Eric, skip this post

My dear sweet repressed husband will be horrified I not only allow this kind of behavior, but also am going to share it with you. Sorry honey, you knew what you were getting into when you married me :)

On to the good stuff. Now that Otto is in school every Tuesday and Thursday morning it has become girl time for mette and I. We hang out with friends, go the the grocery store, the coffee shop, the bookstore, whatever we feel like. Today I was hoping to clean their room and get some more primer on their walls. To keep mette occupied while I was painting I gave mette a brush just like mine and a basin of water to paint with. After painting three strokes she started taking off her shirt, "help me mama!!!". Once her shirt was off she made short work of her pants and undies. "Naked painting" she proudly declared. Somehow on Tuesday she also managed to spend most of the morning naked as well. It is clearly her idea of how to spend a good morning. After painting with me for a while she wanted to take her brush and water to the third floor. Seemed like a fine idea to me so I carried them upstairs for her and that is when I took these:




The master creating





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Morning light

This morning I took advantage of two kids in a great mood, fabulous light in the kitchen and Mette sporting a particularly fantastic outfit courtesy of my mom to shoot some great photos of them. It has been a while since I caught them just enjoying themselves on camera. They actually even stood next to each other when I asked them to and looked at the camera. It may never happen again so check it out now!

He wanted a picture of him "smiling like a soccer player". Here it is:

She started jumping and yelling "go git 'em" over and over again.

So of course Otto started jumping.

Squeals of laughter over finding Otto.

Mette, watch this....

I can do it too.

That's my girl.

Ssshh...

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For Sale

Yesterday was one of those days. A day where we seemed to be teetering on the line of holding it all together. I don't know what to blame it on, the crappy weather, an exhausting end to the previous week followed by a busy weekend, or just plain funk, but something was amiss. Just after lunch Otto had one of the single biggest meltdowns I have ever experienced. By the time I finally got him into the guest room where he could thrash and hopefully not wake up his sister (that didn't work but I tried) and went downstairs I was shaking with adrenaline. I have since purchased a book on raising a "strong willed child" and am making my way through it in no time. I have no desire to go head to head with Otto, or anyone else for that matter, all the time. I would much rather find a way where everyone can feel like they are in control of the situations they need to be and feels good about the general state of things. Clearly being three is hard and when you want to control things, but are still just three and can't control everything you want to it is REALLY hard. But I can see how I need to work more on giving him things he can control and helping him when he can't control things he wants to.

Once I started to calm down I called eric to vent and talk out the situation. There is a message board used for selling things from hairbrushes to houses at school and we always joke when things get rough that they do not have a human trafficking policy like ebay. This is of course just a joke, no matter how much they drive me crazy I still love my kids more than anything.

About 15 minutes after I got off the phone with eric I got this email from him. I made me laugh so hard I had to share it with you. I think this will be especially good to show Otto some day, perhaps when he has children of his own and can really relate. Anyone who has kids has to get to this point.

FOR SALE

One slightly used surly 3-year-old male boy. Speaks English and R2D2. Can be sweet with the appropriate bribery. Likes race cars and soccer/mocker. Incapable of listening or following directions but comes equipped with an infinite supply of questions. May randomly snuggle or scream. Verbally witty and intrigued by lethally dangerous objects and actions. Will eat anything except what is served for dinner. Needs lots of exercise.

Best,
e

And to top it off, last night at dinner after I answered a question Mette asked she came back with, "but why?". Seriously, they are trying to kill me. TWO asking why may be more than one person can handle at a time. If they start answering each others questions that will be great, but so far it hasn't happened yet.

introducing

Baby Opal

not the real one. Well, that depends on who you are talking to I guess. See, a good friend of mine recently had a beautiful little girl who they named Opal. I think she is the "real" baby Opal. Mette is quite taken with her. Otto too, though not as much as Mette. As soon as she arrives Mette immediately points her out. "Look Mama, it's baby Opal" she yells as she runs over. For the most part she is pretty gentle with her. When baby Opal is being held by her mother Mette often declares that she should be "down, down on floor" as she points to her feet, "baby Opal, down on floor with ME". She is not totally aware that you can not lay on small babies, or poke their eyes out, but she does show some caution. Regardless she is the talk of many conversations we have each day. When baby Opal grows up into little girl Opal, or, wow, could it really happen, young woman Opal (denial, denial, our children won't get there for a LONG TIME, right??) I will always in a part of my mind think of her as baby Opal. That is due in part to the fact that right now, in addition to keeping track of Mette, Otto and an entire fleet of matchbox cars, I am now in charge of baby Opal.

