On the not so sweet side, getting Theo out of the house in the mornings has become such a challenge lately. Requests, bribes and threats to get shoes on feet, coat on back, and hiney in car are met by various forms of resistance ranging from the flatly stated “I not going to school today” to much howling and throwing of oneself upon the floor. My friend Robin told me about how her mom once pretended to leave without her, going so far as to back the car out of the driveway while an instantly repentant Robin pressed her horrified face to the window. I suspected that Theo would not be at all perturbed were we to do something similar and I turned out to be right. Matt tried it out the other morning. After loudly announcing several times that he was going to leave without Theo, he ostentatiously closed and locked the door and headed to his car. Theo watched out the window briefly but Matt hadn’t even gotten to the car before he had disappeared from view into the depths of the house. When Matt came back in (under the pretense of having forgotten something) Theo was parading gaily around the living room, banging on things with a wooden hammer.

This is a collage of outtakes from taking our holiday card photo this year. I set up a big mirror to one side of the camera thinking that Matt and I could make funny faces into it and thus get the kids to look in that direction and laugh/smile. Then we would also smile and quickly snap the shot. In my fantasy, we get a shot where we’re all looking in the same direction to one side of the camera and smiling sweetly. However, the remote on my camera has a bit of delay so we could never get the timing right with the goofy faces versus the smiling ones. Plus the camera would make a beeping noise to alert of the imminent shutter release and part of the time the kids would look at the camera instead. Or we would. Or none of us would be looking at either the camera or the mirror. Or some of us (I won’ t name names) would go running off, or put our shoes on our hands and bang on the window, or just be really damn squirmy.

We dragged our Christmas tree out of storage in the garage this past weekend. I had these lovely visions of Theo and me hanging ornaments on the tree together as Christmas music played softly in the background but he just wadded a bunch of tinsel and ornaments together, lobbed the resulting mass into the depths of the tree, then wandered off to play with his train table.

Oh, one more thing. We were eating grapes after dinner the other day and when Theo got down to his last two, he did something rather odd. He named them “Grandpa” and “Keiko.” (Then he ate them.)

We’ve been having my favorite kind of weather lately: crisp fall sweater weather. (Speaking of sweaters, I want to explain those photos of me in my various outfits that you’re seeing on the Flickr page recently. I joined this group on Flickr where people post pictures of what we wore to work that day. I’m finding it entertaining and inspirational to see what other people are wearing, so I’m participating, too. It’s been fun, plus it gives me incentive to try to put myself together a little. It’s also a great litmus test for an outfit — I assume that complete lack of supportive comments from other members is an indication that the outfit is a dud.)

Anyway, as I was saying, lovely weather lately. We went on a walk in the woods on Saturday, photos on our Flickr page.

I also kicked her out of our bed this weekend. The first night she cried for, oh, 30-40 minutes (with periodic visits from me to soothe her) before she went to sleep. That was tough, and I did a fair bit of crying, too. The next night took about 15 minutes and was much less intense. Tonight it took about 5. Hopefully that’s a trend. The best part is that she has slept all night each of those nights instead of waking to nurse every few hours as she did when she was sharing our bed. Hopefully, that will continue. The crazy part is that *I* keep waking up every few hours anyway. I think I miss her warm little body snuggled up against me all night.

In other news, Theo choked the other day. Maggie was over for a play date and they were having lunch. Robin was watching them while I was in Polly’s room, changing a certain baby who had had an Xtreme Blowout. Theo was goofing around, stuffing his mouth full of cheesy bread then tossing his head around and laughing. I heard him start making this horrible noise and knew exactly what was happening. I tossed Polly into the crib - she had poop all up her back and was wearing nothing but a pair of green socks - and went running into the kitchen but Robin had already performed the Toddler Heimlich on him. He was scared and crying but okay. Still, I kept thwacking him on the back until Robin said, “Uh, Jen. I think he’s okay now.”

I uploaded a bunch of photos from the past several weeks to our Flickr page, including our day at Remlinger Farms, our trip to San Diego to visit the Ritchies, and our weekend at Cama Beach.

