Two Years of Tenacious (and terrific and tremendous!)

This past Sunday, her real birthday day day, we spent the day all together and went to the Academy of Sciences in Golden Gate Park. Besides Lucy wanting to be able to touch everything and not being able to, it was a great morning. We sprung for a family membership and hope to spend a few more outings there throughout the year. We didn't get her anything for a physical gift, but decided to carry on the tradition we started with our nieces of having an "experience" for special occasions in lieu of wrapped gifts. I made her a greek yogurt with honey and freeze dried fruit "ice cream" cake covered in candles, which she loved. We sang happy birthday to her all day (and to many other people that she wanted to celebrate), facetimed with family, and opened gifts that came in the mail. It was a wonderful day of celebrating and I am grateful to have spent the entire day together. Having a

birthday close to the holidays might be a drag in some ways, but when you have scroogy parents it means they have a lot more time to celebrate your birthday at this time of year because we aren't making many plans for Christmas and I am out of school. Lucy was exhausted by the end of the day from all of the fun and drifted quickly off to sleep at the end of a wonderful day.

Opening her only gift from us! 

Animal pancakes for breakfast

Green macaroon at CA Academy of Sciences

New pajamas from Aunt Tracy.

Facetime with Grammy and Grandpy

Facetime with Aunt Tracy and Baby Hawk (in her new cat robe)

 

 Celebrating with Jonana. She brought a new hat, bath paints, socks, and Daniel Tiger dolls. Boy, does know this kid well!

A few weeks before Lucy's real birthday, we had a small birthday party to celebrate her second rotation around the sun. Jim and I won a private music class at the Nia House silent auction and used it to celebrate her second rotation around the sun. My family from Stockton came and a few of our little neighbor friends. We had a wonderful time. Everything went smoothly and it actually calmed my end of the semester nerves to plan and execute a gathering. It wasn't as fancy and over the top as my parties once were, but it was nice and fun and low-stress. Lucy seemed to have a great time and that was my ultimate goal. She got a piano from the Hosker family and loves to play it and sing abcd's, a tisket a tasket, twinkle twinkle, or row, row, row your boat. I am glad we did something to celebrate and it was nice to do it in advance of her actual birthday.

 
 

Welcome December

Lucy is 2! She can BM and urinate in the potty. She sings the abcd's, counts to 11 in English, 3 in Spanish, and knows so many songs in both languages that I can't even count them. Lucy Guy's language development is incredible. She is speaking in full sentences, saying multiple complete thoughts at a time. I am in awe of her. Some of my favorite phrases include, "maybe later," "walk away!" "stop!" and "move your face!" She woke me up this week kissing me on the cheeks saying, "I kiss your face, mommy guy." She is using plurals, verbs, and adjectives. She knows a litany of opposites, including big and little, stop and go, forward and backward, and up and down. The world of imaginary play is opening up to us and her little, tiny "Lucy" frog (all little things are named Lucy) asked me (in her voice) if she could read books with Lucy and I before nap. She will do ANYTHING if one of her puppets, stuffed animals, or reindeer slippers ask her to (even if she told me no and all I do is dance the slipper in front of her and say the same thing in a "reindeer" voice. Toddlers.)

In one of my most proud mom guy moments so far, she let go of Jim's hand in the middle of the crosswalk the other evening, looked back at the car that was waiting for us to cross and said/signed, "thank you! See ya later!" I melted all over the sidewalk. She is a darling and sweet young lady, even if she does love to bite me.

Lulabean's inquisition is unending. It makes for some slow-going it most cases, but both of us do our best to let her lead the way at her pace as often as possible. The more we let her call the shots, the more willing she is to follow our directions when necessary. The only significant power struggle we are currently having is sitting down in the car seat. She wants to stand up and talk to whoever is in the driver seat for half an hour and it makes me crazy. We can legally turn her car seat forwarding facing now, but the odds are in our favor if we leave it back facing. It may help to turn it around soon. Chances are I can ride up front a whole lot more if we do that, anyway.

The semester has come to close. Thank goodness. This semester chewed me up and spit me out. Many years ago I told Jim and Jeb that I wanted school to challenge me, just once. Lesson learned. Be careful what you wish for. I don't think I have ever learned so much new information, been so challenged in my thinking, or read and wrote that much in a four month period ever before in my life. I am hellbent on turning my first position paper in to my adviser at SFSU by Christmas Eve. The plight of graduate students is that the writing is never done. It may be sufficient, you may turn it in, but it is never complete. I have one week to go and then I will feel some relief. The feedback can be awful. I just want to turn it in.  Next semester should be easier time management wise. I am only taking 2 courses (I hope) and a research group and tutoring. Crap. It is going to be intense again. But hopefully I will have my second and third position papers in the works. As long as there is forward progress I will solider on. And as long as my husband agrees to remain married to me, because this would be nearly impossible without his support. I had two pretty low weeks toward the end of the semester. Then I reorganized our entire apartment, cleaned, cleaned, cleaned, and turned in my fourth and final final. So now I am feeling a bit better.

