Saturday, March 25, 2023
On the same day in March...
Thursday, March 23, 2023
Skinks and daffodils
Sunday, March 19, 2023
Georgia Children's Lit
Wednesday, March 15, 2023
More lizards
Today during my class, Benjamin caught an anole and named it Jake...or Jack...or Jeff. He honestly can't remember. But that's okay because upon further inspection it was decided the lizard might be a female. Maybe. It's hard to tell the gender of lizards.
So now we're calling it Sam.
Here they are together:
Sunday, March 12, 2023
More sleep success
Friday, March 10, 2023
I'm a great aunt (again)!
Thursday, March 09, 2023
Sleeping
Say what you will about sleep training—and I do because I'm of the opinion that some babies (see Zoë for exhibit A) are much more difficult to convince that sleep is beautiful than others (see Miriam for exhibit B)—but I've been working hard at sleep training Phoebe (who is more like Zoë than like Miriam) the past little while.
And—wonder of wonders—she seems to finally be figuring out that sleeping is (a) a thing we do every night and (b) a thing that she can appreciate.
I don't want to brag, but...tonight when I put her to bed she got up and started playing around in her bed right away and I told her to lie down and go to sleep and she didn't listen. (Okay, there was honestly nothing to brag about in that sentence...anyway...) So then I told her that if she wasn't going to try to go to sleep I'd have to leave and I got up, walked out of her room, closed the door, and played a round of Boggle on my phone.
It's like a timer, but more entertaining (and makes it so I can ignore all the screaming she does).
And then I opened her door and she ran back to her bed and lay down as quickly as she could. I gave her some hugs and kisses and reminded her that Momma was always nearby (my office is just across the hall), but that I couldn't sit beside her while she fell asleep if she was going to get up and play. So if she wanted me there she had to lie down and be still.
It still took her several minutes to fall asleep, but she did it!
That's the first time I've only had to leave her room once.
All the other nights this week have been a scream-filled circus. Though last night it only took three times.
She still got up a couple of times last night and climbed into bed with us sometime in the middle of the night, but we're going to count this as a bedtime win.
At 16 months, Phoebe has finally accepted that bedtime is a thing we just...do.
Sunday, March 05, 2023
Phoebe and puddles
We had some big storm systems roll through recently. We were on tornado watch all day on Friday...and once again we didn't breathe a word of this to Alexander since a tornado watch simply means that conditions are ripe for tornadoes, not that there's one ripping around the neighbourhood (that's what a tornado warning is when we take action).
Here are a couple of pictures of Zoë and Phoebe from before the storm hit:
Snapping turtles and great blue herons
Wednesday, March 01, 2023
Things that dangle upside down
Phoebe, Phoebe, Phoebe.
She is a going concern from the minute she wakes up to the minute she falls asleep (and then wakes up and falls asleep and wakes up and falls asleep and wakes up until the morning). She is always getting into something (very often that "something" is trouble).
She draws on stuff, she climbs on stuff, she's still constantly trying to eat stuff. She follows me around just...getting into stuff and trouble. It's all I can do to keep up with her.
Here she is climbing on her little jungle gym: