Sometimes, when life seems too complicated - a little time spent with Thumbelina unravels the simplicity.
Dandelions need to be discovered.
And after we’ve picked fistfuls of weeds and marveled at their beauty, the best thing to do is run. Just because we can.
I should follow her lead more often.
Gosh, when I get out of a habit I really… get out of a habit. Like, updating this blog.
Speaking of habits, we are in the midst of a major change around here. Thumbelina and I saw a naturopath last week. It appears that Thumbelina has some major food sensitivities, and he suspects I do as well - so, we’re cutting out meat and dairy (”for the time being,” I keep adding - mostly to just make myself feel better) and going vegan. Eventually we’ll have a blood test done to see exactly what we need to avoid, but the dairy itself I think is a huge component. And… not so fun to give up.
We joined Costco in our quest for bulk (mostly organic) produce, and walking past the gigantic chocolate layer cakes was slightly akin to torture - but, I persevered and we came home with a healthy trunk of fiber. Woo. So far, it’s going well but it’s definitely not easy. We cleaned out our entire pantry and freezer, giving away anything that had dairy within it, since I was worried I might give in if Thumbelina saw something she wanted but couldn’t have. Topher is probably struggling the most, since he’s halfheartedly trying to support my vegan efforts, but… he misses milk and cheese.
Beans are a new world to me. We’ve dumped canned beans on salads in the past, and included them in Mexican food, but… I’ve never actually soaked beans. And now I’m attempting to sprout some and use them generously in our meal times (to varying degrees of success). I realize it’s a process, but I wish we were already comfortable and happy to be eating this way. However, it’s really opened the door to lots of reflection about how food is so easy to misuse - it becomes far too important, much too easily (for me, at least). Food is merely fuel and it only makes sense that we should eat the most nutrient-dense food available to us. (Yes, I’m paraphrasing the Eat to Live book.) I think it will feel more comfortable once the dairy withdrawals have passed. Thumbelina asked for cheese and yogurt and milk and toast (with butter) all.day.long. Poor thing. But I’m already noticing an improvement with her skin sensitivities, so that is helping inspire me to keep going.
In the midst of drinking oat milk and eating trees (as Thumbelina calls her fresh spinach), we’ve gotten out and about quite a bit lately, since Spring has seemingly arrived for good. It’s been alternately sunny and cloudy, with lots of rain on the forecast.
Here’s a snap from yesterday, at the park, on a very windy day:
As for Thumbelina, her cuteness continues to grow exponentially by the day. Normally, Topher is responsible for bedtime after I nurse and hand her off - so I’m not usually around for her bedtime prayers. But, this evening was a little different and I got to hear their typical conversation with God. Topher explained later that they thank God for things that are important to her - and on the list are things like milkshakes and her jungle gym. Barney, Baby Bop, BJ and Riff. Music. Crayons (cullies). Outside. The park. Tickles. Apples. MeeMee & Daddy. He prays in simple phrases, followed by an amen, so it’s very easy for her to participate. She loves it! And she melts me.
She finally called me Mommy!!!!!
Topher started referring to me as Mommy instead of Mama, because Thumbelina says “maff” for “off,” and “mah” for “mouth,” so we were beginning to wonder if Mama just didn’t make sense to her. But hearing me referred to as Mommy seemed to do the trick right away. It comes out as “MeeMee.” So cute. And she still announces when she’s happy, so I’m glad she hasn’t lost her use of that word. It’s the best thing ever to have her grab my hand and say, “Happy, MeeMee!” And I say, “Are you happy?” And she says, “Fee (what she calls herself) happy!”
This weekend we spent de-cluttering and rearranging. We moved the train table out of the rec room, so now we have more space for Thumbelina’s pretend play stuff and also my treadmill and trampoline. The train table (which we got crazy cheap from Charlene, a parenting group friend, for only $20) is not something I can bear to part with for the time being, but it wasn’t being used in any purposeful way so now it’s going to stay in the garage for a little while. The rec room seems so much bigger without the table taking up so much space. We finished moving Topher’s desk and computer into the living room (since we’re sans furniture, and at this point have a jungle gym hanging out in the middle of it) and turned the third bedroom (formerly the office) into a craft & learning room for Thumbelina. I’m so happy with it! We’ve been dragging this $20 bookshelf from IKEA around the country with us during every move, keeping it in storage and for some reason haven’t ever given it away in all the years we’ve not been using it. But now it’s a great way to keep her activity bins neatly stacked. Lately I’ve been struggling with the poor accessibility to all of the fun stuff we have for Thumbelina to play with, and realizing that some of her things aren’t getting any attention. It seems like such a waste to have toys and activities just sitting around, ignored or lost. She is always moving toys or items from one room to the next, because we haven’t given her a proper sense of where certain things belong. Soooo, now we’ve decided that her kitchen and pretend play items are in the rec room, along with miscellaneous toys. Her bedroom has a bookshelf and baby dolls. The learning room has puzzles, alphabet and numbers activities, art supplies, felt board, small manipulatives for counting & sorting, color & shape activities, matching games, books that are intentionally educational, language activities, instruments and her Calendar & Weather interactive posters. It sounds like a lot, but it really isn’t. (I think I listed all of that out for my own peace of mind.) I can’t stand feeling scattered, and I’ve felt so guilty lately for knowing we have all of these fun things to do together, but half the time I don’t know where anything is - so, hopefully this set up will be great for us. I also bought a clothesline and strung it along the ceiling so we have a specific place to hang up her art projects, most of which have been ending up in the trash lately because she’s always on a creative binge. She fills pages and pages full of scribbles or the most detailed “designs” (when she isn’t asking one of us to draw Barney). I need to start saving a few of the masterpieces and putting them into a scrapbook for safekeeping.
