Adoption Day! for Squirms!

Throughout the day warm, sweet tears have unexpectedly flooded my eyes. Thankfully, I don't even walk to the mailbox without sunglasses on so my tears have mostly been a moment just for me.

Squirm's pleas to play with the Barbie Cake on display at our local bakery reminded me that she is a normal two year old - and I can't think of anything more beautiful than the fact that she is a normal two year old, our normal two year old, who wants every Barbie, Princess, and Sesame Street toy she sees.

Cup Cake!

Yesterday I removed my headphones during a run so I could listen to her singing from the jogging stroller. She had her feet up on the snack tray, barbie in hand, singing.

She calls Curious George "Georgie", as if she and a cartoon monkey are friendly British aristocrats. She demanded to wear a tulle skirt for three days in a row, before I hid it so I could wash it. She throws toys when she is angry, she insists on kissing mama, daddy, and the great before bedtime, and she loves birdhouses.

Oh Shelby Ann....you may be my best friend, but I'm not sharing my cup cake.

Last week we watched a night launch and the next morning she stood up in her crib, pointed to her window and yelled "Rocket! Rocket!", expecting to be able to walk into the backyard at any time and see a rocket. This morning we saw another launch and she happily kept pointing and saying "contrail" to the white smoke left behind as we waited to hear the rumble.

Her room after "independent play" time.

As I write this post, a Belle figurine sits next to my elbow on my nightstand and our washer and dryer are working overtime to clean car seat covers. Belle seems to understand my tears, my joy at being a part of this child's life.



Two years ago Squirms became, officially, ours forever.
(Original Adoption Day Post here: http://cornerofcentralflorida.blogspot.com/2012/05/happy-adoption-day-yesterday.html )

The Smile.

Happy Adoption Day Squirms.

Bananas

I was supposed to write a post last night. But, we have a lot of bananas at our house. 

Oh, she's lost the ability to write two sentences that relate to the same topic. Has she had coffee this morning? 

Before I allowed myself to sit down and write, I had to clean the kitchen, and that took two and a half hours. 

When I clean the kitchen after we eat dinner (and not the next morning) I always think of my great-Aunt MRD - she cleaned, like spotless cleaned, her kitchen every night during our stay. I was impressed by her discipline. I always want to go to bed after dinner, and usually end up sitting on the couch too long, and then I think that I'm not really as tired as I thought and I should stay up later, and then I regret how late I stayed up the next morning. 

 After I had watched the season finale of Elementary and half of a 48 Hours mystery while cleaning, my lap top battery told me it must be plugged in or it would immediately go to sleep. So. I plugged it in and tried to listen to the end of 48 Hours as I finished the kitchen - I'm pretty sure the guy was found guilty. 

There is just something about crime shows that make cleaning the kitchen a bit more pleasant.

So, really, I'm saying "I was overwhelmed by kitchen cleaning and couldn't bring myself to sit next to a power outlet to write a post".

This might be a better blot post if I had just led with that one sentence.

Our banana tree produced one thousand and two bananas this year. It was very exciting for us - we had no idea our banana tree actually would produce bananas! Squirms has eaten a lot of them, and we've tried to feed some of them to the Great. We've also given bananas to our neighbors, our baby sitter, and then Squirms ate more of them. Yesterday it was time to start baking with bananas. I found a recipe for banana-chocolate chip cookies and then used my trusty banana bread recipe from the lovely Junior League Ladies from Jackson, MS. We ended up with a batch of cookies and four loaves of banana bread. Thankfully, R went to help some friends set up a network last night so he also became banana bread delivery man. 

One cool point can be award to living in Central Florida because we have a banana tree in our backyard. VBM! Where is my guest blog post about Good Things About Central Florida?

