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18 and 19
18/365
(Jan 22)
Coloring monsters with my favorite little monster.
19/365
(Jan 23) Today.
Bathtime with the girls while dad’s at work.
Armenie updates and conversations with Hanna
Beautiful little Armenie. She has the wisdom of old wrinkled woman hiding behind those big dark soulful eyes.
She only wants to sleep in a carrier with her face nestled against my warm breasts, the second I put her down and leave the room she whips her eyes open frantically “Where did you go? Come back mom!”. She likes to bounced while she nurses, this a habit she’s picked up from constantly being in the carrier around the house. Sometimes she won’t latch until I’m bouncing.
I press my lips against hers gently while she sleeps and feel them move as she dreams of milk and warm bodies. Her tiny hand, fingers wide and stretching in the palm of my hand, I nuzzle her neck and inhale the sweet smell of her pajamas. These quiet little moments, I’m just trying to gobble them up.
Her fuzzy hair is ducktailing at her nape. Sweet ginger-blonde fuzz that smells like coconut ice cream. Nom nom nom nom. I love the way she now snuggles into me with intent. Resting her head against my shoulder and her hand over top of mine.
Hanna is currently naked in the front window in the fur covered cat bed.
Conversations with her are so wonderful and insighful.
Hanna: MAMA, what are you doing? Where are you?
Me: I’m just stirring the dinner, I’ll be right there!
Hanna: I am tired of waiting for you now.
She says Are instead of Do, and Has instead of Have, as in: “Are you want to has a bath?” or “I has to go poo.”
She’s added the phrase “Excuse me.” to her vocab. “Excuse me, I can has that fairy?” she said to me today, pointing at one of her fairy figures I stuck up on the ledge over the sink.
She’s also quite fond of the word beautiful, and like Moses, has also picked up on the word “actually.”
“Actually mom, this is Cinderella, not mermaid.”
I have also been laughing at phrases she so OBVIOUSLY picked up from me.
Me: Mommy’s so tired Hanna.
Hanna: You has a long day?
I was watching a bad made for tv movie about teenage girls beating up another girl and posting it on the internet. Hanna was playing and I didn’t even think she was paying attention but she turned to me and said “They’re not being good girls. They’re being baaaaaaad.” Little pitchers have big ears, whatever that’s supposed to mean. (I actually looked it up, in case you’re interested because I had absolutely no idea where the expression came from, only what it meant.) Gone are the days when we can argue in front of her or talk about serious or private matters, she not only repeats but truly understands what’s going on. She’s so in tune with our emotions, that even if she doesn’t fully comprehend the conversation, she senses the tone behind it.
`GROWING UP. It’s blowing my mind.
Posted in Adventures in Parenting, Videos
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Playing catch up – 365
11/365
(Jan 15)
The lighting in my bathroom is REALLY bad.
12/365
(Jan 16)
Late night feeds.
Late night feeds.
13/365
(Jan 17)
Not getting any work done.
![]()"http://www.fetuspanda.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/marm.jpg" "13/365")
14/365
(Jan 18)
Hanna is dressing herself now. I love it. A lot.
15/365
(Jan 19)
The best place to be, baby it’s cold outside.
16/365
(Jan 20)
First nap in the crib.
17/365
(Jan 21)
Today we went to Dilly Dally with Nan and added a cat family to the farm we’ve collecting.
The Dalmatian Family
I HATE being angry mom.
I spend each and every day without fail, fighting the good battle between happy mom and angry mom. With each annoying quip, with each defiant ‘NO’, with each smack on my face, with each ignorance of my requests there is a battle between these two beings inside of me. Happy mom says ‘Stay calm, she’s just a child, she doesn’t know any better. Be patient, set an example – yelling is only going to escalate the situation.’ Angry mom doesn’t say anything, she’s had enough- she just yells. Happy mom seems to be in control of the situation most of the time but angry mom seems to be always lurking in the background, fighting to make an appearance, like earlier today when this conversation took place:
Hanna: AH!!
Happy mom: I need you to use your inside voice please.
