The Big Snip

Dear Declan,

If you stop screaming at me, I promise I will never get you circumcised ever again.

Love,

Mama

My Old Buddy Bert

Bert, you are one good boy.

Fundalentil

Dear Lentil Soup,

I love you. You are fresh and delicious. You have always just begun to simmer when m'babe starts signing "please!" frantically, pointing in your direction. You make my husband believe he likes sweet potatoes and spinach - or at least he would believe it, if he could tell they were in you. You are generous enough for supper, leftovers for tomorrow, and a few lunch-sized servings for our friend Mr. Freezer. You are the perfect meatless supper for a Friday in Lent (although I have to say, we love you so much that it would be more punishment to make us eat meat tonight, Catholic church.)

Can't wait to see you at suppertime.

xoxo
Treen

Hear, Hear

Declan is almost 6 weeks old. His interests still include boobs, sleeping, and hockey. He's a pretty easy baby, still sleeping in long stretches and eating well. He's starting to smile and chatter, especially with his big sister. All in all, he's been doing great. We noticed this weekend, however, that his ear is draining some kind of fluid. We're trying not to jump to conclusions about it, but can't help thinking that my Mom was born with a draining ear. Her ear drained until she was 16 and she was finally able to have surgery to stop it. Draining isn't a big deal, but my Mom has also never been able to hear from the ear that drained. Here's hoping everything is okay, we're off to the dr. tomorrow.

Perhaps we should get Dr. Lee to check his tastebuds, too:

Reality Check

I'm coming to the end of my first full week home alone with both kids everyday. Talia is in the middle of her daycare transition, so she's been home full time. At the beginning of the week, I wasn't sure how things would go - we had a full week planned, including lots of "firsts" for Mommy to handle with both babes. But it went great. I have 2 wonderfully easy babies, although each can have their moments, and the week has flown by. I had a great time being out and about with the kiddies, Talia is becoming such a chatterbox and interacts more and more everyday, and of course it's a big deal when Declan actually keeps his eyes open for a few minutes. I loved watching Talia being "big sister" - always eager to help and run to "brutter's" side whenever he makes a peep.

Our outing this morning lasted much longer than I had anticipated, so that sort of threw off our day. I have a mental list of things I want to get done each day, and after Talia got up from her afternoon nap approx. 1 hour earlier than usual, I was pretty behind on my list. So after I changed her diaper, and she ran over to the rocking chair and asked me to sit down ("Down! Down!" while signing please and tapping the chair) for the 1 millionth time today, I said "Sorry honey, Mommy doesn't have time for that right now." And that's when I saw this face:

. I think I actually captured the moment her heart broke (or at least got bruised.) And it instantly hit me: this year of mat leave is for me to spend with Declan and Talia. I have many friends who don't have the benefit of mat leave, and have to go back to work a few months (or in some cases, a few weeks) after having a baby. So sure, I didn't get as much done today as I had originally planned. But did that really mean I didn't have 5 minutes to sit with my daughter in our side-by-side rocking chairs while rocking like a crazy person and singing "Rock, rock, rockin' in our rockin' chairs, we don't care if we don't get nowhere!"? I don't think so.

Neither does she.

Grammie's Girl

Today's telephone conversation between Grammie and Talia:

Grammie: Hi there, Tally!

Talia: Mmm-hmmm?

Grammie: What are you doing today?

Talia: Mmm-hmmm?

Grammie: Did you have a good sleep?

Talia: YESH!

Grammie: What's Declan doing?

Talia: Brut-ter! Brut-ter!

Grammie: You're a good girl, Tally.

Talia: Do-da! (Dora)

Grammie: I'm going to see you soon, Tally!

Talia: Why?

Grammie: I'm coming to visit!

Talia: Why?

Grammie: Because it's Easter! I'm coming to your house!

Talia: NO!

Grammie: Don't you want me to come to your house?

Talia: No no no no no no no no no no no!!!!!!!!!

Grammie: (laughing)

Talia: (drops phone in dog bed and stalks off in a huff)

In other news, we brought the potty upstairs and have started reading books about the potty, sitting on the potty, and just generally talking about the potty. A lot. This is what all the prep has produced so far:

Talia loves to sit her babies on the potty and yell "STINKY!!" Here's hoping she starts setting herself there sometime soon. You know, Talia is pretty clearly Grammie's girl. 30 years ago, I was also Grammie's girl, and MY Grammie trained me in a weekend. Any chance of history repeating itself during our upcoming visit, Grammie?

Big Tease

M'baby is such a big girl these days, she has discovered she loves to tease.

During the Olympics, I got all caught up in Joannie Rochette's story, and would cry whenever she mentioned that her Mom had been her best friend. (Now, I realize that I can't actually be my kid's friend, I am her parent, but you know...) So I would tearfully ask Talia "Who's your best friend?" She would come running over to me, throw her little arms around me, look up at me with those big brown eyes and sweet smile and reply:

"Cuncle!"

Which is what she calls Uncle Kent. And of course, I would pretend to be shocked and appalled (okay, it didn't take much pretending. I mean, really. CUNCLE?!?!?") and it turned into a great big game. This pleased Uncle Kent to no end. My brother actually calls here during the day and says "Yeah, put my best friend on" when I answer the phone, he asks her who her best friend is, and they chat away for a few minutes. It's very cute.

This weekend, Cuncle got a taste of his own medicine, though. He came out for supper on Saturday night since my sister-in-law and nephew were away for the weekend. We were sitting at the supper table when Cuncle asked Talia "Who's your best friend?" She looked at him with a giant grin and said:

"Auntie!"

