My children are amazing people. I am so grateful to have this time with them, to be able to spend my days with them and to raise them and watch them grow every single day.

Ember is becoming more and more her own person; she looks like an interactive baby now, no longer a squishy little newborn. I can hardly remember her being a tiny little thing (although “tiny” is not how I would have described this child at any point after birth) with a floppy head and folded-up limbs. Now she sits up on my lap (with support) and intentionally grabs things – she looks right at people and smiles and laughs. I love it. I love her. I struggled the first two months with constantly comparing her to Kate and not knowing how I felt about this new little creature, not knowing who she is. Now she is just Ember.

As a warning, when you’re feeling all mushy after having had a baby, don’t sit down late at night and watch old videos of your first child. I watched a bunch of Kate from last year and I swear I think my heart nearly exploded. She was so adorable and looked so young and precious and oh my gosh. I can’t believe those times are over, that I’ll never get to go back to that time in her life – just like how next year I’ll look back at today’s video and think the same thing. Can’t I just capture every single day in a vault?

I told my therapist how I always felt this pressing need to detail and document and preserve each memory. I have a baby book for each girl, a scrapbook for each girl (still in progress, of course), this blog with stories, a calendar for milestones, excel spreadsheets, and of course the thousands of photos cataloged by date and subject. “That’s ambitious,” she replied. Yes indeed. And stressful. I don’t think I’ll ever feel like I do enough… and what I do accomplish takes up a lot of time and energy. Who am I doing it for, really? I sat and thought about that for a long time. My mom was good at record-keeping and photos and I really appreciate all of it. My brother, on the other hand, couldn’t care less. It occurred to me that my girls may not really care all that much. And if they do will they really care if they have two detailed pages per week vs a couple of scribbled milestones? Will they really care that I spent an entire week perfecting one scrapbook page instead of just putting pictures on the page and writing notes? No, probably not. I have to admit that I do it for me.

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Every once in a while Kate wakes up in the middle of the night crying. She is getting her 2-year molars so I’m sure sometimes it hurts. And it’s funny but I actually am happy to get up with her. It’s just her and I in the dark, when she is quiet and cuddly. I wrap my soft blanket over us and snuggle her onto the couch while she watches a quick show. Sometimes I’m sad to put her back in bed.

Every morning Kate is the one who wakes me up so I tip-toe out of my bedroom, leaving Ember sprawled out and fast asleep, and get Kate up. She runs immediately to the couch and assumes the position then pats the seat next to her, “Mama lay down.” So I get the blanket and snuggle in. Sometimes I fall back asleep until Ember wakes up, sometimes I just stay there long enough for Kate to wake up fully and jump down. Either way it’s the perfect way to start our day. Kate really seems to need a slow transition in the morning, and she needs the hugs and cuddles. As active as she is during the day she still definitely has a cuddle quota she needs to fill or she’ll start demanding I put the baby down so she can sit on my lap.

Yesterday nap time was over too soon and I was in the middle of writing this post (yes it’s taken me two days). I tried to bring out her blanket from bed to tuck her onto the couch so I could keep my blanket for the computer. Apparently that is not acceptable. She kicked off her blanket, sobbing, and said, “No! Blanket!” and yanked on mine. So her pink crib quilt is for bed; my blue blanket is for the couch – no exceptions. Got it. (She was discombobulated after that nap and needed another snuggle, which she doesn’t usually need after nap.)

Ember gets her snuggles at night and during nursing. I love rubbing her back as she nurses to sleep, love nursing laying down in bed. It’s just so comfy and warm and sweet.

Ember is now 4 months old, definitely not a newborn anymore. She is little miss grabby hands, snagging dishes or food or whatever may be in front of me. She also likes to grab at my hair when I’m holding her, and it can be hard to extricate myself from her grasp – this only adds to my shedding problem (I think I am going bald). She’s really grabbing toys and crinkling them and playing with them.