Meet baby Opal.









She is darling, no? Mette found her in a bin of random Playmobil people and declared her baby Opal at once. We haven't been without her since. Which would be fine until you see her to scale:



as Mette says, "baby Opal TEENY TINY". And she is. We loose her on average I would say 100+ times a day. Did I say "we" loose her, yeah, that would be, Mette looses her. In her defense, she is about 100x better than eric or Otto in finding things so that helps, but I still find myself not going more than 5 minutes without checking in to see where she is. I have learned from my time tracking matchbox cars that vigilance pays. If you loose it, but have seen it recently, your chances of finding it are much higher. The longer it goes without you knowing where it is, the harder it will be to find. In addition to the large part of my brain that is taken up with song lyrics, we can now officially designate a large section to "constant small toy surveillance". This supports my theory that really I am brilliant, I am just stuck keeping track of everything and as a result my brilliance suffers.

Despite her small stature, baby Opal is very accomplished. She goes on the potty, she eats most anything, she takes a pacifier that is twice the size of her body. She seems to take many naps and is very sleepy. She loves the slide "weeee!!" and is also quite fond of riding in small cars, but they have to have seat belts. It would be a crime any other way.

Should anyone who is reading this blog post happen to have a small playmobil person who resembles baby Opal lying around their house, I would pay top dollar for it.

I'm just saying'....

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Promise

I promise that as soon as I finish the last Girl With The Dragon Tattoo book, I have 200 pages to go, I will start posting more and start going to bed before midnight. But I have to admit, it feels good to be so engrossed in books again. Having babies who didn't sleep through the night really cut into my book time.

I will however share this little bit of cuteness.


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Going so well

School, that is.

Otto seems to be loving his school, and so am I. Each day he is excited to go and is off before I can say good bye when we get there. When I go to pick him up he is engaged in fun and hesitant to leave. I am really hoping the enthusiasm continues. So far, so good.

I am also loving his school. Today I received this email from his teacher:

Hi Friends,

This week we will be talking about the waxing moon as it approaches its full harvest moon phase on Thursday night. We will read some books and hear some stories where the moon plays a central role. See if you can walk outside with your child and notice the moon this week. We will also be talking about the first day of autumn which occurs Wednesday. Finally we will be making grape juice. I look forward to seeing you tomorrow.

It doesn't get much better than that in my eyes. You should know, the grapes they will use are grown at the school so the kids will help in the harvest as well.

I have some great pictures, I got my camera back!!!, to share but that requires getting the iPad out of eric's hands and he is currently reigning champion on Shrek Cart so it may not happen tonight.

Otto had his first night of soccer school tonight. It went pretty well. There was an older kid who was literally beating Otto up and the teachers weren't doing anything about it. Eric stepped in and stopped it but it seems to have bothered Otto. As you can well imagine. He has a week before the next class so we will see how he is feeling then. I think overall it is and will be something he likes, he just is working out how to process the whole thing. It is really hard seeing your kid in a situation like that. I think both eric and I are still dealing with what to think about it as well.

Oh, one other thing, today is day three in a row of no naps from Otto. He seems totally fine. It doesn't seem to make him sleep in any later, he is still up and raring to go at 6:12 so I have adjusted the bedtime. They normally were going upstairs for bed at 8 or a little after, tonight lights were out at 7:30. There were no complaints and it seems pretty quiet up there. Often Mette fights an earlier bedtime but she has been really tired lately so it may just work out fine. Today he did a very good job of playing quietly downstairs while I cleaned. He went in and outside all by himself engrossed in his own world of cars and games. On days where he goes to school I think I will encourage him to lay down in bed for half and hour, but if he doesn't fall asleep I will let him come downstairs. I knew this day would come eventually and I have to say, it is much less of a big deal than I thought it would be. If he can play quietly and let me get done what I want to get done while Mette naps, and if it means they go to bed earlier, I am fine with that.

