Rapunzel Got Run Over By a Scooter

At my house tonight, Rapunzel got run over by a scooter and died. 

As Lydia approaches 4, I've been reading about developmental milestones to see where she's at.  She's been at 4 or even 5-year-old language skills for a long time, but her motor skills have always lagged behind a little.

In the interest of encouraging her motor skills, I took the girls out front tonight, so Lydia could practice riding her scooter in the driveway.  The scooter usually lays forgotten in the backyard, next to the outgrown, but never mastered, tricycle. 

In the driveway, Lydia rode the scooter up and down a few times.  Then she set ran inside to retrieve two of her dresses, which she calls "clothes girls."  (She often carries her dresses and sets them up like they are people.  These are different from her pretend girls, who cannot be seen at all.) 

Tonight, the clothes girls who came to play were Rapunzel and her little sister Julianne.  They played on the front porch and rode the tricycle and the scooter.  Rapunzel got run over a few times, and in the end we had to break the news to Julianne that her big sister was dead.  Julianne cried, and then we all went inside to go to bed. 

And that's what became of gross motor skill time in the driveway.

Penelope: 13 Months

Wow!  The last few months have gotten away from me. 

I've been busy trying to figure out some of Penny's health issues.  She started throwing up daily just after her nine month check up.  I started keeping a food journal and we figured out that garlic was the culprit.  She's also had some episodes of lip swelling and vomiting after eating flax and lentils with tumeric.  We think she may be sensitive to grass, disposable diapers, California Baby soap, eggs, and most acidic fruits. 

Overall, her skin is doing better.  I wish we could get away from using steroids, but we know it's important to keep her skin from getting open and infected.  So we use them for now and keep trying to find more clues to why she breaks out. 

But on to the fun stuff!

• Penny has about ten words now: mama, da (Daddy, dog), ba (ball, bath, book), buh-buh (bubbles), na (no), nuh-nuh (nurse), kuh-kuh (kiss).
• She likes to point and say "Da!"  We interpret this to mean "What's that?"
• She has two favorite sounds--Dukka, dukka, dukka and nunga, nunga, nunga.
• She makes the sign for "nurse," waves bye-bye, and gives high-fives.  She is proficient in pointing, grunting, and shrieking to communicate what she wants.  She also understands a lot of basic requests, like "give," "not for Penny," "where is Daddy/sister?"
• She is very attached to Grandma Sharon and only wants her when we visit their house.  She's still very sociable and likes to be held by and snuggle our friends and family. 
• She still nurses a lot.  Some of her favorite foods are blueberries, sweet potatoes, corn on the cob, and peaches.  She loves her sippy cup.
• Penny likes to read books now and will bring us the ones she wants to read.  Her favorites are Baby Faces and Where is Baby's Belly Button?
• She has all eight front teeth now.
• She lifts up a leg and attempts to climb anything near her height.  She can easily climb on the footstool and Lydia's bed.  At the playground, she climbs up the big toy steps. 
• She likes to look at dogs and pet them, but doesn't like them near her face. She pushes them away and says, "Dukka, dukka, dukka!"
• She still takes two naps a day although occasionally she will just take one. 
• In the past few days, she has discovered bracelets.  She wants to wear anything that will fit over her hand.  Sometimes she takes them off and holds up her hand for me to put them back on.  She also tries to put on necklaces, headbands, and hairbows. 
• She likes to throw things--food, sippy cup, balls.
• When she starts crawling fast, she gets a big grin on her face and sometimes makes a humming sound like a small motor. 
• She's learning to use a fork.  She also puts her face directly on her tray to get her food sometimes.
• Penny is very interested in putting toys together, taking them apart, and seeing what will fit inside.

Why I Nurse in Public

I don't usually admit this, but I'm not completely comfortable nursing in public. 

I try to silence these thoughts, but I still wonder what passersby are thinking.  I hold an ever-vigilant finger on my shirt so that nothing will be exposed if my gregarious 10-month-old decides to pop up and say hi.  I hope this isn't the time I'll be asked to move or cover up or leave the premises.

And yet I continue. 

I'm doing this for my daughters.  For everyone's daughters.  I hope that someday, no mother will ever have to try to push these thoughts from her mind or else hide while she nurses her baby. 

I believe no mother should feel like she has to make her baby sweat under a stuffy blanket, so she can keep an eye on her toddler climbing at the park.

I believe no mother should have to frantically search for a dressing room with a screaming baby in her arms.

I believe no mother should feel like she needs to add pumping to the already gargantuan effort of getting her small children out of the house.

I believe every mother should be able to take her older children for a fun day at the zoo or the museum without worrying about where she can conceal herself while she nurses her baby.

So, despite the hesitation I feel sometimes, I've determined to be the change I want to see in the world.  I hope when my daughters nurse their babies in public, their only worry will be whether or not they packed a burp cloth to catch some spit up.

