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There She Grows

I know I’ve talked about this in the past, and its that time again. I’m a fan of this bi-annual LA Kids Consignment sale, where I sell stuff and also shop. There are many great deals to be found. There’s necessary new-baby items I’m looking for this time. Plus I can get Lil all the clothes & shoes her growing body needs, and tons of art supplies and toys. And since there is nothing this kid loves more than new books, I bring home a pile of them. (50cents each, pretty sweet!)

I feel like this presents a healthy way of showering Lil with new fun things. The fact that everything is super-cheap is great, but that doesn’t (and shouldn’t) register with her. I like that she helps me choose old toys and books to get rid of, in exchange for new surprises. She gets a sense of sacrifice and trading, rather than just new new new & more more more. Plus, we just downright don’t have room for any more stuff without subtracting some.

I also like the underlying message that passing things on for other kids to use is better than throwing them away. She talks about that as she sets things aside. “Lets give this toy to babies at the consignment sale,” she’ll say about some old thing lying around that she hasn’t used in ages. But now she is also mindful about saving stuff for baby Violet, so we aren’t getting rid of quite as much this time.

The closest sale is in early october in Burbank. Click for the official flyer for all the infoz:

Lil is very excited about baby V. She tells waiters at restaurants, strangers, anyone who will listen: “My mommy has a baby in her belly. its a little sister.” Yesterday out of the blue she said, “When I was a baby I drank out of a bottle. Where’s my bottle now?” I told her it was in the cabinet somewhere because she hasn’t used it in a long long time. So she says, “I’m saving it for Violet. She will use my bottle.”

She is already thinking about her a lot in that way. When she’s building things or coloring pictures she will often set one aside, announcing it is for her little sister. She drew a family picture for Mike’s birthday, consisting of 4 circle-blobs. Representing mommy, daddy, Lilah and Violet. I melted, of course.

She announces that she is going to teach V how to talk, walk, read, share, pet Marley gently, play catch. It is so adorable! She talks about sharing her toys, and then says, “but sometimes she will chew on it. Because she’s just a baby.” Yesterday she says, “I’m going to carry her across the street because babies can’t walk in the street.” Maybe when you’re both a little bit older, honey!

Lil was the first one I told I was preg (since she was home with me at the time), she was the first one to hear the news that it was a little girl, and now she has become the first person to feel the baby move (besides me, of course!). I can feel her squirming in there all the time, but for the most part she’s not big enough yet to be felt from the outside…so Mike is still waiting. But late the other night she was laying across my belly in a patio chair, almost asleep, and the baby started doing a little jig in the belly. I figured since Lil had so much surface area of her own body pressed up against it, she might actually feel it. So I quietly asked if she was asleep. “No…” she yawned. “Can you feel the baby moving around in there?” And her eyes open wide. “Is that Violet?!” And she sits straight up, wide awake, amazed. She totally felt it, that was cool!

It all started when she walks into the kitchen brandishing a pretty good sword she’d made from a sheet of tissue paper found in a shoe box. She comes in with her face super serious, pointing the sword right at me.

“On Guard!” she says, never breaking character. I’m still distracted by the impressive sword. “Where’d you get that?” I wonder. She says, “From the paper that came with the shoes.”

I go into her room and see there was another sheet of paper. “Hey look, I can make one too.” I try, but its not nearly as sword-like as Lil’s. “How’d you make it awesome like that?” I ask.

“Like this. Let me show you.” and proceeds to explain her technique. “Flatten it around your body, tighten it a LOT, then fold this and hold it. In your hand…like pirates do. Right!”

I’ve accomplished as much so far. But then, “how can we make the other end better?” she asks, fumbling with the ’sharp’ point of the sword. I suggest, “Lets twist it, like this.” And we both twist it into a small point, achieving total sword.

“See we made it out of paper!” she screams. “Now I’m a pirate. Yo Ho!” Pointing the sword at me, super-serious face again.

“This is my ship” I said, and pointed my sword back at her. Apparently giving in to the fact that my 3 yr old and I are about to have a sword fight with our paper swords. When they prove a bit too flimsy to sufficiently evoke one, she is looking a bit dismayed. So I say, “Welcome to my ship. Lets be on the same side.”

