Trouble With a Capital "S"

Recently, a friend and I were sharing daughter stories, and he mentioned a supposed pattern that I had never heard of. Apparently the type of personality that a girl has at age three is a strong indicator of the personality she will have in her teenage years. If this is indeed true, it is a dire foreshadowing of what we are in for, given what happened later that evening.

I had given Leila some shakers of various sprinkles to take to school for cookie decorating. Sabina wanted to hold one so I absentmindedly gave her one. Surely she won't unscrew the top. I continued with dinner preparation, only to look up mere minutes later to see the top off and a ring of rainbow sprinkles around Sabina's mouth.

"Sabina, we don't open the sprinkles," I said as I took it and put the top back on. "If you open it again, I'll have to take them away from you." And I handed them back to her. I returned to dinner preparation, but out of the corner of my eye, saw her quietly walking around the corner, out of sight. Surely she is just going into the office to find Kevin. She is too young to know how to hide things from me. A minute later, and I hear nothing, no chatting with Daddy, no playing, so I stop to go look for her. Sure enough, she is in the office, with a new ring of sprinkles around her mouth. I reprimanded her again, and I did take the sprinkles away, but I am pretty sure it had little to no effect. She had already succeeded at nearly emptying the container.

Now, we have a few months before she turns three, but I think I will take this as a warning.

Hypocrite

It's really hard to reprimand your children when you can't even keep your voice from cracking with laughter.

A Good Day

A morning trip to the zoo where we froze our booties off because we overestimated the weather, a junk food lunch in the zoo cafe followed by a run through the drizzle to our car, a nap for everyone once we got home, playtime after nap consisting of "mommy and baby", where Leila and Sabina are the two mommies, followed by painting purple toenails and fingernails while watching Charlotte's Web, followed by takeout from our favorite Nepalese restaurant.

What could be better???

Hand Me Downs

It's that time of year again, time to head on over to the spare bedroom to fish out Leila's old hand-me-downs for Sabina's seasonal wardrobe. I pick up piece after piece, memories flashing by... what Leila was doing when she wore this... I think I have a picture of her wearing that the summer after Sabina was born. Sabina is that age now, meaning that more time has passed and they haven't stopped growing for a minute. I pack up last season's clothes that they have both outgrown, and I finish with a lump in my throat. The lump will stay there for a few more hours at least, and it will dissipate as I get caught up in our routine and our daily activities, until it's time to migrate the next season of clothes into the guest bedroom.

Buddies

Melts my heart.

Potty Training

Who says it can't be fun?
Now if we can just get something to actually
make it in there....
Maybe there are just too many distractions?

We're Back

It's been two months, and not a peep from me. Not that there hasn't been anything to report. On the contrary, there has been plenty:

• A 36 hour hospitalization followed by a weekend of home-administered oxygen for Sabina. This entailed her being tethered by a 25 foot tube to an oxygen tank. A fully energetic almost-2-year-old and a 25 foot tether don't mix.
• We now officially have a two-year-old.
• We have now been married for 10 years.
• Sabina has had at least four colds since the hospitalization, two of which warranted the nebulizer, one of which Kevin caught twice, the same of which I caught that then resulted in a sinus infection. Leila has barely been affected.
• We are now officially mainstream-- We have seen "Twilight".
  

So now we are up to date. Next time it won't be so long.