You are two months old now and I am just now doing what I did for your sisters before they were born.  Maybe someday you will understand and forgive me; I am just a little busier because of your arrival, not less happy about it.  Honestly, I feel phenomenally blessed to have you and your sisters here with us.  The Bible says that God puts the lonely in families, and he has given me three incredible gifts in you and your sisters.  You are a masterpiece of God, created specially by him for some purpose we will someday discover.  

I marvel at your beautiful gray eyes and chubby little cheeks; I smile at your lopsided grin.  I like how your hair curls after it has been washed, and I love the feel of your soft body on mine.  I watch your sisters hugging and touching you, and you smile at them like you are already looking forward to the day you will play with them.  People always ask us if you were ‘planned’; we may not have planned for you to be in our family, but I know that God did.  I know you fit into our family, that you were always going to be with us.

My prayer for you and your sisters has always been that we will understand who God made you to be and raise you to be that person.  I also pray that you would learn to be loving, kind, compassionate, and (dare I say it) obedient girls.  I pray you will love your family and that we would teach you to love others as God calls us to.  I pray you will love God most of all and use your gifts and talents for his glory.

I look forward to watching you become the person God made.  I am so glad you are with us, and I am blessed to walk the journey with you.

I love you always!

Your Mother

Three little girls, no smiles for the camera.

Enjoying a fall day!

I spent June taking my kids to the local pool to beat the Iowa heat and humidity (we were joined by about half of the city of Ankeny).  Once July started, I (and my kids) journeyed to Michigan only to find the heat and humidity followed us (this is the same Michigan that had no summer last year; the highlight of our family party in mid-July was a bonfire with s’mores–”Are we going on a hay ride too?  It’s like a fall day,” one of my cousins said.)  Unfortunately, the modern convenience of air conditioning did not follow us, so we spent a lot of time sweating (and me swelling up) when not in the pool.  We were also able to visit Lake Michigan a few times  in its warm and beautiful glory–though when I complained that it seemed dirty, Mark said I sounded like an Iowan.

Back in Iowa, we have been coping with the heat and humidity by, once again, visiting local pools and staying in air conditioning.  Having grown up in Michigan, having never had air conditioning, I have always hated it.  It’s too cold, it makes me sneeze, it’s unnatural were my complaints.  No longer–having braved an entire humid summer with increasing pregnancy–I have finally learned to be thankful for air conditioning. 

Aside from learning to appreciate air conditioning, it has been an eventful and fun summer thus far.  I always judge the success of summers by how many times I go swimming (I have a Michigander’s love of water).  So this has been a very successful summer.  It will end in a month or so with our family expanding once again. 

Summer 2010 (so far) by the numbers:

Family birthdays:  2 (Mark and Ella)

Birthday parties:  6 (3 each)

Trips to local pools:  15

Trips to local beaches:  0  (those that exist are contaminated due to all the rain)

Days in the 90s:  too many

Steps Nora has taken:  lots of one or two steps, 4 once or twice

Trips out of state:  2

Days in July out of state:  14

Swims in Boppy’s pool:  10

Trips to Lake Michigan:  3

Inches of rain:  80,000 (a rough estimate)

Books read:  6

Days Ella said, “Can we go to the pool?” before going to Michigan:  15

Days Ella said, “Can we go to the pool?” since returning from MI:  2

Pregnancy pounds gained:  more than strictly necessary

Nights of sleep disturbed by sirens going off:  1 (and counting)

Days blessed with wonderful family:  All of them

Days appreciated said family:  Not enough

Nora at her first birthday party!

Playing on the deck!

Mark's birthday at a pizza place.

In Boppy's pool!

Little cousins on the 4th of July (Nora, Ella, Lena, and Sam)

Little cousins playing together (Hugh, Simon, Ella).

My girls at Lake Michigan.

Ella blowing out candles at her birthday party.

More little cousins! (Georgia, Graham, Nora, Ella)

Nora is becoming my little social butterfly, and she had smiles for everyone (thankfully, she seems to be over the stranger anxiety thing.)  She reaches out her arms to everyone to be picked up, and she babbles and laughs constantly (she also puts her head down on mine and Mark’s shoulders and cuddles with us.  It is so cute I can’t stand it.)  She was a big fan of her teddy bear birthday cake, so much so that she rubbed frosting all over her head.  She was a little confused by all the present opening (but of course her sister helped her with that part) but she has thoroughly enjoyed all the new toys.  She probably would enjoy them more if she didn’t have so much competition to play with them.

