Bear's cuteness (why I'm going to end up in the crazy house)

My children make me crazy. Not in the usual sense. I mean actually crazy, in the sense that when I look at them, I can’t cope with how cute they are and my brain starts to implode, and I start babbling and kissing them uncontrollably.

When Bear is excited about something, he goes taut and shakes. Actual vibrations go through his body. It might seem like some kind of medical condition, if it weren’t so clearly a response to exciting things like pages turning in a book or Zuzu talking to him. Or Zuzu jumping around in front of him. Or Zuzu laughing … or Zuzu doing anything. He watches her intently and expectantly, waiting to be entertained. And when she does something funny, he shouts, shrieks, and cackles.

He’s trying out different vocal sounds right now. I love it when he looks surprised by a noise he just made.

He has two teeth that I know of, on the bottom, and still leaves drool puddles everywhere he goes. And the past couple days have been especially rough, teething-wise:

Oh, I know. Impossibly sad.

Right now he’s more focused on examining objects with his eyes and hands than on trying to get around. He can sit for as long as he wants to, but will still always eventually fall over. If he has something in his hands to investigate, he's too absorbed to care.

We went to the Northern Wisconsin State Fair a couple weeks ago with a friend and her kids. We ducked into the horse barn during a downpour. 

 

The story of this picture is this. I was holding Bear in position to strap him into the Baby Bjorn, and paused for a second to look over at something else. When I looked back, this horse head had APPEARED OUT OF NOWHERE and was snuffling Bear! I laughed so hard at the shock of it and the quietness of Bear while a large beast kissed him. That’s when my friend took the picture. A couple minutes later while we continued to stand in about the same spot, something horrifying happened. This same horse SNEEZED. And Bear and I both got abundantly sprayed with horse phlegm. I wiped us off with Bear’s blanket, began to think longingly of baths and showers, and stepped away from that horse. I reassured myself that people who work with horses probably get sneezed on and couldn’t care less. (?)

Here he is excited about Daddy:

So there you have it. Cuteness overload.

 

Zuzu's language

We have a smart little chatterbox of a two-year-old. Here are some of the characteristics of her speech right now.

Zuzu's had a habit for a long time of not pronouncing the S at the beginning of words (as my sister pointed out, it's words where the S is followed by a consonant). She will say "twinkle twinkle little tar," ask to eat a "nack," and when frightened say that she's "cared."

When asked who-what-where-when-why questions, she will nod affirmatively and say "yep!" or "mm-hm!" repeatedly, which can get infuriating, actually. A typical conversation goes like this: "When?" "Yep!" "When?" "Yep!" "But WHEN did it happen?" "Mm-hm!"

However, she has just learned to ask the WHY question herself. And she asks it ... a lot. I realize that she is not quite sure what the question means, because she'll use it inappropriately ("Zuzu, do you want to ride your bike?" "Why?") and she'll use it even after I've already answered it, and she doesn't hold my responses to very high standards of coherence. Nevertheless, I've noticed that Daddy and I, as adults, are trained to answer the question when asked. It's like a knee-jerk reaction: when Zuzu says "why?" we come up with an answer, again and again and again. I met a mom at the park who also has a two-year-old daughter who has also started asking the why-question. "I LOVE it!" she said, beaming. She explained how it makes her think about the world and how she usually ends up at some universal truth. That part is accurate. At the tail end of asking and answering the why-question over and over, "because God made it that way," is usually the final thing I say.

Sometimes Daddy and I have to fight the impulse to give the why-question its logical answer, and to curtail the exchange with something along the lines of because-I-said-so. You know, to keep the upper hand in our parent-to-child relationship (ha. Ha ha).

This is one of our recent conversations verbatim. We were about to go out. I asked her, "which shoes are you going to wear?"
     "My tennis shoes," she said.
     "Then you need socks!"
     "Why?"
     "Cuz you can't wear tennis shoes without socks!"
     Silence.
     "Do you want to go get socks, or do you want to wear your orange flip flops instead?"
     "Um ... my pink ones!"
     "Your pink crocs?" (Another shoe option.)
     "My pink TENNIS SHOES!"
     "Then you need socks!"
     "Why?"

