Back at it Again

Just when I thought I'd gotten back into a rhythm with this thing, we all get sick. But that was in March. Now it's August.
Ollie will be a year old in two weeks. He's been walking for about a month and a half, but he's just now starting to get proficient. He can make it just about across a room. His problem now is that he'd prefer to run. I predicted this several months ago when he started climbing things before he could crawl.
Speaking of climbing, he's, well, pretty good. The most dangerous places I've found him are in the bathroom sink (Ike thought this was hilarious) and on the dining room table (the paring knife I'd used to cut his banana that morning in his hand). He hasn't repeated either, but he can get on any couch in the house now, and can almost make it onto our bed. He's now the type of kid who I can't let disappear for more than five seconds.
Ike is still working on adjusting to having Ollie around, and now Ollie's big enough that he can give back whatever Ike can dish out. We've had our share of screaming matches. But they love each other. Ike's our main sign language teacher - Ollie pays far more attention to him signing than Joe or me. They love wrestling, and Ike enjoys "sharing" food with Ollie, which mostly means he takes stuff off Ollie's high chair tray and says, "I was just sharing with him."

The Emperor Has No Clothes

Joe and I were discussing baby stuff yesterday at breakfast and the horrors of buying something from Wal-Mart. Ike chimed in with, "And do you not like Wal-Mart, Daddy?" He learned this by observation some time ago.
Joe said, "No, I don't like Wal-Mart."
Ike: "And why do you not like Wal-Mart?"
Joe: "Because I don't like their business practices. They don't care about the communities where they build their stores, and they don't take care of the people who work for them, their employees. They don't pay them enough money to live on, and they don't help them pay for the doctor and stuff. They also sell yucky food and things that people who shop there don't need and can't afford."
Jeni: "And they try to make it so that the people who shop there buy these things that they can't afford instead of buying stuff they really need, like good, 'growing' food."
Ike listened very carefully and thought about it for a minute.
Then he said, "So do you like Target, then, Daddy?"

Ollie Discovers His Toes

I had to put this up because we're really lacking in photos of Oliver. Poor, poor second child. He's officially sitting up. I can't leave him for long, but I can let go. He was thrilled to discover that he's got toes.
He started creeping a couple weeks ago, but he would really rather crawl, so I don't think he'll be as efficient at the commando crawl as Ike was. But I'm thinking he might walk earlier--he's just unsatisfied in general, so I think he'll keep trying to do something that he can't. He's super cute, though, isn't he?

Priorities

Last night at dinner Ike decided he was going to say the Lord's Prayer, as he was picking through his quiche. I didn't even know he knew it, but I guess he's picked it up from Joe. It went something like this:

"Our Father, who art in Heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come ... will be done ... 'give us trespasses ... temptation ... Give us this day our -- I found a piece of bacon!"

