April Snow

Overachieving strawberry plant that blossomed a bit too early.

Valerie, the Photographer

Valerie loves taking pictures. She actually has a really neat sense of composition, and I like letting her take pictures, but I am always so nervous when I let her borrow my DSLR. So, when she asked for a real camera for her fourth birthday, we thought it was a great idea.

We did a lot of research before finally deciding on a camera for her. We wanted to get her a real camera, that would take good enough quality pictures that they would be worth getting prints. But we also wanted to get her one that would survive ownership by a preschooler. We settled on a "sport" camera, the Panasonic Lumix, which is waterproof, shockproof, and dustproof.

When she opened her gift, she was so excited that she dropped the camera. She gave us this horrified look, as if to say, "Oh no, you gave me a camera, and I broke it before I even got to take a single picture. You're never going to buy me anything nice ever again!" We smiled and told her, "Guess what? We bought you a special camera that won't break when you drop it!" Relief spread across her face, and she started right into taking pictures of random, awesome things that four-year-olds find worth photographing. We knew we had made the right choice.

The biggest problem with Valerie having a camera is that the number of photos I need to sift through before uploading has now increased exponentially. Not only does Valerie take hundreds of pictures of things that are interesting to her, but we take her camera along with us on outings when I normally would have left my camera at home. Not to mention the fact that I don't want to apply *my* artistic eye, such as it is, to the pictures that my daughter chose to take. So, while I am carefully wading through my pictures, carefully choosing my favorites, and carefully cropping them to my satisfactions before uploading them, I have had to develop a simpler system for Valerie's photos. It goes something like this: Copy all of them to a new folder, skim through and delete any that are absolutely terrible, and upload the whole folder.

So, consider this my apology, internet, for all of the bad photos, nearly identical photos, photos of giant, blurry fingers, and undecipherable photos that have recently been flooding your tubes from my corner of cyberspace. I'm just trying to respect the artistic integrity of a four-year-old. Oh, and I'm lazy.

Lions

We have a membership to the Philadelphia zoo, and we tend to go fairly often. One of the things I like about having a membership is that not every animal is "on" every time you visit. So, if the polar bears are sleepy today, you don't worry about it too much, and keep wandering until you find an animal that's being more interesting.

Yesterday, the polar bears weren't swimming, the giraffes and otters were off-exhibit, and I was starting to wonder if any of the animals were having a good day when we came to the lions. As we approached, the juvenile male and the adult male were having a bit of a scuffle. Cool! A lion fight! Now that makes for a fun zoo trip!

Once we got to the viewing window, the juvenile (I'm guessing at their roles) was put in his place, and he shuffled back to the cave where the females were.

"Mom! Dad is picking on me!"

Junior went to the back of the cave and hid, while mom came out to confront dad.

"How many times have I told you not to pick on Junior? Hey, look at me while I'm talking to you!



"Let's see how much you like being nipped on the ear!"



"Listen, woman.



"That boy needs to learn to stand up for himself."

"But..."

"Don't interrupt me! This is MY pride, and I will rule it as I see fit!



"Besides. He started it."

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Oops

So, I finally sorted through Dorothy's drawer and purged the too-small clothing (again). I gotta say, I am looking forward to the "not outgrowing clothing on a weekly basis" age. Mostly because I am too lazy to sort through her clothes often enough, and tend to just dress her in whatever is sitting on top because it just came out of the wash.

In this week's purge, I found several of my favorite outfits from Valerie's baby days, and I sadly moved them directly to the too-small box. I also found the cute "little sister" outfit that my in-laws bought for Dorothy when she was born. I had stuck it in the bottom of the drawer, because it was so huge, and wouldn't fit her for ages.

The hat was too small, the pants were almost too short, and the top just fit. Oops.

I tried to do a "sisters" photo shoot, but we'd all had a long day, and the girls weren't feeling overly cooperative.







Oh well. Maybe I'll get a couple more wears out of the little sister onesie, and maybe even another photo-op.

And I bought a bunch of hangers so cute outfits stop getting lost in the bottom of drawers.

Big Sister

I should have written this post a week ago. If I had, it would have said:

Everybody warned me that after you have a second baby, your first "baby" will suddenly look enormous. I had braced myself for this, so when she showed up at the hospital, I was expecting her to be huge. I was not expecting her to be so old. Suddenly, Valerie wasn't a baby, or even a toddler. She was a full-blown little girl.



And my little girl is the sweetest big sister I have ever seen. She is so gentle with Dorothy. All she wants to do is sit and hold her hand, or hold her on her lap and touch her face. She is so loving and gentle.