Speaking of going to bed, I am on the last of the Girl With The Dragon Tattoo books and I have a habit of staying up WAY too late reading them so I am going to go get a head start on getting to sleep.

Like father like son

Everywhere we go, people are always telling me the children "look just you". Which is sweet and I know people mean well when they say that. The kids do look like me, a little. They both have big brown eyes which immediately links them to me. I do have big brown eyes, but so does eric, but quite frankly if you had seen me as a baby you would have been taken a back. My eyes were HUGE, almost strangely so. I think both kids, mette especially look like Eric just as much as they look like me. Otto, who really looks like my dad, has just taken looking like your dad to a whole new level.

Since Otto starts soccer school on Monday we had to get him some soccer shoes. Eric wears, and has been wearing, ADIDAS Sambas as his everyday sneaker for, well let's just say, as long as I have been alive. Recently his daily drivers wore through the sole and i had to order him new ones, the old ones are still in his office going through what I understand to be a mourning period. Otto was beyond excited to get shoes just like daddy. I have e feeling i will be ordering many more pairs in the future, and i am quite alright with that.





My boys, with their matching shoes, lounging on the late summer lawn.





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Inside the Egg

*Warning, when I first heard this story I almost peed my pants. Granted, I have had two children in the last three years, but consider you own situation and prepare accordingly.*

Attentive readers of the blog will remember in my recent post about Papou and Matt visiting I mentioned that I had misplaced our camera. I was really trying to be cool about the whole situation while totally freaking out on the inside. I use our camera almost every day and not having it has added an insane amount of stress to my life. But really, it's not like anything big has been happening, oh wait, Otto started school. CRAP!! Thank God for eric's iPhone is all I have to say.

Back story on the missing camera:

The last time I remember using the camera was Friday evening at the cabin. I took short series of the kids playing two of the four freshly made banjos on display. There were some real winners in the set and I was very much looking forward to sharing them. My memory of what I did with the camera after that was a bit fuzzy, but I really thought I put it in a Trader Joe's bag in the mud room that was filled with random other things we had brought up for the weekend.

On Saturday morning it was a little hectic trying to get all of us out the door to head to the track so I didn't really stress about the camera. I thought it was in the bag but also knew that there would be many other camera along that day. I took a few things out of the bag that we did not need to bring with us to the track and put them away and didn't think anything of it.

By Sunday I had come to the conclusion I had lost the camera. It was not in the Trader Joe's bag, it was not in my purse and I couldn't seem to find it anywhere else. Still, I had no memory of taking it anywhere else so it couldn't really be LOST. Except that my mother and I have spent the past two weeks looking EVERYWHERE for the darn thing. I took every last thing out of our car, twice. Including floor mats and car seats only to find many scary old bits of kid food, but no camera. My mom took apart the beds we sleep in, including the mattresses, looked in all the bins in the mud room, scoured all of the many, many bookshelves. It was a total lost cause. The camera was gone. Every email and phone call from my mom for the past two weeks has been a bit of a let down. She always has interesting things to say, but she hasn't called to say that she found the camera.

Until today.

This morning she went into the pantry to get some beans for something she was making. On top of the jar of beans was a box of Dinosaur Egg Oatmeal, Mette's favorite. I had brought the box up during our last visit to leave there. She felt the box should be moved over next to the cereal and picked up the box, that was when she noticed how heavy it was. She opened the box, and there nestled among the packages of instant oatmeal was our camera. It was in the Trader Joe's bag and when I put the camera in the bag it must have fallen into the open bag, then when I was taking out things we didn't need to take to the track I took out the oatmeal and put it away. I must not have noticed the box was heavy and put it away without looking inside.

