Mazie is 10!

We started this blog when Mazie was but a little peanut growing in my belly... lo and behold, she has now grown into a lovely 10 year old child!

For Christmas this year Mazie got her first computer (Chromebook) and has started using the email address we created for her right after she was born.  On her birthday I forwarded her her birth announcement email, and wrote this:

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Dear Mazie,

If you scroll down through all of the email addresses below (we had lots of people to share our exciting news with), you'll find your birth announcement. 

My memory is pretty terrible, but the feeling of holding you for the first time is still etched clearly in my whole being. I can feel your wiggly and slippery little body on my chest, the ecstasy of having the pain and effort of labor instantly replaced with pure love and relaxation, the wonder of examining your perfect fingers and toes and face (oh, that miraculous little face) of a tiny human that your daddy and I somehow created. Ahya and others had tried to explain to me the love that a parent feels when they meet their child for the first time, while also understanding what I now know: there's no way to really describe it. It is something completely new and magical. You gave me that gift when you were born. 

Since that moment, the gift of Mazie James has  grown and changed in so many  ways. You give me so much just by being who you are. You have always made me laugh... whether it was with the many silly faces you would make as a newborn, your never-ending renditions of Little Bunny Foo Foo and your pronouncements about the delightfulness of our neighborhood as a toddler, or your current dry wit and cleverness. You've given so much love and kindness to your friends and sisters and grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins and classmates and pets.... It's been so rewarding to hear your teachers talk about the confident and compassionate leader you are in your school community. 

I am so excited for the adventures ahead, starting with this crazy Mazie summer! I'm excited to bring you out into the world with me, to share these spaces that are now familiar to me with you, and to watch you share your gifts with our global community. 

Bright Mazie, keep shining.  I love you.

Mama

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Mazie leaves tomorrow to spend a week in Alaska with Uncle Ty and Aunt Sara - she is flying solo to Seattle, meeting up with them there, and traveling on to AK with them.  On the return, she'll spend a night in Seattle with Nanny and Papa before coming home.  We are so excited for this adventure!  One of her birthday presents was a camera, and I'm getting her set up so she can actually post to this blog while she's gone!  Pretty amazing how far we've come... when she was a baby we would write blog posts in her voice, making up a narrative for her.  Now she's taking over her story!

Mazie also finished 4th grade this year.  For yet another year, she had wonderful teachers who absolutely adored her... here she is with Mrs. James on the last day of school.

Zae Singing

Zae and I have been singing "rainbow songs" as part of our bedtime routine.  Here we are singing them in the morning recently.

Night Owl

Zae's at a point where if she takes a nap, she won't go to sleep until after 10.  Yesterday afternoon she managed to sneak in a short one, and after we put her to bed she reappeared in the living room ALL ramped up.  Hard to be too frustrated when she's this cute.

Similar story from a few weeks ago...

** Updated 11/27... the saga continues.  Here are more late night antics.

Resurrecting the Blog

With Facebook and various other social media, this blog has been neglected and idle for some time.  While I've gotten out of the habit of lengthy posts and don't know if I'll use it the way I did before, I very much miss having this resource to look back on for updates on the kids' progress, antics, and milestones.  So I'm going to attempt to resurrect it with more frequent short updates and anecdotes.  We'll see how it goes.

Here's one short one.  I was filing my nails the other night and Zae wanted to use the file.  She proceeded to stick in into her sock and declare that she was using it as a "honk-shoo," which is our onomatopoetic snoring noise, and also, apparently, confusingly similar to "shoe horn."

General impressions of the kids these days:

Mazie:
9 years old, 4th grade, loves writing, has two close girlfriends (Mae and Tia) who are similarly good kids, school-focused and creative.  Caring, kind, and helpful big sister.  Got Zae all ready for bed tonight.  Independent and self-sufficient, but also social and great company. 

Athena:
6 years old, 1st grade.  Doing great with her reading and writing.  On our recent trip to California and Washington, she kept a little journal with notes and drawings of our trip.  Loves school and lights up when she learns something new.  Still strong willed, but less volatile than a year or two ago... growing up.  Loves her sisters... plays creatively and in different ways with each of them.  Read Zae a book at bedtime tonight.  Best friend is Lucy (although they "break up" sometimes, but always get back together.) 

