keep it up

Well, Stella has found her fist. Before I had kids I thought that was some sort of an inside joke, when very excited mothers said - my baby just found her fist! But it turns out to be very true. For the first month or two of their lives little babies are just moving their arms without ever knowing how to control them. And then one day, all of a sudden they find the fist and from that moment on, more often then not, the fist ends up being in their mouth. Stella has just hit that stage. She also “coooos’ and “aaahs” and makes all sorts of other sounds with her lips. Kaspar tries to tell her to say “da-da”. I’m not quite sure, but I think it has to do with a cartoon, where some bear or raccoon baby is being taught to say da-da. I cannot keep up with the stuff he learns from cartoons. I know I should, but I’ve lost track. Today he said something about “wonder pets” and I was totally lost. It turns out that he’s seen a show about wonder pets on TV. Go figure! And they say that it’s hard for parents to keep up with their teenagers. Gosh! What am I going to do, when he hits the teens????

hockey man

Kaspar sat me down about a week ago and very seriously informed me that he wants to be: "a garbage man first, then a fire man after, but the best is when I be a hockey man!" For my own sake I hope the “hockey man” comes to fruition before the garbage man.

In the picture he’s wearing his “skates” and his "hockey man shirt", which says : “Kaspar – hockey man” and “mommy – goalie”. Don’t even try to convince me that GAP spells gap and not “Kaspar – hockey man” and “mommy – goalie”!

guilt

Guilt. It’s a powerful thing. Guilt is what got me back into doing the blog. Guilt keeps me recycling. Guilt makes me get out and shovel the sidewalk in the morning. It keeps my kitchen floor clean. It even gives me more time with kids… and I’m sure I could go on.

After having one kid and trying your best to do things the right way (by my self imposed standards, of course) I find myself feeling guilty more and more often these days. I just cannot manage things the same way I did, when my first was a couple of months old. I feel guilty about not taking as many pictures of Stella as I did with Kaspar. I feel guilty about not spending as much time talking to her. I feel guilty about not using washable diapers the same way I did when Kaspar was born. And even though it’s probably a very legitimate response to having two kids, even legitimate guilt (if I may put it that way), I’m well aware that no matter how hard I try I will never be the same for the both of them. Maybe it’s me. Maybe I just cannot cope with two the same way I did with one. But maybe, just maybe… it’s the way the world works. Whatever the reason, it does not make me feel less guilty. So, I’m beginning to realize that feeling guilty is probably going to be a part of my daily routine, no matter ho hard I try. I have to make sure I don’t let it run my life.

I’ve often wondered how my mother did it. She had three kids and very little help. But when I ask about it she always has a very wise response. Such as “ I only had two rooms to take care of, not an entire house!” or “My three kids over the course of fifteen years had less toys then your first in his first year of life!” or my favourite “When you have to do it, you have to do it. That’s all there is to it.” (It does not rhyme in Latvian, unfortunately.) Then there are also the ones I have a hard time swallowing myself - “You were never that spoiled!” or “You helped me clean and cook as soon as you could walk!” and “I didn’t need to teach you to read, you absorbed it all on your own.” and “Of course you could spell by the time you turned three… I still have a card to prove it!” I have a hard time believing some of it, since I never turned out to be some sort of a child genius, but she does insist that she’s not making it up. And being a genius in early childhood does not mean I’m a genius at being a mother myself. Quite the opposite, in fact.

But… back to guilt and things I feel guilty about - My house is never as clean as I’d like it to be. The laundry is never done, because there is always more in the basket. There could always be more time for the kids. And more time trying to educate them in the ways of this life. The washable diapers are never used as much as I’d like them to be used. More often then not I forget to bring a reusable bag to the grocery store and there are way too many things that never get sorted properly for the recycling bin. I go for days at a time not answering my emails. I conveniently forget to mail 80% of my Christmas cards. I don’t floss as often as I’d like and I eat way to much sugar and drink way too much coffee. I don’t read as many books as I’d like. Oh, let me correct myself… I don’t read at all these days. But it really all comes down to one thing - there is never enough hours in the day to do it all.

