Recently I've spent a lot of time talking to friends and family, reading articles, and generally complaining about how hard it is having two kids (mostly about how hard it is to have a 15 month old "psycho"--as Jed calls her), but this past weekend provided glimses of a rosier future, sprinkled between excruciating bouts of our bleak present, restoring my faith that it will get better someday in the not-too-distant future (pre-college years, for example).

We made the decision a few months ago to get away from San Francisco for the 4th of July this year. The 4th here is usually a bust (too cold and foggy to bother going out, too foggy and overcast to see any fireworks anyway), so we get our fix of fireworks around Mother's Day when our local radio station hosts the "Ka-Boom" instead. The year Zoe turned one, we actually put her to bed at 7, then got her up at 9, loaded her into the car, drove the 1.2 miles to a park with a city skyline view, wrapped her up and packed her into the stroller, all so we could stand huddled together in the cold to silently watch the display over the bay while she snored away. Nice, but not my ideal Independence Day.

This year we flew to LA to stay with Grandma Gail and Grandpa Howard in mostly sunny LA (early July suffers from remnants of the June Gloom, apparently, although it cleared out by Saturday and Sunday). Although the kids struggled quite a bit with sleep (the excrutiating), we had a picture perfect 4th and a lovely weekend with family and friends (the glimpses).

We spent the 4th with Jed's parents and step-brother's family at their club: a delicious buffet/barbecue outside, face painting, balloon animals, popcorn, snow cones, blankets on the grass, fabulous fireworks and nary a sweater in sight. Zoe was able to run off and play with her 7 year old cousins and although Josie still needed constant attention, for a few moments she played with the "big girls" and I got to sit and sip my cocktail and chat with the grown ups. The best part (as it should be) was the fireworks show. I originally had planned on Josie sleeping in the stroller through it (not sure it would have worked, but since she showed no signs of being tired, we never got to test my theory). Instead, she watched in awe, and danced, and pointed, and ooohed in glee. She got antsy before the end, but Daddy took her for a little walk and she was fine. The quintessential family 4th! It reminded me a lot of our small town 4th of July when I was a kid. Especially noteworthy was the feeling that we could let the kids run a little bit and not worry about strangers, or passing cars, or other dangers that seem constantly on my mind now that I have small children.

Other signs that life may be getting better soon:
--Zoe got a new baby doll (early birthday present), and she and Josie actually played together for upwards of an hour!
--Although showing no interest in actually swimming, Zoe and her big girl cousins played at the pool for another hour (Zoe "fished" for them with a pool noodle while they went from fishbowl/jacuzzi to ocean/pool and back again--a game of their own devising), and best of all, I didn't even have to get into the (freezing) water!
--Josie finally learned the sign for "more" and even combined it with "please"--a linguistic breakthrough that may significantly reduce the screaming at the dinner table (and everywhere else for that matter). If you are wondering who is doing the screaming...we like to take turns.

I know the future also holds bickering, tattling, all out fist-fighing, eye-rolling, and "I hate you" yelling, but for now, I'll just focus on the vision of my kids playing with each other or with friends long enough for me to read a chapter of a book. Hey, a girl's gotta dream...

Pictures at: http://ultralame.shutterfly.com/920

First post-vacation shower this morning (last shower was post jacuzzi, exfoliation, massage and twenty five minute bonus SCALP massage at the Spa Grande):

Goodbye enormous walk-in resort shower (en suite, no less!)
Goodbye luxury resort bath products that smell like Hawaiian sunset (ok, I stole some of those, so it's only goodbye until I locate them in my suitcase).
Goodbye amazing ocean view from every room of the condo.
Goodbye breakfast on the lanai every morning.

Ah, but also
Goodbye first day sunburn, thanks for hanging in there for the entire six days.
Goodbye five hours of airplane "lap child" snack cup Chex detritus.
Goodbye un-babyproofed stairs, kitchen cabinets, pool, ocean, etc.
Goodbye twenty minutes per day of sunscreen application, child chasing, tears, and negotiations.

But mostly
Goodbye my-own-bed to which I would gladly return for another three hours, if only I didn't have to go back to work.

