My crowning moment of motherhood

On Sunday we went to the Independent Catholic church in Fells Point to watch baby Zoey get christened. It was Hannah's first time in a church, and she did surprisingly well though she became bored with the constant up and down and refused to participate in the subsequent ups (I don't blame her--I get tired of all the up and down that goes on in a Catholic church too, although I suppose it's better than having to sit still for an hour...).  We had to ask her to whisper a few times and also to hold her applause for the organ player until the end, and I carried her out screaming once when she decided to stand up and simultaneously fall over face first into the pew in front of us, but other than that, model behavior! Fortunately it's a really laid back church so nobody gave us any dirty looks.

Amy and Nate provided refreshments after the service, so everyone headed down to the basement room to mingle and munch.  Hannah and I were the first ones at the buffet, me trying desperately to cut a wheel of brie with a plastic butter knife, Hannah loading up her plate with the surrounding strawberries. After clearing away some of the berries, she noticed the "garnish" the brie was sitting on and berries were sitting on and started pulling at the leafy green stuff and putting it on my plate, saying, "Here mommy. Here's some kale for you."

I was so proud. I realize that most of you will think I'm crazy for calling this my crowning moment, but I seriously love it that the little munchkin knows kale and knows that it's not just a garnish.  Not many 2-year-olds (or 32-year-olds) can claim that.

The only thing that would have made me prouder is if she had put it on her own plate and started chowing down. Maybe some day. A mom can dream....

The below pic is unrelated. I took it the morning before the christening while waiting for Clay and Grammy to show up. Hannah has joined me in my ritual of drinking hot water throughout the day (she has hers with honey) and was enjoying a cup while snuggling her Lila doll and enjoying a slow Saturday morning wake up.

Conversations with Hannah: Pee pee shooting out

Daddy: "Can I have a hug?"
Hannah: "No, I can't give you a hug because my pants'll get wet and my pee pee is shooting out."

(She offered him a hug after putting her shooting pee pee in the potty.)

City Rat Sled Ride

When I was little, my dad took us to the hill at Smithsburg high school to sled ride on snow days. There were other hills too, but that's the one I remember most. I haven't found an equivalent hill in Baltimore (I'm sure there's one in the county somewhere--ideas anyone??), but in the meantime, we've got the hill we live on and the hill in the parking lot a block away. Heck, we don't even need snow--a thick layer of slightly melted ice on a sidewalk is all this city rat needs to break out the sled for some winter fun!

I never thought I'd say this, but I'm ready for some snow now....Well, not right not, but maybe after Eric gets back from his dog sledding trip.

Habla Espanol

Eric and I took Hannah to a trial Spanish class this morning designed for kids ages 2-1/2 to 3 years taught by a woman from Columbia who speaks very little English, both inside and outside the classroom. Hannah was the youngest of the three in the class, but probably not by any more than a year, if that. The class was great, and I stand to learn just as much as Hannah. Today's class focused on animals, specifically, pejaro, perro, and gato. We sang songs that I couldn't understand the words to, played games, and did crafts that focused on emphasizing the words for bird, dog, and cat. We also learned the words for fly, walk, and run, and, when one of the crafts involved gluing eyes, ears, and noses on a cat and dog, we learned all those words too, but I forget them now....

My guess is that Hannah will pick it up way faster and easier than me, although she stayed pretty timid, clingy, and off-to-the-sides today. She had plenty of good reasons for being in a bad mood though. She's had a pretty severe ear ache all week and was up screaming for most of last night so she was exhausted today, and it doesn't help that the class is really late in the morning. Most of our activities start between 9 and 10, but this didn't start until 11:20 and it's an hour class. Hannah's other classes are 45 minutes, so about 50 minutes into this one, Hannah was fussy and ready to go, and we were eager to get our over-exhausted and long-since expired munchkin down for a nap.

Given the time of this class, we probably won't register her for this semester. I liked the program and see the importance of exposing her to another language while she's young, but that time just doesn't work for us, and the only other time frame for her age group is during nap time on Mondays. There are a lot more options for classes once she actually turns 3 so we'll revisit the idea then. Of course, we're leaning toward a Montessori education right now which will mean that she'll start learning French as soon as she starts.

If you're in the Baltimore/Towson area and interested, check out Fun with Foreign Language. They teach Spanish and Mandarin Chinese to ages 18 months to 10 years.

As for the ear ache, no clue what's going on there. Thinking it was an infection, I took her to the doctor on Tuesday. Apparently there's a ton of wax lodged in her ear canal, some of which the doc pulled out, and there's a little water in there, but no infection. Certain that it would turn into an infection in a few days, the doc wanted to put her on an antibiotic anyway. Although I'm pretty anti-antibiotic, I allowed it because her waking up screaming all night is getting exhausted, and also because she's had mucous coming out of every orifice since the beginning of December. I don't think I made the right call though because if it were an infection, she shouldn't still be in pain after 4 days on an antibiotic, right?  Swimming yesterday was probably a terrible idea...We tried to get her to sit still with peroxide in her ear today, but she freaked out within a minute which is not enough time for it to clear out all that gunk. We tried a little alcohol too, the main ingredient in Swimmer's Ear, but by then she was freaked out and wouldn't let us anywhere near her ear. Eric said he used to get ear aches a lot and that Grannah put drops of sweet oil in his ear. I have no clue what that is but am thinking I should look into it....Any other advice anyone?? Peroxide always works for me...

Quirky, quirky Hannah...

I managed to sneak Hannah into her underwear and pants today before she realized that I was dressing her at which point, she promptly put an end to it and insisted on keep her pajama shirt on. She took the shirt I'd picked out for her to wear and went tearing off into my room where she found an excellent hiding place for it, so excellent that I was unable to find it. While in my room, she pulled this hat of mine out of the closet and put it on her head before going downstairs to put on her slippers and fill her backpack with stuffed animals. This is how she looked when I came down:

I eventually talked her into showing me where she hid the shirt by praising her excellent hiding skills (which really were excellent--I seriously couldn't find it) and asking her to pretty please help me. She gave in, and I brought the shirt with us in case I was able to sneak her into a normal outfit, and I was. She change shirts after gymnastics and even put on her shoes so she looked less interesting walking around Whole Foods. What can I say? I was embarrassed....Sigh. I'm going to have to get used to it because my guess is that she's going to come up with far crazier ensembles come high school...

In other quirky Hannah news: yesterday I was making dinner and Hannah was losing brain cells staring at the boob tube when all of a sudden she came running into the dining room singing the "I gotta pee, I gotta pee, I gotta pee, hey, hey, hey, hey" song (am I the only one who sings that or do you guys know what I'm talking about?). She grabbed her little portable potty that we keep on the first floor and ran back in to the living room. I walked in a minute later to check on her and was startled to find her on the potty on the couch:

It's a bad pic, I know. I grabbed my camera as fast as I could but she was in the process of standing up when I snapped it and since I don't use flash, blurry is the result. I had to share it though because of the sheer ridiculousness of it. Who does that?? Today I caught her trying to do it again and asked her to please leave it on the floor to pee. This is not a habit we need to get into. I mean, really?? Fortunately, no pee was spilled in the taking of this picture.