Little Sinners

Our car shop is in walking distance, so S left after he got home, on foot, to pick up our car. This conversation promptly ensued:

E: Where did Daddy go?
Me: He went to get the car.
E: Oh, it’s fixed already!?
Me: Mmm-hmm.
E: Where did Daddy go?
Me: He went to pick up the car.
E: He can’t lift up the car, it’s too heavy!
Me: (laugh) that’s true… I mean… he went to get the car, to bring the car.
E: Oh. (long pause) Did the neighbors fix our car?

I am a poor record-keeper.  Which is a bit odd, since I enjoy writing, but somehow these things—the days of first steps, first words, trials and triumphs—they escape my notice.  This attitude was quite solidified the first time E got into some “precious” item of my own past and did it some damage, and I realized that the here-and-now reality of my little daughter was more important to me than the memory of times and people past.  Things burn and turn to dust.  And I struggle, likewise, with finding events particularly important in the context of eternity: far too much, I think; there is surely some value in baby books and memorials, and it is my own fault for having trouble finding it.

At any rate, E’s life has been more chronicled than R’s, in no small part because people bugged me about it more.  Did you write it down?  Did you get her footprints stamped?  Did you send off for her birth certificate? (Yes, we do have R’s birth certificate, but it was literally months later in arriving than E’s was!)  But there is one thing that has really struck me lately about R, and so I thought it was perhaps worth a post: I do believe the child talks more now, at 14 months, than E did even on her second birthday.  It’s probably E’s “fault,” because she talks to R from sunup to sundown and R’s vocabulary is clearly reflective of her elder sister’s more than my own.  And I’m not implying a difference in intelligence, either: I frankly don’t really follow milestones at all anymore, but I’m pretty sure there’s a wide range of “normal” in speech development and the girls’ personalities could easily put them at opposite ends of the spectrum even without their own interactions.  That said; R’s words, as nearly as I can recall them all; words she says spontaneously/unprompted, consistently, and clearly:

• names: Ellie, Mommy, Daddy, Mammaw, Grandad
• bye, hi, night night, mmm-wee, up, me, I (love you), awwww, whee, please, no, baby, milk, eat, boo, uh-oh, ice, eyes
• she sings, semi-recognizably (you can tell which one she’s trying for): ring around the rosie, the alphabet song, twinkle twinkle, itsy bitsy spider, and old macdonald

I also want to remember something that is incredibly special to me to watch: while the girls have long played with each other—and nicely—lately they’ve actually been moving into a stage of being actively affectionate with each other.  It astounds me to see how patient E is with R’s physically clumsy attempts to hug, tickle, tackle, and give her kisses, and it’s also unfathomably neat to see R initiating said hugs and playfulness instead of just being on the receiving end all the time.  There are few moments in my entire life that have made me as happy and almost giddy as walking into a room and finding them sitting next to each other playing, “reading” a book together, or just plain hanging out.  They have their small moments of disgruntledness, but they’re much less than I’d expect given that they’re both still pretty clumsy (prone to flatly knocking each other down by accident!) and that the lines of communication are distinctly limited.

I know I’ve mentioned this before, but… I really love watching our girls together.  Today they fell asleep at naptime with their arms literally wrapped around each other, and I just kept thinking about how if anyone else was “in” their personal space that way, they’d never be able to go to sleep.  And how amazing it is that a ten-month-old can cuddle with a two-year-old and actually find it calming rather than distracting (E is apparently even more calming than Mommy), and that a two-year-old can contain herself to gentle pats and head rubs and no sudden movements that jolt her sister back awake.  Sometimes they end up such a tangle of limbs (and so similarly-sized, at that!) that you can hardly tell where one begins and the other one ends.

We were at the mall yesterday, and E was getting tired, so I helped her into the umbrella stroller behind R.  They’re getting a little bit too big to ride side-by-side anymore, but with the back tilted, I think they’ll fit this way until they’re really both too big for a stroller anyway.  I wasn’t sure how it would work, but they both thought it was just the neatest thing ever, and cooed and talked and giggled at each other until we were back at the car.  R kept leaning back and turning half-around against E in very cuddly fashion, which E of course thought was very sweet.