Beware the Suburban Housewife

So my new point to this blog, other than my darling children (who are really the point of everything), is as a writing exercise. I was complaining to Joe last night (actually bawling) that my brain is atrophying and I can barely string two words together. This condition is not surprising when I consider that most of my conversations consist of arguments like, "We can't go outside right now, it's dark out." "No, it's not dark out!" "Yes it is." "No it's not!" "Yes it--wait, I'm not going to argue with you about this." "Yes, you are going to argue with me!" I'm talking to Ike in this conversation, if you're wondering.
Yesterday I actually stooped to telling Ike that he wasn't allowed to be whiny and cranky because it was my turn to be cranky, I'm the one whose knee was hurt (I did this, or something similar), I'm the one who didn't sleep last night, I get to be cranky! To which Ike replied as he put his head in his hands, "But I just can't help it, Mommy." How's that for suddenly seeing your true colors? No duh, he can't help it. I mean, I just told my 2-year-old he wasn't allowed to whine because I wanted to whine.
So. I need an intellectual outlet. I have my book club, but that's made up of playgroup moms, who I love, who are some of the smartest, best-educated women I know. But, we have to face facts, we only spend about an hour of any meeting talking about the book (if it's even worth an hour), and the rest of the time is spent drinking wine and talking about our kids and husbands. (shh. Don't tell the husbands.)
Joe suggested that I write in my blog regularly to practice my writing. So smart.
Also, there's always the dreaded question, "And what do you do?" Over the holidays we went to a few parties. We have a few friends who don't yet have kids (seriously, we do), and they have friends who don't have kids, who come to parties where we're expected to socialize. I've become self-conscious at parties like this because it's a totally acceptable party question to ask someone what they do for a living--I've asked it myself--and people often do really cool stuff. I say, "I'm a stay-at-home mom." I love raising my kids (in theory, not always in day-to-day practice--don't hate me, you know it's true for you, too). But my answer is usually a conversation stopper. What am I supposed to say? "I get puked on five times a day, while leaking breastmilk and arguing about the need for at least a t-shirt, if pants are not going to be worn." Probably also a conversation stopper.
People react in various ways. I've been asked, "But what did you do before you stopped working?" As if that would be the more interesting answer. Certainly my old job description is more acceptable in a room full of childless yuppies. I've been patronized: "Ohhh, I hear that's such a haaard job." And then there's what I got at a holiday party this year. The "oh, you must be a moron, then" stare. There was this guy, fresh out of law school, single, probably younger than me. (Another recent realization: there are lawyers younger than me. Also, most major league ball players, Olympians and every single Miss America contestant.) I saw the veil go down over his face as soon as I answered "the question" when his girlfriend asked it. I may have imagined it, but I don't think so. The girlfriend responds with reaction #2: "Oh, that must be haaard." And the topic got switched to pregnancy (I did not choose this). So, I'm participating in this conversation with the girlfriend (who's curious) and another mom (who works), and the lawyer decides he's going to argue with me about something stupid. I won't go into it. Basically, he's wrong, but I'm not going to say this because he obviously thinks that I should be the one who's wrong. As if because I choose not to work, I must not be intelligent. I must have only ever done one thing in this world, and that's change diapers, and it couldn't possibly be hard to do that. And if you choose to do that instead of real work, you must be a moron. Seriously, I got all this from the guy doing the arguing. I couldn't call him on this--it's not like he was being outrightly insulting. Could I just randomly yell at him where I went to school, that I graduated with honors, that I was at the top of my field before he even went to college? And then how would I have come off, as some crazy stay-at-home suburban housewife who doesn't know how to behave herself in social situations? Okay, so maybe that's sort of true, but I don't go around advertising it.
I swear. It makes me so angry. I chose to stay home to raise my family--to do dishes, change diapers, do laundry, breastfeed, kiss boo-boos and read "Curious George and the Dump Truck" 5 million times a day. I chose it, I didn't get stuck with it because it was all my little brain could handle. Doubt my current events savvy, doubt the appropriateness of my wardrobe, doubt my commitment to the feminist cause, but DON'T (this is where my writer alter ego does that snap and head waggle thing that I could never actually pull off in real life, even in jest) DON'T doubt my intelligence.

