Jillian's Birthday Party

Miss Jillian will be three on the 28th but this Saturday but we had her party yesterday as it was more convenient for all involved. She is very aware that she isn't three quite yet but she was more than willing to have the party a bit early.

My cousin Tanya started sending Jillian a birthday dress on her first birthday and now she sends both girls dresses this time of year for the party. I managed to get them to stop bouncing off the walls long enough to pose in them:


That Jillian is such a ham.

She loved that dress. She loved that if she twirled it would go up and out a little bit and she insisted I take pictures of her twirling. Here she is mid-twirl:


Back in November, right after Claire's party, Jillian decided that on her next birthday she wanted a Mickey Mouse cake. Luckily for me, I was able to borrow a pan from my friend Kate's mom (thanks a million Joan). Here it is:

I'd love to take all the credit for making this reasonable facsimile of Mickey Mouse but really, I was more the sous-chef than the big kahuna in this endeavor. Kate has some mad cake decorating skills and she was kind enough to come out and join me in the festival of frosting. We didn't finish the decorating till 1 AM and were both so full of icing we were sort of jittery. Goooood times. Here's Kate enjoying her customary Daniel squish:


The birthday girl was really delighted about Mickey:

I still can't believe she's three. Where'd that time go?

Her favourite two presents were the pyjamas with the panda bears on them (to replace her beloved 24 month size 'whale' pyjamas that I was having to squish her into nightly) and her Melissa & Doug slice and bake cookie set. She played with it from the time she opened it till she went to bed. I 'ate' so many wooden cookies that I'm lucky not to have splinters in my lips (not really...the pieces are very smooth). Here she is taking them out of the 'oven' (aka 'box'):


Here she is serving them up:

The toy is really neat because the pieces all have velcro so if you stick the doughs together the child has to cut it apart with the little wooden knife and then put them on the pan. They stick to the pan with velcro and the icings velcro on. It takes just the right amount of strength to scrape them off the pan with the spatula. Loads of fun.

She also got a sandwich making set (also Melissa & Doug) and Claire made a sandwich with all the toppings to eat. My flash failed when I took this picture and this was the best save I could get without too much thought:

She got another really cool present from Anne but I have to take pictures...wait till you see what she came up with!

Even Mr. Daniel had fun hanging out with the celebrities:

Yet another birthday come and gone. The years keep rollin' by....

Conversations in the Doctor's Office

Yesterday, I took Jillian for her three-year check-up. She is, as we expected, healthy as can be. We had a very personable resident do the examination instead of our regular doctor and Daniel, of course, was along for the ride. While we were there, I was party to not one but TWO noteworthy conversations:

#1:
Doctor: So...what's your name?
Jillian: I'm Jillian! This is my brother Daniel and that's Renée...but call her "Mommy".

#2:
Jillian (thinking she has to have a medical issue to be at the doctor's office): My foot hurts.
Doctor (playing along and noticing a little chaffed spot from those too-tight shoes she insists on wearing): Oh yes. Look at that! Does that hurt?
Jillian (big dramatic pout): Oh yes!
Doctor: Do you need a bandage on that, you think?
Jillian: Oh yes! My other foot hurts too...
Doctor: Oh my. There's a little mark on this one too. Does that one need a bandage too?
Jillian: (still with the pout) I think so.
Doctor: Ok...so there are no issues with her verbal skills...
Me (laughing): Nope. Not a one.
Jillian (realizing the attention has shifted from her): Ohhhhhh...my arm hurts toooo!
Me: Jillian - your arm doesn't hurt.
Jillian: My leg hurts.
Me: Enough Jillian. Nothing on you hurts.
Jillian (to doctor - her eyes as wide as saucers): My sister? She HITS me!
Me: Uh huh...tell him the whole story.
Jillian (busted - now gazing at lap): Ok...I hit her too.

I'm not sure where she came from but she is headed straight for Broadway!

Forget the Solstice...Summer is Here Now!

I don't care what you say - THIS is the first day of summer. I have evidence to prove it:

A kid eating a quickly melting fudgsicle on the back patio.

I recently found a really great new thing called a Dripstik. They hold popsicles and ice cream cones and have little bowls around them to catch the drips. I bought one for each of the girls and they work really well. However, Jillian decided she really, really wanted to turn her treat sideways and ditched the Dripstik. By the time I figured that out, this was how she looked. I couldn't stop her. She was having too much fun and was already about as dirty as she could get.

Believe it or not, Miss Jillian will be three years old next weekend. I don't know where those
years went. We are having a very small party for her this weekend and she's very excited.

May as well update about the other kidlets too...

Here's Claire at the park:

I have noticed a huge change in Claire from last year in terms of her behaviour at the park. She's more fearless and does a lot more climbing and jumping and swinging than before. It actually seems like she gets a bit of exercise when we take her to the park now. Before it was just an outing.

