The Advent of "Why?"

"I wanna wear this, Mom," Stella says holding up a little pink sun dress. It's been unseasonably cool here in Phoenix. It rained in the middle of the day on Friday. It poured down. This is glorious, mind you, but nonetheless unexpected. For this reason I tell Stella she can wear the dress but she needs to wear a shirt underneath.

"Why?"

"Because it's a little chilly outside lately."

"Why, Mom?"

"Because there are clouds in the sky."

"Why?"

"Because a cold front has moved East off the Pacific."

"Why?"

"Because," and here I must pause. Because? Have you ever had an existential conversation about the weather? Do I offer her Jeff Goldblum's chaotic theory from the helicopter ride in Jurassic Park?

"Because a butterfly flapped it's wings in Japan..." Of course I don't say that. Mostly because she has moved on.

"Can you put your hanger back?"

"Why, Mom?"

"Because hangers don't belong on the floor."

"Why?"

"Because they can't hang there."

I think you know the rest.

Thank You, Jesus, For...

Part of our nighttime routine is to say some prayers and talk to Jesus. We thank Him for the day and people that we love. I think it's fun to see who Stella remembers first. Tonight the first name out of her mouth before I even finished the Our Father was my brother Nate. I thought that was especially sweet as she hadn't seen him in a week.

"OK, thank you for Nate. Who else?"
"Papa."
"OK, thank you for Papa."
"Gigi. Mommy. Daddy."

Really, who wouldn't want to hear that? Then she really gets to the heart of the matter.

"Target. McDonald's. The shops."

How Do I Stand It?

The growing up, I mean. How do I not burst into a thousand tears? Stella's in her bunk bed and Gianna's in the crib. I'm in my bedroom in the middle of the day. With a light on. And flagrantly TYPING ON MY KEYBOARD. AS LOUD AS POSSIBLE. Because there is no baby asleep in a little bed in here with me.

How do I stand it? Seriously. And there's going to be more of this. These transitions and milestones. These aches and sadness and the welling up of tears.

I caught Stella playing in her room instead of napping. She saw me and said, "Oh, Goo' morning, Mom."

"It's not morning, Stell, you never slept. Time for bed."

"Want to sleep with me, Mom?"

Totally caught off guard, I oblige her and say, "OK, scoot over."

We're laying there and she's not settling down. And as much as I want to sleep beside her little, sweet frame I know she won't sleep. I have to pull myself away. Because as much as I am having a hard time with all this growing up, I know myself enough to know that I'll have an even harder time with the small child that she still very much is trying to keep her shit together without a nap.

I let myself out of her room with warnings of some swats if she gets up to play. I peek in a few minutes later and she is asleep.

And in the next room in Stella's crib is the other baby. The ten month old baby. I went through this with Stella, too. And it helps to know that I will survive. I had the hardest time when Stella moved from our room to her own room when she was Gianna's age. I was so sad and felt so alone and far away from her. Of course Jamie was with me but, eh, not the same thing.

All this growing up makes it hard for me to indulge my favorite pastime: purging excess material goods from our home. I have the hardest time throwing the girls' stuff away, or passing it on, or even packing it up. I think this is because it's a physical admission that they are beyond a certain point. It sounds so silly to say it out loud. But there's this part of me that craves the beginning again. The uncertainty of parenthood. The unknown of what I was getting myself into. All the growing up I had to do.

Gianna's Atypical Evening

• Ate bird poop
  
• Was slightly run over by her sister via the Cozy Coupe
  
• Fell on a cup in the bath and got a minor chest abrasion
  

These are the days it's hard to be little.

And these are the days it's hard to be the little's mom.

Made My Day

I don't know what else to say. Obviously she's not potty trained, but she had to go and when I stuck her on the toilet--she went! That is one less poop I need to excavate from the nether regions! And this is so much more exciting to me than it should be.

More Stella-isms

Upon discovering something is amiss/out-of-order/unexpected:
"Dear me! Wha happen? Wha happen, Mutter?"

***

When being put down for her nap, usually after much protesting and some tears, as soon as her head hits her pillow:
"Goo' night. Goo' night, Mutter."

***

After I hang up the phone up:
"Whas that, Mom? Whas that? That Jesus? That Jesus, Mom?"

***

While getting her poopy diaper changed:
"Gross. Gross, Mom. My deepah'"

Photographic Evidence: The Silence is Not Golden When Two Toddlers Are Concerned

April 2008
Originally uploaded by alishialinn

If you have been or are the parent of a small child you certainly know that silence is a treasured state. Of course, it is not easily won. And it is rarely a good thing when small children are awake or in pairs. It is with such knowledge that my friend Tara and I went in search of our wee ones when we had been enjoying a rather focused and lengthy--albeit three to five minute--conversation the other day.