So in the end it’s all about a good balance, because building another snowman on a snowy day is way more important then having a clean floor in the kitchen, or all the laundry done, is it not? My two year old understands that, but I on the other hand have a hard time dealing with my own guilt. Go figure~!

did you say sleep?

Kids never sleep when you want them to. It’s got to be Murphy’s law!!! And I don’t mean that I want them asleep for most of the day and night. Well, maybe once every few weeks I might wish for that… but not typically. Today I was out visiting a friend for brunch and had a half a dozen babysitters ready to hold Stella and play with her, but she was fast asleep the entire four hours. On the other hand, in the evening, when I was home alone trying to do laundry, cook and eat dinner and make sure the two of them fall asleep before midnight, she was wide awake the entire time. Why, I ask? Why?

You know the little gold star stickers you used to get in grade school, when you completed an assignment or got a good mark on a test? I think I should get one of those every night that I manage to get both of my kids to bed on my own and have them sleeping before 11pm. I’m sure that most moms manage this without any difficulty, but not me… not with my kids. It’s a zoo here on the nights, when Steve works and my mom is not here to help out.

It kind of goes like this:
“Kaspar, which tooth brush would you like to use for brushing your teeth?” I try to give him a choice, because he’s not too keen about brushing (I don’t think many 2 year olds are!) and I read somewhere that if you give kids a choice then they feel like they are in charge and are more likely to do what you ask them to do.
“No! I don’t want to. I want to see Stella brushing her teeth first.”
“But she does not have any teeth to brush.”
“Then I don’t have any tooths, too! I don’t want to brush! No. I’m a baby and I have no tooths.” Kaspar still has no concept of “teeth” v.s. “tooth” or “feet” v.s. “foot”. It’s kind of cute!
By the time I do manage to get Kaspar to brush his teeth and wash up for the night, Stella is sure to be crying her little heart out, because she’s been left all on her own in her basinette. And Kaspar is in no way happy about it. He tends to get a little frustrated and upset if she cries for a long period of time.

Next we try to read a night time story, but it often ends in tears, because I’m trying to pacify Stella while reading the story and all I keep hearing from Kaspar is “The story does not go like that!” or “Stop saying ‘shush little baby’!” or “That’s not the next page, you missed one!” I cannot say that by this time I’m not getting frustrated myself and thus my attempt to get Kaspar to flip his own pages is not taken well. Once I get frustrated, it never goes well. Kids feel our frustration!

So, I take a deep breath. Put Stella down (she’s almost asleep!) and take a long overdue bathroom break myself. The bright light in the bathroom tends to put things in perspective, even if only for a brief moment.

But the brief moment is never brief enough. Kaspar has already managed to wake Stella, turn the lights on in his room and relocate the entire book shelf contents onto his bed. “Mom, let’s read these books first and then I’ll go to bed! Ok?”

NOOOOOOO!

And I’ve muttered the wrong thing again! The word “no” immediately starts another fight. “No” “Yes” “No” “Yes” “No” “Yes” “No” “Yes” “No” “Yes” … You try telling a dedicated and tired two year old to put the books back in the shelf. Besides, I have a screaming 6 week old baby in my arms, who does not understand prioritizing and has decided that she NEEDS to eat NOW!

I could go on, but I think I’ve painted a pretty good picture of my night time routine. By the time the two of them are asleep (often no before 11pm, even though I start well before 8pm) I feel like I’ve had a major physical workout and need a change of clothes and a shower. But I wouldn’t dare take a shower! If I do, then it’s a sure thing that one of them will wake up just as I have covered myself with soap. And, believe me, you don’t want soap drying out all over your body, while you wait for your kids to fall back asleep. It feels disgusting.

Sometimes I do attempt to watch the news, but most nights I just crash. You never know how long it’ll be before one of them is up again.

