Halloween 2011

It was a very piratey year! Three in our own trick-or-treating party plus the neighbor kid and at least a dozen other random people out that night.



Kirk was Captain Jack Sparrow.


Cousin A2 was Elizabeth Swann.


Mama was Anamaria. And Ronnie was Princess Leia. (Who of course likes pirates and scoundels.)


Mr. b really got into character as gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson.


He was quoting Fear and Loathing lines all night.


HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

Veronica at Large

It’s been two weeks since Ronnie had her second birthday. Since it fell on a Monday this year, we had her party the Sunday before. She had a great time opening her presents.



Brother got her a stuffed Olivia, but she still wouldn’t put down the Puffle.



The Easter hat was a hit, but the Jessie doll stole the show. Boy howdy does that girl love Toy Story 3.



We had cake and visited with friends and relatives and it was a lovely afternoon.

Miss Veronica seemed to get extra naughty following her birthday. I mean, even more naughty than she already was. And the crowning achievement of said naughty? Taking off her poopie diapers in her crib. Or in her nap bed at daycare. Basically, just wherever she happens to be. She still won’t poop in the potty more than the occasional shart when she’s already sitting there, but she refuses to stay in a soiled diaper for one second longer than she deems necessary. Which means that she’s getting crap everywhere. Rare are the days she comes home from daycare with the same outfit on. Or if she is, it’s because she already had that one washed, ruined the second one, and got switched back into the first one. We’re going through crib sheets like mad, too, changing them sometimes twice a day – after naps and after night – on the weekends.

But at least she has finally adjusted to daycare. Ronnie is happy to go now, willing to say goodbye to me without tears or clinging on. She even will occasionally be having too much fun to want to leave when I pick her up! But even if I do get her settled into the car without a fight, we then have to go to school to pick up Brother from Adventure Club. And that’s where the trouble usually takes place. Kirk is a master staller, always has been, and he loves Adventure Club and rarely is ready to leave when we get there. Which feeds back into his sister. So a typical evening now involves me forcibly hauling Ronronica to the car from the school, sometimes carrying her boots or coat that she ripped off in a fit of pique, and trying to get the two of them to not fight over the remains of Kirk’s bag lunch in the back seat. I’ve gotten into the habit of bringing snacks with to pass out for the drive home from school. Even with them eating something in the car, they are still famished when we get home. I have to fix them a second snack before I can even start on supper.

We had a brand new development last night. Something that Kirk never did. Ronnie climbed out of her crib. Twice! She was fighting going to bed and screamed so I went in there to hold her for a few seconds. I opened the door and saw her dangling by her fingertips over the side of the crib and then she let go and dropped the remaining few inches to the ground. My jaw dropped and I turned to Kirk, “Oh my god did you see that?!” Mr. b couldn’t believe it. But when we thought we had her calmed down and back in bed, we heard more clunking around sounds. Sure enough, she was out of the crib and making a beeline for the bedroom door. Apparently we’ll be buying a toddler bed this week.

Halloween 2010

It will come as no surprise that Kirk went as Indiana Jones for Halloween this year.


Continuing the apparent new tradition of father-son costumes, Mr. b was Henry Jones Senior.


They looked great!


Ronnie was not happy about being a Sith baby, which is weird because she was loving the cloak as I was trying to put finishing touches on it earlier in the day. She'd try to grab it out of my hand and shout "Mine!"


I went as a Doctor Who character, River Song, which of course no one recognized, as expected. It was fun playing with spongey rollers and ringlets in preparation.



I think it turned out great!


Once again my sister and A2 and A3 joined us and we all had a great time trick-or-treating.

Walter

One week ago today our lives changed. Mr. b and Veronica got in a car accident. He called me from the scene and I could tell from his voice that he was in shock. He claimed they were both fine but that he was sore. But “sore” can mean just about anything. I immediately left for the bus and met them at the hospital. It was the longest bus ride of my life. Just seeing them both made me feel so much better. I held onto Ronnie so tight. She had been such a good girl for her daddy, who was laid up on an ER triage bed, too sore to move around much. Drugs took the edge off and an x-ray showed he didn’t have internal injuries so we were sent home.

The bruises got worse. Ronnie had a fierce one on her shoulder that started to fade right away. But the two on her thighs deepened to a dark purple. I guess it’s proof that the carseat was installed correctly but it was still brutal to see on my sweet bundle. Mr. b’s bruises are still going strong. The one across his stomach from the lap belt was darkest at first, along with his side and upper thigh. But it’s the sash diagonally across his chest that has proven to be the most painful. He is still tender to the touch and his skin is a sickly green color where the seatbelt crossed his torso.

