B & G Update

I just realized that it's been so long since I posted an actual update on my kids {and isn't that kinda what the point of this blog is about?} instead of a quick little blurb.  So, here goes...

BAILEY 

 There aren't enough words in the English language to describe Bailey right now.  She's four years old and she's the coolest, sassiest, most amazing kid ever.  Her favorite color is pink and she won't let us cut her hair because she says princesses have long hair.  Never mind the fact that half the time it's a nest-y mess.  In the last few months, she's decided to be a part-time vegetarian and will only eat chicken nuggets from Chick-fil-A.  She'll eat pretty much any fruit or vegetable under the sun, but she's got a thing against almost all meats.  She poses for pretty much every picture I take of her like this:

And like this:

Some days she's totally cool with throwing on a pair of shorts and a t-shirt, but then there are days where she insists on wearing a fancy dress and high heels.  Even if we're just hanging around the house or running to the mall.

She'd eat ice cream every day if we let her {and most days we do}.  She's starting preschool {at home} this year and she picked out a new school bag...pink with princesses all over it.  I don't know how I ended up with such a girly girl. She loves to swim, but she won't go in the deep end and prefers to stay in the kiddie/shallow end.  She got brave in the beginning of the summer and ended up a little too far in the deep end of the pool, clinging to the wall and screaming like she was about to drown.  Since then, she refuses to go much further than the stairs of any pool.

She likes to sneak into my makeup and put on lipstick and blush.  She's getting better at it, but still looks like a clown a lot of the time.  Most of the time.  Okay, every time.  She'll figure it out.

Sometimes she says things that just make me stop and laugh.  She's a fan of the show Big Brother, and watches it with Scott and me.  She sits there and chats about all the houseguests while we're watching:

"I love Frankie.  He has pink hair and glitter polish on his nails."  

"I miss Amber.  She got 'victed and had to go sit with Julie."

"My favorite character is Nicole.  She got 'victed, but then she came back."

 She's probably the best big sister a kid could ever ask for.  She's patient and loving and she truly enjoys spending time with her little brother.  And, good Lord, does he adore her.  Watching them together is so awesome.

Every once in awhile she busts out with "You're the greatest mommy I ever saw-ed" and it makes my day.  When she sleeps, which isn't often, she looks like a tiny little angel and I completely forget about all the craziness of the day.  She's been sleeping in a toddler cot in our bedroom lately.  She's got this thing against her own bedroom these days and, honestly, setting her up on a cot is easier for us at the moment than spending hours every night trying to convince, cajole, and threaten her to stay in her own bed.  Plus, she's been waking up in the middle of the night with nightmares that leave her a shaking, crying mess.  More often than not, they're silly bad dreams {her cousin stole a broom and wouldn't give it back} but sometimes they're "for real" bad dreams {a stranger stole her}and I think it helps both of us to feel more at ease with her right there on her cot next to the bed.  We'll work on getting her back to her own room, but for now I'm not stressing.

In just a few short months, we'll be registering her for Kindergarten.  Oh...my...God.  Kindergarten.  how do I have a kid old enough to be in Kindergarten?  And what the hell am I going to do without her here with me all day?

In a word, Bailey is FABULOUS.  She's growing like a weed, speaking like a little adult, and I love how confident she is when it comes to meeting new people.  I have no doubt that when it comes time for her to "leave the nest" as they say, that she'll be just as awesome as she is now.  And I can't wait to watch her grow. 

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GERRY

Gerry, Gerry, Gerry.  Just like with Bailey, there aren't enough words in our language to describe him.  He's almost 20 months old now and he's my little hellion.  Anything he can climb on, get into, or throw around, he does.  With joy.  My dad often jokes that Gerry just walks into a room and looks for things he can get into, and he's absolutely right.   To him, the entire world and everything in it is up for grabs and just waiting to be explored and uncovered, and I love that about him. 

He loves pretty much ALL foods, but he has a ton of fun eating spaghetti.  He tried to slurp it up like Bailey does but pretty much always just ends up dumping his plate on the table and digging in, utensil-free.

  

In the last few weeks, Gerry's vocabulary has just exploded.  It's so cool to see all the things that he understands now, and I love that he's becoming more verbal.  He can actually tell us now when he wants something, whether it be a snack, a bottle, to open something, his blanket, a car, whatever.   His newest phrases are "Found you!" and "Where are you?"  He'll walk around the house pointing at Bailey and yelling, "Ha!  Ha!  Found you!" or looking for Scott..."Daddy?  Where are you?"  So cool.  

