Princess and the Bee - Happy Halloween!

Elise and Lucas with Daddy and cousin Abby

Leavin' On A Jet Plane

When Elise was about 12 weeks old, we were supposed to fly to California to attend a wedding of some good friends of ours. Elise was a...shall we say...finicky...baby and the idea of taking her on a five hour plane trip gave me nightmares in the very rare instances that I was asleep in those days. With her distaste for sitting, her uncomfortable skin and allergy issues and her disdain of fast movement (car trip = scream fest), there was just no way that she wasn't going to cry the whole time. I got a lot of advice from other parents who basically said "Who cares? So she cries! You'll never see those people again." And I get that rationale, I do. If she were my second child I might have even been confident enough to just do it and let her cry for hours (although my second baby had a completely different temperament and I would not have worried about flying with him). But I get so stressed out about that kind of thing (and it was even worse when I was a new mom) that I would likely give myself an ulcer worrying about her disturbing everyone for FIVE hours. It's one thing to put up with a crying baby for 45 minutes. Five hours is a whole new ball game. So I didn't go to the wedding. I was disappointed in myself for not trying, but ultimately relieved that I did not put myself through the horror.

Fast forward to 3+ years later I had still never been on an airplane with my little girl, who only within the last year stopped having a fit every time we got into a car and began to sit still for more than 5 seconds. In August, my best friend from college, Shoshana, and her family stopped by our house on their way up to New Hampshire and Elise and her daughters, Regan and Lauren, had an absolute blast playing together (Regan is one year older than Elise and Lauren in 9 months younger). It made me so sad that we live so far apart (they live in Raleigh) and our girls don't know each other very well, especially since they are so close in age and obviously have a great time together. Shortly after their visit, I got an email advertising cheap flights to Raleigh, and decided it was a sign! How fun would it be take Elise on a weekend trip to visit with the Sumy's?! Since Lucas was born, Elise and I haven't had tons of one-on-one time together, and lately she's been itching for some Mommy time. So I thought that this could be a great way for us to bond together, and also have a fun visit with friends. Plus, it was a great way to introduce her to flying since the flight is only about an hour (and we probably won't be making the 8+ hour car trip down there anytime soon).

So this Saturday, we packed our bags (Ellie has a Hello Kitty suitcase that she has become completely obsessed with since we bought it last week), said good bye to the boys and headed to the airport to begin our three day adventure. There was lots of excitement from the very beginning since we parked our car in long term parking and rode the bus over to the airport (Elise LOVES the bus). Elise expertly rolled her bag through the airport, was thrilled to take her shoes off at security, was delighted to see our plane roll up to the gate and enthralled with watching them load the bags on the plane. I was nervous when we were boarding the plane - I mostly worried that she would have problems with her ears on the flight since I had that issue when I was younger - but she was nothing but completely excited. She was great during the whole flight and never seemed to have any problems with the flight.

However, we did hit one hiccup on Elise's first ever plane ride. As we were going down to land in Raleigh, our plane was caught in some wicked wind gusts and we experienced some really nasty turbulence. It was so bad, in fact, that the pilot didn't feel that he could land the plane safely, so he brought the plane back up, circled around and tried to land again. Yet again, we experienced terrible turbulence, and once again the plane went back up. At this point, I (and most of the other people on the plane) was a little green and feeling like I was going to vomit. All of that bouncing around, combined with the rapid and repeated altitude changes had me completely sick to my stomach. However, Elise didn't seem phased (although at one point she casually mentioned her tummy hurt) and enjoyed watching everything get smaller and bigger again and again out of the window. Finally on the third try, the pilot landed us safely and everyone burst into relieved applause, which Elise thought was great.

Our visit with the Sumy's was a ton of fun. At the Sumy's house, the girls had many, many dance parties, played dress up, rode bikes, pushed strollers, made Rice Krispie Treats, played hide and seek, and bounced, jumped and tumbled all over the place. We also went on a few outings including the Children's Museum called Marbles, dinner at Cracker Barrel, and a moonbounce place called Monkey Joe's. Like the last time they were together, the girls played well together and had a blast. Elise was a little too demanding about being called Elise NOT Ellie (see previous post) and at times she was a bit bossy but for the most part she did really well all weekend - especially considering that she didn't take many naps, went to bed well past her bedtime, got up just as early as she usually does and was running, dancing and on-the-go non stop while awake.

