5 years and 18 months

Silvia and Jack had their wellness check-ups today. That's the pediatric idea of a birthday present-- here, let's stick a needle in you, or maybe two or three!

At 5, Silvia is a healthy little monkey. She's still smaller than average, but she always has been so that's not a big surprise. One stumbling block at any exam with her now is her incredible shyness. She just shuts down. She won't respond, won't whisper an answer to me and gets progressively more withdrawn the more someone pushes to get a reaction from her. This makes it hard to get vision and hearing tests done, but the doctor was very patient with her and they worked through it. She'd point at a star shape and ask if it was a fish or a house so Silvia would shake her head and then ask if it was a star to get a nod. After about 5 minutes of that down the chart, we decided she still has 20/20 vision.

This year was the first time Silvia's ever had her blood drawn. I was very nervous for her, mostly because I'm still in shock from when Anna was 2 and went to the hospital with rotavirus. They had to wrap her in a blanket and fully restrain her to get an IV in, it was awful. But this was a whole different bag of tricks and Silvia did great. I gave her a lollipop, held her hand and chatted to her about all the blood tests I had to have when I was pregnant. The nurses were very smooth, got the needle in, the vials filled and a band-aid on all in less than a minute. Impressive! Silvia didn't even cry. Shy, yes... but tough.

Jack, on the other hand...wow. He has some lungs! He's been sick and has about ALL his teeth coming in, but I've never seen him so upset at the doctor, usually he's a charmer. He screamed the whole visit, from the weigh-in to the shots finale. He, too, is under-weight but more so than Silvia. The doctor made a comment that he needs to be eating three meals and two snacks every day. I burst out laughing. Sure thing. I'll get right on that. Is it ok if I just put it all through the blender, sit on him and pour it down his throat? Because that's the only way it's gonna happen.

That boy just will NOT eat. It's a struggle every day. Any suggestions will be appreciated, really.

So other than skinny and surviving needles, the kids are doing great. Silvia is moving up to a booster seat now. The rule is 40 pounds and four years old. She's 36 pounds but since she's already five, we got the green light to change up anyway since her legs are getting pretty dangly in the carseat. I wonder what it's like to have a 40 pound four year old?

Silvia turns 5

Silvia had a girly birthday, which suits because she is a super duper girly girl. After much deliberation, she decided on five things she wanted to do: go see Beauty and the Beast 3D, go to The Disney Store to pick out a present, go to Starbucks, go to a restaurant for dinner and have Daddy make her his special deep dish pizza for dinner.

Since there was only a limited amount of time and some of the requests overlapped (two dinners? Don't kids usually want two desserts?), we broke it up over the whole weekend. Saturday Kurt took the girls to the movies while I stayed home with Jack. Then we all went out to dinner at Chili's. (The Starbucks and restaurant requests come from the fact that we've instituted a no-eating-out rule recently, but that's another story).

On her birthday Sunday, she woke up to a table of presents and a brand new big girl bike. She's been scooting around on the bike we got her a couple years ago and it's gotten way too small. Her little legs pump like crazy and practically hit her chin with her determination to pick up speed. It's funny because as the younger sister, you'd think she'd follow Anna's example of caution, but it's the other way around completely. Once Silvia started going as fast as she could, Anna started trying to go a little bit less slow.

On her new bike, she's a speed demon. It's been a little confusing getting used to the reverse brakes, but I think by the next time we get her wheels to the ground (when all this chilly rain lets up), there will literally be no stopping her.

She also got some new clothes, a Wii game, a purse and a pretty heart pendant necklace that she wears almost every day. Then, after a prelude for a vanilla steamer (ok, and a latte for me) at Starbucks, she and I headed to The Disney Store. We've walked past it a dozen times and I've always refused to go in, knowing that would be inviting disaster. She was practically breathless crossing the threshold.

After a fevered circuit of all its treasured corners and much deliberation, she settled on getting a princess costume and shoes, though which princess took some time. As she said, "Oh, mom, it's just so hard, I keep changing my mind, whew!". She eventually chose a white Cinderella dress and "glass" slippers. I caved on the budget and got her a doll, too. I'm a pushover that way.

In true Silvia fashion, she collapsed into a nap on the couch shortly after we got home, waking up just in time for pizza and cake.

It was a whirlwind, exciting weekend and at the end of it all, she went to bed in her new dress-up with a smile on her face, shiny slippers on her feet and arms overflowing with a variety of stuffed animals and dolls-- some new, some old. She didn't want anyone to feel left out.

(As a side note, I find it amusing that, after years of fighting the Disney character-themed merchandise, my house is now bursting to the seams with princesses. Always remember, in parenting as in life, never say never. You may end up eating your words at a pink Cinderella tea party.)

shoes!

Or, more accurately, "shzzzz!". My son is all about the accessories.

