Imagination

Annie and Jemma have been playing a new game recently. Here's what they pretend:

Jemma is a baby. Her name is "baby Natalie." She sticks her tongue halfway out of her mouth and makes baby noises. She cries a lot.

Annie is the mom. Her name is "Emma." She spends most of her time transferring things from one purse to another, going to concerts, going to birthday parties, and going to Africa. She will be home before bedtime, though.

I am the babysitter. My name is "Miss Kelly." I am to feed baby Natalie lunch, give her a nap, and play with her when she wakes up. I should be careful with her on the swing.

This game has been happening, off and on, for a few weeks now, but it was very big this weekend, while we were at "the cottage." Amidst jumping huge waves, swinging on the monkey bars, having a great dinner with my parents at the new Su Casa, eating ice cream, and showing the house (three times, but NO, surely nobody is going to actually want to BUY IT . . .), the girls played these roles so much that, even today, Jemma keeps correcting me when I address her. Especially if I am directing her or disciplining her, she cops out. "I am not Jemma. I am baby Natalie." She scowls, then sticks her tongue out a little bit.

The funny thing about this is, Natalie was actually one of the girl names I originally liked when we got pregnant with Annie, but Jason would never consider it because of lingering associations with the sort-of-obnoxious-and-not-super-attractive character on the 80's sitcom The Facts of Life. Looks like we got ourselves a baby Natalie, after all.

Making Her Birthday List Already

Last night, about an hour or so after I'd tucked Annie in to bed, I walked past her door and noticed a lot of light coming from the crack underneath. I opened the door quietly and found Annie, sitting up in bed, her blinds open and her lamp on, casually perusing the American Girl catalog.

Rewarding Good Behavior

The girls have been mostly good lately, Jemma's daily morning tantrums about Not Wearing a Ponytail and Not Getting Dressed notwithstanding. Today, Jason and I both had things we wanted to get done, so we split up the day and each took half to do fun things with the girls while the other parent had "alone" time.

This morning, Jason took them out for breakfast, then ran a couple errands, then hit a new park, then brought them to the gym to play. I ran the lake with Sarah, showered, lazed around drinking coffee and reading The Hour I First Believed, got a pedicure, did some laundry, and ordered Jemma's new Big Girl Bedding (not that we are in ANY hurry to move her out of her crib), which I've been meaning to do for some time.

This afternoon, while Jason got a few projects of his own accomplished, I brought the girls to the pool. When we pulled up, I was confused: fountains off, lifeguards not in chairs, pool completely empty of people, gate closed. I did a mental tally - it's Friday afternoon, it's hazy-but-sunny (no rain, no lightening), it's 80 degrees . . . So I stopped the car and ran over to yell to a lifeguard who was straightening empty chairs. Yep, they're open.

So we tromped in (via the other entrance) and proceeded to be the only people in the entire pool for 45 minutes until, finally, one other family showed up. It was amazing; normally, there are 50 million kids bashing against you and splashing and yelling. Today, just Annie, wearing her goggles and diving down to retrieve rings on the bottom, and Jemma, crawling and jumping and throwing a ball in the shallow end. I sat on the edge, they yelled, "Mom! Watch this!" a hundred thousand times. I guess I'm entering the "Mom, watch!" phase of life, which I'll take over the "Mom, hold my hand and be one inch from me at all times so I don't drown" phase.

I read this recently (on www.sanemoms.com) and thought it was good enough to share:

If you’re debating a day trip or an outing with your kids, or keeping them up late, or doing something spontaneous and out-of-the-ordinary with your spouse: do it! The best memories rarely come from the most meticulously planned events. They come from that late-night-firefly-catching ramble or last-minute trip to the beach. It’s never practical, rational, or well thought out. It’s just plain a good thing to do. Find something absurd to do this week, grab your kids, a friend, or your kids friends, and do it!

And off to "the cottage" we go tomorrow morning, fingers crossed for sunshine and happy memories in spite of the absurdity of another weekend on the road.

p.s. - New post up at Bodies in Motivation!

Assessing

After several, several posts with ZERO COMMENTS, my curiosity is piqued. (Also, my pride is a little wounded, I admit.) And though I'm writing this blog mostly for myself and for the girls in the years down the road when they care to remember, it's fun to know who's reading it from time to time, too. So instead of writing tonight about all the new recipes I'm attempting or how we made ice cream this afternoon, I posted a little poll. See? Over there in the right-hand corner? Indulge me, please.

