Friday, March 28, 2008
Logan's Take
"Mommy, sometimes I like blueberries. Sometimes I like blueberries on cottage cheese cuzzin I ate it. I ate it and then someone gave me a haircut. It got all over my hair. Silly Logan!"
Friday, March 21, 2008
Quiet
In a switcheroo here at the RL Castle, Logan is now sleeping through the night (I whisper in case the Sleep Gods hear and yank away this blessed turn of events while cackling with evil glee), and Shay is – well, not sleeping through much of anything at all. But she's doing much better sleep-wise than Logan did at her age. Yesterday I actually put her down in her Pack n'Play wide awake (her, not me), and she fell asleep on her own. First. Time. Ever. Of course, we tried it again last night and today and she refused a repeat performance, but it was heartening nonetheless.
Meanwhile she sleeps for about ½ an hour in the morning around nine, then again around 12:30 or so, but I try to get her back to sleep in the afternoon so we can keep her up until 7. Then both she and Logan go to sleep between 7-7:30, and after the flurry of activity that consitutes our evenings (bath, cooking and eating dinner, dishes, milk, diapers, PJs, teeth-brushing, stories, these projection-lullaby things that Logan is now fixated on, several rounds of songs) once they're both sleeping, Will and I sit on the sofa looking shell-shocked and thinking, "Wow, is this what quiet sounds like?"
Logan is on spring break from preschool this week, so we've actually been venturing out after the snowiest Madison winter on record, and we even made it out to the park yesterday. But now it's snowing again (8-10 inches expected), so we joined our new friends Kim and her daughters Lily and Iris in the apartment community room for a playgroup they host. Only one other mom and her son showed up, but it was nice to have company nonetheless. Tomorrow we have a birthday party for one of Logan's preschool classmates, so hopefully the roads will be plowed. Come on, Spring!
Sunday, March 16, 2008
Viewing of the Lambs
It was crowded. REALLY crowded. But because this is Wisconsin, people were all very polite about being shuffled and jostled about ("Oh, excuse me." "No, that's all right." "No, excuse me."). Logan was quite taken with the sheep, although he startled with the sheep baa-ed right in his face, and then he had his picture professionally taken holding a baby lamb—while wearing his boots and overalls, no less. SO cute. I will post it as soon as it's mailed to us.
We petted baby lambs, chicks, goats and a full-size rabbit, then went into another area of the barn where people were demonstrating how to spin wool on various looms. Logan had a heart painted on his face at the face-painting station, and then was entranced by the man using a spinning wheel—I herded him out of the room about three times, and each time he said, "I want to go back in." Since I am nothing if not accommodating, we maneuvered our way back in—did I mention three times?—and he stood there just staring at the spinning wheel. After finally announcing, "I'm done with this," we went back to look at the lambs again and he proceeded to pitch handfuls of hay from the floor into the lamb pen "because I wanna give them something to eat."
Just as we were leaving, a big "ahh" rose from the crowd, and we hurried back to try and see a lamb actually being born, but the big event was taking place too far away from where we were standing. So we didn't get to see that, but we had a very nice morning nonetheless. Oh, and Shay just hung out quietly in the sling and was the recipient of several exclamations of, "Oh, look at her! Look at those blue eyes!" Meanwhile I stood there all bursting with pride.
Man, do I love my children.
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
Stuff
It should come as no surprise that I am crazy about my children—head over heels, ga-ga, loop-de-loop. Every time I look at Logan, I get little fluttering thoughts about how intelligent, handsome, funny, kind and creative he is. Every time I look at Shay (and I could stare at her puffy little baby face for hours on end), I think about how pretty her eyes are, how good-natured she generally is, how I adore every last one of her myriad facial expressions from smiling and cooing to scowling and frowning. I can't even form a coherent thought about how much I love them—every time I try to grasp it, the thought flits away into this vast wellspring of awe and wonderment over how fortunate we are.
So. We are lucky and busy. Logan started swimming lessons yesterday, which he's taken to like a...uh, like a duck to water (lack of sleep does not good metaphors make). He's already ducking his head underwater, jumping in and doing a substantial amount of kicking. Will took him into the pool last week to get him used to it, and the kid didn't stop smiling the whole time they were in the water. After these lessons are over, I'm going to take him to our apartment pool to keep his practice up. He's always been athletic, and as it's turning out, being in the water is just another venue for him to express that ability.
