Inevitably Keely

Earlier today, Zoe asked me (for the 1st time) about the scars on her forehead. Frankly, I was sort of surprised she hadn't asked me sooner. Zoe is very interested in her appearance - I wouldn't say overly so, but she is on top of what she will wear daily and she does make hairstyle requests. I took a deep breath and told her someone was not driving safely and they accidentally ran their car into ours (September 27, 2009). I told her that her and Finn's car seats kept them safe, but glass from her window got her. She asked me if it hurt my heart and I said it did, but that I felt like that day was one of the luckiest of my entire life. She asked me "It could have been much worse?" I said yes and she said: "If I had gone to heaven I would have always been with you still." And my heart broke a little, but I told her she was right and that I'm glad that she's with me now. She said she wished the marks would go away, that they aren't very pre...

Sometimes, we forget that Zoe isn't actually a teenager what with her vocabulary, sense of humor and intelligence. She watches us and the world around her so carefully and she really does take it all in. My little girl has an old soul. I remember thinking it as I watched her sleep as a newborn. I remember telling her not to grow up too fast when she slammed her door on me and quickly turned on her radio and cranked it loud; she was, after all - barely one year old. I worry sometimes, (like I'm sure all parents do) about how much she is like me. I witness her sensitivity on a daily basis. I see her eyes well up quickly if she accidentally makes a mess or if her little brother picks on her. I worry that I've let her see me cry too many times and that I've made her feel less than safe. Our accident of course comes to mind here. I can still hear myself screaming and crying as that truck hit us. I wonder if she remembers? I wonder if she feels the same fear I do that it will...

This morning (once I realized Zoe was being more quiet than usual) I found my daughter in my bathroom. One of my lipsticks was in her left hand, fully extended and ready to apply all over her face, no doubt. The rest of my makeup lay scattered on the floor haphazardly. Pieces of my jewelry were strewn about her person: bracelets on her arms, multiple necklaces draped over her neck and a few over her princess crown and kitty ears that she’d decided on wearing earlier. In her right hand was a large clump of more jewelry... I’m not sure exactly what she had planned for it. She looked like she was either a pirate, a burglar, or perhaps an over accessorized beauty queen. When our eyes met, there was a moment of hesitation before we acted. I simultaneously wanted to grab my camera and scold her for the mess. She wanted to run with her loot while explaining why she had to have all this stuff. Zoe was faster than me. As she raced passed me and through the door into my bedroom, she yelled out ...

you're a theatre person and/or a mom to a toddler when you find yourself making up songs* about the asshats you share the road** with. P-R-I,C,K I,C,K I,C,K P-R-I-C-K You are a Prick! ck,ck,ck Further proof: *** Last night I sung an impromptu duet with my daughter about bedtime. Impromptu because my portion of the song is verses I made up a while ago about it being time for bed and how little girls... and now, little boys - need their sleep. Zoe's portion is new, as far as I know and it's about how it is not time for bed but in fact, time to "PLAY THE DRUM!" and "DANCE!" She harmonized perfectly with me and managed to overlap with my portion of the song in such a way that it sounded like we'd been singing this song exactly this way for AGES. I've said it before, but 1. We have a lot of fun in this house. 2. Zoe seems to be musically inclined and a GENIUS. * - Zoe was not in the car with me and Finn was asleep. ** - I'm driving again. V...

A couple months ago, Daniel and I signed Zoe up for her first dance class. We thought it would be good for her to have a fun activity for the summer that would allow her to make new friends and take advantage of her love of performing. We were also hoping that a dance class might teach her to follow directions a little bit better and instill as much discipline and focus as possible for a 2 year old. We didn't have huge expectations - humble ones, actually. I figured at worst, there's nothing cuter than a kid in a tutu, prancing around to music... and multiply that by infinity when it's your kid. So we prepared her. We talked about how she was going to get to take a dance class. We read her a book about ballerinas. We got her a couple leotards with tutu's, tap shoes, ballet shoes, and a special "monkey ballerina" dance bag. She was excited. We were excited. After weeks of hyping up the dance class, I got butterflies this morning as we got Zoe ready. Would she b...