Some of the things Claire says these days are amazing. We never know what's going to come out of her mouth. Yesterday, for example, I sat down to do her hair before school. I got out my big black paddle brush to brush her hair and she told me she wanted me to use a wimpy pink comb she found. I told her no and kept going with the reasonable brush and she got sort of mad at me.
To distract her, I asked how she wanted her hair done. She didn't answer me. I repeated myself. Again, she didn't answer me but she did poke her index finger into one temple and then the other. I asked what she was doing and she repeated her actions. At that point, I gathered that she was trying to tell me that she wanted a ponytail on each side of her head but was too mad with me to talk. Well, I wasn't about to go along with THAT so I told her I had no idea what she was getting on with but if she didn't use her voice I was going to choose her hairstyle for the day. At that point she sighed heavily and said "Mommy. I was using body language to tell you that I wanted a ponytail on each side". At that point half of me wanted to laugh my head off and the other half wanted to sell the kid on eBay. Instead, I explained that body language is a lovely thing but in this situation words would have been a better choice and besides - body language plus words is the best solution of all. Body language...sheesh.

Here is sir Daniel enjoying his new favourite hobbies a) the fisher-price aquarium bouncer and b) creating a beard of bubbles:

Wow...we really lucked out with this guy. He is such a happy, mellow baby. He almost never cries and now that he is learning to smile and giggle and coo, he's an absolute delight to have around.

About a week ago, he started putting himself to bed at night. Honestly! In the evening, he will start to fuss and none of the regular things (nursing, a ride in the swing or face to face time) will soothe him. At that point, we wrap him up tightly in his blanket, pop him into bed, put his lullaby CD on, and WHAM off to sleep he goes. If we don't recognize the "I wanna go to bed" fussing for what it is, he will ramp up and then we end up walking the floor with him until he gives up and goes to sleep (this was easier when he accepted his soother but his love of his tongue and bubble blowing mean that he won't tolerate the soother anymore). We also started to notice this self-imposed bedtime getting earlier and earlier. First it was around 9:30...then 8:30 and now it seems to have settled at around 7:30. AND - if all that wasn't enough good fortune for one woman - he started sleeping for longer stretches every night. Last night he slept for 11 hours! I am hoping and praying that he keeps this up. The unbroken sleep is wonderful and I've been a much happier person to be around.

Ok...it has taken me all day to write this. Time to hit publish and get away from it!

D-Rex

Hey...Daniel here again. It's been a while since we talked. Gotta tell ya, that whole 'baby acne' thing sort of had me running scared. You know, when a guy looks like that, he doesn't like to splash himself all over the internet if he expects to have any parties at his crib.

Since I'm lookin' cute enough to get all the ladies at the yarn store to make that "awww" noise, I figure I'm ready to model my Alice Starmore hat again. I resisted at first. I mean, isn't that hat, like, sooooooo six weeks ago? I tried to tell Mom to get with the times but she was pretty insistent (the head control is coming but I still can't land punches very well so she can do what she likes to me). Turns out this hat is a timeless classic, transitioning seamlessly from late April to early June.

It's also pretty cozy. It doesn't scratch and doesn't mess with my hair at all. The weather is pathetic here today so I can get away with a wool hat out in public. I fell right to sleep in it when I wore it out to drop those creatures they call 'sisters' at school.

Right now, I'm on a mission to grow as fast as I can. It's fun and I'm convinced it will help me protect myself from the 'sisters' so I'm really putting my all into it. They tell me that there will be something called 'winter' and it will be cold but it's wayyyy far away and I don't imagine I'll fit into this hat then. I might be as big as Daddy by then...or bigger. I must get working on a plan to get Mom to make me a bigger one for then.

Ok. Here I am. Are you sure you are ready for the cute?:

Yeahhhh....look at me! I warned ya about the cute so no complaining if you just felt a little faint or anything. Ok, ladies?

When I wear this top Mom calls me D-Rex and then she tells me to say "ROAR" as ferociously as I can. I'm not really about ferocious right now though. I prefer to cuddle and drink lots of milk in my attempt to become with world's fastest growing baby. Those 'sisters' aren't gonna mess with me! Nuh-uh...they can't get me to wear those fairy wings no matter what they do! ROOOOOAR!!! Hmm...maybe I can do a little ferocious once in a while.

Just Checking In

I'm trying to blog regularly even though I don't really have much to say. We are going on vacation to Newfoundland in a month and things promise to be less routine, and more bloggable, then. We are starting to settle into a new normal way of living and that means I'm less frazzled than I was. Daniel is also starting to sleep for longer stretches at night (six or seven hours) so I'm feeling a little more awake as well.

We still haven't gotten any results from the ultrasound of Daniel's sacral dimple. I'm inclined to think that this is a 'no news is good news' sort of situation and just relax unless I'm told to do otherwise. In fact, I'm pretty sure the dimple is growing over as I can definitely see the end of it now. I guess it was just a little thing to freak a mother out.