I wonder just how long the camera could have sat in that box before anyone ever found it. We are going up there this weekend so I can be reunited with my companion. I promise to post some great photos on our return.

And he's off

Today was it. The day Otto started preschool. I can not tell you how much time I spent worrying about today. It has only been recently that I have been able to leave Otto without him having a melt down and even then it usually has to be a perky undergrad who he is staying with for the situation to be OK with him. Change is hard on him. Anything that seems like it is a big deal makes him nervous and his way of dealing with being nervous is usually to fall apart. Otto can fall apart in a most dramatic and intense way. If you have not seen him in full swing before, it can give you pause. So, you can imagine how many sleepless nights I have had over this. As today grew closer though I started to think that it might, just might, go alright.

For one, he started to seem somewhat interested in the whole concept of school. I think the fact that Daddy is a teacher (tenured prof. really, but let's for the sake of argument call him a teacher) and when he goes to work each day, he is really going to school. School is a big part of our lives. When know what days Daddy leaves early to teach an 8 a.m. class, and which evenings he goes back to work to see students. This all seemed to start sinking in with Otto recently. He has been really into ROBOTS lately and I just happened to have a great piece of fabric with really cute robots on it. I used it to make him a backpack which he fell in love with. We bought two reusable snack bags for him to take to school and he liked the designs I chose. One has robots of sorts and the other has a very simple pear. More and more he seemed interested in what was happening.

On Friday of last week we went to the school for an orientation. Really it was just a chance for the kids to see the school, meet their teacher again and get a sense of what they would be doing today. Otto visited the school once before, but it was last winter and I don't think he or any of the other kids remembered much from that visit. Otto had so much fun on Friday I could have left and he would not have even noticed. Within minutes of being there he was off playing and enjoying himself while I watched from the wings. It was wonderful. His teacher has two sons who she is homeschooling and they will be around on some days to help with school. They are dear sweet boys and Otto pretty much thinks they the greatest thing ever. They alone can take a lot of the credit for him feeling so much at home so quickly. That and the fact that they have a soccer goal and soccer balls in the yard. He was pretty much sold after he saw that. I left the orientation on Friday with a warm fuzzy feeling. All the prep work with play school and the long talks just might pay off. He may just be able to do this after all.

School starts every Tuesday and Thursday morning at 9 a.m. Since it is a quick walk from our house to the school this gives us plenty of time to get ready as both kids wake up with a shot at 6:12 these days. I am not joking, 6:12, no earlier, no later. I am not convinced that they don't have an alarm clock hiding somewhere in their room! Since the first day of preschool is a big deal, eric stayed home this morning so we could all walk there together. Otto of course wanted to wear a soccer jersey, he went with his America jersey, Bucknell Hoodie that Papou got him which he wears to soccer games, and sweat pants he blessedly thinks are soccer pants. Topped off with the robot backpack he was looking pretty sharp. I will have to get some better close ups of the back pack.





We made him pose for the official first day of school photos. He actually seemed to enjoy it!





He of course had to take one with mom as well.





The walk to school takes us right by one of his buddies houses who is also going to the same school. Just as we passed their house they were coming out the front door, we all walked the last two blocks together. The two boys walked hand in hand talking about things that really only make sense to other three year old boys. It was one of the cutest things you have ever seen.





When we got to the school Otto put his bag and spare clothes in his cubby right away. The teacher asked us all to bring in a picture of something the kids did over the summer. Otto choose this picture:






which seemed like a good choice for him. They immediately started using glue sticks and paper to make a collage of everyone's pictures. In addition to that there was a work station set up where the kids could use small knives to clean off the block crayons for the start of a new year. It didn't take long for Otto to be engrossed and eric and I gave him a kiss and I told him I would be back to pick him up at lunch time.

And that was it.

No tears.

No, where are you going?

No questions. Just, "OK mom, see you later".

If anything it was harder getting Mette out of there. She totally wanted a glue stick and to go to school as well. "I too, I too" she kept saying. Luckily there are grapes growing outside the door so I kept her quiet picking grapes.

