Things I Love About Three

*Last night, we took Brigid and Caitlin to a park near our house for Food Truck Tuesday, and Brigid spent a majority of the night sticking blades of grass or random pine needles between two of her fingers, then coming up to us with a pained look on her face, asking us to remove the splinter. Then she'd giggle wildly every time we acted like it was a terrible ordeal. I have no idea where she came up with the idea for that game.

*The last few mornings, Brigid has come downstairs, yawned loudly, and told me that she didn't get enough sleep because her toys have kept her up all night. Three nights ago, it was the Doc McStuffins trio of Lambie, Chilly, and Stuffy that kept her up, talking. Two nights ago, it was Thumper. Last night, her rubber lizard, Spot, and her rubber bunny, Bunny, threw a party. She's hanging with the wrong crowd, that kid.

*On Monday, I was pulling some stuff off of the kitchen shelves, in an effort to declutter the house a little bit before we put it on the market. Brigid helped me pack the things away in moving boxes, to be stored in my SiL's garage until we (hopefully) sell the house and (hopefully) find a new one. Brigid then took it upon herself to start a pile of toys to be packed away, yelling 'I WANT TO PACK MYSELF' at me when I told her it wasn't time to pack her stuff up, yet, before collapsing on the floor in hysterics. She then slammed the door on her way to the time-out chair, where I found her asleep five minutes later. That one doesn't necessarily fall under the things I love about this age, but you have to admire her initiative, I'd say.

*She asks for things she knows I'll say no to, things she doesn't really want, and when I do say no, she's fine with it. Then she looks at me, smiles, and reminds me that she gets a gold star on her behavior chart for not arguing with me when I say no. I'm glad to see she already knows how to cheat the system. This bodes well for the teenaged years.

*She read Brown Bear, Brown Bear to her baby sister on Monday night. I'd tell you all about it, but I'm too busy being dead from all of the cute. Because it was the best thing, ever. Then she told us that she read the book so well because she used to have it, but she couldn't find her copy anymore. And Steve made the rookie mistake of telling her that the copy in Baby Caitlin's room was her copy, but we were giving it to Baby Caitlin to read now. And then she tried to take it back, because it was hers. And she started crying when we told her she should leave it in the baby's room. But the reading part? To her baby sister? That part was still cute.

How things change...

I don't know, I can still see that skinny little newborn in my chubby little eight-month old.

 

I do, however, find it hilarious that it almost looks like she has more hair in the first pictures, because of just how blonde she's become, even though I swear she has so much more now than she used to. Thank goodness the head lump went away, though, because that thing was just weird...

The Next Steps

Steve and I have spent the last few months talking about how we maybe wanted to move someplace else in the greater-Atlanta area, preferably someplace a little less expensive, but with better schools, because while we have a great elementary school a quarter of a mile away from our house, the middle school we roll up into leaves a little more to be desired. And well, doesn't it possibly make sense to make the move now, before the girls get even more entrenched in the friend base their building where we are?

It does make some sense, but that hasn't made the decision making process any easier, and we kind of thought we'd put it on the backburner until spring. But, houses are selling right now, and interest rates are still low, and well...

We had a realtor out to our house last night, and we committed to her that we'd spend the next month getting the house showable, so we could list with her on September 1st. Ish.

And then we told Brigid that we were maybe going to go look for a new house, and she told us she didn't want to move because she loved her bed and would miss all of her toys.

I guess we're maybe going to have to work on our communication a little bit with that one...

And this is why she's still around...

Caitlin is a sweet baby, truly, but she's also kind of a pain in the butt when it comes to sleeping. She doesn't like to sleep on her stomach, but she also can't seem to keep herself from rolling onto that stomach several times a night, which leads to me getting out of bed several times a night to walk down the hallway, find the pacifier that she has managed to fling under her crib AGAIN, roll her back onto her back, and stumble back to bed again, all without opening my eyes wide enough to wake myself up in a way that will lead to me tossing and turning for the next 45 minutes as I try to get back to sleep.

Oh, except for that 2am wake-up last night, when I also had to change the bomb of a diaper that wasn't about to hold anything else she tried to put into it. That one forced me to open my eyes...

Oh, but when she does sleep?

Well, then you just want to pick her up and snuggle her until she wakes up, because COME ON. How do you fight the pull of those cheeks?

And thus concludes today's lesson on why parents are crazy and parenting makes no sense.

Blondes have more fun?

Because my mother asked me last weekend if poor Caitlin had any hair, yet, since she couldn't see any in the pictures I've been posting lately, I've been trying really hard to get it to show up on camera. Because she does have hair! I promise! I could even stick a bow in there if I wanted to! But, MAN...

...that kid is BLONDE. And I have, it seems, officially been saddled with two blonde haired, blue-eyed, Georgia peaches, one of whom has already informed me that she is pretty because she has light hair.

And when I asked her if that meant mommy wasn't pretty, with my dark hair? She patted my cheek gently, before informing me that, yes. That's exactly what it meant. 'But it's ok, mommy,' she said.

