Hello again! Sorry for another 2-month lapse in my posts. Things are going very well. The girls won't be in preschool for another couple of years, but the start of the school year made a big difference in my own schedule and my mood. Erin babysits for 4 hours every Monday now -- a nice start to the week! -- and Fairy Godmother Julie often takes the girls to her house for the day.
My last post was a rant, but I'm feeling better about my parenting style and methods. Recently I retook the test in MotherStyles, the personality typing book based on the Myers-Briggs system, which is pretty much my #1 parenting book. I'm an INFP: Introverted, Intuitive, Feeling, Perceiving, but I'm on the borderline between Perceiving and Judging. So I'm "The Tuned-In Mother" but nearly "The Know Thyself Mother." I rock the unstructured time, emotional connections with my children, transcendental moments, and random stops for ice cream. I struggle with/suck at small details, structured activity, and decision-making in general. I get moody if I don't have enough "me" time. Very true. I've given this book to my closest friends and shared it with my mom. The awesome part of this book is that it really does show that there is no one way to be a good mother and that women approach motherhood with different motivations, dreams, and values. Also, I can understand now why I felt so disconnected and confused during infertility. I'm not a goal-setting kind of person, so "watchful waiting" was truly the right approach, until intuition led me to IVF.
Thus it's more than OK that I just like to hang out at home with my kids and haven't taken them back to storytime since my last post. That's how INFPs roll.
Because I do need a lot of time to myself, I've started getting up at 6 every morning; this gives me a couple of hours in the morning before the girls wake up, and it's a big improvement. I can spend some time with D., have coffee, watch Rick Steves, read, go online, or occasionally work on a draft of a blog post that will be published eventually. : ) I've been trying to go to bed earlier and setting my cell phone alarm for 9:55 pm -- that's my cue to stop my freelance work. Before the girls were born, I usually got up at 6 and was in bed by 10:30, and I feel healthier, having returned to those habits.
It helps that the girls have stopped napping, and although 6-7 pm can be hellish, they're out with lights out. I think they are going through a growth spurt; for the past week, they've been sleeping for 12.5 to 13 hours at night.
The girls might just look taller because we were gone for nearly a week. D. and I were in Paris from Oct. 12th to 17th. Paris is wonderful. I've only been to two other cities in the U.K. and Europe -- London and Amsterdam -- and they were awesome, especially London, but Paris is on another level altogether. D. edited our photos and video with iMovie; I've been trying to embed it from my Facebook wall, to no avail, but if you're FB friends with me, you can see it there, or maybe the link above will work. And I promise to write another post soon about our trip. For now, let it be known that dusty (grayish) purple was the color on the Paris streets as of last Sunday. Nearly every female, from infant to elderly, was wearing something in that shade.
In other big news, Ivy and Nina will be 3 in less than 2 weeks! Their personalities and differences are very clear now, and the girls are beginning to take ownership of their belongings.
I'd say that Ivy has a temperamental side but is also extremely loving and tender hearted. She says, "I love you, Mama" dozens of times each day. She takes good care of her stuffed animals (and Nina's) and likes to line up Little People animals for a dance party. I can usually calm her down by talking "through" a stuffed animal. Ivy is a great dancer and can do somersaults. She's attentive and orderly and, in crowds, is more likely to stand back for awhile and look on with a smile, then join in the fun. Ivy's smile and dimples continue to light up the room. She's into clothing, especially pink dresses, and she likes to wear a necklace. She did not get this from me, although she's very much a mommy's girl. But she told D. last night, while watching Mary Poppins, "He [George Banks] is not a very nice daddy. I have a GREAT dad." Her speech improves daily.
I try not to make a big deal out of Ivy's blonde hair and aquamarine eyes, because I had some serious blonde resentment when I was little (in the days when most dolls were blonde). But Ivy's hair really is beautiful. It is shoulder length and has an enviable wave. Nina's hair is a pretty shade of light golden-brown, but it's very fine and can look kind of straggly sometimes. Her legs make up for that, though. The girl has gams! She's so lucky.
Nina is a little less feisty than Ivy, but I don't think she listens to half of what I say, and I know she doesn't listen to half of my instructions! She's a sunny little girl but is sensitive to criticism and when she starts crying, she gets upset that she is actually crying ("I'm sad. I don't want to be sad. I don't want to cry. I can't stop crying!"), and it takes awhile to calm her down. She's kind of mischievous, or maybe she just likes to push boundaries. Nina is very gregarious and joins in right away. I think Ivy would be far more reserved without Nina, but I do need to work on STRANGER DANGER with Nina. She's very tactile -- she sleeps on her stomach over a bundle of blankets, but with wooden toys, colored pencils, or other favored objects of the last half-hour at her side, and she likes to play with water. She loves to color with chalk and to make layers of intense pigments on the sidewalk, the wall, and herself. Nina is great at memorizing lyrics and nursery rhymes -- she gets this from me and my dad -- and she has a nice voice and the sweetest inflection, but not a whole lot of coordination or mechanical ability (she gets this from my mom... and maybe from me). ; )
Right now the girls are obsessed with Mamma Mia!. They know all the lyrics, and when the first "Dancing Queen" number comes on, they get up on the couch/pier and sing at the tops of their lungs, then jump off the couch/into the water. I love their exuberance. But I wish to God that this movie had been cast with people who could actually sing. Any soundtrack purchase will be from the stage musical, not the movie!
It's close to 9:30 and I still have a bit of freelance work to do tonight, so bonsoir for now. I'll try to post pictures and details of our Paris trip within the next week.
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