This is what we found. Not bad, mind you. No damage done, just belongings hastily strewn about the room. We stuck them in the bed afterward. They couldn't quite figure out how to climb into it on their own so we helped tackle that temptation.

I am suddenly reminded of an afternoon a few months ago. Stella was playing alone in the living room while I was in the kitchen having some lunch. Since much of her solo play involves lots of noise--little people chattering, sound effects and the like--complete silence is rare. So after a few silent minutes passed I went to check on her only to find her slumped against the couch. She had fallen asleep in the middle of her activities and surrendered to her exhaustion.

That was a good kind of quiet.

The Best Day At My House in 2008*

I have just enjoyed ninety minutes of middle-of-the-day solitude WHILE MY CHILDREN SIMULTANEOUSLY SLUMBER! This is a first.

Other things that make it the best day: went to Mass and Stella was good, Gianna cooed and blurbed her way through, a clean house, my freshly cleaned and folded laundry, a soda for no reason, picked some weeds, watered some plants and noticed new plants sprouting from the ground, found Stella some cute flip flops, Stella calls me "Mudder," sister comes in two weeks, friend coming next week, two months from now we will be in San Diego and my dad and his wife are buying us tickets to Sea World!

And other great things pending.

All this on the heels of some not-so-great times makes it even sweeter. Sweeter than my sister's Diet Dr. Pepper.

*To be said in Kyle Dwyer's voice, for those that know him.

April 2008: What We Like

Gianna, 9 months: her paci, standing up, probing orifices (orifi?) with he sharp-nailed index finger (beware of your gums when she approaches your mouth!), peas, her sister*, drinking from a cup thank-you-very-much, being awake at naptime, saying "Yayayayayayaya!" and gurgling

Stella, 2 years, 4 months: her sister ("John-Ah")*, her DAD!!!! thank-you-very-much, licking rocks, picking weeds, watching Peter Rabbit and Curious George, talking, Autumn Wheat, tacos, saying "NO!", her friends, "Abah, EEek, Mamy, Mace, Cahtah," her cousin "Camren," baby treats

Jamie, 28 years, 2 months: reading, his punching bag, talking to other men who like to talk about philosophy, tea in a green mug, preparing for law school ("Babe, I'm in it to win it!"), 30 Rock, Lost, sauerkraut, roasted chicken, New York Times over the Wall Street Journal, his Geeg, his Stell, belching in videos*

Alishia, 33 years, 3 months: sewing, looking at craft books on amazon, reading A Tale of Two Cities, sitting in Jamie's office looking out the window at her plants, drying clothes on the clothesline, virtual shopping at Barney's, whiskey sours, Scrabulous, chatting off the record, morning coff, showing off my large feet*

****

Yesterday Equals Frustrating, Today Equals Better

Staying home with children is a series of minor failures and victories. Sometimes they balance out in the course of a day. Sometimes they most definitely do not. Yesterday morning was a crucible of wills (is there such a thing?) that set the tone for the rest of the day--it was only seven and I was exhausted.

Stella awoke in a crabby, desperate mood. It perpetuated my mood. I was mean and impatient as I tried to ride her wave of early morning "decisions" in a period of ten minutes: get dressed, wear a dress, eat Aunumn Wheat, no Aunumn Wheat, shoes, no shoes, yogurt, "Stop IT," go outside ,ad nauseum.

I hard-boiled some eggs for an entire hour. At least. And I did a host of other annoying lame and poorly executed tasks that I am thankful I cannot recall. We were on pins and needles waiting for 10:00 to roll around so we could go invade our friends' house with our pleasant demeanors and morning breath.

This morning has already been an improvement. We had a good breakfast without travail. I cleaned up the kitchen with the use of a timer: only fifteen minutes at a time so my children don't fall into a morning of parental neglect. We all got dressed without drama and we went on a bike ride. Now Gianna is sleeping and it didn't take a magic voodoo dance to get her to bed and Stella is playing peacefully with her toys so I can record the minutiae of my days.

At least Jamie is ever-patient and always forgiving. I might have been fun and easy-going before we were married, but I'm not always a peach these days. And he doesn't always remind me of this fact.

My Poop: Exclamation Point

This is the time of year where Stella likes to run around in the backyard after dinner. Tonight she did so without a diaper on.

We were inside with our friend Michael. Every now and then we caught a glimpse of Stella running around. Suddenly she yelled something incomprehensible. We didn't think much of it. Out friend's dog, Doodle, was running around back there, too. We figured she was shouting at him or just playing around.