We have more organizing to do tomorrow, but I feel like we’re off to a good start.
Thumbelina has continued her quest for a milkshake, and we’ve spent a lot of time pretending to make one. My smoothies are still a hit, but she doesn’t consider them a shake anymore. She gives me an annoyed look whenever I say, “Let’s go make a shake!” and start getting out frozen fruit. She seems increasingly irritated that we don’t seem to understand what she’s talking about - and I know, you’re probably thinking I’m the meanest mom ever to not go out and buy the poor little sugar addict a real milkshake. The other night, I came home from dinner out with a few mama friends, only to find Thumbelina standing at the top of our stairs and exclaiming, “Shake! Shake! Shake!” over and over again. I asked Topher if he bought her a milkshake while I was gone, and he said “Um…no. Not exactly.” Hmm. Okay. But Thumbelina persisted in talking to me about milkshakes, excitedly mentioning Daddy’s name and pointing to the refrigerator. I eventually opened the door and found a frozen-looking concoction on the top shelf. Topher came in and tried to nonchalantly say, “Oh, yes, we made milkshakes while you were gone. Those are the leftovers.”
Now, the thing about Topher is that he’s only learned how to boil water in the last year. He can therefore make pasta, but he never leaves the stove while it’s cooking, because… well, I’m not sure why. He can brown taco meat and scramble an egg. (We’ve spent nearly five years of marriage practicing these few tricks.) However, none of these facts ran through my mind when he apprehensively mentioned the homemade milkshake in the fridge. I just thought, “I’m glad I bought that ice cream last week. Poor Thumbelina has really been wanting a milkshake.” But, I noticed a horrible grimace when I let her grab the milkshake from me and she took a sip. And then she kind of gagged and half-heartedly said, “Shake.” Hmm. So, I tried it. And nearly threw up!
Topher, watching all of this, completely ignored my reaction and was like, “She LOVED it. We put a few scoops of ice cream, some milk and some syrup together in the blender.”
“Syrup?”
“Yeah, I found a bottle of Aunt Jemima’s syrup in the back of the pantry.”
Gag.
“How come it tastes so salty?”
“Oh, well that’s because I put sea salt in it.”
After talking to him a little bit, I realized the addition of salt came about because he’s watched me make cakes and sweet breads and cookies and they all have salt in it. And those are all really sweet, yummy things. So therefore the salt must somehow interact with the sugar, right? And make it taste good, right…?
So, we went to an indoor inflatable play place yesterday, assuming Thumbelina would love it because jumping is her favorite thing to do as of late. She was quite happy when we arrived, sitting on daddy’s lap in the parking lot to ‘drive.’
But, as soon as we got inside and Topher jumped into the inflatables, she wasn’t quite so enthused.
Yes, those are Topher’s feet. Do you like the “No Diving: Enter Feet First” sign?
After we finally got Topher to, ahem, come back out - we spent most of our time in the small toddler area, which seemed more comfortable for Thumbelina (much to Topher’s disappointment).
Since the play place wasn’t much of a hit, we decided to head out to the toy store and FINALLY pick out her birthday presents. Yay! We got her an indoor/outdoor jungle gym of sorts. She can climb and slide and do all of her monkeying on it, hopefully. We also picked up a wooden letter puzzle, since she’s been interested in the alphabet lately. Not surprisingly, Thumbelina managed to find a Barney and Riff that were on clearance. They aren’t the small, blissfully silent types that she’s been carrying around for months, either. Nope, they sing songs and Riff even has two obnoxious maracas that he shakes around. She also found a Barney coloring book and Mama took pity on her and bought another Barney dvd. Oh joy!
Admittedly, the jungle gym isn’t put together yet, but she’s quite taken with Riff and Bah-ney.
