The Likes and Dislikes of Bee at 3-years-old.

I started a tradition with Gracie’s birthday; I had meant her birthday letter to mark her likes and dislikes, accomplishments and quirks, but found myself gushing instead about how my life rose and set with her. Funnily enough, the same thing happened with Bee. It’s so darn tough when you love your children so much. So here you go: my Bee Baby’s 10 most favoritest things ever, and 10 things she never, not ever wants to ever hear of again.

 

Ten Things Bee Loves:

1. Hopping. It’s her dearest love right now. The kid will hop anywhere and everywhere. Seriously. It is physically, mortally impossible for her to walk sedately anywhere at all. I think she’s half bunny rabbit.
2. Singing. Particularly, she loves singing “I’m smushing up a baby bumble-beeeeeee…” and Wheels on the Bus and Five Little Ducks. She sings along with some of the grown-up songs on the radio, but Bee is happily still a kid at heart.
3. Chocolate. We are all food lovers and appreciators of fine chocolate at my house, but Bee really lurrrrves her some chocolate. To her, it’s the deity of all things food – the way it’s meant to be.
4. Waking up early. This one hurts me deep in my heart. Bee used to be my baby (erm…toddler) who would go to bed at 6:30 p.m. and sleep until 9:00 a.m. if I let her. Her wake-up time sloooowly crept backward until 8:30, then 8 a.m. Then 7 a.m., and now she’s springing awake at 6 a.m. The kid would be up even earlier if I let her. For the love of sleep, child, GO BACK TO BED! You will thank me when you’re a teenager.
5. Cheese. She would trade me for cheese. She would trade years off her life for cheese. She would learn to read and write just so she could write a book about how much she loves cheese. True story.
6. Babies and purses and all things girly. This is funny to me because you are not a girly-girl. You are mischievous and a tomboy and dirt and mayhem. But you will play for hours with your baby dolls, holding them on your hip and “shhh-ing” them as you rock back and forth, or feeding them pretend food. You find a purse and fill it with jewels, phones, blocks, or really whatever is handy and then cart them around. (Heaven help the person who tries to get between you and your purse.) Entire afternoons you’ll spend with all of these facets of your version of playing house. Even better, you usually include your sister in your pretend-play and I love to watch the two of you weave magically mundane stories around your pretend families.
7. Turning my hair gray. You jump up and down on the couch and can’t figure out how I know you’re doing it when I’m in the next room. (The springs squeak, silly.) You pull your bed out from the wall and jump from your bed to your sister’s when you’re supposed to be going to sleep – and don’t even have the grace to look guilty when I catch you! You fall down constantly, dangle perilously from chairs, and whack your head quite often again any hard surface nearby (usually the coffee table). I don’t know who you’re going to kill first – you or me from sheer fright!
8. Whining. Please, oh please let this be a short-lived phase. For the past few months, you’ve refused to use your words to tell me what’s wrong. You whine. Or cry. Or both, while moaning my name. I’m partly to blame, I know. I enable you by guessing what’s wrong. Then nothing will fix it but a long hug, a kiss, and a some soothing words from Mommy. But this stops now, you hear? I am not running off to college to fix your boo-boos.
9. Band-aids. You will invent boo-boos just to get a band-aid. I have had to use the words, “You’re not bleeding; you don’t get a band-aid,” in an attempt to reason with you. I just love the added bonus of giving you a goal to work up to.
10. Being silly. Silly narrowly beat out mischievous as Bee’s Top Quality. Bee will tell you she is “Gwacie” not Bee, or that your dirty clothes go “on da cei-wing fan” when I ask if they belong on the floor. I love the glint she gets in her eyes when she know she is asking for trouble. God, I love this happy-go-lucky kid.
    

Ten Things Bee Hates, Hates, Hates with the Passion of 1,000 Fiery Suns:

1. Being told no. I should amend that – sometimes she does fine. But if she really isn’t in the mood, she ain’t kidding. She will enact her go-go-gadget spaghetti legs and collapse to the floor, crying and whining faster than you can even blink. Really, she should rethink that strategy because then I can’t give in.
2. Hot dogs. I don’t know what it is about it, because Bee used to live on hot dogs and their predecessor, Vienna Sausages. Now she won’t even take a bite. She will tell you she likes them, though, just to lick off the ketchup (and ask for more).
3. Waking up 15 minutes earlier than she normally would have (you know – at the crack of dawn) to go to school. “Seep! Seeeeeep, Mommy!” she begs. Dahling, I’d love to let you sleep in – Lord knows I loathe getting up early to go to work – but this is just how life is. So just SLEEP IN ON THE WEEKENDS FOR THE LOVE OF GOD. Ahem.
   