I am now getting belly laughs out of her! Full out squeals and laughs. I’ve seen it said before that adults will do the weirdest and stupidest things just to get a laugh out of a baby, but it’s so true. I will ignore everything else around me to squish her belly and nom her arm and say dumb words over and over again just because she finds it hilarious. And then she laughs and I bury my face against her cheek and just want to eat her up.

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Kate continues to talk more and more. She’s been speaking in short sentences for a while now and her descriptions are getting longer. She’s also been quite sneaky, turning my own words against me.

For instance she was drawing with her aquadoodle (or rather, splattering water on it like an artist). She held out the “pen” to me and said, “Mama draw pig!” I told her I didn’t know how to draw a pig. She shoved the pen at me again with a grunted “Eh!” I repeated that I didn’t know how. Then she looked at me seriously, pen still held out for me to take, and said, “Mama try?”

She’s also starting to pretend and act things out. A few times now she has gone “looking” through the house for Tiger or Pig (from Kipper). The other day she woke up from her nap and asked me where the ghost went. (There was a ghost on one episode.) She peeked around things and whispered, “Ghoosse? Ghooooosse? Where you?”

Her Little People sets are starting to be used for pretend play in addition to whatever else they also do. She was acting out the little girl climbing the ladder and going “wheeee!” down the slide. She also held one of the people on Sophie the Giraffe’s back. And then, quite hilariously, Kate tried to sit on Sophie the Giraffe herself. Considering it is only about 6 inches tall it didn’t work too well.

As mentioned she loves Kipper the dog. LOVES. Like every time we turn the TV on she says, “Watch Kipper TV!!” Turn on anything else and she’ll cry. I think this is a step up from a few months ago when all she would watch was Pingu. Kipper is actually pretty cute and not irritating.

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Den is gone all month. I was on my own for 9 days and honestly it’s not been that bad at all. My mom is now here visiting so I have extra hands and the ability to run to the store real quick – things I take for granted sometimes! But I am still lacking in free time. Both kids are doing really well though, so I can’t complain at all! I feel quite lucky that both kids are as flexible and mellow as they are. I really didn’t think my life would be this calm with two little ones. Getting everyone dressed and into the car seems to be my only daily frustration; it should not take that long to get shoes and coats on and everyone into the vehicle!

I have an interesting relationship with my body. I get the impression that many other women hate their flabby belly, their stretch marks, their soft breasts. And to be fair I still am confused when I idly grab a fistful of loose skin that was not there 5 years ago. I think that it’s more surprise than anything – it still seems strange to think all my body has gone through. My fingers like to gently feel my skin beneath my belly button, feeling the slight divet created by the stretch marks there. It’s this visible, tangible mark of how my body gave at the end to accommodate my largest baby. And I don’t know, I guess it’s become a kind of comfort item to me, a familiar mark like a mole or scar, but with so much history bound up in it. My body gave me my children, something I didn’t know if it would ever do.

Yes, sometimes it is sad to think that I will never have that 22 year old body. But isn’t that just the passage of time? Hairs turn grey, joints get stiffer, skin gets lines. It changes, always in the direction of more chaos, not less.

I know I should be eating healthier, and I know if I start working out I could lose some of this fat that is left behind, I could tone things up a bit. It’s never going to be the same, of course, but there could be improvements. But right now I think I’m just getting used to this body that I have. I’m just going to sit with it a while. I feel like I need to get acquainted with this new body first.

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It’s a wonder how fast childrens’ bodies grow. You don’t even really notice it day to day but suddenly your toddler has huge long legs and they are fitting into clothes that looked so giant in the store. How the hell does that even happen? And how uncomfortable must it be for them? The more I think about it all – the teeth, the growing, the brain development – the more I think it’s a miracle that children sleep well at any point.