I would post pictures of her Barney cake, but it’s so sad and pathetic that even I, with my no-shame policy regarding craft attempts, can’t bring myself to post pictures. It took me TWO HOURS and Topher continually came in to gently suggest that I just give it up. Maybe because I kept having to scrape the frosting off the cake and re-frost it to have a clean slate. (Thumbelina fell asleep while waiting for her cake, which at first made me feel sorry that I was taking so long and being so frustrated with something so silly - but then I realized she was spared learning a few colorful words I’d prefer she not hear yet. Yay.) And then when I finally managed to trace a great outline of Barney onto the cake, the purple frosting came out as red and his eyes looked deranged. Isn’t that sad? The only triumph during the entire cake debacle was that she at least recognized him as Barney - though with a distinct question in her voice, kind of like when a parent asks their child to “tell me about that drawing, son!” because they don’t want to mistakenly hurt the kid’s feelings. Topher was like, “At least she didn’t think you made her an alien cake, right?” Yes babe, that makes me feel a million times better. Nevermind that Thumbelina thinks she sees Barney on any cereal box.
We did make an emergency run to the grocery store and procured a few pink princess cupcakes. Thumbelina enjoyed the frosting the most, I think.
My one culinary success this birthday happened to be using my trusty blender and re-introducing smoothies. We haven’t had any in awhile, which is a good thing because Thumbelina discovered milkshakes last weekend during the wedding - and has asked for a “shake” every day since. (Poor Topher ran out of ways to amuse her during his many hours of solo parenting between activities.) Fortunately, she was satisfied that a cherry-peach-mango smoothie is a sufficient “shake.”
If there is any mercy in this world, Thumbelina will have a new interest by her next birthday and Barney will be a friend of the past. Then maybe we can actually order a cake, since not one single local bakery still does Barney cakes anymore. (And I can spare my little one the torture of my cake-decorating disability.)
We survived the wedding weekend. Emily is officially married and cruising up the east coast with Ben, enjoying their honeymoon for the next two weeks. Yay!
We came home on Sunday and crashed for five hours. Slept through the entire afternoon, which also happened to be (shh!) Thumbelina’s birthday. I feel horrible that we barely even celebrated, although Topher can’t quite muster the same amount of parental guilt and keeps shrugging whenever I bring it up, saying, “but she has no concept of what a birthday actually is.” Like that makes it any better! Friday has been officially designated as Birthday Do-Over Day. I’ve been stalking eBay, trying to find a fast-ship Barney cake pan since the original one I bid on and won is “unavailable for shipment.” Grrr. The seller sent me an email saying she “couldn’t find it.” Nice.
I can’t believe my baby is two years old. I feel a little sad about her growing up, but excited about the years ahead. I often think back to my first glimpse of her, just as she was pulled from my incision and held high above my body. The tufts of gleaming ringlets, wet from the amniotic fluid, made me smile and wonder if she might resemble her papa - since his sister has very dark curls. When I eventually saw her face and spoke her name, the peering dark blue eyes turned to me with instant recognition and curiosity. The sense of belonging to one another was immediate and intense. She was so new and yet so familiar.
Topher was immediately mesmerized.
This was our first week home. We bought preemie diapers and they totally engulfed her.
Here we are at about one month old. She was just beginning to sport the old man ‘do - losing her hair on top of the head.
I get sad thinking about how there will never be another Thumbelina. It’s such an obvious statement, but when people talk about baby lust, they usually refer to having a new one. I don’t necessarily feel it for another baby (yet). I feel baby lust for Thumbelina. I wish sometimes that we could go back in time and savor those new moments, some of which were stolen from us with the drama of our birth and recovery experience. I want to go back in time and re-experience all the quirks which make her so unique. I may not have another baby who squishes her lips together in puckered concentration, or insists on being carried like Super-Girl, suspended precariously over my shoulder to maximize her ability to see the world around her. I wonder if my next baby will love nursing as much as Thumbelina and her milk addiction. Even now, as I enjoy her toddlerhood and laugh at her antics, I wonder if my next baby will insist we sing, “If you’re happy and you know it…” (shout “HOORAY!” is her favorite one right now) over and over and over and over again.
I am probably just too sentimental for my own good. Topher is always looking ahead and mentioning things we have to look forward to with Thumbelina - intelligible conversations! Soccer games! Sleeping in her own bed! Trick or treating! Roller-coaster rides! The list goes on and on, and I realize there are many fun times ahead, but I will always miss her baby days.
Here is the very first video we ever took of Thumbelina, when both of us were giddy to discover that our crappy little camera could actually record extremely low resolution video. I can’t stop giggling, Topher keeps talking in a falsetto and Thumbelina just laughs and laughs and laughs. So, enjoy. I hope she is always this happy.
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