15 Months

Lewis is 15 months old today and he is such a toddler now; the baby in him shrinks every day and is replaced with more and more little boy.



He has graduated from just being a walker to climber extraordinaire. If the chairs are not pushed all the way in to the dining table, he will climb to the top of it in no time at all. He also can climb to the top of our upright piano, and is getting quite steady on the stairs as well. He loves to empty drawers and the house is often littered with the contents of kitchen drawers, the book basket, the toy bins.



He calls me "mama" now, and he will hold pretty much anything up his ear and say, "A-yo? A-yo?" An actual phone, a block, the cherry pitter, just his hand. He is starting to copy our intonations when we say certain things, not quite ready to say the actual words yet but still learning to connect with us.



This has been a month of big transition for Lewis as we have moved the girls upstairs to their new bedroom with bunk beds and have moved Lewis into the room downstairs that the girls have been sharing since we moved into this house. (Yes, I admit it; Lewis slept in our room for over a year.) With a tiny baby, I always sleep better with the baby in the same room as me, and I like not having to really get up and go anywhere for night wakings. With Lewis, we went hard-core hippie and just accepted that he was going to be in our room for a good long while, not even decorating a nursery. Somewhere around the one-year mark, some hormonal switch in my brain flips and then I WANT THE BABY IN ANOTHER ROOM. It happened with both of my girls (who had nurseries, but didn't really spend much time in there for their first years) and it happened again with Lewis. In the past few months, I have been SO SO READY for him to move out into his own nighttime space and the week of Thanksgiving we made the big move! It has gone really smoothly and he has been doing very well transitioning to being in his own room at night. I know it will be a while before he is there the whole night through, but even just sleeping on my own for the first chunk of the night has been great for me.



I feel like my sleep has vastly improved since we moved Lewis to his own room and I am happy about it, but an era in his life has ended and he will never be that little baby who sleeps in our room again. Realizing how fleeting Lewis' present self is makes me want to soak up who he is right now and imprint on my memory forever his cheeks, his lips, his funny shrieks, his toddler waddle, his chubby hands. I don't want to miss any of who he is and who he is becoming.

Still Feeling Thankful

I've been contemplating our autumn and how much there has been to be thankful for. Both sets of grandparents came to visit, it was a harvest season full of bounty and deliciousness, my astronomy writing job is going well, and we explored Utah outside of our own city more than we have before.



We left the girls overnight for the first time with our friend Haley and Rob, Lewis, and I went up to Park City for a little mountain getaway. We stayed at a really lovely hotel (fancy hotels are SO NICE; that is a very creative thought of mine, isn't it?) and rode up a ski lift to do a little hiking and had such a fun time. It blows my mind a little that it won't be that long before we could leave ALL THREE CHILDREN with friends and actually be away just the two of us.



Riding a ski lift in summer or autumn is my new favorite thing. Grace and I did it again during our visit from Rob's parents when we took them up to one of the ski resorts. That was a LONG ride, over an hour roundtrip including the little bit of walking we did at the top, and it was amazing. It's crazy to realize that this is all covered in snow now; maybe this is the year I will give skiing or snowboarding another try. ALL FOR THE SKI LIFTS. Seriously, they are the best part.



Not that the scenery is too shabby in the city itself:



Seriously, you guys, Utah is amazing. That is just the view on one of my running routes from our house.



This was my most productive year yet for preserving, and also the year that might convert me to finally labeling my jars with what they contain. I have enough jars this year that I'm not entirely sure which jam is which. I also might try to do some non-sweet foods next year; I've realized that I pretty much just did jams and fruit and apple butter and that kind of thing. Considering that I'm trying to shift away from eating sugar regularly, this might not be the best plan for me. Oh well, the girls like it and it all makes good Christmas gifts. And it is SO SO SO FUN.



We had a fun Halloween, with our sweet birdie and fairy. (Gotta love hand-me-downs, right?) I wasn't sure how that bird costume was going to turn out while it was still in process. When I was sitting there cutting out those feathers from my bins of fabric scraps, I was pretty sure she was going to look like she was wearing a quilt. By the time I'd gotten about halfway up sewing them on in layers, I felt more OK about it, and the overall effect with the mask is good. I did show it to a few friends without telling them what it was supposed to be to ascertain if it was obvious, or just crazy looking. And then I never know what to do with all the candy; maybe we'll become one of those buy-back-the-candy families.