Kate is wearing 2T now – even 2T pants are fitting her, her legs must have had a growth spurt recently. She’s right around 29lbs and approximately 34″ tall. Ember is in 3-6M but I feel like some of them are already getting snug on her, especially with the big cloth diaper butt. Which is a bummer, since I think by Christmas she will have already outgrown the Christmas outfits Kate wore. At 4 months she weighed in at 14lb 1oz and 24 1/4″ – which is around 50th percentile for height and weight. She seems so big to me, but apparently she’s actually average… just big compared to what Kate was.

Several days ago I was being good and moving some things out of the house into the garage for storage. While doing this I had the door open to the garage, as I was going in and out. No big deal, right? The big garage door was closed so my cats couldn’t get outside, it was only for a few minutes so the house wasn’t losing too much heat or anything.

Later that night I’m on the computer and my mom is sitting in the recliner. The cat goes running past all helter-skelter and slides into the bookshelf. “What was that?!” mom says. I shrug, “cat is chasing a toy.” Then I saw something, too, dashing across the living room and into the kitchen under the washing machine. Oh shit. There’s a mouse in the house.

Now this is a problem for one very specific reason: I don’t kill things. If you know anything about me you know that I am very soft-hearted towards animals, I have a history of volunteering for different animal causes, and yes that even applies to mice. They are cute little furry creatures. In my childhood I owned a hamster and some gerbils, I have experience with rodents. Mostly I just can’t bear the thought of me killing something that was simply unfortunate enough to get stuck in my house. I just want to catch it and move it back outside.

Unfortunately I also have the aforementioned cat. Two of them, actually, but one is quite fat and snores loudly, so I kind of figured he wasn’t going to be much of a threat to the mouse. But Jojo? Yeah. He’s going to catch that mouse.

I had some plans of capturing the mouse under a container, but I discovered that there are a lot of hard to reach places a mouse can hide in my kitchen. Washer and dryer, range, fridge, freezer, the list goes on. I can’t even move them. Basically I was just stuck scratching my head.

Later that evening I hear the cats making noise, pouncing, scratching type noise. (I can immediately tell what is going on in my house just from a quick sound. I assume I got this superpower from being a mom. It comes in quite handy with the kids.) So I run in there and Merlin – the fat cat – has jumped on top of the mouse. He seems equal parts giddy as hell and stunned. I push him off the mouse, which immediately runs into a box. YES! This is exactly what I wanted! It’s trapped in the box! Except it ricochets off the bottom of the box and leaps out… right in front of Jo. Who immediately grabs it in his mouth. I’m yelling and hitting the cat, the cat tries running off but has nowhere to go, the mouse is squeaking. He loses his grip and the mouse runs away into a corner. My heart is racing, Jo looks totally tweaked on drugs or something as he prowls around looking for the mouse. I’m saying “Shit! Shit!” and stomping my feet because I can’t find the damn thing. But neither can the cat. I worry that the mouse is injured. Shit, an injured mouse loose in my house is even worse than a live healthy one. What if it’s suffering? What if it dies under something? Shit, shit.

I wake up in the morning scared I’m going to find a dead carcass somewhere. I do not. Later on the cat repeats his performance and I’m still trying to figure out what the hell to do. It gets away again, but I have the same worry about it being injured. Clearly the cat can and will catch this mouse, and clearly I can’t even when I’m standing right there. I’d order a live mouse trap but I have a very strong suspicion this mouse will not survive the two days until it gets delivered.

Third time it happens I open the front door and chase the cat out. This time if he lets it go it will escape outside, where I want it; it’s easier to catch a cat outside than to catch a mouse inside. If it’s alive still. I got a look before they went out – it didn’t look good. I’m pretty sure Jo was not going to give up this time. I go get a broom then try getting him to let it go. I fail. It’s dark. I hear noises I really don’t want to hear. The whole thing just grossed me out so bad. My cat ate the damn mouse. I’m all pissed off and upset. I know that’s what cats do, but ugh.

Now the cat is acting all puffed up like he’s king of the damn jungle, yowling at the door wanting to be let outside to go rule his kingdom. Tough shit, cat. Go take a nap on the couch. I’m sure you’re exhausted after committing murder.

