mr. coy

neighborhood park

Reading Ventifacts* on a breezy day.  Ryan following Maya up and down playground equipment.  Finn sleeping in my arms.

* ventifacts means 'facts about the wind'  It's a beautiful hybrid book.

maya reading the ramayana

Doesn't every two-and-a-half-year-old read this?

box is better than the object

We're still in double diapers around here (the potty training stint didn't last long, but now that we're back from the East Coast, I plan to start back up again and stick to it this time, no matter how painful), and since we order Seventh Generation, we get these giant boxes, which Maya promptly hopped into and started shredding.  Indeed, not the most lovely cleaning-up later, but it kept her happy and she was exploring, and I'll take it!  With two, I'll take just about anything that entertains one safely and without the screen.  (I save that screen for the needier moments, I admit.  That girl loves her some Diego.)

head, up!

Maya requested I take a photo of her sheep.  Sheep, sheep!

5/18:  To Maya's great-grandmas and grandmas and everyone else who has been waiting for updates:  I'm so sorry I'm backposting these to such a great extent.  I have the photos, but am lacking the time to add even the smallest of words!  I will try to zip through a few weeks and stay up-to-date soon.  In happier news, I have another book manuscript complete, so I'm not completely a bum!

dear finn: two months

Dear Finn:

As I posted on Facebook, your daddy drank all your birthday wine and your sister ate all your birthday cake.  Poor babe.

You've managed to hang in two months with this family and though Maya has walloped you a few good ones, they are rarely intentional and if they are, it's some weird how-will-they-react kind of scenario.  I suppose it's like testing a melon--a thump here, a book nick there.  Is it hollow?  Hollow enough?  Too meaty?  I'm not sure what she's looking to find out, but I have a feeling it's will-I-get-punished.

You're smiling now--smiling at feeding time, smiling when I run my finger down your nose, smiling when you spot me and I've been absent a while, smiling for no reason at all.  You are still a bit more serious than your older sister (you'll face comparisons like this for most of your life, though know that I'm [usually] not attaching value judgement), so your smiles, though slightly more rare, are a delight.

You sleep in the crook of my arm.  There's a waking that is part of the nightly routine, not long after the sun comes up, where you just want to kick for a while and grin at me like a little fool.  You'll go back to sleep after ten or fifteen minutes of this, thank goodness, so I'll sit sleep-drunk, nodding a bit, while you kickkickkick and coo and smile.  Usually this isn't long after the sun has come up, and your father and sister sleep on.  It's like a little secret, just us.

You're not fond of being left alone for long.  I can usually eek out a few minutes--bathroom break!--when you're in your cradle, but otherwise, you are my attached baby.  You grump and grump before you break out into wailing and sometimes--if I can't get back to you quickly enough--some full-out screams!  Oh how those pierce and I feel terribly and sometimes it takes a while to coo you back to your body, but no tragedy has passed yet. 

Our family feels so cozy, the four of us.  I mentioned the words "almost" and "complete" in another post and that's only because I haven't landed in the two-kids camp or the three-kids camp.  Lots of pros and cons to weigh, and one of the pros is absolutely that you and your sister are bright shining star loves of my life.  You're also incredibly busy kids, and I want to show / give you the world and a third... Well, a third just makes the world bigger, doesn't it?  I'm muddled, and we'll leave it at that.

Sweet two months, darling.
xo
mama

nyc: central park zoo + farewell

It was a gorgeous day at the zoo.  Finn took his second flight ever (Maya's eighth, I think) and we arrived in Minnesota to globs of snow.

Home again, home again.  :)