I just wanted to post a few quick things about Polly.

She has been an explosion of new stuff these days. She is mastering her hands and thus the ability to shove any nearby objects into her mouth. She’d been watching us eat with an unnerving intensity so we started her on solids (rice cereal) this week and she is digging it. She sits in her high chair at the kitchen counter with us when we’re eating dinner.

She isn’t sitting up unsupported yet but she’s getting close. To develop her trunk strength (and just to park her somewhere where she can’t skooch away) we’ve been putting her in the Exersaucer. She has a great time in there, bouncing and thwacking away at the various activities with great enthusiasm and delight (albeit a sorry lack of precision). Here’s a video.

Don’t get too excited, I just wanted to share some photos that Theo took the other morning.

Also, here’s a photo of our new yard. I wish we had a good “Before” picture showing all the crab grass and dandelions. Now there’s a patio covering about a 3rd of the yard and we had new sod put in. We moved the furniture from the deck to the patio and my dad got us that nice umbrella. There’s a dog run on the side of the house so that Dixie no longer gets to use the whole yard as her own personal toilet which makes one a little more open to the idea of rolling around on the grass. And it is such lovely lush grass, quite deserving of some rolling around upon. Theo’s napping right now but once he’s up we’re going to spend some time out there togevo.

Granddad came for a week-long visit a few weeks ago. We took a ferry ride to the peninsula to poke around the tide pools and beach at Salt Creek. It was an all day affair and Theo skipped his nap. There were some great things about that day, most notably the ferry ride and romping around on the beach, but overall we all wound up tired and crabby. (Theo’s nap isn’t just for his benefit, ya know.) My favorite part of Granddad’s visit was the morning we spent picking blackberries at a nearby park. Theo pretty much ate them as fast as I could pick them but with Granddad’s hefty contribution we would up with a couple of pounds’ worth take home. I slapped together a blackberry streusel pie that by happy accident turned out awesomely delicious.

Polly recently had her 4 month check up. Her stats: 25 inches, 14 lbs 11 ounces. She’s 75th percentile for both height and weight. Developmentally she’s doing great. She’s been rolling over for several weeks now and is also ooching around on her tummy. Her first tooth is coming in (bottom left) and I see another one breaking the surface, too (bottom right). She such a delight, always smiling and cooing. She has also been laughing with a wonderful raspy chortle, and it is just the greatest sound. No, I take that back. The greatest sound is when Theo laughs and then she laughs at him and they just keep going back and forth.

Matt and I celebrated our 5th wedding anniversary last Thursday. This makes 13 years we’ve been in love. Here’s to many more years togevo, Papa Bear.

Today was my first day back at work. I’ll be sticking with my old part time schedule for the time being which makes me very happy. I spent last week transitioning Polly into day care, working up from two hours on Monday to six on Friday. This was ostensibly for Polly’s benefit but also helped ease me into it so that I was able to make it into my first day of work without a tear-streaked face.

So, Polly! She is such a doll. I’m sorry we haven’t been keeping you apprised as she went through her phases…from being a squishy mewling newborn, to when she’d lie on her back and march in place with an intent look on her face, to when she’d lie there blowing bubbles and waving her arms around like an angry crab, or when she’d lie back in her bouncy chair and twiddle her hands under her chin in a very evilly scheming manner.

Theo was an easy baby — a great eater, a great sleeper, hardly ever cried — so to preserve the balance of the universe I’d been expecting Polly to be a royal pain. So far, however, the scales have remained tipped in our favor. She doesn’t sleep as well as Theo did and is still spending a good chunk of the night in our bed with us, but we usually get a good 4-6 hour stretch from her in her crib every night. She is very social, more so than Theo was I think, and smiles and gurgles all the time. She has also been quick with physical milestones and started rolling over at 3 months and lately has been inch worming around on her belly.

Frankly, I can’t stand how sweet she is with her shining eyes and a big beaming smile. Her hair (which sticks straight up in the air, by the way) is so so soft and oh, the way she smells! Well, okay, maybe sometimes she smells not so fresh but underneath it all she has that delicious baby smell. It takes every ounce of restraint I have to keep from gobbling her up.