In fact, her transformation into a mature, responsible individual was so complete in my mind that one day, before Dorothy was even a week old, I started picking up some toys while Valerie was holding her, then I wandered off to the kitchen to do some dishes. Then I came to my senses and realized, um, Valerie is still only TWO. I can't leave her unattended with a newborn!



She really loves her baby sister. She doesn't seem to be jealous of the baby getting other peoples' attention. Rather, she is jealous of anyone else getting to hold the baby. One day, when her friend Moira was visiting, I let Moira hold Dorothy, and Valerie threw a fit. She kept trying to wedge in between them and pull the baby away from her friend. And this is where last week's post morphs into this week's post. And my angelic, perfect, little big sister becomes significantly less angelic.

Somehow, the gentle hand-holding became a squeeze, and I have had to pry her enormous two-year-old hands away from Dorothy's poor, little, squashed, red newborn hands on several occasions. Or she'll be sitting, quietly holding her sister on her lap when I notice that her head is pressed tightly against the baby's head, whose face is just starting to contort in tears. And don't even get me started on her inability to comprehend, "Don't touch the baby, she is sleeping!" (Or, if she does understand, her ability to circumvent that instruction by rocking the sleeping baby's little rocking chair violently enough to wake her, and then touch her, because hey, she's awake now!)



At first, it was mostly innocent. Trying to hug her too close, hold her hand too tight. Sometimes she gives her a toy that smacks her in the face or tries to feed her real food. But recently, she's shown more malevolent intent. In fact, she just finished a time-out for hitting her sister in the face.

I realize this is all normal sibling behavior. That doesn't make it any less frustrating. It's especially frustrating because, for two beautiful weeks, she was the model of a perfect older sibling. I think that's still in there, though. She's still a good big sister in her heart, she's just over-eager and impatient and more than a little jealous. I'm trying to make sure she gets my undivided attention for a stretch of time several times a day. Tubby time and bed time are both Valerie and Mommy or Daddy one-on-one time. But when you're used to nothing but one-on-one time, it can't be easy to make that switch. The honeymoon may be over, but the honeymoon is just the beginning of the marriage. And now, we're on to the dirty, daily task of being a family.

You've gone two months without pictures, too?

I'm sure the last ten weeks of Valerie's life merit more than a few words and a handful of snapshots, but alas, this is what you get. (As usual, you can click on any of the pictures to go to our flickr photostream and see more pictures, or to see other sizes.)

Beginning of October: Valerie is becoming very dexterous, and gets into things we might leave unattended, such as enormous slurpees.



Middle of October: First trip on the train to visit cousins Nick and Timothy in Vermont. Surprise visit from Auntie Nan while we were there.







Late October: We all got sick. Pretty sure it was the swine flu, but we didn't get tested. No pictures of that. You're welcome.

Halloween: Valerie was the cutest barista on the block. And she got to have her first ever chocolate bar.





Early November: Played in PopPop's leaves. Devoured her first hotdog at the church hay ride.





Mid-November: Valerie took her first steps and figured out how to climb the play structure and go down the slide all by herself. GA/PC Day on Mama's back.







End of November: Thanksgiving. Visit from Grandma. Put up Valerie's first Christmas tree.



Beginning of December: First time walking on snow!

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This one is just for the Doctor Who fans

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More Birthday Pics

For my picture-happy followers, here are a few more shots from Valerie's birthday party.

In her birthday dress, which she wore until the eating part of the party:


Rubber ducky cake, by Erin:


Close-up:


Trying to show her how to blow the candle out (she didn't quite get it):


Eating her cake - what a pro!


Happy after finishing the first piece (she eventually finished the whole thing):


Handy tip: I generally post more pictures on Flickr than here, so anytime I post pictures, if you'd like to see more, click on a picture, and it will take you to my Flickr page.

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Ten Months Old!

Dear Valerie,

You are ten months old now! This month seems to have completely flown by. Maybe it's because it was such a busy, eventful month. Or maybe it's just because I took so long writing last month's birthday letter.

Unlike last month, this month was full of milestones. You cut your third tooth (May 16) and your fourth tooth (May 29). It's funny, because you have four teeth now, but none of them meet in the middle. Tooth number three came in on top, but off to one side, and tooth number four came in on the bottom, but off to the other side. It's not funny in a bad way, though. It's funny in a really unique, adorable way.



