Clean-up problems solved

I take it back. Emery does still say humorous things. The other night she shared with us a ground-breaking solution that will actually make cleaning up fun:

"You know how it's not fun to clean up? Well, here's what you can do - you can just clean up with one hand and play with the other."

If only.

"The white man" and other things that are making us laugh

A few weeks ago, soon after Matt and the girls had been watching quite a bit of the coverage of the Pope's visit to the U.S., Anna Kimball asked, "Mommy, that house that we saw at the running race (a big brick art museum downtown), is that where the white man lives?"

I just love the connections kids make at this age. Like, here's the most important looking man I have ever seen and then there's the biggest house I have ever seen so naturally the two must go together.

Jamison puts on a great show for me and the church nursery workers every week. Whenever I drop  him off, instead of crying, he just freezes with one knee slightly bent and stares at the ground. He won't make eye contact with anyone. Not even me.

Now what could be going through his head? Maybe "if I act like I'm not in this room I won't really have to be here?" Would that we could really know ... In any case, this peaceful opposition to being left in the nursery is always good for a few chuckles.

I'm starting to get concerned that since Emery is 5 1/2 she isn't going to say as many funny things anymore. None really come to mind right now. But, she still scrunches up her nose when she's explaining something important and that's kind of funny. And the relative maturity that comes from 5 1/2 years on this planet is certainly welcome on days dominated by irrational toddler/preschooler behavior.

She hasn't shed a tear

Emery's been in kindergarten almost a month now and I can't say that Anna Kimball has once indicated that she misses her or wishes she were still at home with us during the day. It's not as if Anna Kimball is happy to have her gone, it's just that, well, she's content with our new normal. 

These children, they have a lot they can teach us! I have shed more than enough tears for the both of us and have done more than my fair share of complaining inwardly and outwardly about this transition to having one member of our family in school five days a week. 

Anna Kimball is also pretty proud to now be in preschool. She does the one-morning-a-week co-op preschool that Emery did and according to her teacher, acts like she's been in school all her life. 

She's also doing a fantastic job of playing with Jamison and taking on the role of calling the shots now that big sister is out of the picture much of the time.

Having Emery in kindergarten is a startling wake-up call to just how quickly the "littlest years" fly by. I'm so happy I get to be with Anna Kimball and Jamison during the day and really just want to follow Anna Kimball's lead in embracing and accepting the season that we are now in.

Here's our brave and happy kindergartener, who has also shed her fair share of tears ... but now bounds down the steps each afternoon happy to declare she had a "no tears" day. Gotta love her!

"You don't have to tell me because I already know."

Currently, this is one of Emery's most-used responses to any information being relayed to her. I think it usually tends to be in response to good news from someone smaller than she, as in Anna Kimball is exclaiming there will be ice cream for dessert or that we are going to the pool.

So maybe our little know-it-all really is ready to start kindergarten next week.

Emery certainly is into seeming more grown-up than she actually is. I sometimes catch her talking to herself in bed, making up words to sound smarter. You know, just adding "tion" to the end of any word and using her very best professional, motherly voice.

Yet, the lack of inhibition or self-awareness is still there and for this I am so very grateful. This means she will still blurt out to the elderly man up the street getting his mail, "I know how to swim but not all the way!" No introductions, no formalities. Just getting to the point. It's great.

In the past few weeks sometimes Emery has been so dear and such a delight to be around that my heart just cannot bear the thought of sending her to school for 35 hours a week so someone else can watch her be who she is. And then a friend reminded me, "The world needs her little light. Send her out!"

True. And I did need to be told that, even though I already knew. 

July is for Jamison

Attempting to summarize summer so far actually overwhelms me to the point of wanting to shut down this blog all together. I think the only way out of this blogging hiatus is to catch up with several short posts instead of getting bogged down by a diary of all that we've been up to for the last eight weeks.

So today I will give a little summary on Jamison and call that success for July.

