret book Oprah loves so much. I've never read it, but I think the main point is that you're supposed to tell the universe what you want and then things start happening to grant you your wish(es). I do have a hard time with the concept that "it's as easy as that!" because of, you know, the starving and disease-ridden and oppressed millions who...just didn't want it badly enough?

BUT, one day in August of '07, I was talking to myself in the car about my current job, and how it wasn't right for me. The schoolyear was due to start again in less than a month, and I said something out loud like, "I really wish I could find a place that really suited me, where I felt like I could do everything I wanted to." And mere days later, I got a call from the director of the I&A classroom asking if I was interested in taking over the lead teacher position. If that job had been a tangible object, it would have literally fallen in my lap.

So. Wonders never cease, right?

**********

Finny is eleven months old today, and this morning I woke up and thought, "I will absolutely cry on his first birthday."

I know how fast this goes now. Bear with my analogy, if you will: Motherhood started out feeling like a train, and I was the conductor, and the upcoming mile markers thrilled me; then it became a symbiotic thing where I still had my role, but now the train had a mind of its own (like Thomas!). And then I had another kid and started to feel like I was running down the tracks in pursuit of this runaway car, and if I could just--move--faster--?

Finn SO VIVIDLY remains a nursing, crawling infant in my mind, and part of me harbors the preposterous hope that time isn't linear and we'll get back there someday. I can't believe we're only moving forward, at a pace that's beyond my ever-shrinking sphere of influence.

He slept all the time, I remember.

 And now he's this sweet and handsome and charming little blue-eyed BOY.

(Or "Chubby little man!" as Will calls him.)

So Finny and I are at odds: he wants to grow up, and I'd prefer that he didn't. And although neither of us is the conductor of that particular train, I have a feeling Finn's going to win this one. And THAT makes me feel like crying.

All in a Month's Work

You know when you have "Call so-and-so!" on your list, and then as the days tick by with no time for phone calls there is SO MUCH MORE to tell so-and-so, and you try to keep track of it all, and then you have to block out more and more time for this supposed phone-based catch-up session, and before you know it, it's been a month? Or more? That's what happened on this here blog.

First, I didn't want to jinx anything by discussing the sale of our condo. Real-estate-wise, how have we been burned? Let me count the ways:

-new construction home delayed by two weeks, then a month, then another month, and finally doesn't come through *plus* we have to do battle with the builder to get any money back for our upgrades

-rushed condo purchase leads to...interesting...upstairs neighbors, a far-less-than-ideal location in a busy intersection

-the whole thing about the economy tanking and our not being able to sell said condo for anywhere near what we paid

-our first buyers for the condo, five months after it goes on the market, back out post-"under agreement" for no reason at all, before the home inspection's even happened

And those are just the biggies. So you can forgive us for being closed-mouthed when it looked like we might actually, honest-to-goodness get out of our place once and for all.

But it happened. We closed on November 29 and moved in with my parents. And (Mom, Dad, I love you, thank you for being so wonderful, but) that's pretty rough on a 30-year-old with a husband and two young kids. There are trade-offs, and the good of escaping a home we KNEW we wanted to escape CERTAINLY outweighs any bad that accompanies this temporary situation. I won't get into all the pros and cons, but please believe me when I say, for all the short-term perils of a crowded house and six conflicting schedules, I'm vastly grateful to have the opportunity to conduct a house hunt that is Thorough and Thoughtful rather than Rushed and Desperate.

Then, the kids' "new things" kept piling up and changing. Will went from saying "Cranbezzies" to "Cranberries" and I didn't cry because at least he still says "Peamup and jelly," and that's about the cutest thing that's ever happened, maybe to anyone. My big boy has been in his big-boy bed for four months now, and he has never had one iota of angst regarding that transition. He HAS been working through a cough for the last month and a half, which means when he partially wakes up in the middle of the night, Dave and I completely wake up. We've recently begun addressing this problem (for us) with something called Wal-Zyr (for him), a Walgreens-brand antihistamine approved for 2-year-olds. It's been fabulous, as has my discovery of Walgreens. Hey, did you all know there's a place that sells the same stuff as CVS but has, like, great coupons and Jingle Bucks on top of already low prices and steep sales? You probably all did, but as my turn as a bargain shopper is relatively new, I had not known. (My mom got concerned when she realized I was suddenly all about the coupons--I had to reassure her that it was, in fact, my classic What's The Point of Doing Anything Without Going Whole Hog? routine and not the more worrisome We're Broke So I'm Off to Fight that Lady in Line for the Last Bottle of 99-Cent Apple Juice life crisis.)

Back to Will! He's as verbal and as gargantuan as ever. We just ordered size 10.5 double-wide sneakers for him. If you don't have a two-year-old, trust me when I say that's RIDICULOUS. He says things like, "I'm tempted to see everything!" and "Finny, you're such a cute little munchkin!" In other words (ha), he parrots us all the time, but also seems to know what he's saying. It always takes me aback when he paraphrases something I've said, as if he needs to make it his own, or just comes up with something spontaneously--lately it's been on-the-spot songs narrating his thought process, like when we were at his bestie Connor's house and he sang, "I want to hold--hold--hold--Con-nor's hand--hand--hand." I didn't have the heart to tell him it was bordering on copyright infringement and the remaining Beatles would surely sue if they caught wind of his plagiarism.

And Finny? Finny walks, runs, pivots, swivels, bends, lunges, squats, and generally runs me ragged. I can't believe I used to sit on my playroom floor and despair while Will toddled around me and Finny lay sleeping on my lap. THOSE WERE INDEED THE DAYS.

Finn also continues to sign, tries to talk--he can half-say a lot of words when prompted. Much like Will at (almost) eleven months, nothing is safe around that boy. He is, however, less of the Dismantling and Reassembling variety than his older brother--Finn's more a "Let's hurl this ball/block/4-pack of paper towels as far and as hard as I possibly can. Over and over and over," sort of guy. His new game is to kiss me repeatedly, with a wagging tongue and an open, drooly mouth. It would be positively disgusting if he had one less dimple and stubbier lashes and eyes with no twinkle, and if he was missing that guttural, joyful chuckle that punctuates our days. Instead, that sloppy French kiss is out-of-this-world adorable, and I'm constantly squeezing him and then pulling back to ask for "Kisses?" He even makes a "MWAH" noise. He's crazy cute, demands an audience, grunts heartily when he needs something, beats his chest as he circles the house, smiles at everyone, snuggles us all, and LOVES his Cheerios and his mozzarella. Purees are, like, SO three months ago, says his expression when Chicken and Summer Vegetables are on the menu.

And see? This post is already ages long, and I still have covered maybe .0000003% of everything that's happened since last I wrote here. I still have to put up pictures of Thanksgiving and tell you about the many wonders of the boys' Mary Poppins-esque babysitter. For tonight, I'll leave you with these:

My sweet and exhausting boys. And also Bulldog the bulldog.

Look Who's Walking Too

Just two days shy of his ten-month birthday, Finn decided it was time to be a toddler. Literally.