Happy Fourth Birthday, Finney Boy!

Starstruck In A PBS Kind Of Way

Guess who I got to meet today?

There's A Certain Slant Of Light

BFF!!! KIT!!!

Last week, before I was stricken with a rogue case of strep throat that confined me to a horizontal position and forced me to pass horse pills down my impossibly swollen gullet, I took the kids to the beach.

We packed a picnic lunch, built tiny sandcastles, chased the waves, and got sand in all the wrong places. It was a classic beach day.

As it was also the last day of public school, the beach wasn't crowded yet as most of the schoolkids were busy in class signing each other's yearbooks with proclamations of undying love, inside jokes, and other insipid ramblings to last through the ages.

Which made me wonder what I'd write to Finn and Shea in their 2005/06 yearbooks:

Hey Finney ~

Good thing you're a fast runner 'cause the little girls are gonna want to kiss you soon! Ha! Ha!

Good luck learning how to swim like a mako shark this summer, dude. (They're the fastest ones, you know.)

Anyway, thanks for putting the cold compress on my head when I had a fever that one time. Stay cool, bud. See ya at the beach!!

Love, Mama

Hey Shea, Whad'ya Say?

You've come a long way, baby! Now that you can walk, feed yourself, and hold your own juice bottle, this summer is SOOO going to rock over last summer.

Try not to eat too much sand, ok kiddo? Makes it a little sketchy during the escape route, if you get my drift... ; )

Love, Mama

The Signs Of Celebrity Are Already Showing

After being asked to show Mommy her makeshift bath basin in the backyard, Shea completely ignores the inane request and instead blows an impressive zerbit on Mommy's tummy, demands her to stop filming, then makes out with the camera. Totally punk rock.

Shea's Walking!

Happy First Birthday, Shea

Sweet Shea,

What fun it has been for us to get to know your charming personality and watch you grow over this last year.

You are our baby joy.

Love,
Mommy and Papa

P.S. We should have recognized your fantastic potential for SCREAMING from the video footage below, shot less than an hour after your birth. A sign of things to come, indeed.
May your voice always be heard.

Birth Day: April 30, 2005, 1:57pm

10 days old

one month old

two months old

three months old

four months old

five months old

six months old

seven months old

eight months old

nine months old

ten months old

eleven months old

one year old

From Bad To Worse

Shea's a great eater. What Shea is NOT, however, is a great lounger. When she's done with her meal, she wants out of her high chair immediately, if not sooner. Forget hanging out with a few cookies while Mom and Dad finish their meals, I've got toys to play with, brothers to follow, and floors to traverse.

See, below, what happens when Shea's forced to sit in her chair just one moment longer than she'd like.

Lean On Me

It's official: less than a month from her first birthday, Shea's finally been weaned from her attachment to breastmilk. She's also getting her third tooth, standing on her own for a few seconds at a time, walking with her walker, climbing up the stairs, and even saying "thank you" (and even though it was only once, it was a sweet, sweet song of gratitude).

Check out this fun new blog feature: VIDEO!

The Little Mermaid

When Finn was a baby and I was still getting used to the almost incomprehensible difference between childless life and life as a parent, I would regularly compare notes with friends who were going through the same process. This was how I learned that many of us were having similar experiences--that they, too, also missed adult conversation, having the time to read magazines and books, and wearing clothes that stayed clean throughout the day; that I wasn't the only one to rely on coffee and chocolate as a daily crutch; that sleep deprivation affected almost every aspect of our lives and could be so impairing as to compromise our ability to drive, let alone care for another human; and that we all cherished those rare, quiet moments when baby would nuzzle into our shoulder and let us rock him/her to sleep.

I was always so grateful for these regular maternal noteswapping sessions because they showed me that, although parenting brings many of the same challenges and rewards for moms and dads, every kid is vastly different. Comparing children is inherently problematic, as it repeatedly boils down to the old apples-to-oranges paradigm. Some of the things that were hard for Finn, for example (sleeping through the night and coming out of his shell in social situations), were much easier for other kids. Other things (learning to speak and communicate his needs) were easier for him, while other kids struggled in speechless frustration.

