There's still love...

About a month or so ago I was startled into a new phase of siblinghood: The fighting. From the day Claira was born they got along like any parent would hope and dream. Ellia relished and flourished in her role as the bigger sister who already knew everything & now she could prove it by showing this new little one. Claira was born with stars in her eyes for Ellia. For a long time Ellia even won out over Mommy. But coinciding with Claira's new milestone of using the potty - her independence and self confidence has increased as well. The first few times Claira defied Ellia's requests or demands...well, Ellia was outright shocked. I realized it had been inconceivable to her that Claira would ever think differently than how Ellia guided her to! Poor thing. I felt bad. But her & I actually had some good talks. It gave me an opportunity to reinforce with her what a great sister she is and how patient she is with Claira. I made sure to agree with her that having a little sister IS frustrating. I'd say Claira still heeds Ellia's call 90% of the time. I just hope the sibling connection doesn't drop 10% EVERY two years!

Little Girls Before Bed

Sometimes, I repeat, sometimes there are evenings where there is a very mellow drowsy zoned out calm right before bedtime. I usually miss that window & put them to bed after the calm passes and a new storm hits. But sometimes I'll walk past a room & the quiet side-by-side play is almost deafening. So I stop and take in the sweet soft specialness of having girls.

School Time (Mommy's view)

Once I've wrangled them out the door (hopefully with their teeth and hair brushed), into the car (usually to the tune of "NO Mama! I do!" as Claira can not be helped one bit into the car and seat as I look at my watch) - 1st we drive to Claira's school. Unbuckle, climb out, grab what I hope is everything I was supposed to supply her with & head upstairs. Lately Claira is having a hard time with the Goodbye. I hug her and give her to Teacher Denise and tell her "Mommy pick up before you go outside. Remember?" It seems to help her realize/remember the picking up part of the day.

Then Ellia & I head to her school just a short distance away. (The photo above shows Claira cuz it's a non-school day for her, but usually I drop off Ellia alone.) Ellia has adjusted to her new school very well. It took about 1 week of crying & clinging. It was so so hard to slink into my car after hearing her cry for me. But the teachers were so good with the transition & they would call me within minutes to say that she had calmed down already. That was 7 months ago. We now pull up & she looks around to see who else she knows who is being dropped off. She still gets antsy-pantsy nervous-awkward sometimes when attention is on her during our good-bye. But that's just her. A lot of times I'll ease her up by chatting with one of the kids about his mohawk or I'll say "Bye Baby Dinosaur!" as I wave (to kinda use the spotlight she's in to make a joke & laugh.) They have a transistion tradition there where the parents say goodbye & say "I'll meet you at the window!" The child goes to the window to say goodbye. A lot of times it's just Ellia and I sharing a goodbye but sometimes it's her and others. I like to make silly faces or spin around & get dizzy or hang Claira upside down. I want to put Ellia at ease with having attention on her.

This is a rare thing for a mom to have, I think. This is a photo of my Ellia in a moment that I share with her. It's a face, a smile, a feeling that I purposely try to imprint onto my busy-mom-brain as I close the big white gate and walk across the gravel to my car door. I want to remember that brave goodbye smile.

Pickup time got a whole lot more fun with Claira in the last month or so. She's more social now & so when I arrive she gallops over to me and 'claims' me as her mama. She really likes the attention of being the one that's escaping while the others stay. I love watching her dive into the tasks she thinks she needs to do: run to cubby & grab "Bankie" (blankie), grab her jacket off the hook, spin around and show her 'talk to the hand' palm & scream "BYE-EE!"

Next up: Head to Ellia's school. At the time we pickup Ellia she's having her outside time. Claira loves the outside yard there. She's really taken to Gus-Gus (the goose) but I have to make sure she doesn't get her fingers bit off. It's usually hard to pull them away.

I was lucky enough to be able to join Ellia on her long awaited, mucho anticipated Field Trip. I had been hearing from the kids about how they were gonna ride in a real school bus. (Geez, the things that get 4 year olds excited) For Earth Day, they were riding to see a matinee showing of the 3D IMAX movie "Born to Be Wild". You out there = you HAVE to see this movie! Amazing! Ellia & I hunkered down in our seats munching on the bag of popcorn & mini chocolate chips I had stashed in my purse.

Easter 2011

Easter morning started with a trail of M & M's leading them to their Easter baskets. Ellia L O V E D this whole concept so I'm gonna roll with it for all the holidays (Valentines day? a trail of Hersey's Kisses. Christmas? a trail of green mints. Halloween? a trail of candy corn.)

"Just what I wanted! The Easter bunny knew!" Like I said, the 99cents Store is a gift from heaven.

Well, I knew the time would come and it has. Ellia is offically candy obsessed. Maybe I've gotten lucky that it took almost 5 years to kick in. Even last year's Halloween (at age 4) I was still able to put her candy away or throw the crap stuff out with no notice from her at all. But, alas those days are offically over. Eh, that's to be expected though & a new phase of childhood is opening up. I remember my brother and I dumping our pillowcases of Halloween loot onto the livingroom floor, laying on our bellies and meticulously yet feverishly sorting through it all. Our very own candy! It actually belonged to us! So that realization is alive & well in Ellia now. Above, you can almost see her Virgo line-up of her candy. She very carefully and deliberately groups them according to their kind.