On the down side, Nora is still on the small side, weight-wise.  This doesn’t really matter to me–she probably just has Mark’s skinny build–but it poses a problem.  She can’t get out of her car seat until she is 20 pounds, and she is only 17 and a half.  I need the car seat for the baby that is coming sooner than Nora can put on 2 and 1/2 pounds.  Nora is long enough–she is in the 90th percentile for height and her feet are hanging over the edge of the car seat.  But she is skinny enough (8th percentile!) that the doctor advised me to come in before her next appointment to check her weight, just to be sure she is gaining enough!  Outside of putting butter on everything (that was the nurse’s suggestion), what can I do to help this child gain weight?  I wish there were some weight donation program we could get into, I could just give her some of mine.

Other than size issues and general messiness (seriously, are children professional mess makers??  How do I combat that without losing my mind?) the first year with Nora has been a good one.  It won’t be long before our family increases to five from four, and I can’t help but wonder what Nora’s second birthday will be like.

Nora is in many ways a more extreme child than Ella ever has been.  She laughs harder, cries louder, crawls faster.  She gets to all her physical milestones earlier than Ella did (with the natural exception of size.)  And she has a talent for trouble that Ella could only dream about.  She manages to find all the tiny toys Ella leaves on the floor, despite our combined efforts to pick them up.  In one day, she managed to poop in the tub, pee on her bath towel, knock over the corner table in our family room (which, oddly, made Ella cry, not Nora), rifle through Ella’s library books dangerously, make Ella cry from frustration by taking her toys, and spill the dog water.  There are days I think I might as well be raising a boy.

Ella, on the other hand, is a softer soul.  While Nora’s cries are mostly from anger or frustration (usually because she thinks I take too long to feed her or get her out of her crib), Ella is an emotional child who is brought to tears by the smallest of life’s challenges (a daily cause for crying is me combing her hair and Mark attempting to help her get ready for bed when she wants only Mommy.)  Though Nora is more vocal than Ella was, Ella was more verbal (an continues to be a very verbal child who can talk my ear off with the best of ‘em)  Ella is cautious (even as a baby) and hesitant to try new things, and Nora throws herself into whatever physical challenge without thought to harming herself–though she is more proficient than Ella was at the same age with less effort.  She mastered crawling and pulling herself up before Ella, and she did not need the incremental step of creeping like Ella did. 

Once baby #3 comes, Ella and Nora will have to share a room.  I am interested to see how long it takes before their personalities collide.  I am thinking it will be a while before I have to deal with true sibling rivalry, given Nora’s inability to talk, and the fact that, as a younger sister, she thinks that Ella is the Most Fascinating and Hilarious Person in the World.  She’d probably give Ella a plaque saying just that if she could.  For now, however, there is only tears and the older dominating the younger due to size advantage.  Ella just kicked Nora out of the play room (Nora did not protest) because, according to ELla, she stinks.  My thought is:  just wait, Ella, because  one day your little sister will be faster and stronger and won’t hesitate to fight back.

This news was a surprise not just to us.  As Nora looks like a 5 month old (as I was informed yesterday), how is it possible that we are going to have another baby, especially with me still nursing?  It is (somewhat) a mystery to me.  But I can only shake my head and laugh at God’s timing (not to mention sense of humor:  how long did we wait in Traverse City for that elusive first baby?  Now that we are in Iowa, I am as fertile as the Iowa soil.  Go figure.)  I will be huge through the hot Iowa summer and at the Iowa State Fair! (Mark said I could enter a most pregnant woman contest–they have contests for everything at the fair–and cousin Cindy suggested I get one of those motorized chairs to ride through the fair in comfort.) 

For now, I will wait for the nausea to end, the baby to grow, and learn to be content with the gift God has for us.  In Traverse City, I would often remind myself when frustrated with waiting, ‘this is just our story, this is what God’s way for us is.’  Now I can almost see the ending of this part of our story, and it was indeed worth it.

No, Ella, that's for the baby.

The Princess' Kingdom is expanding.

Nora can be a big sister too!

How many little bodies can we fit in the tub??

Ways to beat snow, ice, the cold, colds, and the flu:

1. Play in the Winter Wonderland:  Ella has found this year that she likes going out to play in the snow with Skylar.  She tries to go down the slide and swing and even take out her outside toys, but mostly she and Skylar run around the back yard and make lots of noise.   Nora and I joined her one day, and Nora took it all in like the little adventurer that she is.