Life can change in an instant. Every time I hold Ronnie, I find myself thinking that it’s precious time that could have been taken from me. Even when she’s being brutal and hitting me in the head, pulling my hair, ripping my nose ring out, I’m just so glad to have her here. Yesterday was our 13th wedding anniversary and it took on increased importance to me because I nearly didn’t get to celebrate.

But the bureaucracy of life is already doing its damnedest to diminish the lucky and blessed feeling. We still don’t have a car. We have a loaner pick-up from my dad but it’s unwieldy and just a poor fit for us and our lifestyle. Our insurance will cover the medical bills and the car loan but then what? We won’t have a trade-in vehicle and we won’t have a down payment and we only have one full-time salary. I miss Walter. Ensign Walter Pontiac bravely gave his life to save my family. RIP.

Addendum 2b

When I was a kid and I played dress up it was only for that particular session of playtime. The outfits or costume pieces would go on for the game or the play we were putting on or whatever and that was it. I was never the little girl wearing a tutu out to the store or a tiara to piano lessons. And maybe being in dance and having actual sequined costumes that were more dazzling than anything out of a dress up box helped me to avoid doing that.

Kirk, however, likes to dress like a favorite character All. The. Time. To the point where he actually gets mad if his ability to dress that way is somehow impeded by little things like being in the laundry. Obviously the current favorite character is Indiana Jones. He’s got two main outfits that he switches between: short sleeves and short pants for Young Indy


And long sleeves and long pants for Teacher Indy.


But thankfully he doesn’t have to wear the entire get-up every moment of every day. He mixes up the elements and includes other favorite pieces like his vest


Or one of his ties.


I was thinking about this and realized it’s hardly a phase. Oh, the choice of Henry Jones Jr. might be a phase but not dressing up like a particular character. He was David Tennant’s Doctor from Doctor Who and ran around in a suit jacket and button down shirt, carrying a sonic screw driver everywhere he went. He was Ringo Starr and wore garish rings and carried drum sticks. He was Dave Gahan and wore a black cowboy hat like in Depeche Mode’s “Personal Jesus” video. It does seem that as he gets older he demands more completion to his outfits as each one is more involved and has more required pieces than the previous one.

But I’ve also noticed that Kirk doesn’t try to wear actual literal costumes. Even when he was into Superman he wouldn’t try to wear either his be-caped pajamas or his Halloween costume outside the house. He would put on a sport coat and tie and be Clark Kent instead. When he was into Buzz Lightyear he would ask to wear the Halloween costume as pajamas but again, wasn’t trying to wear it outside of the house. I’m not sure what that means but I think it’s a good thing. Even though Kirk has a very healthy imagination and is constantly exercising his creativity, he’s got a handle on reality and knows what will fly in public. Right?

Addendum 1

Since Ronnie has been fully weaned we’ve also been trying to slowly switch her over to sippy cups. We’re not going particularly fast on that front. She is drinking juice out of a sippy cup and that’s progress. But we haven’t regularly changed any of her milk bottles to sippies. She typically has three regular bottles of milk – in the morning, before nap, before bed – and then however many others throughout the day. We need to start giving her those irregularly scheduled ones in cups. I’ve tried giving her milk with a straw in a restaurant but she just makes a mess. She enjoys drinking water with a straw though.

The only thing about the sippy cups is that she’s rather violent with them. I don’t let her wander the house with her bottle, though she can hold it herself in her carseat or in my lap, but I’ll let her walk around with her juice cup. And she swings it viciously. She’s really strong. Three Saturdays ago, Ronnie was sitting on my lap, drinking from her sippy cup. She then, with no warning, backhanded it into my face. Into my eye socket. This picture does no justice to how bad it looked or how much it hurt.



I still have a very faint spot of red where the blood pooled under my eye but it’s only visible if you’re looking for it.

ONE!!

We all have summer birthdays so it was weird trying to prep for an indoor party. Moving the ottoman to the side opened things up nicely.


Ronnie menaced plenty while we were trying to get organized.


I think we put out a pretty decent spread of food!


Mr. b picked out a separate slice of cake for Ronnie to menace. I was surprised that he got chocolate since he hates messes!


This mess was a doozy.


We had to strip her bare and give her a bath in the middle of everything in order to clean her up!


She wore her third outfit for the day to open presents. She got tons of cute clothes and some really great toys.


She was definitely overwhelmed by it all.

Back Pack & Baby Toy

I had a burst of creative energy a few weekends ago and put it to good use. Mr. b had a pair of old khakis with the knees torn out that I hemmed into shorts for him. But what to do with the legs? I am too much of a fabric hoarder to just toss them into the rag pile. Instead, I made Kirk a back pack! I had a lot of fun thinking it through. Putting in a circular bottom seemed obvious but coming up with the fold-over button front took me a while.



