Back on the horse! After a long blog pause, I decided to
break up the posts to catch us up over the last months – today, posting through
Halloween. So here’s what happened: I went back to work, and to no one’s
surprise, many things fell through the cracks for months. I spent my extra
energy on 1) hanging out with our awesome kids, 2) feeding us, and 3) sleeping. The food was passable, and the sleeping sometimes happened. Blogging and
cleaning did not.
Nora adjusted quickly to having “Nanny Elizabeth” full time, and they really bonded. Elizabeth even does some invaluable dinner prep for us, chopping
veggies during the day when Nora sleeps. On days when Toby’s school was on
break or he is sick, she’s a lifesaver. (And she’s quickly become a favored
playmate, as well). The fussing improved gradually, but it didn’t stop; I’d say Nora was colicky
into November, so it was a great blessing have a patient, loving caregiver to
take her during the week. (Below I'm holding Nora in my favorite anti-colic
pose.)
But she certainly wasn’t grumpy all the time – here she is
at the end of October, showing her true self.
We loved hearing her start to talk, and growl! Sometimes we would lie
in bed in the dark, and it sounded like a little monster was in the crib. She
still loves to growl, it’s amazing.
Although Nora’s colic improved, the cuteness has only
worsened with time. And the clothes! Here she is in Mama’s favorite party dress
(a gift from Smith lab manager Ramona), and exhibiting her increasingly
infectious smile.
We all enjoyed watching Nora’s personality continue to
unfold. She was definitely more active than Toby at that age; we sometimes
buckled her in the Froggy chair, or she would nearly roll right out of it in a frisky
mood
Plus she started doing amazing new things in September, like
grabbing! And looking at books! She rolled over back to front for the first
time at the end of the month, although it took many more months before it
happened regularly. And even holding her head up (it’s a big head, but not as
big as this unfortunate angle made it look).
Toby and Nora have been doing better and better together. He’s
loved watching her get more interactive. As the weather got colder and we put
footie pajamas on, he would throw fits because he wanted her feet to be out.
Sometimes he would settle for her hands. They starting enjoying sharing zerberts
and screaming together.
Increasingly, the problems we have are from Toby just
wanting to be with Nora TOO much – there’s a lot of “give her some space!” in
our house. One of the things he really enjoys is helping out at bath time.
Toby’s not great about letting Nora nurse, but not because
he’s interested in nursing himself– it’s just that he’d rather be on top of
both of us all the time. But he definitely thinks pumping is awesome. Probably because it’s
a machine. Here’s big brother “pumping breastmilk for Nora.” (This is one for
embarrassing highschool sweethearts, right?)
He's also often interested in "being the baby," begging to be swaddled next to Nora or be put in the crib.
And snuggling, of course, is a major family pastime.
As I started back to work, Toby transitioned from the YMCA
to the nearby Montessori school (above he’s pictured saying goodbye to his
favorite Y teacher, Elizabeth – I don’t think he was quite old enough then to
understand when we explained it to him. But he was definitely excited about his
lunchbox, which we practiced filling, and I even got a first-day-of-school
picture.
It was a tough transition in the beginning. He never wanted
to go to Little Friends Montessori in the morning, but then also never wanted
to leave in the afternoon. We even had a meeting with his teachers to
troubleshoot because of the tantrums. Fixing steady, earlier times for both
drop off and pickup helped a lot, although commuting by bike didn’t work out
after those adjustments. We’ll try again in the summer.
Toby loves his teachers
- Miss Megan, the lead teacher (although they call them "guides", and Miss Gloria, the assistant. Miss
Megan was pregnant when Toby started, and since he knows ALL ABOUT babies, he
enjoyed hugging her belly and talking to the baby. (I’ll talk about his
transition to a new teacher in January – when Miss Megan took maternity leave –
in a later post, but no worries, it went fine.) Miss Pamela is in charge of
Spanish, naps, and after school – she especially loves Toby, and affectionately
detailed his daily fits until we worked them out. He likes her too, and can
occasionally be heard singing Spanish songs around the house. He is learning a
lot, and doing cool new things that he doesn’t get to do at home (like when the
reptile man came to visit class, or the day a cool band played in their room!)
It’s a great place for him.
Even if it does mean he comes home and wants to do “jobs”
like at school… usually the messy kind. It’s so cool to see him excited about
funnels and counting and scissors and cooking, I’m willing to clean up (almost)
any mess.
Montessori philosophy includes a strong focus on
independence, which is probably one of the reasons he got more interested in
dressing himself. With the usual, regrettably short-lived, experimentation. He
does lots of things on purpose to be funny, but this was earnest superhero
wear.
Naturally we’re still collecting great Toby quotes. A few
highlights, about Nora: "I'm putting her to sleep and
she's still being loud. What a funny baby!" "She spit up like a
geyser!" (They learned about geysers at school, at it was a favorite topic
at home for weeks.) And when we were finishing up potty training: Toby, do you
ever use the grey potty seat? "Maybe sometimes. Forever. But not forever
right now."
On the weekends, we’ve kept pursuing various adventures. For
local fun, Daddy took the lead on encouraging lots of walks to the park, often
with Toby biking. It started to pay off in September with a big leap in skill.
Naturally we spend some of our downtime keeping up the
estate.
And of course we hop in the car for more remote adventures
(in the movie below we’re headed to the beach, but this general scene repeated
itself regularly - "Where we goin', guys?".)
Toby got his face painted for the first time at an invasive species potluck for
Matt’s work, we baked gingerbread men after Toby got excited about fairy tales,
and we spent a day at the ocean.
We scored Nora’s second visit from MommaSue in late
September, which was a wonderful treat.
And in other important Schultz family news, Aunt Becky sent
Toby his first Star Wars toy in September – a talking R2D2. Stay tuned for his
evolving obsession with the space opera.
We had lots of fun fall-related activities in October,
including a day of cider and pumpkin patch visiting at the farm we get our
veggies from…
And a wonderful pumpkin-carving party at our house. Toby’s
favorite part was the power drill my boss, Chris, brought out for his
extra-thick pumpkin. He cried when Chris, I mean the drill, left. But he enjoyed playing with everybody, especially our
friend Ramona.
Toby was excited about Halloween, his first year actually trick-or-treating.
At first he said he wanted to be a witch.
But when it came down
to it, I showed him two cool costumes at the store and he picked the (EXTREMELY
CUTE) spider. We spent a lot of time practicing trick-or-treating all month,
taking turns knocking on the utility room door.
When we actually went trick-or-treating, it rained. A lot.
He carried an umbrella for the first time, made it through six houses, and went
home happy. This was perfect, as far as I was concerned. All the fun, and much
less sugar to deal with! We went out with two other 3-year-olds and little
Charlie (who didn’t really trick-or-treat). The parents took turns going up to
the door with the little ones. It was so cute to see them look at each other
when the door opened to see who would get up the courage to softly say “trick
or treat!”
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