Anna is 18 months old and she is as independent in the pool as an 18-month old can be. She can jump in, she goes down the slide, and she kicks herself where ever she needs to go. When David was a baby, he was happiest in the water. It was so much fun to
Last month, when Anna turned 16 months, I decided I’d skip her monthly update. She had just broken her arm (somewhere, Mary Virginia is correcting me, “IT’S HER WRIST!”) and she was whining a little more and sleeping a little less. Plus, she decided she couldn’t feed herself and so for the first time in
Mary has been wanting to do the monkey bars at school. She never mentioned it to me, she kept it to herself. It was her own, personal, quiet goal. She had wanted to try, but she hadn’t tried yet. She hadn’t even climbed the ladder. There were plenty of very valid excuses — David broke his
At Anna’s 15-month well-visit last week, the nurse let me know that my happy, smiling, gurgling baby had a low grade fever. Um, excuse me, what? A few minutes later we had a diagnosis of two bulging ear infections, one emerging molar, and an otherwise growing, healthy bald baby girl. Happy 15 months, Anna! I
Recently we visited a friend one afternoon, and when we got home I exhaled dramatically, “WHEW! That was crazy! That house is NOT set up for a toddler!” We’d spent the entire evening chasing Anna around their house, keeping her from the stairs, out of the toilet, away from drawers and cabinets and from pulling
I always knew this would happen one day. In fact, this is why I keep blogging. Because I want my kids to have a treasury of stories from their childhood. Last week, David read my blog. We were watching this video and he noticed a tag in the sidebar, “Why does that say David Monthly? What’s that?”
Recently Mary has become obsessed with letters and writing. I credit this newfound hobby to kindergarten and her phenomenally creative and motivating teacher. I also credit it to Mary deciding she wants to know letters, because Mary does not learn things that she does not want to learn. Not for her phenomenally creative and motivating
I’m not going to use that cliché, the one parents always say at the end of the first year. The cliché I used when David turned one, the one I am so very tempted to use. I am not going to say that this year flew. The phrase implies that time slipped through our fingers
Last Saturday I cut Thomas’s hair. The night after The Haircut, we were all sharing our rose and thorn at the dinner table, Thomas’s thorn* was his hair cut. And the next day, he put his hand on his hair and said, “Mommy my hair is still cut, right?” And on Thanksgiving day, when everyone
This summer Anna blew through baby clothes sizes so fast I could barely keep up. 6-9 months, 9-12 months, 12-18 months. “Hmmm, this can’t be right,” I thought when shimmying a pair of 2T leggings on my 11-month old baby. I kept a very weather-inappropriate fleece sleeper in Anna’s drawer all summer because I wanted