On the Blog Again...

So last summer I took an unexpected break from blogging for a couple overwhelmingly busy months (as if I have any other kind).

After the summer was over and the fall routine settled in again, I sat down to write my "sorry I was MIA all summer" post. Then it dawned on me: no one - not friends, family, or distant readers - had commented about the fact that I disappeared for months. I thought about this for a while and realized that Facebook was sufficient for keeping loved ones up to date and my blogging life had probably reached its natural end. I decided to write a final post and call it good, but that post just wouldn't come.

For some reason, people have recently started asking me what happened to the blog and it got me thinking about why I started it in the first place. Certainly not for the fame and glory and money (although if anyone wants to offer me that, I won't refuse). Mainly it's a diary of our life. I realized that so much of the boys' first few years were documented, while Miren's first year will soon be fuzzied by mommy amnesia.

So I'm back - even if it's just to satisfy my own navel-gazing and family journaling needs.

With that in mind, here are a few of the most important moments of our last year...

We got the world's coolest bike. And despite my tricycle past, I can actually ride it:

Took a trip to Mackinac Island with my parents:

In front of the Mackinac Bridge.

Held Miren's Dedication:

Celebrated Robbie's 30th Birthday:

Had one family reunion or family party after another:

Celebrating Grandma Marion's 80th Birthday

We remodeled our only (and incredibly tiny) bathroom, forcing us to travel to our neighbor's empty bathroom (they were in Europe) every night for bathtime for months. Our children decided that most of the trips needed to be done naked, which our neighbors doubtless appreciated:

The crappy "Before" picture.

The equally crappy "After" picture.

Fionn started his first year of preschool:

  

 

Emerson made huge gains in all areas and got a wonderful kindergarten placement for next year. I pushed for more testing in the fall and - as I suspected all along - he qualified for autism spectrum services. More on that later:

The handsome man himself.

Miren learned how to do all the important baby things:

Miren also learned that her smile could help her get away with pretty much anything:

Once mobile, she quickly dispelled the myth that at least one out of three kids is bound to be easy:

Miren enjoys her first Popsicle.

I celebrated my 30th Birthday. It was not quite as exciting as Robbie's :) :

We lost our beloved "Mama:"

Mama meets newborn Emerson for the first time.

Fionn earned the title "World's Best Big Brother:"

Fionn shares his Valentine's sucker.

We enjoyed visiting friends and drinking good beer in Wisconsin:

Fionn enjoys the view of Milwaukee from his "bubble" in Discovery World.

We decided to rip up our entire yard and fill it full of edible plants and perennial flowers (pics coming).

The boys got to go on their first fishing trip thanks to dad and papa:

I continued to slog through grad school classes and finally decided the focus of my ministry will be the environment:

I started a Michigan chapter of Kidical Mass (kidicalmass.org):

The kids help me run the booth at "Bike Bash."

Families setting off on our first ride.

And in general we had some crazy fun:

Miren's first Easter egg hunt.

April Fool's Parade

Robbie brought the boys some wrestling masks from Mexico.

Christmas chaos.

Feel more caught up than you ever needed to be? Good. Now hopefully I'll write again before next year.

Step One: Admit You Have a Problem

There are these moments with Emerson:

One moment I feel Progress sprinting by - lean, agile, unstoppable. The next moment, Progress is face-planting into the pavement.

One day he's smiling and saying "Hellooo!" to strangers. The next day I ask him to say hi to his teacher and he screams, "NOOOO!" and attempts to slap me. One day his training pants are dry all day, the next day he won't come within five feet of his potty chair.


Yesterday was a perfect example. After arriving at preschool, I was clumsily unbuckling his car seat as usual, and as usual he was complaining. "Buddy, we need to go into school so you can have fun with your friends and learn new things," I pleaded. He stopped and smiled. "Yeah! 'chool!"

This was the first time I heard him say school, so my heart leapt. He was so pleased with his new skill, he repeated it all the way to class and I couldn't stop beaming.

Later that night, I was trying to simultaneously bounce Fionn on my hip, cook dinner and help Emerson paint at the table. I would paint various colors on his hand and then he would create bright handprints over and over again on the paper. When we entered his "purple phase," he surprised me by looking at his hand and saying softly, "Puple." Two new words in one day is huge compared to his rate of progress a year ago, so I couldn't be happier.