4. Spiders or bugs. This is a weird one. Sometimes she is fascinated with them, like the grasshopper on the floor at Gate C-42 in Baltimore that kept the girls busy for 20 minutes straight. (God bless you, tiny grasshopper, wherever you now are.) But if a bug flies too closely to her, or heaven forbid a spider is spotted and she isn’t in a random spider-whacking mood, her shrieks will split your eardrums and the terror on her face is unmistakable.
5. Going to bed. I’ve gone on and on throughout the blog about the girls’ Up-And-Down Bedtime Brigade. Bee is clearly the captain of that team. She wails – loudly – from her bed for sometimes up to an hour. She gets up again and again. She tells me a “spy-door” is in there near the window. (“No, I put all the bugs outside.” “Out-side?” “Yes. What do we tell the bugs?” “Go AWAY! Leave me ‘lone!” “Or? “Or I ‘moosh you dead!”) She’s really shaken when we have to do the Bug Banishing Incantation. That one is a real fear. But I have my suspicions this bedtime thing is a ploy to manipulate mommy.
6. Being left out. Bee is furious that she isn’t going to kindergarten in the fall. She insists she can read like her sister. And that she knows her letters. The problem is…
7. She hates any attempts to help or teach her something. She thinks she already knows how to write the letter “B” or spell her name or any manner of things. Except wiping her butt. That she still insists on Mommy helping her with.
8. Watching TV. She loves her some “See-er-ella” (who used to be called the much cuter “Rella-ella.” You’ve probably correctly translated that back to Cinderella, her one true Disney love). It’s the only television show or movie Bee will sit still for. Maybe I can get her to sit still for Sesame Street or music (the girls love them some of Simon and Garfunkel’s Concert in Central Park), but Bee is fickle if it’s anyone other than See-er-ella.
9. Getting out of the tub first. Good lord, the fights I go through over something like who has to get out of the tub first. I have to make up wacky rules like whoever washes their hair first (also a fight) get to stay in longer, or whoever misbehaved at dinner has to get out first. And really, it’s like a bonus of 30 seconds! The only other fight I listen to more often is who gets to be line leader.
10. When I call her my baby. Oooh, she gets ugly. And defiant. It’s like I called her a Yankees-lover or a Cheesehead or something.”No I NOT!” she’ll yell, eyes blazing. But that’s okay. Pretty soon she and her sister will be fighting over which one of them gets to be my baby and who I love more.

So there you have it. A few insights into my baby big girl Bee at three-years-old. Look out world – she is going to set you on fire when she gets a little older!

Quote of the day.

Me: Bee, what do you think you’re getting for your birthday?
Bee: Ummm…a puppy!
Me: You think you’re getting a puppy?! No, it’s not a puppy.
Gracie: When? When can we get a puppy, Mom?
Bee: I want a bear. A big bear. A polar bear!!! I want a polar bear!
Me: …

To my sweet bouncy Bee, on her third birthday.

Dear Bee,

Today you are three years old. You are ecstatic and seem incredulous that yes, indeed, you get an entire day for your very own. Ever since the beginning of June when I informed you that your birthday was approaching, you have happily declared, “My birt-day is comin’ up!!” I wish I could capture your beautiful toddlerese, especially the squeeky upswing with which you finish your announcement each and every time. Truly, it’s the most adorable thing in my whole entire world. I may or may not have asked you whose birthday was next just to see your eyes light up and see you dance with excitement.

I hope, I hope, I hope you aren’t so desperately happy because you can’t believe you get to have your own birthday. Sometimes I worry that you feel overshadowed by your big sister. You shadow Gracie’s every move and repeat every word she says. I try not to, but I find myself constantly comparing the two of you in my mind. Not because your sister is a standard I expect you to live up to, but because I love and worry about you so much, Bee. Is your vocabulary where it should be? Should your speech be clearer? Am I giving you enough one-on-one time? Are you too quiet; should you be talking more? So don’t ever wonder: I love you like crazy-cakes, sweet pea. You bring laughter and happiness and oh the surprises into my life every day. Especially the surprises! Your sister is wonderful, but – to me at least – fairly predictable. With you, Sunshine, I never know what will greet me. You are just as likely to squint your eyes and give me a super shiny smile, dazzling me with your cuter-than-cute teeny, tiny toddler teeth as you are to declare, “I a monstore! Rowr! Rowr!” Or perhaps collapse in a puddle of wah on the floor and sob/whine, “Mommy!” until I ask what is wrong. I might sigh at times, but I can’t tell you how much I love the unpredictability you into bring to my life. My world would be quieter, boring, and much too orderly without you.

