Riley and Avery

An old post I forgot to publish...

So here's a great picture of Avery for those who may be doubting the status of her quickly-developing attitude.

Since Rudi has a penchant for throwing away cloth prefolds when Avery poops outside of the house, I bought some disposables for use outside of the home. Well, Avery prefers them and will not go back to cloth. The diapers have little suns and clouds on them and Avery joyfully exclaims "Care Bears belly badge! Sunshine Bear belly badge!" Although she is quite baffled about why the disposables go in the trash. She says, "Diaper trash, why?" Hopefully it'll pass...

Whereas Riley had the "why"s by the age of two (heck, she still does) Avery has "What is this?" "What is THIS" "What is this?" Soemtimes it borders on the ridiculous. "What is this pants?" "They're pants, dear" "Oh."

So I've never been a fan of anti-bacterial stuff; gels, wipes, soaps, etc. In fact I hate the whole anti-bacterial movement. I intentionally DON'T buy hand soap, dish soap, etc. if it is anti-bacterial. Until Riley picked up a dog turd at the park on Thursday. She held it up "Mommy, what's this?" I run over hoping on all that is holy that it's just a damp pine cone, a clump of dirt, anything other than what it most likely is. I arrive at the scene, and say "Aaaah, it's a dog log! Drop it! No, don't touch your face!" To which Riley replies, "I just wanted to smell my fingers!" Then I go around begging for Purell, all the while wondering why my four-year-old doesn't know dog poop when she sees it. Or wonders what her fingers smell like after she touches it.

I don't usually post links to other sites, but here's a funny one. Stuff White People Like. Disclaimer: If you're a white person who cannot take a joke or find humor in your life, don't bother reading it. I found that I am a whole lot more white than I thought I was!

These hugging picutres are courtesy of Avery's special request. She said "Take pictures Riley Avery hugging each other on couch!"

I've totally forgotten about blogging. Not even just couldn't find the time, but like I totally forgot that blogging is something that I do sometimes. Oh, well...

School is going really well. I have A's in all of my classes so far. And I aim to keep it that way. I'm still working on by breastfeeding paper for my anthropology class. I got another amazing book, Mother's Milk. Absolutely love it! The paper's not due for another three weeks, so I have plenty of time. I think I need to focus my topic a little more. Perhaps instead of talking about breastfeeding taboos since the beginning of time, I might just focus on breastfeeding culture as it is today and the factors that lead to formula-feeding. Or I could just examine 1950-1970 as the era I think contributed most to the decline of breastfeeding, the move towards a disembodied motherhood through increased hospital funding, increase in hospital births and high-intervention labor practices, blah blah blah...

I'm still struggling with whether to send Riley to preschool next year. I'm starting to lean towards sending her and homeschooling Avery. If Avery went to preschool next year, she'd be in the same boat that Riley is in, with three years of preschool. Three years is a lot of preschool. So Avery shouldn't really be going to preschool until the year after next. If we pay the monthly tuition for Riley over the summer to go towards next years tuition, we could have lower payments during the year and free up some money for activities. She really really really wants to take a dance class. And Rudi wants her to take an art class, which I think she would enjoy too. I'm not sure about buying a curriculum for Riley. I wouldn't know which one to get. She's been in preschool for two years already, so the preschool curriculum may not challenge her enough. The kindergarten curriculum is most definitely over her head. I'd probably have to buy both and that's not cool. I've found some great websites on Montessori curriculum and will try a little with her now and over the summer to see if teaching her myself is even something that I can stomach. We have a knack for rubbing each other the wrong way, and homeschooling might be the death of us. We'll see...Either way, I definitely need to focus more on Avery. She's getting gypped for sure.