I think I set the straps a bit too wide but Kirk doesn't seem to mind and I suppose he'll grow into them this way.





There was still a bit of fabric left after that so I decided to make Bundle a chew toy. I deliberated for a while on its shape and size and finally decided to go with a triangular block because it seemed like the easiest for her to grab onto. I added the buttons for her to pick at, hold onto, and crew on. It's "educational" because I did 1, 2, 3 on each side! She loves it and it's always covered with slobber now. Especially on the 2 side. Not sure if it's the red, the style of buttons, or coincedence...

Fear the Reaper

Kirk is mildly obsessed with death at the moment. I’m not really sure if this is typical at age four and a half or what. I don’t think he truly understands the concept of mortality, but he definitely knows that people and things die and it freaks him out. So he talks about it. A lot.

I’m not entirely sure what started it all. My sole remaining grandmother has been on a steep and steady decline for the past ten months so there’s definitely been frequent conversation about aging. At one point a few months ago Kirk told me that he wants to be a dad (his standard answer to “What do you want to be when you grow up?” is “A Daddy.”) but he doesn’t want to be a grandpa because he doesn’t want to get old. And then he invented the dying machine.



We were flabbergasted when he first came up with this concept. He announced out of nowhere that you need to take a rock and smash your dying machine so you can’t die. Apparently everybody has their own dying machine, though there’s still some confusion on the subject. He’s worked through the mythology pretty thoroughly with his dad, dictating the drawing to his father, so you’d have to ask Mr. b for more details but I believe the dying machine is in the center of the Earth. I’m not sure why more people haven’t smashed theirs. Maybe you forget about it as you get older and smashing it just no longer seems to be a top priority?

Hallowe'en

Kirk decided early on this year that he wanted to be Superman for Halloween.



Naturally Mr. b then realized Jor-El would be the perfect costume for him.



I wanted to get a hot dog bunting for Bundle, because that’s hilarious, but didn’t want to spend twenty bucks when she doesn’t care yet. Thankfully we still had the baby demon costume that A3 wore last year and Kirk wore three years ago.



I couldn’t find the horned hood thingie though but found the Santa hat to be even funnier. She was Satan Claus! I was out of inspiration and so just wore festive black and had green hair.



My folks and my sister came over with A2 and A3 to trick or treat with us while my dad passed out candy.

Sleep Study

Sleep, or lack thereof, continues to be the subject of much consternation in our house. At first I thought I had figured it out. Mr. b was home on Thursday last week so I made Bundle a doctor’s appointment for that afternoon. Her cold has been hanging on for a couple of weeks now and I always feel better after getting confirmation that yes, indeed, it is just a cold. And yes, indeed, it is just a cold. But since her cough is so rattling and has been the key feature of said cold for a while now and her daddy has asthma, she came home with her very own personal nebulizer.



I’ve heard all about Mr. b’s visits to the emergency room as a kid. Heck, I’ve even had to take him once! (We left our own engagement party because he couldn’t breathe. Amazing how they don’t make you wait your turn then. Heh.) The nebulizers are so easy and small and portable now.



It really seemed to make a big difference. We had been holding Ronnie in the bathroom with the shower running to try to loosen up the phlegm via steam and that had helped but this was even better.

All weekend I over-thought sleep patterns for both kids. When was Kirk napping, how long, what time did he get up in the morning, when did he finally go to sleep after going to bed? When was Ronnie napping, how long, what time did she get up in the morning, when did she finally go to sleep after repeatedly not going to bed? Again, it didn’t seem to match up with what was happening at daycare. After receiving such fantastic advice, I broached the topic with C on Friday at pick-up but only for Kirk. I told her I was researching why they don’t fall asleep and that I think Kirk needs to be made to get up after 2 hours, even if he was only previously just lounging for the rest of the time listed on his nap chart. I do still think they feed off each other’s restlessness but I admit I was using that as an excuse.

It seemed to go well the first part of this week. Kirk was gone Sunday night, sleeping over with his cousins, and Veronica went to bed very easily and earlier than we’re used to. Then Monday night Kirk was wrecked from sleeping over with his cousins so he went to bed very easily and his sister wasn’t disturbed by his squirming around. But by the end of the week I don’t know that much of anything has changed.

I asked C about Bundle’s naps earlier this week, trying to find out if she’s actually asleep during the times that are listed. So the feedback I’ve been getting has been more specific, stating when she was making noise and when she was quiet. But it still seems long. And this morning C mentioned she didn’t know that Ronnie was sitting up on her own until I had set her down like that the other morning. I find that strange because she will sit up now even from crawling, and not just have to be placed that way. And maybe it’s because we have hardwood floors at home and there’s carpeting at daycare but frankly, I feel like it’s just another indicator that my poor baby isn’t getting very much attention during the day. And *that’s* what freaks me out more than anything.