“Yeah!” her face lights up. She looks around the room and suddenly runs to her giant green chair, rocking it. “This is your pirate ship! Get on the ship, mommy!” So I do.

“This is our ship. You can be my first mate.” I tell her. “Yeah!” and then, pointing to various objects around her room, “There’s a seagull, look out! Its waves! Hey, there’s an island!” indicating a play-mat laying in the corner. “We’re there right now, lets go on it!”

So we slide off the chair and run to the island. “Lets see if there’s any hidden treasure around here” I say, eyeing a jewelry box a foot away. But she’s already ahead of me. “I found a treasure!!” she yells, grabbing a stuffed dog. “Good find, matey!” I say as she runs it over to the chair that was our ship.

We spent the next 10 minutes or so finding treasure – various objects around the room, and animals to guard it. She offers running commentary on each item as she stashes them on the chair. “An ancient pirate coin” I say as she finds a cup lid. “Good find, matey!” she yells back. “Here is a beautiful magic peacock purse to put the coins in!” She screams.

She is also the queen of making up words, and here was a prime time to do it. A rainstick was deemed a ‘mensia’, some puzzle pieces were ’snidos.’ The best was when she found one of her belts and announced that she had found a “long lost minxie golden arshala.” (I ran off to jot that one down right then and there so I wouldn’t forget!).

We ran around doing this long enough to fill the chair-ship with our plunder, so Lilah decided to expand our territory. “Behind the chair is the real part of the ship! Behind the chair. This is.. this is just where we keep our treasures and artifacts but we eat back here!” She slides along the wall behind the chair. This is when I had to check out; I told her I was staying on the island to help cover our tracks… then tried to straighten up a bit while listening to her continue on alone, gleefully narrating her story from behind the chair.

I often hear her doing stuff like that, from another room or something. She’ll be chattering away and on closer inspection we will hear what sounds like a complete story, orally authored by Lil. An ongoing narration of her imagined actions complete with characters, conflict and dialogue, adding things like ‘…said the cat.’ after whatever the cat said. Its hilarious, I SO wish I could have any of this stuff taped! These days when I break out the camera it ruins the situation. So as she’s getting funnier and funnier, less of her antics are documented. Gotta hold on to these hilarious memories!

I do love having a 3yr old who talks like a 5 yr old. For more than the ease of communication – its also hilarious. The other day she befriended a 5 1/2 yr old at the park, and the two of them played crazily together. I heard them running around in a ’spiderman castle’. Hearing them conversate back and forth, his mom had assumed Lil was her son’s age and was startled to see how small she is. Super small for her age? No she just turned 3 a couple months ago… I don’t know what people mean at first when they ask me that. “He never likes to play with younger kids, this is a first!” she tells me. Which seems to happen a lot. They interact similarly.

I forget this isn’t always the norm at her age, until people remind me. Like my aunts’ initial surprise at the beach this month when Lil grabbed a bottle of water and said “Its good to stay hydrated.” And pointed out that her saliva was on the ground, after spitting out a mouthful of sand. But, these are words I’ve used with her, so of course she knows them. Has for awhile. Is it so strange?

I am so curious how #2 will be! Lil told me today she is going to teach baby Violet to talk. I have a feeling V will be a quiet one in comparison. It would be cool if she is able to find her voice as easily as Lil did but then again, i also hope she sleeps more easily. That would be nice too!

Lil is not a kid who likes to be forced to do anything, even if its by her own body. If she doesn’t want to go to the bathroom right now, who is her body to tell her she has to. She will downright refuse. Dancing around? Uncomfortable? She’ll hold her ground. She has not had a single accident though, she just waits until she is absolutely desperate, then runs.

