Dora vs. Princesses

I am sad to announce that Ellie has discovered the Princesses. It all started with the Sleeping Beauty plastic heels that Peter got her. She had a couple of Princess things before, but she hadn't really been exposed to them. Now she is aware, and these darn Princesses are EVERYWHERE. Seriously. Grocery store, library, school, restaurants...

I'm encouraging her interest in Dora for several reasons. Number one: She said she wanted a Dora birthday party and I already came up with a lot of fun ideas. Number two: I think Dora has more moral values (sharing, learning Spanish, accepting differences, friendship) than Princesses (being pretty and having princes fall in love with you). Number three: I can't think of a number three, but the first two are good enough.

Peter has been fueling the Princess fire like crazy. Since the shoes (and a princess camera), he's gotten her a huge book full of Disney stories with all the Princesses on the cover (serves him right that all the stories are beyond her level and super boring, but she insists he read them to her), a Princess activity set with coloring books, dot-to-dot, stories, stickers, and markers (again, mostly beyond her level, but Sammy had fun coloring Snow White when he and Gina baby-sat), and the Cinderella DVD (we thought she'd fall asleep reading it, but she just kept asking questions, so Peter announced "The end!" at the part where the clock struck midnight, and she didn't even know any better).

As much as I like Dora better, there are some things that really bother me about the show. Some I've mentioned already, such as the proportions of Big Red Chicken changing to fit whatever need he plays in the show (Are they going to ride him? Big. Is he just hanging out with them? Not so big.). OK, it's mostly proportional stuff being inconsistent. And I mean from one frame to the next. Benny is stuck in a hole, but when he gets out, the whole is wider than he is tall. The other day, there was a dragon that cast this humongous shadow. He consistently had a shadow, although Boots and Dora standing next to him had no shadow. In fact, NOTHING had a shadow except for the dragon. I know these artists are working on a kiddie show, but are they really lacking that much integrity to only have a shadow for one character?! Really, people.

Sorry. I don't know what motivated this tirade. Don't anyone out there ever expose my child to Barbie. Ever.

Endearing moments

What makes babies prefer one person over another? Strange. The first person Ellie ever had stranger anxiety towards was Sammy. Unfortunate, because she saw him all the time and he always showered her with affection. She got over it pretty quickly, but still. Matthew still doesn't really care if strangers hold him, but he clearly knows when it's a stranger versus someone he knows. The first person he showed stranger anxiety towards was Daniel, who works in Peter's office. He is the sweetest, happiest, smiliest person I've ever known. Seriously. He broke his ankle and was in severe pain, but he smiled through it all, even when describing the horrific sound his bone made when it broke. Anyway, Matthew stared at him suspiciously for a long time. Random.

Ellie is being really affectionate lately. She'll come up to me randomly and give me a kiss or tell me she loves me. Peter said she doesn't do that to him yet, but she'll go and give him hugs randomly. The other day in the car, out of the blue, Ellie looks at Matthew in his carseat and cries frantically, "Matthew! I love you so much! You know I love you? I really really love you!" So sweet! She loves giving him hugs, too. She hugs him and kisses him and tells him she loves him several times a day.

Anyway, my mom is always ordering Ellie to show affection to her. "Who gave you yummy food? Grandma did. Kiss Grandma." "Say, 'I love you Grandma'." "Tell Grandma I love you so much." Most of this is to no avail. My stubborn and snobby daughter will more often than not completely ignore Grandma, or give in with marginal affection ("I just give you a hug."). HOWEVER, get her with Grandpa and she's all over him. Hugs, kisses, "I love you so much"-es, even when he reminds her of his conditional love for him.

Strangely, and rather conveniently, Matthew has a clear preference for Grandma over Grandpa. He'll stare at Grandpa, albeit calmly, but won't really play with him. Grandma, on the other hand, is fun and exciting to Matthew. He cries when she leaves the room. He laughs when she picks him up. He smiles when he sees her, even if only in passing. Again, random. But convenient, as afore mentioned. One for each.

Raising newborns can be fairly unrewarding. Most of the time, they just sleep, poop, eat, and require cleaning. No smiles, no affection. Yet most parents are enamored with their non-funcitonal newborn and can't stop talking about them. What's definitely rewarding is when the baby starts reacting more and responding to you.