I peeked out the window to ensure myself that she was indeed safe. I caught a glimpse of our dogs chomping on something. Some food? A toy? A lizard or bird? They frequently catch critters. Who knows what it was.

We carry on with our visit.

Stella continues to yell--lamenting almost--something that is now making sense.

Jamie says, "Is she yelling, 'My poop!'? Stella, did you poop?"

"Yes!" she replies, somewhat alarmed.

In a flash it all computes.

I now know what the dogs were chomping on earlier--Stella's poop.

Yes indeed.

"Stella, did the dogs eat your poop?"

"Yes! Yes! My poop! My poop! Oh. Oh no. My poop!"

Michael acts quickly, "Doodle, get in here."

Stella continues to talk about the social affront committed against her and her feces. It's not disgusting to her, it's more like when a playmate steals a favorite toy. She feels wronged. She runs around repeating it as if she wants her poop back.

Michael comforts her, "I would be upset, too, if that happened in my immediate company."

Totally Pleased With Herself

Totally Pleased With Herself
Originally uploaded by alishialinn

The girls love to play with their empty diaper boxes. Stella makes cars, towers, baby beds, hiding places for her people, general merriment is had by all. This morning while Gianna was playing with hers and I stepped into the adjacent bathroom to brush my teeth, etc, she pulled herself up to stand.

I was so overcome with excitement for her that I started to loudly praise her. This pleased her enough to try again so I could capture it on film. Isn't that face just the SWEETEST thing?

Yes, sweeter than the faces of all your children.

My Dad's Flickr

He's all growed up: his own flickr account.

In addition to which he sent me an email that ended with these words, "THERE, PUT THAT IN YOUR BLOG."

Oh, Dad, I will. Thank you.

Flickr and Stuff

I just finished a conversation with my father. He was talking on his cell phone using Bluetooth while driving in his truck. I was priming him on the merits of flickr. It's one of those conversations that daughters didn't have with the fathers last decade. We were comparing notes about sharing and storing digital photos.

"I just bought some DVDs to use to store my pictures and get them off the hard drive."

"Dad, I use flickr and I don't have to worry about losing my photos or storing them anywhere special. And it's so easy to upload them. You'd love it. Granted you have to pay twenty-five dollars a year, but consider how much time and money os spent trying new ways to store your photos or fretting about it." These were not my exact words, but if I was more immediately eloquent that's what I would've said.

I simultaneously love and hate telling my dad about new technology. If you're my age you might know of what I speak. There are all these things out there that make life so easy and manageable: Google, Flickr, blogs, youtube, yahoo, eBay, craigslist, etc. These are all things that did not exist ten years ago. (The writer pauses and thinks, "Ten years ago it was 1998. These things might have existed. I always think it's still the early 2000s.") People talk about the digital divide. I live the digital divide with my father.

My dad is technical and capable and smart. He's a tinkerer who loves to fix things. He can fix many things. He is good using computers and the internet, but it's not like second nature to him. I grew up with computers and while I am no expert I am able to figure lots out on my own. I just, well, tinker. But much of this stuff can't be explained. He'll ask me questions over the phone and it is then that I have great respect for customer service professional in India who get phone calls from people trying to figure out how to fix the Word document formatting so the outline doesn't automatically indent the following line when they no longer need it to do so (c'mon, you know what I'm talking about). I cannot for the life of me conjer the proper vocabulary to instruct my father with computer issues over the phone.

I joke about this idea I have: The Technological Fallacy. Technology is supposed to make our lives easier. However, it usually requires a lot of work to get it going: uploading photos somewhere safe, digitizing all your movies or music. The universal remote. The fallacy is that it isn't always easy. It's especially difficult for people whose parents call to get help retrieving all the lost music from their holiday playlist that they programmed into their iPod shuffle three hours before their holiday party. You can troubleshoot for a max of ten minutes and them you want to hang up the phone before you lovingly scream obscenities at your beloved parent because you have no clue what happened. And yes you did follow the directions, you understand that. But how do you explain that sometimes it doesn't make a difference? IT JUST DIDN'T WORK AND I DON'T KNOW WHY I'M SO SORRY FOR YOUR DIGITAL LOSS.

Phew.

I wish I made commission from flickr, however, because darn it if they're not user friendly and helping to narrow the generational digitized divide.

"Can I drag all my photos from iPhotos into flickr and drop them there?"

"Yes. You have to download the flickr Uploader though."

"Oh. OK."

"I'll send you a link."

"Well, then. I'm excited to go home and pay twenty-five dollars to join flickr."