Mommy? Yes? Mama! Yes, honey? Mamaaaa!! Yes, Zoe? What's that? Mama's pumping. What's that? Mama's making milk for our baby. What's that? It's milk. PAUSE. Chocolate. No. Just regular milk for the baby. Chocolate milk? No. Plain milk, for the baby. LONG PAUSE. What's that? It's mama's pump. So she can make milk for our baby. Mama? Yes, Zoe? What's that? It's milk, honey. Just like what mama used to do for you. Good job, mama! Thank you, Zoe. Zoe has been telling me "good job" a lot lately. Whether I'm changing her or Finnegan's diaper, pumping, fixing her breakfast, reading to her, etc, she will look at me square in the eye, nod her head and tell me "Good job, mama." After a particularly horrible diaper of hers last week, she smiled and said, "GREAT job, mama!" I've never been one to feel under appreciated by Daniel or the kids, but these extra words of encouragement from Zoe have been lovely to hear....

My girl has music in her heart. Have a great weekend.

She is my light, my inspiration, my joy, and my amazingly beautiful little girl. I simply cannot believe how quickly she has become a little girl since we brought her home almost two years ago. See the individual pics HERE .

In a matter of days, Finnegan will be three months old. That is so crazy for me to even imagine. In some ways it feels like he has been a part of our family for years, like his place is with me and Daniel and his sister. Like there was always this place carved out for him with us and he is exactly where he is supposed to be. And sometimes I look at him and how much he has grown and how interactive he has become and I ask him how this is even possible because we just brought him home! He is supposed to be little and delicate, but he isn't. He is my big, strong, three month old with a killer smile, flirty eyes, quick temper and lively personality. Things weren't easy at first. For the first few weeks that Finnegan was home, I cried every single day. I cried when Zoe cried and when Finnegan cried. I cried when I was away from Zoe. I cried when I needed a break. I cried because of television shows and movies. I cried because we had ants in the house. I cried because I was exhausted...

Last Tuesday was Finnegan's first full day away from the house and me. Daniel and I carefully got him ready and loaded him up in his car seat. I loaded a bag with 20 diapers, 4 burp cloths, 3 changes of clothes and five bottles of my milk for his nine hour stay at Cheryl's*. And as we were securing him in his seat, I might have cried... just a little bit. And then I went back to sleep for a while because Zoe is still my little sleepyhead who will sleep til 10am if I let her. I took a shower and got ready - meaning, I actually put some lipstick on. I got her up at nine. We had breakfast together and watched some PBS Kids. And then we got ready for the park because we were lucky enough to have a lovely, sunny day instead of this grey weather we've had since yesterday. Zoe squealed with delight when I pulled into the parking lot of the park. The park is only two blocks from our house and I feel a little guilty for not just pushing her stroller, but I had big plans for our girl...

Performance Artist So, I decided to get the crayons out for Zoe again since she grabbed a pen and paper off the table and obviously wanted to draw. When I asked her if she wanted crayons, she quickly responded "Please!" instead of doing her usual when she's got something she shouldn't: Running like a bat out of hell. Up she went in the highchair. I took a sharpie and wrote her name in block letters. I drew a cartoon of a cat, flowers, numbers. Basically it was my quick answer to a page from a coloring book. She went with it. She carefully chose her colors. Red. Blue. Purple. Green. She was partial to the blue. I left her alone for a second. OK. Maybe 30 seconds. She ate 1/2 of the blue crayon. Well, maybe just a 1/4 of it because a good amount came spilling out of her blue stained mouth when I exclaimed, "Oh, NOOOOOO! What did you doooooo?!" (In slow motion, of course.) And she laughed and said "Blue!" Great. At least I'm teaching her colors. A...

See all the Finn pics HERE . Watch me and the kids here: Zoe is saying hello to Torrie's daughter, Willa after seeing her on flickr this morning. She says "Hi, Willa." and then again - but I thought she was just pointing at the baby. Sometimes it's not so easy to understand "toddler speak" right away.

Send your own ElfYourself eCards This video would not be possible had Jen not given me the heads up via twitter. I couldn't resist multiplying my little monkey by five too. Cute, funny and a little bit scary all at once, yes?

On the mornings that I wake up Zoe and get her ready for the day, we have a little ritual. I give her a hug, she says hello to Bailey and Max (and is more interested in them, by the way). Then I go to her closet and pull out a couple clothing options for her consideration. I sing, "What are we going to wear today?"* which is received with big smiles and this twisty, kicking, dance move she does when she's happy (she does a variation of this dance while in her high chair eating something she thinks is particularly yummy). And then she points to one of the outfits. It's our thing. Zoe is a Grabby McGrabbersons. Like most kids at this age if she sees something within her reach (or even not quite in her reach) she wants to grab it. She wants to touch it. She wants to inspect it and see how it works (I think she might get this from her father). But when we take her to a store with clothing (like, Target) this behavior changes a bit. She's more careful with what she cho...