So, yeah, I got a tattoo. Finally. It took two full hours. I'm really really happy with it. It's in the nasty peeling stage right now. I can't wait to see what it'll look like when it's finally all healed. Avery freaked out when I came home with it. She pulled up her pants leg and screamed "Own tattoo! Avery own tattoo!!" Poor thing wanted her own. Temporary tattoos are the only things that she will tolerate on her body. No stamps or band-aids or stickers, please. She keeps looking at my tattoo out of the corner of her eye, and if she sits next to me, she looks at it and scoots over. She doesn't want to hurt me.

Avery still is having her love affair with baths. She takes at least one bath a day. Of course, with the sensitive skin my girls have, I can't possibly wash her that often. She gets pretty dried out with just the water.

Avery's language skills are really blossoming. Now there is officially never a moment of silence in our house. Never. She asks "What is this?" a lot. She's using adjectives and complete sentences, although she still talks like Yoda sometimes. "Avery like band-aids NO!" or "Where big black rolling pin where?" I was talking to another mother here who is concerned that her daughter doesn't draw yet (at 3 1/2) and I told her about how Riley's art started practically over-night. That got me thinking about Avery, who is still in the scribbling phase. I can't wait to see what Avery's art work will look like when she starts drawing recognizable objects. Exciting!

I had a few pictures of the girls that I wanted to upload but now realize that the camera batteries are in Avery's train set and don't have enough charge left to upload pictures. So that'll have to wait.

Nothing new has really happened to us lately. We have our unemployment hearing tomorrow morning. Should be a blast.

We went to the Fine Arts Center on Sunday. It was the strangest thing ever. We had been talking for a year and a half about how we absolutely needed to go there. They were under re-construction for a while, so we finally decided to go. When we got there, we were both kind of baffled and we look at each other and we say "What?! We've been here before!" Turns out we had gone when we lived in Ft. Collins and passed through Colorado Springs on our way to the Sand Dunes with Amy and Emily, like six years ago! Weird. Riley had said that she had no interest in going somewhere where the pictures are already painted (to her "museum" means "children's museum") but started to really like it. Total bonus that they had a small children's room with easels for the kids to draw. Riley got right to work and created three rather intricate drawings.

Anyway, I've been buried neck deep in my research for my anthropology paper. I'm finding this subject so fascinating that I am researching even topics that I don't need for my paper. Right now I'm almost done reading Milk, Money, and Madness: the Culture and Politics of Breastfeeding. Talk about fascinating. One picture that I find telling is this one:

This depicts a pair of boy-girl TWINS. The mother was told incorrectly by her doctor and her mother-in-law that she could not produce enough breastmilk to nurse both, and they advised her to nurse the boy (because of the importance of sons in Pakistani culture). The girl was bottle-fed and died of malnutrition and diarrhea the day after the picture was taken. The mother gave the rights to the photo and her story to UNICEF to promote breastfeeding efforts. So sad...

I'm trying to get my hands on a copy of Mother's Milk: Breastfeeding Controversies in American Culture but I'm having issues with using my Barnes and Noble member account online. I just received Breastfeeding: Biocultural Perspectives from Amazon. I haven't had a chance to look at it yet since Riley's been reading it (even though it contains no pictures) for about half an hour now, going through page by page. I look forward to going over it since it's written by an anthropologist. It could be really cool or really boring. Who knows?

I have recently been focusing on the Puritans, trying to support my claim that they WEREN'T the source of our breastfeeding taboos. I came across this rockin' article (here) that tells how breastmilk was commonly used to sustain the elderly and ill. How the relationship between a breastfeeding mother and suckling child was as close to divine as humans could become. The Puritans revered breastmilk for its healing and life-sustaining properties. Quite interesting. So, I was right. The Puritans did not have a skewed view of breastfeeding.

Sorry to bore everyone, but as I said before, I'm rather obsessed right now...

So we made a last minute decision last Sunday to go to My Little Pony Live. Oh my goodness, the girls were so excited. Avery was just totally dazzled. Riley kept giving me excited little hugs during the performance. Avery sang along and totally participated in the performance, and clapped after each song. It was so cute. Of course, they walked away with a bunch of goodies. Yeah, they're spoiled. It's these kind of things that make a parent realize that they'll probably end up at Disney World at least once in their life. Whether they really want to or not.