#Imwithher

Today is an unexpectedly emotional day for me. This morning Lucy, who has had a low-grade fever for the past 24 hours, accompanied me to vote. Here is what we voted for:

• common sense gun control 
• early childhood education
• reproductive rights
• fair and safe immigration policy
• racial justice
• paid family leave
• LGBT rights
• to close the gender wage gap
• to address climate change
• and to shatter the highest glass ceiling!

We also voted to legalize pot, tax corporate buyers of soda, and to exercise my rights. Many women are not allowed to vote. In countries that have recently legalized voting for women, women aren't allowed to leave alone and the men they must accompany them won't do it. If they do make it to the polls, their votes won't count any way. It is often a mask to show foreign investment how progressive they are becoming. This is a right, and I consider it a privilege. I asked Lucy if she knew who she was voting for and she said, Yeah! (which was met by adoring awwww's from other voters and poll workers). She can vote for whoever and whatever she believes in when she turns 18. What is important to me is that understand what she believes and that her moral compass is pointing in the right direct. Today I voted for the first ever woman candidate on the ballot because I believe in her, not because she is a women. But I don't take for granted that this is a historical moment. Proud to be an American today. 

Hapaneenah Haldoween!

Unlike my childhood, the Bay area seems to have trick-or-treat on October 31, no matter what. This means that, unfortunately, we didn't get to go out with our nieces because Halloween was on a Monday. I was hugely disappointed by this. Most of my reason for participating in these silly (my opinion) materialistic American traditions is for just that reason, tradition. The girls love this sort of celebration and Lucy loves them, which means she loves what they love. As I mentioned before, I wasn't even interested in going out for Halloween. Boy am I glad we did. Our little Owl had an absolutely great time trick-or-treating this.

I was thinking we would go out to about four or five apartments, have some sort of toddler protest, and then head home for dinner. I figured the costume would be off in ten minutes, she wouldn't want to carry a basket (in fact, we used my old Easter basket because I didn't even think to get her a proper Halloween bucket), and we would have a couple of cute pictures. I HATE to admit, but I couldn't have been more wrong. An hour and half after we left the house, she was an old pro. She social skills are quite amazing considering her age and the fact that she has spent most of her life one on one with adults. I showed/told her what to do once, ONE TIME, and she walked half around the neighborhood, ringing doorbells, exclaiming "Hapaneenah Haldoween!" and taking as much candy as the door answerer would allow. Then she would say, "Sank Jew!" and move on to the next one. It was really fun to watch her have such a great time and has made me reconsider my bahhumbugness about holidays. I may even give in to a small Christmas tree.

Here is a litany of pictures and a video so that I can remember how much fun we had. Also, this costume has become part of her wardrobe and she wears it at least once a day, flying around, and hoooing. Then I eat her (and all of her Halloween candy, which she has no idea even existed the next morning) with a spoon :-).

It is fall. Well, in California it is post-summer. Even if the trees aren't beautiful hues of the sunset, pumpkin spice is "in season" and, thanks to my income this year, I have been enjoying my fair share of this delicious treat. Lucy is delighted to see the world be taken over by "pumpies" (pumpkins) and scarecrows. We just got her an owl costume from the consignment store. She has no idea what it is actually for, but loves wearing it every day after school. Adorable owlette pictures to come after some Halloween festivities. After some encouragement from our neighbors, I have decided to (delicately) join in the holiday fun. I am all about fall, but I tend to be in favor of ignoring holidays that I don't understand and that are so overtly connected to materialism (such as Mother's Day, Halloween, Easter, and Christmas). This isn't Lucy's fault and so I am putting my cynicism partially aside. Besides, she is really darn cute flying around the house hooting at everything.

This semester has been a crazy one with too much travel and too many classes. I will be glad I have done so much in so little time, but I hate feeling like I have all performance and no learning goals. I am hoping this means that winter and spring will bring less scheduling woes and more writing time, but this is every academics dream. In addition to my too full load of classes, Lucy is full-swing into toileting/potty training/peeing and pooing all over everything all the time. I wish I could say I was overwhelmed with excitement for this milestone, but I am under prepared. It turns out child development doesn't care how packed the calendar is. On any account, she is the poster child for extrinsic AND intrinsic motivation for this task. She loves undies/underwears/panties. She loves reading books with a grown-up while she sits on the potty. She loves trying out big potties everywhere we go and she hates the way it feels to go in her pants. She announces "pee is coming!" or "BM coming" when it is time. It is just me. It is so time consuming and it is created an excess amount of smelly laundry. This week Jim has been out of town. Speaking from experience, scrubbing undies while cooking doing while playing with a toddler has been tiring. We didn't use cloth diapers for one reason. I am not interested in scrubbing poo out of cloth, laundering it, turning around one time, and doing it all again. But here we are. Another major milestone. I can hardly remember what it is like to have a newborn. This kid is the growing girl and we are on to the next stage in independence.

