Fantasy Meet Reality
Topic: Lauren
At this time last year fantasy and reality were pretty much one and the same for Lauren. She loved to dress up as a princess and marry a prince or she would see a cute puppy on Animal Planet and talk about going into the tv to get it. One short year later and things have changed. We were watching the Princess Bride the other night and at the moment when the bride is kidnapped, Lauren turned to me and said happily, "He can marry me instead!" Then sadly, "Oh wait...he can't come out of the TV to do that." Disappointing the fact that characters can not come out of the television and we cannot go into it may be, there's a more disappointing and potentially more poignant realization coming down the road for my little girl - not all men are princes. Hopefully she won't have to go through many toads before she finds hers.

Preschool - Day 1
Mood:  celebratory
Topic: Lauren
I'm declaring day 1 of preschool to be a success! Since Lauren has never been to daycare and the only sitter she ever had was her grandmother, we were sure the drop off would involve not only tears, but flat out crying and maybe a bit of leg hugging as well. Lauren surprised us once again. There were no tears as Tony dropped Lauren off and she even told me later that day that she enjoyed being dropped off. It probably helped that last week there was an ice cream social where we met one of her teachers and then Tuesday was an orientation where everyone arrived as if it were the first day only the class was half the length and the parents stayed. Either way, it's great and definitely a success if your child talks about going to school the next day when there is no school the next day :-)

Time Keeps On Slippin'
Mood:  rushed
Topic: Family and Friends
I met up with an old friend for lunch yesterday and as we talked the subject of family came up. I was talking about how it would be fun next summer because Lauren will learn how to ride her bike without the training wheels when my friend asked how old Lauren was now. I said 4 and you could almost hear his jaw hit the table. He thought she was only 2 and a 1/2! He then went on to say that his twin nieces would be entering college this fall and I pointed out that they couldn't be because they had just been born not too long ago LOL! Continuing on with our topic of family, we realized that these children have grown up not knowing their grandmothers. Not one of my friend's nieces or nephews has ever met his mother and Lauren has never met my mother. We didn't even have to count - it will be 5 years for me and it's been 24 for him. Unbelievable! My God, I never thought it would ever be 5 years and I just can't imagine it will ever be 24! It is just unbelievable that that much time has passed.

Since both of us have lost both of our parents, we both admitted that we think about our own deaths more now than we ever did. For me, I just can't bear to think that some day it will be my turn and I will have to leave my little girl behind. Not only will I have to leave her behind, but she will be in pain and I won't be there to help her through it. No wonder my mom insisted my dad and I hold her hands when the end was near. She had always said she wasn't afraid and I believed her, but I'm sure she had a hard time leaving all the same...just as I will. God, I hope it never comes.

Old Fuddy Duddy
Mood:  surprised
Topic: Lauren
Could it be that Lauren has already entered that stage where she thinks her parents are not very hip?! Just the other day she told me, "You have to do something really exciting to interest me. If you do something exciting, I'll be interested."

LOL!

Mother Goose, Dr Suess, and Oops
Mood:  cheeky
Topic: Lauren
Lauren loves to rhyme words. In fact, if she is rattling off a list of rhyming words and she can't think of another that fits, she makes one up - usually starting the word with an s or an sh. For example,

cat, bat, hat, mat
kite, bite, right
book, look, hook, sook
toy, boy, shoy
itty, bitty...shitty

Oops ;-)

Speak Up
Mood:  quizzical
Topic: Lauren
Like most parents, we want Lauren to be well-read and well-spoken. I'm sure these two things will come to pass, but we also want Lauren to have what we do not have - an extensive speaking vocabulary. Tony and I are both fairly well-read and well-spoken, however, neither one of us grew up in a house where the members had outstanding speaking vocabularies. A bit above adequate maybe, but nowhere near great. In fact, we are constantly lamenting the fact that even if we know and understand many of the words used by those with great speaking vocabularies, we simply do not put them into practice. The question we are faced with is how do we help Lauren develop a wonderful speaking vocabulary when we don't have it ourselves? Sure we can read, read, read, but I wonder if that is enough. Growing up, I read, read, read and it didn't do much for my speaking vocabulary. Whether this is because I was quite shy or because I wasn't immersed in an atmosphere where the skill existed is a good question. I tend to believe it was the latter. We have been trying to use multiple words for the same thing so she hears, learns, and eventually uses them herself. I think this, in combination with the reading, may help some. If you have any other ideas, please let us know.