I realized something about myself lately. I talk to myself. A lot. Out loud. That's all I'll say about it here. I'll talk to myself more about it later...

I also realized that cannibalism doesn't really bother me all that much. I mean , if the person is already dead. I guess I'm crazy. In anthropology class my professor said that sometimes an anthropologist has to do certain things in order to be accepted into the culture he's studying, and said that one of her professors admitted to cannibalism of an enemy after warfare. Didn't bother me that much. I'd rather eat human than antelope entrails. So if we're ever stuck in the deserts of Africa and all there is to eat is antelope entrails, watch your back.

I bought Riley and Avery their new Easter bikes yesterday. That was fun. I thought that I'd better do it now with the tax refund money rather than waiting until next month. Since Walmart is challenging the unemployment decision, who knows if we'll have money next month. I got those old-fashioned baskets for the front of their bikes and that will be their easter basket. I'm going to put some bike accessories in it, like a bell or horn, handle bar streamers, stickers, etc. Riley needs a new bike really badly and Avery needed one with a push handle. I got Riley the only bike you can find in stores that is not a Dora or Disney or Barbie bike. Avery is getting a tricycle with a push and steer handle for parents. It's red, blue, and yellow, I think. So I'll have to girl it up a little. I wanted to try to get her a 10" bike, but I didn't think she'd go for it. I have found that tricycles with the pedals right on the front wheel (as opposed to a chain) are really hard to pedal. Hence the push bar. If Avery just weren't so tiny. I'm pretty sure that Riley will take me to task about not having a helmet and knee pads, but I'm going to try to get away with not buying them. It's not like they're biking on the road.

So I drop Riley off at school this morning, and realize that their Valentine's Day party is today. I had no idea. We had no cards or anything. I usually stay for her parties and bring something baked. I ran out of that school before Riley realized my error. Who knew the party would be the week before Valentine's Day? Well, parents who read the newsletter and mark their calendars would know, but that's just not me. So I sit here feeling guilty and horrible. I'll probably take her out today to buy valentines cards and chocolates and we'll spend the weekend making them and put them in the kids' cubbies on Monday.

Riley loves writing her name now, and actually writes in a line instead of a jumble of letters like she used to. She can tie her shoes now too. That was all on her. She just so wanted to learn to tie her shoes really really badly, so she tried and tried until she got it. Which means that she has to tie everyone's shoes. Nothing wrong with that except that I can tie my shoe in 2 1/2 seconds flat and Riley takes a bit longer.

Riley got two goldfish last week. We have one left. I found Avery dumping food and dechlorinator in the tank, so it's been cleaned more than any other fish tank in history. One morning we woke up and Riley says "Why isn't that fish swimming?" "Well, hon, that fish is dead." "Why did it die?" "I don't know, RyRy." "Maybe it just reached the end of its life, right?" Yes dear, goldfish have a five day life span. She was okay with it. So the tank got another cleaning. And it's cloudy again already. Whose idea was it to get fish? Oh yeah, that was me...In order to dispose of the dead fish, I had to clean out the dishwasher so that I could clean out the sink (one of Rudi's lovely habits is piling things in the sink, even non-dish things, like napkins, ice cream boxes, whatever) so that I could give the tank a proper scrub. So needless to say, it took a little while. Riley kept asking me if I got rid of the dead fish yet, and I would say not quite yet, dear, but I'm working on it. She said "Mom, it's probably best if you don't tell me when you do it." Then it's probably best if you stop asking me.

I know I've told most people this, but just for posterity, Riley has started saying "I command you." As in, "Get me some water. I COMMAND YOU!" Funny at first, now quite offensive.

I'm gonna post this baby now so I don't forget!