So for now it seems like Miss V will either not go to bed and then when I finally get her down late, like around 11, she’ll at least sleep through the night. Or else she’ll go down fairly well but then wake up in the midnight-thirty range and come to bed with me the rest of the night. I prefer the former if I have to choose so that’s what I’m going to work on. But at this point, the daycare concerns are enough to make me root for Mr. b quitting his job and staying home with the kids even harder than I already was.

Socializing

Kirk is destined to be The Weird Kid in school. I mean, I suppose it was sort of inevitable with us as his parents. He could have rebelled by becoming a football jock or something but that’s already seeming incredibly unlikely. I’ve noticed that he even increases his weirdness quotient when he’s around other kids he’s not very familiar with. We were at a company softball game last week and he was off playing with random stranger kids that were attached to the game at the adjacent diamond. And he was totally upping the bizarre behavior, strange voices, calling things by the wrong names, deliberately subverting the rules of their impromptu game, that kind of thing. After some tattling to us they ended up finding a rhythm and playing together nicely but it definitely took a while.

I’ve noticed that older kids tend to exclude Kirk when there’s a group of kids playing together. At daycare there’s a 5 year old boy that he just idolizes and this boy is generally nice to Kirk. Except when all the other kids are gone for the day and the only other one left besides them is the 7 year old Mean Girl. Then they are rude and mean and call him names and don’t let him play with them. I’ve even seen this happen with Kirk’s alley friend who is about to turn 6. They play together so nicely and are really great friends, running over to each other’s houses and playing in each other’s yards. But whenever any of the other neighborhood kids are involved, again Kirk ends up being left behind.

I’m trying to not get too involved in child politics. Obviously he’s going to have to learn how to fend for himself because he’ll be starting school in a year and lord knows he’ll be interacting with all kinds then. But I am also trying to make sure that we go to as many family friendly artistic and intellectual type events as possible. Like the iron pour back in July. Going to Art-a-Whirl. We’re meeting my sister for a community theater production of the Jungle Book this Thursday. We bring both kids with to drop Daddy off at gigs. I bring them to book club once a month. Basically I want him to know that there are other weirdos out there. Musicians and artists and comic book readers and sci-fi fans and boys that wear pink dresses. He may be called “nerd” already (which I think is solely due to wearing glasses) but being a nerd is a good thing.

We do need to help Kirk to understand fandom. He gets so obsessive over something and expects everybody to automatically know what he’s talking about every single time. Not everyone has seen exactly what movie or book he’s referencing. Hell, not everybody has even heard of things like Doctor Who. Most kids can’t name a single rock drummer from the 60s, much less choose a favorite one.

I’ve decided that one thing I can do is get Kirk involved in activities. Nothing major. Just community offerings like swimming lessons and karate. I’ve been talking about signing him up for something for a year now and haven’t gotten around to doing it yet. I don’t think I can put it off anymore. I certainly don’t expect or even want him to be “normal” but I do think having some “normal” interests will help to normalize him around other kids.

Gifts

I love hand-made gifts. I’ve just always been a fan. The time and effort and creativity that goes into them makes them so meaningful and precious. Kirk had several fantastic gifts of that sort. Of course there was the Enterprise sweater but he also had some awesome onesies that were hand decorated, a Tintin quilt that’s hanging on his wall, and I knitted him a little white hat and matching booties. I have done nothing of the sort for Veronica.

Thankfully, other people are picking up my slack. A couple of my aunts have made her some blankets, bibs, and a crocheted cube toy. Just this week we received this awesome TARDIS sweater, once again made by the inimitable akg!



The Trekkies sent around a card again, too. Lovely folks, one and all!

Bundle got this adorable hat from the fabulous monkeypants. It’s still a bit big but should fit perfectly for the fall.



And superbadfriend was super badass and painted Ronnie her very own orangedotstickbutt. And hand delivered it!!!



We hung that sucker up in the kids’ room right away.

Veronica's Post

Ronnie had her 4 month check up yesterday. Nothing exciting to report, which is as it should be. She’s getting huge, now weighing 14 pounds 1 ounce (65%) and is a tall girl at 25 and a half inches (90%). All physical development is on track and we can start her in on cereal in the next few weeks or so.

She’s starting to hold on to toys so I added some plastic links to her carseat.



She brings toys up to her mouth but doesn’t necessarily chew on them yet.



She continues to be a drool machine however. Doc said no teeth are immanent.



For some reason, I can’t get her to smile on camera. She has the most beautiful smile. Such an enormous, genuine grin. My dad was tickling her and I ran to get the camera, but once she saw me with it she went back into serious mode.



She’s got some awesome clothes. I love these legwarmers.