So, to recap: Brigid is blonde. Caitlin is very blonde. I am not pretty because I am not blonde.

And I need a stiff drink and a manual on how to break your three-year old of her mean girl mindset before she becomes seriously convinced that she is better than other people because of her hair color. So.

That should be fun.

Caitlin's Update

Despite Caitlin's best efforts at remaining lazy, she has, in fact, learned to sit up on her own, if 'sitting up on her own' is defined as me setting her on the ground, in an upright position, and her holding herself up for longer than 30 seconds at a time. Because she can do that.

But if I don't force the issue? Nope. Nothing. She will lie on the ground and screech until someone comes to entertain her. She will NOT be responsible for pulling herself up into that position on her own, thank you very much.

(And just in case you think I'm complaining about this...no. You just stay there and be immobile as long as you want, Baby Caitlin. We are FINE with that decision. One kid constantly on the move is more than enough for me to handle right now.)

Oh, and in other 'my baby is growing up so fast!' news, we have teeth. Two of them, to be exact. Two of them that showed up at almost exactly the same time, with one breaking through on Sunday and the other coming in on Monday. Two cute little bottom front teeth, that you can see perfectly clearly when she is screaming about something, not that she EVER screams about anything, of course.

(Yes, she does. She's kind of a wimp, actually. She screams about a lot of things.)

Two teeth, that I'm blaming for the worst weekend of sleep that we've had since Caitlin's first month in this world, because...the screaming. The screaming while she was still too tired to open her eyes. And the only being happy when she was being held. At midnight and 3am. It was less than pleasant, truly.

It's been better, though, the last few nights, which I'm kind of hesitant to even mention, because the sleep karma gods will smite me with another weekend like last weekend, and you  know what? Never mind. Just forget I said anything, ok?

And so, in conclusion: Caitlin sits up if I sit her up, she has two teeth, and her sleep habits are not to be a topic of discussion. Ever. The end.

Trying To Take A Picture Of My Kids: A Photo Essay

(Alternate title: Why I, Until Very Recently, Had Over 3,000 Photos Saved On My Phone.)

(Alternate title, the second: Why I Never Take Video, AKA Nobody Needs To Hear Me Yelling SMILE!/Stop Smooshing Your Sister/Get That Hair Out Of Your Mouth/All I Want Is ONE DAMN PICTURE, PEOPLE!!! Over And Over Again.)

Scenes From the Game

Steve's entire family was born in Cincinnati, so even though he moved to Atlanta around the age of five, he's always been a Cincinnati sports fan. When we lived in Cincinnati? We had season tickets to the Bengals, the Reds, and Xavier basketball, and while I never gave up my Indianapolis Colts fandom, no matter how many Bengals games he dragged me to, I did end up embracing the Reds as my own.

(Mostly because I had a crush on the 3rd baseman at the time, but that's neither here nor there...)

Now that we live in Atlanta, we don't attend nearly the same number of live sporting events, because one, it's too expensive, and two, Atlanta is the most poorly planned out city in the history of cities, and to get to any sports stadium in the area is a test of every ounce of patience Steve and I possess, and also, quite frankly, the strength of our marriage. Traffic...is not good for us.

But we do make exceptions when our teams come to town, because we're determined to raise the girls the right way. They will be Notre Dame fans, obviously. They will be Reds fans. I WILL WIN THE BATTLE OF NFL TEAMS, and they will be Colts fans. Indiana basketball is a must. The brainwashing has begun at an early age.

This weekend, the Reds are in town, and Steve decided it was time to introduce the girls to baseball. So we did. And last night at Turner Field, Brigid ate a hot dog, cotton candy, frozen yogurt and french fries, while washing it all down with an extremely watered-down Coke Zero* (and then she actually went home and went straight to bed, which surprised me to no end, because I figured she'd be riding that sugar/caffeine high until next Tuesday...). And on top of all of that? It was bobblehead night, so Brigid left with a new toy.

I'd say she's probably a pretty big fan of baseball right now.

Caitlin, on the other hand, got none of the good stuff. The poor, mistreated child had to settle for a bottle and an exhaustion so deep that she was able to sleep through the last two innings of the game we stayed for.

Then she woke up as we left the stadium, stayed awake through the drive home, a bath, and another half bottle, before immediately crashing once again, as soon as I put her in her crib. One thing that kid has going for her...when it's time to go to bed, she generally goes to bed (*knocks frantically on every single piece of wood within a fourteen mile radius of current location*). It almost (ALMOST) makes up for those times where she's up in the morning at 5am and still only manages about an hour of naptime, total, throughout the day.

And then Cincinnati lost. But, you know, other than that, I'd say the evening was a success...

Baby's First Baseball Game

Every new event deserves new clothes, right?

(That hat stayed on long enough for me to snap the picture, under the threat of turning off Disney Jr for the rest of the afternoon, then came right back off. We'll see if Steve can convince her to wear it all evening or not...)

