good times

It's been a good couple of days here. Not only have we had a few nights of reasonably good sleep, but I finally caught Anja's elusive smile on (digital) film. And someone awesome at preschool taught Nate the chicken dance (please excuse my horrible singing - I am tired!)

wanna buy an s?

I am tempting fate by announcing this publicly, but Anja slept until 5am two nights in a row! You could knock me over with a feather (and not because I'm too exhausted to stand). Since Thad and I are still on our new-parent bedtime schedule, I got seven straight hours of sleep... gasp! Babies would be much easier if they did this all the time. I'm still finding balancing two kids challenging (for instance, how to get from the car into the grocery store during a pouring rainstorm) but it is much more manageable when mildly rested.

In the latest chapter of our Adventures in S*@#, yesterday Nate "pooped an S" in the potty. I remember our friend Julia pooping an L while she was potty training. Could this be training for the day when Nate first writes his name in snow? I really hope he doesn't do so with excrement. I'd be so proud.

a short conversation

[Nate is exiting the house]

me: Have fun at school, honey!

Nate: Have fun at home, honey!

what else?

In case you haven't heard enough about my kids' excrement, here's another gem from this morning. For some unknown reason (perhaps it was that I hadn't had my coffee yet?) I dressed Anja in a cute-but-difficult-to-put-on outfit this morning. And, like many a babe, she proceeded to have a major diaper blow out a few hours later. And boy, was it a big one. Poop was oozing out from all edges of the diaper. When removing said cute outfit I had to pull it over her head and ended up smearing the gigantic poo even farther up her back. After putting a new diaper on, I sat her up facing toward me so I could wipe her back off. And at that very same moment she projectile vomits. 'Nuff said.

the scoop

Here's Nate with the excavator he got as a special treat for pooping on the potty. Personally, I think a dump truck would have been more appropriate.

splish splash

Actually, bath time was a while ago, but I've just downloaded the pictures from my camera. Anja seems to like getting a bath. Or at least she doesn't dislike it. I can't think of anything clever, amusing, or interesting to say, so I will just post a couple of pictures of my cuteie patootie daughter (who I think is looking more and more like her big brother).

going back in time

My sleep deprivation is getting to me and I realized I haven't updated you all on Anja's month one stats. Normally, a two-week delay isn't that big of a deal, but the kid is only six weeks old so I'm a third of her lifetime behind. Not only that, but I didn't write down any of the details from her doctor's appointment, so I am relying on my not-so-functional brain to regurgitate her stats. Here goes nothing... Anja is growing at a normal pace and was 8 1/2 pounds at her one month appointment (I'm guessing she's 9 or 9 1/2 pounds now). She may have grown two inches since she was born. Her head circumference is an unknown but healthy measurement bigger. Her growth charts are normal and unremarkable. Exciting, to say the least!

On the subject of sleep deprivation, it has come to my attention that Thad and I have very different, yet equally annoying, issues with falling back asleep. I can't shut my brain off, and it's worse at 3am when all is quiet. I try to go to sleep, yet my brain is racing with completely unimportant, often asinine, thoughts. One night I was up thinking about high school (thank you Facebook). The next night I was up thinking about Glee. As if it wasn't annoying enough having flashbacks to my own high school, thinking about a fictional one is even more irritating. Then my thoughts switched to ways of making the window shades in Nate's room fit better. On the other hand, Thad's brain goes completely blank. This would normally be a good sleep-inducing technique, but he will then get a burst of something popping into his head randomly. The other night he kept hearing Emmett "Doc" Brown from Back to the Future yelling, "One point twenty one gigawatts!"

more deep thoughts

Nate, on breastmilk:
"It starts in your head, then goes into your chin, then into your body and into your nipple. Then it goes round and round. Then it comes out and into Anja's mouth."

Nate, who still doesn't eat meat, especially chicken:
"When chickens get dead we usually bake them and eat them."

it's potty time, excellent!