Fourth of July 2009

Christmas in July

We're happily home from a big, busy Fourth of July weekend up north, where we went all the usual places and did all the usual things. There is something comforting about marking the years this way: taking pictures of the girls splashing ankle-deep in the freezing beach at Harbor Springs; watching the small-town parade along with thousands of other people decked out in red, white, and blue; eating Tom's Mom's cookies; having Sunday brunch at Bay View; watching the sun set before the fireworks; boating on Walloon; making s'mores around the campfire. It's my second-favorite holiday, rivaling Christmas and coming close to edging it out just by virtue of the glorious weather.

This was the first year that Annie dared to jump in (wearing her lifejacket) and paddle around by herself in the lake; she and Jason swam underneath the boat and delighted Jemma every time they came back out. This was the first year that Jemma held her own marshmallow over the coals and waved it slowly from side to side. This was the first year that we've stayed for the whole parade and then gone right out on the boat, defying naptime altogether and putting the girls to bed, sleepy and full of sugar and sunscreen, very early in the evening.

I snuck away a few times - to town, to read down by the dock, and to run on the trails near Camp Daggett. As I tackled one dusty hill after another, I thought about how this holiday is different from the ones in the past. When Jason and I were dating, then married with no kids, we did fun things outside every minute of the day. We stayed up late, eating and drinking on the lawn of the Perry Hotel, waiting to watch the fireworks. We played bad tennis, we drank beer and played cards on the boat, we rode our bikes to Harbor Springs just to drink a Bloody Mary on the deck of the Pier.

After Annie was born, we were lucky to make it to a parade at all, much less fireworks, much less lounging around drinking or eating. Over the last few years, we've adapted. We've missed our share of fun due to naps and we've had lots of hurried meals and frantic drives to beat crowds, but it's fun of a whole other variety to watch Jemma's eyes grow big with wonder as a sucker lands at her feet while a float goes by or to see Annie get up and dance when the bagpipes play.

I realized, as I ran, that I used to MIND the fact that having children had limited my ability to life as freely and easily as I used to live. And even though I got up with a sick child in the middle of the night, cut short a parade to make it home for a nap, missed the fireworks or a concert or a fun event because of bedtime, it was hard. I admit: every time I scraped back my chair to chase an "All Done!" toddler when my meal sat untouched on my plate, I harbored the teeniest, tiniest scrap of resentment - not at my kids, really, but at . . . the situation. At the fact that it was almost always ME who got up to do those things, who had had to change my life so radically to accommodate these needs.

And I admit, although I'm actually not proud that it's taken me nearly five years of parenting to do it, that I don't MIND, anymore. Jemma, who was 100% completely, totally healthy when we left on Thursday, got a bad cold while we were up north, and I was up with her most of the night last night. Instead of feeling angry, resentful, bitter (instead of calculating how much sleep I was losing), I felt OK. Not thrilled, but actually sort of glad to be able to comfort my girl. Not pleased, but able to have enough perspective that this, too, shall pass.

So Happy Fourth of July, little girls. You are seeming not-so-little to me, this year. And I am feeling ever-so-grateful to be your Mommy.

On the Cusp of Five

With a little more than two months until she is officially five years old, Annie is, more and more, my big girl. Less frequent are the days where she whines and hits and yells and can't pull it together. More common are days - lots of them, in a row - where we do one fun thing after another, where we talk about anything and everything, where we kiss and hug and giggle spontaneously, where I am so glad to be with her.

She continues to astound me with what she knows and what she notices. We still play "Which is more, 18 or 43?" with various numbers in the car, and she still mostly gets them right. The other day, Annie turned to Jemma in the middle of a game and said, "Jemma, which is more, 1 or 3?" And I was amazed that she knew to make the game as simple as possible for her two-year-old sister.

She loves words and letters and knowing what things "mean." Driving through Eastown today, she pointed out the "lowercase e" and then started listing off things that begin with the letter E: "elephant, eggs, Elizabeth, . . ." and went on for about five minutes. She "reads" a few words on sight. She asks how to spell things like "Congratulations" to make a card for baby Arlo next door, sticking her tongue out of her mouth with concentration as she prints each letter with an orange crayon. She can tell time (just the hours) on a non-digital clock.

She flies around the sidewalk on her scooter and balances for what seems like minutes at a time, coasting between driveways. Just this week, after weeks of ignoring her bike completely, she abruptly decided that she wasn't afraid of falling down on it, anymore, and now she straps her helmet on and pedals furiously around the block on that, too. We went to the track this afternoon to run off some steam, and she had me time her running a lap. She ran a 400 in 2:17 (by comparison, it took me 1:27, only fifty seconds less), then wanted to do another one. Immediately.

She can crack an egg to help me bake. She chooses all her own clothes. She does the monkey bars all the way across without stopping and can pump on the swing with no pushes at all. She has plans for herself every day, ideas about where we should go and what we should do, and it is a great joy to stand back and watch her, my almost-five-year-old, embrace her life.