Back-log Blog: September 2011

Gotta get a blowout for the blowout party. Ellia's a pro at the hair cutting now even though she's only had a handful of hair cuts. This was the first time she got to have a professional hair wash in the weird neck sink :)

Ellia's 5th Birthday was awesome! You never know if it'll all come together, if you chose the right place & if people will show up. She was talking about this party for weeks leading up to it and even more weeks after it was over. She was telling strangers on the street that she held a scorpion, held a turanchula..anyone who would listen. She felt SO grown up to be 5. Why that was a huge milestone in her head I don't know. Although I was hearing for a long time this summer how s0-and-so was already 5, when will I be 5, etc. It was a huge milestone for me too. There seems to be a large divide between 4 and 5. 4 seems more like 3. But 5 is nothing like 4. 5 looks squarely ahead at 6 and beyond & is not longer looking back.
Well, if she's not lookin' back I will: http://thechaifam.blogspot.com/2009_09_01_archive.html

I slaved over those darn dinosaur egg favors for 2 nights and the morning of the party (blow drying them dry). They were going to work if it was the last thing I did. I used water balloons and paper mache then put candy and reptiles inside. Ellia was really into the details of her party. She had a giddy & "let's get this done right" attitude the morning of her party when we stuffed the eggs. I'll also always remember the day we picked the reptile zoo as her birthday party place, that night when I was scratching her back she just wanted to gab and gab about all the things she envisioned for her party and all the friends who would go.

After the party friends and family came over for a movie in the yard old-school style. It was the first time doing a movie outside and I loved it & hope to do them next summer.

The morning of her birthday we gave her her BIG 5 Surprise! I remember my parents leading me to the front porch for my birthday and there was a Strawberry Shortcake bike with a white basket and all. We did the same for Ellia - although this bike is waaaaaay cooler than a Strawberry Shortcake bike. She gets a lot of compliments on it too. Definitely a cool 1st bike - or Training Wheel Bike as Ellia calls it. She never calls it a bike, she used that long title, haha! She was SO excited. She told everyone about it, and riding it was always the first thing she wanted to do when she woke up and the first thing she wanted to do when I picked her up from school. She was determined to master the balancing of it, the turning of it, the braking of it. I loved how she valued her bike so much, every so often she'd stop suddenly, hop off and bend down to see if the tires were ok.

Here are the sisters playing Mommy & swaddled baby. For an average camera, I think it's a beautiful shot. Someday in the future in my future free time days - I plan to paint this photo.

Ok, so I guess it's tradition now to end each post with a GEEE-orgous pic of Claira. This is at their school & she's up in the treehouse. We had all just celebrated the September Birthdays at her school. Claira joined Ellia's Montessori in August and she adjusted so well (with tons of help from her school Mommy=Ellia. One of the first weeks, one teacher said that she was taking Claira to the bathroom & Ellia jumped up from what she was doing and said "I better go with you. You might need my help." Claira gained a new sense of independence and "Claira-ness" & even though that brought more feistiness outta her, it also brought her closer to her sister.

Back-log Blog: August 2011

And here's all of me and Grandpa's hard work put to play. We were even featured on http://mandooandlumpia.com
Ok, that's just one of my friend's blogs :)
After living here since, what, 2007 we finally took in one of the free summer events in the park. Mama Ellyn and her chubby rolls baby and sweetie girl joined us and my parents for an animal show. Maybe next summer we'll take advantage of the summer stuff more (yeah and I said that 2 years ago too!)

Big girl Claira is all in now with the arm bands like her sister. Crazy to see her out in the middle of the pool floating and twirling when I used to have to sit with her on the steps while she splashed around and liked the feeling of the water on her legs but didn't want to get in. She's not that grown up though cuz she still drinks the pool water.

Jimmy had the week off work and wanted to take a trip. The plan went from a drive up to stay in San Luis Obispo - to - a beach day trip to La Jolla. It was a great time, perfect weather, water was clear and pretty warm! We liked experiencing new sand (really coarse), the tide pools with baby hermit crabs everywhere, caves, tons of seaweed, and even a washed up half lobster. Me and Ellia and Claira played a game for a long time: Ellia and I raced to the shore and grabbed a huge handfull of sand that was mixed with big bits of colored glass thats been turned into little jewels, softened by the rolling tide. Claira LOVED being in charge of the pile, taking out the jewels she liked best. Ellia loved yelling at the waves "ERR take that! You can't get me! We're the wave blasters!"