Nate's World! Nate's World! Thad and I made a New Year's resolution on Nate's behalf - to have him potty trained sometime this year. We had hoped he'd have been potty trained last year, but that didn't go according to plan. His teachers have a policy of sitting on the potty whenever they change a diaper, so we decided to institute something similar here. It worked okay for a few days and then turned into a battle royale. A few days ago, Nate was almost hyperventilating at the idea of sitting on the potty (I'm not being sarcastic, I swear!) So I used the small portion of my brain that is functioning and realized that he has used the potty at other people's houses and at school, and all of these were a different potty than the one we own. Nate confirmed that he would indeed use a different potty and would like a red one. So yesterday afternoon I went to the store and found a potty matching that very description, which I proudly presented to him and then went along my merry way assuming Nate will be in diapers long past the point when he can change them himself.

Fast forward a few hours... We had a fun dinner at our place with Saydee, one of Nate's friends from school, and her parents. After eating, the adults were in the living room and the kids were playing happily right around the corner in our kitchen. Nate waltzes into the living room with no pants or diaper, holding the potty insert for all to see, and proclaims, "I did poopies in the potty." Lo and behold, Nate in fact did poopies in the potty! You could have knocked me over with a feather. I was actually stunned and for a minute thought Nate was trying to pass Saydee's poop as his own. Then I remembered that he is three and doesn't know how to do that yet. And Saydee was still fully dressed, so the owner of the poop seemed pretty clear.

I was nursing Anja, so Thad accompanied Nate and Saydee back to the bathroom. Nate put the pot back on the potty and tried again, but to no avail. He stood up and double-checked to see if anything new had appeared (it hadn't). He then stood up, picked up the potty, and tipped it into the toilet. His aim, however, is not that good, and instead of going into the bowl, the poop landed on the seat. Acting out of some bizarre instinct, Nate then reached out and picked up the poo. Upon realizing that he now had a handful of poop, he shook violently and screamed in horror, "Get it off! Get it off!" So Thad picked him up, washed his hands, cleaned the poo off the potty and toilet, and realized that he never checked if Nate wiped his bum. He hadn't. So Thad bent Nate over and started wiping. Like many a curious three-year-old, Saydee then said, "Let me see!" A minute later, Nate asked her, "Did you see in my anus?"

After the poop escapade, Nate and Saydee decided to run a marathon in our house. Although they didn't technically run a full marathon, it felt like one to the bystanders. Apparently, Saydee has never run anywhere before, so this was quite a shock to her parents. Nate was much faster than Saydee, so to compensate she would take a swipe at the alphabet magnets when she ran past the fridge and Nate would then stop to pick them all up. After returning the magnets to their rightful spot on the refrigerator, he'd catch up with her just as she reached the kitchen again and the magnet routine would be repeated. The pair ran laps around our house for at least a half hour, and after miscalculating that the kids ran 600 feet, Thad rechecked his math and determined more accurately that they had run over a mile, and probably closer to a mile and a quarter. Needless to say, after all that pooping and running, Nate slept well.

In related news, Anja, who still poops a lot but does not yet run, also slept great! It was the best night we've had so far. I'm sure I'm jinxing tonight by sharing, but she ate right before bed, only woke up once around 2am, and then slept until 7. Then this morning while I was nursing her she smiled at me. I'm still not sure if it was her first "social smile" or if she was just gassy, but it was great nonetheless.

and we're off!

I had such high hopes, but 2010 has so far been mediocre. We made our first phone call of the new year not to our families or friends, but to our plumber because our bedroom radiator was leaking. Nate described it perfectly when he said, "the radiator drooled all over." Luckily it was an easy fix and our amazing plumbers didn't charge us, if you can believe it. We plan on bringing them some beer next week.) We no longer have to wade out of our room, but our rug is hanging over the stairway railing, dripping into a bucket in our downstairs hallway. Since we haven't been cleaning much (understatement alert!) the rug is really dirty and now our house smells like wet dog. Awesome.

Also, sleep deprivation is also starting to get the best of me. On New Year's Eve I said something along the lines of, "see you later, 2006!" Then yesterday, amidst our plumbing woes, I said that 2008 wasn't off to a very good start. As Thad pointed out, I'm at least moving in the right direction.