Thankful Mama and a Sweet Baby Girl

According to my husband, that last post crossed the TMI line toward the end there. Sorry about that. The good news is that the plumber came the next morning and had everything fixed and running properly within an hour. I really should have trained to be a plumber instead of a teacher or a journalist -- better pay and very appreciative clients.

Anywho, I got a strong reminder yesterday that if my biggest problem is that I had to go overnight without running water while I waited (inside my toasty warm house with my loving husband and sweet children and plenty of bottled water) for the plumber to come in the morning (so that I could write him a check without worry and without having to crawl under the house in the puddles myself), then my life is really good. I have wonderful family and friends, my health and a great new year ahead -- and I am thankful. A little bad luck here and there shouldn't change that.

So instead of giving some kind of rant today about the crazy school board that just did away with assigning students to year-round schools without any review of the economic impact of that decision, I'm going to write a happy little Pippi post instead.

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This morning while I was getting dressed, Pippi was playing in her room -- she's just now getting old enough that she's figured out she can do that. I love listening to her talk to herself and her toys, alternating between random snippets of songs ("Row, row, row,... ream..." followed by "Bimble bell, bimble bell, bimble bell, way!") and general gibberish.

At some point, I realized she was calling for me, so I peeked into her room to find her holding Elmo by the hand (which makes him sing the "Sesame Street" theme in Spanish) with her pretty monogrammed burp cloths spread all over the floor. She had pulled a diaper and a new package of wipes from the changing table and had been wiping Elmo's bottom, but she couldn't fasten the diaper by herself.

"Emmo dia-puh?" she asked, handing me the diaper and placing Elmo's tushie squarely on one of the burp cloths. After I got him properly suited up, she took Elmo into her arms, cradled him with a kiss, then tossed him over the side of the crib. "Night night, Elmo," she called, before dumping every book in her room on top of him, one at a time.

As I struggled not to laugh in front of Pippi (she was being so earnest about taking care of her "baby"), I realized I couldn't remember Junius doing this when he was her age. Maybe I've just forgotten -- and he certainly "mothers" his baby bear -- but the baby-doll instinct (or at least the impulse to keep a diaper on anyone small, which I certainly understand) seems much stronger in my daughter than in my son. Don't get me wrong -- she'll play with cars and balls and blocks, too, but she really loves to put on her dress up shoes, hook a little purse over her arm, and push that diapered Elmo around the house in her stroller.

Crazy stuff, this parenting -- but it's a funny show to watch.

When Junius Grows Up...

One of my favorite books to read with Junius is I Want to Go to UNC by Ripley Rand and Jorin Garguilo. Although I didn't grow up wanting to go to Carolina (in fact, it was my last choice -- but that's another story), it's never too early to get Juni on board with the Heels -- particularly given his track record of supporting, ahem, other ACC schools. I like the book because it introduces him to important places in Chapel Hill; he likes it because it rhymes, has fun illustrations and references lots of career and college options.

Tonight while we were reading, he kept pausing on each page (a ploy, no doubt, to put off the inevitable and impending bedtime) to discuss what he might want to be when he grows up. It was the first time I'd heard him discuss what's on his list, so I was curious to know what he was thinking about. Keep in mind that the options were inspired by the careers in the story, but I just wanted to take a moment to capture them now in case he actually becomes one of them later on:

• jet pilot
• dentist
• pediatric nurse
  
• car mechanic
• tuba player ("For when I'm bery, bery growed up, Mommy.")

I think it's a great list -- surprisingly technical and medical, two areas in which I was never interested. My guess is he's probably thinking more about having cool tools than about solid career paths. Can't fault the kid for liking the accessories

Come to my window

I promise I'm not stalking Mrs. Chicken, but she has another interesting post on her blog this week about the fascination of being a voyeur. I'll let you read her post because it's better than reading my paraphrase of her post, but I saw myself in her story about the "allure of... glimpses of someone else’s ordinary evening." Nothing creepy, but I still find it fascinating to see in the windows, whether literal or virtual. Probably part of why I like the movie Rear Window so much -- I get the fun of inventing a story around that tiny glimpse.

Okay, go ahead. Read it -- I'll wait. Seriously -- you don't really need another link, do you?

So here's my "window" -- the photo of me when I was reading her post yesterday. No make-up, bed-head, still sweaty from the morning's walk pushing 75 pounds of children and stroller around our hilly neighborhood. I'm in what my husband calls "Command Central" -- it's the corner of my kitchen counter where my laptop sits most of the time. While my children are napping, I catch up on email, read blogs, check Facebook and prep for dinner. It's not glamorous, but it's me -- and most days, I'm happy with that.

But if you happened to walk by my house later on last night (and one of my friends was doing just that), this second picture is what you saw... not through our window, but outside at the curb. It's Junius and his Daddy watching for lightning bugs.

This sweet scene started when my husband heard Junius walking around upstairs after he should have been asleep. When he found Juni awake, he suggested a trip to the potty might help. Junius looked out the bathroom window into the almost-darkness and said, "Da -- look at that! What's that little light that keeps blinking? Look -- there it is again!"

And so the boy with the early bedtime got his first trip outside on a summer night to catch fireflies with his wonderful father. His eyes wide with excitement, his voice hushed in the dark, Juni went out and hopped around the yard with us as we tried to show him what a lightning bug looks like up close.

Before we went back inside to bed, he turned and said in his most earnest little voice, "Thank you, Da. Thank you for taking me outside to see the fireflies."

If you like, show me your window now... what would I see as you read this post?

He says it there and it comes out here

Junius loves to talk. I have no idea where he got that from (*ahem*), but he really does. Even when he's wrestling with the stutter that occasionally comes and goes (apparently a normal developmental thing for 2- to 5-year-olds, especially boys), he still keeps talking. And talking.
And talking.

As he gets older and his vocabulary expands, it's fascinating to listen to what he comes up with and try to decipher where the ideas or words came from. I feel like I'm working some strange puzzle, searching for the links to things we've done or books we've read or shows we've watched until I can make sense of his story.

Here are two favorite excerpts from the past few days:

In a conversation with a grown-up friend over the weekend...
Junius: The Red Wings and the Penguins played for the Stanley Cup last night, but the Penguins won.
Ms. S: Oh really? Did you want the Penguins to win?
J: No, I wanted the Red Wings to win.
Ms. S: So did that make you sad?
J: No... [and then he paused, looked at her and said very carefully and clearly] I was disappointed.
[Strangely I found myself tearing up at this moment. Not because I was so upset for the Red Wings, but because my baby sounded so grown up. Also, we have no idea why he became a Red Wings fan, but it could be the red uniforms remind him of the 'Canes.]

Talking to his dad at bedtime...
"Alex used to be my big brother, but he's not anymore.
Now my big brother is Walt Henderlite.
And Pippi's big sister is Dot Henderlite."
[This is funnier when you know where the names came from. Alex is his best friend from preschool, who happens to be about nine months older than Junius. Walt is my friend from college who met us for lunch earlier this month -- it was the only time I've seen him in more than a decade, but he's tall and apparently that made quite an impression on Juni. Dot is a character in A Bug's Life, which is the movie we recently let Juni watch -- she's the little sister ant. And Henderlite is the surname of a family in our neighborhood whose house we'd passed that morning on our walk.]

Side note: The photo is Junius playing hockey. I'm noting that for you just in case you can't tell because he has a golf club, a baseball glove, a soccer goal and a footbal helmet. But it's hockey. He's being Cam Ward.