Penelope: 10 Months

• Penny just cut her sixth tooth.  She now has four on top and two on bottom.
• We're still not sure if she's saying any words besides "mama."  She says "ba" a lot when she sees the bathtub and bubbles.
• She likes to walk behind her push toy and is cruising quickly. 
• She's interested in putting toys into containers.  She likes to stick magnets to the fridge and was trying to stick one to my leg today.
• She never sits still.  Even when we're somewhere busy like the library or a big play group, she crawls as much as 30 feet away and will play for a while before looking around to see where I am or crawling back to me.
• She also crawls up to other moms and tries to get into their laps or play with their shoes.
• She woke me up one morning with open mouth kisses. 
• Her first joke was pretending to bite my sleeve when I put more food on her tray.
• She doesn't have patience for books yet.  She likes to open and close them or chew on them while I read to Lydia.
• She loves to swing and play in the sand but still tries to eat it.
• Penny has learned to crawl up to us and wave her arms when she wants to be picked up.
• She takes two naps a day, 30 minutes to an hour each time.  She doesn't sleep very long by herself right now.
• She's started spitting up and throwing up a lot and we're not sure why.

Lydia at 3 1/2

Things I want to remember about Lydia at 3 1/2

• She loves to practice counting.  She will line up or arrange the items she wants to count and then very deliberately point at each item.  The highest we've heard her count accurately to is 10.
• She's fully into the Why Stage now, sometimes asking quite complex questions about things that happened hours or days ago.
• She also asks, "What would happen if..." a lot.  Today she wanted to know what would happen if she shut the fold-out changing table while Penny was lying on it.  One time she asked what would happen if someone thought our cart was their cart and took it while we were grocery shopping.  Sometimes she giggles and sometimes the question are more serious to her. 
• She spelled her first word, "zoo," several months ago.  She recognizes most letters and knows many sounds.  She recognizes some numbers.
• She has imaginary friends now.  Collectively, they are "my girls" and their names vary depending on who she's played with or read about recently.  She's particularly attached to her baby Melissa and sometimes nurses her and puts her to bed.  Recently, she invented "clothes girls," which means she pulls all her clothes out of her closet and pretends they are girls to play with.
• She often pretends her name is something else and introduces herself this way to people.  Some of her favorites are Audrey, Isabella, and various princess names.  She makes up names too.
• She still loves climbing and will occasionally slide by herself.  She prefers me to slide with her. 
• She's becoming interested in scary things, pretending that she can't get out of the livingroom because a wolf is in the way.  EW showed her a little bit of Star Wars so she could see Princess Leia fighting.
• She likes to make up songs and rhymes.  Most of her songs have some nonsense lines, but she made up one complete song recently at the zoo.  Here's Lydia singing "Ducks Love Grapes."

Penelope: 9 Months

• Penny is busy cutting her four front teeth on top, but only two have come through so far.
• We're pretty sure that mamama means me.  We think that mamama in the highchair might mean "more."  She grins whenever I sign "more."  Mostly, she shrieks when she runs out of food.
• We discovered she's allergic to wheat when she had a bite of pancake last month.  Her face and hands got very itchy, her face broke out with a few hives, and then she threw up. 
• She's loving lots of other solid foods though.  She's eating ground turkey, chicken, peas, beans, bananas, sweet potato, carrots, pears, peaches, puffed and cooked rice, avacado.
• Penny is learning how to clap (with closed fists) and to wave.  She likes to bounce up and down when she sees someone dancing.  She also likes to hold out a hand and for us to bump it or get it.
• She also likes to imitate our laughter and other sounds.  Lydia and Penny like to shriek, squeal, and giggle back and forth with each other. 
• She knows her way around the entire house crawls to find whoever (or whatever) she wants. 
• She plays happily with her toys on the floor a lot of the time, even crawling off into another room to play by herself.  When she wants to nurse or gets tired, then she crawls to me and follows me until I pick her up.
• Penny loves baths.  She crawls into the bathroom to reach over the tub and splash in the water when Lydia takes a bath.
• Penny and Lydia like to wrestle together, which mostly means Lydia pulls Penny over on the floor.
• Penny has tested out cruising a little bit, but mostly just pulls up and stands, then crawls elsewhere.

The Plot Thickens

Before today, Lydia's appreciation of Tangled could be mostly summed up with the words: princess! long hair! purple dress!

Lydia follows the plots of shows like Max and Ruby and Wonder Pets pretty well, but longer movies seem to mostly go over her head. 

I popped Tangled in the Playstation this afternoon because I was tired, and I wanted to rest and snuggle on the couch with my little girl. I expected to hear comments about Rapunzel's bare feet and the flowers in her braid.

But Lydia's mind was on a mission to understand the plot at a deeper level.  I heard a continuous stream of questions:

"Why did she take the baby?  Is that the prince?  Who are those other guys?  Why are they running? Whose crown is that? What is that horse doing? Why does Rapunzel have to stay in the tower? Why is Rapunzel sad?  Where did the prince go?  Why are they trying to put Rapunzel in a bag?  Who's the guy with the white face? Why does Rapunzel's pretend mama want her hair?  Why is her hair gray now? Why...?"

I didn't get any rest until after movie, but instead I witnessed Lydia's mind open up to a whole new level of storytelling.