Matthew's in this super cute stage where he is starting to respond to cues and requests. For instance, in the bathtub I'll tell him to kick kick kick. He responds with an excited smile and splashy kicking. More endearing than that is if I ask where Mommy is, he'll look for me. So far, he'll only look for Mommy, Daddy, Ellie, and Grandma. They're probably the only people he knows for sure. Anyway, I was holding him on my lap, but he was standing with his back towards me. Every time I'd ask where Mommy was, he'd crane his neck and twist his whole body to find me. Then when he saw me, he'd smile like crazy. So cute!

Another thing he does that's particularly endearing is grin from ear to ear everytime he sees a reflection of the two of us in the mirror. Now the words "Matty and Mommy!" trigger a smile. Fun stuff. I'm liking having a baby. If only he'd stop biting me with his four crazy teeth...

Multi-tasking

Peter often accuses me of not being a good multi-tasker. He says this because he'll ask me to do stuff and I won't always do it right away. HOWEVER, many of my mom friends have praised me for my multi-tasking abilities. I've decided that I'm good at multi-tasking mom stuff that I've already planned out in my head. If he asks me to do something that I haven't thought about and worked into my schedule earlier, it throws me off. Hence, I simply ignore his request with the assurance that if he really needed it done, he'd do it himself (since he considers me so bad at multi-tasking). Catch 22, but in a way that's beneficial to me both ways. Heh heh.

The other night, Peter said he'd be home at 6:30. So I was hanging out, playing with Ellie and stuff when he unexpectedly came home at 5:15. From 5:20 to 6:20, here's what I did. Baked two loaves of pumpkin bread I'd made from scratch (I'd already made the batter earlier when the kids were napping), fold a load of laundry, do a sinkful of dishes, make Matthew's butternut squash puree, write out a new grocery list, throw away some stuff in our fridge that had gone bad, make rice, make kimchee jigae, pan fry some fish for Ellie, cook more fish for me and Peter, look up and print out a recipe online for house church that week, set the table, and serve dinner.

Of course, I was doing all of them at once. Mostly because I have no brain these days. I would start the bread, put the mixing bowls in the sink, start doing dishes, the dryer timer would go off, I'd stop dishes, go to the laundry, fold and start putting it away, be reminded by Matthew's clean bibs that I needed to finish his food, puree some squash, think about the fact that I needed to get more vegetables for him, write out a grocery list, check the fridge to see what I needed, get grossed out and start throwing stuff away, see the fish and start cooking it, make the rest of dinner, go online while it was cooking, save the dinner from burning, etc.

Anyway, I got sick this week. I don't get sick very often, but when I do I'm just the biggest baby. Totally non-functional. This was weird, though. I'm sure my mom will say it's due to the fact that I wore tank tops and went barefoot after having babies, but I get this chill down to my bones. One night I was in flannel pajamas, covered in two blankets, and had Peter holding me. I couldn't stop shivering for half an hour. I finally stopped because I fell asleep from exhaustion, I think. My skin gets super sensitive, too. I can only wear flannel pajama pants, or I feel like my clothes are chafing my skin off. It's really weird. I feel like an old lady. Oh, the cold weather's puttin' a chill in me bones! Apparently, I'm an old pirate lady.

What was my point? (No brains) Oh yeah. So the house has been in complete disarray since I've been nonfunctional (although Peter said it didn't look that much messier than usual, I knew it was). Finally I'm feeling normal again, so I went and bought some plants for our front yard, pulled out some dead ones, weeded, met some neighbors for the first time, made dinner, did dishes, spent 20 minutes trying to figure out how to collapse the bassinet that's been sitting around for months, collapsed the bassinet, put garland on our bannister, put up some other Christmas decorations, organized my bathroom counter, refilled my diaper bag, organized Ellie's Pull Ups and Matthew's diapers, learned that I could've earned a whole lot of money for my kids' college education through UPromise, signed up for UPromise, discovered I maxed out my monthly uploads on flickr, and uploaded some videos. Here they are:

Random stories

Ellie really likes Genie in a Bottle, we've discovered (or, as she calls it, The Song From the Game). She kept chanting "There's a price you have to say" earlier this week. I thought it was maybe from a song she learned at the retreat last weekend. Turns out it's from Genie in a Bottle. Now she knows several lines: If you want to be with me there's a price you have to pay. You gotta rub me the right way. Oh-oh-oh-oh-oh, my body's saying, "let's go." Oh-oh-oh-oh-oh, but my heart is saying "no". Yes, she knows the redeeming line of the song now. She wants me to sing it ALL the time, which I'm reluctant to do, but it's just so funny. And bad. Mostly funny. But still bad.

