Bunny Love

So, it turns out that a 6 foot rabbit is in no way as scary as a fat man with a beard. At least that's the case for our little girl, anyway. With all the fear that surrounded Santa, we thought for sure that Elise would be equally, if not more, terrified of the Easter Bunny because let's face it - a giant rabbit is kinda creepy. However, we have seen the Easter bunny on two occasions in the past two weeks and both times it has been more like seeing a rock star than anything.

A few weeks ago we were at the mall and the Easter bunny was waving to children as they passed by and handing out packs of crayons (because no one was paying to get their picture with him). Elise actually waved to him, approached him and got the crayons. That may not sound all that shocking but Elise is really not the kind of gal who just randomly approaches strangers. She is a very, very cautious person and typically it's like pulling teeth to try to get her to even acknowledge someone who is talking to her (and sometimes, like with our neighbors, she even knows them) so approaching a giant rabbit seemed out of the question. I figured that this untypical reaction was just because he was giving away free things, but it looks like that's not actually the case.

Last weekend we went to an Easter egg hunt (which was terrible by the way - who designs an Easter egg hunt where there isn't an opportunity for all of the children present to get at least one egg? craziness) the Easter bunny also made an appearance. At this event, Elise was oddly attracted to him- wanting to constantly follow the Easter bunny all around as he greeted the children. She went one step further and shook his hand - twice - before going in the last time for a hug. A hug. And then another.

Bunny love is not the only love going on in our house this week, either. The sibling love also continues in shocking quantities. Of course right after my blog declaring that Lucas refused to call Elise by her (or any) name, he began regularly calling her "Lise". Giving her a name has put a whole new spin on the love he has for his sister. When he wakes up before her (which is pretty much always) the first thing he says is "Lise" and then he points at her bedroom door, calling her name, trying to wiggle out of your arms to get to her. He also tends to greet her like a rock star when she does eventually come down. His face lights up, he squeals and runs to her, throwing his little arms around her body and kissing her saying Lise! Lise! over and over. So adorable.

Elise also continues to be enamored with her little brother as well. One day a few weeks ago she was smothering him with hugs and kisses and he started crying, so she said "I just can't help it Lu! I love you so much!" We are enjoying all the love while it lasts!

Cute-O-Meter

I believe that all children go through various phases of extremes. Phases where they are eating more than usual, or whining more than usual or sleeping more than usual, etc. These phases can last days or weeks or even months, but you can usually pick up pretty quickly on what phase your kid is in at any given moment. They always seem to be doing something more than usual. Currently, Lucas is going through a Super Cute phase. Not that he isn't ordinarily cute (I mean look at him - he's always been adorable!) but lately it's as though all the stars have aligned in the Cute-iverse and they are shining right on him in a perfect storm of cuteness. No one can resist his charms! How does a child have a "perfect storm" of cuteness you ask? Here's how:

1. Friendliness. Lucas has always been pretty friendly with strangers but he's been taking it to a whole new level lately. Out in public, he just can't resist saying hello to everyone he sees and strangers can't help but melt. I often refer to this as the Lucas Parade. He sits there in his stroller/grocery cart/etc or just wanders around and smiles and waves at everyone in the vicinity and gives a very endearing "hi" in his adorable little baby voice. But all that is just regular cute. In order to rank off the charts on the cute-o-meter, Lucas takes this to a whole new level, cocking his head to one side and waving his little hand under his chin and saying hi like he's being shy (but he's obviously anything but shy). It's like a took a class in how to say hi in the cutest way possible. At restaurants, he charms everyone at nearby tables with this adorable faux-shy greeting. But then the cuteness continues. If he has you hooked, he will then also engage you in a game of peek a boo, which is accompanied by adorable giggles and random strangers sighing about how cute he is.

2. Enthusiasm. There is nothing cuter than a child getting genuinely thrilled over seemingly mundane things. Like when you return from the bathroom and are greeted with an enthusiastic "Mama!!" and he runs to you, throwing his little arms around your legs as though you has been gone for months not minutes. Or when Elmo pops up on the screen during Sesame Street and he cries "Melmo!" and looks up at you expectantly perhaps hoping that you are just as excited as he is that Elmo is on screen (for the 15th time in the last 5 minutes). Or when he sees a dog or a cat and points and grins and giggles repeatedly saying "dog!" or "cat!" until said animal has left his sight of vision (this never gets old to him).