Less silly and more just downright frustrating is her refusal to sleep. Yeah, Lil knows she’s tired, but she didn’t ask for that and she doesn’t like it one bit. She’ll do anything to keep herself awake. The more tired she is, the more she wants to fight relinquishing control of it. All toddlers give us a hard time at bedtime right? I hear that a lot. But I think the extent to which this kid fights sleep might be extreme. Its slightly disconcerting when I start telling parents about her daily sleep antics and I am met with a combination of amazement and pity. I have not heard a single parent, of grandma’s generation or mine tell me their kids are the same way.

Her most lifelong go-to method is flailing her legs and arms for as long as she can. As a baby, Lil angrily flailed when she needed to sleep, and fell almost instantly asleep once she was tightly swaddled. She had a very hard time falling asleep without the swaddle for a pretty long time, like 6 months. A part of her hasn’t outgrown that. She even purposely flails her hands into things, even into her face, to slightly stun herself into awakeness. She does this in other ways also.. like tugging her own hair when her arms have become too tired to do much else. After that, she’ll resort to holding her eyes open with both hands… and then holding one eye open by the eyelashes.

Lil has a list of strategic deterrents to employ long before all that. Getting ready for bed is dragged out as long as possible. Putting one arm into a nightgown could be an ordeal that takes 10 minutes. She enjoys brushing her teeth but will run around as long as she can before doing it. Then she is eager to snuggle into her bed for some books, a part of bedtime Lil truly enjoys. She gets very relaxed during books but when its time for me to leave, she uses her distress over that to revive herself. She sits up, making deals for how much longer I’ll stay. (one more song?) Then suddenly she has to go pee (she’ll hold it until now, so its one more time to leave bed). Under the covers again, she needs a drink of water.

Lil can get more comfortable with a nice soft toy, so she sometimes refuses one. Throwing her teddy bears and dolls off her bed, and instead surrounding herself with harder toys like large books, trucks, potato head, etc. We don’t mind if she plays with toys alone in her room once we’re gone, in order to wind herself down. I am glad to leave her with books and a small light on, since she loves looking though them. But, sometimes we can hear her active in her room, reading and singing and banging her toys all over the place for up to an hour. This is getting into 9:30, 10, before she finally drifts off.

She often emerges once or twice during that time, needing to be tucked in again. When we bring her back to bed, we find evidence of her activities around the room. Instead of resting she was buildling a castle of blocks, stuffing things into purses and easter eggs, giving medical treatment to dolls. Her entire bed is covered end to end with books, so there’s absolutely no place for her to collapse and lay down. Finally she’ll allow me to give her a soft toy or ask for one herself, as if succumbing to her body’s need to just get comfy and sleep already. She really is too much.

And, more nights than not, she appears in our bedroom circa 2am. She’ll get in on my side instead of Mike’s, knowing I’m a heavier sleeper. If she can do it without waking me, she’ll stay until I wake up and realize we are totally squished. She’s getting a lot bigger (so am I), and we only have a queen size. I tell her its too early for her to be in our bed, and she’s fine with going back to her own. But I have to get up and carry her or lead her back in there.

During the day, Lil still takes naps at her pre-school and her daycare. Days when she’s home with me, she makes a huge production out of it. She knows that her dynamic with my emotions is different. She always pushes things with me as far as she can before I get angry and lay down the law. But I know that kids transition out of needing a nap, and some days we just do our thing without naptime. Still, there are days Lil is really over-tired to the point of crankiness: a kid who needs a nap. I read books with her in our bedroom, sometimes 6 or 7 of them, until her eyes are closed. If she manages to make it past that and stay awake (eyelash method etc) then its all over. Just not gonna happen. By then I am close to falling asleep in bed next to her instead of getting anything done.

They say you show a lot sooner with second and additional children, than with your first. That was definitely true with me! My aunts were telling me this in Europe. They said I’d have a belly by August, and I sort of doubted it. As soon as I arrived back, I began to show. That was almost 2 months ago already! Looking back at old photos, it seems I was maybe 22 weeks with Lilah before I looked like this.

Some pregnant ladies never seem to appear bigger than I already am – but I get SO MUCH HUGER. Beach ball style. Something about being so short-waisted. Cool how we all carry so differently, huh? Flash-back to when i was 8 months with Li – this is what I have to expect in the months ahead!

So, the 2nd trimester is well underway and I’m now at the point where I really love being pregnant. Weeks 6-12 were quite bad for me, as they were with my first pregnancy. Traveling in Europe right in the middle of that time was a challenge. Heck, everything was. But, that’s all over now! Its even difficult for me to remember how crappy I felt. We tend to forget just how bad something felt once its over. Right? I think that’s possibly a universal part of human nature. Or at the very least, built into motherhood.

So, staying hydrated is my big pregnancy challenge now. I do drink water all day long but some days I can’t seem to keep a drop in me – I’m peeing faster and more frequently than I can drink. Its actually quite comical sometimes. One sip of a drink and I’m in the bathroom within seconds. Those days I get fairly bad headaches, and I remember that issue from my first pregnancy. But other than that, I really can’t complain. I’m really enjoying it again, showingness and all. There is something very freeing and fun about walking around unabashedly with a huge belly. And, I think I’ve started to feel her moving around a bit, though very slightly. Its a little bittersweet in a small way, because I’m pretty sure this is the last time I’ll ever be pregnant. So I want to relish it.

Here’s me on the beach at Catalina Island (aka Mekkon – yep we gave Lilah her day in Mekkon and that probably deserves a post of its own!)

I’ve wanted to post about this for awhile now, because Lilah’s been talking about it for months. I think it all started back when her friend Indie took a trip to Japan, combined with Lil’s learning about world-wide locations via the Wonder Pets. She wants to go everywhere she hears about, and particularly to a place she’s invented: Mekkon. This is Mike’s spelling of it, which I think works best because it makes the most sense phonetically.

A few facts: Mekkon is a whole nother country. We take an airplane. There is a pool, and little dogs. Sometimes Li asserts that only girls are allowed, so she can bring Mommy and Marley. Other times, its open to all of us. There will be a dance once we arrive, and we’ll wear fancy dresses. Other kids will be there, and she will share her toys with them. She has her own personal airplane captain who flies us there. His name is Captain Hensido and he’s a tall man like Papa. It goes on and on!

For awhile the Mekkon talk had trailed off, but it has fully erupted again after our big trip to Europe. Lilah is already a seasoned traveler by plane, but now she has visited other countries. And since we’ve been home, her interest in Mekkon is clearly re-kindled. And as time goes on, her description of it expands. She’ll announce that she is bringing a specific toy or outfit to Mekkon, and then talk about that aspect for days on end. Snippets of paper or her artwork often become maps to Mekkon and are folded meticulously for future viewing. God forbid one of those should get lost or thrown away. Oh, and we now have to take a tow-bus to get to the plane. Her interest in tow-vehicles grew out of a flat tire experience we had on her birthday. Ever since then, a tow-bus is an integral part of the scenario.

She has become so obsessed with the reality of this, that she tries to use it to get out of, well, anything she doesn’t feel like doing. I can’t go to bed now, mom, because we’re going to Mekkon. I can’t put away my toys, because I need to pack my suitcase for Mekkon! I’m not going to the playhouse (her daycare), because we’re going to Mekkon today.

This goes far beyond jokes or a momentary distraction. She will get so serious about it that she will literally spend tons of time searching for her suitcase or just the right bag and then meticulously pack it just so. Then she’ll carry or drag it around the house announcing that our tow-bus will be arriving any minute, and that I need to pack up and get ready too.

The night of her birthday, our friend Miguel was over here well past Lil’s bedtime. He witnessed her refusal to get ready for bed because she needed to pack her Mekkon suitcase. As she packed it thoroughly, she ended up discussing it with him at length, answering all his questions. It is fun to indulge her imagination on this. Our families get a kick out of it too, encouraging her to tell them all about it. Friends have joked about sending Lil a postcard or bringing a small gift from their recent trips to Mekkon.

