The Daughter Chronicles

Thursday, July 26, 2007

In case you're wondering ...

Yes, that is Norah with a plastic Lego container on her head:


The great thing about kids is just when you think they're going to drive you completely insane, they go and do wacky stuff like this that reminds you why you love them so much in the first place. They're crafty that way!

Tuesday, July 17, 2007

Notes on Norah

Norah can count to ten. We're not exactly sure how it happened, although she does watch some Sesame Street and Baby Einstein videos that count, so that's probably where she picked it up. Who says television can't teach our children! She started counting a few weeks ago at dinner - she just launched into it, and we both kind of stared at her. She has counted correctly 1 through 10, but she prefers the "Mia route" to ten - she skips 7 and 8. We're not sure why Mia does this, but now Norah has joined in too. It's still nice to hear her wandering around counting.

She's still not talking all that much, however. We're being patient. She knows plenty of words, but she doesn't put them together. We're trying to get her to ask for things instead of screaming, and she's slowly getting that concept. She asks for milk now (she calls it "huck") and tells us when there is poop in her pants. Interestingly enough, she doesn't tell us before she poops, but she does know when it's there. We figure this is the first step to potty training, as at least she knows what it is and knows it's unpleasant to have in her pants. She'll figure out soon enough that it's helpful to tell us before it happens so we can sit her on the toilet. One word she does know, however, is "sucky."

She knows this because we're slowly breaking her of her pacifier habit. It's not easy. She still sleeps with it, and very often she'll forget about it for a long time, but then she'll get it into her head that she needs it right now! So she finds us and starts whining "Sucky! Sucky!" over and over, which is kind of annoying, needless to say. When she doesn't get it she throws a bit of a tantrum. We've been trying to divert her attention from the sucky, and sometimes it works. She's a stubborn one, though. But we'll win this one, I think.

We've noticed that she's deathly afraid of crickets. We're not sure why. Krys and I aren't especially afraid of them, so we never freak out when we see one (I'm waiting for the children to develop a phobia of spiders, because Krys does not like them). Crickets periodically invade our house, so it's an issue. The only thing we can come up with is that she saw one jump once and it made her wary. Whenever she sees one, she starts yelling "Crick!" and flees. It's a bit weird, but I guess it's nothing terribly unusual.

I may have mentioned that we started getting Norah to clean up her mess. She's been doing it for quite a few months now. I figured that she could walk and understand me, so why not have her clean up? If you start her young, by the time she's old enough to object, it's such a part of her routine she won't mind doing it. She's very excited about cleaning up, actually. The minute she finishes her dinner she's on the floor saying "Keen up!" and wandering around. I supervise, and she puts everything away. Usually once we're finished I attack her and we roll around on the floor, me tickling her and she jumping up and down on my chest. I think I come off worse in that exchange. This summer Krys has begun taking her outside to water the trees in the backyard, and she gets even more excited about this than cleaning up. Occasionally we don't have time to water the trees, and she gets a bit grumpy about this. Yes, she gets grumpy because she can't do her chores. That won't last.

She's doing fine, according to her pediatrician. It's a bit odd having a perfectly normal child, but I'm certainly not complaining. These are just some of things she's been up to recently. According to Mia's OT, she's a bit ahead of the curve in some things, but she's still lagging in the communication department. Oh well. She'll figure it out.

Thursday, July 12, 2007

Quote of the day

"Norah, popcorn isn't a walking-around food." - Krys Burgas, Sunday, 8 July 2007.

Norah vociferously disagreed. I know, shocking.

Tuesday, July 10, 2007

I got nothing

It's 110 degrees here these days, and the kids are just too overheated to do much, so I got nothing to post about. Well, that's not necessarily true - I'll get to what's going on, I promise, but it's the middle of July in the desert, and it just saps the energy right out of you, even in the air conditioning. So for now, I'll just point out that if you have HBO, I highly recommend you catch the new documentary Coma. It follows four patients with traumatic brain injuries who have just come out of their coma and are learning to adjust to their new lives. In parts it's uncomfortable, and in parts it's pretty depressing, and in parts it's very inspiring - kind of like our lives with Mia! It will probably run for a while (it premiered last week), so if you get the chance, check it out. The patients are all adults, and Mia wasn't in a coma (well, she was in an induced one, but that's a bit different), so it's not exactly like what we go through, but it's close.

I'll be back soon.

Wednesday, July 04, 2007

Official Picture time!

This past Saturday we gussied the kids up and headed to Sears for our annual "official" picture taking. We do this between their birthdays, since they're so close together. It's always a fun affair - last year Norah couldn't walk yet, so she was freaked out when Mommy left her alone, and this year she could walk too much, so she could do something about it when Mommy left her alone - namely, follow her! Mia always loves getting her pictures taken, so the biggest challenge for us with her is making sure she sits up straight. Norah, meanwhile, usually loves getting her picture taken, but it took her a while to warm up to the photographer, who kept talking in that annoying high-pitched tone that people use when they're talking to small children (I lapse into it very rarely, but then catch myself - I know kids are supposed to like it, but I loathe it, and wish people would speak to my children like they speak to everyone else). She warmed up eventually and then didn't want to stop taking pictures. Yes, she's a mass of contradictions - she's two! We're getting a bunch of them to give to family members, but I thought I'd share them with the massive readership here at the blog. Yes, you should feel special. They are, after all, the most beautiful children in the world!

This is almost a perfect picture of Mia. I would have liked her left arm to not be sticking out at a weird angle, but that's how she rolls. It's still gorgeous.


We got a couple of nice head shots of Mia. We picked the one on the right, because she's smiling just a bit too much in the left one.












This is the "together" one that we're ordering for our families. It's purty.


The photographer tried to get some "natural" poses, and she got a few nice ones. We ordered a print of the last one in black and white. Krys, of course, now thinks we should have gotten it in sepia. Because she's never happy.




We got more solo shots of Norah than Mia because Norah was unwilling to stop having her picture taken.





Krys really loves the last two pictures. She was disappointed with the penultimate one, because of the seam running down the middle of the picture. Norah just wouldn't move the netting around to keep the seam out of the photo! Oh well.

So those are the pictures of the girls. We hope you enjoy them!

Sunday, July 01, 2007

"Away!"

Mia's latest thing when she's eating is to pick up her plate or cup and say, "Away!" It rarely works because she does it in the middle of the meal, but it's quite adorable. So adorable I staged a photo of her doing it with the mat we put down under her bowl or plate so that it doesn't scoot across the tray:

We got photographs taken of them yesterday for their birthdays (we like to do it about now, sort of in between), and they should be available on-line in a day or so. I'll have to post them, because they're quite cute. As if everyone didn't already know that!