We had our 3rd Annual Cousin Easter Egg Hunt/Egg Dying/Dinner. Jimmy's cousin lives with her husband & 3 kids in Chino Hills. They graciously host this event & it is such a wonderful time for the cousins. This year Claira was definitely old enough to take part in everything.

You can see the evolution of their Easter's here and here.




While we're chatting about cousinhood, I thought I'd post just a sweet little trio of their easy & natural interaction with eachother. They 'just know' that they're family.

Some Riverside days

Ellia having some Ellia-type conversations with Kirby and with Grandpa.

I love this photo of Ellia & Auntie Carissa! Carissa wants a kiss but Ellia decides to joke when asked for kisses. Ya gotta play to win with a girl like Ellia so Auntie is playing along if that means she'll get her kiss.

Look at her crazy long legs! Ellia had a crazy growth spurt somewhere along the way. Almost all her pants are highwaters now. They loved Grandma's trampoline & that bird pillow. She even invited the next door neighbors' daughter over. I was kind of surprised at how extroverted Ellia was with the girl! A typical situation would be for Ellia to whisper to me "Can she play over here?" and if I say "Yeah, go invite her!" she would say "Come with me. You ask.." But I guess there was something that made Ellia feel like Alpha-Ellia.

Here Ellia wants to give the birdie a bike ride but she has to fill up with gas first!

I love this goofy pic of Ellia. I almost want to make it my profile pic on Facebook. Everything from her face to her crouching over the bike just says Childhood.

Just me and my squirmy little girls in a tree.

Mission: Art IS Messy & That's OK

OK, so that's a mission statement meant for myself as much as it's meant for them. There's a couple reasons I'm repeating this mantra until it sinks into our psyche. First of all, over these past months I've gathered a collection of other women's blogs, bookmarked them into 1 folder, check them occassionally, grab photos/ideas & drop them into catagorized folders on my desktop (ie: "crafts_easy", "crafts_help", "drawing/painting", "outdoors") I know, VERY VIRGO. A popular site I like is The Artful Parent. I was inspired by how her daughter starts out doing something with her materials but her mind wanders & explores & experiments and she eventually creates a variety of things. I liked the ease with which her daughter felt with any material; her openess to just let go, zone out and create. It took me awhile to realize why & the answer was that art was always within arms reach. Her mom wasn't setting out stuff, calling her over & saying "Ok now this is what we're gonna do! Doesn't this look like fun!?" That's not how art works - that's how craftmaking works. So, over the months I gathered (99cents Store is a store sent from heaven) But because I have, oh say, a zillion other things to do I've only gotten so far as the materials. I have not set up a station anywhere near what Jean from The Artful Parent has given her daughters. But I'll make something that works for us & this Virgo will post it all soon!




The other night I asked Ellia to dig through their crayon bin & drop all the itty bitty piece crayons into my muffin tray. While they took a bath I baked them at 150 & when Ellia got out of the bath she was very excited to see the "Swirly Crayons". Her first instinct was to NOT use them. Haha! She wanted me to put them in a bag so she could bring them to school and pass them out to kids & teachers.

Spring with my sissies

We visited my grandparents graves for my grandma's birthday. Ellia is, by now, familiar with Forest Lawn. She says "I know this place...the flower garden." She's also wrapping her 4 year old mind around the concept of "dead". Right now she says that people go to the center of the earth when they die. I really love this photo of the 2 of us. It pretty much sums up how we look together most of the time.

Me & my sissies joined forces with my family, dad/mom/brother/sister in law for pony rides at Griffith Park. We had been there before for train rides but believe it or not, now they're old enough for the pony rides. Without a doubt, it was hot and stinky. Grandpa and Ellia did so good waiting in the hellish long line. I decided to not throw Ellia in the line for the "Fast" ponies. I took one look at the kids bouncing up & down with a look on their face that said "Am I having fun? I don't know! Am I gonna die? I don't know!" & the teenage 'handler' jogging to keep up behind.

So no, Ellia rode this nice, slooooooow pretty pony. I think it was just her groove, she looked completely relaxed & proud of herself as you can see on her face.

This was Claira's first time on a pony except for the little jaunt she took at Ellia's 4th birthday party. I have the wrong photo of her on this post because here she looks perfectly content to be going .0000001 miles an hour lassoed to a merrygoround. By her second rotation she was 'revving up' her horse trying to get it to go faster as if it were a ride at Chuck E Cheese! I guess I could've put her in the "fast" lane...I think my baby was born in the fast lane.

Ellia & Claira are lucky to have Grandpa and Uncle Adam as men in their lives. When I stop to think about it, they are pretty much surrounded by women 24/7. There's me, of course, then there's their wonderfully loving women teachers at school, there's Auntie Kristine (who they see at least once every week), there's Mommy's Mommy friends making memories & going on fun trips together, there's Auntie Carissa who squishes them the most & understands them effortlessly, and of course there's loving Grandma (Gamma) who cared for Claira for 6 months as an infant, always supplies Ellia with new learning or artistic things to do & who has helped me for countless backup babysitting!

Their Grandpa is a man who they know can't wait to see them because he is in the driveway when we pull up to his house to visit. Because he listens to Ellia when she talks about the Nick Jr. shows she's interested in and he fills his DVR up with them for her. Because he's always planning new places to go with them...wanting to create memory after memory, tradition after tradition. That's what family is all about at the end of the day. And that is a good man.