He is at the most adorable and vexing stage right now. He still looks enough like a baby that I just want to devour his thighs and snuggle him so ... but he's also old enough to wriggle out of your arms and get into big trouble with electronic devices, toilet paper rolls, spice grinders, you name it. His favorite words are "Da!" "Dog!" and "Go!" Though I'm still his parent of choice, the instant Matt revs up the lawnmower Jamison does a Jekyll and Hyde on me and will. not. be. moved from his observation deck.

It's pretty wonderful.

Jamison enjoys his sisters but is quickly learning to hold his own with them. Just today when one of them was trying to grab something he was playing with, he bellowed the deepest, manliest "NOOO" I've heard him utter so far.

Jamison has been walking since he was 14 months old, which is a new experience for us, given that the girls didn't get going on their two legs until 21 months or so. When Emery would carefully go through a basket of board books, page by page, at his age, I thought this was normal toddler behavior. When Anna Kimball would quietly inspect a bag of small trinkets and toys, I thought this was normal toddler behavior. And I think I was right ... it's just that now I'm learning there are many different kinds of "normal."

The only book Jamison has ever gazed at for more than a moment has pictures of dogs. I might as well toss all my buckets of little toys for him to fiddle with because he is over it. All this boy wants to do is climb the furniture, mow the lawn, run away from me at the pool, turn his sister's CD player into something that doesn't play music anymore and then melt my heart all over again with his grin.

What progress looks like

I believe last spring I blogged about Emery's preschool performance, during which she just stared at the audience and never opened her mouth except to shout out, "Anna Kimball!!" in between songs. 

This year she actually did sing along and even cracked a smile or two ... but kept her arms folded the whole time. Too cool for preschool?

Who knows? It's all behind us now ... nothing but a few months of fun in the sun stands between us and kindergarten. Eek. 

Emery is also as cautious as they come. As in it is pretty difficult to get her to even go down a playground slide unless it's a three-foot baby one. Well, she's doing swim lessons right now and at the end of class the kids "get" to go down this slide if they want to. 

Double eek. Emery has actually been going down with an instructor but we told her that if she went down by herself she'd get a milkshake. I had no idea that would do the trick. I didn't even see her come down, I was that sure she was going to ride with the instructor. 

But she did! At this rate she'll be marching off the diving board come Memorial Day to snag that ice cream prize Matt has promised her for such a feat. 

"When I turn into Emery ... "

"I'm going to go to preschool, too!" Anna Kimball has had this revelation a number of times recently. School is certainly on the brain with more talk of kindergarten in the fall for Emery popping up in our daily conversation. But we're not going talk too much about that yet ... I'm still in denial that things really are going to change that much around here come August 13.

We have this book called "Watch Out Kindergarten, Here I Come." I'll admit, sometimes it gets me a little choked up. Without fail, if Emery asks me to read it to her, and then asks for another story after, I always wind up saying yes. I think to myself, "how could I not read her another story right now? This time next year she won't even be here trying to stall before nap time." If Emery were really clever she would work this strategy to her advantage every afternoon ... and I'd probably fall for it every time.

Our incoming kindergartener's latest obsession is parties. She usually plans a party a day, sometimes more and there's always a list involved. It's convenient that it's almost always one of the baby doll or stuffed animal's birthdays, hence a perfect excuse for a party. But these aren't always birthdays we are celebrating. No, today I caught her with a ruler making a list for a measuring party. And right now, as Matt is tucking the girls in, I can hear Anna Kimball exclaiming, "I want to go to your party, too!" According to Matt, this measuring party is an all-day affair and Anna Kimball is going to get dressed up. You would, too, right? I mean it's a measuring party after all. We always wear our finest to those.

Now that Jamison is one, he is eager to assert his independence in most situations. He can climb a flight of stairs faster than you can say "We need to make a list for my candy party." Spoon feeding? No thank you. Jamison insists on forking much of his food and if you have the audacity to put the food on the fork for him, he'll just take it right off and try again himself. With limited success.