These are the days to remember

One of the things I regret about not keeping up this blog is that I’m losing more of my memories of the girls. For example: Maia is so sweet right now. She’s three, almost four, and she plays really well with her big sister, pretending with the My Little Ponies and building coaches and castles with the Legos and imitating Chloe’s drawings, much more sophisticated than Chloe herself was doing at this age. But her laugh is still her baby laugh, and it thrills me to hear it because every time might be the last. And I remember that Chloe’s laugh was never quite like Maia’s, but I don’t remember how it was. When did she transition from her baby laugh to the smarter, fuller, sometimes-slightly-raucous laugh she has now? I don’t remember her first year of preschool, except for some highlights. I don’t remember exactly when Maia became potty-trained. I want to write it down, so I don’t forget it. I spend so much of my time exasperated or anxious or bored with the girls, and I hate that. I want to remember how good they are, even when I can’t feel that way in the moment.

A couple of Maia moments:

Maia dresses up as Elsa almost every day. She and Chloe were Elsa and Anna for Halloween—the warm versions, Elsa at coronation and Anna in her winter dress. Chloe already had an Anna dress-up dress, so I bought Maia an Elsa dress from China off eBay and made them cloaks and headgear (Anna’s hat for Chloe and a yarn wig for Maia). I figured they would enjoy them at Halloween (which they did—they had three or four different Halloween dress-up events and rocked them) and maybe dress up again once or twice and they’d be done. If I’d known Maia would be living in her costume I would have sprung for a handmade dress from Etsy rather than the cheap eBay version. I would also have actually finished the edges of the cloak instead of just cutting them and leaving them. (It’s made of fleece, with some flannel edging fused on, so this was permissible for something that wasn’t going to get a lot of wear.) It was fine through Halloween and a bit beyond, but the edging is suffering now. The dress is holding up very well, however.

"Can I have my snowflake necklace?" she asked one day while in this getup. "It gives me ice powers!" Then, "But only pretend. I don't really have ice powers."

I'm working from home now, and the girls have yet to internalize that shouting upstairs at me when they want something is no longer going to work. (This isn't so bad when Eric's home; but he teaches one afternoon a week.) Today I got on the phone with someone and heard Chloe yelling "Mom! Mom! Mom!" I slammed the door (which the phone on mute) to respond. Pretty soon came a persistent knocking. I used mute again and yelled, "Go away, I'm on the phone!" I'm a charming mother. When the call was done I went down and explained that they cannot shout at me because I will not answer, and if I don't it is appropriate to silently open the door to see whether I'm on the phone or in a rage-induced seizure. (I didn't say that last part.) Chloe nodded. I returned to work. Sometime later Maia came up and crept to my side. "I came up to ask you something because I knew I wasn't supposed to shout," she said humbly. Then she asked me to take out Twilight Sparkle's ponytail. 

Barbie talk

"I didn't know Merida was up here all night!"
"She was supposed to get a salon, like the other Barbies, because of all the weddings."
"Elsa and Cinderella got married. Because their names both end in -a. And they're both in blue."
"Merida wants to marry Anna."
"But Anna is already married."
"Then I'll marry Merida."
"But Anna is married to you."
* * *
"Yes, her feet are high-heeled. But they can be flat."
* * *
"Let's compare skins!"
* * *
"Psst! Elsa!"
"Go back to sleep."
"The sky's awake, so I'm awake. So I have to play."
"Go play by yourself."
Thump.
"Do you want to build a snowman?"
"Now let's do it with ourselves!"

A girl on fire

It is so amazing watching Chloe learn to read. She's acquired sounds and blends and several rules, and the world is blooming around her. We drove home from the mall the other day and she called out "'Stop'!" and "'Market'!" and "Is that 'Dillards'?" She spelled "splendid" for me in bed when she kept telling me she had a "splendid" idea for my Christmas present (though not what it is). Spelling words to keep her from knowing what we're talking about isn't safe anymore. It's wonderful.

The big day

Today is Chloe's first day of kindergarten. She's been so excited about it. We went school shopping last week, and school-clothes-shopping a couple of weeks before that, and she was eager to help pack her lunch and make sure everything was in order in her backpack. She had three nosebleeds yesterday, so last night we discussed writing a note to her teacher to keep her informed, and the first thing she asked me this morning was "Did you do that note?"

She was all smiles when we left her at her classroom door this morning. All three of us walked her in, since I'm working from home on Tuesdays and it wasn't terribly busy. Her teacher met her at the door and told her to put away her backpack and play with the Play-Doh at her seat; and she gave us quick good-bye hugs and was off. There was a "Boo-Hoo Breakfast" for kindergarten parents in the school library afterward. We didn't go, but I did feel slightly boo-hoo-ey as Eric, Maia, and I walked back to the car.

So did Maia; she wanted to be picked up and buried her face in my shoulder. But she's also anxious about going to meet her preschool teachers today, and she recovered quickly--though the house is very, very quiet without her favorite playmate to assist in making the usual ruckus, or demand the usual shows. Change, it is here.

Naptime

I suppose I might as well make this official: I am on hiatus. Life is sort of difficult to live once at the moment, let alone over again for the blog (though the girls are mostly not the difficult parts. And certainly not the dull ones). Therefore, instead of our last post (Maia's doing much better), I leave you with this:

"Pirate sisters Chloë and Maia, best friends for ever!"

On the poop deck

(Warning: discussion of gastrointestinal function ahead.)

"I don't need 'positories any more!" Maia said brightly yesterday. Then she took a wipe and tried to stuff it up her ducky's butt.

We went to Seattle last week. While we had a good time overall, travel didn't agree with Maia's digestive system. There were no poops for the first two days, and when she was straining but getting nothing out, we decided to use suppositories, which we've used for her once before. They were highly effective then, but she was ambivalent about them--she knew they worked, but she didn't like how they went in, which I really can't blame her for--and refused these. Of course, being two, her refusal didn't mean as much as she might have wished. We administered several of them, as well as tons of fruit and juice and gummy fiber pills (Chloë also had a couple since they tasted yummy, she said, but since she didn't need any of that sort of help and we're the ones who wipe her butt, she went off them), and eventually a vegetable laxative pill.

She didn't do terribly well the remainder of the trip, but it wasn't so bad we wanted to take her to a doctor. She did start crossing her legs when she was straining, presumably because it hurt--she mentioned this a couple of times when I was changing her, so I took extra care cleaning her, and when I forgot once told me, "Wipe gentwy!" We discouraged the leg-crossing, and by a couple days after we got back, she had gotten back to normal consistency and frequency. She got milk today for the first time in a week.

We're not sure how much each remedy helped, but I'm fairly confident that getting back to her normal schedule was a part of it. Funny how travel can affect something like digestion and excretion. She didn't have this problem our last trip out, admittedly. But it certainly wasn't the change in diet, since Mom and Dad pushed fruit and vegetables even more than we do.

Unassailable logic

"I want that," Maia said, pointing up to Chloë's solar system mobile this morning.

"Which one?" Chloë asked her. "Jupiter?"

"Yeah."

"She wants Jupiter," Chloë told me. "But not the real Jupiter."

"Why not?" I inquired.

"Because one, she couldn't carry it. And two, it wouldn't be in orbit any more. And three, it would be bigger than a room."