In other Daniel news, his acne is all but gone. See:

He has some really dry skin around his hairline and on the very top of his head. I don't really think it is cradle cap but I may be wrong. Either way, I've been putting olive oil in his hair, letting it sit for an hour, combing off the dry skin and then giving him a shampoo the likes you only see at the most thorough salons. It's getting better slowly. After the acne, dry scalp doesn't bother me at all.

In even more Daniel news:

He can smile! I love it when tiny babies learn to smile. In fact, I make my face sore grinning and goggling at him in an effort to make him grin. He has even given a chuckle or two and it melts my little heart.

The girlies are doing well. Jillian is super big into playing make-believe and that's new for us. Claire is far too Vulcan (she takes after her mother) to suspend reality long enough to play pretend. Until now, we have never had to treat dolls gently because they are 'babies' or pretend to be "Lucianda" or some other name she fabricates or eat pretend foods or have tea parties. Jillian's new favourite toy is not a new toy at all. She is head-over-heels in love with my old Fisher-Price kitchen set from when I was a kid. That toy doesn't owe my parents a cent. I played with it a lot when I was a kid. I'd insist on having real food to serve my real friends though (like I said, I was pretend-challenged). My nephews used to play with it endlessly at my parents' cottage when they were younger and now Jillian plays with it daily. I have to admit that I'm still a little bit anti-pretend because I will toss back a cup of 'tea' of scarf down a bowl of 'soup' almost as fast as she can hand it to me. In turn, she has started handing me my 'food' like this:


This look says: You will take this 'cake' and you will 'eat' it slowly and with many, many yummy noises and you will tell me how delicious it is and then you will ask for more...got it?

Claire has been doing well too. She has her moments for sure but she has been better behaved since her surgery in December. Lately she has been into helping and that sometimes raises issues because she likes to think that she is the boss of other kids (or sometimes even us). It can get sort of ugly sometimes. She has been big into asking us a lot of questions about everything but mostly about nature. Yesterday it was about sharks and what they eat and why they want to eat meat and, and, and. The day before it was about ants and what they eat and why spiders eat ants and why birds eat spiders and, and, and. The day before we had a big decomposition/litter chat when she tried to tell me that "the ground is the garbage" (I'd like to get a hold of the little monster at school who told her THAT). The other day she told her father that bees make honey and when he asked how she knew she said "Because they do. BESIDES, I'm four years old you know", as if that explains it all. She thinks this is how to pose for photos (the strange effect is what happened when I tried hitting "auto repair"):


It is a good pouty supermodel look if you ask me.

Our biggest issue nowadays is bedtime. They started sharing a room shortly before Daniel was born. They love sharing the room but they have such different sleep patterns that they are driving DH and I nuts. Claire has always been the sort of kid who embraces bedtime. When we tell her it is bedtime she almost always goes without complaint, asks for a book and then happily goes to sleep. She sleeps like an absolute rock for 12 hours and sometimes gets up grumpy. The grump wears off once she's fully awake but it is easy to set her off till she sheds the sleep.

Jillian is a completely different story. She is a much lighter sleeper and she has always been harder to settle to sleep. She stays up till she's overtired and wired and even then has trouble falling to sleep. She can function on far less sleep than Claire and will wake up between 6:30 and 7 AM regardless of when she goes to bed. She always wakes up in a reasonable mood and just picks up where she left off the night before.

If we put them to bed at the same time, Jillian will keep Claire up for HOURS. She talks and laughs and jumps on the bed and sings and does anything else she can think of. Claire wants to go to sleep but she can't help either talking to Jillian or admonishing her for still being awake. It almost always ends with one or both of them downstairs complaining. The other night Claire got up, put Jillian in the spare bed in Daniel's room, put herself into our bed and went to sleep. When I found them, Claire was almost asleep and Jillian was still bouncing off the walls.

If we put Jillian to bed first, she might fall to sleep and then 20 minutes later Claire goes in and goes to sleep. This would be the perfect solution but it only works out that way about 20% of the time. The other times, Jillian is still awake waiting to parrrrrr-tay with Claire and they're both just up later than if they went to bed together.

If we put Claire to bed first...well...that's never happened. There is no way nosey Claire is going to let Jillian stay up later than her. NO. WAY. This would be the best scenario if Claire would allow it.

In the end, what all this means is that I have two really tired, grumpy kids around here. Frankly, we're grumpy too as we spend hours trying to get them to sleep so we can have a bit of peace before we go to bed ourselves. Yes, Jillian needs less sleep than Claire but she still needs more than she's letting either of them get. She has been going to school in a bad mood and picking more than her usual share of fights with Claire. Claire looks like the walking dead half the time. On the nights when Jillian goes to sleep first and she can go to bed and directly to sleep she is much easier to live with the next day. When she gets less than her 12 hours things are going to go wrong around here before 9 AM. Guaranteed. And when things go wrong with Claire - things go wrong with everyone (her wrath knows no boundaries).

I have yelled, I have revoked priveledges, I have promised treats if they just go to sleep already, I have left them alone. Nothing works. Nothing. Help? Please? Help?

Maybe I do have lots to say after all!