Making Friends

As I am looking at a full school year home, I am trying to figure out what we will do with ourselves.  The idea of being a stay at home mom for an extended period is both very exciting, and a little intimidating.  And actually, I don't like the term stay at home.  I think I'm going to start saying on the go moms because I very rarely stay at home!  Evelyn is used to being around kids regularly, and she doesn't do well at home for days in a row.  I like taking her places, but I don't really like doing things alone all the time.  It's nice having other adults and kids around to interact with.  Unfortunately, I don't know many other on the go moms. 

As a result I have been trying to meet other moms anywhere I go.  It's a little hard for me because, while I am very outgoing with people I already know, it's hard for me to take the first step toward meeting someone new.  I often think after the fact about how easy it would have been to strike up a conversation with someone I was sitting next to at the playground or smiled at in church, and potentially made a new friend.  My mom assures me that when Evelyn starts preschool in the fall I will start to make friends with the moms of the other kids in her class, but I don't want to wait that long. 

So, I have started forcing myself to be more outgoing.  I have become completely relentless in making connections with anyone I come into contact with who also have kids in Evelyn's general age range.  I have left notes in mailboxes at her daycare, I have struck up conversations with moms and babysitters at the playground, and I think I totally scared a woman in church with what I remembered about her and her family from a conversation months ago.  I have mentioned trying to make friends with a family that lives in our neighborhood so many times that every time we drive past the house Evelyn says something about making friends.  I just talked to Steve over the weekend about planning a neighborhood playdate and putting invitations in the mailboxes of any house we know that has kids. 

This weekend, my attempts were rewarded!  We met a mom and her daughter at the playground who live a few minutes away from us and we hung out there for about an hour.  I gave her my phone number and she texted me about planning to get together again.  And the woman from church?  She texted me this weekend, too, about getting together!  I'm really proud of myself, and can't wait to continue to get to know these families and meeting others! 

10 Things About Evelyn

At 2 years, 5 months there are a ton of things about Evelyn to love.  Her little personality (which actually isn't little at all...it's in fact quite large!) cracks us up daily.  I want to use this post today to document 10 thinks about Evelyn...

10. She's starting to get really into movies, especially Disney.  We have instituted Friday movie night at our house, which has really become something Steve and I look forward to.  We do early jammies, make some popcorn, and pop in a movie of Evelyn's choice.  Her current favorites: FROZEN, Tangled, Finding Nemo (which might possibly be the LONGEST. MOVIE. EVER!), Cinderella, and the newest favorite is The Lion King.  I hope this tradition continues for a long time!

9. Speaking of The Lion King, the way she sings "Hakuna Matata, it's our problem free, 'losophy" is quite possibly the funniest thing I've ever heard. 

8. Evelyn has realized that many people nod their head when they answer yes to a question, a practice which she is trying to implement herself.  Her nod starts at her waist, though, resulting in the funniest looking upper body bob I've ever seen. 

7. You will never get to see this awesome move because she refuses to let me take a picture or video of her.  The minute I try to get out my phone to take a video or picture she instantly wants to watch Marshall videos, which is what she calls any videos on the phone because they originally all featured her cousin Marshall.  When she's doing something cute I have to go stealth mode to try to get a picture of her from the side or back. 

This is actually starting to change with the arrival of Vivian though, and she has actually started to ask for a picture to be taken of her and baby sister.  If I really want to take a picture of her I employ the fail proof tactic of...

6. Bribery.  She will do anything for a "treat."  The treat should preferably be in the form of beans (of the jelly variety) or chocolate.  And the treat must come in pairs.  "Two Mommy!"  I kind of blame her love of chocolate on Frozen, which is mentioned at least 3 times in that classic.  Steve has a different theory as to who is to blame for her love of treats, particularly the chocolate. 

This beauty cost me a handful of goldfish. 

