Poor second child, with no blog posts of her own

Bicycle! Bicycle!

Well, we did it. We bought Morgan a new (second-hand) bicycle and he is in love. Here he is on his first full day with the bike. When he first got on, he wobbled a bit. Within 10 minutes he had figured out how to use the coaster brake. In the next hour he had lost most of the wobble, could start from a stand-still, and could ride standing up on the pedals. He rode for about four hours yesterday. Today he rode for five hours, with a break in the middle for his swim lesson. He was asleep very quickly tonight.

A Dream

"Last night I dreamed about Mama and Maevey. They were swimming in a big lake, and Maevey was big enough to swim. She was using her Big Boy arms and her Big Boy kicks." Morgan Graeme, age 3y4m.

Our Big Dude

Morgan has been riding his scooter a lot lately, because his wooden balance bike has a broken axle at the moment (which may or may not be fixable). Today at the park he rode his scooter while his friend Tobias, one year older, rode a bike. At some point Morgan asked Tobias if he could have a go on his bike. Morgan hopped on and promptly took off. No training wheels, no problem. He just started riding. It was so fun to watch the joy on his face as he rode around under his own steam on a pedal bike for the first time! I wished so much that Casey could have been there to see it. "I'm doing it! I'm doing it!!" he shouted as he passed me.

Since the premature (possible) demise of the beloved balance bike, Morgan has been begging us for a pedal bike. We've hedged, explaining over and over that we are not willing to get him one until he no longer has need of training wheels, that any bike we get him will not be equipped with them. Now we know that he actually can ride, we may just break down and find him a second-hand bike at a garage sale. I can't wait for Casey to see Morgan ride. When he does, I'll be sure to have the video camera handy. He'll make both his bicycle-loving grandpas Michael proud.

Finally! A New Post

Ahhh...the sweet sound of sleeping children. Casey is not using his laptop tonight, for once, so I can finally blog. I was surprised to see that I hadn't done a single post in the month of February! That's because the only time I could possibly post is when Maeve is asleep, but since my computer is in the room where she sleeps if I type she invariably wakes up. Casey is currently working on bringing the old laptop back to life so that we can hang out together downstairs (where I have the luxury of not burning my eyes out in a dark room) and work.

Also the keg is located downstairs, so I don't have to keep walking up and down the stairs for beer. Yes, we have a "kegerator" now, with two taps: one for homemade fizzy water and one for beer (so far, not homemade). Beer on tap, at home? Danger, Will Robinson!

Morgan is up to all sorts of hijinks these days. Sometimes he is all three-year-old: melting down because I started to peel his satsuma for him, after he ASKED ME TO START PEELING HIS SATSUMA FOR HIM. Or throwing a minor fit because I walked downstairs in front of him instead of waiting for him. Or breaking down because his blankie won't lay perfectly flat. I don't know when that one started, but somewhere along the way he became fairly OCD about his blankies being perfectly flat and oriented just so against his chest.

Other times he seems more like a six-year-old: when asked if he'd like to have a glass of water, he might answer, "I'd love to!" He tries his hardest to understand this world we live in. "Mama, why do people call you on your phone? Is it because they want to ask you how's your baby doing?" He is getting to be pretty helpful around the house. No, really. He can put away groceries, put laundry into the washer or dryer and start either machine, and yesterday he chopped the asparagus for our supper all by himself. "With a sharp knife. With NO GROWNUP!"

And then there are the days Morgan is sixteen. *sigh* Lately he takes himself to the bathroom and shuts the door, telling us, "I need privacy." This is our cue to listen carefully for what is going on in there; the first time I decided he was probably okay to go by himself I walked in a few minutes later to him with a trail of toilet paper in his hand and a surprised look on his face. "There's poopoo everywhere!" he said in bewilderment. I will spare you the details of what followed. Morgan often listens to rock-n-roll so loud we have to close his bedroom door. He vigorously plays his "magic electric guitar" (a small toy guitar with an old computer cord attached so he can plug in, and a custom strap), jumping around and shouting out incomprehensible lyrics. With no clothes on. His current favorite, edging out the legendary Dan Zanes, is George's band The New Centuries. I really should ask George what those songs are about...

Maeve is in training to become Morgan's backup dancer. When she is standing with support on someone's lap she starts this funny little hip-swivel/booty-bump dance, with one leg buckling then straightening over and over. She seems to enjoy music, though she isn't as affected by it as Morgan was at the same age. When he was five months old, his crying would abruptly cease if I started singing to him. Maeve is not as comforted by song; clearly she is inferior. Just kidding.