Yes, that's Avery in the bath! Happy! She actually asked to get in the tub with Riley a few days ago. She wouldn't sit down, and stood and played for a while. Then she got a little nervous, and asked to be washed so that she could get out. She whimpered a little during her washing, but apparently saw it as a necessary evil if her goal was to get out. The next day, she asked all day long to take a bath. I put her off until bedtime, when she had a huge glob of glue in her hair and glue smeared all over her body, and she actually sat and played in the tub for a looooong time! She was splashing and throwing water all around. She cooperated with me washing her, and only wanted to get out after she poured water over her own head and over her face. Hopefully she won't regress. I'm almost afraid to try another bath in case it's all too good to be true...

So this is what I have waiting for me when I got home from school one day. Rudi admitted that the girls had been quiet for a rather unusual length of time, and this is what he found...


Needless to say, I was none too pleased!

So Riley had her birthday ceremony at school. She had a lot of fun and Avery absolutely adores Riley's school. During the ceremony, Avery was sitting in a chair next to me and she wrapped her arms around my waist and said "Love you!" for the first time! Afterwards, Riley said "all that attention made me feel so special for the first time ever!"

Yesterday, Riley wrote a bunch of music notes on a piece of paper, and sang me a song that went like this: "I love you no matter what. You are an angel. I love you, especially when you're nice!" That was so stinkin' cute.

Rudi has a prostate biopsy six days ago and has been laying on the couch since then. Literally on the couch all day and night long. Still bleeding. He did go to Blockbuster last night and it caused him to bleed some more, so now he is getting worried. It's really not that much blood, but it really should have stopped by now. We'll see how it is for the rest of today and I'll call the clinic tomorrow if it hasn't stopped. They told him that he should take it easy for two days (which translates to "sleep all day" in Rudi-speak) but it's been six says. So yeah, I'm worried, but if there's one thing I know about our relationship is that we can't both be openly worried about the same thing. So I'll have to pretend that it's no biggie, otherwise he'd think he were dying. They did take 14 samples, though, so that could be the reason. Last time they took four.

With Rudi convalescing on the couch for nearly a week, the house has gotten really messy. I'm just all thrown off. It seems like I'm making food for either the girls or Rudi all of the time. Somebody's always putting in an order. I try to pick up between, but can never seem to get anywhere. Add to that school work for the new semester and I'm feeling over-extended. And I feel that I haven't spent a quality minute with either of the girls for a really long time. I catch myself always asking them to wait one more minute, or perpetually saying "maybe later." I think tomorrow I will try to stay off the computer. Homework can wait. I do have another blog that I want to post, but I'll probably do that after the girls go to bed. I need to reconnect with my girlies!

So, it's been a while...Well two exciting things happened today. Riley said "I hate you, Mom" for the first time. That made my day. And then Avery called Riley a "poopy head." I can't say that it wasn't justified. Ah, life with a 4yo and a 2yo. Whose idea was this?

School started on Monday. I had Introduction to Cultural Anthropology on Monday and I really like the instructor and I think I'll really enjoy the class. There's a lot of room to explore topics of particular interest to each student. We have several small papers on any topic of our choice. I'm seeing visions of "The Urbanization of Traditional Peoples and the Loss of the Babywearing Culture" or "That's What Boobs Are For?: Public Breastfeeding in America" and I'd like to delve into oral traditions among indigenous people as it relates to storytelling for children. Hmmm....I might need to take more anthropology courses! I really like the professor, a jolly and funny overweight woman. I tend to be irritated by really small things that people can't really help, and this teacher sounded a little out of breath just from talking, and I thought that would annoy me. It did at first, but I really got to like her anyway. Yeah, I'm irritable and judgmental, get over it.