In other, more interesting, news, Squirms has somehow figured out how to find the Netflix app on my phone and play Curious George. R and I were impressed. And felt a bit defeated. My phone keeps having to be stored on higher and higher objects around the house. She also likes being able to reach the fruit bowl on our new table. Yesterday I walked by and she was eating a pear. Perhaps we should work on asking mom for food? The Great is now excellent at moving himself from his belly to sitting up on his own. He is very mobile - he scoots, rolls, almost-crawls-then-throws-himself-forward-on-his-belly, sits, performs downward-dog, and spins on his belly. We have also started breathing treatments for him, he has had some trouble staying well and we are on the road to an asthma diagnosis. He is not a fan of the treatments, but he does sound much better afterward so that is good news. He's very strong and stubborn so we feel confident he'll continue to be an active and curious little boy. R has been riding his road bike, enjoying choir practice at church, and I have pulled a muscle in my back. I feel too young to be taking two aleve in the morning. Too young....but too out of shape. I tried to hold a plank position this morning while playing in Squirm's room....then she declared "Mama horsey!" and plank time was over.

She's going through my make up drawer now so I really should leave the computer.

Ten Things

1. I went to dinner and a movie with some dear friends last Friday night. We had dinner at a French cafe downtown that specializes in crepes. My first crepe experience; it was tasty and more filling than I thought it would be. One of the movie previews was for Gone Girl, a movie based on the best selling book that I had not read. The preview, and MMD's endorsement of the book, piqued my interest.

2. I read Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn. I started out disappointed that there were two narratives - but the book really needs two narratives for the story to work. It's entertaining, at some points thought provoking (like the paragraphs about "Cool Girls"), and I really liked that it is so abnormal. It does have some, kind of a lot for me, bad language (to go along with the toxicity of the characters). I found it difficult to put down - I really wanted to know what happened, and then what was going to happen. I would classify it as a Read if you like weird thrillers.

3. Squirms has been helping me in the yard lately. She likes to dig in the "sand" (dirt) and pick "weeds" (flowers, mainly amaryllis and crown of thorn blooms) while I pull weeds. Please don't get the impression that I'm actually helping our yard look better. More weeds have shown up in our grass since I started trying to rid the grass of weeds and I leave piles of the weeds I pick on the sidewalk because I usually abandon my task to chase after her somewhere. Plus, sand toys all over the sidewalk help the overall effect of "Warning: small kids and exhausted adults live in this house. Nothing looks clean, tidy, or neat."

My Helper.

 4. We also put aloe and this purple plant in a decorative pitcher (from our wedding decorations) for the back porch.

5. MMD brought me presents for my birthday. This adorably clever Manatee that holds tea leaves (get it?? Mana-tea!!) is one of them. 

6. Shelby Ann is Squirm's best friend. Squirms chases her around the yard yelling "Shelbeeee. What you doin?"

Best friends.

7. The Great is not a fan of real food. We've tried banana, avocado, and apple. It's getting difficult to trick him into opening his mouth when I have a spoon in my hand.

8. I like this picture of me.

9. R has been working hard to re-finish the family table we bought. The table is done and he has almost completed the chairs. The Squirms and the Great have already began using it - it's lovely.

10. It rained, stormed really, all day Saturday. It was beautiful. Squirms came out of her room wearing a hat and carrying her two swim suits and said "beach?" 

Dear Squirms

Dear Squirms.

You are a very cool two year old. However, this recent transition from two two-hour naps per day to one hour-and-a-half nap per day is taking your mother a bit longer to adjust to than you. I'm sorry that I don't make it to your room as fast as you would prefer - first I have to stumble from my bed, where I had just drifted off in an attempt for a mid-day nap, into the kitchen where I dip an old thin mint into leftover cream cheese icing and chug whatever coffee is left in the pot from this morning.

I am taking B12 and exercising more, in an attempt to have more energy; but, mommy would also be very okay if you wanted to take a longer nap....perhaps two-and-a-half hours, or even two hours? I think perhaps you are underestimating how wonderful lying still under a cozy blanket can be.

Your biggest fan,
mommy

p.s. Tanner and Shelby Ann have asked me to permanently hide the plastic straw you've been using as a specialized high-pitch flute.