Today Bill came home with his allergies gone wild. He wasn’t in the mood to eat, so I decided to get Subway to make life easier. I took Olivia with me.
There was some confusion at first, she told me that she wanted to ride on the Subway. After I explained we were going to the sandwich shop she excitedly told me she wanted a ham sandwich. When we pulled up she looked at the door and said “MAMA! THIS IS $5 FOOT-LONGS STORE!”
I’m so proud.
It happened today.
Olivia was playing memory with Bill on the floor and I was reading some news regarding the passing of Billy Mays. I found his son’s twitter page and commented on how I didn’t know he had a son. I think my exact words were, “wow, he was a dad?”.
Suddenly Olivia looked up at me and said “Mama, where is YOUR daddy?”
How do you answer that? I silently started weeping behind my laptop screen as I pondered what to say. Bill looked up at me and said to Olivia “We’re not going to talk about that right now.”
I felt like that was somehow wrong, so I said “No, that’s not fair to her.” I want to answer her questions. He told me that that we can’t explain it to her…yet.
I agreed, but before I could further his answer, Olivia piped up and said “Mama, we’re not going to talk about that with me right now.” Which cracked me up through my tears (God I love that girl). Bill told Olivia to give me a hug, and as she did I told her that we would talk about my dad one day, and I would explain everything, but for now she should know that she has a pretty awesome dad, who loves her and loves to play memory with her. She smiled.
So did I.
I just hope the words come when the time is right.
The day started with homemade french toast, bacon and fresh strawberries. Bill got to sleep in a little later than usual, which is good, since he can’t even remember when he drug himself to bed Saturday night/Sunday morning.
Olivia drew him a picture of the two of them together, complete with glued-on poofballs (on his thumbs and nose and a big bunch of balloons). Sophia had her hands traced (sloppily, because she is past the stage of wanting to have her hands still for a long period of time). She also contributed a few scribbles to the hands, before she tried eating the crayon and I had to take it away from her.
The day was spent lazily, exactly as daddy hoped, with a small afternoon jaunt to his grandma’s house to see his dad and to take the obligatory Father’s Day photos.
It may seem like such a mundane day to many, but it was absolutely fabulous to me, and made me a little weepy.
My girls have everything that children should have in a daddy. He is what every man should strive to be when they become a parent.
I could list all of his attributes, but I would be here forever, so I’ll just say that I am so thankful I fell in love with the man who would become the best daddy I have ever encountered.
Happy Father’s Day Baby!
“Olivia, could you please not pull your sandwich apart and eat it like a normal person?” I asked her during lunch today.
“But, Mama, I’m not a normal person, I’m Olivia!”
I swear I nearly ruptured an internal organ from laughing so hard.
She got it honest, that’s for sure.
Tonight I achieved my own personal milestone.
I FINALLY got all of the baby paraphernalia out of the giant gift box I kept in the closet and into both Olivia & Sophia’s scrapbooks and baby books. I had neglected to finish Olivia’s a long time ago, and had barely started on Sophia’s. Granted, I am nowhere near finished with all of the other stuff I need to include (photos, dates and specific information, etc.), BUT I have tackled the biggest hurdle, going through and weeding out all of the papers and keepsake items from the trash and useless information. I also finished Olivia’s birthday book. I’ve been a little behind.
I have two baby books for each of them. Yes. Two. AND scrapbooks–and I am NOT a scrapbooker (more on that in a minute)
The reason for two baby books is because when I was pregnant with Olivia I had been given a regular (Winnie the Pooh) baby book that tracks up until five years old. THEN my mom gave me this really cute hardcover book that goes more in-depth and has more space for clippings and other scrapbook-y type stuff. Being that I was a first time mom I thought “Oh, two baby books, that won’t be too difficult.”
DUH.
When I became pregnant with Sophia, I bought her a similar Winnie the Pooh baby book. I wasn’t intending to buy the second one. Pregnancy hormones got the best of me and I wanted to be fair and didn’t want “the second baby to feel shafted because he/she only had one book whereas Olivia had two.” So I bought the damn book.
To be honest, I’m glad I did, because there is a lot of extra room for the tons of things I kept for each girl. However, I hope they don’t hold it against me that I did not record the date/time of some of their “firsts” (who remembers the first time their baby gurgles? Gurgling? Don’t they do that right away?)