Theo has been adjusting well. He has definitely ramped up his testing of us and other classic Terrible Twos behavior, but he also makes us laugh on a daily basis and can bring me to tears with how sweet he can be sometimes, like when he sang “You Are My Sunshine” to me one night as I was putting him to bed, or when he rocks Polly in her car seat while singing “Rock a Bye Baby.” He has never been hostile towards Polly but was largely disinterested in her until a few months ago. He becomes more and more interested in her all the time and likes to show her off to his classmates.

We’ve been careful to spend quality time doing Theo stuff. It was rough for a few weeks this summer when Matt injured his back and had to have surgery. He was unable to bend over or lift anything more than 10 pounds for several weeks, so he could not pick up either child, vacuum, do laundry, load/unload the dishwasher (although I did point out that he could wash dishes by hand), etc. Aunt Jessica stayed with us while Matt got his surgery so that was a huge help, then Nana came to visit and help out right after the operation. He is fully recovered now.

We thought about taking Theo out to the 4th of July fireworks but decided in the end not to. It just seemed like it could go badly, what with Matt’s back, the crowds, the late hour, and his unknown reaction to the fireworks. Watching them on TV that night after Theo was sound asleep, though, I felt sad that we hadn’t let him experience that. Nearly everything I encounter now I see through the filter of my children’s eyes. I feel like we say “no” to him so much and I wish he could understand that far from denying him everything, we’d do anything for him. Our outings, our meals, our days, our lives are structured around his needs and wants.

We’ve been having a fun summer. Matt and Theo have been spending time in our “pool” (the hot tub with the temp turned way down) and Theo has been going “unnawada!”, although he forgets sometimes to hold his breath. He loves the water so we enrolled him in swim classes for the fall. We’ve been having lots of visits fro family and friends all summer and there is more to come. We’ve also been on a camping trip, two nights and three days. Being in the tent was too much excitement for Theo and he did not want to go sleep. He kept climbing out of the Pack and Play to bounce around on the air mattress Matt and I were going to sleep on. Eventually, about 3 hours past his bedtime, we put him in the minivan and belted him into his car seat. He almost seemed relieved to be confined, and immediately took on a glassy-eyed stare and then feel asleep a short while later. Naps were completely out of the question, however, and by Day 3 Theo was pretty much falling apart.

Well, I know this is very disjointed and I’ve forgotten a bunch of stuff but I do want to get this update posted. We’ll try to do better with keeping up to date. I don’t have time to stick photos inline with this entry, but there are a bunch of new ones on our Flickr site.

We’ve decided to name Polly Josephine, which seems to fit her very well.

Jen started having contractions at around 11:30pm. Around 4:10am or so we made the decision to head in. Jen was able to walk and talk through the contractions but they had become more regular and we decided that it was better to be safe than sorry. I don’t think that any of the nurses believed that she was ready to give birth given her calm exterior but we explained Theo’s rapid ascent to the on call doc, she performed an exam, and 15min later we were on our way to a delivery room. We made the choice to have them break Jen’s water at around 5:30am, labor came strong and furious after that, and after 2 hard pushing sessions our daughter emerged into the bright lights and happy faces of the hospital room. They actually had to rush our delivery doctor in to keep up with the record pace of Jen’s delivery. The nurses and doctors were all great and were blown away by how quickly it happened and how effortlessly Jen made it all look. I’d like to think that this effortless birth experience is a commentary on how easy this child is going to be to raise but even I am not foolish enough to make that leap.

Mom and kiddo are curled up in bed, getting to know one another. Dad got a nap in earlier today and is filling his time between baby visits with various errands and announcements to the outside world of our amazing progress. Per hospital policy we’re here until tomorrow morning but should be discharged at that time if things keep on track.

We miss little T and are anxious to get home to see him. I’m looking forward to seeing how Theo reacts to his new sis. It’s going to be a big change for him but he is a very loving kid and is going to make a great big brother.