"Well, I'm excited that you're excited."

I'll have to remember my excitement in case he calls me this evening with a question that starts out something like this, "OK, Alish, I'm in flickr. I've joined. Now, where did all my pictures go?"

Obscure Memories: Memora Obscura (That's made up Latin)

My brother commented on the fact that I remember obscure things. To prove him right I'm going to offer up more obscure memories. I used to ask my mom and dad for stories from their childhood all the time. I loved it. I loved imaging them as little dopplegangers of their adult self conducting life in the 50s and 60s. I'm going to record my memories for my children's later referral:

My first friend, Michelle Nissler, and I once planned to carve flutes out of sticks to give to her father for Christmas.

My brother was a huge KISS fan. He had a little copper square that he had banged the word KISS into and wore it around his neck on a string.

I used to feed our family cat, Buffy. She was technically my brother's cat. I remember thinking what a good citizen I was for feeding his cat for him.

Once I sent away for Picture Pages and forgot to put a stamp on my envelope. It got sent back to me.

One time when Nate was really mad at Dad, he threw a Fudgesicle at him. It hit Dad's chest sideways and left a Fudgesicle skid mark in his chest hair. This really impressed me. I was even more impressed that Dad just chuckled at his foolish son instead of soundly beating him.

I once brought a roly poly into a restaurant with me. I didn't want it to die in the heat of the car. And then I lost it in the cracks of the booth.

I used to pretend that it was "snowing" in the kitchen by using my mom's flour.

Mom taught us how to make her coffee so that we could get the pot brewing and bring her a cup on Saturday mornings when we were home from school.

That's all for now as my husband is reading over my shoulder. Always stifles my creativity.

My Fourth Grade Subterfuge

I was a member of Columbia House Record Club. I was ten and I was seduced by the idea of twelve for the price of one. I still remember some of the titles I ordered:

Rocky IV soundtrack
Back to the Future soundtrack
El Debarge ("Who's Johnny?," she said...)
Thriller (I need not name the artist. You really should know.)

Even better than those titles is this fact: I chose to order records instead of tapes because of the following edict set forth by my older brother. He declared that if I got records I would be able to listen to the records while at home and enjoy the utmost quality that they could provide. In addition, I would be able to make cassette recordings of my records and have a portable version for use on my walkman when I was tooling around town on my bike. The best of both worlds.

I'm leaving a minor detail out of this story. I joined this club on my own. I funded it with my own money. "How did you pay with a check?" you might be asking. I didn't. I would save my money and ride to the Circle K on the corner of Camelback and 82nd Street in Scottsdale, Arizona and I would buy money orders! Even better is the fact that I used my own money that I earned from my job at the bookstore dusting bookshelves. Five dollars a week.

The sad fact is that I can't imagine a fourth grader being allowed such autonomy today.

Did I mention that my mom didn't know. She didn't know. Now she does.

Some Easter Cheer

A little dancing with Stella's new Side Snap signature move.



And a little doll quilt that I made with a kit purchased from etsy. It's an Easter treat for my girls.

While Helping Around the House: Or How We Know It's Been Awhile Since We've Cleaned the Place Up

Helping me in the yard:

"What's that, Mom?"
"A weed. Can you help me pull them?"
She exclaims, "Yes!"
"Mom, there's an unner one. An unner one, Mom. An unner one, an unner one."
Ad nauseum.

Helping Jamie in the yard:

"Poop, Dad! Yuck."
"Yep, there's poop. I'm picking it up."
"An unner poop, Dad. An unner one, an unner one, an unner one."
Ad nauseum.

Helping us finish the prayer before dinner:

Jamie says, "Amen."
Stella says, "Oh, man."

More Words

Upon awaking:

"Mommy, did you sleep? Well?"

"Yes. Did you sleep? Well?"

"Yes"

***

At breakfast:

"I want some."

"Some what?"

"Some showmy."

"Showmy?"

"Yes."

"Show me what you want."

Points at yogurt and says "showmy."

I realize that she now calls yogurt "Show me" because I never understood what she wanted with her frantic grunts and pointing so I would open the fridge and say, "Show me." And she always wanted the yogurt during these exchanges. Thus yogurt = "show me."

***

After returning from an outing with her dad.

"Did you have fun?"

"I had bun."

"Did Dad have fun?"

"Yes. Dad have bun. Gigi have bun. Mom have bun?"

Always.

Represent!

This is a classic Gianna posture: craning around me to see what Stella is up to. And, of course, a small little smile acknowledging how cool her big sister is.

I thought it was high time for some major Gianna face time on the stellarstories blog.