I have always been a person who keeps shit. Ticket stubs, candy/gum wrappers from specific events or situations that were important (wrapper from a lifesaver a cute boy gave me in 7th grade? Anyone?), notes, post-its, flowers, etc. Before scrapbooking was popular I bought those magnetic page photo albums and would make scrapbook-style photo albums. I have a fabulous book that causes Bill to groan every time I pull it out. It documents (with photos, receipts, stubs, wrappers) our first year or so together.
For some strange reason, however, I never jumped on the scrapbooking bandwagon. Never had any interest or desire to create scrapbooks using fancy paper, stamps or stickers. One of my college roommates loved doing it, and the books were pretty, but the photos interested me more than the fancy stuff. Most of the people who made scrapbooks never had any of the scraps of paper that I loved so much about my “original” scrapbooks. Plus? That shit is EXPENSIVE.
But I still keep all of the girls’ cards and other random things, so, while they won’t be getting scrapbooks the way most people do them, they will get their cards, notes, certificates, etc. saved in a photo safe, acid free, highly overpriced, scrapbook. I also decided after Liv’s first birthday, to create a birthday book each year, where I can put the invitation, birthday cards, scraps of ribbon, gift-wrap, decorations and photos. I am 100% certain that scrapbooking aficionados would scoff and laugh at my crinkle cut scissor work (that is the ONLY “fancy” thing I will do) but I hope that one day, my girls will appreciate the effort I put into them. I also hope it doesn’t take me 8 months after their birthday to get them done each year.
I’m going to Michael’s tomorrow to buy Sophia’s birthday scrapbook (gotta love those 50%-off coupons), so at least I have a leg-up on the whole process this go-round.
When I was pregnant with Olivia, I bought a journal for her. I wanted to write and give it to her when she turned 18. I did the same for Sophia. So, imagine my surprise yesterday when I realized that the last time I had written in Olivia’s book was ONE YEAR AGO. Sophia fared almost as badly: it’s been about 9 months for her.
I felt so badly about it. I wrote a quick entry for Olivia, but then, Sophia wouldn’t take a nap and was screaming her head off, so I had to deal with that, and then I forgot to get back to Sophia’s. I plan to try today. I then remembered “hey, I’ve been writing on the blog, that’s something.” And it is, but it isn’t enough.
I think that this day-to-day of being a mommy can sometimes be overwhelming when both kids are so extremely needy right now. Sophia is still teething, but sleeping (usually) 10 hours a night. Which sounds heavenly, except for the fact that we put her down around 7-7:30. So, around 5-5:30 she’s ready to get up. This morning it was 4:45. Olivia was up earlier than that this morning. I don’t know how to regulate their bedtimes. I’ve tried putting them to bed earlier, later, room darkening, white noise, etc. etc.
With Olivia, I think it is just her age. She threw this amazingly incredible tantrum yesterday. It was the biggest tantrum I have ever seen. Seriously. I honestly had to sit back and laugh at her. It was so ridiculous to see my normally well-behaved child morph into this child who had thrown herself on the floor, screaming, pounding her fists on the ground and yelling. She would actually stop, stare straight at me and SCREAM. I was pretty calm through the whole thing, laughed a little and explained that when she was ready to behave and talk to me like a normal human than she could. She threw another (smaller) one today. She’s attempting to test her boundaries, and that’s fine. It’s amusing. Does laughing at her make me a horrible mother?
Sophia has found her voice and expresses her displeasure by squealing at things that won’t open, or close, or work the way she sees fit. She’s so loud it is hard to ignore, but we’re working on it. I also find this amusing, because I am discerning between “good scream” and “bad scream” now, whether or not her scream or cries warrant my immediate attention. All in an attempt to make her less inclined to behave in that way.
Overall, they are good girls and I have little room to complain. We went to the park today and had a fantastic time, Olivia was able to take her shovel and pail and dig in the sand while Soph and I sat on a blanket and watched her, Sophia crawling around and trying to eat my camera equipment. It was nice.
In hilarious kid news: Today we were watching an episode of “Yo Gabba Gabba” and there was a young boy who was playing the piano and he was awesome, so I said “You go boy!” (oh, yes I did…don’t judge me) and Olivia looked at me and said “Mama, you can’t talk to the TV.”
Schooled by a 2 year and 8 month old (I wonder when I will stop counting the fourth of every month?).