beach babies.

for the first time ever, lucy has figured out that if she cries at night, she gets picked up.  she has been a fantastic sleeper since she was about seven weeks old…i kept waiting for this day.

so tonight, we decided to let her cry it out.  we are heading out for my  birthday this weekend and don’t want my wonderful babysitting parents to be up all night with her shenanigans. oliver is in our room, so he won’t be kept awake, and i’ve got shows lined up to keep us distracted.

but this is the difference between mothers and sons, fathers and daughters.  i remember every agonizing moment the night we decided to let oliver cry it out.  it was awful, and i was so thankful it only lasted one night.  i mentioned it to the husband today, and he couldn’t even remember it being an issue.

and where is my husband now?  holding lucy.  so much for crying it out…

love this boy and girl.  thanks for making me a mama.

love my mama.  thanks for showing me how to be a good one.

remember when you just had one child and did monthly updates on him and knew every step of his progress and milestones and likes and dislikes?

poor second child.  she doesn’t seem to mind, though.  because she is definitely her own person and will never let us forget about her.

fun facts about lucy (seventeen months tomorrow):

she loves “jumping” on our bed.  she’s really just bending her knees, but she totally thinks she getting away with something.

she’s obsessed with feeding the dog.  and does it multiple times a day.  fat dog.

she has two two-word phrases, “right there” and “read book”

speaking of books, go, dog, go! her favorite.  just like oliver at this age. i wake up with “do you like my hat?” running through my brain.

she has a sinister laugh.  if she does something that is a little bit mean, she’ll chuckle really low.  it’s the only time she does it.

when she was a baby, i never even noticed when she was teething.  toddler teeth are a whole ‘nother story.  one day, she was so miserable, she even walked up and pointed to the ice dispenser.  ice is her only relief.  

she is obsessed with putting on clothes. all by herself.  whatever she finds lying around the house.

she is the sweetest snuggler i know.

she just dumped an entire bag of crackers on the floor.  i thought it was an accident until she started shaking the bag to make sure they were all out.

i love this girl.

“jumping”

i’m a married woman.  where is my breakfast in bed?

i think lucy will be dressing herself by the time she’s eighteen months.  she might be wearing my sweaty sports bra as a top, and oliver’s underwear as a skirt, but she’ll be doing it by herself.

being a parent is hard.  some days it just sucks.  i’ve had a few dark moments over the last three days…lucy pooped on the one rug in the whole house and then walked through it, oliver decided to put his football in the toilet after he peed in it, with lucy’s help, and this morning, he attempted to pee standing up, by himself, all over the wall.  lucy has been teething and grumpy and going through a screaming stage.  oliver has been waking up a couple times each night, which means a trip down and up stairs at three in the morning, nothing like a little cardio to ease you back to sleep. and we’ve had two broken glasses, one enormous goose-egg on the forehead, and three falls off the couch onto to coffee table. just to name a few incidents.  i can feel the scowl lines between my eyebrows deepening. 

but then today, after it took me forty minutes just to throw on bathing suits and get water for everyone, we made it to the beach.  there is something delightful about swimming on the west coast of florida (as opposed to the east coast we just left) when you have small children.  there are no waves.  so i could sit and relax and watch my two littles completely entertain themselves for two hours.  they didn’t need me.  they just were.  free.  carefree.  light.  in the light and full of light.  they splashed and jumped and danced and dug and chased and laughed into the wind.

so i stepped into the light with them.  i let go of all the piss and the frustration and that sense of never quite catching up, and splashed and laughed along with them.

oh, to always be in the light.