Certain things, though, like bath time, I simply took for granted as being neutral: not hard, not easy, just there. Finn never really complained at bath time, nor did he ever really seem to relish it. It was more of a mechanical stop on the route between dinnertime and bedtime, one that didn't usually elicit very much of a response. Rarely a fight, but rarely a party. I was sometimes even a little disappointed that Finn didn't act like one of those babies on the Johnson & Johnson commercials who, while being bathed in a sink full of bubbles, splashed and squealed and smiled as every pore filled with sheer, slippery joy. He acted more like he was in a jacuzzi and it was time to unwind after a long day of negotiating plea bargains. Maybe he'd push a toy boat around the tub or chew on a plastic lobster, but if there were no toys there were no complaints.

It wasn't until I heard from a couple of friends how vehemently their kids hated their daily baths--some with such intensity that their screaming and often violent protests suggested they were being rinsed with molten lava instead of warm bathwater--that I realized that I had dodged the bath bullet. But now that I have a second child--a very different child from the first, mind you--I'm reminded about the old comparison trap as I've discovered that the bath-hater bullet comes in an inverse--and, I'd argue, as challenging--form: the zealous bath lover.

(If you're reading this at home and are about to run a bath, by the way, I feel compelled to warn you to first make sure the bathroom door is fully closed before you read any further because the second the water hits the bottom of the empty tub, suggesting with its splash that it's about to fill it up, baby Shea will come crawling towards it at full speed from whatever crib, car seat or high chair she may be sleeping or sitting in.)

The girl's just loca-crazy-nutsy for baths.

And it's not a girly, Esther Williams/Doris Day bath love, either--nothing like the Go Go's Beauty and the Beat album cover; she's not luxuriating in a pampering pool of Calgon bubbles. The girl's there to throw down; to splash and squeal; to hurl herself at toys at the other end of the tub that must be played with immediately; to stand up and sit back down 23 times each minute; to dunk her face, accidentally, while reaching for toys, choke on the water intake, cough it off, and then do it again a minute later; and to scream, writhe, arch and howl in protest when we inevitably have to take her out of the tub. (By which time, of course, whoever's bathing her is drenched from head to toe and exhausted from trying to keep her from inadvertently knocking herself unconscious from her indefatigable bathtime play.)

The flip side of this, of course, means that she barely notices when I pour ENTIRE VATS of water over her head to rinse the shampoo from her hair. I babysat on a pretty regular basis during my adolescence and have given plenty of children baths in my lifetime, but I've never seen so much of a waterbug at such an early age. She loves it so much so that, even if she's had a bath in the morning and I'm getting ready to give Finn his evening bath, she'll hurl charges of favoritism at me and try to crawl her way into the tub with her brother to even the apparently unjust score.

Usually, I indulge her. But lately bathing both kids at the same time has been like wrestling a pig in a mudbath while giving a lecture on phonics. (Finn, as you might be able to detect in these photos, adores his foam alphabet and spells his favorite names and words with them on the tile wall during his baths these days. Sometimes, we'll spell slang words or even turn the "Z" on its side to pretend it's a second "N" so he can spell his name. Yeah, that's about how crazy he gets in the bath.)

And so it goes: At least in the bathtub, my little apple and my little orange couldn't be more different.

First Snow of the Season

The last morning of our trip to Big Bear saw the season's first snowfall; the hills that were brown and orange on our way up the mountain had turned a patchy white by the time we made our way down.

We made a point to stop and let Finn out of the car to walk around a little in the fresh snow, as what's an annual fact of life for most of the country is a downright novelty for us beachfolk. He loved touching it and when he reached down for a pinch and brought it to his mouth he proclaimed, "Mmmmm, good. That's the best snow I've ever tasted!"

Given that he's only been in the snow twice before, that says a Southern California mouthful.

You can watch the video for yourself, below.