Hanna: AH!!!!!
Happy mom: Stop yelling please, Armenie is trying to sleep, ok?
Hanna: AH!!!!!!!!
Happy mom: Please stop yelling Hanna. Do you understand?
Hanna: AHH!!
Happy mom: Hanna, if you can’t stop yelling, you’re going to have to go into your room
Hanna: AHHHH!!
Happy mom:HANNA, please listen to me, I need you to stop yelling. I’m warning you that you’re going to have to good to your room if you don’t stop.
Hanna: AHHHHHHHHHH!!!!
Angry mom: GO TO YOUR ROOM RIGHT NOW AND STAY THERE!! (which I must admit is a million times nicer than what I actually WANT to say)
In fact, I actually texted Syx just to use the F word.
It seems like the more you do for them, the less they behave. Is this the result of spoiling? Sometimes I think her expectations are a little too high. I give her a treat once and she expects it all the time. I don’t want to take away the specialness by giving in all the time and I definitely don’t want to have a spoiled child.
So while we’re on the subject of treats, today by about 11am we were getting a little stir crazy so as a treat, I let her empty out her piggy bank so we could walk over to Dilly Dally and pick out a new Scleich figurine (which I am loving as much as Hanna does). She collected all her change into her purse and off we went.
Her first pick was the kangaroo which was awesome since we’ve been learning about them lately and recently watched a documentary on Australia featuring of course, kangaroos. She had enough left over for another figurine and wanted to buy one for baby Armie too, so she picked out a ‘mation puppy for her. With two trips to the counter, counting out quarters and loonies we were ready to go for lunch. On our way to the restaurant, Hanna suddenly started crying. When I asked her what was wrong she held up the dalmatian puppy and told me, “He misses his mama, we need to go back and get her.” I tried to convince her that the kangaroo would look after her joey AND the puppy but Hanna didn’t buy it, and we had to go back for a third figurine which turned into four because apparently the dalmatian puppy needed his mommy AND daddy, just like Hanna has. Break my heart much?
So now we have a whole dalmatian family.
Phanie posted this blurb the other day on her blog:
Staying Home – by Tiffany Doerr Guerzon
(Found in BC Parent, free magazine)
“I also underestimated how incredibly long the days can be. This was especially true when I had been up all night with the baby. Instead of being well dressed and put together, I was so tired I often returned home from an outing to find, to my dismay, that the flaps on my nursing bra were still open under my shirt.”
Phanie posted this quote on her blog the other day and it kept on cycling through my brain while I was huffing up the hill pushing Hanna in her umbrella stroller in the snow with Armenie passed out in the ergo, my shirt wide open and my left breast hanging out of my nursing bra, not to mention the milk that had previously saturated the front of my shirt had started to freeze.
Also you forget to pee when you’re a mom.
Good golly.
And I just burned the grilled cheeses.
10/365
(Jan 14th)
Fresh and clean.
Also needing an eyebrow wax.
Art with Hanna
Hanna is drawing things that look like things!!! Watching this next stage in her development is really exciting- we’ve been spending a lot of time sitting together and talking about what shapes to use to build up a picture, like using triangles for ears and circles for eyes with very little prompting from me. I ask her where she thinks is a good place for each part and she shows me. I especially like that she has figured out that an upturned line looks like a smile and a downturned line looks like a frown.
This is Hanna’s cat drawing that she says looks like marmalade but is not marmalade. I helped her color this one, because she wanted me to. She chose the color scheme though.
It says PUCK- not what YOU think! Puck is Oma’s dog and Hanna drew this picture so she could send it to Oma.
In Armenie development, she’s rocking tummy time HARD. She pushes herself up to an almost crawling position. She LOVES craning her neck around to see what’s going on around her.
She’s such a noisy baby. She gurgles and coos constantly with fluctuations and inflections, like she’s in a deeply intense conversation with you and you can tell from her eyes, that she is. Big blue almond shaped eyes looking up at you lovingly, beginning to follow you when you get up and walk around the room. Her head smells like coconut and I am always drunk on the smell. It’s lovely to have a baby around, it’s going to be over way too soon.