Here's a cave that Ellia wanted no part of. Claira kinda liked it. We pretended that there was something sleeping inside. I cherish that my little one still puts her finger on top of her whole nose for the "Shh" sound.

Well, I guess I seem to be ending a lot of my posts with gorgeous photos of Claira. This photo is ridiculous...it's so weird how every so often the camera catches children in a certain light: The photo doesn't really LOOK like the child looks in person, it looks more like what the child will look like years from now.
This night was the girl's school Camp Out Night! I went to Walmart with the girls and bought a little tent & sleeping bags. All the kids loved being at school 'after hours' and playing in the yard at night. I had a good time chatting with the parents. I put up a tent! Oh yes I did (OK one of the mom's helped me since all the kids started playing in MID-construction. This was the first Camp Out I've been to (last year Ellia had only been at the school for a week or so and we didn't really know anyone). I was under the impression everyone who was there (and there were a lot) would actually CAMP OUT. Well, turns out a lot of them were veteran's and were wiser than me. They'd already done it before & instead used the campout to completely wear out their kids for bedtime. Brilliant, I thought. If only I hadn't been pumping up our "very 1st camping night!!!" for weeks. Well, I hung in there. A dad also camped with his 2 sons and a mom with her daughter. 3 parents, haha! But the look of sheer exhilaration on Ellia and Claira's faces when we cozied into our tent and sleeping bags was something I made sure to put to memory. Especially since I needed something to make the rocky dirt digging into my back all night worth it!

Back-log Blog: July 2011

Love love love this photo & the adorable 4th of July dresses - THANK YOU AUNTIE BARBARA!
We celebrated Grandpa's birthday at Magic Mountain. This is Ellia's first theme park roller coaster. If I had the 1979 photo of me on this same roller coaster (my first as well) I would post it. I have a look of pure terror mixed with trying not to look terrified. I love how my sweet, careful Ellia is the only child on the ride with her hands down.
She eventually threw her hands up and when the ride was over she was confident enough (and tall enough) to go on an even bigger coaster. Here she is proudly standing in front of the "big person roller coaster"
HAPPY BIRTHDAY GRANDPA!

4TH OF JULY 2011
We saw Cars 2 3D with the cousins at the El Capitan. Then off to a Dodger's game & fireworks.

Back-log Blog: June 2011

The sisters (sissies, Eye-ya & L00L00.)

Ellia continues to be a 2nd Mommy to our little L00L00 (Ellia and I started calling her that at some point because she was 'acting Looloo' so I said "you're our little LooLoo." Ellia got a kick out of that, she laughed and laughed. Claira said "I not LooLoo. I not LooLoo.I Crar-a."