But with us, she will seriously push the envelope as far as she can. And sometimes it ends in a tantrum when she has to do something besides fly to Mekkon. Possible other locations and activities don’t entice her when she is in full Mekkon hang-up mode. There have been times she’s asked me point blank, “we’re going to Mekkon today, right mom?” I’m eager to pretend with her, but she’s not satisfied. Once, at the end of my rope, I said “we can go, but only for pretend.” She erupted into a tantrum with, “no, we’re going there for real!” When it gets to that point, Mike and I look at each other like, hmmm now what? She is an intense kid.

An idea Mike had is to take her to Catalina Island for a day and tell her its Mekkon! Is that wrong?

This is only just the beginning of the movie theater Lil created in our den (or movie feeder as she calls it). Once things really get going, taking pics or video is no longer an option these days.

Ultimately, there were several more audience members, all of whom needed appropriate chairs and a buddy to sit with. There were a few near-tantrum moments when the buddies would not all sit up by themselves. Necessary adjustments were made.

When everyone was sitting properly, they needed access to snacks, so we had to change things around again. She widened the aisles and brought in a cart full of play food around to serve each seat. Each pair needed snacks that were just right, and if a piece of food fell on the floor it was a travesty. Getting this to work out just right was a bit of an ordeal again, but it had to be done to her satisfaction before the movie could begin.

Once everything was set up just so, a movie was broadcast on the back of our ottoman. Her running commentary described what they were watching. First, an educational program about dinosaurs during which a few of the bears became afraid, so we took some time out to comfort them. Buddies were switched around so that each one who was afraid was paired with a stoic partner. Next, they watched a story about a king and queen eating strawberry cake, which made everyone in the audience happy.

Thats a pic Mike shot a couple weeks ago. Lilah will be three in a couple months.
And here’s a random conversation i wanted to jot down from earlier today. Read the rest of this entry »

After a few too many times of yelling “stop!” Aunt Jen had Lilah saying ‘hammer time. da na na na’ afterwards. Then we decided she had to be introduced to MC Hammer.

Occasionally, Lil is “Super Arrow”, a badass alter-ego who tends to fight bad guys. My theory is that she overheard superhero and adapted that, but I can’t be sure. I once asked her, “superhero?” And she was NOT pleased at the suggestion of a name-change so I quickly dropped it!

I haven’t taken much video at all lately, because I can’t keep up or do any justice to everything that goes on. She gets so involved in her imaginative scenarios. I wish I could just capture some of this stuff through my eyeballs, but all I can do is occasionally write these things down before I forget.

This photo of Lil cracks me up. Yesterday as we explored Mayor’s Bicentennial Park, she found some good sticks and became Super Arrow. Then we were on an important quest and she told me exactly what we were doing the entire time. I was helping her as best I could. I was “Super Arrow Kid”, after all.

She’s using a super magical wand stick to cast a spell on three bridges, capturing them. In order to protect us from three wild cats, who are capture cats. She also holds a sword. We want to catch capture cats. (She plays with words a LOT).

We’re trying to rescue a dragon, a good dragon. What’s the dragon’s name, I ask. “The Big Dragon…Hepsido. He’s invisible. He’s right over there, sleeping on that rock.” I have the gall to ask how she is able to see him if he is invisible. “I’m Super Arrow!”

Actually, he’s a baby dragon. Wait, he’s not there, he disappeared! So we walk down the river bed calling Hepsido! And then she discovers him sleeping in a cave. Its a bit precarious, honestly, so I break character slightly and suggest it may be too dangerous to retrieve him from under there. She says, “lets sit down and think about it.” And finds a rock on which to mull it over.

“I got it! We can reach him with sticks, find some good sticks, Super Arrow Kid!” She tells me.

The idea has merit, so I do.

Today we had a fun time at Mayor’s Bicentennial Park in Glendale, which I revisited on a lark. I was just cruising around in an attempt to help Lil take a nap, and I hopped on the 2. When it became clear that wasn’t going to happen, she wanted to “go somewhere cool” and luckily, there we were.

We’d been there several months ago on Sarah’s recommendation, so I knew what an uncrowded gem of a place it is. There’s a nice grassy area with gently rolling hills and a series of concrete winding paths, with small bridges over dry rocky beds. Read the rest of this entry »

Vocab is reaching new heights. Her pretend-play is hilarious and has been for so long. This stuff isn’t necessarily new, its just me blogging about what’s been going on lately.

