Tuesday, September 30, 2008

T minus 2 days

until we get Madeline's big girl bed. We've been talking it up- but as most of you know, Madeline is a 'by the books' kinda gal. She thrives on routine, on everything being exactly the same night after night after night. Taking away her bottle resulted in a weeks long nap strike. Moving to a new house resulted in a months long sleep strike in general.

Since my happiness is directly related to the quality of Madeline's sleep, you can understand my anxiety about such a big switch. Couple that with the realization that she is officially not a baby anymore, and its quite a lot to digest. I'm hoping thats its much easier for her than it is for me.
Here's a picture of Madeline and her good friend G.

Saturday, September 20, 2008

Her Hair


I have a love/hate relationship with Madeline's hair. I love it for its gorgeousness. Not one day goes by where we don't get " Look at those curls!" comments ( or any variation thereof- i.e ' Who does she get those curls from? ' 'I love those curls', etc). It really is beautiful, shiny, curly and boingy. I love watching her run away from me , seeing those little curls boinging up and down. I like the ease of hairstyle- there's really only one thing I can do with it, put it off to one side with a clip. I can do pigtails, but they don't stay in.

The only thing I don't like about it is the knots. She has got a lot of hair, its thick and is very knotty. I have an aresenal of products- some intended for children, some specific to curly hair- that I use to tame her crazy 'do everyday. She sees me take out the de-tangler and runs. So then I run, chasing after her while spraying product. I've been known to do her hair under the table or use bribery to get her to sit still. If I don't brush it out a few times a day she would have dreds. But is just not fun.

And she will of course spend her whole life wishing she had straight hair.

'take a pit-ture"






The other day I put Maddie in a cute little number Mimi bought and asked her to sit on the stoop so I could take a picture. Now we can not leave the house now without Maddie sitting on the stoop and saying " take a pit-ture, Mommy. Cheeese, please!"
i know I am completely biased- but how cute is she?!?!

Monday, September 15, 2008

Ugh. Its time.




Its time to get Madeline a big girl bed. I'm pretty sure she's ready, and I'm pretty sure I'm NOT ready. She's getting quite adventurous and jumpy- so much so that I'm afraid to leave the room while instituting " Quiet Time" * ( the poor moms 'nap time'). So its here, time to retire the crib. Like I said, I am just not ready.

Sunday, September 14, 2008

Mimi and Papa

We had a nice visit. See you soon!
p.s " gooey goeey gooey gooeygooey bear"

Friday, September 12, 2008

We had a busy week. On Wednesday we had a party for one of Madeline's playgroup friends. It was a lot of fun. Maddie enjoyed the little bouncy house, the pinata and I think she may have a suitor. One of the little boys said to me " Excuse me, excuse me"
"yes?" I said
He points to Madeline " I love her "
It was really cute. She's been carrying around her pinata loot for 3 days now and is still singing " Happy Birthday" .
Maddie also strated soccer on Thrusday. By accident I signed her up for a class in which she is the oldest. Honestly, I think she was a little bored. Her skill level is actually above what they were doing, so I talked to the director and she put Maddie in an older class.
I have pictures that I'll upload later. Its been a little crazy around here as maddie has a fever now and hasn't been sleeping well. well, let me amend that. SHE'S been sleeping OK, horizontally, in our bed( forcing greg to sleep on the couch); me and greg haven't been sleeping well. I have a ton of stuff to do while she is napping( thanks to some tylenol). Mimi and Papa are coming for a visit!

Wednesday, September 10, 2008

September 11th

Its been 7 years. I thought of that today as I drove around trying to get madeline to nap- I thought how she wasn't even a thought in my mind 7 years ago. Greg and I weren't even talking. In 7 years we got together, engaged, married and now we have a 2 and a half year old who will one day ask me where I was on September 11th, 2001.

And I will start my story the way almost everyone does- it was the most gorgeous day , not a cloud in the sky. High 70s , low 80s, maybe . You have to mention how perfect the day was because of the horrific events that took place- its like Mother Nature's own oxymoron. The details of that day- how I got a phone call saying a plane had crashed into the tower, how i didn't have a TV yet b/c i had just moved into my apartment two days before, how I thought for sure this was an accident, how even after the second plane hit, there was still a part of me for one nano second that thought" oh, something must be wrong with traffic controllers computer systems today" ...and then the dread as my mind computed what this all meant ...and as I thought of all who had died- the deatils are all fresh in my mind. Never in my wildest dreams did I think the towers would collapse. Maybe they'd lose some floors and have to rebuild, or worse even shut it down while they rebuilt- but not for one second did I think what happened would happen.

I got in my car and drove to my parents house. I didn't want to be alone, I needed to be with people. As I was driving the news came the tower collapsed, people were jumping, the Pentagon was hit. By the time I got to my moms I saw the second tower fall and I , along with the rest of the world was in complete shock. I went to work in a daze, looking up at the sky that had no planes, and roads that were only filled with firetrucks and EMS trucks rushing west.

Because I didn't have a TV to see the actual live events, I became obsessed with watching it. For years afterwards, I would watch anything and everything having to do with 9/11, read anything that gave firsthand accounts. I wanted in my heart to believe that the way NY came together after the towers feel, they way everyone was looking out for everyone else when Penn Station was plastered with missing flyers- I wanted that to last. I knew it wouldn't, and soon we'd go back to complaining about stupid stuff, taking friends and family for granted and letting little things bother us.

Seven years later, I feel like we've really lost it. There is very little mention of 9/11 in the news( well, what I watch of it anyway. Certainly they're not talking about it on Noggin), and I imagine next year will be less. Then they'll do big things on the big anniversaries- 10, 20, and eventually 50 years. Those who weren't here when it happened will learn about it through history books. But books will never capture the feeling of New York City in the weeks afterwards. I had tickets to a play two weeks afterwards. Honestly, I didn't want to go. The atomosphere was too unstable and scary, but I was meeting a friend, and I had to go. I couldn't go down to Ground Zero, I didn't want to . Here it was a Saturday night in NYC and it was a ghost town.


So these are the things I will tell Madeline when she asks. Greg has his own story to tell- and since he was down there for weeks and months afterwards, it differs greatly from mine and he's never actually told me the whole story.
But I will never forget. September 11th will never just be another day to me, like Dec 7th is to people who weren't around for WWII. We know something happened that day equally as horrific, but we didn't live it. Unfortunately, we lived September 11th.