June marked Claira's 2 1/2 age & with it (as I noticed at Ellia's half-way marks) came a serious personality adjustment. I remember at 1 1/2 thinking "this chick wears her emotions right out in the open. Even if she has a tantrum, boom, when she's over it she is OVER IT." I thought "hey, this is cool...she gets over things so quickly!"
Well, then came the next roll-out phase of The True Claira. The Emerging Claira. The "What the hell am I gonna do when she's a teenager" Claira! For a month or so I was reeling. Everthing I learned while parenting Ellia for almost 5 years - I threw it all at her. She was immune to all of it. This chick required a whole new play book that I inwardly dreaded wasn't capable of coming up with. She seemed so foreign to me. So hot and cold. She KNEW she was older. She was mowing over every boundary she could find & with not a care in the world about it. I was living through back to back melt-downs. And by that I mean, within minutes of eachother. (Screaming about being put into her carseat instead of climbing in it. OK, finally calmed down. Boom, screaming about that way I buckled her in.) I was on pins and needles because I was right smack in the middle of a "damned if I do, damned if I don't" world. And she was mean! It wasn't just a tantrum. It was "NO Mommy! What'd you DO dat!? I don't LIKE you." She was definitely bullying me. And she was bullying Ellia too - hitting her the millisecond she became mad. Then, as soon as her tornado started it stops and SHE'S fine. SHE'S ok. She leaves chaos, hurt feelings, buises (an emotional armeggedon) in her wake - and she's lookin' back like "What? I'm over it, why aren't you?"
Luckily, after a few weeks I found my inner Mother of Claira. It's a new one & I'm really proud that we've made & grown stronger through this first of many Emerging Claira's to come. I'm firm on the things that 100% without a doubt are no-budgers. And it has to be a strong, loud NON-emotional firmness. Emotions to Claira are like blood in the water to a shark. If she senses she's 'getting to ya' she'll zero right in on ya. Mostly, I realized I had to TELL Claira what she needed to say, instead of just saying "use your words". She's an emotion thru action type person. It's hard for any child to put their feelings into words but for Claira, even more so because it's not her first instinct to let you know - she just wants to show you. Fast & easy - That's her motto. Action first, words later (maaaybe). A co-worker of mine who was the only Saggitarious in an all Virgo family once told me. Oh yeah, we're "Jump first. Say 'oh shit' later."
It's so true. But I realized that I could not let Claira be a bully. I also had to teach Ellia to not let herself be bullied. So actually it was a bonus that I could help give her the self-esteem to say No to Claira, that she will not allow herself to be treated that way. Ellia doesn't like conflict so her instinct when hearing Claira begin to whine or yell was to just make it better. ie: make it go away. I told Ellia "Claira needs to learn that she can't scream at people to get what she wants. You are a wonderful big sister and you should not be yelled at."
Things are SO much better. Claira will now point out when she is following rules. "Look Mommy! No teeming (screaming) no running aroun!" When Ellia squeezes passed her in the back seat Claira looks at me and exclaims "I no push!" She's becoming proud of herself for living inside boundaries. I'll enjoy it while it lasts.

Importance of Play - May 2011

One of my favorite blogs is Teacher Tom: http://teachertomsblog.blogspot.com/
He teaches at a progressive multi-age parent participation pre-school in Seattle. I get a lot of inspiration from his take on "the early years" of guiding young ones. Visiting the school, most parent's would probably take one look at the outside play area and shoo their children away immediately. At first glance it looks like an absolute junk yard:
But it's overflowing with room for a child's imagination...for a child to move & learn at the same time, shaping those neuron's in that growing brain. Even once we grew up, we adults still seem to say that we learn best when we can just do it ourselves - learning through doing.
Teacher Tom had a breakthrough once where he realized that when he put things out in the yard with a specific goal in mind for the kids to do with it - he would always end up frustrated because it seemed like they weren't going along with what he envisioned. Sound familiar moms?
He said: "...the more vested I am in my own agenda, the more likely it is that I'll find myself frustrated. And that's, of course, because it's not my agenda, but the children's, that must stand at the heart of a play-based curriculum. In a play-based curriculum, the only failures are those that come when adults cling too possessively to their own agendas, either driving children toward their predetermined goal, or pulling out their own hair in frustration when the children, as they always will, seek to make it (whatever it is) their own. It's something I need to remind myself of every day, this setting aside of my own agenda. We all should, I think. There is great power in standing before children and saying, I don't know what to do. When we do that as teachers, we put learning in the children's hands, and in doing that we cannot fail."
The concept of giving Ellia and Claira something and NOT telling them "THIS IS WHAT YOU DO WITH THIS." was actually refreshing. And, seriously, they're gonna end up doing what they want with it anyway! May as well sit back and watch the show instead of getting flustered. It's hard to slow down to their pace, isn't it? It's sad we don't really remember what it was like when time went by so much slower.
Parents might look at the yard in an expansive view & write it off as messy, haphazard and dangerous. But they would miss the tiny spaces children make, inside their own minds...
...their own worlds.

Above is Teacher Toms "Mud Pit". It inspired me, even though crowded-cookie-cutter California can't really compete with other areas of the country with more room, more greenery, more originality. I bet the same moms who would say "I would never let my kids go to that messy school!" are the same moms complaining that they're kids never play outside. "Why don't you want to play in the back yard?" Maybe cuz a lot of planned-community California towns are stuck-up & landscaped to the point of sheer boredom.