Part of the reason we have been so busy is because I miss being a part of the lives of the people I love. We live so close to my sister now and I don't want to miss out on their lives any more than we have. We aren't close to any other family and I don't want to take for granted the family we do have near. Lucy adores Aunt Cashew, Uncy Tim and her four cousins and loves following them around (and bossing them around). We had a great TiaJimLucycation this year and we even got to take all five little humans out rock climbing and swimming in a gorge. They all slept over at the same time. It was little girls every where in our small apartment and we had a blast.

We also got to make a quick weekend trip to Salt Lake City. Andria and Kyle, who we love and miss dearly, came for a visit we couldn't resist making the trip when they were so much closer than Virginia! It looks like we will be doing an East Coast trip in June for a wedding in the NE and then heading south, but the idea that Lucy had never met these beautiful, kind, and loving souls was unfathomable to me. They spoiled her rotten and my heart was full of joy to see them connect so quickly. Lucy is a tentative kid. She doesn't jump without counting and she doesn't give her love away without knowing where the love is going. She fell right into their arms and spent the entire weekend getting to know them better. They are easy to love, but that doesn't usually matter to Lu. In this case, she felt an immediate connection with them. I am grateful to them for continuing to be in our lives after all these years and the distance between us.

We live so close to so much now. This makes it easy to be tempted into traveling frequently, which is great, but makes things less organized and I don't have the chance to get all of my work done. On any account, we went down to San Diego for a conference that I wanted to attend. I chickened out of doing a poster presentation at the last minute, but we went down any way for a little time by the shore. San Diego is a wonderful place. Without living on an island, it was about as close to living in paradise (with jobs, economic growth, and an educational opportunity) as you can get in the states. Sign me up. Even though we didn't want to leave, San Diego has moved to the top of this list of motivators for getting through this program alive.

Lulabean has been a never ending musical show recently. It is hard not to love hearing her sweet little voice walking around singing "oh, baby achewgah" (oh, baby beluga). I am astounded by the number of songs she actually knows and sings to herself in the car, while she plays, at night before bed. She requests songs now and can keep a four beat, clapping two and slapping her thighs for two. I think her current favorite song, sung in multiple voices, at any time, at various rates of speed, is the "ABCDs." She sings it the whole way through on her own. She sings in a deep raspy voice and a high, "little" voice. She can do it amazingly fast or slow, loud or quiet. I used to say the alphabet song was unimportant. It really has little to do with learning to read. But now that my kid has been singing it since she was 20 months old, it has been become VERY important to me.

Louie has always loved reading. This is no surprise given the literacy environment she has already been blanketed in. This has been fully intentional on our part and we have been supported in this effort by our friends and family. But this kid LOVES books. It is incredible how much she loves books. Books in the car, on the potty, on the bed, on the floor, outside, inside. She will choose books over ANY other activity. Recently she has been reading along. I thought this was to books she had a million times, but she was finishing the sentences of a library book last night that we had read only one time before. She is generalizing ideas from one book to another, such as "dum ditty dum" from a book about monkeys drumming to drums she sees in other books. She is even pointing, although scattered, to the words on the page and reciting what she knows comes next, such as "beep beep beep" on the right at the right time in Little Blue Truck. I realize reading early has little academic advantage later on. I also realize not reading until third grade is developmentally reasonable for many kids. But she loves words and rhymes and books and songs and poems and it is a joy to watch her dig deeper into the world of literacy, a world that can transport you across the globe, back in time, and through the minds of brilliance.

Lucy has recently been really into pretend play. She loves putting her toys to sleep with blankets (which are actually washcloths and burp rags), patting them, and shushing them to sleep. Then she exclaims, Ci-ciri-ci! which is the sound a rooster makes in Spanish, and sounds the alarm for everyone to wake up. When she wakes up she is thrilled to see her friends in the bed and gives them all hugs and kisses. She is a snuggly little love bug. This morning her lion and duck finger puppets were so happy to see each other they couldn't stop kissing each other! It was as sweet a wake up as possible. At school they have a big emphasis on care for others. When someone gets hurt, there is always someone lined up to help that kid or give them a hug. This is a strategy we use when Lucy is upset or sad, or when she hurts one of us. We acknowledge her feelings, even if her actions caused a consequence that she is then upset. We always offer a hug after we work through validation of the feeling. This has been a positive way to manage the wide array of toddler emotions that she can go through in the course of two seconds. It is helpful in redirecting and reinforces the allowance of all feelings while handling those emotions without hurting yourself or others. 

Family Photo Session

Bribed with Annie's fruit gummies and her bff, Nana, we got some nice shots from our first Cali photo session. Call me cheesy, but I wanted to take the pictures on campus, as that is why we are here in the first place (and the sunshine, and good food, and liberal nature of the city, proximity to rock climbing, and endless opportunities for our kid). Here are a "few" of my favorites. Also, do not be alarmed by how Republican we look. We have not gone to the other side :-).