Exploring the Limits of the Earth

"Can I climb this?" Lauren said.  I looked over.  The item in question was a chicken wire covered chicken tractor, which would probably, but not absolutely, hold her weight.
"No," I said.
"Why?" she asked, because that is the stage we're in.
Later, she was swinging the punch balloon that Sydney had gotten her for her birthday around.  Sydney was tired of being pummeled by her sister and suggested that Lauren could have "something else to punch" for her birthday.  With a mischevious glint in her eye, she asked:
"Can I hit you with this?"
"No," I said.
"Can I hit the chair with this?"
"Yes," I said.
"Can I hit Hoolio with this?" Hoolio is our cat. 
"No."
"Can I hit the wall with this?"
"Yes."
"Can I hit Daddy with this?"
"No."
"Can I hit Sydney with this?"
"No."
"Can I hit myself with this?"
"....yes.  I guess so."  So she did.

Reflections on Two

For the past two years Lauren has made it clear that she is an entirely different child than her sister.  Sure, there are similarities-- they both like olives, for instance.  But Lauren adores milk, and her sister barely tolerates it.  Lauren climbs up structures with impunity; Sydney is still tentative about the potential gravitational implications.  Sydney made a leisurely crawl towards walking, finally deciding to do the deed when she was around 18 months; Lauren was up and running at 9 months.  Sydney's language skills are spectacular, but she would wait until she could fully pronounce a word before trying it out publicly for the first time.  Lauren just barges right in with sometimes less than stellar results, but immensely long and complicated sentences.

So we've arrived at Two and that's precisely what we have.  We don't have two babies anymore, or even a baby and a kid; we have two blond, slight, actively curious, highly intelligent, completely different kids. 

Lauren has been traveling backward per the recommendation of the Car Seat Expert people, who actually recommend that you keep your child riding backwards until they leave for college, which I find would be awkward for many reasons, not the least of which it would be hard to explain to the driver's ed teacher why your child can only learn to drive in reverse.  But recently she has been emphatically reminding us that everyone else is riding forward, by saying, petulantly, "I don't see that!" whenever I mention a cow or a pretty tree or something interesting passing by our car.

So yesterday, for her second birthday, acknowledging that she is no longer a baby, I turned her car seat around.  Now she's facing forward.  Let's not look back.

To Make a Bed

For her entire life, all, 20 months of it, Lauren has slept with me.

For some reason, I was able to move her sister onward in her sleeping journey, and was even able to be coherent enough in the middle of the night when she was done eating to place her back into the co-sleeper which sits right next to the bed.  But for Lauren, I would only wake up partially, drag her into the bed with me, attach her sleepily, and then fall back to sleep.  Two hours later she'd be hungry again, and I'd wake up to see that once again I'd failed to place her back in her own sleeping area. 

In the past few months she's moved on from breastfeeding and sleeps mostly through the night and even mostly in her own bed, but recently I placed her in the co-sleeper, and noted that with all that breastfeeding and such, she's grown quite a bit.  Her head and her feet almost touch the ends of the little bed.

And so Operation Bedroom finally commenced.

Even though we live in a monstrously large, leaky old colonial with a million rooms, we've managed to fill them all up with various detritus through the years, and so what was to be Lauren's room had to be cleared of what used to be the office, and the new office had to be cleared of what used to be another office-cum-junk-accumulation space.  That took a while.  Then, some discussion ensued about who would occupy the old office space, Lauren, or her sister?  After her sister took dibs on the new room, we decided that it really needed a closet, and so we had that built, and then finally we had to strip the wallpaper and paint it, all of which could only happen after the gardens, orchard, chickens and wood were put to bed, Christmas was taken care of, and we officially moved indoors and started hibernating for the winter.

So for the past few weeks we've shuffled furniture and covered things with plastic and finally created a very cute little kid's room for Lauren's older sister, who moved into her new room proudly.  We then moved all the assorted items for Lauren's new room into her new room, including the fire engine toddler bed we bought at a flea market in the summer, and watched with wonder as both kids took to the new arrangements with gusto, running back and forth between the two rooms and jumping on the beds.

As we settled down to enjoy the moment, we took stock of the situation.

"That bed sure is red."
"Yeah... and the walls are blue."
"Syd drew on the wall over there."
"Yeah.  The trim is a little dirty."
"Lauren's going to be in that bed for a long time.  Look how big it is!"
"Yeah.  And the walls are blue.  And the bed is red."
We looked at each other.
"What if the room was brown?"  I said, slowly, reluctant to bring this up.
"Yeah.  Brown would work."
"Probably should paint it soon.  Before Lauren is settled."
"We have the primer..."
"I'll get paint chips tomorrow..."
"I can paint on Friday..."

So, we took all the furniture out, covered everything in plastic, and started over.   At least this room already has a closet.  Meanwhile, for the past few nights Lauren has woken up around 4am and crawled into bed with me.  She's warm and cuddly.  It's okay if we share a bed a little longer.