Because I do love your (ahem) differences. You are stubborn. You are the child who will look me straight in the eyes and tell me to throw the toys away when I lose my cool and threaten to do just that if you don’t pick them up. If I tell you I will only put you to bed three times, you insist on getting up five times. You work that lower lip and pout and ask for all manner of things just because you know you have your older sister (if not your loving, devoted momma) wrapped around your pinky finger. There are many days when I tell you, “It’s a good thing I love you!”

And I do. I love your little quirks, like the way you insist on jumping everywhere. While we were on vacation you and your sister were frequently playing in the other rooms of Grandma’s house with other people and every so often you two would come back to find me just to make sure I was still around. Gracie would run up to me and try to tackle me. You were always only a step behind her and even though I would prepare myself for your crashing hug, you would always take this little hoppity bounce at the end and say, “Hi, Mom!” Then you would bounce away. Literally. You will bounce across a room just for the sheer joy of it. It’s no wonder you asked for a bunny rabbit cake for your birthday because these days, I swear you are half-bunny.

The other hilarious trick you have right now started because of another habit of yours: repeating things over and over and over. I noticed you were pointing to things one day with your middle finger; I told you not to use that finger because that was a bad word. “That a bad fing-gor?” you asked? “Yes, that’s a bad word,” I answered. Now you will randomly come up to me several times a day and flip me off, asking, “That a bad fing-gor?” in your toddlerese. A hundred times we have repeated this conversation in the past two weeks. When we were on vacation, we walked out of Dinand Library on the campus of my alma mater. Right in front of the library is a sculpture of the hand of Christ. “Mommy, there’s a GIANT HAND right there!” Gracie yelled. And because the view from where we were was of the back of the hand, and the fingers were rather splayed, you finished right on cue: “And there’s a BAD FING-GOR!” Oh, how we all cracked up.

Yes, sweet little bouncy Bee – you are my heart, my sweet little baby girl, my shrieking court jester. You keep my on my toes and fill my life with love until my cup runneth over. Happy Birthday, Bee-baby. I hope you have entirely too much fun tomorrow and all the joy you bring to our family is brought back to you a million times over.

Averting my eyes.

I will not panic when I look at my inbox… I will not panic when I look at my inbox… I will not panic when I look at my inbox…

The In-Between: Is it just me?

Or does everyone else feel just a bit…off…when they return from vacation? I’ve been back for 24 hours and I’m finally starting to feel like if I haven’t gotten my groove back yet, it’s beyond my grasp by only thiiiiis much.

Still. It’s been disconcerting. Saturday night when Crisanna picked us up at the airport, I forgot we had already gone through the tollbooth. Then I kept making wrong turns. I almost drove to daycare. Granted, I was operating on very little sleep and I was busy catching up but I still felt like I was operating through a sea of mud in a strange city.

Even the house had that familiarly unfamiliar feel to it though I’d been gone for only a week. I found myself pacing through it before I could feel at home enough to go to sleep, as if I had just arrived here for vacation and the idea of feeling comfortable enough to sleep was laughable. When I woke during the night (only once, at 3 a.m.) I was freezing, but when Bee first woke up at quarter-to-six, I thought the air conditioner had quit. I could barely feel the air moving, the unit sounded like it was churning laboriously out in the living room, and the return wasn’t whooshing in the back hall like it usually does. Had the 100+ degree temps we’d experienced the entire week we were gone killed the a/c…or had I just forgotten what central air sounded like?

Later yesterday morning, when I was driving to the grocery store I had that same feeling. I felt off track; like the first few days after I had arrived home and I was driving around a city achingly familiar and yet strangely surreal because I hadn’t seen it in so long.

Even blogging – something I had relished when I had the time to write while I was back home – was hard to pick up again. Oh, sure, my two-sentence, I’m-here-but-I’m-not post was easy as pie, but I tried writing one of several posts I’ve already thought out and nothing happened. I couldn’t do it. It was there, but not. Just like me.

Is it me, or this in-between unsettling for you guys, too?

I’m baaaaack…sort of.