2.  Books, books, and more books:  I used to check out only a few books at a time at the library, not wanting to be fussed with more, but I am over that.  I take a bag and we fill it with 10 or so books each time.  Ella got a new Bible for Christmas (I recommend the Jesus Storybook Bible) and we have been reading that at bedtime.  But in between we have discovered lots of new characters and authors we like. (Charlotte Zoltow is now one of my favorite children’s authors; Ella loves her Big Sister, Little Sister and But Not Billy.  I Like to be Little is also cute.)  We go through phases:  Bible stories, Fancy Nancy, princess stories, fairy tales, Critter, Clifford, etc.

3.  Dramatic play–We watched Peter Pan when Ella was sick a couple of weeks ago, subsequently re-read the book lots of times, and now Ella has been known to run around saying, “Peter Pan, ahoy!”  What she means by that, I am not sure.  She also likes to play ‘baby Jesus’ as she calls it, wrapping her baby in swaddling clothes and running from Herod.  She has also been known to, after reading Alice in Wonderland, quote the Queen of Hearts saying, “Off with their heads!”  Then she stops, considers, and says, “That’s not very nice, is it?”  She has also discovered the delights of  building a blanket fort with her daddy and played with her new market and kitchen in the play room.

4.  Sisters in it together:  Ella has played well the role of big sister lately, keeping her toys away from Nora and giving Nora things to play with (which is harder now, as Nora is crawling, and proved herself able to get into anything).  Ella will also take it upon hersel to get into the crib with Nora when both wake up in the morning or from naps.  When Nora cries, Ella is often the first to say, “I can help her!” then she will run over to her ailing sister and make her laugh, which is one of the best sounds in the world.  

5.  The Stories:  Ella asks me to tell her stories a lot.  These range from fairy tales to Bible stories to movies she has seen to stories about when I was growing up.  Occasionally, I make up stories.  Usually the heroine in these stories is Ella-locks (much like Goldilocks, Ella-locks’ fault is curiosity).  The villain in these stories is usually Skylar-locks, whose main weapon is her abominable breath.  Other characters appear in these stories as well–Mommy-locks, Nora-no-locks, and Daddy-no-locks all have had parts.  But Ella-locks is undeniably the hero, and that’s what her namesake wants.  

Some pictures from the long, hard winter:

Ella making a snow angel.

Ella and her cousins go for a mini sleigh ride.

Ella and Nora on the day of the Iowa Orange Bowl game.

Ella and Nora in our backyard. Yes, we have 3 feet of snow on our deck.

Ella and her snowman! Daddy helped, of course.

Sisters playing in the crib!

Ella shopping in her market that she got for Christmas.

Nora tries out the talking chair--she's finally big enough for something!

Our vacuum chose the highly inopportune time of right before Christmas to die.  Anytime is an inopportune time in this hairy house, but Christmas was worse with the plethora of Christmas tree needles.  So, for a few weeks I only had a very weak vacuum to use, and the dog hair has piled up.  Poor Nora is covered in it after playing on the floor, despite being on a blanket.  And, I can’t even properly brush the hairy dog because she tore another ligament (she did the back right 2 years ago and the back left over New Year’s) and she won’t let me near the back.  If I weren’t so annoyed with the hairy dog, I would feel sorry for the sight of her limping around the house. 

But it’s not only dog hair that is the theme of life right now, it is also human hair.  Or, more specifically, little girl hair.  I seem to spend an inordinate amount of time coming tangles out of Ella’s hair, listening to her cry as I do so, and attempting to make her hair look neat with ponytails, braids, headbands, etc.  And, yet, after all of this time, I still feel like I need to attend remedial hair class.  Why does her hair never look as neat or cute as I want it to?  What am I doing wrong–other than forcing tears and yells out of her as I comb?

I always wanted long hair when I was little.  I always hated the short haircuts my mom made me get, especially the Dorothy Hamill cut (I still hold a grudge against Dorothy Hamill for that).  But I can see now why my mom cut my hair (though I will never understand the awful Hamill cut).  Ella’s hair is just like mine, thin and naturally snarly.  I am tempted get her hair cut shorter, but then will I wonder what I have become?  There has to be something non-Dorothy that is cute, and I will find it.  At least, I will probably fail in the attempt.