And Then There Were Two

It's interesting to note that my last entry was two weeks before I found out I was pregnant with Banks human #2. I guess that just goes to show what life is like these days. Being pregnant while having a toddler at home was hard. Having two kids is hard. There's not a lot of time. For anything. End of story.
Well, it's been five months, almost exactly, since human #2 arrived (Oliver Edward, Aug. 26, 3:08 pm, 8lbs., 20 inches), and I'm coming to the realization that it's not going to get any easier, so I've got to suck it up and get things going again, or I may never do it. The house will probably always be not clean (my new goal is to keep it not filthy), my projects will always be not done (I'm working to make them not too neglected), and this blog will be not planned out (but hopefully now not totally inactive).
So, part of what's kept me away is trying to keep up with all the crazy amazing stuff Ike's been doing in the last two years. That's pretty much impossible. Suffice it to say, it's been fascinating. I am sorry I couldn't write all this stuff down because I certainly can't remember everything that made Joe or me roll our eyes, stifle our laughter or just try to roll our tongues back in our mouths and pick our jaws up off the ground. It's seriously something new every day.
Now we've got two of them, and Ollie's a whole new bag of tricks already. He arrived via a fully natural (not the no epidural but pumped full of pitocin with needles and bags everywhere that I had with Ike), water birth. Compared to Ike's, this birth was night and day. I'm going to refrain from a serious rant, mostly because it's 9pm and I want to have time to read a little tonight before I zonk out. I will, however, say that I think that my experience with Ollie, attended by a midwife, just goes to show how much our bodies are capable of doing the whole birth thing "properly," and how much we women are capable of dealing with it, if left to our own devices.
I woke up on the hour at 1am, 2am and 3am, not really knowing what was going on, but registering that I was awake. By 4am I realized I was having contractions and tried to go back to sleep. I laid in bed until about 5am, when I realized I was just laying there waiting for the next contraction. So I got up and went for a walk around the block, paced around the house, did the dishes. At 7 I woke Joe up and told him to start making arrangements for his mom to come watch Ike, then I went for a couple more walks around the block. By 9am I was starting to have to concentrate on the contractions more. Joe told Ike we needed to get ready to go to the hospital so that Rocky (Ollie's in utero name, given to him by Ike) could be born. Ike got so excited he ran through the house at top speed, tripped on the corner of the living room rug and took a header into the corner of the coffee table. All he wanted for an hour and a half was for mommy to hold him. Mommy, meanwhile, was having serious contractions every three minutes. So, every three minutes I had to hand him back to Joe so I could go do my "exercises."
By noon I was getting antsy to go to the hospital, realizing that the ride to the hospital would SUCK if we stayed home much longer, but Joe wanted to walk with me a few more times to time the contractions before we hit the road (the hospital was 40 minutes away). We left about 1pm for the hospital and I listened to hypnobirthing stuff on the ipod the whole way there. When we got to the hospital I had to go to triage to be monitored for 20 minutes or so before I could go to the room (because with this particular "Alternative Birthing Center" within the hospital they don't do needless constant monitoring, but they want to make sure everything is okay before they turn you loose). So, while I was hooked up to the monitor my midwife got there. She did a pelvic exam to check how dilated/effaced I was (she told me later that by my demeanor--still talking, smiling between contractions, she expected me to be 3 or 4 centimeters, 5 at the most), and she said, "You're 7 centimeters, fully effaced, baby head down, perfect position. Let's get a room quick and go have this baby!" Joe still had to go back down to the car to get the camera and our stuff. I think I must have transitioned on the way to the room and while he was getting the stuff. I had about three contractions while he was gone and they were filling the tub, and just when I thought I couldn't do it anymore, the tub was full, Joe was back and I got in. I had one contraction and then started pushing. Pushed for about 20 minutes and Oliver came out screaming so loud even the nurses commented. He still screams like that. So, we were at the hospital about an hour and a half before the birth. Some of the nurses in the nursery told Joe we were lucky we didn't have the baby on the way to the hospital, but we figure we timed it perfectly. We paid attention to what was going on with me, knew how things should go, and that's how they went.
Whew. Well, so far the birth has been the smoothest, least complicated part of being the parents of two boys.

From the Mouths of the Babe

Ike's taking one of his rare four-hour naps, so that gives me 20 more minutes of relative silence in which to write a little update. Four hours? Yes, four hours. Aren't I lucky? Well, yesterday he didn't take a nap, so I figure I deserve this.

I can't even think of where to begin. As my friend Megan (who has a son two weeks younger than Ike) said the other day about the boys' development, "Wait while I pick my jaw up off the floor." That's pretty much what every day is like these days. It seems like there's a new word or phrase coming out of Ike's mouth at least every day, if not every 20 minutes. For the record, for some of you who may have naysaying relatives and friends, teaching him to sign HAS NOT slowed down his speech. I'll admit, even though everything I've read said it wouldn't, I sort of expected it to, which I was fine with. But in reality, I think if anything it's made him more skilled at putting phrases and ideas together. He regularly uses two word phrases, and will even do some longer than that, with pauses in between. Something like this:

Ike: "Sit down."
Jeni: "You want me to sit down?"
Ike: "Yeah, play blocks."
Jeni: "We're going to play blocks?"
Ike: "Build. House."
Jeni: "Well, all righty, then."

He's slightly ahead of the curve on this, according to BabyCenter.com.

Okay, okay, so I'm probably mostly a typical my-baby-is-the-smartest-baby-ever parent, but there are so many points when Joe and I just look at each other like, "Where the heck did that come from?" The other day, he was looking at a cookbook with Joe (he loves to cook, by the way, which he signs and says at the same time), and pointed at a picture of ground beef and said, "meat." Joe said, "Yeah, that's meat that you cook hamburgers with." Ike said, "Cook outside."

Uh. Okay. It's December. The last time we cooked outside was, like, September. So he stored that in his little brain for months before it popped up and he made the connection. Freaky smart, I say.

