Oooooh, we just had a pretty sizeable earthquake. The whole house was wiggling for over a minute, and I actually got up from my desk to hold onto my shelving so that nothing would fall on me.

And all I can think right now is...thank freakin' GOD the kids did not wake up. Because we just go them down and it has been one of those days, you know?

The second thing that comes to mind is that possibly more people will freak out and move away from California. Not necessarily a bad thing.

Posted by msLaura at 08:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Today Adrian was crawling around playing like mad. He was playing outside in the grass for a while (lots of leaves to hold and eat), crawling around on our tiled patio (basketballs to chase, basketball hoops to reach for, various random items of furniture to pull up on and smack his palm against), and then there was the always amusing spectacle of Big Brother Julian doing Big Brother stuff, and Daddy raking leaves.

Then he came inside and examined all of the pots and pans in the cupboard, examined all of the canned goods on the bottom shelf of the pantry, gnawed several boxes in the recycling bin, ate half a teething biscuit, knocked some tupperware containers around, explored the bottom shelf of the dishwasher (and attempted to climb inside), and gnawed on his big brother's wooden train tracks.

I know, pretty damn exciting! Occasionally he had to come back to Mommy Home Base and nurse a little bit, or take a little snooze on my back in the carrier. Then it was back down, getting into stuff.

Dan and Julian took Bugs out for a walk, and when they came back Dan went right into the garage to get Bugs' dinner WITHOUT (gasp!) picking Adrian up.

He immediately started crawling towards the garage, calling "DADADADADA!"

I yelled out to Dan, "He's calling you!"

Adrian called again, "DADADADA!"

Dan came inside and talked to Adrian a little bit, still without picking him up. Then he left the room again.

"DADADADADADADADA!!!!"

Mind you, he hadn't made this sound all day, at least not that I had heard.

Dan came back, played with Adrian, then put him down again.

"DADADADADA!"

So yeah, definitely a Dada thing. Julian's first actual word was "Doggie", but he said "Dada" pretty early. He didn't say "Mama" until much, much later. We would play games and I would point to everyone and he would immediately name Doggie, Daddy, Julian, etc., but me? Nothing. I got a tight-lipped refusal to be named. I was calling myself She Who Shall Be Be Nameless for a while.

I've read that this phenomenon is somewhat common, and it's theorized that it happens because it takes babies a while to recognize that they are a separate being from their mothers. So yes, they know Daddy and Doggie and all the other members of the family, but the Boobed One over there is in a different category. Part Self and part Other.

I'm glad that Adrian knows his Daddy's name. It's super cute. I'm sure he'll pick up on Doggie and Juju pretty quickly too. We are kicking in with the sign language finally, so I'm excited to have him start signing for "more" and "milk" and "eat" and "drink". But I hope it doesn't take *too* long for him to say "Mama", because that's one of the sweetest sounds around.

Posted by msLaura at 08:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Here is Adrian standing at the toybox yet again.

He's not so glued to it this week. This week he's all over the place. He's a super-fast crawler now. He zooms around on a route that includes:
* the dog's bowl, fun to splash in
* Julian's toy box (shown above)
* under the dining table, easy to get stuck there in all the table and chair legs, beware!
* cling to mom's legs in the kitchen
* baby toy basket in the living room
* eat magazines out of the magazine rack
* eat paper out of the recycling baskets
* gnaw any other appealing, inappropriate items (ignore pacifier and all appropriate items for gnawing)
* attempt to pull trash can over on top of self

Adrian has a bunch of nicknames. We call him "Sandbag", "Termite" and "Billy Goat Gruff". The last two are due to his proclivity for gnawing on paper and other materials.

I came into Julian's room the other morning. Adrian was crawling around gnawing everything in sight in Julian's room. Julian was shooing him away and strumming his guitar at the same time, singing, "Baby Brother, don't biiiiiiiite my toys....Baby Brother, stop biting everything in my roooooooom!"

And very melodic it was, too.

I've had a couple of hard days with the kids. Julian has been going through a SassMaster phase where he has to say NO to everything I ask him to do, or else he just ignores me.

It's all normal 3.5 year old behavior (according to my new book: "Your Three-Year-Old, Friend or Enemy?") but completely maddening.

Here's our typical interchange:

ME: "Do you want some blueberries on your cereal?"
JULIAN:
ME: "Do you want some blueberries on your cereal?"
JULIAN:
ME: "DO YOU WANT BLUEBERRIES OR NOT?"
JULIAN: "No!"
ME: "OK then, geez!" I start to put the blueberries away....
JULIAN: "AIIIEEEEE! I want blueberries! Blueberries! "

That stuff goes on all day long. I pretty much want to stick a fork in my eye rather than deal with him by about 6:00pm. Luckily he's super sweet and funny when he's not driving me utterly insane.

Two nights ago Adrian refused to sleep. He was up squirming and writhing and demanding to nurse while scratching me and pulling my hair and kicking me. O joy. I was ready to put him out in the backyard for the raccoons to carry away. OVER IT. I got so pissed off that I went and got Dan and practically threw Adrian into his arms. "Here you go, I'm DONE with him!"

At which point Dan's back went out and he sunk to the ground in a writhing heap. I plucked Adrian out of his arms just in time to avoid him going down as well. After I had established that Dan wasn't dropping dead of a heart attack or anything like that, I grabbed the now screaming baby back, and went off to my rocker to sulk miserably while rocking EXTRA FUCKING FAST to work off my super-peeved state. Finally Dan recovered enough to take over and get Adrian to sleep.

After *that* joyous night of no rest, last night Julian was the one who didn't sleep. He had napped in the car a little bit that day, and if he naps even a little bit, there's no sleeping before 9:45-10:00pm. It's horrid. At least he wasn't screaming or kicking or fussing. He just hung out in his room and occasionally came in to ask us about some book or some stickers. I finally grabbed him around 9:45pm, cuddled up with him, and he went to sleep.

Ah the joys of coming back home after vacation. We go three hours away for a week and it's like we just got home from a month in Australia. Total mayhem and readjustment.

I had to work at Julian's preschool today, and wrangling ten 3-4 year olds was the last thing I wanted to do, let me tell you. While wearing a non-napping 25-pound sandbag on my back, no less! Thank god it was only 2.5 hours. Whew.

The teacher was reading No David! to the kids, and she got to the page where David is taking his clothes off and his mother is yelling "No David!" at him. At that point she says, "...and we are not naked at home except when we are taking a shower or changing our clothes, right?"

Um, no. Wrong. If the weather is warm my kids are usually bottomless. They would be completely naked, but you know, the sun is kind of strong so they need to wear shirts.

If I weren't still somewhat mortified by my post-partum body, I'd be naked a lot more too. I'm still naked quite a bit at home. Dan too. What's wrong with that? We LIVE there. Very odd for a hippie granola school, this anti-nakedness talk.

Posted by msLaura at 10:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Julian's in black, 'cause he ROLLS like that, yo. Look at Adrian's super cute smile.

I'm struggling to maintain an upright stance while holding a 25 pound baby in front of me. We call him "The Sandbag".

Posted by msLaura at 09:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Love this photo of Julian reading a "No David!" book with his Grammy.

Posted by msLaura at 09:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)