She's working on her teeth, blowing drool bubbles at every opportunity. I wasn't really checking her gums much since I had so many false alarms with Morgan's first tooth. I really was expecting her to get her first tooth around the same age as he did, eight months. So I was surprised when my friend Becca looked in her mouth during a particularly fussy period and said to her, "Ouch! That tooth must really hurt!" Okay, the tooth is not actually out yet, but she has four swollen, white bumps on her gums. Like I did, she seems to be getting her eye teeth first. Little vampire. Now a week after Becca's comment, I can see that the bottom ones are close to coming through. Teething before Morgan; clearly she is superior.

Wanna know which child I love better?

Just kidding.






I'll never tell.

Pretend Play

We are sitting in front of a nice fire on this rainy Sunday evening. We had an early supper and are now sipping hot cocoa and eating Casey's delicious saffron rolls. Morgan has bitten one end off, and is studying the remains. "It's like a snail," he says. "This is his eye, his antennae, this is his shell, and this [the raisin inside the curl] is his food inside his body. 'Hi, hi!'" he makes the snail talk to us in that high-pitched voice he's always used for such play. He goes on to tell us, "He can't drink hot cocoa, he would get hot cocoa all over him. So I have to drink the hot cocoa...but eventually, I'm going to eat him. 'Don't eat me!' But I need to eat you. 'Ouch, ouch!' I have sharp teeth for eating saffron rolls. 'Okay, you can eat me then.' I'm gonna eat you, that's gonna be okay."

Of another snail-saffron roll he asks, "What if you went on a train? I would eat you."

Life With Two

Morgan is growing up whether we like it or not. He is three years old, and the honeymoon is pretty much over. When asked politely to refrain from stepping onto the stereo, he came back at me with "Mama, I've explained this to you already. The answer is 'NO.'" Hmm, wonder where he picked that up. Couldn't possibly have been from me.

Morgan would live in his jammies, as long as he could still have his guitar, and Dan Zanes playing on the stereo at all times. One of the main stumbling blocks of our days is the project of getting him into clothes. We cajole him out of his jammies, then we've got a nakey boy running wildly around the house trying to avoid being re-clothed. (Nakey is, after all, his true preferred state.) When we ask if he wants to go to the park, he denies it and says he just wants to play his guitar. One way we side-step the fight altogether is to put him to bed in clean clothes. We find it much easier to get him changed at night, so by doing this we only have to do the Get Dressed Shuffle once per day. We haven't yet figured out how to work a bath into the equation, what with the shortened day (see nap news below), but I'm okay with having a kid who only bathes once a week or so.

He has basically dropped his afternoon nap. This development came sooner than we had hoped, yet it has a silver lining: bedtime is usually 7:30 at the latest when he's had no nap, and he is out like a light. I'm talking under five minutes. This, compared to his standard 1.5-2 hours of bedtime "routine" (read: circus) for most of his life. Coupled with the fact that Maeve is still the Magical Sleeping Baby whose bedtime routine consists of laying her down on the bed at 7 and walking away, this means that Casey and I have time to *gasp* have a conversation with one another without an obnoxious guitar player serenading us in the background - or foreground, as the case may be. The drawback to this state of severely reduced nappage is that the moment Casey arrives home to make supper is the same moment Morgan chooses to go into full meltdown mode. I haven't figured out how to avoid this yet. (I know, I know...make sure he's not too hungry. That trick doesn't work.) Still, it has improved over time, as he used to go to DEFCON 1 at around 3 in the afternoon, making for a highly unpleasant afternoon. I've instituted a daily Quiet Time, in which I lay down with Maeve in my room and Morgan plays quietly in his room. Or more likely, yells down the hall for me to please bring him more cars or, failing that, "Peepee and poopoo!!" That one always works.

Big brother loves his baby. He often comments on how cute her clothes are, for some reason referring to any item of her clothing as a "dress." He can make her smile with almost anything he does. In the morning when he comes into our bed to nurse, the only thing that will get him to stop is when Maeve wakes and he scrambles over me to say good morning to her. Once when she took a particularly long nap, he began begging me to let him go wake her up because "I miss her, she's my buddy." Today at the park a friend watched Morgan loving Maeve up and asked him, "Do you love your baby sister?" His response was classic three-year-old: "I love to squish her!" Then he went back to playing with his friend Freya, using a large flat shovel as a peel to put tanbark "pizzas" in the oven on the end of the slide.

Maeve is becoming a tiny person. Like her brother once did, she enjoys flirting with herself in the mirror while sitting on the pot. She also started grabbing toys, particularly the ones on the tray of the Neglect-O-Matic swing. My own brothers have declared her to be a Linda B. clone, but friends have commented recently that she is beginning to look more and more like Morgan. Comparing her to photos of Morgan at roughly the same age reveals more than a passing resemblance:


(Morgan, 4.07.2006)


(Maeve with cousin - and fellow Goblina - Natalie, 1.04.2009)


(Morgan, 2.26.2006)




Yes, I'd say they're related somehow. Sort of like Casey and Beth.