Our autumn has been full of things to be thankful for, but it has been hard too. Life with Violet is hard right now. She is amazing and beautiful, creative and super smart, but she is so frustrated so much of the time, and coping with life does not come easily for her. We did decide to give her a break from preschool for a while and that has helped, and we also decided to get a professional perspective on what kinds of changes we should make. That's still a few weeks off but I have hopes that it will help. And then Lewis is, well, a toddler-- a normal piano-climbing, drawer-emptying, house-trashing toddler. It's a challenging convergence of intense needs that has me struggling, I admit. At the same time, I am fiercely thankful for this season of my life. It's flashing by like autumn rushing into winter.

Hello There, Bloggy Blog

• Last night for dinner we had this pumpkin-coconut-kale curry thing for dinner that I ate over spaghetti squash. It was Squash Inception!
• There was much wailing and gnashing of teeth from the girls about dinner, even though I gave them rice into of spaghetti squash. Why do I feed them such terrible food?! Don't I love them?! This is in contrast to the night before when we fed them Costco pizza (I had been sick with a stomach bug and didn't feel up to cooking yet) when they sat there in serene happiness, cleaning their plates and asking for more.
• For Lewis, I picked out chunks of pumpkin and slices of chicken from the pot and rinsed off the curry sauce. As one does.
• I am working! Although actually not that much this week, between our babysitter being out of town and me having that stomach bug. Recently I have been working on questions about tidal effects in the Solar System and spaghettification.
• We have a parent-teacher conference for Grace tomorrow and in preparation, her teacher has asked her to come up with an intention for the rest of the semester, like in a yoga class. I think her intention should be to get ready in the morning quickly and independently; she thinks it should be to learn to go really fast on her scooter.
• This week is also parent week at her ballet class, which means we are allowed to go into the class and sit and watch. She is taking ballet at the school associated with Salt Lake's professional company and it is kind of hard-core. They all wear the same leotard and are required to have their hair in a bun and aren't allowed to wear earrings or nail polish. I'm not sure if she'll want to stick with it beyond this year but she likes it, being the rule follower that she is, and I like that everything is in good taste and non-skanky.
• We are going through a tough time with Violet, mainly preschool-related. She's been there since January and seemed to like it pretty well at first, but things have been going downhill. Now she says that she doesn't like school, doesn't want to go, school makes her sad, etc. Her teachers sat down with me recently and we had a hard-to-hear conversation about how she doesn't participate with the group, sits off by herself a lot, has pretty drastic trouble with transitions between activities, and often turns non-verbal and withdrawn when she's upset at school. MY HEART. We're still processing, trying some new things, and thinking through our options-- give her a break from school for a while? get some kind of professional help/opinion/evaluation? try a different style of preschool that would be a better fit for independent Violet with her long attention span, maybe Montessori? push through at her current school? I don't know. I do know I broke down crying while describing her current struggles during a visit to a Montessori school last week, so that's awesome.
• And Lewis? He has moved from the high chair to sitting at the table, he says "nigh nigh" when it's time to go to bed  and "allo" when he puts a phone to his ear, he gives wet open-mouthed kisses complete with "mwa!" sounds, and I really really really want to get him into his own room at night. We have to move the girls upstairs to their new room first, so we are still in process on that. I did buy bunk beds yesterday, though-- hooray!

One Year of Lewis

One year ago today, before the Sun had risen, Lewis had arrived here in the world after a much longer labor than I would have predicted. And then he was here, his beautiful amazing self was here, on the very morning that Grace started kindergarten and our family changed and grew and became what it is now.


Lewis' Zeroth Birthday from Julia Silge on Vimeo.

And now Lewis has made his first trip around the Sun and we have spent the past year seeing him get gorgeous and big, opening up to the world, becoming everyday more who he will be. I love newborns, I love babies, and when I watch that video, I feel absolutely in love with the tiny squashy newborn Lewis was and so happy for one-year-ago me to get to hold his curled-up body and kiss his wrinkly old-man fingers. But there is so much joy in the future of one-year-ago me too, as the newborn in that video turns into this gorgeous happy baby who is toddling around the living room right now.



