Twinkle Twinkle Little Star!

Rose loves singing. She always has. Before she could talk she used to babble sing in her own made up language. Lately I’ve noticed her intonation and memory for lyrics improving. Tonight I asked if she could sing three songs for the camera and here’s what she did:

2nd song:

And the best for last:

What a little cutesicle!

Pediatric checkup for Tess

We took Tess to see her pediatrician on Wednesday for a check up. She’s not due for a full check up until she’s 12 months, but we had a few issues we wanted to ask him about. We told him that her eye is doing really well, that Dr Kennedy thinks she’s gained some sight, and showed him that she was now wearing glasses. He thought all of that was fine. I wanted to ask him about the fact that Tess isn’t crawling yet, and in his own inimitable style he said, “I’m not worried about that.” He quizzed us about why we were worried. I told him that she’s very passive when being patched (and the patch is on for half the day now), and I wondered whether being patched might slow her physical development. He said, “Why would it?” (As you might recall, his bedside manner has been a point of consternation at other points). I also asked about whether her being premature might have an impact. He wouldn’t say. All he would say was that she’s strong enough to crawl, she’s doing everything she should be doing before crawling (sitting unassisted, standing assisted, reaching and grasping objects, rolling, etc) and that she’ll crawl when she crawls.

Okay, I get it. I’m a bit of a Type A mother. I either need to get a Type A pediatrician or accept that Dr G doesn’t believe it getting worked up about things that don’t exist. (But as you all know, worrying about something that doctors told me not to worry about was actually a GOOD thing when it came to Tess’s eye. So henceforth worrying is a good thing, right? Okay, I’m being a little facetious.) I guess I’m resolved to sticking with Dr G because my midwife friend Tara said he’s the best in town, that when something serious is happening he’s really quick to respond. And he is actually a caring person (he called every few days when Tess had surgery and didn’t bill us for multiple appointments etc.), it’s just I have to look past the personality and through to the scientist.

We also asked him about the nuclear scan of her kidneys that he told us last time Tess had to have. (She has VUR, or rental reflux.) He said he’d check his notes and get back to us. Harrumph.

Out of sync

For the last few months we’ve been going through something tricky. Tess usually sleeps in the morning from 10am for a few hours, and then she has another nap at about 3 for another hour or two. Rose, however, has one nap a day, starting at 1pm and lasting an hour and a half.

See what I’m getting at? Someone is usually asleep. Hardly ever at the same time.

So we either have to stay home all day, or go out anyway and put up with the crankiness. When I’m on my own I usually run our days like a military operation. Consider the following:

8am-9am: Rose, Tess and Mum at the park
9.30am – 11.30: Tess asleep in bed, Rose and I playing in the living room, or messing around in the back courtyard, or riding her bike up and down the back laneway
11.30: Everyone has lunch, then off to the park for another quick play
1pm: Rose to bed, Tess I play in the living room
2.30: Tess to bed as Rose wakes up, Rose more playing in living room
4pm: all go to the park

It’s working out pretty well. But on the weekends we’re following a ‘divide and conquer’ system where one of us goes out and does chores or nice things with one of the girls while the other stays home with the sleeping kid. It’s fine, but we’re not spending much time together as a family. And it feels like Chris and I aren’t seeing much of each other, either.

Some days, of course, we just all go out and let the girls nap in the car or in the stroller. But usually there’s crying involved when one of them doesn’t get enough sleep. And problems getting the tired one to go to bed at night. And, after months and months of sleep craziness on Tess’s part, it’s actually really nice to have some certainty and regularity to the sleeping. So I guess by and large that we’ll have another few months of this scheduling craziness to put up with and then we can get Tess to drop a nap, and get everyone on more or less the same routine.

Our new neighbourhood

Our new neighbourhood is awesome. For starters, there are a bunch of really great parks within 5 minutes walk from here. On Monday I had an hour in the morning between 8 and 9 before Tess went to sleep. Usually it would’ve been too short a time to go anywhere, but I managed to get the girls packed up and off to the park for some play time, and then got back in time for Tess to have her nap. Rose would normally be climbing the walls if she had to stay home all morning.

Also, I’ve discovered that there’s an icecream factory about 50 metres from our doorstep. Yesterday we were looking after Cleo in the evening so I decided to get some icecream as a treat. It’s a really old-fashioned place, you can still get a 30 cent cone. I decided on a big tub of Tiramisu flavour for $3. Rose looked at it when we got home and said, “hummus?” It dawned on me that  Rose has never eaten icecream before! She had her first taste after dinner and pronounced it as being “really yum”!

Yesterday was also a big day for Rose. We went to our regular play group and were surprised when we found a petting zoo was visiting. I hadn’t gone last week so had no idea of the special event. Unfortunately I didn’t have my camera with me, but I did get a few snaps on my camera. Here’s Rose’s mind officially being blown away by baby bunnies:

Also, my friend Renee took a picture of me and Rose on her camera:

Goodbye Grandad!

Grandad left yesterday and we’re really feeling his absence today. He was in Sydney for five weeks in the end; four weeks house-sitting at Sarah and Louise’s place, and the last week was spent with us. Not only was he an immense help with the kids, but he was a companion throughout a time of great stress. It’s funny how in five weeks we’d managed to fall into an easy pattern of things. Dad would take Rose out for an adventure on Monday and Friday mornings. One day they took the ferry to Manly, another day the Powerhouse Museum. Every time they came back Rose was bursting with stories about things that they’d seen and enjoyed. Rose had so much fun on these trips!

