You Are My Wild

I am your parent you are my child,
I am your quiet place, you are my wild.

I am your calm face, you are my giggle,
I am your wait, you are my wiggle.

I am your audience, you are my clown
I am your London Bridge, you are my falling down

I am your Carrot Sticks, you are my licorice,
I am your dandelion, you are my first wish.

I am your water wings, you are my deep,
I am your open arms, you are my running leap.

I am your way home, you are my new path,
I am your dry towel, you are my wet bath.

I am your dinner you are my chocolate cake,
I am your bedtime, you are my wide awake.

I am your finish line, you are my race,
I am your praying hands, you are my saving grace.

I am your favourite book, you are my new lines,
I am your nightlight, you are my sunshine.

I am your lullaby, you are my peek-a-boo,
I am your kiss goodnight, you are my I love you. 

by Maryann Cusimano     

Happy 5th birthday sweet Jayce.  You are our dream come true.

XOXO
Mom and Dad 

Mother's Day

We celebrated the US Mother's Day this year.  

This is partly because the UK Mother's Day was right after Hannah and I arrived home from our trip home in March.  I was looking at something on the computer and turned to Chris.

Did you know that tomorrow is Mother's Day?  

It is?  No, I didn't…actually…Jayce made you a Mother's Day card at school this week and I told him it wasn't Mother's Day...

Then they told me they would take me to dinner, but since I was jet lagged I took a 3+ hour  nap instead.  So we delayed it.Also, and more importantly, this year I would actually be with my mom on Mother's Day, which I haven't been able to do for about 4 years, so it was due.  And it was great.This is also why I have been MIA for about 2 weeks.  

I meant to write briefly about that on here, but instead I was doing the "frantic scrub down of the house" that I do before company comes, despite the fact that, not only do my mom and sister not care if my house is clean, they would have helped me clean if I had just waited a few more days.  Oh well.And now I have hundreds (literally-like 600) photos to sort through and share here.  I promise I won't share all 600.

I need to get on it because there is a big birthday party this weekend as well.  Wish me luck.

Freeze

Hannah.  You should know that right now, at this exact age, (22-ish months), is where your dad and I would like to freeze you.You are SO fun.  So so fun.  

You are chattering all the time.  Walking around the house, being pushed in your stroller, riding the bus, playing with your toys-it doesn't matter.  You are narrating what you see, reacting to it, telling us about it, and engaging in it, and with your ever expanding vocabulary and baby pronunciation, it is often a joy to listen.

Oh!  A cat!!  Hi cat!! Meow.  Mommy, a cat go? Where gone cat? Ca-at!  Where are you cat?!  Oh, flower!!  Mom, flower!  Bu-ful flower.  Smell flower?  Delicious. (Yes she thinks flowers smell delicious.)

As I'm typing this out, I realize that it sounds a little crazy and maybe a bit much.  And sometimes it is.  But it is so funny too.  More and more of the baby babble are actual words and it is a delight to hear you actually speaking in little fragmented sentences.
Daddy!  A chocolate cookie!  Come on! 
Listening to the joy in your voice as you react to the things around you makes it almost impossible not get excited with you.

You are hugging us with tight squeezes around the neck.  You often decide that it is time for squeezes or kisses and won't sit down until everyone in the house has received them, at least once.  But you normally reserve multiple hugs for Jayce, who is the least excited to receive them.

You are repeating what you hear in hilariously appropriate times.  It just makes me laugh how spot on you normally are.

Yesterday I loudly exclaimed "Oh no!" to myself when I realized that I had forgotten something.  You came running over with a concerned face, and said, "A wrong mommy? You okay?"

If we sneeze or cough, you'll say bless you, "Besh you. Besh you mommy. A cough." 

You say "yes sir" now, even to me.  I remember Jayce going through the phase of saying "yes sir" to me as well, though he was much older.  But it sounds so funny though in your little voice and pronunciation, which sounds like "ye-shu."  I smile every time.

I think you have a little crush on one of the tv presenters on the kids channel, Andy.  I don't really know why he stands out to you, he isn't on a favorite show or anything.  But I noticed last week that when he's on, you yell "Andy!," run over in front of the tv, and smile and dance around a little bit.  True, he is a part of a duet that dances and sings about a different number every day, but you seem to like him in between as well.  This morning you were playing on your phone and I heard you saying, "Wha doin' Andy? Okay.  Buh bye.  See you soon."  So I guess now we have to deal with you pretend talking on the phone with boys.  You still just LOVE your bear.  Whenever you first grab it, you give it a bit hug between your cheek and shoulder and say "Awwww!!" like you are in the picture above.  It is so precious.  I have no intention of taking that thing away from you.  The paci, however, it's days are numbered.
Your favorite other thing right now is a show (and the characters) called In the Night Garden, but you call it Iggle Piggle, who is the main character.  Whoever made it has obviously cracked into the minds of 1 and 2 year olds everywhere, because little kids are crazy over it and you are no exception.  Even though I can barely pronounce the names of the characters and their things (the Ninky Nonk, Macka Packa, The Tombleyboos, etc.) you declare all of their names as soon as they pop up onto the screen and just adore the whole thing.
There is a live show coming to Richmond this summer, and though your dad isn't happy about it, I think we'll be taking you.  You are absolutely delighted every time that it comes on, so I can't wait to see how you'd respond to seeing it in person. 

There are a million other things that you do every day that just kill me and try as I may, I just can't get pictures of them all or remember each thing to record here.  So if you could just freeze at this age for a little bit, that would be great.