3. Talking. When a child first starts talking, practically everything that comes out of their mouth is extremely exciting, for both the parent and the child. Breaking down the communication wall is thrilling - as a parents it's fun to hear new words and to be able to communicate with your child in a whole new way. Plus the adorable way they say words as they are just figuring them out is always so cute. For Lucas, Phone = Bye-bye, Elmo = Melmo, Milk = MuK (emphasis on the K), Surprise = Pise and so on. For the child, having someone actually understand what the heck you are trying to say is a relief. Lucas gets super excited when you figure out what he's trying to tell you. He will be crying or whining and I'll tell him to use his words to tell me what he wants. So he'll point to the window and say "ou-side" and I'll say "You want to go outside?" and he erupts into a hilarious, excited laugh as though he never thought I'd ever crack the code. So. Cute.

4. Age. No doubt about it, this is just a really cute age. Lucas likes to mimic what other people are doing and saying and it is adorable when he randomly picks up a baby doll and shooshes her while patting her back, or lays on the couch and pretends to be asleep, or throws his little hands up in the air and says "Whoo hoo!" - things that are just cuter when done by a toddler than an older kid for whatever reason.

Yup, where ever we go, everyone is talking about Lucas these days. We can barely take a step without hearing it: Look at those curls! Look at that red hair! Look at that smile! Look at that wave! What a sweet boy!

And those strangers don't even know the half of it. Luke's cute-o-meter is definitely off the charts and Marty and I are simply smitten with our little boy. Like when we were all sitting at the diner table the other night laughing and joking and Lucas shouted "Happy!" Does it get any cuter? I think not.

Parrot Explosion

Similar to how he was with crawling and walking, Lucas hasn't seemed overly interested in talking. Sure, he's been saying some things here and there and he figures out how to communicate what he wants (there is NEVER any mistaking that - he's very clear, words or not) but he has not seemed overly eager to talk or to add new words to his vocabulary. For several months now, he's had the words that he said and maybe added a new one every few weeks. It just didn't seem important to him.

In the last week, however, Lucas seems to have developed a new interest in talking and has completely caught fire with his vocabulary. Not only is he saying a lot more words suddenly (he has probably added more than two dozen words to his regular repertoire this week alone), but he is also repeating almost every word you throw at him. Our little parrot will repeat back just about any word you ask him to, and often he'll repeat random words that he overhears you saying (watch out!). Sometimes it's more that he's repeating the cadence of how you say the word, but more often than not he says what sounds like the actual word. I feel like his progress has gone light years in an extremely short period of time.

One funny thing, however, is that for whatever reason he still doesn't really call Elise by any kind of name. He will clearly repeat back words that I feel are fairly complicated to say, like purple and elbow, but won't even repeat Elise's name when asked. We have tried with Elise, Ellie and Els but he rarely even attempts to say any of them and nothing sticks. He has said Ellie a handful of times, but when we ask who she is he doesn't say anything (just smiles or sometimes calls her Dada) and he doesn't call her anything when he's trying to get her attention - just sort of grunts at her. So strange, particularly since they are the best of friends these days.

Anyway, again similar to how he was with walking and crawling, Lucas seems to have done a "sneak attack" on talking - kind of jumping into it and making huge strides out of no where. It's so exciting to watch him grow and learn and fun to watch (and listen) for what will come next!

Thawing Out

A few months ago, I boasted about what Playground Junkies the Molloy's are and how nothing - including weather - can keep us away from our playground fixes. Well sadly, this winter we discovered our playground kryptonite: multiple feet of snow. It's not about the cold - we can handle cold - it's more about the waist high snow making it impossible to actually walk around or go on any of the completely buried equipment. Because we've had so much snow this winter - and multiple feet of it stuck around for so long - we went for almost two months without a playground trip. That is definitely a record! A few weeks ago, the kids were in such playground withdrawal that I actually shoveled a trench under the swings in our backyard so they could actually swing a little bit.

So you can only imagine the excitement that ensued last weekend when a lot of the snow actually melted and we could finally hit the playground circuit again. It couldn't have been more than 50 degrees, but Elise came out of the house and exclaimed "Mom it's so HOT! Is it summer now?!" Crazy what a few months of bad weather will do to your sense of what is considered "hot"!

It's amazing how far Lucas has come physically in the few short months it's been since we last went to the playground. As we discovered this winter, he loves climbing (unfortunately in the house that means he climbs onto the dining room table, kitchen counter and things like that) and was in heaven to be able to climb up on things without getting the riot act! He had so much fun climbing and running, sliding and even swinging (he hasn't liked the swings much in the past). Elise also had a great time and didn't have any trouble getting back into her playground groove.

We hit a couple of playgrounds last weekend - some with more snow/ice still on the ground than others - but spring is definitely on the horizon. We're all so very excited about spring. This has been a particularly crazy winter and we have all been feeling cabin fever, particularly lately. Of course it's supposed to rain heavily all next weekend, which will probably keep us away from the playground yet again. But at least it's not snow!