During the day, he never stops.  Ever.  He's a little ball of energy and craziness, and it's just go-go-go from the minute he wakes up until the minute he passes out for nap or bed time.  But when he's sleeping?  Oh my goodness, is he angelic.  So still and quiet and adorable.  Lately, he's been waking up in the middle of the night so Scott and I have revived our old middle-of-the-night standby:  he goes in to get Gerry out of his crib while I run downstairs and warm up a little bit of milk for him.  The last few nights, when I go back into the room, Gerry holds his arms out and leans toward me and says in his sleep-filled little voice, "Want you"...and right then and there my heart just melts. 

 He loves to play and be silly and, lately, his favorite thing to do is to dance.  Seriously.  The second he hears even a hint of a beat he stops whatever he's doing and starts dancing.  It's awesome and hilarious and I hope he never outgrows it.  He's also a fan of bright and sparkly things.  I can't tell you how often he asks me to put this skirt on him, and I can't stress enough how much Scott HATES it.  But it makes our kid happy, and who am I to stand in the way of his happiness?

He's just so damn mischievous and happy all the time.  The only times he's not walking around with a smile on his face are when he's sick or very, very tired.  Otherwise, it's all happy all the time.  

He still loves the hell out of Bailey, and looks for her as soon as he wakes up in the morning.  He gets a kick out of playing with her, and I can't help but laugh when I watch them play together.  More often than not these days, he's attempting to terrorize her by knocking her toys over or taking her doll and running away with it, but she just goes with it...and they have fun! 

Just like with Bailey, I cannot wait to watch this little guy grow.  And I'm so lucky that I get to do just that.

 

That Time My Kid Had Leprosy

Just kidding.  No one had leprosy over here.  Close enough, though.  All last week, we battled the dreaded Hand, Foot and Mouth Disease.  And let me be the first to say that it suuucked.  Never heard of it?  Never suffered from it {or had a kid who suffered with it}?  Here's a picture of Gerry's arm on the very first day with HFM.  By day 3, he was covered head to toe in this awful, pus-filled, blistery rash.  The only place...literally, the only place...on his body that wasn't covered in the disgusting mess was his forehead and the tops of his cheeks.  No joke.  There were blisters between his fingers and toes, in his ears, his mouth, the bottoms of his feet. 

***WARNING: GROSS PICTURES AHEAD***

Saturday night, I was out of town and Scott and Gerry were at home.  My parents had taken Bailey to the beach for the weekend, so I drove down Saturday afternoon to pick her up and then spent the night into Sunday before heading home.  Scott texted me around 11:15 Saturday night...

"G not sleeping.  What should I do?"  Thinking he was just fussy because I hadn't been there to put him to bed, I gave Scott a few tips to try with Gerry.  Nothing worked, and they were both up most of the night.  So I was prepared to come home to a sick kid...but I was not prepared to come home to a sick leper. 

Sunday was spent alternating between this:

 And this:

 To say he was miserable would be a huge understatement.  It felt like every morning he woke up with more blisters {he limped around for two solid days because of the sores on the bottoms of his feet} and he didn't eat for three days.  It was a 6-day-long cycle of wake, cry, sleep for a few minutes, wake, cry, sleep...

Not being able to do anything for him was the worst part {for me}.  I gave him Tylenol to keep him comfortable and because the sores in his throat were hurting but, beyond that, there's nothing to do for HFM but sit back, ride it out, and sanitize the hell out of your house.  We kept Bailey and Gerry as separated as humanly possible. and just did our best to keep Gerry as comfortable as possible while he dealt with the worst of it.  By Wednesday afternoon, he'd started eating a bit here and there.  By Thursday, he was sleeping better at night.  And by Friday, he was just about back to his normal, happy, smiley self. 

It's been more than a week, and he still has blisters on his arms and legs.  He had such a bad case that I expect those blisters to stick around for quite awhile {luckily, he's no longer contagious}.  But, other than that, he's back to giggling and causing mischief wherever he goes.  So far, Bailey seems to have come through completely unscathed {knock on wood!}

And, on the bright side, I've got enough cleaner in my house now to last quite a while!

 

Mean Girls: Toddler Version

Every time I look at this picture my heart just sinks.  

Yesterday, Bailey had her first taste of  "friendly heartbreak" when two of her friends didn't want to play with her.  It wouldn't have been so bad if it were just some random kids at the park blowing her off, but these were her two best friends.  And they wouldn't play with her, no matter how hard she tried to get them to.  They played with each other, but whenever Bailey asked to play or just inserted herself into whatever game or scenario they were acting out, she was shut down pretty quickly.  They were playing some game where one of the girls was "the boyfriend" and the other was "the girlfriend".  Bailey's solution was to have two girlfriends so they could all play, but the other two girls just kept shooing her away.  After a few minutes, one of the girls came back to Bailey and said, "Okay, come on, you can be the girlfriend now and I'll be the boyfriend."  Bailey's eyes lit up and she said, "Okay!" and hopped up from where she was sitting.  But then that same girl turned to her and said, "Okay, now I'm breaking up with you.  You can't play with us anymore."  She walked away and left Bailey sitting there.