5.  She is absolutely fearless.  She climbs up rock walls at the playground, goes for the big slide, and jumps from heights that seem just way too tall to be safe for a two year old. 

4.  She is the friendliest kid I know.  She calls out the window of the car to people passing by, walks down the paths at Longwood Gardens saying hi to everyone she sees, and when she sees other kids she wants to go over and "make friends." 

3.  Every morning she asks us if we want her to make us coffee.  She then proceeds to bring us a toy cup with a play tea bag in it.  Not sure how the connection between the tea bag and coffee started, but I'm wondering if Steve and I discuss coffee too much?  Because there are 4 cups, she also proceeds to indicate who her favorite person of the day is because she gets that fourth cup ready for someone (usually Grampy, Poppop, or Uncle Jeff). 

2.  Speaking of Grampy, Poppop, and Uncle Jeff, her favorite people are boys.  She mentions Uncle Charlie, Uncle Andy, and Uncle AJ often, too.  Every day when I pick her up from school I ask her who she played with.  (A great example of how I am totally turning into my mom, every day for my entire school career she asked me who I sat next to at lunch.  This continued through college.  I apologize in advance, Evelyn.)  She only mentions boys when she tells me who she played with.  I know the names of all the boys in her class, but really have to dig deep if you would ask me who any of the girls are.  And I'm often just guessing by pulling from some of the most common girls' names these days (anything that ends in the letter A is fair game it seems...). 

1.  She says everything three times, especially questions.  She would drive Will Ferrell's character Mustafa from Austin Powers totally crazy.  Everything she has to say is so important that it warrants being said three times.  And when she gets her little pointer finger going with what she is saying, watch out because she means business.  And after that third time, she usually punctuations what she is telling you with, oh-KAY?

So there's the top 10 things I want to remember about Evelyn at almost two and a half.  :)

Mommy's Adjustment to Two

My last post was about how Evelyn has been adjusting to being a big sister.  I figure I should also include a post about how I am adjusting to life with two, as that is the second most common question I get these days.  I actually was asked by a friend who just told me she is expecting her second.  This is my reply to her.  Now you're all trying to guess who is having a baby.  I'll never tell... 

It's funny because in many ways going from one to two has been easier than from none to one.  I guess it makes sense because you have done it once before, so you have an idea of what to expect as far as caring for a baby.  Don't get me wrong, Evelyn and Vivian are different babies, and Vivian has her own little quirks that we are working to figure out.  The basics of babies stayed the same though, and that made getting used to having two a little easier.

 I think another reason getting used to having two is easier than getting used to one is because of Vivian's delivery.  It was much easier than Evelyn's, and the recovery was faster.  I was up and moving around much quicker and when I could rest, I was actually resting comfortably.  I remember with Evelyn I was exhausted from the very beginning and stayed exhausted for a very long time.  I'm still tired this time around, but not to the extent I was with Evelyn.  With both of them I am also trying to be very good about sleeping when they're both asleep, particularly at night.  I would often stay up after Evelyn went to bed for a while, which wasn't the best idea.  Now, as soon as they are both asleep, I'm asleep. 

 What has been difficult as far as sleep is the napping.  Evelyn still takes about a 2 hour nap in the afternoon, but Vivian does not.  She tends to take her nice long nap in the morning, usually in the carseat or stroller while I am running an errand or doing something with Evelyn.  I try to catch up on a little rest during Evelyn's afternoon nap, but that gets harder with a baby that doesn't want to sleep much during that time.  I will admit that in order to get a little more quiet time in the afternoon, or to make some dinner, Evelyn watches an episode of Sesame Street every day.  It's the only show she watches, so I don't feel bad about it.  (Unrelated... any parents out there who have seen Sesame Street lately, what's the deal with Abby's Flying Fairy School???  Can't stand it, and neither can Evelyn!)