But "shzzz" is a multi-purpose word. It goes a long way around these parts; shoes, juice, cheese. All with very subtle changes of tone that often only Silvia and I can differentiate. She does a lot of translating for Jack. There is also "baa": bottle, ball, bar (as in cereal bar). "Meh" is for milk. He will specify if he wants a cup of juice or a bottle of milk. Woe to you should you mix it up. Jack has a VERY distinct sound for, "You have FAILED ME".

He's developed quite a vocabulary and we find him fairly understandable most of the time. More importantly than that, though, is that Jack understands US very clearly. We can send him on errands around the house (so fun!), tell him to put a certain thing away or give something to someone. We can also ask him which foods he wants to eat, which leads to his favorite new word.

"No". And also, "NO!". That ties into, "mine!" and conversely, "okay". But mostly just "no".

There are a dozen other cute variations on common words he has, but mostly just imagine the word, take the final hard consonant off the end (and possibly drop the first syllable), and you have the word. For instance, "remote" comes out as "mo" with a barely there "t" on the end. Sounds confusing for an outsider, but in the tradition of all close families, we understand him pretty well.

And if it's all in our heads or he's just messin' with us, it's still really cute.

"SHZZZ!"

Last minute dash still wins the race... or at least crosses the finish line.

This year was Anna's first school science fair. She brought home the paperwork in late October, absolutely THRILLED and pumped up about doing a project with her dad for the whole school to see. The fair was set for the beginning of January, though, and foresight is not one of Anna's strengths.

Every week or so we'd remind her it was coming up, ask about what she wanted to do, what topic she wanted to explore. Every week the answer was, "I don't want to do that right now, I don't know, let's do it later". I suppose as parents we could have forced the issue, made her sit down, focus and get started. But we kept thinking about the stereotype of the parent who "helps" a child do a project by just DOING the project for them. So we left it to her, with frequent reminders.

Anna had no interest at all until, in a sudden fury, she came home from school on her first day back after the holidays.

"Mrs. Ziegler wants to know who's doing the science fair! She said everyone needs to turn it in on Thursday next week! All my friends are doing it, I need my project!". She was in a SNIT, anxious, worried and mad at US that she hadn't started yet.

Oh, boy. Or in this case, oh, girl.

We quietly pointed out that the project is supposed to have around 6 weeks of study with a science notebook documenting the steps and observations and that she had ignored all our reminders. We also pointed out that we had, in fact, only 6 days. We told her it was too late, but maybe next year she'd learn from this and start early. The drama that ensued was akin to what would happen if we let her bring home a puppy from the store and then took it back about an hour later. Devastation and anger. It was so UNFAIR. WE, her miserable parents, were so UNFAIR.

In truth, we did feel bad. She was genuinely upset, begging over and over again. Eventually, after talking to her teacher and deciding that she could learn the lesson here without having to lose everything, we decided to let her go ahead with the project. The understanding was that she would do nothing BUT the project until it was done-- no playdates, no leaving it up to daddy. And daddy, in case you didn't know, is all about the scientific method. There would be NO skipping of steps.

It was a marathon. Kurt took the lead while I held the other kids back on the sidelines. He guided her gently through each observation and hypothesis without doing any of the work for her. When I asked him how that felt for his analytical mind to step back and let her figure stuff out, he sighed, stretched his tired neck muscles and muttered, "it's really, really hard".

But Wednesday night, at not-quite the eleventh hour (but not far from it)., Anna's project was finished. The display created, the notebook complete, the detailed report written in laboriously tidy print by her own small hands.

Her experiment was to see what floats and what doesn't, with two evolving hypotheses based on her observations and a suggestion for the next project about WHY certain things float and others don't. For a 1st grader, it was quite a feat. And as she dragged the big poster board creation into school on Thursday, Anna said fervently, "Next year, I'm going to start on November 4th (the day after her birthday), right away. I promise."

I think she still had cramps in her hand at that point, but it was worth it. "What Floats and What Sinks" won second place for the K-2 Fair. She was modestly pleased, dismissive and mostly just happy to be done. But you have never seen a prouder papa.

Sweet Dreams

One night not so long ago, our house was quiet. That right there is a beautiful memory, but it gets even better. The children had all gone peacefully to bed, Kurt was settled at his computer doing whatever it is he does there and I had curled up in bed, bundled in warm blankets, reading a new book.

Into this cozy atmosphere drifted... a laugh. It was soft and slightly muffled, but still tingled with excitement. Sighing, I unwrapped my cocoon and walked over to the girls' room, thinking to settle them back down from illicit bunk bed playing. As I reached the door, though, I heard the laughter again and then the rustle of blankets coming from Silvia's bed.

She was still asleep, smiling and laughing at some dream. Then her little lips opened again and she giggled out, "Anna!", rolled over to her side and quieted back down into her covers. For all the fighting, grumping and general sisterly nonsense those two can muster, Silvia's sweet dreams show what lies underneath it all-- and it's happy.