I’m so glad I don’t have to do it on my own every night!

p.s. the horse

The horse in the previously posted picture actually grabbed Kaspar by his jacket and ate the strap off his sleeve. Yup, ate it. A red, five inch long, velcro lined, fabric strap. Go figure! Must have been a very hungry horse. I was sure glad he did not grab Kaspar's entire hand. I wasn't there to see it, but they both look a little unsure about the animal in this picture...

the cold/hot factor

The weather has been so weird all winter. Whatever it is la nina or pollution or greenhouse gasses… I’m not liking it one bit. Sure, it was nice for Kaspar to enjoy the couple of weeks of full blown winter wonderland in December. I’ll even agree that I’d take this above the total lack of snow last winter, but being teased with +14 degree temperatures for a whole week, watching the crocuses come out and tulips begin to peak through the earth and the wake up to more snow and cold weather. I know it’s normal for January. I know. I know. I just don’t like it. I don’t like winter anymore, I’ve decided.

Winter with kids is so relentlessly tiresome. Just imagine for a minute the task of getting two kids ready to go outside. It takes a god ten minutes to track down all the garments and boots and blankets around the house. And that’s not even the beginning of the chore. Then it’s the decision of who to get dressed first. Of course, if I decide to get the two year old dressed, then the baby will start to cry just I begin. On the other hand, if I do manage to get the baby dressed and placed in the stroller before Kaspar decides to take off, then she’ll more then likely freak out, because she’s left there to lie all on her own. Then there is the traditional fight between Kaspar and myself of “You have to go and pee before we get into the snow suit!” “NO! I don’t have to pee!” and so on, and so on, until I cave and give up only to be faced by the unavoidable – “I need to pee pee, mom!” It always comes right at the moment, when I’m opening the front door and getting ready to shuffle the fully snow suited child out onto the porch. It’s Murphy’s law or just my luck. So, these days I intentionally avoid going outside with the two of them, if I’m home alone. When there are a second pair of hands to get the task done, then I can almost feel normal by the time we make it onto the street. So, that’s why I enjoyed the temperatures last week and am very much looking forward to spring. I know there are at least two more months of winter to go. But who knows… maybe it’ll end early. Maybe I can pray for El Nina to work some magic or move to Cuba?

I thought I’d better take a picture of the kids by the Christmas tree on the morning of our last “tree pick-up” day. We had been so severely sick during the season that I couldn’t remember if we took any pictures of the kids at all. And what’s another ten digital pictures, if the computer’s already full of hundreds and hundreds of them anyway? The invention of the digital image and camera has secured that not a single meaningless moment goes by unrecorded in a child’s life, while also securing themselves a prosperous future through parents, who’ll always be in need of memory upgrades, new digital software and such. Sad, really!

So, I took this picture of the kids, loaded it into the computer, stared at it for a while … but it took a few moments before it registered. I knew that something looked odd. And then it dawned on me… the colouring. It’s so strange looking at your own kids and realizing that judging by the skin colour they could almost pass for children of two different races or at the very least from two different families. And that is without adjusting the colouring or the contrast in the image at all. Honestly. I had never thought about it until now, but Kaspar is very pale. Alabaster child. Stella almost looks tanned next to him. Ever since noticing it in the picture I’m also seeing it in real life.

I had these grand plans of all these things I was going to write about today, but Stella is making those grunting, huffing and puffing and little kitten noises already. So, I might have to keep this short for the time being. She’s been acting really odd the last few days – restless, very restless.

new years resolutions

New Years resolutions… a blessing or a curse? I’ll have to think about that one. But one thing for sure – I would not be writing this blog if it wasn’t for New Years resolutions. Ha!

Since we have a brand new addition in the family, I guess I just felt like I owe it to her. Stella is just over a month old and I’m already riddled by guilt. Go figure? I guess it with the territory of having a second kid.

I will not go into detail of what the blog has missed since I quit writing last summer. Let the past be the past… let us focus on the days ahead! I’ve got my hands full with the days ahead. I never in my wildest dreams imagined how much work two kids are. Especially while they’re still little. It’s true what they say that one plus one does NOT equal two!