On the way to the airport Monday, we stopped in to visit my friend Jen, who lives very near the Raleigh airport, and got to meet her son, Nathan (7 months) and visit for a little bit, which was great. Apparently I wasn't really thinking when I booked the flight home, which was a 3:30pm, typically the middle of Ellie's nap. I was bracing for an airport meltdown since she'd had such a busy morning and not much sleep all weekend, but she did a pretty good job holding it together. As we were going through security on this leg of the trip, someone went through a door they weren't supposed to, so all sorts of alarms went off for about 5 or 10 minutes. Elise cried for a second (she hates loud things) and then put her hands over her ears and shouted "That hurts my ears Mommy!", which all of the airport staff thought was hilarious and adorable. This flight was relatively uneventful (especially compared to the first one) although this time she was feeling more comfortable and we had to have several chats about why she needed to keep her feet off the seat in front of her. Poor guy.

We had a really wonderful weekend, but by the time we walked into the house - about 6:30pm Monday - we were both happy to be home and we crashed in exhaustion. She is already asking when we can take a trip on a plane again and when the next time she can see her buddies Regan and Lauren. I'd say the trip was a smashing success and I am excited to take more trips like this in the future!

Nicknames

Marty is a nickname person. This proved to be a tad frustrating through the process of deciding on names for our little ones because he has a series of nonnegotiable "rules" about names.

1. It has to be a "formal" name that can also be shortened. One name that we both really liked (and almost went with for Lucas) was Jack. I liked just plain Jack, but Marty insisted that it needed a longer, more formal version (because according to Marty's name rules you can't just name a kid something that sounds like a nickname, even if it's not actually a nickname. You have to also have a formal version appropriate for a professional setting). We couldn't agree on a longer name for Jack, so we ultimately scrapped it all together.

2. The nickname has to both sound and look good. Another boys name that we both love is Nolan (which was Lucas' planned name until about three weeks before he was born). But we were in constant debate about how to spell the nickname, which we loved when it was spoken. We went back and forth about Noel (Marty insisted that people would say No-elle when reading it) and I thought other versions like Nol, Nole and Knoll were goofy. This was ultimately the demise of Nolan, which was sad because we both really liked the formal and nicknames of this name.

3. Love the nickname. While the name has to have a longer more formal version, you have to love the nickname because Marty loves nicknames and doesn't actually like calling people by their full name. Even if there is no logical nickname for a name, Marty will make one up anyway, so you might as well have a shorter version that makes good sense. He calls his sister Amy - the shortest name ever - Aim. So you have to make sure that the nickname is something that you are going to like using on a regular basis. For example, a possible name we'd chosen for Elise was Addison. We both loved the full name but because both of us weren't completely in love with Addy, we decided it was best to rule it out altogether.
Cousins: Morgan, Emma, Cory, Elise and Kam

Taking all these rules into consideration, we chose names for our children that had formal versions, with nicknames that we loved and liked the way they were spelled (whether or not the spellings actually make sense in relation to the full name). While we do use their full names about a quarter of the time, Elise has pretty much been Ellie and Lucas has been Luke since they were born.

When we started Ellie at a new day care when she was 14 months old, there were two little girls in her class named Ella. The teacher thought having two Ella's and an Ellie would be confusing, so she wanted her to be called Elise at school. We didn't think much of this, because, hey it is her name. And we do call her by her full name sometimes so it's not like she wouldn't know people were talking to her. I worried a little bit that she'd have identity issues being Elise at school and mostly Ellie at home, but she's smart and children figure things like that out pretty quickly.

It hasn't presented any kind of problem for us until recently, when our little angel began correcting us when we called her Ellie at home. "I'm not Ellie. I'm Elise, Elise Lawler Molloy." Ooooookay. So apparently she's taking the full name thing to an extreme. We tried to explain to her that sometimes people can be called by more than one name. Like Lucas is sometimes Luke. But she is not buying what we're selling. She is pretty insistent that we call her Elise. So we have been trying to make a concerted effort to call her by her given name, at her request. But as you can imagine after three years of calling her Ellie most of the time, this is pretty hard for us to do.

