day 68 blog 56 a morning in my life

i'm posting only this single photo of sea and story loving each other and it is difficult to not search my photo library for examples of a lot of the details i'm about to share...hopefully i spent enough time writing down all the specifics in this "observational study" (12 pages long in the new journal i bought to record all the cute things my children say/do)...

thursday oct 8, 2009 sea 4 story 19 months 7:20 a.m.

sea: "i'm feeling sad in my heart a little bit" (dad leaving for work)
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"let's paint!" (i actually do get out butcher paper and watercolors and we spend a few minutes making random drawings and splashes that will later be used as gift wrap)
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"mom, that's a wild good chase!" (not sure the context...heard this in a video, i believe)
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"...by the time i count to twelve-teen..."(20)
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"i think daddy is going to be concerned when he sees this scary monster"
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"brother's throwing balls he's not supposed to...please help!"
...(she begins role playing with her animals...complete with different voices and turning them to talk to each other) "i'm not a monster, i'm your mom!" "i don't want to be scared"
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"mom, ready to go inside the bathtub? i need to...goggin is really dirty so can i please put them in the bathtub?" (her favorite little stuffed tiger)
(story pushes around the bubble popper)
story: "mombee" (throws, bites, hits out of frustration then climbs on my lap, grabs, bites again...yes i fear he learned these things from sea although she went through a violent spell out of the blue when she was a little older than him)
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sea: "i'm a carpenter silly" (she saws and hammers with her play tools...then story starts crying while i'm trying to write this all down)
me: "sea, what happened to story?"
sea: "he bited himself"
story: (he reaches for me) "mumgees"...(nursing makes everything better)
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sea asks me to read her "what if the zebras lost their stripes" and "herb, the vegetarian dragon" and we get through most of both of them while story hums to himself "are you sleeping" a little too fast and frenetic over and over...we walks around us, reading his own books, exploring sea's room...i decide we should take a bath with epsom salts, lavender oil and grapefruit scrub (these details matter only to me)...sea nearly rips her clothes pulling them off so fast...she is in before we are...story goes "uh...uh...uh..." trying to communicate something (probably that he wants to get in quickly, too)...somehow i manage a blow out poop diaper clean up before he makes it in after her...sea is singing "la cucharacha (sorry i didn't look up the spanish spelling for the cockroach song)"...story starts singing old macdonald's farm "oh...oh...oh...oh...oh..." he also shows off his new skill of blowing on the "flauta" (flute...we try to throw spanish vocab at them when we know it)...sea had another piano lesson with daddio last night, too...oh, my, if ever this post was deserving of the label "free association"!!!!
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sea: "oopsadaysee...look what brother did to your socks!" (he pulled them all out of my drawer and was sitting in the middle of the pile) "instead of putting ba-ba's (what story calls balls) in (she is now referring to the little trunk of their toy car) we can put socks in and take them to a new city!" she jumps on this car and sails out of the room as fast as her legs can push on the slick hardwood floors...
story: "ba-ba" (he shows me the ball he chewed on that is now deflated)
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sea: "no hair" (she grabs ahold of her hair and runs off naked down the hall to avoid having her hair brushed...she someone talks her way in to brushing her own hair which never works but i hate this battle every day and am trying to hard to write it all down to put up too much of a fight...she immediately starts brushing story's hair instead)
"i've got a great idea!" (she skips off down the hall) "how about for dinner we can have a peanut butter and jelly sandwich?"
me: "how about for breakfast?"
sea: "yeah, come on!" (she goes in to cupboard...i tell her to get out--as i do every day--she grabs bread anyway...i yell too loud...overreact...also, as i do almost every day...in the meantime, story is stacking the soda cans in a pyramid...i get them out and then they both climb up in her chair "to cook"...i try to eat a few bites of my own cinnamon toast in between..."mom, can you please help me i'm having a bit of a problem...this peanut butter is too stuck...too sticky...oops, i'm sorry, i fell out of my chair...it was an accident" (she has a lot of accidents wiggling around too much on said chair)
story: "uh-oh...MA...ma..."
sea: "story made me spill my milk" "brother..." "look what we did!" (dollop of yogurt on top of sandwiches...story dips his whole hand in his yogurt...sea wipes her dirty hands on her pants...way too close to her dad's clean shirt hanging on the back of a nearby chair...i have itunes on random and originally listed the songs that were playing throughout our breakfast but they are so random i'm not sure that they add much to this story..."boogie woogie" was in there somewhere if that means anything..."i'm sorry, mom, i didn't mean to sit on brother"
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(they are both now jumping on the bed...sea puts on my nightgown and a long silky slip and plays dress up...story rides around on the little car then pushes it as fast as he can in to walls...sea jumps on and he pushes her...she pushes off with her feet and then coasts...this causes him to drag part of the way before he gets his feet back under to run and catch up to her...then they play bumper cars with each other as the bumpers and one car in between...sea then takes off without story and looks over her shoulder to see if he is still chasing her and it is still worth running away...)
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(now they are both under the comforter and playing peek-a-boo...then both back under taking turns lifting the edges to look out...
sea:"there's brudder"
me: "where is sister?"(story tries desperately to talk in an excited squeaky voice: "EE...EEE..."--his way of saying "sea"--story then jumps on top of sea under the covers...
sea: "i couldn't breathe for just a couple of seconds...not like as long as i could die breathe..."
(they both keep taking their socks and slippers off and i put them back on all throughout this morning i might add while i'm thinking about it)
"we're right here, mom, in a holee hole house" (back and forth under the covers together) "i'm in my chin-e-chin house" (i think this came from the 3 little pigs story? combining "not by the hair of my chin-e-chin-chin" and the concept of houses?)
(i get under and we make a "chin-e-chin house" together...this basically means one person stands up or hold their arm up to make a tent so the rest of the people can group together and see one another in the air pocket...sea and story are on and off my lap...crawling around and over me...this then buys me a couple of minutes to pick up my socks, nightgowns, etc. in the bedroom while they go in and out of the chin-e-chin houses they are making for one another...story jumps on the car again and practices pushing himself backwards...
sea:"oh dear" (she grabs a bite of scrambled egg...it tumbles out of her mouth while she's on the run, story runs to get his baby broom and starts scattering the mess...all this despite telling her every day she has to sit down at the table to eat...sea is now in and out of a giant computer box in the back room...i go to clean up the egg mess and as i try to vacuum story obsesses over it, takes over, "helps" me push it for awhile...sea pauses by the computer to see if she recognizes the next song on playing on random...i still haven't found a moment to brush my own hair let alone her (a small thing i take note of as i'm recording all this)...i do now recruit sea and story to pick up a little and then we go back in the chin-e-chin house...story nurses...sea says "mom, please help me, i'm on the edge" (of the mattress or between mattresses...we have a giant family bed made out of two...she always seems to need the most help when i'm nursing story)...she ends this story she is telling (living) with "...we lived happily after after in our chin-e-chin house"...