He is walking, just within the past two weeks or so, and stomps unsteadily around the house like a cheery drunk person, arms waving, little diapered butt hitting the ground when his balance fails him. It happens so fast, over just a few days, the transition from not being able to walk to it being the preferred method of locomotion. He still occasionally drops to all fours for his super-fast waggle-butt crawl, but its days are numbered. He says "uh oh" and "dada", with an occasional "mama" that he doesn't quite use appropriately yet. He claps his hands and says "yayayayayaya", and he waves goodbye, repeating either "nana" or "dada" while waving (apparently there are no "b" sounds yet, and no long "i" vowel sounds either). He still has just the eight teeth he's had for months now, apparently believing in the "all at the same time" school of teething. He likes to eat fruit and cheese and books (all paper, actually) and sticks. And dirt. And rocks too, if we're being honest. I did finally put all the crayons up high so at least they're not a regular part of his diet anymore.



He is a joy to be with and his presence in our lives is a gift. Today my parents are coming in town; we'll have a party with cake and a few presents and grandparents. I am so glad to be celebrating this milestone.

Happy birthday, my delicious blue-eyed boy.

A Good Book Is Hard to Find

Apologies to Flannery O'Connor.

Grace's reading has blossomed in an amazing way this summer since kindergarten ended. She actually sits with a book and just reads independently, by herself, absorbed in book after book after book. It is such a joy to see her become a reader; it makes some deep part of me happy to see her become totally engaged with a book and just want to READ. Also, I will admit to a bit of jealousy as I am not reading as much as I want to be, or as much as I did as a girl, or a single person, or a woman with no children. In this season of life with my three little ones, I read for fun about as much as I did during grad school, which is not really enough.

We've always done reading aloud and we stick to lovely worthwhile classics for those, books that we love that we are so glad we can share for the first time with Grace. Right now Rob is reading through the Narnia series to her, a chapter a time, before she goes to bed. We can't wait to start Harry Potter, and Ballet Shoes, and The Cricket in Times Square, and so forth... I am having a harder time finding books that are just right for her to read by herself, though. She is just at the cusp of being able to read chapter books. The early reader books we have (you know, those paperbacks that star a character like Amelia Bedelia or Eloise but are not the original works) are starting to lose their appeal for her, and she occasionally still enjoys plowing through a pile of picture books, but those options not really challenging to her or moving her skills forward. On the other hand, most of the classic children's chapter books that I think are so wonderful are still a bit too hard for her to read independently. I feel like she's in a challenging in-between place right now.

The great discovery of the summer has been the Magic Tree House series. I think I saw these books mentioned briefly on someone's blog as a good introductory chapter book and BOY, was that person right. They are somehow perfectly designed to appeal to Grace at her current reading ability and developmental stage. She LOVES them. She has finished the entire first series since school let out and is well on her way to catching up to all the ones in the second series that are currently published before school starts again at the end of August. They aren't what one would call great literature but they aren't junk-y vacuous books either. (Ask me sometime about the Barbie book that Grace brought home once from the school library. ANGRY PARENTS.) I have taken to requesting about four at once from the library and depending on how busy our schedule is, she will finish all of them within 48 hours of us picking them up at the library.

So here I am, crowd-sourcing some suggestions for books for her to read. What else would be good for a newly-independent reader just taking her first steps into chapter books? The Magic Tree House series is about as far as I'm willing to go when it comes to lack of real literary merit. I'd prefer for her to read books of real value and beauty, but age-appropriate appeal is important too. I got some of the non-fiction "research guides" that the Magic Tree House people put out to go along with their books but she struggled to get through those and did not enjoy them at all; reading became WORK again. I know that eventually we all have to read things that are hard to get through but that is not what I'm looking for right now for Grace. I really want her to love Frog and Toad and Little Bear but much to my (hopefully well-hidden from Grace) disappointment they just haven't grabbed her in the way Magic Tree House has. I guess a related question to my main one above is how can I make Grace love Maurice Sendak?