Why Peeper Needs Two Moms

Mama's idea of pipe cleaner fun:

Mommy's idea of pipe cleaner fun:

It's all about the balance.

Immortalized in Oil

Anonydaddy has a patient who paints oil portraits. Several years ago, she did one of him, and then another. A few years back, he commissioned one of Anonymama, and the Christmas after their fiftieth anniversary, he had her do one from a photo of the two of them at the big party.

So, I guess I shouldn't have been surprised, and yet I was blown away, when we and BabyBro's family each received a painting based on the bluebonnet photos of the kids from last spring.

He told us that he'd given her the whole set of photos from that day, and the final product was actually a composite, evidently of these two photos.

As you can see, she took a bit of artistic license to make the whole better than the sum of its parts - taking out the Bumbos and teaching the then-six-month-old twins to sit up, and getting rid of all the non-bluebonnet flowers, for example.

We got it framed to match collages of our family photos, and I picked it up this evening.

When I got done hanging everything, I asked Peeper "How's it look?" and she said, "Pretty."

Given that it's a whole wall of her, I'd say that's a pretty good assessment.

Getting My Dollar's Worth Out of That Headband

Is it too early to start dressing for Valentine's Day?

I said, "Show me what's on your shirt." She said, "No, no, noo-OOO" and hid up against the door!

Where did the headband go?

I gotchur headband right here!

Goofus.

Black and White and Red Up Top

I'm pretty sure I've already posted photos of Peeper in this same get-up, but it's just so cute, I couldn't resist.

Bits and Pieces of Language

This morning, I was asleep on my back, and Peeper was, as usual, beside me nursing.

(Yeah, my boobs do that.)

Through the fog, I heard her sleepy little voice ask for, "uh si' pease."

As I rolled toward her, she looked at me and said, "Hey, Mama!" as though she were surprised to find me there.

You know, attached to my breast.

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"Other side, please."

That "please" just slays me.

As does "Sank you, Mama" and "Foof me, doggy." ('scuse me)

Manners. Where the hell did my kid get manners?

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A few days ago, I was pissing and moaning to Shrike about "Oh my aching back" (I am forty-two years old. I have a toddler. My back aches.) when Peeper started climbing all over me, saying "Tiss! Tiss!"

I figured she was asking for one, so I was trying to grab her hand to kiss the scratch she got at Target, and couldn't figure out why she wasn't cooperating.

Finally she said, "Tiss. Mama back."

And then she did.

And you know what, it kind of felt a little bit better.

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She's been rocking the two-word phrases since our trip to Texas, then last week, during the great toy relocation project, I wasn't even paying attention to what she had, until she handed me a toy and said, "Wind it up."

Verb. Object. Preposition.

That's an honest to God, diagramable sentence right there, folks.

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There have been more. The things she repeats tend to run together with the things she makes up on her own, but I know there have been more.

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Humhummuh is now almost always "San-tah Caws!" and snowmen are something not quite spellable, but clearly "snowman" rather than "myan-myan" which is also her word for "man" and "mailman" and, probably, any other compound word ending in "man."

Doggies are no longer "dada" and cats are "cat" or "kitty" but very rarely "yow yow" anymore.

And if she's talking about our critters, she often calls them by their proper names.

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She's into greeting people and animals and inanimate objects. There's not much more adorable than "Hew-ow, Mama!" unless maybe it's "Hew-ow, Snowman!"

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Her Little People farm includes a brown horse, who is all rounded and bloated and non-chokey, like all the new-fangled Little People. Out of the corner of an eye, he always looks like a pile of poop.

We made the mistake of talking about it, and now his name is "Poop Horse."

And it is HIGH-larious.

An Update on the Baby#2 Plans

Let's see, where did I leave off . . .

Oh yes, I think the last time I actually posted about this little project was in October, right after Shrike's fibroid surgery, when I said that they'd removed it all and didn't expect there to be any more issues with it.

Well, not so much.

When she went for another mock transfer in November, Dr E discovered that a bit of the fibroid had pushed out of the uterine wall, and would require a second surgery. This time it would be less of a big deal though, and could be done in their farther-away office (where we did our IVF and weekend/holiday monitoring before) rather than in the actual hospital.

