When Little Bear Ruled our World

There are a million things that have happened lately that I think, I need to write that down somewhere.  I need to document this time in our lives, because it will never be like this again.  These moments, these toddler days, the things they say, the things they do, the amazement I feel at the fact that they are mine, and so big.  And then the laundry needs to be folded, or the dishwasher emptied, or a baby fed, and I lose my chance to do it.  I shouldn't be blogging right now, I really shouldn't even be awake right now, but I'm pumping, I have a brand new functioning laptop, and I am going to see how much I can get down in the 23 minutes I now have before my pump stops.  Speed blogging.  We'll see how that goes.

Mia rolled over the other day from her back to her front for the first time.  I think.  We are pretty sure we left her on her back, found her on her belly, but Ben was the only witness.  There is probably a very slight chance that he pushed her.  I would write it in her baby book, but I don't have one.  And I don't have proof.  And I think it was Sunday, but I am not positive.

There really is some truth to this third child thing.  I am lazy about a lot.  I missed a lot of this kind of stuff with the twins too, and the thing that is different this time is I'm really not that stressed about it.  I realize that someday, my little Amelia is going to want to sit down and ask me how old she was when she rolled over, or laughed for the first time, and I'm not going to know.  I can show her the pictures I took (except for her four month photo shoot that I never ended up actually doing), make a guess and hope she doesn't hate me for it.  But the thing is, I am just plain old enjoying her.  I feel more like I know what I am doing, I am happier, and I just spend my time loving on that little girl.  So if there were three days between her first two first solids meals, well, there were three days.  Who really needs three straight days of avocado anyway?

Maggie and Ben are potty trained.  I'm calling it.  We can go out in public in our underpants, and both of them are down to hardly any accidents ever.  Ben occasionally has aim issues, but we are working on that.  They still wear diapers at nap and bedtime, but even then are sometimes having them dry when they get up, so that is something.  Baby steps.  I didn't follow a method, I have never bribed them with m&m's, and I have two potty trained children at 2 1/2.  I'm pretty proud of that!

The day that I knew for sure that we were potty trained was the day we did our family photoshoot with my best friend and her family in the park.  We started off at the playground, and I didn't even think about potty preparations.  When Ben announced that he had to pee, Andy took him to the restroom facilities.  Which were apparently closed.  I saw Andy with Ben under one arm, kind of darting around trying doors before they disappeared.  When they came back, Ben proudly announced to me that he had peed on a leaf.  An important right of passage had gone on over on the other side of the building.  During the rest of that afternoon, Ben peed on a leaf, and a tree and pooped in a trashcan.  Maggie peed in the trashcan and in a non working water fountain.  Because we are classy like that.  Or maybe creative would be a good word.  I'm not going to tell you where we were!

Maggie knows how to spell.  There was a day that Andy was trying to sneak away to go to the grocery store.  I swear, when he came up to tell me, he spelled almost every word of "Ben and I are going to the store to get more milk".  Maggie was on the bed with me while I nursed Mia.  She looked up at him and said "I want to come."  Playing dumb, we asked her where she wanted to go.  She replied that she wanted to come.  Come to the store to get more milk.  Scary!

I have the sweetest Ben story ever.  In our music class, one of the things we use is hula hoops.  Sometimes, all the adults use the hoops to make a tunnel and the kids get to crawl through.  It is a big deal and they love it.  After the kids have gone through, we have to pick up the hoops after the last kid.  This day in class, Maggie got to go first, and came gleefully around to do it again, only to be confronted by adult after adult removing their hoops as she was trying to get in the tunnel again.  She burst into very loud wails (which I quite honestly didn't blame her for) and Andy was trying to calm her down.  Ben looked very concerned about all this.  I was watching him watching her.  No one but me heard this over her wails, but he went over to her with the hula hoop he was holding and said, "Here Maggie, you go through my tunnel" as he was holding his hoop in the air.  Melt.

I know I have mentioned before that my kids watch a lot of Little Bear.  Like almost exclusively.  One of the nice things about it, is that there is no big merchandising scheme to go alone with it.  I like that I do not have to hunt down Bear pajamas, and bear toys, and bear everything else.  The funny thing though is how uncommercialized my kids are.  I need to explain things to them like Winnie the Pooh, and they really only know Dora and Mickey Mouse a little.

If you don't watch Little Bear, you should.  It is sweet, old fashioned, and not at all gimicky.  It is about friendships, and family, and imagination.  My kids have kick ass manners.  They say please and thank you all the time now, no prompting most of the time.  Ben says "No thank you" all the time, and it is really funny.  They know how to share, how to take turns and how to pretend things like "goin' to a weddig" and picking blueberries.  I think I have seen every episode of that show now.  Multiple times.  We know many of the episodes by heart.  The kids will know from the title of one, or the beginning scene that they have seen the episode, what happens, and what new characters might have been in the episode.  I'm trying to enjoy this stage.  Trying to remember all the things that they do that are just sweet and innocent.

One last thing and then I have to get some sleep.  This deserves its own post, really, but, the wonder of Christmas really can be found in the eyes of a child.  If you have lights up in your yard, any kind of a tacky, light up display or a single strand of lights on your garage, if we drove past your house, we are the ones slowing down.  We are the ones pointing at the different colors and doubling back so the other side of the car can have a good view.  The oohs, ahhs, Bootiful, that's very nice, and all of the other comments that come from the backseat. . .I hope that is the reason you hung them this year.

This post will be pictureless because I haven't put pictures on the new computer yet.  But that is a good thing for tonight.  Pump is done, sleep is calling, and I have a million things to do tomorrow.