Still, most of this stuff is typical toddler talk. Don't think that there isn't a whole load of interpretation that goes on. Like, I imagine you can guess what "sit" sounds like. I cringe every time I hear it. Then there's "vatbroom" (vacuum), "puh-puh" (plug, what we call his pacifier), "drate" (grapes), "sing" (sing, but also sling), "wreff-wreff" (wrestle), "waff-waff" (waffle – yes, we do get these last two mixed up), "manah" (banana – luckily he signs this at the same time), the list goes on. He says some things clear as day, though: Pearl, butt, go away, Izzy, Pappy, ror-ror (This actually is what he calls Seamus. It's the sound Seamus makes when he "talking."), yeah, no. I could go on and on. We don't bother to count what he knows, it's just a lot.
He's finally growing physically, too. We always knew he would, but doctors with their narrow idea of what's normal have to always define anything not completely average as abnormal. I know, that's their job, it helps find problems, etc., but it's a relief to know we're done, at least for now, with the doctors saying, well, he's awfully small, we should do tests. Look at me and Joe for goodness sake! So, he's back on the curve for weight, and up to the 10th percentile for height. His head, as it has been all along, is up in the 50th percentile area. (Like I said, freaky smart.)
We started making him a smoothie to get him some of the calories that toddlers often don't get because they tend to be picky eaters:

1 cup whole milk
1 cup yogurt
1 cup frozen fruit, like berries, peaches or mangoes
1 banana
2 teaspoons Flax seed oil
a little honey

It's got about 350 calories per serving and lots of healthy fat from the flax seed oil, and got raves from our pediatrician. Warning: DON'T tell your kid it's an ice cream smoothie in order to get him to try it because it's just not. And if your kid expects ice cream and gets this, which isn't really that sweet, he'll just be disappointed and good luck trying to get him to try it again. I say this because I know someone who tried this.

Okay, Ike'll be up soon. So I've got to go squeeze in a junk food snack before he gets up. I'm learning to eat the junk food on the sly so that I don't have to explain to Ike why he can't have any. Joe on the other hand, frequently walks into the living room with a handful of potato chips or a piece of candy. I don't say anything except "Good luck with that." He'll learn.

Bad, Bad, Bad Floor

Ike is becoming more of a little person every day. He definitely knows what he does and doesn't want, and his personality is more pronounced than ever (like when he wants to wear shoes and a winter hat with his diaper when it's 105 degrees outside).

He's adding more signs faster than Joe and I can learn them, and he's talking, too. Last weekend, he walked up to me (he's walking now ... since about a week after his birthday), and signed "hurt." I asked him, "What hurts?" Since he thinks that this means "What hurt you?" As opposed to "What part of you hurts?" He pointed over toward the dining room. I said, "Something over there hurt you?" He said, "Yeah." So I said, "Do you want to show me?"
"Yeah."
"Can you walk over there?"
He shook his head no.
"Do you want me to carry you?"
"Yeah."
So I picked him up and he pointed where we needed to go. He led me to the door between the dining room and kitchen and said, "Yeah." So I put him down and he crouched down and touched the threshold between the two rooms that bridges the linoleum and hardwood, and said, "Yeah."

"This hurt you?" I asked.
"Yeah."
"Did you trip on it?"
"Yeah."
"And you fell?"
"Yeah."
"Well, it looks like you're okay now, right?"
"Yeee-aa."

Then he took my hand and led me in a circle around the dining room. Then a smaller circle, then a smaller one, and then a smaller one. We walked in progressively smaller circles until we couldn't do any more. Ike crouched down and looked at the floor very closely, found a spot and put his finger on it and said ... anyone? ... "Yeah."
I said, "Did you fall right here?"
"Yeah," and pointed at the spot again.
"Right there? On that spot?"
"Yeah."

He looked closer and found another spot about six inches away, then put his finger on it.
"You fell there too?"
"Yeah."
"But you're okay now, I think."
"Yee-aa."

This went on for, literally, at least 10 minutes. I asked if that's where he fell, he said yeah, I said I think you're okay, and he pointed at one of the two spots and said yeah.

He does say more words than yeah, even though that's his word of choice right now. He still prefers to sign, but he's got a pretty big vocabulary. I think he said, "water," this morning. And he said, "Seamus," twice the other night, but hasn't since.

And, yesterday, I left him in his high chair while I went downstairs to switch the laundry over to the dryer and I heard: "Bad, bad, bad dog! Noooo!" Any ideas about what he hears most often recently? When I got upstairs the dogs were sound asleep under the table. Turns out Ike was just practicing.