At least my house no longer has a mouse in it.

Over the past couple weeks Ember has become such an active baby! The bouncer and swing are out, the exersaucer and play mat are in. She loves toys and I am amazed at how much she plays with them. She doesn’t just sit passively in her exersaucer – she owns that thing. She lunges forward to grab things, she spins the spinny thing and pushes and pulls the horse, she grabs the toys we put on the edge so she can crumple them, hold them, chew on them. She’s already figured out how to do things that Kate never did! (Not that Kate didn’t have the ability, but she was too timid to push or pull things very hard.) She reaches out all the time, touching my face, grabbing my mouth and hair. Nothing is safe from her little fists. That stage of sitting on my lap without grabbing my plate went by rather quickly.

She also has started shrieking. Sometimes randomly, sometimes in the middle of a laugh. Her cries are also getting louder and more piercing. As I was changing her diaper before bed tonight she was both tired and hungry and she was very dramatic in her shriek-cries and gasping. Then when I am done and pick her up she smiles at me through watery eyes as if to say WHEW, glad that horrible thing is over!

As busy and active as she is she does not really care to stop to eat or sleep. Sleeping in the swing in the middle of the living room? Hahaha… no. Nursing in public? Sure… as long as I’m okay with her pulling off to smile at me and look around every few seconds… and she doesn’t eat a full meal, just a little snack before she’s too distracted to keep going. She nurses really well when I lay down with her in a dark room when she needs to sleep. Big meal, a sigh, then she comfort nurses to sleep. That means she’s waking up frequently at night to eat, because she’s going 3-4 hours without eating during the day! Gah. We need to work on that.

At night I’ve been leaving her on my bed rather than trying to move her into her own, since Den is gone and I can give her half the bed at night. (I will probably regret that one when he gets home and I have nowhere to sleep! Maybe I’ll make him sleep elsewhere, haha.) She still isn’t as light a sleeper as Kate was, when she’s asleep I can get up and leave the room or come back in and not wake her up… but I had to get some white noise for in there because house noises kept waking her up. And I’m back to being unable to read on my phone at night because the light definitely disturbs her. Damn. But she sleeps great from 9 until 1am, but then she’s up every hour or two until the sun comes up, at which point she sleeps great… just in time for Kate to get up.

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Kate’s language is still crazy. Every day I’m amazed and laughing at some new thing that she says. Currently her favorite show on Netflix is… The Story of 1. Thinking to yourself, That’s a funny name for a kids show? That’s because it’s not. It’s a documentary about math. Kate thinks it is awesome and hilarious. They have a lot of computer animation in the documentary, mostly various forms of the number 1 doing things like jumping, pushing other number 1s, etc. Kate watches with rapt attention shouting things like, “Where 1 go?! WIGHT DERE!” and “1 fall down!! Oh no!”

The whole “Where it go? Wight dere!” phrase is very common right now. Hiding/seeking/looking/finding is a big deal to her right now. She will frequently ask me where something is only to go and “find” it while we gasp with amazement at her skills. :)

A skill she has picked up: playing catch. She has some inflatable balls that she loves to play with. She is so-so with her throwing, but she can actually put out her arms and catch the ball. I try to toss it with one bounce so it lands properly in her arms, but even tossing it underhand to her she has a pretty good reaction time and can trap it in her arms. Funniest thing about playing catch is that she’s very specific about where I need to stand on which side of the room.

Actually that’s true of a lot of things right now. She doesn’t just want to do something, she wants to do it a specific way, and she wants to do things by herself. She’s started getting upset and crying when I put the lid on her sippy cup, because she wants to do it. (But she doesn’t do it right, so I have to do it.) She also insists on “eye coob” – that took me a while to figure out, ice cube in her cup of water, I assume because I always have ice in my water bottle. Then there’s things like she asks for milk but pitches a fit when grandma gives her the milk, she says, “Mama! Mama milk!!” So I have to get the cup of milk from grandma and give it to her.