So, the other night we're wrapping up dinner and getting ready to get Zoe out of her highchair. Daniel is clearing up her "dessert" and getting ready to put the remains of it back in the refrigerator for another day. General freak out/fussy/woe is me/how dare you try to end a meal! noises come from Zoe. If she had it her way, certain meals would go on and on and on. Daniel pauses and looks at me as I look back and forth between him and our daughter. I'm exhausted, lounging on our couch and completely letting him run the show, but I offer this: Me: She wants more, honey. Him: Should I give her more? Me: Well it is apples, not.... CRACK!* (I had paused as I tried hard to think of something we shouldn't give her too much of. Didn't want to say something boring like cookies or ice cream.) Him: You need to blog this. So - she got more apples and she was thrilled - like we'd given her the best thing in all the world. What can I say, sometimes she's easy to...

3076. That's how many photos I have taken of my daughter since she was born nearly eighteen months ago. Let's do the math: My little one has been on the planet for 548 days, so that works out to being about 5 pics a day. Except, I didn't take 5 pics every day - which somehow seems more reasonable. Instead, I would go days and days without taking a picture and then all of a sudden I was uploading 100 pics of her in the same outfit , each photo nearly the same except she might have changed expression/position a little. And while we're being completely honest here, I've deleted tons of pictures of her. There were the ones that just weren't flattering at all - why save those? And then there were the ones where the lighting was bad and nothing could be done to salvage them. What has become evident though is this: 1. I am clearly obsessed with my child. 2. There is no way I'm going to be able to keep this up. Finn, I'm sorry. There just will not be as many pho...

A couple nights ago it hit me hard. I went from feeling fine to instantly having a sore throat and sinus pressure. Almost as if a switch had been turned on to bring all the symptoms rushing at me full force. I was laughing with Daniel and Zoe one moment and then all of a sudden, "I'm sick. Really sick." Now, instead of giving you a long whiney post about how horrible it is to be SWP - Sick While Pregnant - I'm going to show you something that makes me smile: That's my munchkin playing dress up at her Cheryl's house. If the photo doesn't make you smile just a little bit, you are even sicker than I am and you should get yourself to a doctor, stat. Alright. Back to sleep I go.

Well, my little family was up and out the door this morning at 10AM for Zoe's first movie theater experience. The showing was at 10:30 and I thought getting there at 10:15 would be ample time to get seated and situated. It was, but Wow! I was so surprised to see the theater full! Silly me thought we'd be the only ones willing to drag our family out to the movies so early. We got seats in the last row on the floor instead of the stadium seating and I think that was probably best. There was no one behind us to be bothered by Zoe standing up in her seat and we were far enough from the people closest to us that she couldn't reach out and touch someone. Zoe really enjoyed Madagascar 2. She's a big fan of animals in general and when they're singing and dancing - that is even more awesome for her. She was in awe of the large images and color and didn't seem bothered by how loud the movie was - which has always been a concern for me. We made sure to bring snacks and dri...

I've had a relaxing day today. Zoe was kind enough to sleep in until 9:30 this morning so I was able to be lazy in bed for a while and then take a leisurely shower. When I did get Zoe up, we got her ready for the day and fed her breakfast. We played with the dogs and read books and cuddled. There were no tantrums, no freak-outs... just a lovely morning and early afternoon with my girl. And then shortly after Zoe's lunch, one of my best friends here in town came over with her seven month old and some salads. I put on Zoe's favorite movie: Annie while I got to sit back and relax while talking to a grown up and gushing over her precious little boy. Zoe, by the way, did fabulous with my friends' son. She gently pet his head and touched his arm and feet and you could see the glee in her eyes. She did not mind that I was giving him attention or that she was not the only child in the room. Frankly, she handled it all so much better than I thought she would. This gives me a gre...

I'm not sure if you noticed I'm back to not posting pics of Zoe again. No biggie, just a privacy issue.... I do have photos available to friends and family on Flickr. What I did decide to do was post pics of Zoe where he face isn't so visable... and I thought these were pretty cute: