I have lots of interesting stories to tell here, so I’ll try to split it into chunks. First, thought I would share Lily’s report card from today:

“Lily found a whole bunch of small pumpkins today on the playground. She took one of her friends by the hand and walked around with her and pointed out all of the big pumpkins. Lily called the big pumpkins ‘daddy’ pumpkins. She called the tiny ones ‘Arden’. ” Awww, isn’t that cute? Take that in for a moment.

(pause)

Okay, then comes the part where I show up at school to pick Lily up. She was in the middle of playing with farm animals with a couple of the other kids. Ms. Allen asked her to help clean up and I, being the mommy, encouraged her. She said, “NO!” and Ms. Allen proceeded to tell her why it was rude to say No to adults like that. Nothing I said or did, including pushing her towards the toys encouraged her to pick them up. Finally Ms. Allen took pity on me (did I mention I was holding ‘Big Turkey’ - aka Arden on one hip?) and put the toys in Lily’s hand and pushed her to the bin. This started a huge crying and screaming fit. One of the other little girls there covered her ears with her hands and started crying too. Lily is really LOUD when she’s mad. She makes this horrible screeching choking sound. As my mother said, listening to her over the cell phone, she sounds like a demon when she’s having a temper tantrum.

I grab Lily by the hand and begin to pull her from the room. Then comes “CARRY ME!” shouted at the top of her lungs. Since Arden can’t walk, and Lily can, I tell her I can’t pick her up. She refuses to move and begins to sit down. I grab her under the other arm and drag both children out of the school. I put Lily down on the pavement and tell her to walk to the car. She really begins screaming at the top of her lungs, “CARRY CARRY CARRY CARRY ME!!! CARRY ME!” Other mothers are staring, the school director is looking out the window at me, and I’m standing there trying not to lose my crap in front of everyone. I grab Lily’s hand and begin dragging her across the parking lot. Literally dragging, because she’s trying to sit down the whole time.

I finally make it to the car, put Arden in, and notice that Lily is running back towards the school across a very busy parking lot and in front of a car. I drop Arden into her car seat and pray she won’t fall out of the car, and start tearing after Lily. I drag her screaming back to the car, put her in, and another temper tantrum ensues because I didn’t let her climb into the car seat herself. While I strap Arden in, Lily starts throwing anything she can get her hands on in the car towards me, screaming “I WANT TO GET IN THE CAR SEAT MYSELF! CAR SEAT! CAR SEAT! I WANT IT! I WANNA DO IT!!!”

Screaming continues all the way home. She is still screaming to get in her car seat as she is getting out of it in our garage (logic and 3 year olds don’t mix). I have to drag her into the house after taking Arden in (she refuses to say please when she screamed for me to carry her into the house, and I refused to pick her up until she did - have you ever seen two extremely stubborn women in a stand-off? If not, this was the world series of stand-offs . . . ). After 5 minutes on the “naughty step”, she finally loses the world series and says, “Mommy pick me up PLEASE.” We snuggle on the couch after she wipes a face full of snot and tears on my new sweater wrap. We have a long talk about why this isn’t the best way to start the evening and that she owes Ms. Allen an apology. The rest of the night, I must say, was much, much better. We all ate dinner at the table and she immediately confessed to Mike, as he walked in the door, “Daddy, I WAS REALLY BAD! I screamed in the car.” I’ll enjoy it while it lasts - soon she’ll be denyin’.

So why the “Grammy Jr.” title of this post? Lily loves to sing. Just like her grammy. Not only does she sound like her grammy (read: can’t carry a tune to save a life), she makes up the words and they are completely ridiculous and hilarious. Tonight’s “Underwear Song” has a new verse: “Underwear, Underwear, how are you today - underwear, underwear, how are you in the morning. . . do you hide from me, Underwear? I love you very much, Underwear!!!” The Underwear Song is done in conjunction with a lot of hand-waving and arm-pumping and occasionally a single or double leg kick under the covers.

Thank god for our nighttime cuddling ritual. If it weren’t for her little brown face getting 2 inches from my own, her arms around my neck, and her bubblegum-toothpaste breath in my face, telling me she loves me SO much, I might not make it through the terrible twos and threes.

Jennifer and her mom came to visit a few days ago. Lily thought Sophia was very interesting, but wouldn’t give her the time of day. As soon as they left, Lily started yelling, “I want to see Sophia!!! Where is she?” What a nut.

Arden’s doing great - and no, she has no other teeth other than her initial egg tooth. She’s pulling up and cruising a lot more but still seems a month or so out from actually walking. I hope she walks soon because my right arm’s bicep is twice the size of my left. It’s from hauling her around all the time. I really have no right to complain - did you read the post about Susan’s 33 pound child who is two months older than Arden? While we may call her the Big Turkey, she is so NOT a big turkey.

More to come later . . .

Susan wrote me an email yesteday joking about how if she tried to go away for a night, her 1 year old+ would never forgive her. Apparently we are paying for our DC trip, and paying big.

Mike swears that this was, hands-down, Lily’s “Worst Day Ever” (he even says it like it is capitalized and in quotes). Temper tantrums began this morning in bed - before 8 AM.