My favorite word that she says is flip-flops. She says "fip pops," and it just sounds so cute.

For a short time she doubled-up adjectives a lot. "My white white cup." "I'm a big big sister." That transitioned into using "very," but now she doubles "very" all the time. She uses "very" before verbs a lot, which I love. "I was very very singing." "He's very very crying!" (that one is often particularly apt.) And the other day she said, "I'm very very inside."

Right now she's thinking a lot about family relationships, and likes to make jokes by mislabeling people. Poor Bear often ends up as her sister, or as my mommy.

She is also experimenting with time phrases, usually opting for "last night" if it happened in the past, and "in two weeks" if it's happening in the future (I don't know why two weeks). She likes it when I ask her if she remembers something, and describe it to her. She practices doing the same thing, usually picking something that happened about ten seconds ago. "Member? Member mommy?"

It's so fun to have her around.

Flightiness

Have you ever opened the trash can and noticed a fork sitting on top of the trash? Not a plastic fork, but an actual fork? And then realized that you were the one who put it there? And then wondered how many other things you have accidentally thrown away? A coffee mug? Your kids’ pacifiers? Dollar bills? How many items have gone the whole course from the trash can to the curb side to the dump truck, never to be seen again? I often assure Zuzu that something she’s looking for will “turn up.” I should add the caveat, “unless mommy took it out with the trash last week.” Let’s just hope half a ham sandwich doesn’t turn up in the toy box.

The other day I pulled a knife out of the knife block, used it, and then returned it to the knife block. Ten minutes later I looked for the knife in the sink, wanting to use it again. It wasn’t there. I looked on the drying rack next to the sink. I then saw it in the knife block, and as I pulled it out I desired fervently for it to be clean, hoping maybe I’d washed and dried it without remembering. But it was quite obviously dirty.

Whenever I have an experience like the fork in the trash can or the dirty knife in the knife block, I feel nervous about my entire life. Do I run red lights without noticing? Do I RSVP for events and then forget to go to them? Have I shoplifted??

I don’t even have to ask myself whether I forget birthdays—yes, everyone’s, all the time—or if I’ve ever left a tray of cookies in the oven for an hour (you can’t hear the timer beep in the basement, but eventually the smell of burnt peanut butter will waft down).

I’m pretty forgiving of flightiness in general. Even when flightiness results in cost, which flightiness usually does, whether of time or money. In fact, I tend to take flightiness for granted. It’s my opinion that 1.) we’re all a bit crazy and just going to keep getting crazier the longer we live; 2.) mistakes can usually be fixed, or turned into better things, and 3.) all material goods are sort of transient art, like wedding cakes and sand castles: maybe beautiful, expensive, sentimental or important, but not meant to last. Stuff is gonna break or get colored on with markers. Or accidentally thrown in the trash can.

I try not to be flighty. But I have a suspicion that I’m as not-flighty as I’m ever gonna be, and that, despite my best efforts, the only direction I’m likely to go is towards increasing flightiness.

I’m called on as a mom to be patient with my two-year-old when she forgets where she put something two seconds after putting it there. (Children, it turns out, are remarkably flighty. For having young fresh minds, they sure do forget a lot.) Other adults, I call on you to be patient with me. And if you’re feeling flighty, come over to play at our house … you’ll fit in.

Fourth of July Fun and Scary Sparklers!

Zuzu did not like fireworks. This was her third Fourth of July and the most scared she's been. Daddy passed around unlit sparklers, and then after everyone else lit theirs, she begged him to take hers away and put it back in the box. So I took her inside, much to her relief. Once inside she wanted the doors and windows closed. She absolutely did not want to watch through the window. She relaxed once her cousins came back inside after lighting the rest of the fireworks. "Fireworks all done?" she asked happily.

Bear slept through everything.

This was a fantastic Fourth of July. The weather was ideal. And I spent it with my favorite people, my sister's family!

The kids did an art project that we are calling Fireworks in a Night Sky. And Uncle Todd did too.

There was also cookie decorating, berry cake baking, outdoor playing, and outfit changing!