That's m'girl.

Yikes

Thrush.

We gots it.

It blows.

Here's poor little Declan with his gentian violet face. Wish it would clear up the baby acne and goopy eyes, too.

Life Is Good

Things could not be better here at the Raine Drop.

Talia continues to adore The Bro.

Declan continues to pack on the weight (mostly into his cheeks) and is settling into more of a schedule everyday.

Mama continues to get more sleep than anyone with a month-old baby deserves, in my humble opinion (not that I'm complaining, Declan!!)

It's almost Easter, and the weather feels like Spring, which means we get to wear our new spring clothes!

The old 19 inch TV keeps flickering more and more often - a new TV seems to be just around the corner. We don't even watch that much TV, but it was pretty sad to sit on the couch and squint at our tiny TV during the Olympics. ("What was the score?" "What flag is that?" "Why can't we see the entire picture?" LOL!) And it's depressing to play Wii on such a tiny, sad TV. We could just go and get a new TV, but since we don't use it that much, and neither of us like to waste things, we just haven't because this one still works. Now it's become a huge joke with our family and friends - we had some friends over during the Olympics, and everyone let out a huge cheer everytime it flickered. And at the beginning of every month, Rainer and I guess what day the TV will finally give out. Good times!

We started Bark Buster training the boys again, their behaviour is about a million percent better after only a few days. Erin, Edie & Jackie came by for a visit on Friday and they did NOT get mauled or even barked at. Success!! Today, only Bert noticed that the garbage truck had the audacity to park at the end of our driveway and steal our garbage - and he wasn't even all that upset about it. My biggest pet peeve is a poorly trained dog. I especially hate that I own two of them. True, we have more work to do, and there is always room for improvement. But they no longer bark at the doorbell, they sit & stay when told, they don't go on the baby's blanket when he's playing on the floor, and they're almost broken of jumping up. We're on the right track.

And lastly, we're having roast chicken for supper tonight. Life is good.

Steppin' Out

Spring fever has hit so we've been out and about here this week:

- The boys have been spending longer and longer stretches outside, which burns off some energy. I'm looking forward to getting back into the Bark Busters training with them once the snow is gone. They were so good last summer, but we've really fallen off the training plan over the winter, and like you would expect, their behaviour has gotten pretty bad again.

- Declan and I have had a day at the mall, the grocery store, and today we went to the chiropractor and Starbucks. Pretty wild stuff, I know. Declan is not quite the shopper his sister was at this age, on account of him needing to nurse a lot more often. I have a feeling I'm going to be a very regular visitor at the Family Room at the mall over the next few months.

- Talia has been spending her final days at Jojo's house. She goes 2 days next week, and then Jojo quits daycare and goes back to work at the school. I'm very sad, as Joanne was an excellent daycare provider, but it's the right move for her, so I'm glad about that. We have another home daycare lined up, so after a couple of weeks of a break, Talia will start going to the new daycare two days a week. We went back and forth about whether or not to send Talia to daycare while I was off on mat leave, we decided to keep her in half-time for a couple of reasons:

• it would be good for her to stay in her regular routine


• she loves Jojo and the other kids


• it's good for her to play with the other kids


• they spend a lot of time playing outside, which will be hard for me to manage until Declan gets on somewhat of a schedule and it warms up quite a bit


• it gives me a few days to get out and about to run errands a little easier - Talia is still a baby in many ways, it's hard to manage both of them sometimes. With Declan in the bucket carseat and Talia not able to walk very far yet, they take up my entire cart, leaving me no room for the groceries.


• it gives me a few days to catch up on sleep, etc. if we have some bad nights (which we haven't yet, but I know we will)


• we had to pay for her spot anyway, in order to keep it until next Feb. when I go back to work

So far, it has worked out really well. I hope her new daycare is just as good as Jojo's place. Finding daycare is so stressfull!!

Here are some pics from the last few days. Declan fits into newborn jeans now, woo-hoo! And the shoes he's wearing are the exact same ones (boy version, but same size) his sister wore in her 6 month pictures, which I actually had taken when she was about 7.5 months old. (No, he doesn't have huge feet, they are newborn shoes - Tally's feet are just freakishly small.)

Day 1

Our company is gone, and Daddy has gone back to work, leaving Mama outnumbered. My goal for today is for Daddy to return to the same number of wives, children and pets that he left here this morning.

So far, so good. My meds have kicked in already, so I am practically not bothered at all by my sinus/ear infection. Talia slept in until 8am, Declan slept in until almost 10am. The staggered wake-up time was the perfect way to ease into our day. So far everyone has gotten up, gotten dressed, had breakfast and lunch, 1 of the 3 of us has bathed (mmmmm, clean baby smell) and now both babes are having naps. Talia was also on the receiving end of her very first-ever time-out, but we all survived the morning without a problem. Victory is within reach, my friends.

When people learned that we were having our second baby when our first was 19 months old, they almost all had some kind of horror story to tell us, and usually ended the conversation with "You'll be busy!!!" Um, thanks. That kind of advice was so terribly helpful. We would usually brush it off, but from time to time I would have moments of panic, thinking THAT MANY PEOPLE CAN'T BE WRONG. Fortunately, Rainer would calm me down in these moments. In the words of my darling, caring, supportive husband: "People way stupider than us have more than 1 kid all the time, how hard can it be?"

So far it honestly has not been any big deal. We realize that we've been blessed with 2 easy babies, and that we may be in for it yet. But look at those babes. Who cares how hard it might be? Love!!