Soccer

A few weeks ago Jayce started soccer.  For some reason it was kind of a big deal to us.
I've written before a bit about how Jayce had a rough start at the beginning of the school year.   He also had a kind of rough experience at a basketball camp that we took him to.  

Chris' school was holding a basketball camp one night a week for various ages starting at age 6.  Chris had talked to one of the coaches and they had thought that it would be fine to bring Jayce along and see how he liked it, so we did.  We thought it might be a fun distraction for him, but it didn't really work out.  

First off, he was a young 4, and there is very big difference between 4 and 6 year olds.

Second, Chris stayed to watch, but at one point had shifted where he was sitting to a spot closer to Jayce.  But even though he was closer to Jayce, Jayce hadn't seen Chris move.  He glanced up at one point, didn't see Chris where he had been sitting, and kind of freaked out. (Nothing crazy, he just got upset and wanted to leave.)  So we decided not to go back.  

That was months ago and in the midst of an unsettled time for him.  

This camp is for kids in Reception and Year 1, (basically ages 4-6), and we found out about it through a flyer that came home with him from school.  So it was his age group and there was a good chance that there might be someone there that he knew.  It turns out that it didn't matter.
He was really excited about his soccer gear.  I had bought it for him a few weeks before, gave it to him during spring break and he tried most of it on nearly every day.  On the way to the camp we passed our neighbors who were walking home, and Jayce informed them, "I'm going to soccer and I have all of the stuff.  Shin guards, soccer socks, soccer pants, soccer shirt, water bottle and ball.  Everything!"  He was so ready.  But he was also a little hesitant.  He had mentioned to Chris and I each that he kind of didn't want to go.  We didn't push it.But when we arrived he saw all of the kids kicking their balls around and ran excitedly onto the field.  He was fine.  He ran and kicked and smiled, went up to the coach and asked if he wanted to see his "cool move" and then showed the guy before he could even respond.  The camp was an hour long, and he would occasionally look over at Chris and I, smile, and give us a thumbs up.  It was a total success.Strangely, or maybe not, Chris and I both felt a strong sense of success while we were there and afterwards.  Not just that Jayce had a great time, although we were delighted by that.  But it just felt like the type of thing that you do when you are settling in somewhere and feeling at home-enrolling your kid in an after school sport.

I don't know why this gave us more of a sense of settling in than, say, enrolling him in a 32 hours a week, 42 weeks a year school?  Or signing a year lease on our flat?  Maybe it was because those were things that we had to do but this was something additional that we elected to do?  Regardless of why, it was really satisfying to watch him run around so happily and walk home together knowing that we have 11 more Monday afternoons of this.  I mentioned this camp to a new friend who has recently moved to the area with a little boy Jayce's age.  I said that it might help that Jayce was there if he was feeling nervous about being around all new kids.  She said about her son, "Oh no, he never gets nervous around other kids, even new ones."

I immediately thought, "Yeah, neither did Jayce.  Until he suddenly did."

It's such a relief for us that this fear about new people and us leaving him seems to have been conquered.  It's a relief to just watch him being himself, feeling confident, feeling comfortable, and having a great time.

The second week of camp we were happily surprised to discover that one of his friends from his class was also in the camp.  It's nice that he has one of his friends there with him.  But I'm a little glad that the kid wasn't there for the first week, and that Jayce's level of comfort hadn't just come from a familiar face.Also, and maybe this should go without saying, but Hannah loved it.  We could hardly keep her off the field even though she had her own little ball.  Only two more years until she can join a soccer camp of her own, but in the meantime she ran onto the field, antagonized Jayce by drinking from his water bottle against his wishes, and yelled for him from the sidelines.  She was quite the little cheerleader.  And my basketball-bred husband was such a proud dad watching from the sidelines.  

It was a good day for all.

Let's Decorate: In the Living Room

My goal for March was to decorate.  We've been here long enough now that most things place, and I haven't rearranged the living room in 4 months, which means that I've finally found a layout that works best.  So now for the fun part, the sprinkling in of details and personality.  The bummer is that by the end of the month I felt like I had barely scratched the surface.  But I DID get some things in place.  And to make me feel better about it, I'm numbering them.  Numbers make me feel like progress has happened. :)1.) Cushion for my desk chair.

2.) Kids seating solution/Rollie Pollie.

3.) Add mood lighting.  

4.) Hate the new lamp's shade and re-cover it.

5.) Hang peg board in my little office nook.  (Notice on the blue paper Jayce drew a picture of me with my hair in a high ponytail and my bangs!  The details he takes into account are so funny sometimes, and I love it.  My Mother's Day card says "I love my mommy because she always kisses me."  Sweetie.)6.) New pillows!!  I love these so much, yes, I made them and yes, those are zippers!  Questionably installed or not, they are zippers.7.) Conceal the monstrous eye sore/air conditioner that you can see here.8.) Wall art above the piano.  

(Plan A didn't really turn out, and I hate to be a one-trick pony, but a big chalkboard in a semi glitzy frame, in the middle of a light-colored wall just looks cool to me.)

9.) Add color.

10.) Add plants.  

Run out of cash to buy plants, so clip pretty branches with budding white flowers and stick them in vases around the house.
11.) Add some sort of Easter decor.  (Remember, this was in March.)

That's that for the living room, but I think that 11 things in one month in one room isn't too bad.

The kitchen got lightly decked out as well, but that is for another day.

Like tomorrow.