Maybe Next Year
Mood:  not sure
Topic: Lauren
Lauren is 4! Last year we did the big party with all of the kids, games, etc. but this year we decided to skip it in favor of a family affair. We spent the day together at the zoo as a family of three and Lauren is so into animals, she absolutely loved it. Most kids have a favorite animal they like to see when they go to the zoo, but for Lauren it doesn't matter the type, she loves them all! If it weren't for the not altogether unexpected excitement, I'm sure we would have visited each and every animal at the zoo. The excitement was the severe thunderstorm that blew in. We knew the chance of rain was fairly high and we even watched the sky as we walked the grounds, but once we were inside the rainforest building, we completely forgot about the weather. Well, not both Tony and I forgot, there was the point at the end of the rainforest where I was looking up at the ceiling with its many skylights and even mentioned not seeing raindrops when Tony talked about windows being open during rain. I thought he was talking about skylights in general not the windows and sunroof of our car. We headed into the final section of the zoo which has areas with windows looking into the cougar, leopard, and ocelot exhibits where I happened to notice that it looked awfully dark. Then we heard the thunder. Uh oh. It hadn't yet started to rain so I grabbed the umbrella and headed for the car. Halfway there the downpour hit and thanks to the high winds and substandard grading of the parking lot, by the time I arrived at the car, I was completely drenched from head to toe. Thankfully the car wasn't too wet and neither were Tony or Lauren. The rest of the day went off without a hitch. After drying my clothes at Tony's mother's house, we met up with Tony's brother and his SO at Lauren's favorite restaurant for her favorite meal - pepperoni pizza with black olives and mushrooms. Lauren played with her grandma while we waited for our table and Tony and I discussed the day four years earlier when it all began. A great dinner, a little cake, a little ice cream, and a few presents rounded out the day.

As we tucked Lauren into bed that evening, I thought about the day. I thought about how my precious baby girl is no longer a baby. She's no longer a toddler either. She's now 4 years old and in the blink of an eye, she has passed into the little girl phase. Feeling sentimental and pleased with how things went overall, I asked Lauren if she had enjoyed her birthday. She thought for a moment and replied, "Well Mom, it wasn't very exciting."

I guess next year we'll have to go back to the big party with kids, games, etc.

Four Years Ago Today
Mood:  crushed out
Topic: Lauren
7am - First call to the hospital to see if they had space and time for me to be induced.

8am - Second call to the hospital to see if they had space and time for me to be induced.

8:45 - While getting ready to call the hospital again, they called me to say we could head over.

10am - We were settled in and the midwife came to check on me. She noticed that Lauren was not head down, nor had she dropped. She could push Lauren into position, but Lauren would float back to transverse. She talked c-section.

11am - The doctor confirmed this birth will be via c-section.

6:15pm - I was wheeled into the operating room and given the spinal. It was so cool how that nice, warm feeling started at my toes and traveled up my legs.

6:32pm - Lauren is born.

6:45pm - Our first snuggle while in recovery.

And so it began 4 years ago today :-)

And The Answer Is...
Mood:  happy
Topic: Lauren
Lauren has a keen interest silly words lately. Well, what she considers silly words. One was sloths and we enjoyed a good 15 minutes of repeating the word over and over followed by giggling. She then began to come up with some of her own very silly words, so I decided to throw a few tongue twisters at her to see if she thought they sounded funny.

Me: If three witches were watching three watches, which witch would watch which watch?

I expected peals of laughter, but instead I received,

L:(without missing a beat) The one with the green face!

I was amazed that she even followed the twister enough to answer the question. We tried another.

Me: Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers. If Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers, where's the peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked?

Sure enough...

L: Over there.

The Secret To A Healthy Treat
Mood:  cheeky
Topic: Lauren
The other day when it was about 97 degrees and humid, Lauren and I were out running some errands. She wanted to go to one of her favorite places - the indoor playground. We started to head over there but found the traffic to be just too much so I casually mentioned that we'd have to skip the playground but offered an ice cream treat instead. Tony and I have been trying to promote healthful treats and foods and it looks like some of it has sunk in. Here's the conversation that followed:

L: But Mom, we're not suppose to eat junk food.
Me: Oh, you're right. OK. Let's skip it then.
L: (pause) Well...maybe we could just sneak it into our mouths.
Me: (not wanting to unwittingly encourage sneaking) Hmmm. How about if we call it a "once-in-a-while" treat.
L: I know! We can pretend it's broccoli - we can have broccoli in a cone!
Me: (muffled laughter)

So we stopped to get some broccoli in a cone. When we arrived home and Tony asked about our trip, Lauren told him where we had been and that we had had a treat. When Tony asked what the treat was, Lauren turned to me with a panicked look, put her hand to her mouth, and in a very serious voice whispered "Shhh! Don't tell him!". Again, in order not to encourage sneaking, I said we could tell him. So Lauren turned around and with a smile said, "We had broccoli in a cone and we licked it like ice cream!"