Sleep continues to be an issue around here—since we made the daylight savings time switch last Sunday, Logan has been averaging three or four wake-ups per night (which means he gets up to find Will, who is sleeping in the living room through no fault of his own), and then Will has to take him back to bed and sing to him before Logan will fall asleep again. Now I remain somewhat blissfully unaware of Logan's nocturne wanderings (until the inevitable morning discussion) since Shay and I sleep in the bedroom with the door very firmly closed. While she wakes me up at least five or six times a night, at least I don't have to get out of bed to deal with it.
I don't know why Logan has always been such a poor sleeper. Of course, two years ago we were certain he'd be sleeping through the night by age three (or two), but it hasn't happened with any real consistency. A woman who was once in one of my aerobics classes told me her daughter didn't start sleeping through the night until FIRST GRADE. What the—?
Our pediatrician told us that children often sleep better when sharing a room with a sibling, which Logan and Shay will eventually do. I'm a little concerned about doing it NOW though, since Logan is still rambunctious around his sister, and I could easily picture him trying to climb into the Pack n'Play with her or tossing toys inside to her. When she's out of a crib and into a bed of her own seems like the right time, but obviously that won't happen for awhile.
In the meantime, we continue to live in the grand State of Sleep Deprivation, but I, at least, am managing well. (I can't speak for my other half, but he hasn't yet started hallucinating. Not to my knowledge, anyway). When I start feeling a little rough around the edges, I try to remember everything I wrote in the first paragraph, and somehow it all seems much more bearable. And blessed.
Thursday, March 6, 2008
More Music
We took Logan and Shay to the Olbrich Botanical Gardens on Sunday afternoon where they have free concerts in their common room. This week it was the Calico Drifters, a three-person folk band. We arrived early and secured seats in the front row as the band was warming up for the 2pm performance. The lead singer had a beautiful silver dobro, which of course immediately caught Logan's attention, and whenever the singer wandered back out from the backstage area, Logan screeched, "Here comes the dobroman!" – much to everyone's amusement. He enjoyed the band for about half an hour, intermittantly pointing out to everyone in the near vicinity what the musicians were doing next ("Now he's getting his guitar!") before we took a quick stroll through the garden's conservatory.
I find Logan's love of music to be quite fascinating, especially considering we never made a conscious effort to nurture it aside from playing CDs often and taking Logan to see a few live bands. It hasn't been like reading, which I've been determined that Logan WILL LOVE, come hell or high water. I've been reading to him since he was an infant and he continues to adore books—one of my greatest pleasures is seeing him take a book from his shelf and sit down to look at it by himself.
So the music thing is cool because it comes from him rather than us—he let us know after seeing that bluegrass band that he wanted to know more. His latest venture is playing "marching band" where he wears his drum around his neck and marches around the apartment playing it. A true joy at 6 in the morning, oh yes. But far be it from me to stifle my child's marching band inclinations.
Monday, March 3, 2008
Siblings
In many ways Shay is a replica of Logan-as-infant. Their sleeping patterns are similar (which is to say "bad"), but overall they are/were very agreeable infants. Logan was, however, quite a bit more active. He had a little workout that he did involving a lot of kicking and arm thrusting, as if he was so anxious to start moving that he had to find some outlet to get his endorphins going. He did his workout at least once, if not twice, a day and of course once he actually started to walk, there was no stopping him.
Shay is somewhat mellower – she's been active in the sense that she likes being in her play-gym and exersaucer, but when she started rolling over about a month ago, it seemed to freak her out. She's getting used to it now, but at first she'd roll onto her stomach and start wailing within about fifteen seconds because she couldn't figure out how to roll back again. But now she has learned to start scooting herself backwards using her arms as leverage, and makes her way with increasing regularity across the floor. Needless to say this has been causing her brother great delight."Mommy, she rolled over! You wanna come see?"
Logan is officially over his transition months in getting accustomed to having a little sister. For awhile there, he was getting pretty hyper in a bid for attention whenever Shay was around, but now he's calmed down significantly and loves being around her. He does the teeth-gritting, scrunched-face thing that many adults do when confronted with an adorable baby, and he grabs her feet and says in a sing-song voice, "Oh, little piggies," and "Hi, sweet!" – which then makes him laugh. He likes holding her hands, helping her play with toys by making them spin or play music, and talking to her. When I bring her out of the bedroom in the morning he says, "I want to say good-morning to Shay," and I have to bring her over to him so he can.
For her part, Shay is generally riveted by Logan. She watches him constantly, especially when he is running around (which is to say "all the time"), and she's learning how to stand up for herself with ear-piercing shrieks when he grabs her arm too hard or gets in her way. She turns her head to look at him when he's near, and is captivated when he sings or plays the guitar.
They are learning how to be brother and sister, but they are also learning how to be friends.