Oh, and did I mention that we seem to have had twins only two years apart? Just look at these pictures. I can hardly tell them apart myself.

As the days pass and Stella grows, she’s changing and I’m sure that soon enough she’ll be a completely different baby. But I must admit that I was very surprised during the first few days of her life how often I wanted to call her Kaspar, just because she reminded me so much of Kaspar, when he was a little baby. I guess dressing her in the same clothes as Kaspar did not help.

The facial features is pretty much where the similarities between the two kids end. Kaspar was a live wire from day one. Stella is a mellow child, who sleeps relatively well, eats well and cries only because she’s got a wet diaper or needs to throw up again and again. The throwing up part is weird. It's called “spit-up” or “burp” in most baby literature, but what she does can hardly be classified as that. She throws up! And lots, too! Projectile, flying through the air, sever times in an hour… but more on that subject later.

drag

i'm sitting at work well past my work hours and doing nothing in particular and the one an only thing i want to be doing is going home. back yard+kaspar+garden hose+a cold drink+dinner... i'd much rather be there with him and not here sitting in a mildly warm and airless office. but, my computer busted last friday. and this morning i spent endless hours frustrated trying to fix it myself, but had to admit to defeat and call the computer doctor. so here i am. waiting for the computer to be fixed. biting my lips. wanting to get out. boredom.

language

Finally, the one morning that Kaspar decides to sleep like a normal child, the sparrows wake me up at 5:30 am. What gives? Yes, I’m slightly grouchy, but I’m getting it off my chest as we speak. And the hot cup of tea should do it’s job, as well.

I’ve kept meaning to write (for quite some time now) about Kaspar’s ever so improving language skills and the funny pronunciations of names he comes up with, but I always get sidetracked by something else. So This is the day, I’ve decided.

It’s been about two months since Kaspar began repeating names of people and showed great interest in calling people names even when we look at pictures in our photo albums. The first were the simple and easy ones “mamma, dada, gamma, gampa, omu, opu” (I will try my darn best to spell them the way he says it, not the way it’s spelled!!!) those were pronounced relatively close to the actual word. Even “Amada, Jamie, Loly, Henny, Kish and Atida” were quite understandable. (Just in case you did not guess the last few were Amanda, Lorry, Chris, Astrida) Up to this point it was relatively easy to get the drift. Most of the time he just opted out of using the letters that he could not pronounce but the general gist of the name was very understandable. He even gave himself a nickname - “Kabīts” would be the way I’d spell it in Latvian. In English it sounds close to “Cabby”, which is what dad has begun to call him now, but most of the time Kaspar very clear with the “ts” ending. Especially when he’s trying to introduce himself to people.

The most interesting combinations in his pronounciation and immagination began to appear when we arrived in Latvia and began to meet people with names that are three syllables long or even longer. I kept thinking to myself – if I do not write these down now, I’ll never forgive myself. As time goes on and Kaspar changes, I’m sure I’ll forget these. So here is a nice little selection of the most interesting. Because most of them are Latvian names, I will write them out in the following order – Kaspars pronounciation in Latvian (My best translation to English) and then the actual name in Latvian (and again my best translation of the name in English). To have a good laugh you have to say some of them out loud! Onku Pāu (Uncoo Paw) – Pāvilonkulis (Uncle Pavils); Pakučš (Packuch) – Patriks (Patrick); Madmems (Madmamms) – Madlena (Madeleine); Feigot (Faygott) – Feliks (Felix); Midzamoo (Midzamaw) – Mirdza More - that was Kaspar’s nick name for our neighbour, a grandmother figure of mine, who always gave him what he asked for and let him water her plants over and over again until they practicly drowned in water.

And if trying to figure out his language was not enough, then we also have the absolute obsession with everything red. It might have started with fire engines, I’m not sure… but ever since he’s learned his basic ten colours, everything “red” in the world is more exciting then any other colour. So, when we drive, it’s almost like playing “punch-buggy” with every red car that appears on the horizon. Don’t you even think about not participating…