Mother's Day

My brain to finger capability has been broken lately. Writer's block would be one way to but it and for now it will suffice as a reason for not writing for so long. Today, I awoke at 5:30am and starting writing in my head, a place that lately has been filled with things that seem to not translate well on paper. As my head filled, my feet followed and motivated me downstairs to use the temporary quiet that begins the day.
This will be the last entry for The Burgeoning Belly. Today I feel the end of this chapter and the start of new things to come. The new blog will still serve as a scrapbook/journal for Nori and Charlie, scattered with all the mess that is in my head. Writing this blog has taught me that it is the mess I can write about that is better then the one I can't. It's nice to have a place to clean it up or at least have somewhere to spread it out and take a look at what I got.

I am always amazed when someone mentions something I have written here. Once I write it I let it go and I forget that once it's gone from my head to here that it becomes someone else's. I want to thank anyone and everyone that has spent even a second of their time to be part of my time and for watching Nori and Charlie grow into these really cool people. I would love to have all of you come along on our next leg of the "journey," a word ruined for me by The Biggest Loser. How about thanks for being part of our life, (no quotes) instead.

The new blog is called The Nest. See you there.

amy-thenest.blogspot.com

Sing a Song

We have many supper time sing off videos but I felt this one captured the competitive spirit of the show. I don't think they are so much confusing "Twinkle Twinkle" with the Alphabet song so much as they are creating an interesting medley.

Teach Your Children Well

Okay, maybe 14 years from now I would have written this article. Unfortunately, I think I am currently the subject.

http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/03/05/yes-brilliant-parent-we-can-hear-you/

According To You

We had our Early Intervention meeting this week. Three grueling hours of evals, including a cognitive eval that was 45 minutes for each child. I swear my shoulders needed to be surgically removed from my ears by the time we walked out of Jersey Shore Medical Center. The results: we are normal. We have to go back in six months to follow up with the speech and physical therapists, but for the most part we are just your average 2-year-olds. Never would I have thought that I would love the word average so much. It is funny how much they (Nori and Charlie)know. I am hyper aware of the things I purposefully teach them, and those things shine through, but what is more amazing are all the things they know that I have no idea where they learned them from. Of course I know that children are sponges and they pick up everything, but it is really shocking to see in practice, to see their environment played out on their own personal stage. They see everything. So they may be "average" according to The Bayler Scale, but accoring to the world scale, they are pretty extraordinary.

Two of Us

Soon we will turn two. In almost twenty two days my babies will be two. Charlie's vocabulary is much larger than I know. He can repeat just about any word, imitate a zoo full of animals, and randomly quote lines from his favorite film, a familial trait inherited from his father and Uncle Dan. His stand-bys are, "Mack!" and "McQueen, kachow!" His smile melts me when I walk in to his room first thing in the morning and he yells, "Mama!" as if it has been days since we last saw each other. He knows how to tease Nori, but does so cautiously, judging her mood better then anyone. He enjoys holding things she might be interested in and running with them, periodically peeking over his shoulder to be sure she is coming after him. He is a quiet soul, playing independently when he has a moment alone. He will sit on my lap for long periods of time, leafing through his books, pointing out all the things he knows or wants to know. He will sit and relax, playing with the tag on an old terry cloth bib, fiddling between index and middle finger. He still looks like an overcooked piece of spaghetti when he ambles about a room, but his hugs are solid and sincere. He is a little prince, my cuddly little bear, my sunshine.

Nori is often like a thirteen year old indulgently placed in a gifted and talented program. She is all the things that I had no idea I was but are seem suprisingly obvious to people who know me. I could use words like "willful" or "headstrong," but she is really just tough as nails and I want her to stay that way. She understands EVERYHTING. She is always willing to help me and herself, proclaiming, "I try," to indicate her wishes. She loves to sing and dance, and has opinions about the songs I play in the car. She often breaks into a head bop in Whole Foods and will hold the last note of a song a little longer than the recording artist. She generates attention any where we go, whether she is sitting primly in the gym locker room, waiting for me to get our things together, or waving and forcefully yelling "HI!" at the gas station attendant, screaming loudly when he walks away to help another customer. She scowls intensely and loves fiercely, often within the same 5 minute time frame. She drives me crazy and I celebrate every minute of her.

"Two" was to be our magic age. The age when we would be "caught up" to children their age. As we close in on February 12th I see that gap between chronological and corrected age close . No one asks anymore if they were premature. I know our past will never be entirely behind us, but I feel as though that part of our story is almost over for now. It makes me think that maybe I need to end this blog and begin a new one. A chapter finished but not all together closed.

Now, to come up with a new alliterative title....

Simply Having a Wonderful Christmas Time

Let the Sun Shine

Sundays past, Bryan and I would hang around in the morning and split up the newspaper, grabbing our favorite parts-the Style section for me, the magazine crossword for him. We would drink coffee until we were caffeine restless and then go about our Sunday activities. These days, we still drink lots of coffee and we still get the New York Times weekender, but it often goes unopened from one weekend to the next and I am left wondering what the heck I did all week that I could not even get the paper out of the plastic.

My all time favorite column is called Modern Love. Each week features an essay regarding different kinds of relationships and the everyday things that may not be so everyday that shape how we interact with each other. I got to read last week’s column because I went into the city by train for a night out with my best friend (a lovely treat!). The essay was about the abnormality that is the long-term marriage and the author’s reflections on why, perhaps, he and his wife have been married for 35 years. “Obstacles become assets,” was the main theme. Days later I am still thinking about it. Fortitude can be found when you can weather the many storms that blow through your life. It is more than just buckling down and waiting for things to blow over-as I so often do, but instead tackling the things that make things uncomfortable. It is so much easier to reflect on this when I am not in the middle of a maelstrom and I so wish I could give the gift of this knowledge to the people in my life who her hurdling through some major hurdles right now. Because if you can come out the other side, the sustainble sunshine awaits.