The thing about vacations is that when the sun finally comes out, you try to cram a million things into each day and don’t have time to post blogs when you finally collapse, exhausted. Or maybe that’s just me.

But I’ve returned home (sweet blessed bed!) and I will hopefully post a few of the zillions of stories I have to tell. But first I have to deal with piles of laundry, a lawn gone wild, an air conditioner that may or may not be working (in 100+ degree weather) and a broken coffee maker.

Ah, Casa de Katie – how I’ve missed it.

This post won’t set the world on fire.

You know how there are these little things, these tiny details, about home that make it home? Things that wouldn’t mean anything or hold any interest for anyone else, but mean the world to those who live there? My mom’s kitchen table is one of those things.

The table used to belong to her mom; one of just a few items my mom has that belonged to her. It isn’t much to look at: dark wooden legs that jut out from a two-tone tan, thin ceramic top. To me, it’s very 60′s looking, although it must have been purchased long before that. It has character and I would love to inherit it. It has sentimental value, it’s practical (with the ceramic top, you never have to worry about dings or scratches or setting hot pans down on top of it), and oh the memories it holds from my own childhood.

Last night my sister, brother and I were sitting at the table playing cards – a common sight when we’re together. And when we’re playing cards, we like to put our feet up on the little “shelves” created but the wooden beam that connects the four table legs. Because of a decorative piece that comes down from the box that the table top rests on, there is just enough space for one foot at each corner of the table. I’m making a mess of describing this, I know, but the point is that we all fight over whose foot gets to rest there. Getting one of those spots is a MAJOR victory. As we were playing cards, there may or may not have been a foot war, and my sister may or may not have tried to win by putting her cold, wet foot on top of mine – clearly hoping for a win-by-Ick Factor. Too bad I had socks on and didn’t care. Heh.

It’s just one of those simple things that means I’m home, among family, among people who appreciate my mom’s kitchen table and all of the memories it holds.

Rain, rain go away.

Today is it raining. Again. It rained on Saturday when we flew in. It rained yesterday, through our trip to the Science Center. And today it is raining again. It’s hard enough to think of a day’s worth of fun activities for toddlers without throwing rain into the mix. Everything that comes to mind has to be put off for (hopefully) better weather. Trip to Old Sturbridge Village? Delayed. Trip to see the Quabbin or the dam? Not today. Even a walk around the block must be put off, at least until the showers ease a little. It’s tough when Grandma doesn’t own a dryer and it’s too damp for your jeans to dry properly. It limits the things you can do in the rain that insists on falling from the sky.

This morning’s activities weren’t bothered by the rain, at least. We visited my Auntie Cheryl’s house for brunch. My extended family is all very close. My mom is one of seven and I was always close to my aunts and uncles and the hordes of cousins. We were particularly close with my Auntie Cheryl and Uncle Teddy’s family. My cousin Shayne would often spend the afternoon and many, many, many nights at our house, and my brother would spend just as much time at their house playing with our cousin Kene. It worked out very well.

The timing this week worked out just as well; after Kim and I bought our plane tickets, we emailed Shayne (who is working on her PhD in Ohio right now) to see if there was any way she could swing a visit when we would be home. As luck would have it, she planned on being home for a conference the same week we were. The angels sang and there were hearts and unicorns and it was lovely. So that’s how we ended up over at Auntie Cheryl’s house for brunch this morning. The girls played with every toy Auntie Cheryl could pull out, we were able to visit with Auntie Cheryl and Nana (her mom), and Kim and Rhi and I got to catch up with Shayne. Even my other cousin Hillary was able to come over for our Ladies’ Bruncheon. It was lovely.

[As a completely unrelated aside, my youngest sister just came upstairs to ask me if I wanted more coffee. She took my empty mug and went to fix me some more. And then she brought it back upstairs to me. I pink puffy heart vacation.]

The very favorite part of my visit – aside from the heaping platefuls of good food and showing off my girlies – was being plied for embarrassing stories by Shayne’s friend Jill. Shayne’s friend and another colleague were staying with her
this week. They were both sweet and fun and talkative (must-haves) and asked us to spill our guts about our youthful hijinks (super-bonus). We talked about playing Barbie fashion shows, and how my mom (the judge) would never pick the Barbie with wrinkly clothes, so we would actually iron our Barbie clothes. And Shayne brought out pictures of the three of us from Halloween. And we talked about how Kim and I would try to hide Shayne as a stowaway when we used to visit, and one time we made it to the top of her street. We didn’t know what to do – we had always tried to hide her and we had finally done it! But Mom would be so mad if she had to drive her all the way back home…

Fun times, fun times. I already can’t wait to see everyone again! And now that I’ve cheered myself back up, I’m going to peek out the window and see what we can do about this rain…

And on the first day….