After I put him to bed, Robbie and I sat down to watch The Daily Show. Robbie's celebrity girlfriend, Maggie Gyllenhaal, was a guest and it didn't take long before she started telling stories about her three-year-old daughter. At one point, she was discussing how hard it was when they watched movies like "Snow White" together because her daughter had so many questions about the death and violence in it.

I grimaced, pained by the idea that a typical three-year-old could not only sit through an entire movie, but could formulate questions about the meaning of death. I know Emerson is advancing exponentially and I should be focusing on that, but every once in a while these reality checks knock the wind out of me.

I guess the first step toward my Pollyanna reincarnation, then, is remembering to keep my eyes on the path right in front of us and not how far we have to travel. I've told myself this about 100 times already, but maybe 101 will do the trick. I'm optimistic.

Potty Mouth

A few weeks ago, Emerson started doing some Hammer-esque crotch grabbing to indicate that his diaper was wet, so I taught him the "diaper change" sign. He has been using it pretty regularly since then, which meant it was time to introduce him to his own potty.

I have been dreading potty training since before Emerson was even conceived. And considering how slowly and painfully he has achieved other milestones, I have no illusions that this will go any better. But to my surprise, at least the initial introduction went better than expected.

We spent the majority of that first day playing with it - all three of us crammed into our tiny bathroom we dubbed "the head" since it gives one the distinct impression of being in a submarine. Without any prompting, he immediately sat down on his throne and let out a satisfied sigh. I cringed at how realistic this reenaction was and thought about offering him a magazine to read. But it did not stop there....

Emerson had to sit on the little potty....I had to sit on the big potty...Emerson had to sit on the big potty...we both had to sit on our respective potties and look at each other...the baby had to sit on the little potty....Emerson had to sit on the little potty while holding the baby....etc., etc.

I made an effort to let him watch me anytime I actually had to use the bathroom that day - emphasizing each part of the routine and letting him flush it down. This ended up being a mistake because over and over again he would drag me to the toilet, jab his finger at me like a little dictator and demand, "Go, go, GO!!!" Maybe in my pregnancy days I could've followed his command on the spot, but now not so much.

Since that day, the potty's magic has faded and now he only occassionally sits on it. I'm not entirely sure he understands the point of it considering 1) he insists on being fully clothed while sitting on it and 2) yesterday he pulled it up to the big toilet like he was pulling a chair up to a table. Then he began to scoop imaginary food off the toilet lid and pop it into his mouth, savoring each bite with smacking lips. I'm pretty sure OSHA would not approve of that.

I'm not going to push this experiment further for now, but I know that day of following him around like he's an untrained puppy, anxiously asking "Do you have to go potty?" is coming eventually. In the meantime, at least our bathroom fun has motivated me to keep the toilet so clean you could eat off it.

Fat Boy Fionn VS the Carrots

Neon puke, stinky diapers, hours of puree-ing here we come.....

One Giant Step for Emerson Kind

Ok, this post is really more for grandparents and devoted aunties, but I have to share some of the milestones Emerson has hit recently. The first and best one is not really a milestone actually - just a funny and strange thing he started doing one day: when Robbie and I are standing near each other and have him in our arms, he grabs the back of our heads and forces us to kiss. I'm not sure if he's a future Dr. Phil in the making or just has control issues, but either way it's cute.

On the walking front, I can (tentatively) say he's a walker! I say tentatively because he's only a walker during specific moods and in specific places, but he's making huge progress nonetheless. Our next major goal is outside so that we can sit and talk with friends during outdoor barbecues while watching him run around, rather than interrupting our conversation every two minutes because we are being dragged up and down the stairs by our toddler.

Since the walking has improved, my theory that other areas would start picking up speed has turned out to be true. He's starting to use more signs and seems genuinely interested in learning new ones. He also started copying us when we say, "uh oh," which seems like such a small thing, but it's actually a good sign that maybe, just maybe, he will take an interest in copying more sounds and eventually...words! Along the same lines of communication, he finally started identifying body parts when we ask. We'd frankly given up on that in the past few months (hey school is out for summer), but then one day he just started doing it!

He's also pointing to what he wants more often, wanting to push his own stroller around, wanting to feed himself with silverware, and in general taking more strides toward independence. Of course, along with all this comes the "terrible twos" syndrome (which is such a misnomer since it's more like 1-3) of wanting to do what they want, when they want, how they want. And if these criteria aren't met - tantrums. It's hard not to laugh at the way he literally throws himself down to the ground, kicking and screaming and burying his head in his hands. Look out Broadway....Emerson is already the master of dramatics!