The other thing about having a second that is making things a little easier is that I'm paying closer attention to any "schedule" I can find in Vivian's day.  I really didn't do that with Evelyn this early on, so it never felt like we developed any kind of schedule.  But with having a two year old, I have been forced to be more aware of any schedule there might be.  Vivian is making that a little difficult though because she hasn't developed a consistent feeding pattern yet.  I think part of this is my fault though because I tend to start feeding her, but then Evelyn needs me and I don't necessarily finish a full feeding.  As a result I feel like Vivian needs to eat all the time, which is not the best situation, but it's reality right now.

In general, adjusting to having two just happens because it has to.  There isn't time to be tired because you have to be on your A game for your older kid.  As my wise Nanny always said, "You can sleep when you're dead!"  I think she was usually implying go out and have a good time, make memories, that kind of stuff.  But it works for having kids, too.  It's making memories, right??  You just might not remember the memories in your sleep deprived state.  :) 

The Transition to Becoming a Big Sister

When you have your second baby one of the most common questions you get asked is how is the older sibling dealing with the new baby.  So, how is Evelyn dealing with the new baby?  Well, it has been a roller coaster of a month.

For the first couple of days Evelyn was interested in this new little person and asked to hold her often.  Now, when Evelyn did hold Vivian, her attention lasted about 5 seconds before she was ready to move on to something better.  She also was more interested in all of the presents that were being thrown at her pretty much every day for a few weeks. 

As to be expected, the desire to hold and be near her baby sister lasted about three days.  She suddenly was a little resentful and every once in a while came out with "Me no like baby sister!"  Of course this was immediately followed by giving the baby her own nickname: Little Cutie.  Also to be noted, Evelyn refers to herself as Big Cutie. 

After resentment and nickname giving, came the desperate need for attention from Mommy and Daddy, resulting in one melt down after another and tons of whining.  We tried to do as much one on one time with one of us as possible.  When we could Steve and I tried to do things like bed time with the three of us.  The constant melt downs and whining lasted a few weeks, but have started to decrease in the past few days. 

The tantrums could also be attributed to the fact that we have had no kind of schedule for the past few weeks as we try to adjust to being a family of four, which has resulted in bed times that change almost nightly and no real morning routines either, both of which we used to have down to a science.  Also, Evelyn went from full time daycare to two mornings a week.  As we begin to settle back into a routine and she gets used to having baby sister around, it seems that Evelyn's general mood is improving.   

 

We have also moved onto the "helper" phase of being a new big sister.  I can't change Vivian's diaper myself anymore, and when Evelyn helps she HAS to be the one to open the new diaper and pull up the tabs for me.  This results in each diaper change taking about 5 minutes, and more times than not Vivian manages to poop again before I can get the new diaper under her because I am waiting for Evelyn to pull up the tabs (and we're back to the posts about poop, how I've missed the posts about poop!)*.  She's also really good at finding a burp cloth to clean up all of the spit up.  This is probably because spit up totally freaks her out, so she wants to get rid of it as quickly as possible.  There was a projectile spit up incident the other day which actually caused Evelyn to start crying.  I tried desperately to control my laughter. 

 

Although she wants to help with everything, she also has become incredibly selfish.  Everything that is Vivian's she considers hers.  She is willing to take turns with everything, but her turns are quite a bit longer than Vivian's.  In particular she loves taking her turn on the Boppy pillow for tummy time. 

Evelyn "sharing" the play mat.

Luckily with each passing day life seems to get a little bit closer to "normal" for Evelyn, and I think she has fully accepted Vivian as a member of our family.  When Nanny asked her if Vivian should stay at their house while she goes home with Mommy and Daddy, Evelyn replied "NO! Vivian goes to our house!"

 

 

 

*Side note: Since becoming a parent, I have made up rules.  One of the newest rules since Vivian was born is "always put a diaper on the baby as soon as she gets out of the tub, even if she is screaming for food like she hasn't eaten in days."  This rule was the result of a lap full of poop immediately following a bath.  I didn't remember this until I was writing about poop.