Yesterday morning, they were both walking around the house with toy phones, chattering away.

It is so incredibly neat to me that even though they’re seventeen months apart, they still manage to really connect and actually play together.  They have quite a few “games”—maybe five—that they like to play, but they also play with toys together and E really tries to teach R how to do things, and R clearly tries to imitate her.  E will put a baby down in a cradle; R will come along behind her and dump more babies in.  They’re definitely on different levels, but they find so many common points to share.

I really didn’t expect this to happen until they were at least two and three, maybe even older.

Today was one of the (many) days when the awesomeness of being a mommy to two little girls is nothing short of overwhelming.  The girls played so very, very many games today that I lost count. 

There was “boo,” which they played over and over again, switching the instigator; then they had a couple games that involved screaming similar sounds back and forth at each other (“aaaaaaaaah!!!!”  “eehhhhh!”  “bababababa!!!”); they rode the rocking giraffe together; they played with Matchboxes and made vrooom-vrooom noises together; and at one amazingly precious moment this morning, E was laying on the kitchen floor and R came over and climbed on top of her (like she would to S or me) and laid her head down on E’s chest and sucked her thumb contentedly while E patted her gently on the back.  When R was getting sleepy and going down for a nap, E rubbed her leg and sang “La Lechuza”… and R fell asleep.  E made R pretend “tea,” and R brought E some sunglasses and tried to put them on E’s face for her.

It’s astounding how different a child can be at ten months just because she has an older sister.  I don’t remember E playing games this way—I mean, I know she did, I remember her playing “boo” and the like—but sometimes R seems like a miniature, much less coordinated version of E.  Well, except completely different, personality-wise, but I mean as far as what she does and tries to do.  Already, if E does something, R will probably try to do it.  She tries to brush her own hair, and put barrettes in; she tries to sweep the floor and wipe down random surfaces… she even “helped” me unload the dishwasher very much like E does.

I’m also really surprised by how many games a two-year-old and a ten-month-old can invent to play together.  I thought they’d be playing “beside” each other (instead of “with” each other) for a couple of years yet, but they really interact quite a bit.  E definitely pushes it; she’ll get a toy and sit down right in front of R, or grab R by the hand and lead her around the house or in a rendition of “Ring Around the Rosie.”  But R is totally along for the ride, and sometimes she’ll eagerly grab for E’s hand to get her to play again.  (And sometimes she screams her head off because she doesn’t want to play right now, thank you very much.  And the two of them wanting the same toy is not a pretty sight, either, because neither of them quite grasps the idea that the other is going to be very upset if you just grab a toy out of their hand.  They both seem quite willing to share once the idea enters their heads, but sometimes they just blaze on with whatever they want without even considering the other.)

Having two girls has definitely opened up a whole new level of wonder—watching them together is so many times sweeter than just watching one of them!

We have a tiny little “room” in our house (more of a walk-in closet, really) which is where the washer and dryer live. It’s also my “craft” room–it houses my yarn and fabric collections, my sewing machines, and also my clothes (the closet in the master bedroom is S’s and the linens’ domain). It’s a rather nicely organized little room, with a worktable, cabinets, shelving, drawers, and a multitude of drying racks.

It is also, however, an invisible room: being a dead end, no one besides me ever traffics though, and there’s no reason why any company would ever go in there–even overnight guests. And so, it is a room with all the usual tendencies to disorder, but without any justification to really add it to the cleaning rotation. There’s always somewhere that needs cleaned more; another job that needs done first.  Every other spot in the house is “more” important, from the basement to the coat closet.  Over the years, my little hideaway had consequently gotten to be quite a wreck, a mass of strewn clothes from a particular toddler helping with the laundry, and piles of boxes and containers quickly tossed in there because it is indeed quite a significant amount of storage space for our house.

But while the girls and I were in Tennessee earlier this month, and S was home by himself, he tackled it.  He cleaned it out, sorted through and organized my stuff (without throwing anything away!), prettied it up, and basically made it all perfect again.  This was at first an odd choice of task, to my mind, but in the week since, I’ve really come to appreciate it.  Even though it’s a very dark and kind of dingy room (remember it’s technically a closet), I love going in there and doing laundry or just standing there drinking in the orderliness.  Everything is so organized and patiently waiting for me to find time to sew, or knit, or scrapbook, or… laundry.