And not just Rose. Tess loves her Grandad so much. She would smile every time she heard his booming voice. She loved the feel of his scratchy beard under her fingers. She loved being bounced up and down in his lap.

What’s going on, you ask? Why it’s a toddler in a baby bath, a Grandad, a baby in a washing basket, and a Daddy, all watching TV!

So we’ve moved into our new home and we’re slowly getting unpacked. There are some great things about the new house (boundless amounts of immediate hot water, large dining room so we call all eat together, fantastic attic space, and most importantly, Chris and I have our own room for the first time in months!), but there’s also a few new things to adjust to. Being an older house it’s a lot less sun-lit (I suppose that’ll be quite nice in the scorching Sydney Summer), it’s older, creakier and more shabby than our last apartment. The biggest problem is a lack of TV reception. We’re trying to convince our landlord to install an aerial on the roof because we can’t afford to get pay TV right now. We’ll have to see. All in all we’re happy here and it’ll be a fine place to be in the immediate future. But our hearts are still dreaming of a place that we can call our own.

Moving Day

This post feels like it’s been a thousand years in the making. I’ve definitely been packing for more than 32 weeks. Sure, it’s only been one actual week of real days, but it could easily be my life’s work because I’m at the point where all I can see is boxes and stuff that needs to go into boxes. My brain has diverted all energy to the power to assess what kind of box an object should go into and how it should be wrapped. I’m proud, in a way. I’ve packed almost all of our possesions, by myself, WHILE looking after the kids. Rose, you want to play? How about you play by putting this object into a box. Still crying? Calm yourself with a few thousand episodes of Thomas the Tank Engine while I pack next to you. There’s no denying it: I’m becoming the Pack Master. Out of my way, humans!

But moving along…

We’re moving. Moving to a new home. Moving to a new temporary home. Somewhere to lay our weary heads and rest our weary bones. Somewhere for the girls to run around like mad things. Somewhere where there is room for all of us, in fact we will have a room each, and where all of our stuff will be in our own rooms. Can I hear an Amen!

We move on Tuesday. We’ve hired a removalist with a truck and some guys. I will be decamping to a friend’s place with the kids while Chris and Dad take care of marshalling the movers.

What do the kids think of all of this? Tess: not really aware. Rose: Pretty freaked out. It’s not that she really understands what’s going on. She’s never moved before. But every morning she gets up and looks around, bewildered at the number of boxes that have arrived and the disappearance of her toys. Only this morning she handed me a CD of children’s music and turned around to point at the stereo while asking to play it, only to find that the stereo wasn’t there any longer. She looked confused. We’ve had major shennanigans on the behaviour front, and while some of it could be attributed to new developmental stuff and being-a-toddler-with-a-baby-sister stuff, surely some of it is a reaction to the change and stress her parents are under.

I have to say how absolutely WONDERFUL and a trooper my dad has been. He has been taking Rose out for a big exciting adventures into town that gives me hours and hours of packing time. He has been running errands. In fact, as we speak he is catching the bus across town to go buy us a new digital TV antenna.  He has been my friend, and a huge support. Would’ve gone certifiably insane without him. I love you so much, Dad!

At the park

This afternoon Rose, Tess and I went to a local park and Tess experienced her very first swing. Even better, her sister pushed her.

Did you catch that face?

And check out that hair!

Headstrong

I can’t believe how smug I used to be. I used to look at other badly behaved children and think, “I would NEVER let my kid behave like that.” Rose was such a calm, placid baby. She slept well, she was cute. She was, well, easy. I read a lot of parenting books. I knew some of the obvious pitfalls (empty threats, not setting enough clear boundaries, etc). In other words, I arrogantly thought I was ace-ing this parenting gig.

Hah! Guess what? I was running before I was walking, which is exactly what Rose is trying to do. Lately she’s been struggling so much lately with a whole new raft of emotions (fear! envy! love! jealousy! anger!) and it’s obviously scaring her like crazy because she’s behaving like a little person out of control. She’s been so wild lately. Refusing the most basic requests. Shouting and crying non-stop! Doing dangerous stuff! Being negative about everything.

I’ve stopped making any suggestions whatsoever to her because they all result in NO! (Even if it’s “Do you want hot chips”!) She’s so headstrong and wanting to have complete independence at the moment that it’s almost impossible to reason with her. Today at the park she started running off and when I ran after and tried to drag her back from the edge of the pond she screamed like a banshee, flailing around and hitting me.

I’m spending my days trying to calm her down, trying to stay two steps ahead of her (emotionally and physically), and having endless conversations about acceptable and unacceptable behaviour.

The sympathetic interpretation is that she’s a little curious scientist, trying to understand the world and her place in it. The negative view is that she’s trying to work out how much she can get away with. Either way, it requires an adult response that is consistent, loving and calm, and that is about as easy as letting someone shout insults at you and smiling benignly. Some days I would rather fly to the moon than take Rose to the grocery store.

I guess if there’s one good thing that comes from this all, it’s that alongside all the anger and tantrums, she also has the capacity to be incredibly sweet and loving.

Take this recent photo of Rose with her sister:

It was Rose’s suggestion to have a cuddle in bed with Tess. You’d have no idea that minutes later she tryed to pull her off my lap saying, “Tessie, Go AWAY!”