Lily: “Mommy, get me a Kleenex.”
Mommy: “Lily, you can get your own Kleenex. Go in the bathroom and get it.”
Lily: “Nooooooooooooo!!!! You get it!”

And so on. Screaming, kicking, spewing snot and spit everywhere . . . ah, the joy of this age. This continued all day long, including one particularly memorable tantrum caused by her peeing (just a little bit) in her underwear, Mike going upstairs to get her a dry pair, and her screaming that it was the Hello Kitty underwear she wanted. We have been doing a lot of deep breathing and in the moments where she isn’t screaming, talking to her about how to communicate more effectively. I don’t think it’s doing any good but it makes me feel like a modern, calm, yoga-type mom.

She was crabby before her shot, but it could have been made worse by the fact that she did receive her flu shot and it tends to make her crankier than usual. Arden, who is truly sick, was her usual placid self except when Lily ripped toys from her hands, shoved her head into the cupboard, or stepped on her in her rush to get a new toy. Feel that sisterly love.

We’re going to watch Best of Will Ferrell - Volume II and try to forget we have kids, even if it’s just for a few moments.

We got back from D.C. yesterday late afternoon, after sitting in traffic for a good 3 hours. Much as I pine for city life, and all the things that go with it, I hate getting anywhere near Northern Virginia because of the serious traffic issues. We saw U2 on Thursday night (sans children of course) and had a great time. You can read about the set list and political comments Bono made here. Mike was in hog heaven. We got a lot of walking in - not much choice because our hotel, supposedly in DuPont Circle, was really half mile from DuPont Circle. It was great seeing all the shops and people, hearing different languages, a million cultures . . . made me realize what a small town Richmond still is despite the population size.

I met with a client Friday morning and Mike stayed behind in the blissful silence of the hotel room, reading the paper, watching television, and probably reliving his evening at the concert. Mom and dad survived the 24 plus hours with the girls and they were both very well behaved. When we got home, we picked up the girls and took them out to dinner with mom and dad. I could tell that Arden wasn’t 100% but had no idea how bad she was feeling until she projectile vomited all over Mike and my leg at the dinner table at Bertucchi’s. She kept on going for a few minutes and felt much better. I feel sorry for the people sitting next to us. They received quite a show. So did the rest of the patrons as Mike walked out covered in white vomit. Yummy!

Last night Lily sang me her usual set of songs, with a new one: “The Underwear Song”. Not sure where the underwear song came from, but the lyrics go something like this . . . “Underwear, underwear, how are you today? Underwear, underwear, I love you!” Then she showed me how to “cuddle” a stuffed animal. “Mommy, you put your arms like this, and your hands like this, and you hold him right under your chin and then you squeeze him like a Python. Okay? Okay.”

Susan sent me an e-mail this morning with some great pictures of Colin, Jenna, Eddie and herself. There is one that I just can’t resist posting on the blog. I was considering calling Child Protective Services considering they are torturing Colin and then taking pictures of him when he cried, but I’ll let you decide. Poor baby! She also told me he now weighs 33 pounds and wears a size 7 extra wide shoe. He’s very, very cute - and I think they are banking on the NFL drafting Colin. He’s their little linebacker!!!

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And not jello shots, either. Arden had her one year checkup today and four shots later, we are home and she is finally calm.

The sight of Dr. Derco sends her into a tailspin. He passed her in the hallway while she was being weighed and she went to pieces. She cried less during the shots then she did when he was simply looking at her! Poor Dr. Derco and nurses - her cry is extremely loud. My eardrums are still ringing and vibrating from the angry bee.

She’s small - like Lily. We always tell ourselves that she’s “huge” - “big turkey” - etc. She’s not. She’s in the lower 5% for weight, 10-25% for head circumference, and 25% for height. My predictions are that the height percentile will drop this coming year as Lily’s did. She was in the 25% for a while but has been off the charts for the past year. Arden weighs a whoppin’ 16 lbs, 11 oz. What a chunker. We can stop using formula and bottles - which, I have to admit, makes me a little sad. My last bottles!!! I guess I can donate them to Jennifer - she’s still got a while to go.

My first day of working at home was not all that productive, so while the kids are being entertained by the world’s most annoying Wiggles song (“Do The Twist” sung by Wiggles puppets in a high-pitched voice - think Chipmunks) I’m going to get back to it.

By the way, the picture is of Lily with her buggy. This buggy is over 60 years old. It was originally Mike’s mom’s - she used it when she was Lily’s age to push around her dollies. It has been completely reconditioned and it’s beautiful, with iron wheels and handles. They sure don’t make them like that anymore - everything is plastic! She LOVES it. Alex brought it up with him this weekend - it’s her early birthday present.

Uncle Richard sent these this morning, so I picked a few of the better ones and am posting them here. She’s my big girl!!!

Picture one shows her sampling her ice cream cake - before her hands froze and she started screaming. We also got one of her with her “I’m One” hat, complete with fur. She didn’t like wearing it much, but mommy is mean and made her - at least for the picture.

I’ll post some of the others a bit later.