That sounds like a good thing, except that office is still an hour and a half away, but unlike the hospital, it doesn't allow children at all, so we would have to figure out how to handle it with Peeper.

Dr E consulted with TN (the study coordinator) and said that she told her this wouldn't throw us off for prescreening, we could screen with the beginning of her next cycle, then start on the pill, get the fibroid out and then get off the pill the following cycle.

So, on day one, I called and scheduled the prescreening, and left a message about it with TN.

She called me back later that day to say that no, we had to deal with the fibroid first, because if she sees it and "officially" knows about it, she would have to kick us out of the study, with no chance to get back in.

Yikes.

So, scratch that plan.

As it turned out, we scheduled the fibroid removal for while Peeper and I were in Texas. That timing worked well for the doctors, and I figured that if it "had to" be then, it was out of my control that I couldn't be there.

I could handle that a lot better than just sending her off to do it without me, and neither of us was comfortable with leaving Peeper for the seven hours or so that it would take to make the trip.

So, she did that on December 30 (her dad drove her down there) and last Friday, she had another mock transfer which this time showed that her uterus is all clear, with nothing funky going on. Finally!

We talked to TN last week, and she said that (assuming the mock went well, which it did) after a cycle off the pill (which she's in the middle of now) Shrike will be ready to prescreen.

Oh, except that they might not be ready for her just yet.

The study is running patients through in batches of twenty, and as of that conversation, they had eighteen prescreened and approved and ready to start their IVF cycles. So, basically she was just waiting on two women to start their periods and prescreen, and then they'll stop prescreening while all those women cycle. When they're done, they'll start prescreening again and do another twenty.

The odds are that by the time Shrike's next cycle starts in early February, they'll have that round full, but they should start prescreening again before she starts the following cycle in March.

So, what's most likely going to happen is that she'll prescreen in March and, assuming that everything still checks out (it's all checked out fine in the past, and there's really no reason that anything should have changed significantly since then, but we still won't believe it until we see it), she'll start the IVF cycle in early April, for a theoretical January 2012 due date, if things pan out as we hope.

I'm thinking I'll email TN next week, just to confirm that they have filled their twenty slots (I can't imagine that they wouldn't have) so that I can go ahead and firm up my plans for a trip to Texas in mid-March, between the prescreening and the beginning (knock wood) of the actual IVF cycle.

Of course, we are going to eventually (within the next 2 - 3 months, barring more delays) have to come up with a plan for making this trip tp the clinic without Peeper, or at least for her to not be allowed to go in once we get there.

Shrike's okay with going on her own for the various monitoring visits (there will be several and they will all be at the 90-minutes-away location) but I would very much like to go for the prescreening (it will include a discussion about the study protocol, consent forms and such), and really need to go for the first appointment of the IVF cycle, to get all the detailed instructions for the medication protocol (because Lord knows, Shrike won't remember a thing they say) and I am absolutely going to be there for retrieval and transfer, if we actually make it to that stage, as well as (knock knock knock) any baby-looking-at ultrasounds.

Right now, when Shrike's parents watch Peeper, it's usually only for a couple of hours, while we go to Dr T's or dinner or a MOMS-only activity with MOMS Club. She's done longer stretches (3 - 4 hours) just fine, but she's not used to it, and that's still a far cry from six or seven hours.

So, we need to discuss all this with them, and lay out a plan for some longer practice-run visits, a> to work up to that length of time, instead of suddenly jumping from 2 hours to 7, and b> to practice while we're in town, and can to go get her if it's not going well.

I think she'll probably do fine, but it's not fair to any of us to try to do it without preparation.

So, to that end, we've got tentative plans for her to go over there for about three hours tomorrow evenings, while we go to dinner - and then to Lowes, to exchange the ceiling tiles.

How's that for a romantic night out?

Christmas Flashback

Hey, remember how I alluded to "Peeper's project" that she was working on at Christmas time, which I couldn't say more about, so as to not blow any surprises?