Time Out

When my parents first offered to watch the kids for a few days so Marty and I could spend some quality time together and catch up on some much needed sleep, I have to admit I was excited about the idea. Ever since Lucas was born (17 months ago now!) Marty and I have been in what feels like a perpetual state of exhaustion. First it was new born craziness - which just leaves everyone exhausted because basically no one sleeps for more than three hours in a row for what feels like eternity - and then when we got over the infant hump, Lucas settled into his predictable routine of being an early riser (between 4:30am -5:45am) ever since. Throw in his habit of waking up an average of one night a week in the middle of the night for no apparent reason (and not getting back to sleep easily) and you have some tired parents.

But let's also not forget to add Elise's middle-of-the-night wake ups into the mix. Elise consistently slept through the night like a champ without fail nearly every night since she was about 7 months old, but last summer I decided (in what I now imagine must have been a sleep-deprived moment of insanity) that Elise was too old to wear pull-ups anymore and we needed to end that. So basically she stopped wearing pull-ups but didn't stop having to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night. Which meant that she was waking up 1-2 times a night to go to the bathroom (and of course was not just getting up and going - she was waking us up and telling us she had to go and then often having trouble falling back to sleep). This meant that from last June until about the end of November we were going to bed at 10:30, waking up with Elise around midnight and then again at 3am and then waking up for the day with Lucas around 4:30. Luckily, Elise's bladder has matured significantly in the past few months and she doesn't have to get up in the middle of the night much anymore (typically gets up one time, once a week) and Lucas usually gets up closer to 5:30 these days. Even still, Marty and I are sleepers. We have never been the type of people who can just grab a few odd hours of sleep and feel refreshed. That is not who we are.

However, I am not saying all this to complain. We realize that we don't have it bad - by any stretch - on the sleep front. For the most part, our children sleep through the night for 10-11 hours most nights. For that, we are extremely grateful and even consider ourselves lucky. Our neighbor's son didn't sleep through the night for the first time until he was 3. THREE! So, like I said, we don't have have it so bad. But, still, we're tired.

So back to my original point. Several months ago, my parents offered to watch the kids for a weekend so that Marty and I could get away. Of course we loved the idea of getting some much needed sleep, but we were hesitant to do it for several reasons. 1. Lucas wakes up really, really stupid early. No one should have to get up that early. We created him, so we feel responsible for the early wake ups. It seemed cruel to have my parents, who are not morning people either, deal with getting up in the 4 or 5 o'clock hour no matter how cute he is. 2. We'd never left Lucas with someone over night before. Marty and I have both had weekends away, but never at the same time. Elise has had many-a-sleepover at her grandparents houses over the years so our going away probably wouldn't phase her. Plus we can just explain to her what's happening. Totally different with a baby who doesn't really understand that you're leaving or that you'll be back. 3. As working parents, weekends are our time with the kids. Weekdays tend to be a series of logistics - getting ready to go somewhere or preparing meals or cleaning up or getting ready for bed. We live for our weekends - lots of quality time, no rushing - just fun hanging out with the kids.

We finally decided to take our kids-free mini-vacation the first week in March and this worked out well for many reasons. First of all, Lucas has been sleeping better lately - even getting up as late as 6:30 on occasion, so it didn't seem as cruel to my parents. Next, we've left Lucas with a babysitter a few times in recent weeks and he seemed to be perfectly fine with it so the overnight thing was the next logical step. Finally, Marty and I both had a ton of vacation time so we decided that instead of giving up a precious weekend with the kids we'd go during the week where we'd only really be missing out on a few hours each day. Perfect. Even better, we had (yet another!) snow storm that resulted in snow days (no work!) at the end of last week, so we went into our vacation right after four days in a row of quality time with the kids.

I am not going to lie. The trip was awesome. There was adult conversation! There was waking up after 8am! There was a hot tub! We went to the mountains for two days/ three nights and did lots of quiet, relaxing, peaceful activities (horseback riding, snowshoeing, massages, shopping) in addition to lots of sleeping, reading and eating. It was great and we really do feel like all that rest and relaxation will make us better parents as a result. The kids were great for Oma and Opa - though apparently Lucas was not showing off his ability to sleep anywhere close to the 6 o'clock hour (sorry Oma and Opa! I swear he has been doing it lately!) and Elise was not all that interested in sleeping through the night either (yikes! double sorry!) but they were otherwise angels. (Thank you sooooo much Oma and Opa!) We had a great time, but missed the kids so much I really don't think we could have been gone for another minute. It was the perfect length of time.

Nothing has ever felt as good as walking in the door and experiencing the joy on their little faces and excited hugs, kisses and cuddles that followed for (literally) hours after our arrival home. And then we got another three full days of hanging out with them before heading back to the daily grind. Bliss.