Calm

So I’m cooking dinner, and Ruby is screaming at me in the way that only a two year old can. She wants to be held or help with dinner, but I’m chopping onions, which is a chore that two year olds really can’t help with. So I turn to her and calmly explain that I can’t hold her and she can’t help. I tell her, “If you’re going to cry, you can cry in your crib. You have three options. You can watch TV, you can cry in your crib, or you can calm down. What do you want? TV, crib, or calm?”

Through belligerent tears, Ruby declares, “CALM!”

I’m gonna be honest, this is not the option I thought she’d pick.

So I said, “Ok. Then go in the living room and calm down.”

And the heavens smiled upon me and she stopped crying and left the kitchen.

…Pulled off all of her clothes, sat in her baby doll stroller, and glared at me. So, you know, you win some you lose some. But I’m gonna count this as a win. Who knew my two year old could choose to calm down?

The Bean Museum

Amy and I took the kids to the Monte L. Bean Life Sciences Museum yesterday. As soon as we arrived, we saw the enormous giraffes which, to my surprise, Ruby quickly and correctly identified.

In every room after that, she went around looking for “Giraffe?” Because giraffes are clearly the most important part of the Bean Museum.

Three Month Sabbatical

Let’s just call this hiatus in blogging I’ve been having a 3 month post-baby sabbatical and pretend that I really blogged about everything, ok?

The funny thing is that life has actually been really good for us these past three months. Sherman is a really fantastic baby. He sleeps, he only fusses when something is wrong, he’s calm and quiet most of the time…basically it’s baby heaven. Especially after all of the crying we endured with Ruby. I finally believe people when they say that after about six weeks babies tend to settle out with their sleep. Sherman totally did! He only gets up once, maybe twice at night, and then is back in bed and asleep withing 20 minutes. Sometimes all he needs is a binky, so I’m only up for about a minute to replace the lost binky. It’s magic! It puts Ruby’s babyhood into kind of a negative perspective on the sleep and crying front, but I’m enjoying Sherman’s blissful babyhood all the more for the contrast.

(As an aside, Ruby just walked past me wearing my white high heels, a diaper, and pushing her baby doll stroller. It is cuteness encapsulated. Oh, wait, then she lost her shoe and goes “Oh, crap!”, so–you know. Parenting win in kind words we’ve taught our daughter.)

I’ve got Sherman’s birth story half written up, and I really need to finish it before all of the details disappear from my mind. The quick and dirty version is that I labored for 4.5 hours, he was over a pound bigger than Ruby, and it was a harder labor and birth than Ruby’s was. Oh, and he was born at home. The longer, better version will be posted some day.

But here’s to being a more diligent blogger. We started attending the Family History class at church, and it has made me regret the neglect of this blog. Since its purpose is as a record of our family, it’s important that I keep up. I’m not very good about taking pictures, so this written record has a lot to stand for. On the up side, I figure that it won’t be hard to be more diligent than I’ve been the past few months.