Above is the girls Mud Pit and I hope to add a pulley and some gulleys (rain gutters used to pour water, sand, cars etc down.)
Ellia was thrilled and shocked that I entrusted her with REAL nails (I hadn't bought her a real mini hammer yet so she was using that baby one)
Both girls seem to be occupied for long periods of time when they're 'cooking'. So I set up their outside kitchen area with lots of stuff to grab, saved coffee grounds & bought spices at the 99Cent store.In the blazing heat good 'ol Grandpa built a sand box, a veggie garden box & a play house!While I was cutting back my arch nemisis: the night blooming jasmine tree shrub (ugh, if my hair only grew as fast as that damn shedding shrub). All 3 of us, actually, were in our own world in the yard that day, not saying much, just working with our hands and letting our minds wander. So I love that Ellia eventually thought to use my clippings to make a jungle for all her dinosaurs.And, well, Claira just got naked. Love it.

Fireworks Day

Jackson. She has insisted he be HER Jackson for as long as she's known him (her whole life). Jackson's going to be moving to another state this summer. He is going to get a wonderful new house & wide open spaces to stretch out & be all the amazing things he's capable of being. I know Ellia would be in heaven to just sit on the edge of the lake in his soon-to-be neighborhood & learn to fish, to scour the muck for the grossest sea creature this side of Peachtree, Georgia. But she won't be with him. And I know it hasn't yet sunk in completely. She just knows that he's moving far away because he has to fly in a plane to get there. And she knows he's leaving after Fireworks Day (4th of July)

Time with Ellia

This is one of my favorite photos of Ellia. And, you know, I'm not even sure why. But I think it has all the little things all rolled into one. I remember when I took it. I had crept into the room because I could not believe that she was entertaining herself for so long! Oh how I remember that blue co-sleeper: how I layered it with washcloths underneath the receiving blankets tucked over to get just the right curvature for her to lay on her side like she liked (hoping that would make her sleep longer!) I remember that toy (her 1st favorite, from San) I remember sitting with her on that big tan sectional couch & marveling at how of all the thingy-ma-jigs on the toy, she wanted to master the hardest one first (and she did!) And you can almost see the crib tent that was attached to keep Kramer out (who ended up never interested in the crib at all!) I remember rocking her back and forth, staring at the red digital clock and mentally waiting for 6 minutes to pass & then bending into the tent to lay her down, holding my breath that she'd stay asleep.

Well, and here she is.. from 4 months to 4 years! She's still sleeping in that same crib (changed out into toddler bed). Getting her to stay asleep isn't like walking on pins & needles. She still loves routine if she plays a part in it. She'd still prefer to play with me instead of entertaining herself for long periods. I suppose when she was 4 months it used to wear on my last nerve that she couldn't at least sit on her own and play. Now, it doesn't wear on my last nerve because there's so much she could be doing & a lot of the time she wants to do it with me. I guess as a parent, you're just always holding your breath for different reasons throughout the years.

These two pictures show the opposite sides of Ellia. The tomboy (transformer) and the sweet girl time (barettes, lipgloss, rings, bracelets & heels). Truth be told, she'd choose the transformer outfit handsdown any day of the week.

This is a sample of what I come across daily living with a chick like Ellia. Don't know why, don't know what for - but I do know that she definitely did.

She went through a month where she wore this Angel's cap to school every day. I loved that she was wearing something to school that sorta embodied who she is: quirky, sporty, friendly.

Ellia likes almost all bugs. I havn't quite figured out her higherarchy in terms of what's a 'good' bug and what needs to be 'killed' (stomped on) right away. Harmless, tiny ant? (she'd stomp them all if she could) Slimpy segmented worm? (loves em "I don't think they're gross") A cool Walking Stick? (terrified. go figure.) I think her favorite are the rolley polleys though. She likes to say if it's a Mama, Daddy or Baby & she talks to them.

And here's a great snapshot of Ellia's typical need to break out into the randomest of random song & dance. As you can see she changes her facial expression with each move. As she gets older, her songs get more and more facinating to listen to. I noticed awhile ago how she's able to hear a song once & memorize all the lyrics. And when she makes up her own songs she actually has a structure to it (chorus, dramatic pauses, instrumental break) She may not be able to entertain herself for very long but she sure does entertain me!