Yeah, we've given those gifts now, so I suppose I can show it to you, huh?

In addition to the "real" gifts from us, Peeper gave these reindeer ornaments to the grandparents, aunts and uncles, along with a set of prints from our most recent photo shoot, and her Santa photos.

They are cut out from sheets of foam; the head is based on a tracing of her foot and the antlers are her hands. In addition to modelling, Peeper helped put on the googly eyes and red noses.

On the back, I cut out a little window to hold a teeny print of her Santa photo, and wrote this dorky little poem.

The dorky poem, in all its dorky glory.

Also: I looooove glue dots. What an amazing invention!

Coming Soon: Peeper's Letter of the Week

One of my resolutions goals fantasies for the new year is to do more intentional, structured, educational activities with Peeper.

What with her being all over her colors and shapes and really getting there with the numbers and letters, I figure she's interested and one should strike while the iron is hot, right?

Also, we need something to do with ourselves in the evenings, besides hanging out at Target, drinking Starbucks and spending money that we don't have.

Nothing too formal or schooly, more in line with the "Tot School" philosophy that I talked about a while back - just some semi-focused activities, with most of the actual "structure" being much more for my benefit than hers.

So, since I am an all-or-nothing, give me some rules to follow break kind of gal, who doesn't do too well with the loosey-goosey and the willy-nilly (ie - I'm lazy and need someone or something to force me to get off my ass and do it.) I figured I'd better make a plan, and what better structure to follow for teaching her the ABCs than, well, the ABCs.

There are several Letter of the Week™ sorts of curricula out there (okay, probably not so ™ if there are multiple ones, but you know what I mean), and that's really not what I'm doing.

I am however, using the letters, in order, as a jumping-off point for our activities. I've found some cute make-the-letter-look-like-something-that-starts-with-it and/or decorate-the-letter-with-something-that-starts-with-it sorts of crafts, which seems like a good way to kick off each week.

Then we'll probably talk about some other things that start with that letter, and do some activities about them.

And probably other stuff, too, that's completely unrelated to the letter.

Or, maybe we'll do a couple of crafts this week, and I'll see something shiny, and the next thing you know, it'll be time for kindergarten and she won't know her ABCs.

But, we're off to an awfully cute start!

Shown Up

As a result of that little waterfall in the basement, we lost a few ceiling tiles, so Peeper and I went to Lowes to buy some replacements.

Sidebar
When we bought the house, there was a stack of spare tiles in the basement. At some point during my tenure with the local Democratic Party, we were badly in need of some replacement tiles at our craphole of a headquarters, so I generously donated them.

Shortly after that, we were booted out of the building and our tile stayed behind. Then the whole building was renovated and I'm sure the tiles have been replaced. If they had any damn sense, they ditched the ugly drop ceiling in favor of the beautiful tin ceiling that we saw under (over?) it when we were replacing tiles.

Point being: We had tiles. I gave away tiles. Now we have to buy tiles. I'm a dumbass. It gets better, and dumber.

So, we're at Lowes, and they have both square and rectangular tiles, and I can't remember for the life of me which we have.

Shrike and Peeper spend a good bit of time in the basement (Peeper thinks it's big fun to play down there, not only with the small stash of toys, but mostly with all the stuff that stored there that she shouldn't be playing in.) and I knew that Shrike had counted the damaged ones the other day, so I figured she'd know.

Another sidenote - She was counting them, pointing with a pen or something, so Peeper went and got her toy screwdriver and pointed it at the ceiling and started counting, too.

So, I called Shrike and she wasn't sure either. I asked Peeper and she was quite confident in her answer.

There were two votes for rectangular and one vote for square, so I went with the majority and bought the rectangular ones.

I wrestled them into the cart, then a very nice man helped me to wrestle them into my car. I figured I'd leave them in the car until Shrike could help me get them in the house, but before we do that, I should probably go downstairs and take a look to see what we actually need.

Guess which one of us was right?

I knew we should have believed her.

She is much more observant than we are, and her little memory isn't cluttered up with forty-plus years of crap.

When will we learn?

Sharing

This was not my idea.