Denis is gone on a business trip all this week. Nothing like being thrown into the hot seat, right? Den was off for 6 weeks (crazy, yes), and then my parents were here for 2 weeks, so I’m just getting used to being on my own with both kids during the day, much less 24/7! I don’t think it will be too bad, however. 2 months in I’ve figured Ember out, I know what she needs and know that she gives me a lot more free time than I ever expected – which isn’t really free time, since I spend it with Kate. It is currently 11pm and I actually have both of them asleep so yippee! Ember doesn’t always go to sleep before I do, which is midnight.

Getting out is being a bit of a challenge, however. Ember is exasperating me a bit because she thus far does not like babywearing. She actually seems to do better in a stroller – go figure. Unfortunately in order to keep sane I need to keep Kate in the stroller when we’re in public or else she’ll think it’s funny to try running off… or do the opposite and stop to study the dirt for an hour. I sadly am realizing that I will need to get a double stroller. Sigh. I don’t really want to spend a ridiculous amount of money so I’m keeping an eye on Craigs List. If you have any suggestions for tandem strollers that aren’t fancy and expensive, I’d love to hear them. The stroller we have now is a Graco. Oh and complicating matters is that I now have Ember in the My Ride car seat, not the infant seat… so no snapping an infant seat into a stroller. (She didn’t like the infant seat much and would just complain.) I’m eyeing a double stroller that can become a sit ‘n stand type down the road, when Ember is big enough to sit upright and Kate is mature enough to stand on the platform. I’m not sure I have many options, given those requirements!

Kate is well and truly 2 years old now. Where she used to happily do what I asked now she’s either saying, “No,” and walking off ignoring me or just standing there staring at me, grinning while refusing to do it. The other day she dumped a bowl of cheerios on the floor. I asked her to please pick up the cheerios. “No,” she said, pleased with herself. I sat on the floor and just kept repeating that we were going to pick up the cheerios now. She stretched out her hand and grunted as if straining to reach them. Really, acting already? She tried changing the subject, she tried escaping (the gate was shut, so she was stuck in the kitchen with me). Finally my repeating worked. “Sure we can have X… after we pick up the cheerios.” She started picking them up.

Other ways the 2 is showing: The limp noodle is showing up a lot, and she is getting LOUD. Lots of foot-stomping and random tantrums. When she wants something she WANTS it. Now. In fact she now throws a complete fit every time I answer my phone. She figures the phone call MUST be for her and she immediately throws herself at me, shrieking and sobbing and grabbing at my hands, as I am trying to figure out who is on the phone. It adds another whole layer of awesome to phone calls, which I never liked to start with.

On the good side of things she is totally into bicycles, airplanes, drawing, jumping. My mom bought her a tricycle for her birthday and she begs every day to go “Outside? Ty-sickle?” (Of course that leads to her tugging on the front door crying when we can’t go out.) She loves to sit on it and she loves to be pushed – I made sure to get the kind with a push bar that also steers. Very handy.

Airplanes excite her, which is awesome because yesterday we went to the local air show! I figured she’d at least be interested briefly, but it turns out she was pretty much enthralled for several hours. I mean her attention wandered and she led Den all over as she walked laps around the tent I was hiding under, but every time a plane went by she stared, pointed, and said things like, “Wow! A-paine! In da sky!” Utterly adorable. Unfortunately it was close to 100 degrees out, thus me hiding under a tent, and Ember was rather cranky even after I stripped her down to her diaper and nursed her many times. Somehow I still got red shoulders even wearing SPF 50 and spending half the day in the shade… but the kids were fine, and that’s what matters.

A concept Kate has been working on is that of possession. She does a lot of passing toys to us and pointing out objects and who they belong to. “Mama wawer (water). Kate wawer!” “Daddy hat.” “Baby paci.” However when it’s mine she insists I take it, now. She keeps giving me my water bottle, even when I want it on the table, she just keeps shoving it in my hands like I’m an idiot who keeps losing it, ha. Also my phone, which is quite handy – if she finds it across the room she’ll run it over to me breathlessly saying, “Mama phone!!” And the baby’s pacifiers… yeah she keeps trying to shove them in the baby’s mouth. Kate is so attached to her paci so naturally she thinks the baby must desperately want hers. It’s very cute, but also frustrating because Ember does NOT like her pacis very much at all and we only keep them around for those emergencies when she is in a mood and will actually take it. So now I have to hide them out of view to keep Kate from “helping” me with that.