Magical Four

It was a unicorn birthday for Amelie and now she is four!

I spend more time with my sweet Amelie than anyone else.  Often I feel we are attached at the hip and we talk (or she talks) all day long.  Mostly we talk about being a kitty, when is snack time, how much we love daddy kitty, and how we need to be kind to Asa.  Occassionally our personalities bump against each other and I see my own stuborn-ness combined with daddy's stubborn-ness and how that has created this incredibly stubborn little girl (er...kitty).

But most of the time, she is laughing and twirling and whirling and hugging Asa too tightly. I know she won't always be here to talk to and when I will most want to know all that's going on inside of her she won't want to tell me. So I listen to her deep desire to be a kitty and how her favorite color is now purple even though five minutes ago it was purple and pink.  The fact that my favorite color is red and doesn't change from being red mystifies her and actually makes her kind of annoyed because red after all is not a very pretty color.

When the doctors lifted Amelie into this world, incredible relief and great hope flooded through my body.  For what had seemed like a lifetime I never thought I would have a second child and then she was a sweet girl.  A daughter.

Just four years and there has been more sweetness than I could imagine from one little person.

Happy Birthday to my sweet Amelie Kitty.

What's that Asa?

Woof Woof Wooof Bark!
What's that Lassie? Timmy fell down a well?

Uh, um babadub.
What's that Asa? The balloon floated into the bathtub and you can't get it out?

And so the day goes.  Asa encounters a problem. He appeals to me through a series of sounds strung together in a usually undiscernable way and I get to play detective and interpreter to figure out what he is trying to tell me.

There are a few words in his vocabulary that I understand but mostly they all sound like either "mama" or "ball."  The rest of the time he communicates through a series of "uhh"s, "ummm"s, and "blabublub"s.  (I really love the blabublubs the best and I think this is the word for marshmallow, balloon, or something else super cute.)  Often he physically pulls on my leg and drags me to where the problem lies - usually a ball stuck somewhere or a snack he wants in the pantry.

Most of the time, Ican figure it out but you probably wouldn't be able to.

Asa never got into sign language. While Asher quickly picked up on being able to say the necessities like more, milk, thank you, and a wide variety of animals, Asa never showed any attempts to try our terms of communication.  He prefers the screaming, dragging, and temper tantrum ways of letting us know he needs something.

He presents the fact that there is a problem.  Then we spend the effort to figure out what the problem is. 

"Rawr, AHHHHH, RAWR"
Oh, your dinosaur is stuck under the chair?
"Uh-huh"

"MaMa, ahh, Mama, Mama"
Would you like some milk, Asa?
"AHHHHH, ahhh Mama"
Oh, you need some water?
"Uh-huh"

Everyday my prayer for Asa is that we will be able to understand him.  Amelie prides herself in being able to understand Asa's babytalk and actually often she is the one who figures out what he is screaming about.

He is not even two yet, and maybe my expectations are too high.  But then I see other toddlers speaking in full sentences that I, as a stranger, completely understand and I laugh at our cryptic Lassie/interpreter relationship.

"Ahhh, mama, Ahhh, gaaa"
What's that Asa? You can't find giraffe in your bed? 

Got to go put on my interpreter hat.
Such is life with my Buddy Boo.


 

Seven!

Asher celebrated his seventh birthday last Saturday.  As the big day approached, he could hardly contain his excitement and I became more and more nostalgic of what my life had been in those last days leading up to the birth of my first child.

I remember giving a final presentation at work, wondering how I would fill my days at home and what I would do without the camraderie of my coworkers,  I couldn't imagine how the baby inside of me would make it out into the world.

Seven years later, my days look a billion times different and I have a new group of friends who are comrades in these motherhood trenches.  This different is good.

My boy can't get enough of his DS which drives me crazy, but he also can't get enough of reading which fills me with pride.  I can see his internal battle as he struggles to figure out how to control and correct ways to express his emotions.  Some times control wins and other times emotions win - you could say the same for me.


He loves his alone time and needs periods of just doing nothing with no one.  I've learned that for his introverted personality, these hours spent in his room recharge his personality and bring back my happy Asher again.  But he also loves his friend time. 

Seven years have been good.  The birth of my Asher, my creative child who always has an elaborate solution to solving problems changed everything seven years ago and I couldn't be more thankful for him.