Zae:
2.5 years old, preschool (Patchwork, aka "Paige's House.")  A riot.  Goofy.  Like her sisters, super verbal and confident.  If we're at a restaurant or a park and there's a kid her age or a little younger, she'll walk right up to them, sometimes as close as nose to nose, and see how they react.  Recently pottytrained, still takes a bottle (bad / lazy parents), moved out of her crib to a toddler bed (briefly) when we moved out of our house a couple of months ago for our remodel... now sleeps on the bottom bunk with Mazie while Athena has moved to the top.

Some pics...

Kids... and words

Holy cow, it's been a while since I've posted here.  8 months to be exact.  No time for catch up, here's what's going on right now.



Zae is 18 months old.  Still perfect.  Has just started getting serious about talking in the past couple of weeks.  She had plenty of words here and there, but is just now embracing verbal communication.  A list of commonly heard Zae words and phrases:
Bottle (bah-woe) -- uses one to go to sleep every night, a habit we'll break at some point but aren't messing with for now since she's still the only one of the three kids who sleeps all night every night in her own bed.
Eat it!  (will eat lots of anything)
Open
Up
All done
No!  (was "Mo!" until recently, now more like "now")
Yeah!
Mama
Daddy
Papa
Mazie
Athena
Wiley (Why-yee... just lost him a few weeks ago.  Zae adored him.)
Stop it (bop it!)  -- said frequently to big sisters
Baby (look, there's one in the mirror!)

Meanwhile, Athena turns FIVE tomorrow.  She is amazing... strong, fierce, loving, and curious.  We're all so excited for her to start kindergarten.  Recent quote: "I want to LEARN!"  She's been starting to read and is THRILLED to begin cracking the puzzle of letters and words, and has also been enthusiastic about math and numbers.  Not that I compare my kids... but watching Zae's language evolution has reminded me how remarkably articulate Athena was from a very young age.  At five, she speaks incredibly clearly and confidently to friends and strangers (aka new friends).  For this reason, I have deliberately NOT corrected the few words she mispronounces: my favorite is "veginning" (beginning).  She'll probably yell at me when she reads it for the first time.  Or yell at her teacher and insist that it's spelled wrong.


Mazie is a grown up.  Practically.  She flew home from Washington by herself today, after spending 4 days there on her own with Nanny and Papa (the other 2 and I also went for a week and came home without her).


As a rising 3rd grader, she is officially halfway done with elementary school.  She also knows lots of words.  A new one: fascinator, the name for the fancy hats that she and Auntie Catherine modeled on her WA trip.

Zaeby Facts: 10 months

The Zaeby here.  Here's what you need to know about me right now:

1. I am 10 months and almost 2 weeks old.
2. I am very mobile.  I've been crawling for over 3 months, pull up to standing on anything I can find, and can stand pretty well for 30 seconds or so.  If you hold my hands (or even just one of them), I will walk walk walk.  I haven't really tried taking a step on my own yet, but that's not far off.  I'm working up to it.
3. I have an enormous appetite and will eat absolutely anything you put in front of me.  It's hard to even say what my favorite foods are since I really will gobble up just about anything.  I routinely eat more for dinner than my sister Athena.
4. I wave "hi" and "bye bye," do the sign for "more," and give kisses.  I love to babble and am making lots of different sounds... da da da, dla dla dla, ma ma ma ma, ba ba ba ba ba.
5. I am silly.  I like to scrunch up my face and snort -- apparently my Aunt Jen used to do this when she was a baby, and Grandpa and Nana called it her "Snuffalupagus."
6. I routinely sleep 12 or more hours at night in my own crib.  Neither of my big sisters did that... really ever.  
7. I stopped nursing when I was a little over 8 months old.  When I was 6 months old, I started having some formula along with Mama's milk since I hadn't gained enough weight since my 4 month checkup.  Unlike my sisters, I've sucked my fingers since I was little and stopped nursing for comfort pretty early, so I guess my lower demand led mama to have lower supply, and eventually I just switched over to bottles.  While Mama was a little sad to be done nursing for the last time, there are definitely upsides.  It certainly made it easy for all of us when Mom went to Ghana for 9 days in November.  I am happy and healthy.
8. I love my big sisters.  Athena plays fun games and roughhouses with me, which I actually like (usually).  Mazie is gentle and adoring.  They both make me smile and laugh.  I'm pretty lucky.
9. I still have blond hair and blue eyes.  I look a lot like baby pictures of Mazie, but people have also said I look like my Papa Steve. 
10. I am a fabulous, sweet, smiley, social baby, and everybody loves me.