9/365
(FRIDAY, Jan 13th)
10 weeks post partum. Glamourous mom life. Hot nursing bra action.
8/365
(Jan 12th)
When I was in my senior year of high school I was involved in a work co-op program. Unsurprisingly, as I was one of those kids with a face full of piercings- I wanted to work in a piercing/tattoo studio. I got placed at Next! downtown on a Granville street, that’s where I met Jamer. It turned out the job wasn’t as glamourous as I thought and in a busy shop there wasn’t much attention paid to the girl in high school standing awkwardly behind the counter. But Jamer was always kind to me and always made me laugh. I was just turning 18 and he had a lot to say about life. There were cigarette breaks that felt like lessons learned. I spent my 18th birthday with him, getting this tattoo.
Rest in peace Jamer, your life has touched a lot of people. You will be sorely missed.
MOM CLUB
I started my day with coffee with Liz (THANKS TO MY DELICIOUS KEURIG which deserves another mention because there is nothing better than french toast flavored coffee) and her kidlets. I truly love being able to text her first thing in the morning and have a coffee companion. We were joined later in the morning by Phanie and her entourage.
In the insanity of having 6 children under the age of three have a playdate, (surprisingly) the only casualty was when Hanna nailed Koa in the head with Thomas the Train. I AM SO THANKFUL for the best mom friends. Whenever I feel like I’m losing my mind or feel like the absolute shittiest mom in the world these ladies snap my head back to the reality of the situation which is: your toddler is an asshole and you’re normal for wanting to put them in a box and mail them to Peru. I’m only sort of joking. These years are such a challenge, some days I feel like I spend the entire day just working on not coming completely undone. When the mom club gets together it becomes very clear THAT WE ARE ALL GOING THROUGH THIS! But like I said, today was a pretty good day and I only actually wanted to put Hanna in a box once (the Thomas incident). All in all it was a really good afternoon and it was really awesome to see the kids NICELY playing together and actually EATING their lunch instead of throwing it on the floor.
From oldest to youngest:
Hanna
Moses
Chloe
Arlo
Armenie 
When we were pregnant we would sit around and say “Isn’t it going to be great when they’re all running around together playing?” and here it is. It’s hard to believe sometime. It doesn’t seem like it was really that long ago. It’s hard to believe that the babies (Arlo and Chloe) are changing into little kids before our eyes and Armenie won’t be long behind them.
Bed time has been going really well over here since we completely cut the afternoon nap out. We didn’t really cut it so much as Hanna just stopped doing it. There’s usually a witching hour around 4 o clock where she gets horrendously grumpy and needs a huge distraction. I’ve been getting her to help me make dinner which seems to be working, and is surprisingly helpful and also gets dinner on the table around 5 so we can have bathtime after and be ready for bed around 7. She has been going to sleep between 7-8 for about 5 nights in a row which is how these recent blog posts are possible. She’s still been a crummy sleeper during the night, waking up every 2 hours or so and wanting someone to come in to her bed to cuddle. This is going to be the next step in sleep adventures, getting her to lay in her bed by herself. Can’t wait for the screaming that’s going to ensue.
Armenie, on the other hand is a glorious sleeper. She went to sleep around 10pm last night and Syx came to get me out of Hanna’s bed at 5am to nurse her. 7 hour sleep?! It was insane. And by the time I had gotten out of Hanna’s bed and into our, Armenie had already found her hand was happily sucking on it. I nursed her for about 5 minutes and she fell off and went back to sleep. She is such a dream baby. I can’t stop kissing her chubby little cheeks and smelling her milky breath. When Hanna was a baby everyone kept on talking about how fast they grow and change and I would nod my head and smile and say, “I know, I KNOW! Don’t they?!” but I really didn’t get it. It felt like every stage Hanna came to took forever and I was poised and waiting for it! Baby center emails, telling me about my child’s development for the week, what milestones they should be reaching. With Armenie, I feel like these milestones are flying by me. It’s all too quick. I need it to slow down just a little bit.