What this whole thing has also made us realize is that we call our children so many different nicknames it's amazing they would actually have any idea what their real names are. We call Elise: Ellie, Els, Elle, E, Buddy, Bud, Bubba, Bubba-boo, Boo-Boo, Sweetie, Sweetie Pie, Ellesabub and Looper (really long story behind that one) , to name a few. We call Lucas: Luke, Lukey, Lu, Lu-Lu, Lus, Boob-a-Lu, Lukey-Lu, Sweet Potato, Cutie, Buddy and the bud. When we asked Elise which nickname she liked best (because we have to call her some nickname - see the above rules) she chose Sweetie Pie. Marty has received special dispensation to call her Els.

Something tells me we're not going to be regularly calling her Sweetie Pie Molloy. Just a guess. Elise calls her brother Lucas most of the time, but if she does call him a nickname she usually goes with the one she made up for him which is Lu-Lu. My cousin pointed out that this nickname for a boy will probably get him beat up in school if it catches on. Perhaps this is an intentional big sister thing. In the meantime, Sweetie Pie, LuLu, Mommy and Daddy are having a great fall.

Here We Go Again...

Attempt number 12 at getting a family picture.
We have had just about three days of cool-ish weather and it has already begun: sick-o-mania is back. Last winter the Molloy family was plagued with illness at an alarming rate. With two little ones and day care and two adults working in a school it seemed that it was a losing battle - we were just going to have to deal with being sick constantly. And sick we were. Despite our efforts to disinfect, wash hands and keep germs away, one or more people in our household was sick at any given time from January through June (sadly, this is not an exaggeration). Then it seemed as though illness went on summer hiatus. By the end of June, Marty and I realized that it had been an entire month since someone was sick. A Miracle! Lucas, who had had a runny nose and severe congestion since literally the day he was born, was breathing normally and we hadn't had to wipe his nose in weeks. We made it through that first year of illness and now we were in the clear! Hurray!

That was our problem right there- overconfidence.

Opa and Oma with their grandchildren- Elise, Lucas and Eamon

It all started last Thursday when I got a phone call from school saying that they suspected that Elise had pink eye and I needed to come get her. This was slightly annoying because whenever Elise gets a cold, her eyes get runny. She has always been this way. Every time this happens they think she has pink eye, and every time I have to take her to the doctor to get a note saying she doesn't have it before returning to school. So after I picked her up, I called the doctors office who basically counseled me to not even bring her into the office. It didn't sound like pink eye to them (her eye was neither pink nor gooey and she has a long history of runny eyes when she has a cold) and there were so many sick people in the office that she'd probably pick something up while she was waiting to get her non-pink eye checked out. So I picked up a doctor's note saying as much, and went to talk to the people at day care who gave me the all-clear to send her to school the next day. Problem averted.

Elise and her second cousin Cory, 4

Then as I was getting Elise ready for dinner that evening I noticed she felt sort of warm, so I took her temperature, which turned out to be 101. SO much for going to school the next day. She had a low-grade fever on and off on Friday, but by Friday evening she was fever-less and acting completely normally. All day on Saturday and Sunday she was again fever-less. Random illness officially over. Not so fast! Sunday night when she randomly spiked a fever again. And again on Monday, she seemed totally fine and then all of a sudden got a fever. Tuesday she woke up with no fever, but had a bloody nose and could barely breathe. Finally by Wednesday she was well enough to return to school (an entire week after all this began!)

When she had a fever, she was a little less energetic than usual (which for her means that she was about as energetic as an average kid because she is definitely well above average in the energy category) and she was taking some really long naps, but had no other symptoms of illness except for a stuffy nose (which is almost normal for our kids).

Lucas and his great grandmother (Oma's mom)

Lucas, miraculously, did not catch whatever randomness that Elise had, and Marty and I also appear to be unscathed. Hopefully this is a sign of good things to come. Our pediatricians' office is completely "out of flu shots" and unsure if/when they're going to get another batch so we may have to just roll the dice with the flu this season. I, for one, am optimistic.

The Kindergarten Dilemma

This weekend, we attended a Kindergarten Panel Discussion to kick off what is going to be a long and arduous process of choosing where we will send Elise and Lucas to school. Now I realize that if you don't live in this area you probably think that we are completely insane to be thinking about kindergarten right now considering that we have two more years until Elise (and five more years until Lucas) will even go into school. And for the majority of people, it's not a dilemma so much as it is a registration day. You go to your neighborhood school and sign your kid up. Process complete.

