11/30/06 Julian in music class

I took a little camera-video of Julian in music class today. The rest of the class is dancing and playing, and as usual, he is the only one just sitting! (Well, he's next to a mom holding a 9-day-old newborn, she didn't get up then either.) He always does this, acting like a little zombie. But at home, he sings along with CDs, makes up his own words to songs, and sings all the time.

The first time everyone else in music class had any idea that Julian could talk was today, when the teacher sang a song about sweet potatoes. Then he went around the room, asking each kid what they like to eat. He started with Julian, who surprised everyone (including me) by answering clearly and very sincerely, "I like to eat broccoli." Most kids answer with a single word, often shouted in glee, but Julian took this task very seriously. It made the whole room smile, including me. When he's not around Gabriel, I get comments all the time about what a sweet, mellow little boy he is.

Actually, Gabriel sings all the time too. His latest is "Hickory Dickory Dock," to which he puts in his own words describing what he's doing at the moment. This afternoon I heard him singing "each one a different color," and then various crayon colors, as he worked on coloring a backhoe drawing in his truck coloring book. He sings to himself and works on coloring, mazes or connect-the-dot (if I can find one for him with numbers that go high enough; he picks an arbitrary number and usually the connect-the-dot books we have don't go up that high) for hours at a time. I love listening to him.

Gabriel being Gabriel of course puts his own twist on coloring. If the drawing has sections that aren't closed figures, such as a mountain outline that trails off, he won't color it. It has to be completely enclosed.

Also, when he was showing me his work on the backhoe, he referred to every color as a number. Apparently each crayon has a number next to its color name. He knows the color names too ("carrot orange," "melon," etc), but when describing his work, he says that an area was colored with crayon number 10.

Katrina is 8 weeks old today! She's in a pretty good predictable pattern now, which includes times of unpredictability. At night, she wakes up once or twice, and for the most part, goes right back to sleep after nursing. In the morning, she's often awake for about an hour, usually happily, then gets a good long sleep from which I usually have to wake her to keep up the 3-hour schedule. I don't always do so, depending on how tired I am, but I try. Same in the afternoon -- a long snooze, then usually awake to nurse again in the late afternoon.

Dinnertime for the boys can be dicey; she usually needs to go back to sleep around then and starts to have a harder time doing so. From there, she has more tired crying, less sleeping and more waking up. After some sleep and nursing, I give her a bath, and lately that's been calming her if she's crying, though I also try to do it right after nursing so she's in a better mood.

After bath, she's almost always tired and crying, so that is really truly bedtime. Sometimes it can take hours to get her really to sleep; other times, like tonight, it's minutes.

When she is awake and happy, she is absolutely delightful, kicking around, cooing, smiling at nothing in particular at all. I'm sure I have mom-amnesia, but I don't remember the boys being quite this energetic when happy. I wonder how she'll feel about being tossed around and going upside-down. At about 4 months old, it was clear that Gabriel couldn't get enough of that, and Julian could well do without it. And that said a lot about their personalities today.

Oh! How could I forget. Tonight, I got all three kids fed and to bed single-handedly!! Dave had to work late, to prepare for a business trip he's taking next week. This was good preparation for me too, though we're in an odd state with everyone sleeping downstairs. In some ways, that actually makes it easier since everything is so close -- I can spend a few minutes cleaning up dinner while the boys are in the bath! Katrina was awake and crying and fussy while the boys were in the bath, but I managed to get her down for a nap long enough to get them to bed. Then Julian got up with some lame-ass excuse while I was in the bath with Katrina (the giant Jacuzzi tub downstairs is too big to bathe her leaning over it, so I have to get in with her). But I pulled it off, somehow. Good thing, because I'll have to do it three nights in a row next week.

One thing about doing it all single-handedly is to do everything early. Tonight the boys sat down to dinner at 6pm, and pretty much finished by 6:45pm. I shoot to start the bed-bath routine for the boys at 7pm. Katrina didn't allow that tonight, but I did get them started around 7:15pm, way earlier than we used to, and they were in bed by 8:20pm. It'll go a lot faster when they're back in their own room and aren't screwing around in the "camp-out" living room.

The house stinks from floor staining and the first coat of finishing, and there's more tomorrow. I can't wait for this part to be done!

11/30/06