Also, it finally happened. I mentioned before that Ellie's baby dolly tends to develop at the same rate as Matthew. She discovered yesterday that Baby Dolly can sit up, scooch, hold cereal (Matthew can just hold it. He spent, like, 5 minutes trying to get it in his mouth, then have it stay there.), and say Mama. Last night, though, Baby Dolly started breastfeeding. I was wondering when it was going to happen. I think Ellie finally acknowledged the breastfeeding because it contrasts with the actual food eating that Matthew's doing now. Anyway, her teachers told me that at school today she nursed a doll. They thought it was hilarious.

Ellie has yet to get back to normal after our two weekends away from home. For two nights, she had tantrums exceeding 2 hours at bedtime and ended up sleeping after 11. Crazy. Matthew, on the other hand, was never really on a regular schedule to begin with, so he's just fine. He goes to bed around 7 these days, which NEVER happened with Ellie. Anyway, Ellie's craziness is making me crazy, too. I think the sleep deprivation is getting to her, though, because she keeps telling me she's tired. She used to always just be in denial that she ever needed sleep at all. And last night she fell asleep at 9. Peter and I were shocked at how early it was when we were hanging out last night. Hopefully this will stick...

On a higher note, Ellie has figured out opposites. We got a Blue's Clues book from the library last week that had about 6 examples, and she totally got it after we read it once or twice. Next time you see her, ask her what the opposite of something is. Of course she wouldn't do it for her teacher, but she really does know it. She got all frustrated when she asked me what the opposite of "remote" was, and I told her there was no opposite. She also says the opposite of Matthew is Daddy and the opposite of Ellie is Mommy.

So Matthew has discovered scooching. He actually is pretty close to commando crawling. Meaning, it takes a long time, but he can travel pretty good distances. I guess napping on the bed is no longer an option for us. He's excellent at rotating around. One thing he's figured out is that there's always a pacifier in the bed with him when he sleeps. It's pretty great, actually, because he'll wake up, look for it, find it, stick it in his mouth, and go back to sleep. What a nice boy.

Speaking of nice boy, I have both kids sleeping now. I've gotten fairly good at manipulating their schedules so the naps coincide. I gotta use the time wisely. Gonna go watch Felicity and eat chocolate. Yes!

Oh be careful little ears what you hear...

Ellie is totally at the age where she repeats anything and everything. And she remembers EVERYTHING. So much to the point that Danny decided to try an experiment with her. He told her that when she turned 5, he'd buy her a bicycle. Then he determined never to mention it again, to see if she'd remember. Unfortunately, she asks about it almost daily, so I think Danny's going to be buying a bike in 2 and a half years.

When we were at Danny and Jieun's place we played quite a bit of Karaoke Revolution. I didn't think Ellie was paying much attention, but as always, she was. Someone sang Genie in a Bottle. It's a catchy song, so Peter and I both kinda kept singing it every once in awhile. I guess something about it intrigued Ellie; maybe the fact that it was so different from the songs she was used to hearing (mostly Sesame Street and kids' praise songs).

So today we're in the car and this guy next to us is blasting some R&B stuff. Ellie says, "That song is coming from another car."
"Yes", I reply.
"What is it, Mama?"
"Umm... that's kinda crazy music."
Long pause. "My body's saying, 'Let's go.'"
"What?!" I ask.
"My body's saying, 'Let's go.' The song from the game."

Uh, OOPS! Of course, I died laughing after I realized what she was talking about, so of course, now she says it as much as possible. I told Peter about it, and as soon as he got home from work he sang to her, "Whoa-oa-oa-oa-oa..." To which she promptly replied, "My body's saying, 'Let's go.'" I tried to teach her the part that immediately follows, "But my heart is saying, 'No.'" That hasn't stuck as well.

Another recent incident was that Ellie had performed her booty dance for her teacher. I asked what Mrs. Meier said after Ellie did it, and Ellie said, "Mrs. Meier laugh and laugh." I chuckled, but then Ellie says, "Mama. Mrs. Meier have a big butt." Umm.... "Did you tell Mrs. Meier that?" "No..." "OK. Don't tell her that. Don't tell anyone that." Yikes!

I remember when I taught, the kids would tell me ALL kinds of stuff. My lazy uncle just sits around in his underwear all day. Daddy slept in the guest room last night. My mom wants to call the police to come arrest my brother. I wonder what Ellie will share about us...!