I l like my little cubby.  :)  And the fabulous fellow who put so much time and effort into fixing it for me.

It amazes me sometimes how very different the girls have been.  From the very beginning, when R was born, I remember being amazed, wow, a baby CAN cry that loud?  She screamed and screamed.  E just kind of whined, and not very often at that.  R reminded me of a banshee.

Now, suddenly, R is walking — not just walking, but walking really, really well.  And in this, too, she is completely different from E.  E took her first little steps at 7 months, and was very persistent in those wobbly first steps: I caught her on video the very first day.  It took her ages to grow to proficiency, but she would try… and fall.  E was our child with the bumps and bruises and cuts on her face, the one who made us childproof our table corners and remove every possible obstacle from the house.  R, on the other hand… I’m not exactly sure when her “first” steps were, because she’d never repeat them more than once in a week or so.  And yet by 7 months or so we could “trick” her into taking steps; one time we counted no less than seven across my parents’ carpeted floor.  She clearly had better balance and coordination than E, but absolutely no daredevil streak at all.  So she didn’t really walk that anyone could see until last month (8 months)… and then she had a little fall, and that was the end of that for about three weeks.  Finally, one day this week, she literally just let go of the couch and by the end of the hour was walking all around the house (not really falling at all), climbing up stairs, climbing over obstacles… she’s like the little dream child, because we haven’t had to childproof things at all, but she doesn’t really ever get hurt.  And now today she’s half running down the hallway at church, enough to make Mommy terrified of the tile floor!

They’re such different children!

I love that our two-year-old–without a word from me–can get a carton of grapes out of the grocery bag, bring it to the counter beside the sink, drag a chair over to the sink so she can reach it, open the carton, detach a bunch of grapes, close the carton back up, wash the grapes, de-stem them, put them in a bowl, and share them with her sister.

Now if only she was strong enough to open the fridge, we’d be in business.

So the highlight of my day today was E helping R walk. She walked behind her, holding her hands, while R just plowed right along from the living room to the dining room to the kitchen.

The funny part about all this is that R weighs maybe half of what E does, so when R pitches forward uncontrollably, E is nearly pulled off her feet trying to stop her from falling. It’s a scary process. But oh so adorable.

I’m hoping that with #3, E will be a little more balanced herself. R would be walking so much better if someone had more time to spend helping her! As it is, she’s really started to take off. She stands by herself for a long time now, and takes a few hesitating steps. It’s kind of funny how different she is from E — R has much better balance than E did, but isn’t nearly as much of a daredevil, so she doesn’t try so much.

It’s interesting, as R gets older, to see how my perceptions of her growing are different than they were from those of E.  I suppose I don’t have time to pay as much exclusive attention to her—and since I know now the general course of infancy and early toddlerhood, I’m less eager for it to speed on by—and so the Big Moments come more as a surprise.  One day R sat by herself without falling over; one day she could support her own weight; another day she cautiously let go of the couch to stand alone.  One day she sat in her walker, the next day she zoomed through the house, knocking down her sister in the process.  Everything is happening suddenly; my brain in perpetual distraction mode fails to notice the warning signs until, each day, R is suddenly that much older.  Somehow my newborn turned into an 8-month-old.

I never thought E was going to grow up.  It seemed like she sat in her walker for months (it can’t possibly have been that long) before she figured out how to do anything besides move backwards.

I love the fact that we have two girls so close in age.  They clearly adore each other—although they’re also learning now how to ignore each other and even get annoyed at each other (mainly E gets annoyed at R for the aforementioned running over in her walker, and R gets annoyed at E for trying to pick her up).  And I’m not really sorry that I’m missing the in-between moments of R’s early childhood—it comes with the territory, and I imagine it’s only going to get worse with (Lord willing) #3.

But I finally have some glimmer of understanding of what people mean when they say to treasure the moments before they’re gone—just because now there are such fewer moments that I even see.