"An Easy Baby"

Ti is mastering his crawling skills these days.  Now I just plop him down to take care of some things and he is quite content and happy to start exploring his surroundings--that is, until I make an eye contact with him.  He then smiles big and immediately starts to make his "hold me!" sounds and frantically starts crawling toward me with all he's got!  My heart melts whenever this happens and I pick him up, kiss all over his soft chubby cheeks, smell him (yes, I love smelling him) and hold him tight.  (I am learning to celebrate these moments...)

Ari shows me everyday that she is changing and growing too.  Today it hit me when she just disappeared without a word and I found her on her little potty in the bathroom taking care of her own business as usual.  I smile and go over to help her wipe (she seems to want to do this herself (after #1) but I just want to make sure she stays clean.  Same with brushing teeth...  I probably should encourage independence in these kinds of things more... I think that in the back of my mind but then I had enough visits to the dentists myself and I want to control this as long as I can. :P)  Potty training has pretty much been a breeze with her.  (I hope Ti will follow in his big sister's footsteps. :P)  I did part time EC (Elimination Communication) with her since she was about 3 months old and I think about starting that with Ti too but he just seems unpredictable and hard to read (the cues) so we will see.

It was another beautiful day out today so after they took descent naps this afternoon, I took them out for a walk (it always seems to help --Ti in his stroller and Ari walking beside me.  She LOVES outside.  I am sure most kids like to be outside but this girl really LOVES to just go out whenever whether rain or snow.  I love that she does, and am trying to meet that need more often especially when I feel lazy and just want to stay home.  As we were getting ready to leave, she said something funny that I want to put down here.  As I put Ti down and helped Ari put her shoes on, I heard her say to me, "Ti's an easy baby, Mommy!"  I was surprised to hear her say such an adult like thing.  I laughed inside and thought she probably heard us say that.  I said, "You think so?  Yeah, he IS an EASY baby!"  She quickly corrected me and said, "No, Mommy!  S-NEEzey baby!"  Then I realized that he did indeed just sneeze. :)  She just has a hard time saying the "s" sound at the beginning of a word (which, by the way, I think is cute but Daniel tries to fix).

We walked to the little playground.  She loves to swing there, and I mean REALLY SWING.  She wants me to push her up pretty high and gets real joy and satisfaction out of every swing up and down.  So we did our usual thing.  Me reminding her with each push that she MUST hold tight and NEVER let go until the swing stops completely.  And at a blink of an eye she fell off as soon as I finished saying that again.  She landed on her back--thankfully it looked like she was able to hold her head up so no head injuries.  I picked her up, inspected, and comforted her.  No blood, no scrapes, nothing I could find then.  After she stopped crying and my lecture was finished, she wanted to go back on the swing.  So we did one last one and walked to the little corner store around the corner to get some ice cream.  All this while Ti was busy chewing on his teething ring.  On our walk back home, she complained that her back was hurting.  I did not think much of it.  After dinner, she told me her back hurt again.  I told her that I would give her a massage before bed.  So I was changing her into her jammies and this is what I found:

She said it didn't hurt anymore as I asked her while "giving her a massage" (feeling around to see if she would cringe).  She is a tough one--the more I get to know her, I love who she is and the sweet and tough mixture she's got in her little self.  I get to be her mother.  I get to be her mother... (I celebrate these moments when I can truly feel the love I have for her--because I know I do not have that in me naturally.  I celebrate and cherish these moments because I know it is given by God and it is therefore pure and life-giving.)

Lastly, today was Daniel's last day of work in Korea.  We indulged ourselves in a few episodes of Burn Notice (we recently go into this) had pizza delivered to us.  In less than three weeks, we will be on our flight back to Chicago.  I am doing some thinking and writing down here and there some of my thoughts whenever I get a chance.