Mr. Mom

I've been home with the girls since early July (thanks, economy!), thus the sparse updating. It's not that I don't have occasional downtime - I do. But that is usually spent doing things that don't require higher brain function. As Mr. Mom, I'm really bad at cleaning, but made a sauce tonight with smoked paprika. So I'm half-way there.

Alina & Evie, now 3-and-a-half and 14 months, love playing with each other. Unfortunately, and I suppose unsurprisingly, Alina wants everything Evie is playing with despite being surrounded by a mountain of fuzzy creatures and bleep-blop. Evie has a very specific objection sound, like a pterodactyl or banshee, when her sister steals a toy from her. It helps to be able to identify this sound from the other room. It allows me to simply yell, "Alina, give it back to her!" without running into the room. Couch Parenting. Sometimes Alina will carry her younger sister, in a modified heimlich hold, into the room and place her at my feet. Sometimes it's because she wants Evie out of her business and other times it's to move her away from danger. "Alina, gentle!" is a popular order.

Evie, the younger, hunts for death. She is a lot more adventurous than her sister was at that age in many ways. It's like she's our Boy. I've caught her scaling everything from kitchen cabinet shelves, open drawers, a rolling wire laundry cart, and any flat surface at eye level (stools, ottomans, chairs, etc). I can't run towards her yelling NO because she tends to throw herself back when she's excited or think I'm playing a game. My tactic is to walk by her like I don't even see her and then snatch her when she's not expecting it. Then it get into the nononono stuff. Suffice is to say that all stools are turned upside down in our house for a reason. So now instead of worrying about her climbing, I just need to keep an eye out for unintentional impalement. Babies put everything in their mouth, but it was really uncanny how Evie would find the one thing in the room that was the most inappropriate thing to sample orally. She would actually crawl over her toys to get to the torn corner of an envelope, mystery crumb, or tracked-in foliage from the outside. Now that she's walking and a little wiser, she'll pick things up off the ground, turn to me and hold it up, say Da-Da, and I'll ask her to give it to me. She'll walk over and hand it to me with a smile. I thank her profusely for the offering. The way she is right now is really the closest I'll ever come in my life to owning a chimp.

Evie is also the lightest sleeper in the universe. Maybe it helped that her older sister spent her infant years in an apartment above a busy, bus routed street, but this new kid will actually wake up if your head breaks the threshold of the doorway to the room where she slumbers. Do you know what that means?! She was awakened by the movement of air particles in her environment! There's really no quieter sound than that!

Alina, the older, is basically a full-on person. I don't even change my vocabulary on her behalf anymore. She just gets everything now. Most of the time, my wife and I debate where the hell she picks up some of the things she says. Last night, for example, she said in anticipation of dinner, "Mom, how's my chicken coming?" Recently she told me she was "really disappointed" about not being able to go somewhere she liked and also that my "breath smells terrible."

She started what I'm told is nursery school last week. I'm still a little fuzzy on the terminology. Apparently, Preschool, Nursery School, and Pre-K are all different things. Maybe it was the steroids the doctors gave her when she had Croup but, at 42 inches, she towers over these kids. The mini-bookbags they give out actually didn't fit her and they needed to go upstairs to get an older kid version. She should do well there. I mean, lets face it, we're in Queens. Most of these kids are hearing two languages at home. We got to sit in on the first day of school and MAN is she a brown-noser. Constantly telling the teacher of her accomplishments and never passes up an opportunity to tell anecdotes that relate to whatever the class is doing. Oh, and she also told the teacher "I share my snack with Grandma Betty" despite the fact that she only met her a few times and has been deceased for 6 months. So, she has playdates with dead people too. Social butterfly.