And that's when I took this picture. 

Even now, a day later, I can't look at it without getting tears in my eyes.  After her friends skipped away {hand in hand, of course}, Bailey dropped back down to the steps and just sat there.  Defeated.  Sad.  Lonely.  The adult in me recognized that this was, potentially, a pivotal moment for her and that how she handled the situation now could be a pretty good indicator of how she'd handle issues like this in school one day {God forbid, right?}.  The rational part of me knew that this is what kids sometimes do and that, by the next morning, all would be forgotten in their little world.  But the mother in me?  Well, she was just as heartbroken as her daughter in this moment.

I wanted to grab those two little girls, drag them back across the yard, and demand to know why my daughter wasn't good enough to play with.  I wanted to ask them why there couldn't be two girlfriends in their play scenario and why they couldn't find a way to include her in whatever it was they were playing.  I wanted to force them to include her.  Instead, I walked over and sat down on the steps next to my little girl.

"I'm sorry your friends aren't playing with you, hon.  But I'll play with you!  Want me to be the boyfriend?"

She just shook her head.  "{Friend's name} is the boyfriend and she breaked-ed up with me."

I offered to play ball with her.  To play dolls.  To color.  But she just wanted to play with her friends, and that wasn't happening.  I wanted to make those other two girls sit in a long timeout for being mean and making my daughter feel sad {how's that for mommy entitlement, huh?}.  Instead, I called them over to where I was sitting with Bailey and talked to them all about being friends and including everyone in their play.  They listened and told me they understood at the appropriate times, and then the three of them ran off together to play.

Not two minutes later, I hear friend #2:  "We don't want to play with you, Bailey!"  And I watched Bailey's shoulders slump, watched her make the same slow walk back to those damn steps, watched her sit back down and just watch everyone else playing.  And it was like my heart was breaking right there with hers.

I know that it won't help if I fight all of her battles for her.  I know that this particular issue is something that she'll face, in various different forms, all of her life and that she'll be much better off if she learns how to cope on her own.  I know that this is part of growing up.  I know that, by tomorrow, this whole thing will be forgotten and everyone involved, including Bailey, won't even remember that it happened.  I know that, when all is said and done, she's an amazing kid and she'll have lots of true friends as she gets older.  I know this. But that doesn't make it any easier to watch.

I had a talk with Bailey.  As much of a "talk" as you can have with a 4-year-old, anyway.  And I told her that sometimes our friends don't want to be nice and don't want to play with us and, even though it hurts our feelings, that's okay.  I told her that it would be a good opportunity to make other friends, and that having lots of friends is a good thing.  I told her that, even if her friends didn't want to play with her in that moment, that they still liked her.  And that, no matter what, I would always play with her if she wanted me to. 

And so the day went.  Her two friends included her a bit more, but still weren't being very good friends.  Basically, let her play "with them", but didn't actually include her in anything.  And it made me so ridiculously sad to see her so upset over it.  So, later that day when she asked if we could have a "Mommy-Sweetie" day {go to the mall, hit the play place, and finish up with some froyo} I told her that we absolutely could.

When I was a freshman in high school, a boy on the bus told me that I was ugly.  To this day, I've never forgotten it and I haven't forgotten that my mom and I sort of had our own "Mommy-Sweetie" day after.  I don't remember all the little details from that day but I do remember walking off the bus dry-eyed, determined not to let those kids see me cry, and then crying when I told my mom what the boy had said, and I remember that she consoled me and took me to get my hair cut that very night.  And that new hair cut did wonders for me.  It didn't make me forget that I'd been called ugly on a bus full of high schoolers and it didn't take away the sting of embarrassment whenever I replayed it in my mind that night.  But it did help me to feel better about myself.  For a little while, I wasn't the ugly girl on the bus.  And I loved my new haircut.  So much so that I walked on the bus the next day, not necessarily proudly and with my head held high, but with enough confidence that I wasn't ready to burst into tears when that boy and his idiot friends glanced my way.  It was a simple thing, that hair cut, but it made all the difference in that moment and I will never forget it.

So Bailey and I went to the mall, hit up the play place, walked around the toy store for a bit, and got some froyo before heading home.  My own version of "the haircut", only this time I was my mom.  By the time we'd gotten home last night, the hurt she'd felt from the day was pretty much completely forgotten on her part.  {Froyo tends to have that effect on things, I think.}

This morning, she's back to her smiley self, the problems of yesterday forgotten.  A completely inconsequential event in her life so far, but somewhat monumental to me.  I know that she's going to encounter situations like this all the time as she gets older, and I know that it's up to me to help her through them and let her know that I'm there {froyo, hair cuts, and all}.

 I just didn't think I'd have to start at 4 years old!