A Toddler's Delight

Lucas is a very happy little boy. He almost always has a smile on his face and, like most kids, gets sheer delight from so many things - from seeing his sister first thing in the morning to seeing a bus pass in front of our house. To little ones, the simplest things are extremely exciting. But the thing that gets Lucas the most excited in life, by far, is seeing an animal. This child loves seeing a bird in the yard or an elephant at the zoo, but cats and dogs in particular create a special kind of exuberance. If we are on the street taking a walk and Luke spots a dog in the distance he will immediately get excited and scream "Dog! Dog!" until it is no longer in his line of vision. He has been known to tear off and chase after any dog that he sees (which reinforces our rule of always holding hands when out in public!) always keeping us on our toes.

Our neighbors dog, Duncan, is a total rockstar to my toddler. Lucas sometimes stakes out their yard or goes up onto their front porch to peek in the window, hoping to catch a mere glimpse of Duncan. Duncan, for his part, is a very old, very tolerant dog who graciously accepts the pokes and prods and ear-piercing squeals from his little fan everyday before smartly flopping down somewhere safely out of arms reach. Lucas is always more excited to see that Duncan in the yard or on his back porch than pretty much anything else in life.

He has a special love for cats too. Our other neighbors have an indoor cat, Tilda, who likes to hang out on their glassed-in front porch. The glass makes it very convenient for Luke to visit his kitty friend whenever he wants to, which is pretty much anytime he is outside (and Duncan is not). Our neighbors are very tolerant of (and luckily amused by) Lucas banging on their porch screaming "Cat!!" in sheer delight at every possible opportunity. The hilarious thing is that the cat is not exactly a people person, and sits there on the other side of the glass hissing at her crazed and adoring fan. Lucas has no idea that the cat is angry or mean, and just smiles and points and kisses the glass, completely oblivious.

This weekend we went to Marty's brother, Kevin's, house to celebrate Father's Day. Kevin recently got a kitten, Jack, who is about 3 months old and completely spunky and adorable. This poor kitten had no idea what was coming when Lucas came into the house and proceeded to follow him around screeching, squealing and screaming "cat! cat!" for pretty much every minute of the 5 hours we were there. It never got old. Halfway through our visit, Kevin's neighbor, who is 15 months old came over to visit her buddy Jack. She has obviously spent a lot of time with the kitten because she was clearly extremely comfortable with him. So comfortable, that she picked up the kitten and happily carried him around the house with her.

Well, once Lucas realized that you didn't have to just point to and pet the kitten, but could actually pick it up, all bets were off. He carted that kitten around as much as possible saying "Cat up!" with a huge grin for much of the afternoon. If he were to rank it, I'd think Lucas would say it was one of the best days of his life!

Super Mom

Finding balance in life can be so incredibly hard. Sometimes I feel like there are never enough hours in the day to: devote all the time and attention I want to to my two children; be the best employee I can be and get all my work done efficiently and perfectly; keep a tidy, organized house; feed everyone home-cooked, healthy, balanced meals every night; spend quality time with my husband; find time for myself; keep in touch with everyone I care about and be a great friend/daughter/sister/etc; keep weeds out of my garden; and on and on. It's hard not to feel like you are not giving something or someone enough of your time. Life is a balancing act. But when one of those things you are balancing is time with your children, it feels so much harder when you can't meet your own expectation.

When the school director sent something out last week inviting parents to attend the last swim class for Pre-K this summer, I immediately began trying to figure out if if there way any way I could go, but the Y is more than 45 minutes from my work and the swim class was at 10:30 - neither of which is convenient for a work day. It was not something I could possibly squeeze in to my always hectic schedule, so I didn't say anything to Elise when I dropped her off at school that morning. I resigned myself to the fact that I could not go. But while I was sitting there at my desk I looked and the clock at 10:00am and felt sad. I thought about how proud Elise is of herself with how far she's come with swimming and her fear of putting her face in the water. How much she loves swim class, how much she raves about it. I really, really wanted to witness that and be a part of it. So at the very last minute, right then and there, I dropped everything and raced to the YMCA.

I arrived after they had already started, and immediately saw Elise in the pool looking longingly at another parent that had walked in just a few second before I did. But then she saw me and her eyes lit up and she said "Mommy!" in this state of elation/shock and began absolutely beaming as though my walking in that door was the most thrilling thing that has ever happened in her life. I was a rock star. I stood there in the galley above the pool watching her boil over with pride as she swam and jumped and put her head in the water. She had her eyes on me almost the entire time, making sure I was seeing all of her tricks and progress. She was so happy I was there.

I have done many, many things to make sure that I provide my daughter with the most love and support and comfort she can possibly have, and that she doesn't want for anything, but in those 30 minutes just passively standing there watching her swim lesson, I have never felt like I've done a better job being a parent.

By the time I got back to work I was still smiling. And no one cared I'd been gone.

Three Girls Turn Four

Elise is fortunate to be so young and have such amazingly good friends. Elise, Sara Jane and Audrey have been three peas in a pod since they were barely walking. They adore each other - they hug and kiss every time they leave each others side, they beg for play dates with each other every weekend (after being together all day nearly all week), they talk about each other non-stop... it's hard to believe such young girls can be so in sync already.

Another fun thing about the girls is that they are all June babies. Audrey's birthday is at the beginning of June, Sara Jane a week later and Elise at the end of the month. So when the three sets of parents started trying to schedule three birthday parties (that all three of them had to attend) in the crazy busy month of June, it eventually became clear that it would be much easier to just have one party to celebrate all three girls' birthdays. I was at first unsure about how Ellie would feel about sharing her special day, but when I brought up the idea to her, she was immediately nothing but ecstatic ("We're all going to be the birthday girls?!") and could barely contain her excitement.

Sunday was the big day that all three girls had been giddy about for weeks. We'd planned to have the birthday bash at a local park, celebrating with some other pals from school. But in the late afternoon, a little over an hour before the party, a thunderstorm rolled in making all of us very nervous. An outdoor party is no good in a thunderstorm! We had to do a little last minute scrambling, and ultimately decided to move the party to our house.

Turns out that the thunderstorm was relatively short lived and we did not get a second one until after 6pm so we technically still could have had the party at the park. Pretty frustrating. But there was no way of predicting the weather and it seemed worrisome to drive all the way out there (about 20 minutes away) only to get stuck in the rain with nothing to do. The house was not quite as exciting as the park, but the kids still managed to have a great time. It was a fun way to celebrate three best pals turning four.

Horse Show

We had a great Memorial Day weekend with a ton of fun activities that included friends, food and new adventures. We attended lots of barbecues and visited with friends, which was tons of fun but highlight of the weekend was that we took the kids to their very first horse show (it was my first horse show too). Lucas was particularly thrilled to watch the horses jumping and trotting around the ring and loved going into the barns to see the massive horses up close. Elise thought being in the stadium was fun and enjoyed watching the horses from afar, but she was less thrilled with seeing the horses up close. She was slightly terrified by their size (most of the horses had legs taller than she is) and literally ran away from them when trainers pulled them from their stalls.

In our first horse show experience, we learned that a horse show has way more to it than simply showing horses. There were tons of things to do including carnival rides, games, and food. Elise may be nervous around large animals, but she is not scared in the slightest to go on fast or high rides. She loved all the rides and was fearless about going on the (adult) tilt-a-whirl all by herself, the ferris wheel and everything else.

It was a long very hot day (with the temperature reaching well into the 90's) but I would say that our first horse show was a success. We will definitely be attending again next year!