When I picked up Otto he and his friends were playing happily in the backyard. He told me stories of them signing songs, cutting with scissors, reading books, the sandbox. Picking and eating pears, grapes and tomatoes. It sounded like he had a wonderful time and my inside resourse (Rachel is the assistant teacher on Tuesdays) said he had a great first day.

So all of the worrying, all of the stress, it is on it's way out. I will be curious to see how Thursday goes, and next week. But I have a good feeling. He really seemed to have a good time. And boy, oh boy was he tired when he got home. He CRASHED for a solid three hours and was ready for bed tonight. We had a very busy day yesterday as well, tomorrow we are laying low. There will be much reading of books, snuggling and general kid setting the pace actives. Maybe homemade hot chocolate for snack. Maybe even some cookie baking. But really just fun around the house. We could use a day like that!


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Tomorrow

Hair cut and face washed.

Spare outfit folded neatly with "FADEN" printed on the labels.

All three soccer jerseys clean for the picking.

Release form printed and filled out.

Snacks ready.

Bag set.

Water bottle clean and set.

8x10 photo of what he did this summer ready to go. (eric printed it and chose the size :) )

-otto chose the photo of him standing in front of the Brumos Porsche at Watkin's Glen

Why does getting Otto ready to spend three hours at preschool 7 blocks away where one of my best friends is the assistant teacher seem so hard?

Fly-In

Last week we had an amazing visit from Papou who flew out from Chicago. On his way here he brought with him a rather unusual co-pilot. A 53" bear for Mette. It was pretty exciting picking him up at the airport. Mette calls the bear "Papou Bear" and both kids seem to really love tackling him. If it takes some of the pressure off them always wanting to tackle eric and I, I am all for it!


While Papou was visiting we went to see the home opener for the mens soccer at Bucnell. Ever since the World Cup this summer Otto has been a bit obsessed with soccer. All he wants to wear are soccer jerseys. On eric's last visit to New York I made him pick up a few more since him only having one was making the pressure on laundry a bit intense for me. He now has three but since he wears the 24/7 I still need to be on my "A" game. He will only wear pants he deems soccer pants as well. Luckily he has a few jammy pants and sweats with stripes on the side which we have been able to convince him are soccer pants. We have been waiting for the season to start so we could take him to a game and it proved to be quite a good idea. Both kids we transfixed and seem to like all the excitement. Otto wore his Netherlands jersey which happens to look like the Bucknell home jersey so he fit right in. About 30 seconds before the end of the first half Bucknell scored the first goal of the season. Otto went nuts. Crazy. It was show stopping. He immediately took off his jersey and starting running up and down the side lines shouting "GOAL!!!!". The undergrad girls who were watching thought it was the cutest thing they had ever seen. He could have had his pick of girls. Bucky Bison came over go give him a high five, it was possibly one of the greatest things I have ever seen. Of course we didn't have a camera and were laughing far too hard to capture anything anyway so you will just have to imagine it for yourself. Needless to say, the game was a big hit and we will be going to many more. In fact, just a few nights ago we went to a girls soccer game and this morning we went to a men's water polo game. Both kids seem to really love watching the games. I think it will open up a great range of activities during the winter months when it becomes hard to find things to do on weekends or evenings.

Otto is so into soccer right now we signed him up for Soccer Shots. Every Monday night starting next week he will have soccer class. It sounds like good program where the kids have fun and get to learn some soccer skills while they are at it. Regardless, watching a group of 3-4 year olds play soccer should be good entertainment. Just wait until Otto's new soccer shoes arrive soon, he won't want to take them off either!

In addition to Papou being here last week, eric's brother, Uncle Matt came for the weekend. Everyone should have an Uncle Matt. He is amazing. The kids adore him and he is so wonderful with them. How he manages to have the energy to chase and play with them amazes me. When he has children someday we will have some serious make-up childcare duties to fulfill!


Otto and Uncle Matt were playing soccer in the back yard. You can see he scored a goal since he has taken off his shirt and is running around yelling.