Unfortunately, living where we live it's not anywhere near that simple. The public school that our kids are slated to go to does not have a good reputation. And by not good reputation I mean that it is a (alleged) borderline disaster. And it is only borderline because they got a new principal two years ago who is really great and is working to turn things around. Even while in the process of being turned though, it is a poorly funded, urban school (K-8) where everyone scores badly on tests, very few parents are involved and people get mugged in the hallways. Ok, no one is getting mugged in the hallways (at least not in the elementary school but the local high school that does actually happen) but from what we have heard it's just not a good school. We still plan to check it out to see for ourselves, but this situation presents a real problem. This has been excruciating for us since the day we bought our house - years before we even had children - to think that we may not be able to stomach sending our children to our local public school. We believe in public school and we want to support it. But do we believe in it so much we are willing to sacrifice our child's education as a statement?

So here are our other options:
1. Other Public School - There is another local public school in our neighborhood that is decent and has a lot of parent involvement. The test scores indicate that the lower grades are significantly more diverse and stronger than the upper grades (because the parent association only gathered strength about 8 years ago). It's not the best school that ever was but it has many things going for it. First and foremost, it is a public school. And it would be free. As I said above, Marty and I believe in public schools, are the products of public school and don't want to be one of the hundreds of educated families in our neighborhood that weakens the overall strength of public schools by not participating in the system. That said, isn't fun when your principles smack right up against your child's education and future? In addition, we'd be leaving our catchment area for a school that everyone agrees is stronger, more diverse and has an extensive parental organization already in place. I admire the first families who put their foot down in their neighborhood and said, 'No more! We are going to fight for our school.' They did - and we would be- benefiting from their stand. Should we do the same with the school near us?

2. Charter Schools - Charter schools are very similar to public schools in that they are chartered and funded by the school district. They are, technically, public schools. And they are free. The difference is that admission is done through a (supposedly) random lottery process. You could role the dice and win, but just as easily you could get your heart set on something and not be selected. There are some great charters and there are some really bad ones, just like public schools, but there are a few pretty good charter schools near our home. The two charters that we are most interested in both have rigorous curricula based in the environment. Both have kids spending a lot of time outside and both have pretty good and rising test scores. We have some neighbors who have kids in these schools and they are really happy.

Quick note about test scores... at this point we have not had a chance to go to any Open Houses, talk to any teachers/admin staff or see how Elise feels at the school. So we only have reputations, websites and test scores to go on. They are important as indicators go, but certainly not what we will solely make decisions based on.

3. Private Schools - These are the schools with fancy after school programs, dream test scores, and amazing curriculum and enrichment activities. But the biggest strike against this option, of course, is that they are not free. There is quite a wide range as to how not free they are. There are several Quaker and Co-Op Schools which are somewhat reasonable (and by somewhat reasonable I mean roughly the same ridiculously expensive cost as daycare). And there are also a handful of "options" that aren't really options because they cost MORE than TWICE as much as an entire year of my college education (which included room and board and was out of state tuition). The nuttiest thing about private schools is not actually the cost, but the process of trying to get you child into one. Again, it's not as simple as writing a ginormous check and registering your kid. Oh, no. There are tests. Lots and lots of tests. Yes, for your four year old. Pretty much all the schools have some kind of aptitude test, motor skills test, interview, essay application and "play date" observations where they evaluate your child as she interacts with other kids. Some schools even require that your child has a one-on-one evaluation with a psychologist. This whole process seems stressful and ridiculous. And you have to pay for each application (just like college). You can apply for financial aid (just like college) which can lessen the price tag but you have to go through the lengthy financial aid process for each school you apply to. Urgh.

4. Scrap all of the options and Move - Of course it does come up in conversation from time to time that we could just move to a place in a better school district. The trouble with that, of course, is that while we'd probably be more happy with the public school system, we'd most certainly be less happy with the location. We do not want to live in the suburbs. We love living in the city. We are city people. This may sound a little selfish, but really our kids are city kids too. They hate being in the car. They love doing City Things. Besides, we love our house. We love our commute. We love our neighbors. We do not want to move. We would have to find an amazing house in an amazing town in an amazing school district for this to happen.

So that's where we are. Applications for the schools (including applying for a transfer to a different public school) are due the fall before kindergarten. Which means that we have to make a decision by this time next year. A year may seem like a long time, but it will fly. I mean, wasn't Lucas just born? So we are planning to attend a few Open Houses and site visits in the coming weeks to get the ball rolling. Hopefully we will at least be able to eliminate some options and begin to realistically take things like cost, logistics, etc into consideration.

Soooo....Let the games begin!