It snowed today. Can you believe it? Moo was in heaven? I was cold. Tried to work out of my grumpy pants mood by getting some quilting in and crafting some birthday gifts.
I had two goals for last week. One was to work on one block of the shoofly Ufo each night in order to speed it along. This is how far I got.
Hurray for me. And hurray for my new Quilt holder. I made it myself..isn’t it cute? Also notice the pink dotty fabric? Pink Dotty three…
And the other was to write Wah’s Second year baby book like entry. Here is his first, in case you want to read it but don’t want to search my archives. Or in case you are me and are lazy and re-reading these next year, they’ll all be in the same place. (sorry some of the pictures are unavailable I freaked out and made them all private, before I figured out how to watermark…it happens…if you click on some of them they’ll show up.)
Dear Mr. Wah Wah.
A Month ago (has it really been so long) you turned two. Two! Tomorrow is your Grandma’s birthday, (she is not two) and you also share this birthday month with your Uncle Pat (also not two). As I write this you are snoozing in your bed, surrounded by many, many, many trains, just as your brother often was.
My sister, your Aunt Janelle (the second child), always says that there aren’t as many pictures of the second child, but I would beg to differ. I think there may be more pictures of you? And they are on the internet, so it’s like your famous!
She also says that she hated being compared to me (the first child) but I can’t help it. I’m fascinated with comparing you and your brother. The way you are similar, the ways you are dissimilar its the most engrossing game I’ve ever played and it’s fascinating because there is no winner, there is just the game.
You both like trains, but he worshiped them. You worship him and love to do whatever he is doing. He rarely talked (although he knew all the train names) you talk, all the time. You never stop. (you get that from your dad).
Your brother still likes to hold my hand and say “Mama! you talk to me!”. You like to run ahead of us (generally into danger) and not listen when we call you back. You have always been this way, fearless and wanting to be first.
Kind of randomly ( I segue goood.) You call me Mommeee. I don’t know why. Your brother calls me Mama and I refer to myself this way. But you? You call me Mommy. It’s so incredibly you.
I guess one of the reasons I contrast you two so much is that you constancy contrast each other. While you brother plays quietly with trains, or letters, or blocks you narrate everything and must always have an audience, the cat, the dog, your brother. And you are forceful when they ignore you, grabbing ears, hair, jackets, physically saying “look at me! look at me!”
You have had a hard time transitioning into sleeping all by yourself, and I can’t blame you, I certainly love to snuggle up with you and your brother and even your dad. I don’t however enjoy being kicked and jabbed, elbowed and rolled on in the night (that is why I make your dad sleep with the dogs! J/k) and so we have transitioned you and brother out.
And it has worked, from about 8-midnight after that we are to tired to fight and you get to snuggle. But you have had it particularly hard, waking and crying for me in the night. I wondered why I didn’t remember this stage with your brother and then realized when he was your age I was spending each and every night nursing a newborn and I had no energy left for his sadness, and it fell to his dad to sleep and console him through the night.
With brother starting school this year we have been alone for the first time. Usually I torture you by dragging you around the lake in a stroller. Sometimes you nap, lately you have taken to narrating this as well “woook out trees!! woook outtt ducks!! wooook out wudder!!” Its as if you are trying to commune with nature as if to say “this woman is crazy and she is taking me with her SAVE YOURSELVES!!”
You spend a lot of time doing this.
We call it Time Out. Or Trying not to Kill you. You are very willful and while I encourage both my boys to be who they are, I also need to impart the knowledge on you that there are consequences to action. Drag the cat around by her neck, she’s likely to scratch. Jump on the bed, I’m likely to send you to Time Out, because frankly blood scares your Mama as does brain matter.
Your brother learned to slide last summer and so did you. Up to that point he was terrified of slides, but you went first and then he took to it. He is a thinker, and you are a doer. It’s almost as if he makes a list of all the things that could go wrong (he takes after me) and you just assume it will go the way you have planned.
I admire this in you. And it terrifies me at the same time.
Here is to another year of keeping you alive. You have officially out lived all the houseplants.
Love, Mama
