Category: Groftzoo Updates

Lily Goes Vertical!

Lily is growing and developing by leaps and bounds, she has recently begun to crawl and pulling up has followed closely behind it.

Just today she mastered pulling up all on her own:

Step one – find something low to reach up to.

Lily Goes Vertical part 1

Step two – Once your hands are up off the floor, straighten your legs.

Lily Goes Vertical part 2

Step three – Look around for where to go next.

Lily Goes Vertical part 3

Step four – Go for it, you’re almost walking now!

Lily Goes Vertical part 4

So not only is she pulling up, but she is already, as you can see, trying to cruise furniture.

Then… if that wasn’t enough, she achieved another balance milestone tonight. She hates crawling on the tile, and will usually just cry when she gets to the edge of the carpet. But tonight she REALLY wanted to get to me, and I was about four feet beyond the edge of the carpet, so very carefully and very slowly she crawled on her hands and FEET. She had to set her knees down a couple of times to get her balance but she only did it when she had no other way to keep moving.

Tooth Fairy Scam

Hello, Tooth Fairy? We have a new client for you.

Tessa lost her first tooth a couple days ago. She was so excited, she actually pulled it out herself! We got it all ready in an envelope and put it under her pillow, but a few minutes later she came to me and said, “I want to take it to school for show and tell before I give it to the tooth fairy.” So I said okay, and told her to go put it in her backpack.

Then last night, she did put it under her pillow. I didn’t remember it was there and apparently my husband didn’t either, so when she woke up and checked, she was just destroyed. The tooth fairy hadn’t come.

So Jay went and got a couple of dollars and went to go help her look for it and see if maybe the Tooth Fairy had just left the tooth, since it was her first tooth and all, she might want to keep it. He reached behind her bed and pulled out the $2 and said, “Oh, here it is!”

Tessa replied, “No, that is just the money I took out of my piggy bank.”

So he had to leave her with the $2 and we have to try this ALL OVER AGAIN tonight. (Drat! Why do we never have any cash around here?)

That Tooth Fairy, she is a busy gal! Sometimes it can take a few days before she picks up your tooth!

Little stinker! She is going to get paid twice!

Posy’s Family Poetry Assignment

Biography

Lily
Small, smiley, cute, wanting to move around
Loves our cat and dog, mirrors, and Peek-a-boo
Who needs to learn to swallow baby food
Who fears not seeing mama
Who wishes she could crawl.

Max
Ambivalence, hungry, loud, energetic
Loves Thomas the tank engine, show-tunes and the outdoors
Who needs to potty train
Who fears diaper rashes
Who wishes he could go on an adventure with the Little Einsteins.

Tessa
Pink, silly, curly haired, all girl
Loves to read, sing, color, and play the violin
Who thinks she needs more books and craft supplies
Who fears being alone in a room at night
Who wishes she was a princess.

Ben
Ticklish, stick-thin, creative, funny
Loves fish sandwiches, the wii, and comedy
Who needs to gain weight, and stop procrastinating
Who fears being tickled
Who wishes he could be a snack-a-tarian.

Character

I am a family photo;
With faces big and small.
A smile. A blink. A “not ready” face.
I sit in your house, un-looked at, untouched.
Dust is collecting on my broken frame.

Haiku

The sky grows darker.
Both laughter and sorrow fades.
The family sleeps.

Field Trip

Today was a lovely day for a field trip. I dropped Max off with his Nina (Godmother) and Lily and I went to join Tessa’s kindergarten class at the science center.

But a simple trip is never nearly as easy as it sounds. Halfway there I realized that I had no cash and was going to have to park downtown. I called Jay, the Human Map of Phoenix and asked him where the nearest bank was. Money, check. On to the parking garage.

We drive a large vehicle. A very large vehicle. We drive a Ford 15 passenger van (with the back bench taken out to make room for multitudes of stuff) and it is very tall. I am not sure how tall, but I know that I have squeezed into parking garages that said 6 feet 10 inches and have hit the bar in ones that say 6 feet 6 inches. I have been to the Science Center many, many times. They have a nice parking garage that the van fits in and, when you get your ticket validated at the science center, it only cost $1 to park. Not too bad! But today when I pulled in to park in that garage, the bar said 6 feet 6 inches. WHY ON EARTH would they lower the allowed car height? I know my van can fit in there, but now it won’t fit under their stupid bar at the entrance.

This is the SECOND time this has happened to me this year. Just a few weeks ago I had to take Max to a specialist appointment at Phoenix Children’s Hospital. I have parked in their garage a dozen times at least but they had changed their allowed height and put a bar in the entrance that measured 6 feet 6 inches. In fact, that is where I learned that I couldn’t fit under it. Shh, don’t tell. At Phoenix Children’s Hospital though, there is NO OTHER PATIENT PARKING. None. Zip… well, except for handicapped. I looked and looked for a place to legally park and could not find anything that did not have either a handicapped sign or say “Reserved for Dr So-and-so”. So I parked in Dr So-and-so’s space and hoped that I didn’t get towed. What is a girl to do when there is NO OTHER PARKING?

Anyway, back to today. I couldn’t park in the Science center parking garage so I had to go across the street and park (for TEN dollars!) in the Civic Plaza garage. Whatever. We made it in on piece and got to take part in the field trip.