(Also, the joke was on Brigid, because I had a 3-4pm conference call to take from home, so there was NO WAY ON GOD'S GREEN EARTH that Disney Jr was going to disappear from our television set this afternoon. My mom lies are excellent.)

Brigid Says...

'Mommy, it's ok if I put my legs on baby Caitlin, right? I'm just resting them...'

(Am I disqualified from the Mother of the Year award race for laughing and snapping a quick picture, before I told her that we weren't, in fact, allowed to use baby Caitlin as a footstool?)

A Lesson in Manipulation

We spent this past weekend at the lake, which would have been the ideal place to spend the 4th of July, if it hadn't rained pretty much the entire time we were there. So, instead of taking the boat out, or swimming, or yelling at Steve for trying to take Brigid out on the jetski without my supervision, I spent a lot of money at the outlet mall.

A lot.

But! The weekend wasn't a complete loss when it came to the outdoor activities, because Steve and his brother were able to take Brigid down to the dock to do a little fishing.

What Brigid didn't realize was that daddy and Uncle Greg were taking her fishing for the small fish that swim around the dock, because they needed bait to lure the real fish in when they took the boat out to do their big boy fishing the next morning. Which meant that my dear sweet girl though she got to keep all seven-ish bluegill they caught as pets.

Because of course she did.

And that, my friends, is how Brigid got Steve to promise that he'd take her shopping for a goldfish this week.

The end.

(So far, she seems to have forgotten about that promise, but it'll come back to her. I'm totally getting stuck with a fish. I just know it.)

Stubborn

 I don't know why my child refuses to let me get a picture of her smiling, but she fights it with all she has in her. She won't smile, no matter what I'm doing, if the camera is up and level with her face. In fact, even if Steve is trying to make her smile while I'm holding the camera up, she still won't do it. The minute the camera disappears? The smiles come out. The camera comes back up?

I get this...

I swear, she was smiling a split second before I snapped the picture in every single one of these shots. She wasn't quite quick enough on that last picture, and I managed to get a little bit of the smile as it faded away, but honestly.

IT SHOULD NOT BE THIS HARD TO PRESERVE YOU FOR POSTERITY, CHILD. Work with me here, ok?

(She has dimples when she smiles. Not that YOU'RE ever going to see them, but still. They're there, and I want to get pictures of them. The rotten little stinker...)

This is why I'm tired all of the time...

*Caitlin does this thing, when she gets really excited to have me hold her, where she grabs my face with both hands and tries to get her mouth around my nose. I'm going to pretend that she's trying to kiss me, because otherwise it seems like she's just trying to take a bite out of my cheek, and nobody wants to raise a creepy little vampire baby.

*The behavior chart we've started for Brigid has had mixed results, up to and including me yelling at her to just GO TO BED ALREADY at 11pm last night, when she told me she wasn't tired and wanted something to do in bed. I told her to try sleeping. She seemed to be thinking more along the lines of watching tv on the iPad. I won, but it wasn't a pretty battle. So. That's fun.

*Caitlin can sit up on her own. But she doesn't want to. I don't even know what to do with that. Except buy a baby carrier so the little turd can get up off of the floor every once in awhile, without me having to carry her everywhere. Come on...who doesn't want to learn to sit up?

*The neighbors took Brigid to the pool the other day, and when she got home, we asked her if she pooped at the pool (because she likes to wait until she's in a wet swim diaper to ask someone to take her to the bathroom...). She told us no. The neighbor texted us to say, if we kept track of those sorts of things, Brigid pooped at the pool a couple of times. I asked Brigid if she pooped, because I heard that she had. She said yes, just once. I asked again how many times she went. Just once, mommy. The neighbor said you went twice, Brigid. How many times did you go potty at the pool? OK, I went two times.

*Caitlin can also roll from her back to her stomach, and then, even though I've seen her do it multiple times before, she refuses to roll back over in the other direction. So, she just lies there on her stomach, screaming. At 11:45pm. And again at 7am. It's nice to get a good bookend on the evening, I'd say.

*Did I mention that Steve is out of town, and I'm on my own with the girls tonight?

Youth: Wasted on the Young

Somedays, I think that being an adult is awesome. I mean, I can eat Oreos for breakfast if I want! I can buy sparkly things from Kate Spade if the mood strikes! Make-up? I can wear as much as I want, AND I don't even have to wait until after I leave the house to put it on!

And then other days? Well, on those other days, I'm stuck at home, painting the railing on our staircase white, so the formerly blond wood trim won't clash with the new darker wood floors Steve has been putting down the last few weeks to replace the carpet that nobody should ever have if they live in a house with four animals and two children, while Caitlin is off doing her own thing at the pool.

Specifically, THIS own thing:

I am going to have to eat a lot of Oreos to make up for these injustices, my friends. A LOT OF OREOS.

Life is so hard.


PS: CHEEKS!! I'm pretty sure everything Caitlin eats goes directly to those cheeks of hers...and I don't think I'd want it any other way.