She’s doing really well with Den being away, and this time she totally gets the Skype thing. In April when he was gone she would just kind of stare at his picture and wander off after a minute. Now she’s climbing up onto my chair saying, “Daddy! Daddy! Slide! Party!” She’s getting the idea that we tell daddy about what we did today so she’ll start telling him things she remembers from the day – and it’s not always necessarily what I am thinking of. She likes to stick her tongue out at him and act silly. She says goodnight to him every night and blows kisses. I think it’s really helping her with adjusting because it maintains some normalcy and she gets to see and talk to him. Though of course she will be super excited when he’s home! Just over a week to go.

Dearest Kate,

Considering the fact that I have told you at least 19 times not to stand on your chair in front of the television and had you put the chair back where it belongs, I am really struggling to understand your surprise and tantrum when on the 20th time I again took the chair.

Also, the horse and ball are not to be used to stand on in front of the TV, either. Those will get taken away too.

Love, Mama

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Ember,

I realize that you are just now discovering what an interesting place the world is. You have your hands, your feet, mama’s face… all kinds of fun things to stare at and play with. But? You still need to nap…. and for longer than 30 minutes a day. Please. Take a real nap. No one is happy by evening and then you can’t do the fun things you want to do.

Love, Mama

Well Halloween isn’t officially here yet but we have had plenty of time for Kate to wear her costume and enjoy the season! There have been Halloween parties, a trip to the pumpkin patch, trick-or-treating at a local zoo. This year she is a zebra! It worked out really well because I again failed to plan ahead so a week ago I was panicking slightly. I found a Old Navy zebra costume on craig’s list for $10 so I drove out to pick it up. It’s perfect! It’s warm, it’s a two-piece so it’s not hard to wrestle on and off, and it’s something she recognizes. She loves it! After I got it she kept asking to put the zebra on. I told her offhand that zebras run fast so every time she put the costume on she’d run around the house saying, “Running!” Even at one of the halloween parties, all the other kids were on the floor playing with toys and there’s my kiddo doing laps around the room giggling. I had to take off the top half because she was getting all sweaty.

I am a horrible mom and as of yet have no costume for Ember. I almost bought something, but then hesitated; a friend was going to loan a costume but it’s not the right size; now I think I’ll just pull out Kate’s first year costume – a lamb – and put her in that. I keep hoping I find something cheap.

Kate is in love with pumpkins. While she was here visiting my mom took Kate for walks around the neighorhood, pointing out all the pumpkins on porches. So now every car ride Kate’s saying, “Punkin! Punkin! ‘Nudder punkin!!” At the pumpkin patch when she got to pick one and keep it she cried when I tried putting it in the car without her, so she ended up carrying it in her lap the whole way home. She is very proud of her pumpkins.

Today I stopped and bought a large pumpkin for carving. During Ember’s nap Kate and I set to work. Kate “helped” – which is to say she kept trying to stick her spoon in the pumpkin at the same time I was scooping out pumpkin guts, so not so helpful at all. I had two bins to separate out all of the seeds from the squishy bits and I tried to get her interested in helping me pick out seeds. Which worked for all of 5 seconds until I she happily dumped the entire bin of seeds in with the bowl with the squishy bits. But that’s okay, I really wanted to do that twice.

When I was done carving a smile into the pumpkin, and she was done fitting the triangle eyes and nose back in the holes like it was a slimy orange shape-sorter I got her to sit with it for a picture. As I’m taking a pic she turns the pumpkin around, tilts it back to stare at its face, then leans down to hug it. “Hug punkin!” she said, “Awwww cute.” Ha!

So our front porch now has a jack-o-lantern! I was starting to think that we might actually get trick-or-treaters this year…. then I saw that we have a hurricane headed for us. Sweet, another Halloween of no power. Awesome. (That’s sarcasm, in case you are confused.)