To paraphrase and basically steal from my BFF Beth: "Whoever coined the term Terrible Twos hadn't gotten to age three yet"

Zoe is generally a really fun person to be around. Since I got back from my 10 day business trip she occasionally even busts out with an unsolicited "I love you Mommy" which melts my heart. But then there are those moments that melt my dwindling thread of patience, culminating last night in me throwing her into her room, slamming the door and letting her sit there crying (real tears) for about 15 minutes. Let me give you some background:

Here is the list of things that have brought Zoe to tears (when I say tears, I mean whiiiiiining, mooooooaaaannnnning, walking-around-repeating-her-request-50-times type of crying) in the last 5 days:
--We couldn't eat at Estella's house (the night I came home)
--Estella couldn't eat lunch at our house (the next day)
--Estella couldn't eat dinner with us (the second night I was home), starting to see a pattern here?
--There is no orange juice
--We have no bagels
--We have no cream cheese (ok, maybe it's time to shop), but we DO have cereal, yogurt, cottage cheese, eggs, bacon, oatmeal, etc.
--(after we buy cream cheese) we have no STRAWBERRY cream cheese
--She doesn't want to go to school
--She doesn't want to go home
--She can't have a yogurt pop (because she already had dessert, AND because it turns out we don't have any)
--We can't make yogurt pops (no time before bedtime, and we don't have the yogurt, FINE, we'll go to the store someday, sheesh, get off my back supermoms!)

I'm sure there are more, but they aren't coming to me right now.

The frustrating thing is that most of the time these are not arbitrary rules (or even justified rules) that we are imposing, most of the time these are just truths: Estella isn't home, we literally have no orange juice, yogurt pops won't have time to freeze before you go to bed, etc. Yet she will beg, and please, and whine, and repeat her request for what feels like hours, but may actually be 5 or 10 full minutes! At least when she was two, you could usually distract her out of a tantrum, but no matter how logical the answer is, if she doesn't like it, she breaks out the tear factory.

So, what pushed me over the edge last night? I picked Zoe and Josie up from school yesterday and Zoe told me she was thirsty. My response: "we'll get some water when we get home." Meanwhile, the much beloved Estella is gleefully socking back a bright yellow cup of water right in her face, thanks E. I gather up my baby, her dirty bottles, jackets, shoes, school calendar, etc and head for the door, when I am informed by Zoe that she is too thirsty to walk home. I am not exaggerating when I say that our front door is 39 feet from the front door of the school. So I brush that comment off and attempt to cajole her out the door. She decides to take a stand on this issue and plants herself in the doorway of the school at the top of about 6 cement stairs. I'm holding a 25 pound baby on a busy city street, so I don't have a free hand or the confidence to drag her out without her falling and cracking her head open. The teacher and I manage to scootch her far enough out that they can close the door and go on with their lives, but she refuses to move any farther, because she is too thirsty. I tell her that the tears are just going to make her more thirsty, and that I don't have any water with me. I try the "I'm leaving without you" move, but she calls my bluff and just stands there. And in reality, I can't just leave her there, even 39 feet from our front door. It's a city, and she's 3.

After asking, demanding, joking, yelling, and abandoning don't work, I ring our doorbell, yell at Jed to come grab the baby and I storm back, pick her up (crying, did I mention that?), stomp home, up the stairs, into her room and dump her on the bed. I whip her shoes off of her, grab her minkee (pacifier/blankey combo, her beloved soothing object), yell "No Minkee" like a lunatic and slam the door. She proceeds to cry (loudly) the entire time I prepare dinner, although after 15 minutes, when I come in to tell her that her favorite dinner (quesadilla and beans) is ready, the waterworks go off like a switch. When I ask her if she knows why I punished her, she says no (love that!), so we have a little chat and we move on to dinner. Where she proceeded to down about a pint of water.

I guess she was thirsty.

"I love you"

OK, maybe she's not really saying it, but it has been independently verified by 3 adults. Earlier this week, I dropped her off at daycare and as I was walking out I said "I love you" and she repeated something like "ah wob ya". The teacher heard it too and swears she said I love you. The next day Jed dropped her off at school and said "I love you" and heard it parroted back at him. It's official. Done. Blogged. She is a genius. Or a parrot.

Playing Memory tonight (you know, that matching game with the square cardboard picture cards?), Zoe was not doing so well, and I hate to brag, but Jed and I were doing GREAT! Jed started getting a bunch of matches in a row and the following conversation ensued:

Me: "uh oh, Daddy's cleaning up"

Daddy: "woo hoo, I'm beating a 3 year old at a preschooler's game" (or something to that effect, I may be paraphrasing)

Me: "Daddy, you're being mean"

Zoe: "Daddy, you're punching me in the butt"

It took a beat, but I figured out that she meant that he was "kicking her butt" which is a phrase I just recently shouted out in another game earlier this weekend.

The moral of the story is that if Mommy were better at watching her potty mouth, we wouldn't have gems like "punching me in the butt" to laugh at and become a long standing family inside joke. Blerg.

Zoe, Josie and I went to the library last week. Chasing a toddler around trying to keep her from digesting the books while simultaneously being asked to read to three year old Zoe was a challenge but these are the times that can pay off hysterical rewards.