While Matt and Papou were here we went to the cabin. Watkin's Glen was hosting a Ferrari weekend and we had to go! Otto went exploring in the back of Matt's car and found hockey gloves.


One night while we were cleaning up from dinner I gave the kids a plate of watermelon and sent them out to the porch steps so my mom and I could do the dishes. It worked amazingly well, they sat there for a while talking to each other and eating watermelon. It was so cute.


We went to the track for the day on Saturday to check out all the new Ferrari's. Otto decided that this would be a good time to take up posing for the camera.


Here we are all watching a race. Apparently Matt is the only one who knew Papou was taking a picture :)


Somehow every time we go to Watkins Glen, despite us telling him it won't happen this time, Otto gets to sit in a race car. This time some Italian driver picked him up and put him in his 430. He was so excited and kept saying, "see mom, I told you I could sit in a race car". Thanks Mr. Italian Racecar Driver.


We were also some of the first people in the States to see the new Ferrari Italia. Lucky for us it didn't burst into flames.


It is easy to see we had an excellent week and visit with family. I should note that all of the pictures were kindly taken with either eric's, matt's or roger's cell phones as our camera is missing in the depths of the cabin. I am so sad and annoyed about losing the camera I have not accepted it as true yet.

More to come soon, Otto starts preschool on Tuesday!!!!

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MIA

I am sorry have been so absent lately but there is a good reason. Papou (eric's dad) has been here along with uncle Matt. Needless to say things have been busy and fun. I will post more tomorrow but for now I am off to read in bed. We all need to get back to our regular nighttime routines.

1.5 years

For starters, I would like to say that I have no idea how Mette is a year and a half since she was just a tiny baby a few weeks ago. On that note, I don't understand why she can't tie her shoes herself since she seems to run the rest of the household just fine.

On Monday when I took the walking germ factories to the doctor it was actually for Mette's 18 month appointment. It seemed a bit unfair to hide her accomplishments in a blog post about Otto learning how to take bong hits so I am adding them here. Not surprising at all, she is healthy and doing well, and tiny!! Kids are supposed to follow a curve on this chart thingy (based on white bottle fed babies in the Boston suburbs of the 1960's, so you know, super accurate and well researched). Mette seems to be making her own curve. At her nine month check up she weighed 20.6 lbs. This Monday, she weighed 21 lbs. Normally babies gain more than < 1 lbs. in a year+ time. But not all babies go from Mette the Hutt to Miss Skinny Minny as fast as she did. Once that girl was moving all the chunk was gone. She is also on the low side for height 45%ish but that is pretty understandable considering who her parents are. Our doctor who has four kids herself and is pretty hep to kids asked "what size clothes is she wearing, she is so cute". Well let's see, the top is a 6 month t-shirt from last year and those are 12 month pants that are a bit on the big side. Yeah, she is kind of a peanut. But a really cute peanut. What she is lacking in size she makes up for in vocabulary. By 18 months they like to see 4-10 words, Mette has 4-10 words to tell you she wants a snack, and now. She doesn't stop talking. Now when she is demanding down from the table and you ask her how to ask nicely, thinking all you will get is "please" she comes back with "I want to get down......PEAS!". That's the other thing, she totally understands pronouns and uses the correctly. Otto, who also talked very early had a hard time with that while she totally gets it. Mine, yours, I, you, we, she gets it and uses them to explain just how she wants things done. Should you not understand her, or not be able to execute her desires that very second, watch out! The temper on this small one is fierce. She throws a fit and holds a grudge like nothing I have ever experienced before. In many ways it is really funny, and scary a the same time. She will grow out of that, right????

All in all we had a great visit, she passed with flying colors and managed to avoid getting shots. Since they both had colds (which seem to be almost gone, thank goodness) we decided to wait with the shots. Next week when they are both feeling better we will go back for the good stuff.

oh, and the stats, Mette is 31 inches tall and weighs 21 pounds. Her head is tiny, her vocabulary, large. At eighteen months I can now say she sleeps through the night and is weaned, both a miracle as far as I am concerned!


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