Preschool-Time at warp speed

The days and nights are flying at the speed of sound, it feels like. My brand new baby is approaching 8 months old, and my old baby is three and a half. We don't count her age by months anymore, just half years. My beautiful girls will be 12 one day and these days will be etched in my mind...Gillian dancing in her blue ballerina skirt and tutu, Addie and Gillian laughing in the hallway, reading Gillian books at bedtime and telling me silly stories and "talking about our day"... and I know I will wish I had been more present, even though I'm doing the best I can.

My baby starts preschool this September. SCHOOL. Time is like sand, slipping through my fingers. I had a moment of panic thinking about all the scary things Gillian will be exposed to, even in a Catholic school. People who just don't love her (she is unfamiliar with the fact that sometimes people just don't), mean girls, mean boys, sexual advances, drugs, drinking, lying, staying out late... God, what I would do to keep my precious baby from all that is ugly on earth. So, I am trying extra hard to love her like a blanket, mindfully- enveloping, soft, comforting. One day she might not want to be seen with me, so I should enjoy the moments when she wants nothing more than to be with me, regardless of what we're doing.

SCHOOL. So, I didn't agonize. I didn't visit multiple programs. I didn't ask hard hitting questions about HOW they would enrich my child. I'm not prepping her for Harvard next year, it's preschool. But I know LOTS of people who agonize, and who approach "getting in" to preschool like it's medical school, and who have visited ALL of the "best" programs in town. I am officially a slacker. We go to church at St. Gerts, and it's a wonderful community of people with lots of young families. There is so much community outreach, charitable work, and sense of unity there that it was a natural choice for us. It feels like home, and we want our children to be part of that. So, we applied to one and only one program, which is the St. Gertrude Parish school, Northside Catholic Academy. We also wait listed for Loyola Preschool, but that was a just-in-case kind of deal. I didn't truly apply there... So, Gillian "got in" and will start preschool at NCA this year, and I am delighted. It is probably on the cheaper side for private schools in town ($6600 a year for a parishioner), and it would be a cost savings if we still didn't need Anna for Addie's care. No one said having kids was cheap, by any stretch.

Yes, NCA had a 98% first choice placement rate at the top (free!) magnet high schools in the area. But we just LIKE it. We like the people, we like the vibe, we like that it is aligned with out values. We like that as far as Catholic churches go, it is pretty progressive. We love that our priests are gregarious and funny. We love the guidance and caring we get there. We love that when Gillian was born unexpectedly early, we got a phone call and a card offering any support we needed. We like the Gillian will be instilled with a sense of service to others through school programs to help the poor, the homeless, and the elderly...we love that she will see her peers doing the same. There is a lot of work to do in Chicago along those lines, to be sure.

And really, I think regardless of the program your kid goes to, a good portion of their performance academically is tied to how you engage with them. So, even if we couldn't swing private school, she would survive. I did, even with minimal attention from my parents (though I am convinced that my dad's efforts with me as a toddler when he was taking his early child development programs in undergrad had long-term payoffs with my conscientiousness in school).

So, Gillian is going to preschool. !!!!

Life

Things are wild around here. Lots of life. The girls have their moments, good and bad. Gillian can be perfectly lovely, or a major challenge. Depends on the mood. Addie is generally happy (particularly when she's crawling or standing), but is prone to falling and hitting her head (impetus for foam flooring purchase yesterday) and has been miserably teething, has many intermittent bouts of eczema that look like giant blisters covering her entire body, and we have had a recurrence of thrush (!). So, every now and then she gets crochety, but who can blame her when she has four molars coming in that she shouldn't be getting for two more years? The thing is, I am never sure why she is miserable when she fusses, so it's trial by error. At least it doesn't hurt to nurse her now that I've been taking my thrush meds.

Addie thinks Gillian hangs the moon. Gillian thinks Addie isn't a real human being. So there's lots of room for us to fantasize about the day they will play together (Addie chased Gillian down the hall squealing today) AND to worry that Gillian might cause irreparable harm to Addie by being to aggressive (trying to carry her, hugging her too tight, etc.). All I know is that I *hope* that the girls are best buddies one day, to take a little pressure off us and Gillian's neverending demands for a playmate (which we both don't have enough energy to be 24/7).


In other news, we think Addie is musically with it. She started tapping in rhythm a couple of months ago when she hears accordian or banjo. Now she is clapping rhythm and loves her egg shaker. We have high hopes for her musicianship. Gillian the dancer and Addie the musician!!!!


And Addie won't eat solid food. I hoped I wouldn't be dealing with this this time around, but once again I have a child who stubbornly refuses to open her mouth to eat. Oh, how I fantasize about Addie eagerly opening her petal lips waiting for spoonfuls of food like a hungry baby bird. Nope. She just clamps her little rosebud shut. Case closed. Annoying. Maybe she will be better if we just give it a rest for another month or two. Maybe she's just not there yet, which is frustrating since she has slid in the weight percentiles consistently since she was born. Exhibit A.


In other news, we are half way through February, and half way to March. That is when hope springs eternal. March. No more dead of winter. Bulbs start coming up and hints of green and springtime start busting out everywhere. I have been too tired to think about how I hate winter this year. Hmmmm. Progress? Or maybe I'm just getting use to it.

The Tale of Two Pee Pees

So, we really tried to wean Gillian completely from her dependence on diapers at sleep time. She has been potty trained during the day since about May of last year. And, somewhere between Thanksgiving and Christmas she had started getting up 2 or 3 times a night to change her own pull-ups, so we figured, "hey, she's probably ready to just get up and pee in the potty instead of changing her own diaper". Silly me. So, for the entire month of January and into February we gave it a try. We even got her up to pee sometimes in the middle of the night if we were up anyway. But, after about 5 weeks of her shamefully telling us "I pee peed in my underpants" 1-3 times a night, we decided it wasn't working for any of us. I'd say our efforts were Hurculean...we literally washed sheets daily, and had a stash, along with PJ changes, on standby for the inevitable wetting incident. She has the best of intentions, but truth be told, she just isn't ready. I have lots of friends who tell me their child took a few nights and voila, like magic, the child was night potty trained. You know, a few accidents here and there but otherwise no issues.

I was bemoaning what was going on with my girlfriends, and they all looked at me like "what are you worrying about?" Most of their kids, Gillian's age, still pee in diapers at night. One of them said, "well, at least she's in underpants during the day..." because her child still isn't willing to go there at three and a half. And she's not pushing. This parent told me about an article that posits, from real research, that some kids just biologically don't recognize the need to urinate until after the fact when they are asleep (missing a vital hormone that triggers that association). It also suggests that some kids sleep like bricks and just don't interrupt a deep sleep with the need to use the toilet. The hormone is potentially genetic, and Gillian (who looks like Sean, had the same first word at the same age as Sean, who walked at the same age as Sean, etc.) has a Papa who wet the bed until he was 5. She also sleeps like she's dead, and has a hearty snore, so it could be a double whammy.

At any rate, we are back to pull-ups. And not just any pull-ups, but PRINCESS pull-ups. We are no longer awoken by Gillian at night, embarrassed by her own incontinence. Everyone is happier, and happy is Good.