Hopefully with the baby coming we will have more milestones to report soon. But for now, we can rest assured that our child will grow up knowing where his nose is and how to ask for another cracker. :)

Celebrate!! I Think...

Ever since the day Emerson started crawling, I looked forward to posting the exciting news that he was officially walking. I don't know why experience hasn't taught me better by now, but I assumed that once he got a few practice sessions under his belt, he would take off on his own at last. And when that happened -ta da!! he's walking!!! I even told Robbie I wanted to throw a mass party for the occassion and invite all the friends and family who've listened to us worry and gripe about it for months on end.

However, Emerson had a different plan in mind. The night before I left to visit Utah, Robbie decided to give an old trick another try. For a while we could get him to stand for a couple seconds before throwing himself into our arms. Pretty soon he caught on and instead went limp in anticipation, so we eventually gave up trying.

Anyway, Robbie tried it again and to our amazement, he took a couple of steps! We tried more and more, getting a little further apart each time until he was walking the length of the living room!

Robbie and I both said we didn't care if he took his first steps at grandma and grandpa's house when we weren't around - we just wanted him to learn. But after that exciting night, we were glad that he timed this momentous occassion so perfectly.

Since we've been in Utah, grandma and grandpa have worked diligently to take this initial success and make it official, but Emerson can out-stubborn the best of them. Some days he's willing to toddle between outstretched arms for several minutes (earning massive cheers and applause from his audience), other days he employs the totally limp or totally stiff technique along with screaming protests. One step forward, one step back...literally.

Tomorrow afternoon I leave for my week-long intensive class and Emerson will be staying with his grandparents here in Utah. They are determined that he'll practice his walking skills as long as it takes, but for the sake of their sanity I hope they don't work too hard!

Sometimes I get overwhelmed when I think about how hard we have to work to get him to hit every milestone and how many more milestones stretch out ahead of us. I'm trying to adopt the "who cares...he'll do it when he does it" approach, but that laid back attitude is hard to maintain when endless therapists and doctors question you weekly on his progress, what you as parents are doing or not doing, what he should be doing and what we need to do to make it happen. Every few months we get a stack of papers evaluating all his milestones and goals and then listing activities we need to do. It's very helpful to have, but also daunting when most days you're just trying to survive.

I wonder how many parents out there even know that holding three objects at one time is a major cognitive milestone much less know when their child reached this milestone? Their child just does it one day without fanfare or pushing and they blithely move on. Oi...sometimes ignorance truly is bliss!

Developmental Milestones and Fun Firsts

Emerson

First trip - 2 weeks old

Smiled - 2-3 months

Batted/grabbed at objects - 3 months

Rolled from back to front - Easter morning, April 8, 2007

Started focusing and looking at faces - 4 months

First tooth - May 11, 2007

First experience with Grass - May 13, 2007

First experience with a campfire (looking, no touching :)) - May 19, 2007

Rolled from front to back - May 23, 2007

Started actively playing with toys - 5 months

First solid foods - June 15, 2007

First boat ride - June 24, 2007

Sat up on his own - 6-7 months

Army Crawl - 9-10 months

Initiates Peek-a-Boo - 10 months

Says Baba - 10 months

Starts Pulling Up on Furniture - 10 months

Says Mama and Dada (indiscriminately) - 11-12 months

Crawls on all fours - 1st Birthday!

Gives Kisses - 12 months

Claps and Waves - 14 months

Says Dada on purpose - 14 months

Takes his first independent steps - 18 months

Identifies body parts - 19 months

Says Mama on purpose - 24 months

Beginning to match objects - 24 months

Jumps - about 2.5

Identifies colors - about 2.5

Fionn

Started focusing and making eye contact - one month

Smiles - 6 weeks

Brings hands together at midline - 2 months

Holds his head up - 2 months

Beginning to make controlled movements with his hands - 3 months

Rolls from front to back - 3 months

Rolls from back to front - 5 months

Rolls continuously - 6 months

First food - 6 months

Babbles ma ma and ba ba (indiscriminately) - 6 months

Waves and claps - 6-9 months (give me a break, he's a second child and my memory is fuzzy :))

Crawls - 9-10 months

Tripods - 10 months

Cruising - 10 months

Standing on his own - 11-12 months

Says "dada" (not sure if purposely or not), "up" "down" "all done" "bubu" (bubbles) and "pop" - all in the same week at 1 year old