PawPaw

PawPaw spent two and a half weeks here, and it's been wonderful to have him. House feels lighter and emptier now that he's gone back to Tennessee today. It has been very satisfying to see the kids rush to his room, climb to sit on either side of him on the couch, share just about every thought with him (Maya).

It has been a nice break for him, too, from Michael & Tim at his house... we made sure that the only things he did here were what he really enjoys - get enough coffee; look at enough old houses (including a mansion); visit the bookstores; write and take naps; hang out with Allan and the kids outside when it was warm. There were also submarines and underground tunnel tours involved... all the local eccentricities, of course. And the Three Stooges movie.

It took all of $10 to book his trip here - the endless back-and-forth on Delta is finally paying off :). Appears we've got another one of these in our back pockets, so hopefully we can get him out here again, soon enough.

Plane!

Jack has developed a fascination with airplanes. For one reason or another, there are at least several prop planes of various caliber that pass over our House on the Hill daily; so when warm weather and sun find us outside on the back porch, Jack never misses the already familiar sound of a prop engine. His eyes dart up and he searches for the sound source, almost always finds it, and cheers with 'plane! plane!' until the aircraft is no longer visible. In the meantime, we've also learned that there are other things up there - birds, clouds... Funny that one of Maya's first solid words right about the same age was 'moon' - came from watching a giant yellow disk over the ocean when we vacationed in Destin with family. The AeroKids.

Bedtime musings...

Mama? Feel my heart. Did you feel it? There's Jesus in my heart.

What is he doing, baby?

He's drawing. I swallowed a crayon [not really], it went down to my heart and Jesus is writing with it.

What is he writing, baby?

A word.

... What word?

He's writing LOVE.

This spring has been eventful. I regret not finding the time to write things down as they happen, which ensures that so many touching small moments are perhaps lost in my sieve of bad early-motherhood memory forever. I still approach this blogging thing as an event - my brain has not yet been Twitterized enough to be able to download 144-character fleeting recollections on the go, a fact I will find highly remorseful when I'm 80 (God willing!) and trying to remember how my children's lives sped past me.

One of the major accomplishments of this season of our lives has been the incredibly long anticipated, and in retrospect hugely anticlimatic, undertaking of teaching Jack to sleep through the night. I decided to go through with The Trial of Wills during Spring Break when I knew I could find some time to rest during the day if the nights turned out a little more sleepless (due to being loud) than before. We asked Jack's new pediatrician the question we knew the answer to (yes, it's important to wean him off nighttime bottles; yes, it's important for both of us involved for him to learn to settle himself back to sleep). In an ironic 'coincidence' I ran into a saleswoman at Williams Sonoma who related her own experience of going through that with her own daughter, of similar age, and told of three nights worth of wails and hour-long screaming sessions, after which peace returned and all were happier thereafter.

Looking back, I marvel that *I* get so ingrained into the process that I distrust mine and Jack's collective ability to keep shaking things up and progressing to better places in life. He had some complaints the first couple of nights, but nothing major; and by night #3 he was mostly OK with the new routine, and has been ever since. The only question I have looking back is - What Took Me So Long?! Geez.

Encouraged by the speedy success, we grabbed the bull by the horns and gave up the baby bottles altogether - this change Jack failed to notice completely and moved right on. For the record, Maya was still drinking her bedtime milk out of Dr. Brown's near the time that Jack was born (two and a half, for her, at the time), and it was my Mom's simple removal that got those archived for Jackman's use. It is true that these HUGE events (sarcasm implied) are easier for a Number 2 in general, although Jackman's rich history of ... being special continues to ensure that I fret over every. little. thing that has to do with him, his health, and general wellbeing.

My next adventure will be scheduled for this Memorial Day and involve removal of pacifiers from our house. Because I am now of good conviction that past 18 months, the suckers (pun was not intended, but funny nevertheless) are unnecessary and create more toddler drama than they're worth. Giddy up!

Cards!

A small pack of playing cards came home with Maya back around Valentine's day, as one of the token gifts in the kids' goodie bag exchange at school. I threw away most of the other small nothings since those just tend to create lots and lots more clutter than we already have; but I ended up opening up the tiny deck just to see what these were - pairs of cute drawings to match and keep. Maya and I tried them out, and she turned out to be exceptionally good at this simple memory game.

Encouraged by her enthusiasm, I picked up Kids' Sequence game at Target a couple of weeks later. She was psyched, and we played every night before her obligatory Curious George. I've always thought I would enjoy what many families call 'family game night,' but until now, thought Maya to be too little to enjoy games with rules and instructions - clearly, I just never stopped to realize how many are tailored specifically to toddlers her age.

A couple of days ago I picked up a colorful deck of Go Fish, or, in this iteration, Go Julius, based on Paul Frank's character and its cronies. While the cards are almost too big for her little hands, Maya's on her second night of Go Julius, and with Dad's help, can hold her own well.

I'm thinking I'll get dominoes or something along the lines of Chutes and Latters or Candy Land, next... On to Monopoly domination, soon enough!

Allan says one of Jack's nursery teachers described him as 'chunky' today. I'm well pleased.

Little red hearts

In a semi-mindless state of picking up and straightening up the house tonight, I noticed one of many micro-consequences of the kids' day at home with Daddy... There were small red sticker hearts all over the house, leftover gifts from the miniature Valentine packs kids exchanged at school. Hearts on the windows. On the light switch plates. On the lamp bases. On the book dust jackets. I picked these off one by one as I found them, smiling, and only after I was done I realized I regretted doing that. I would have loved to see those again and again and again. Maya's little heart prints all over, with heart being such a reminder of all things Jack, too.

Maybe there are a couple of sticker survivors somewhere in the house crevices. I'd love to see them again.