…we traveled. It was a super-long day and in some ways just as horrible as I’d pictured and in others simply a breeze. It’s hard to remember it all because right now I’m sitting up in my old bedroom on my sister’s bed, drinking some coffee that my brother made while I blog and catch up on emails. I have the window open so I can enjoy the cool breeze (it’s 60 degrees outside) and listen to the rain.

Calm. I feel so calm right now. And happy to be home.

I’ll tell you all about the travelling some other time, but it’s a long drawn-out story (of a long-drawn out day) and I really don’t have the courage to look back on it right now. Remember – calm and coffee-fied. Instead I’ll tell you about our outing today. We – my brother, sisters and I – took the girls to the Science Center. It was a favorite hang-out of ours when we were little, and with the cool, wet weather, an indoor children’s museum seemed just the thing.

The girls had a blast. The museum has two floors of hands-on exhibits. A play area with puppet-shows, a massive boat, a caged ferret, a magnetic table, so on and so forth. An interactive lights display. Displays and telescope stations with bugs and sea shells. And some exhibits that were still there from when we were little. A room full of stuffed animals from the African plains, rocks and gems and geodes, and lots of animals: snakes, owls, and more varieties of turtles than I knew existed.

[As I'm typing this from my spot next to the open window, I can hear people downstairs because the kitchen window is open. I had forgotten that about this house. Ah, sweet nostalgia.]

After tearing through the inside of the Science Center, we decided to traipse around the outside of the museum, where there are plenty of animal exhibits. It was varying between a steady mist and actual rainfall, and we only had the one umbrella, but we just didn’t seem to care. We’re on vacation, remember? So off we traipsed. We saw their famous polar bear, Kenda. I remember when Kenda was born 25 years ago. She was frolicking in the water and the girls got to see her swim underwater through a huge window. Kenda would swim up the glass and seem to play with them before swimming away and repeating her routine. We saw foxes and vultures, pheasants and owls. We tried to ride the train, but it was closed until 3 p.m. So we strolled over to the otters on the other side of the center…only to find the otters were closed, too. Uncle Joey proposed to Gracie, who was upset, that the otters were fixing the train. Thankfully, after stopping by to check out yet more owls and the Bald Eagles, it was time to ride the train. The otters are excellent mechanics, I must say. At one point, the train loops back through a dark tunnel and the children are encouraged to scream. Gracie turned around and announced, “I screamed!” to which her uncle responded, “Ice Cream?!” Gracie busted out in giggles like he had told the most hilarious joke in the whole entire world. It sounds like just a ho-hum day to everyone else, I’m sure, but to me it’s like coming home. Only better, because I have my two most favorite people in the whole world here to enjoy it with me. And that puts a whole new spin on things.

God, I can’t wait to see what other craziness this vacation has in store.

An update or two (and I haven’t even left).

I am running around like a madwoman today trying to get all of those last minute things packed. Let’s just hope those beautiful girls of mine are part pack-mule because HOOOO-LY CRAP are those backpacks heavy!

And so I’m running around packing stuff, trying to remember what I haven’t packed (mental list=very long) and what I haven’t even thought of yet to pack (terrifying thought), when I realized that I’ve already lost the second pair of headsets. I had one headset that I found last weekend (…or was it the weekend before?). That doesn’t matter. The point is, I had one set and so I went out and bought another ($20 for a pair of headphones!!) and now I’m missing the first pair that I thought I had. Losing. my. mind.

The second thing is that I seem to be getting a lot of hits from a certain Facebook page. And my stats are off the charts. And my archives are being rifled through. Oh, wait! I know why! My Ex found the blog. (Hello, Ex!) I knew it was inevitable, but I didn’t think it would happen so soon. So. While I sort out this whole trippy, double-consciousness thing and figure out whether or not I’m going to filter my writing, please play nice in the comments. No matter how vent-y I’ve been in previous posts, he is still the girls’ dad and I’d like to co-parent in peace, if not in friendship.

Now. I have exactly twelve hours until my girlfriend is driving us to the airport, so if someone could come please tranquilize me and help me find my headphones? Iwouldloveyouforever, thanks.