You learned how to clap this month (May 26), and you take absolute delight in the attention you get when we clap for you, and you clap back to us. You've gotten quite efficient at crawling on your belly, and you'll even rock up onto your hands and knees and almost crawl a few times before dropping back to your belly and settling into the method you know works, for now. You've also learned to transition from a sitting position to a crawling position, and the combination of these things made it extremely difficult for me to get a birthday picture I was happy with this month. I would sit you up, with no toys nearby to detract from the photograph, and you would immediately drop to your belly and crawl away to a more interesting place. In order to distract you from crawling away, I would clap, and you would get excited enough about clapping to not crawl away, but then I couldn't get you to stop clapping and just smile for the camera. Oh well, I can't complain too much, when my photography problems are of such an adorable nature.







You learned to sign this month, which is not only fun, but also opens up a whole new world of communication for us. You first did the sign for "milk" on May 16, and you have since also signed "all done" and "more". You bang on the table when you're thirsty, but I'm not willing to call that a "sign" even though I know what you mean, because I would much rather you find a way to communicate that particular need more gently. As soon as you started signing, I realized that I didn't know enough signs myself, and I felt bad for not introducing you to more signs before. We're trying to do more signs for you now, but you seem to have become impatient with us, and have started to make up your own signs. Once you figured out that you could talk with your hands, you started to "babble" with your fingers, wiggling them deliberately as if to say, "Is this a word? How about this?" One day, when you wanted me to turn on your mobile, you pointed at it, then made a little circle with your fingers, which I thought was pretty clever, especially since I had never signed "mobile" or "turn it on" to you before.



You're also becoming increasingly verbal. You've been saying "dadadada" for a while, but you never seemed to directly associate the sounds with any particular person, it was just your newest sound to make for a while. But gradually, you started to use a string of da's to refer to your parents, and then, once you added "ma" to your vocabulary, you started to distinguish between the two, and use a string of da's for daddy, and a string of ma's for mommy. It's not exactly words yet, but person-specific sounds are pretty word-like in my books. Within the last week or so, you have also added "na" to your vocabulary, and just today, you distinctly said "Nana" when your Nana walked into the room. But that's technically a spoiler for next month's birthday letter, because you turned ten months old yesterday. Oops.



This month was very full on the external events front as well. We had our first Mother's Day together, and your gift to me was that you let me take a very, very long nap. And honestly, I don't think I could have appreciated any other gift as much as that. We took our first trip to the shore together, but it was too windy to do much on the actual beach, other than run our fingers through the sand for a few minutes before heading back indoors. We'll take more trips to the shore, though, I promise. Jeremy's cousin got married this month, and you loved dancing with me in the sling at the reception, and you didn't complain too much when we didn't get home until after midnight. We have a pool membership for the summer at the pool where Nana and PopPop and the great-cousins all go, and we took our first trip to the pool this month, as well. It was incredibly warm on Memorial Day weekend, and once I figured out that I had to let you get wet really, really gradually, you ended up absolutely loving the pool, and staying in the water with me for over an hour.



We went on our first family camping trip, to a forest in Virginia where we stayed in a cabin and Mommy and Daddy played role-playing games all weekend. You had a great time at Camp Nerdly. You were surprisingly content to hang out and play with your toys while I played games with my friends, and you managed to win over many gamers who had been wary of the prospect of having a baby on the camping trip. And just this past week, we had two sets of houseguests, and you absolutely loved all the attention. You especially loved having a temporary big sister and little brother. You and Leo, who is seven months old, would sit on the floor together, and hold hands, or trade toys, or roll over on top of each other, and just generally show friendship in a way that only babies can. It was a great visit, and I was sad to see our friends leave. At least you'll get to see my Uncle Keith and Aunt Sharon again in a few weeks when then stop back in on their way home.



Honestly, though, I think the thing that changed the most this month was me. I finally went shopping and bought clothes that fit me, the way my body is right now, rather than how it used to be, or how it might hopefully be again someday. I love being your mommy, but I haven't loved every change that has happened to me over the past 18 months or so, and it was a big step for me to finally say, okay, this is who I am right now, and I am going to be content in this skin. One day this month, I was sorting laundry, and as I was making piles to put away, I noticed that I was thinking, "Okay, this is Valerie's pile, and this is Mummy's pile, and this is Daddy's pile." And it dawned on me that I was thinking of myself, in my own head, in the third person, as "Mummy". (Or Mommy, or Mama. On this occasion, however, my Canadian childhood was definitely poking through with "Mummy." It sounds better when I say it than when I type it, though.) They say that you are truly bilingual when you start to count in your head in your second language, and I think the same logic applies here. My life changed completely the day I had you, but now my identity has followed suit as well. I haven't stopped being Jule Ann, but I am now wholeheartedly "Mummy".

Love,
Mummy

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