Christmas happened. We survived. End of blog.
Seriously, though. Christmas was hard. A week ago our nanny had a Covid exposure and started 2 week quarantine. Lorelei had some very high fevers Monday/Tuesday that we wrote off to a generic baby virus. Then Wednesday the nanny tested positive. And then I kinda freaked out. Christmas Eve we all got tested. The kids screamed and I had to hold them down. It was awful. But our real Christmas present was negative tests all around.
There were presents too, which were great, but the fear of the kids getting sick was really scary for me. I am in the habit of getting the kids physical exertion toys so the big present to them both was a geodesic climbing dome. Moriarty can really scale it already. Lorelei is doing some hanging and balancing on the rounded base. I’m planning to get a rope ladder with smaller spacings for her to climb up/down until she’s taller. The physical activities seem to be paying off. Lorelei is full on jumping on our little trampoline and he’s leaping off everything. He still has more tantrums than I expected for his age but we’re going to keep working on identifying and processing emotions before he turns into a raging cat creature that doesn’t talk and screams and kicks. It’s hard.
Back to happy things, other gift highlights included some learning toys (books, dry erase tablet for letter practice, etc), a dangerous toy (bow and arrow!), and some creative play/art toys (coffee maker play set, modeling dough, markers, etc). I’m really pleased with the range and the avoidance of loud plastic noisemaking stuff.
Much of this month has been spent outside. The weather is incredible and we’re preparing for out spring goal of chickens (to give me fresh eggs every day). To get there we had to clear a ton of blackberry, and then regrade that part of the yard. There’s a stone fireplace cairn-looking thing in that area so Pip has been making epic fires with the kids help while I clear and dig up blackberry to burn.
I kinda buried the lede but Lorelei made her first sentence. I mentioned her language explosion last month; this is next level! At night we read books to her while she has bottle, as her bedtime routine. We usually get through 2-3 books while she drinks then she wants her FAVORITE book, Barnyard Dance. This was a recommendation from my sister Jennifer many years ago and both my kids were obsessed with it. So after the bottle Lorelei gets up (often with me and Moriarty) and we dance, jump, twirl, and bow to the chanty book cadence. When she’s sick of a given book she uses her hand to shut it. Well, a few nights ago she finished her bottle and said ‘stop book’ while shutting the book so we would move onto Barnyard Dance. OMG OMG it was so exciting. Putting together words to form phrases is a big next step and it happened so fast.
Things are hard, but also really wonderful.
New Photos, password ‘mal’
Random Videos:
Sort of singing Barbra Ann by the Beach Boys (you can hear Moriarty in the background)
Saying ‘Mo’, but a weird breathy growly version