I had a paralegal class today. Contracts. Woo-hoo. The professor is pretty interesting and funny, so perhaps he can liven up a boring topic. His lips and teeth and diction are exactly like Napoleon Dynamite's. And he has the same flat sense of humor. It shouldn't be too bad. It's got to be better than Legal Ethics. That was so stinkin' boring. Tomorrow I have Family Law, which shouldn't be too bad. I was supposed to take three paralegal classes this semester, but I just couldn't add Legal Research to Contracts in one semester. I'd die from boredom. So Legal Research will have to wait. No biggie.

I've logged on to my Indians of North America class, but only a little reading so far. We were asked to introduce ourselves and the instructor (the same one I have for Intro to Anthropology) asked us if we had any native american ancestry. I was one of the first to post and made fun of those white people who constantly mention that they are 1/32 Cherokee (always Cherokee) in their adoptive father's side. Those people really really annoy me. And why is it always Cherokee? Are they the new "in" people to pretend that you're descended from? When white people think of Native Americans, are the Cherokee the only people that they can think of? Is the Trail of Tears such a "romantic" historical event that people just wish that they could be related, to claim a part of something that isn't theirs? So that they can put their curly blond hair into braids and dance at a pow-wow, unaware, as white people so often are, that they are being highly offensive by doing so? Gosh, people, give it a rest. Well, sure enough a woman posted an introduction the next day and said that her great grandfather was half Cherokee, or something like that. Barf.

Okay, I can see that I'm full of sarcasm and venom today. I don't know why. I'm actually in a really good mood. I'll post again tomorrow after Riley's birthday ceremony at school.

These are pictures taken specifically at Avery's request. "Pictures Grandma!" she said and insisted on inspecting every shot. She also asked to put clothes on since she knows that Grandma likes clothed pictures, but we were heading up to take a bath so I vetoed that. I'll blog more later, but I'm trying to get off the computer to do some housework

[Fresh out of the bathtub, hanging their stockings.]

[Preparing treats for Santa (candy cane cookies and chocolate rice milk) and the reindeer (oatmeal, celery, and a carrot)]

[Avery admiring her tube of My Little Ponies]

[Avery was pretty happy with her stocking and probably could have gone without presents.]

[The (empty) stockings that I made the girls this year. I'm not making any more any year soon, that's for sure. The girls picked out their fabrics on their own.]

[Just a cute Avery picture! By the way, Mom, that's a scratch beside Avery's nose, courtesy of Riley, not dirt!]

[The Naked Girls playing with their new toys. Riley's wearing her Huggalugs on her arms. She loves them. She had the "pirate" ones on her legs, but took them off because she was sweating.]

[Riley contemplating her next culinary creation!]

[When it comes to present un-wrapping, Avery turned pro sometime between her birthday and Christmas. She was so involved in unwrapping that she would forget to look at the gift.]

Christmas Eve sucked. It just totally sucked. I hadn't finished the girls' stockings, so I let them take a later nap than normal so I could work on them and then they wouldn't go to sleep at night. I finally got them down at 11 pm, and Avery kept waking up every 20 minutes or so and wouldn't let me go. Then I finally got her to sleep soundly around 1 or 2am and Riley woke up and wouldn't go back to sleep until around 5 am. All I got were little snatches of sleep. I think I could fall over and slip into a lovely coma. At least they both slept for about 45 minutes to start with so I got to put the presents under the tree and stuff the stockings before they interrupted me. One really annoying conversations I had with Riley as she was struggling to sleep so that Santa could come last night went like this:
Riley: Am I asleep yet?
Me: No.
Riley: Well, I was and you just woke me up by talking!
ARGH! And in my acute mental fog, I fell for this about a dozen infuriating times.