Athena is 4

Though I am apparently too busy to document it, the children continue to grow up.  Here I take a few minutes to pay tribute to my fierce, fiery middle child.

Athena Lee turned four in August.  For her birthday, her marching orders were that we needed to have a party with all of her friends and all of Mazie's friends, and that there needed to be cake, ice cream, popsicles, and a "surprise dessert" (Mazie and I made her chocolate covered strawberries).  She is a girl who knows what she wants, and is getting better at using her vast vocabulary to make requests.  Ahya, who has been on the losing end of more than one meltdown induced by improper preparation of yogurt (vanilla first, mixed in, THEN honey, ON TOP NO MIXING!!) or similar missteps, recently suggested that Athena should right a book about the right way to do things.  "But I don't know how to write!" was Athena's response.  Too bad, because the book would be a long one....
While her convictions can be challenging at times, I am so grateful for her spirit and strength.  This one will not be a pushover.  Dear Athena, here are some of the things I love about you:

• Your sense of adventure.  I love how eager you are for new experiences, and how much you pay attention to details.  On our way up to Vail this weekend, you exclaimed that we were on the road to Winter Park (I-70) and were going the wrong way!  We eventually were able to show you the exit for WP, and to explain that we were going straight to get to Vail.  In the car you like to ask how we get to where we're going, and insist that we tell you all the road we're going to take to get there.  We've also started taking the bus to school together -- it's only about 10 blocks, but you love the adventure of walking to the bus stop, getting on, watching for the fire station and pulling the cord to let the driver know to stop.  

• Your independence.  In September you started your third year of preschool at Patchwork (3 days/week this year), and you could not be happier to be back in your space.  In all the time you've been going there, I honestly can't remember one day when you cried when we left you.  You are so in your element out in a world where you have a cubby and friends and teachers and endless activities and choices you get to make about how to spend your time.  I am so grateful we found such a great fit for you (and so close to home!).  More generally, you love being out in the world and surrounded by people.  Sometimes I'll pick you up at the end of the day and you'll ask where we're going... if I tell you we're going home, you tell me you don't WANT to go home!  You are an extrovert: you seem to draw your energy from being around other people.

• Your affection.  While you rarely seem to need me during the day, you do insist that I "tuggle" with you every night at bedtime.  You've gotten better at letting Dad be the one to tuggle with you when you wake up during the night and come to our bed (which still happens every night), but I am still your most requested parent, and I love that even as you get bigger, you do still need me to hold you sometimes.  I also love to watch your relationship with your sisters evolve and grow.  You and Mazie have been close your whole life... you have rough patches here and there, but usually play well together, with the types and complexity of your play growing as you get older.  What has been really wonderful in the last few weeks has been watching your relationship with Zae blossom.  From before she was born, you have been incredibly excited about being a big sister and very loving to her, but you've also struggled to show that love in a way that she can enjoy and appreciate.  Since she didn't interact much as an infant, you interacted for her, grabbing her and making her "hit" herself, for example.  Another example: when Ahya was first getting Zae to laugh a few months ago, you wanted her to laugh at you, too, and tried to accomplish this by yelling at her to LAUGH!!!!  But with Zae getting more mobile and engaged, you recently turned a corner: sitting on the kitchen floor, you made up a game involving throwing a toy and then racing her to it.  You won every time, but she was completely entertained and squealed and laughed at each new toss.  It was so wonderful to watch, and the game has now evolved so that you'll even let her win sometimes.  I am so excited to watch you continue to play and grow together.

I love you, Miss Athena.  You are our tiger, and our goddess.