This morning she’s running around yelling, “The volcano is erupting! The hot lava could leave burns but I’ll protect you!”

Sometimes she walks around blurting out, “Met-a-morph-a-sis! That means a big change!!!”

She’s trying out new big words that she isn’t 100% sure how to pronounce, just to see what kind of reaction she gets, and to be corrected so she gets them right. She looked at me the other day, while we were trying to fit some of her toys into bins, and says, “That was suspessful?” She said it a little bit off, and knew it, hence the question. I said, “did you mean, successful?” and she nods. Now she’s got that one under belt.

Same thing with words like annoying, frustrated, exclamation (we’ve been talking about punctuation marks when reading together, because she’s been asking about them). Yummy foods are occasionally announced as “scrumptious!”

She knows the evil queen’s name in Sleeping Beauty is Malificent, and will readily correct anyone who gets it wrong (such as me). Something we discuss often is photosynthesis. Ever since she was first read this small vintage book about how plants make their own food from water, sunlight and air, Lil has been absolutely fascinated by the concept. She doesn’t remember the term yet on her own but asks about it to be reminded.

Pretty big words for a kid who is still months away from turning 3, no? Of course, its not like multi-syllable words are a huge deal; she’s been able to say some for ages now. I think it was a year ago when she first began to marvel waiters by demanding “guacamole”. But it is still a thing of excitement for me, how many new big words are added to her vocab all the time. Its all happening so quickly.

A relatively new one, that isn’t necessarily huge but has us laughing, is “whatever.” She tried it out on me the other day in the form of a question, to make sure she was using it right. She couldn’t figure out which tee shirt she preferred so I said, well lets just put this one… then and she asks me, “whatever?” yeah, whatever. i say. and so now she’s been using that one a lot. Whatever, mommy. Yep she is 2.5 going on 14.

Really though, I wish she would adopt the “whatever” attitude a bit more often when it comes to stuff like that. Because mostly, Lil still can get extremely upset and frustrated over little decisions like that, or when things don’t work out perfectly on the very first try. But when she is able to take it with a grain of salt, what used to be “no biggie” seems to have been replaced with “whatever”. lol…

Checking out the stark beauty of La Quinta, where Aunt Jen lives.

Quite a few in our friends & family have recently had a baby or are pregnant, some of them with twins. So L has been talking about babies in her body for some time now. When she plays pretend, if its not teacher or doctor (or monsters or animals), its being mommy. She is forever wrapping various objects in blankets and putting them down for naps. And last week we visited the California Science Center with our playgroup, where L stared wide-eyed at an exhibit of fetuses at various stages. Needless to say, she is now more fascinated than ever. Here is one example.

This morning she was playing alone and I could hear her getting upset. I found her struggling to fit a baby in its crib (L becomes exceedingly frustrated about things like this not working out instantly as she envisions they should, an intensity I should talk more about some time). In this case, the baby was her camera case wrapped in a pair of her tights and they were not staying on properly, which infuriated her. As did the fact that the whole thing didn’t lay comfortably in the plastic bowl that was its crib. The horror!

Once we managed to tuck baby camera case into a shoe box with a proper blankie, everyone was much happier. She kept it nearby all morning, and later she put the camera case under her tee-shirt and was pregnant. Saying he was going to come out in a few minutes.

She talks a lot about having a baby brother. She wants a baby in general but definitely leans toward having a brother. She’s been discussing this with me for quite some time now. I only hope she is still this interested in the idea of a sibling if and when it does happen. Lil is changing and maturing leaps and bounds all the time; she acts well beyond her age and is extremely opinionated. I sort of figured spawn2 would be on the horizon by now but things don’t always go as planned. I just hope we haven’t missed a great window, so to speak, of two little ones being close friends. On the other hand, with a little more space between them, L might feel less like her turf is being infringed upon, and could be a great help in caring for and teaching a new little one.

When I tell her that a new baby might be a sister and that its not something we can choose, she just says, BROTHER.

No pressure though!