Riley and Avery really made out this year. Sometimes you don't realize that you've gone overboard until you see all the presents crowded under the tree. Luckily we have a sparse tree and not all that many branches to get in the way. The treehouse we got the girls is really huge and really well made, standing taller than Riley. Both girls love working the pulleys, but already fight over the large bucket so that they can move the people from one level to another via bucket. Grandma and Grandpa and Uncle Allan got them a Ryan's Room Fairyland Forest and the girls love the bright colors and all the fairies. Pulleys must be the thing, because this one has one that goes around the set with fairy chairs hanging from it. Riley whips it around like an amusement park ride. Poor fairies. Of course, we had to get Riley a Littlest Pet Shop playset and Avery a My Little Pony playset. The girls got fairy and princess cookbooks from Auntie Mina, Uncle Brendan and the boys. I thought they would have a stroke when they saw all the colorful treats they can make. When we next have money I'll take them shopping for ingredients. I always feel crass when talking about what I got, so I'll pass on that...

I also got Riley some quality books. She's been choosing really annoying books lately. In fact, I returned her Fairy Haven and the Quest for the Wand back to Barnes and Noble because I found it nauseatingly written. I simply couldn't read it. The characters were one-dimensional and the plot was unfocused, and oh my goodness, the dialog was unreadable. We're working on Mr. Popper's Penguins now and find that much more enjoyable. Perhaps I should have taught her to persevere, but I also want her to develop discriminating taste when it comes to books. It always baffled me when Rudi would finish a 800 page book, and when I asked him how it was, he's say it sucked. Then why finish reading it? Or like the time I watched Scent of a Woman, and found it so horrible that I physically got sick to my stomach, and yet I kept watching it to see if it got better, and it never did. I guess that's when I learned not to waste my life on sub-standard movies and books. Anyway, for Christmas she received a beautifully illustrated collection of Aesop's fables and The Water Hole by Graeme Base.

Riley definitely has enough toys, so I'm focusing on art and craft supplies for her birthday. What she really needs is an art cabinet to organize all of her supplies and store her finished art. Right now her art is taking up all of the under-cabinet space in our kitchen. I've got a bunch of stuff picked out from Discount School Supply online, so hopefully Rudi's unemployment will go through and we'll have money to buy her stuff. As it is, if we pay the absolute bare minimum on our bills, we'll have about $250 left over for food/gas/etc for the entire month. Which means a lot of going no where and a lot of ramen noodles and plain rice. February won't be so bad, but I'm not getting my VA education payment in January since I barely had classes in December. Well, I had seven days of classes, so I should get a little more than $200, but will need to spend that on books since classes start 1/16. I won't get my full benefits in February either, but it'll be close to $450 so that'll be fabulous. Once I get my full benefits in March, we'll be okay. Until the semester ends again.

Riley's face painted at the Walmart holiday party (not commenting on the quality of the work, but Riley looks cute!)

The best present over: The huge box that the presents came in from Grandma and Grandpa. Note that the box has a "doorbell" hanging on it.

The girls' idea of decorating the tree involves hanging ALL of the ornaments on the branches that they can reach.

I'm getting impatient for Christmas. All the wrapping is done and now I can't wait to give the girls and Rudi their presents! I got Rudi an iPod nano for Christmas, before he was fired. He told me to take whatever I got him back to the store, but I had already opened the iPod and uploaded pictures and music to it, so there goes that. Which is fine because we haven't exchanged gifts since Riley was born. Plus, I'm tired of him buying a new disc-man every month, only to have them break a week or so later. Then I get to hear him cursing in the middle of the night, and the *click*click*click* of him changing the batteries and the *click*click*click* of him taking batteries from the remote controls and every other battery-operated thing to try them to see if they work. Then, if I'm really lucky, he'll tromp downstairs to get the battery recharger and I get to hear that *click*click*click*. Then more cursing and such, all at 3am. Not cool. I got him a hard case for the iPod, so hopefully he won't manage to break it. And perhaps it will get him to go to the gym more often, which in itself is worth the cost of the iPod. I hope he likes it!

Ugh, I'm so far behind on blogging! I still have to post tree-decorating pictures, as well as pictures from our trip to the Electric Safari at the zoo. Better get cracking...