Where We're At

After all, that's what this blog is originally supposed to be about.

Cecelia: Almost 5. Wow. Started pre-school at the beginning of September and because my mind is full I didn't even get a picture of her first day. Bad Mommy.

Still loves, loves, loves to dress up. From morning until night she is constantly changing her clothes. She likes to play "make-believe". If you play with her, though, she plays her role and then will tell you who you are to play and what you are to do and say.

Even though she is getting older she still has moments when she gets upset and cries. Like if her sister messes up her toys, etc.

Lately, she has been considerably more cooperative. Less arguments and crying, thus, less time-outs.

Very helpful with her sisters. Helpful all around, actually.

Cecelia is a Daddy's girl - hands down. She adores her father and it's a beautiful thing.

Delaney: In to babies and fake food. She plays so well alone - something Cecelia never did like to do. I guess that means she's her own person. Hmm..

Still very funny. I mean, very funny. I don't know what it is about her that just cracks us up but we love every minute of it.

She talks pretty clearly at this point and comes up with the darndest things to say.

She too is a helper for her little sister, but the love is still somewhat fleeting.


She wants to do everything Cecelia does. She cries when CeCe goes to preschool and dance because she wants to go to.

If Cecelia is singing, Delaney will start to sing. If Cecelia is riding a bike, she wants to try and ride a bike. It is a serious case of Monkey See-Monkey Do.

Mostly still a Mommy's girl (probably because of her age), but definitely loves her Daddy. When Dad comes home from work she likes to screech and scream and jump in to his arms. But when push comes to shove Mommy usually is her go to person.

Laila: Cute as a button. Could be the next Gerber baby. Still has colicky moments, but is getting better. We have narrowed it down to when she's tired and has missed her nap window.

She smiles (BIG) and talks up a storm. Still waiting for that first giggle. It's my quest in life to get her to laugh for the first time.

Sleeping pretty well, but wakes up constantly to eat. I mean, like, every hour. I will keep feeding on demand until she turns 3 months old. We've created some bad sleeping habits for now, but I have learned that there is nothing habitual about a newborn. Best to start shaping them once they've reached that 3 month mark.

Weighed in at 11 pounds 4 ounces this week.

And I can't finish this post without mentioning our Bill. Today is his 32nd birthday.

Bill works so hard both at his office and at home. He is always doing something around here - whether it's mowing the lawn, changing a diaper, cleaning up after dinner, or giving the kids a bath. He loves his little cirlce of ladies and we love him. It takes a certain kind of man to balance a houseful of females. He is most definitely the perfect person for the job and I believe we're as good for him as he is for us.

He's our Super Dad and my Super Hubby.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, BABY!!!

Lastly, here's a little something that I received as an email today. Enjoy!

On Being A Mom
By Anna Quindlen

All my babies are gone now. I say this not in sorrow but in disbelief. I take great satisfaction in what I have today: three almost adults, two taller than I am, one closing in fast.

Three people who read the same books I do and have learned not to be afraid of disagreeing with me in their opinion of them, who sometimes tell vulgar jokes that make me laugh until I choke and cry, who need razor blades and shower gel and privacy, who want to keep their doors closed more than I like.

Who, miraculously, go to the bathroom, zip up their jackets and move food from plate to mouth all by themselves.

Like the trick soap I bought for the bathroom with a rubber ducky at its center, the baby is buried deep within each, barely discernible except through the unreliable haze of the past.

Everything in all the books I once pored over is finished for me now. Penelope Leach., T. Berry Brazelton., Dr. Spock.

The ones on sibling rivalry and sleeping through the night and early-childhood education, all grown obsolete. Along with Goodnight Moon and Where the Wild Things Are, they are battered, spotted, well used. But I suspect that if you flipped the pages dust would rise like memories.

What those books taught me, finally, and what the women on the playground taught me, and the well-meaning relations --what they taught me was that they couldn't really teach me very much at all.

Raising children is presented at first as a true-false test, then becomes multiple choice, until finally, far along, you realize that it is an endless essay. No one knows anything. One child responds well to positive reinforcement, another can be managed only with a stern voice and a timeout. One boy is toilet trained at 3, his brother at 2.

When my first child was born, parents were told to put baby to bed on his belly so that he would not choke on his own spit-up. By the time my last arrived, babies were put down on their backs because of research on sudden infant death syndrome.

To a new parent this ever-shifting certainty is terrifying, and then soothing. Eventually you must learn to trust yourself. Eventually the research will follow.I remember 15 years ago poring over one of Dr. Brazelton's wonderful books on child development, in which he describes three different sorts of infants: average, quiet, and active.

I was looking for a sub-quiet codicil for an 18-month-old who did not walk. Was there something wrong with his fat little legs? Was there something wrong with his tiny little mind? Was he developmentally delayed, physically challenged? Was I insane? Last year he went to China . Next year he goes to college. He can talk just fine. He can walk, too.

Every part of raising children is humbling, too. Believe me, mistakes were made. They have all been enshrined in the Remember-When-Mom-Did Hall of Fame. The outbursts, the temper tantrums, the bad language-mine, not theirs. The times the baby fell off the bed. The times I arrived late for preschool pickup. The nightmare sleepover. The horrible summer camp.
The day when the youngest came barreling out of the classroom with a 98 on her geography test, and I responded, What did you get wrong? (She insisted I include that.) The time I ordered food at the McDonald's drive-through speaker and then drove away without picking it up from the window. (They all insisted I include that.)

I did not allow them to watch the Simpsons for the first two seasons. What was I thinking?But the biggest mistake I made is the one that most of us make while doing this. I did not live in the moment enough. This is particularly clear now that the moment is gone, captured only in photographs.

There is one picture of the three of them sitting in the grass on a quilt in the shadow of the swing set on a summer day, ages 6, 4 and 1. And I wish I could remember what we ate, and what we talked about, and how they sounded, and how they looked when they slept that night. I wish I had not been in such a hurry to get on to the next thing: dinner, bath, book, bed. I wish I had treasured the doing a little more and the getting it done a little less.

Even today I'm not sure what worked and what didn't, what was me and what was simply life. When they were very small, I suppose I thought someday they would become who they were because of what I'd done. Now I suspect they simply grew into their true selves because they demanded in a thousand ways that I back off and let them be.

The books said to be relaxed and I was often tense, matter-of-fact and I was sometimes over the top. And look how it all turned out. I wound up with the three people I like best in the world, who have done more than anyone to excavate my essential humanity. That's what the books never told me. I was bound and determined to learn from the experts.

It just took me a while to figure out who the experts were.