Scene: Mommy and Zoe sitting at dwarf-sized table

Zoe: Read this book, Mommy
Me: Zoe, that's a baby book
Josie: umrmph (chewing corner of book)
Zoe: READ IT!!!
Me: OK (opens book which contains one picture and two words per page)...Cheese...Queso...Yellow...Amarillo
Zoe: (shoving book to the side with disdain) Stop. I don't like French.

Awesome!

Then she proceeded to select 4 Halloween themed books (yes, it is January, and yes, I pointed out to her that these are Halloween books and might even be too scary for her). Zoe stood on the stool at the auto-check-out kiosk and slid the card and books under the scanner all by herself. Mommy juggled 5 books and Josie (swallowed by her enormous parka), and herded Zoe to the car. As we dropped the books between the car seats, Zoe said "Mommy, we have to go back and return this book, it's scary". To which I replied: GET IN THE CAR! and we headed home.

She has read those halloween books every night since. Oh, and it turned out that the one about the Ugly Pumpkin is actually a Thanksgiving book, also totally appropriate for early January.

It's timewasting powers are amazing. I just found: You know you're from Stafford if...

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2224745509

Note, you will not "get it" if you aren't from Stafford, and even being from Stafford, I still didn't get a bunch of them, but OMG, somebody bothered to make a "You Know You're from Stafford If" post and 318 peopld joined. That's 3% of the population of Stafford!

Last night, Jed and Zoe went out to Dolores Park to have a dinner picnic and watch The Muppet Movie at SF's outdoor movie festival dealie.

Why didn't I go? Well, Josie has not been sleeping so well lately (euphemism for 1-2 hour long fussy periods every night this week between midnight and five a.m.). I sacrificed the fun of this family outing to ensure that my younger child had a steady routine and went to bed on time (whatever that means, we're still experimenting here). Insert accolades for my selfless parenting here please, this may be your last chance.

I fed Josie, read her some books, and sang a song or two(new cutest thing ever is my 6 month old giggling after each page of goodnight moon is read--don't ask my why she's laughing, obviously you've never heard my interpretation of this classic). I put her down for the night with her blankey and wave sound machine and headed downstairs to eat my dinner.

Can you see the neglectful part coming?

I gave her about 15 minutes to cry it out and noted to myself that if she was still crying at 7:30 I'd go get her and see if I could do anything more. At 7:28 she abruptly stopped crying. I considered going up to see what was up, but really didn't want to wake her if she had just drifted off. Over the next 30 minutes she made occasional whimpering noises, but never ramped up to a real cry. At 8 I figured she was sufficiently out, so I could go up and do some dishes and put away laundry without waking her.

I peeked in to her darkened room and as my eyes adjusted, I started to make out a little leg dangling between the slats of the crib. Thinking to myself, I had found the source of her ongoing discomfort I reached in to move her away from the side of the crib and realized she was actually sitting up with one leg sticking out of the crib, slumped over with her face mashed against the bars (out cold asleep, mind you). This is the downside of her being ahead of the curve on some milestones. She can sit herself up, but doesn't have the sense to LIE BACK DOWN when she gets sleepy...

Do they have a Nobel Prize for Parenting? Can you self-nominate?

So Jed dumped out his pockets last night and I saw the crumpled up papers that the doctor writes his notes on. I noticed that Josie's weight was actually 18 pounds 10 ounces, not 19 which is what Jed told me on the phone. So, she's no giant, but she's over the 70th percentile still. :)

Josie’s six month appointment today:

19 pounds 10 ounces!

Still between 90th and 95th percentile, but at least she’s not off the charts like she was before. She’s apparently average for length (she’s dense, just like her mother—insert sarcastic remarks here). We thought she was over 20 pounds already, so we moved her out of the infant car seat a week or so ago, so we were pretty close. She’s still too heavy for me to carry in the infant carseat. I haven’t looked back at Zoe’s baby book yet, but I suspect she’s still way outpacing Zoe at the same age. Jed took them to the doctor, so I don’t have much else to report, he may decide to elaborate.

As an aside: the pediatrician implemented a new computer system/electronic record 3 days ago so Jed’s appointment for both girls too a full TWO HOURS including multiple visits from the software implementation gurus to help the doctor figure out how to enter stuff into the software (yay, paperless). Needless to say, Jed was not thrilled. I’m starting to appreciate this switch to have Jed have the “flexible” job and me be the stable full time worker.

Here's a pic of her a few weeks ago the first day I went back to work: http://www.ultralame.com/gallery2/main.php?g2_view=core.DownloadItem&g2_...