In unrelated news, Ella is sick with some sort of stomach bug.  I spent a lot of yesterday cleaning up pools of sick and praying that none of the rest of us gets it.  The only other time Ella was this sort of sick was in an airport, so I did not have to clean up the mess (I actually wore most of it).  I guess it is some sort of mom rite-of-passage to clean up after a sick kid.  Next time I will be a little smarter and get a sheet out for the couch right away so I can avoid having to take the covers off the cushions to be washed.  Experience, as they say, is the best teacher, though I wish I could learn about cleaning up throw up only in theory.

It seems that not a day goes by when someone does not comment on Nora’s tiny stature.  She’s tiny, she’s small, she’s skinny, there’s not much to her, etc, etc.  She has been mistaken for a four month old at seven months(despite the fact that most four month olds outweigh her) and for a newborn when she was three months.  I remember how much Ella weighed at every doctor appointment her first year (I can’t say this is true anymore; I don’t remember what she weighed at her 2 year or 3 year appointments.)  And Nora has been consistently more than 2 pounds behind in the weight category.  Case in point:  at 6 months, Ella was 17 pounds, 5 ounces and Nora was 14 pounds, 9 ounces (cousin Georgia, who is 2 weeks older than Nora, was 19 pounds at 6 months, but that’s another story).  Nora is perfectly healthy and normal (after all, she is only outweighed by 75% of babies her age), so I am not concerned, just amused that one baby came out size L and one came out size S.  I will continue to hand down clothes despite such differences, so don’t be surprised if Nora is forever wearing tightly cinched belts and baggy shirts.  Maybe she’ll start her own fashion trend.  (It’s fortunate for Nora that she has a sense of humor.)

Christmas Card Woes

I just joined the ranks of frustrated parents trying to take a good picture of more than one child.  I tried the fancy dresses, complete with fancy shoes and tights, on my kids on more than one occasion in a desperate attempt to get a  good picture for the Christmas card.  I took about 60 pictures total, too low a number, I think.  One picture was so-so and the other 59 were bad.  The experiment might have been called “The Many Weird Expressions of Ella” or, “How many ornaments can Nora eat?”  At one point, she bit a puff ball off the top of an ornament, and I had to do a finger sweep of her mouth go get it out.  Skylar even tried to get in the picture, succeeding only in shedding all over those fancy dresses.   So, I will be lucky if I can get them out before Christmas so they can still be considered Christmas cards.  Doesn’t everyone call them Holiday cards nowadays anyway?

Some pictures weaklings and Christmas card  rejects:

Nora and cousin Georgie --let's hope they don't meet in a dark alley.

But two things happened to make me think that her Christmas education needs some supplementing.  For one thing, over the summer I bought a book of the “Twas the Night before Christmas” poem at a garage sale, and have recently started reading it to Ella.  And, secondly, Mark and Ella were going through a Dr. Seuss phase last spring and read lots of different Dr. Seuss books, including “How the Grinch Stole Christmas.”  So, having read the story about the Grinch, Ella was a little confused about the Fat Man’s actions in “Twas the Night Before Christmas.”  “Is he nice?” she asked, thinking him like the Grinch.  “Is he putting things in the stockings?  Why?”  She did not get at all why a man would come down the chimney (“What’s a chimney?”) and put toys in stockings for children.  “This toy won’t fit in the stocking,” she said, pointing to pictures of toys in the book. 

It occured to me that the Fat Man is a major part of pop culture and something that even a 3 year old  should understand.  Besides, I think I would prefer that  she hear about the various Christmas legends and myths (about the Fat Man, mostly) at home rather than on the street.  Not that she’s ever really in the street, but you know what I mean.

I don’t want Ella to believe in the Fat Man, but I think she should know about him, at the very least for the sake of pretending.  I don’t want him to overshadow Jesus, which is probably why I have been somewhat hesitant to even mention him.  But now she has at least a shallow knowledge of him, and, when she hears a Christmas song about him will say so, quite knowledgeably.  (Yes, I have started listening to Christmas music, sap that I am.  Oh, I also gush over babies–especially mine–and cry at movies.)

For now, Ella will continue to play with her Little People nativity set (she asked to get it out last week after seeing a picture of it in an ad).  She knows that Jesus was born on Christmas and that his mother is Mary and that the angel and others came to visit.  She may be a little shaky on the finer points of the story, however; last week, Strawberry Shortcake and her friends visited baby Jesus in the manger, and this week Mary, Joseph, Jesus, the wise men, and all the animals went on a field trip to a ‘castle’ (which doubles as our TV stand).   

And, while she plays with Jesus in the nativity, I will try to figure out how to put Christ in Christmas with a little room left for Santa.