We used to be members of the Science Center, but now I remember why we are not any more. First they charge you either membership or entrance fee. No problem (except that it is super expensive!) but then they have taken up huge chunks of their floor and exhibit space for special features that you have to pay extra for. So even if you are a member you will have to fork over a whole ‘nother wad of cash to get access to the few exhibits that have not already been there for more than ten years. To me it sounds like a bit of a r-i-p o-f-f. Take floor space away from the membership paying public and put it all towards events that their membership doesn’t cover access to. I was actually thinking that we should renew our membership just the other day so that I could take Max there more often. We won’t be doing that. They took away the little children’s area to put in… you guessed it, a paid exhibit.

But the field trip itself was lovely. The kindergarteners had their sixth grade buddies with them (so Tessa really didn’t spend much time with me, but she wanted me there anyway) and they got to see an Imax movie as well. I kind of got to watch it, I saw the parts that I could see when Lily wasn’t grabbing the 3-D glasses off my face. Then we all went to the park for lunch. A bit of an adventure, but a lovely day nonetheless!

Lily 6 Month Update

Toes are the best toys

Stats:
Height: 24.5 in (20%)
Weight: 14lbs, 14oz (25%)
Head 16.5 in (50%)

I can’t believe six months is already here. Lily is doing well, although we have the beginnings of anyone-but-mom-is-the-devil. She still has kind of a needy temperament, but if I carry her a lot she is happy and super sweet.

She smiles all the time and her smiles are changing over the last few days to be more like a regular smile instead of the wide open mouthed baby smile.

She can sit for a couple of minutes on her own and is starting to get up on all fours a bit. She would probably do it more if she ever let us put her down! She is just starting to get the idea that she can move her body to get something she wants, but doesn’t yet know how to coordinate all those movements. She loves the bath and will kick and splash and laugh all the way through it. She loves to give big open mouthed kisses and playing with her toes.

Don’t hate me, but she is back to sleeping almost through the night. I think it is mostly because naps are so hard to come by. She can’t nap if we are out and about unless she is in the car. She really needs to be at home in her own bed or swing to get a decent nap. She still loves to be swaddled for sleeping, but she can sometimes escape the miracle blanket by morning. She doesn’t love the car, but doesn’t hate it anymore and no longer needs to be swaddled for car rides.

She has sampled solids (rice cereal) but for now is happy with just playing with spoons while we eat.

Random Thoughts on a Monday

After looking at the calendar this weekend I realized there are no free days left at all until after Easter. I need to find it somewhere inside of me to be super-organized.

Posy is one step ahead of me. I was looking at the giant piles of undone laundry last night while prepping the kids for bed. I told Posy to go and round up a uniform skirt (clean or dirty, it didn’t matter) for Tessa, because I knew that Ben had clean uniforms. She informed me that she had made sure there were skirts for Tessa when she put the clothes in the dryer. How many 13 year olds can think ahead like that even for themsleves let alone for someone else.

I made it to the first of four sessions of the parish mission today. Well, I kind of made it. I got there right on time if it was starting at 9:15. But it had started earlier. And it was in the Church instead of St Bridget’s Room like it usually is. SO it probably wasn’t appropriate for Max to be eating his cheez-its and drinking juice. Oh well, I’ll be better prepared tomorrow.

Lily had her first try at playing violin yesterday. She watched all through Tessa and Max’s lesson intently, so Dasha put the violin (Max’s 1/16th size) against her shoulder to see what her response would be. She immediately turned her head and sucked on it. Okay, so maybe she is not a prodigy. Yet.

We introduced Max to Star Wars. C3PO is now known as Seepah-wee-ah-doh. R2D2 is just plain R2D2.

I have dinner planned up to (but not including)Thursday and I even have all the groceries to make the stuff. Go me!

A Friday in March

I am going to grab moments as they hit me today and post what I can think of:

The garage is underway! We have been working on it and slowly but surely it is getting almost un-embarrassing. But you don’t get pictures until it is done.

I found Max a little while after breakfast eating right out of the cereal bag in his sisters’ room.

Thursdays would be a really nice day to have a clone of myself to be in two places at once. Bedtime and picking up Posy from choir (40 minute car trip) happen at the exact same moment. But I really can’t think of a day when it would be BAD to have another one of me around. Like today, one of me could hold the baby while the other one does vast quantities of laundry. Then when the baby goes to sleep, that one of me could mop the (sticky, gross) floor.

Lily likes to suck on her toes. I can’t think of anything cuter than a baby sucking on their own toes.

While I nursed Lily down for her nap, Max found a Sharpie. ‘Nuf said.

I received an email from someone interested in my rosaries!

Just found while cleaning the kitchen: a cup of water with three q-tips soaking in it. It boggles the mind…

Also found: two mostly empty juice boxes put back near-but-not-in where the juice boxes go.

As of 11:30 AM, I have washed two loads of laundry, folded/hung up two loads, tidied the family room, cleaned the kitchen, fed Max lunch, and about a hundred other small jobs not even worth listing. But the list of what I haven’t gotten done is still FAR longer. There, the dryer calls!