Simultaneously fast and slow

These two little people fill my days with laughs and aggravation. My friend Christine said it best when she said that motherhood sometimes makes her feel like a crumpled piece of paper.

One of the consistently best moments of every day is waking them up from their naps. I love entering their warm and dark rooms, hearing their soft breathing, and inhaling their fermented honey / yeasted bread smell.

Both of them always worked themselves into the corner and slept like froggies.

However, and related to that, one of the things that is about to drive me crazy is the nap transitions we are currently in. Emilyn is in the transition to drop to one nap, and I think we're smack in the middle of the time where having a nap makes it hard for Theo to fall asleep at night, but no nap is no bueno (probably more for me than for him, insert sweating emoji).

Gah, I can't get enough of this.

Every day, I am just in awe of how simultaneously fast and slow time moves.

Both of them have grown so much - physically and mentally - in the past couple weeks and it shocks me when I look at them. Theo's thighs and legs suddenly got super chunky, and Emilyn is solidly heavy to hold. I definitely think Theo shot up an inch or two overnight, because one day he was tripping all over himself, when he is normally very careful. Emilyn's pants got short on her one day as well. Crazy.

Here are a couple notes on them at their current stages.

Emilyn {15 mos}:

• is juuust about walking. She can do a number of steps in a row. The last few days she's been "running" for a couple steps before she falls, as if she thinks she can get more steps in before the fall this way. 
• does squats and pliés when music is on.
• is starting to learn to go down the stairs backwards.
• loves putting on accessories, like headbands and especially purses. She doesn't even mind socks! (Though she will pull them off in the car, obviously.) She grabs clothes and signals to you that she wants you to help her put it on, and cooperates when you put clothes on. (Except for diapers, of course.) This is the complete opposite of Theo, whom I can barely get to wear pants most days.
• (Related: we had a stretched-out strap from an LED headlamp, which she would put over herself like a beauty pageant sash, so we called her Miss LED for a while.)
• is more clearly saying mama/umma, dada, and nuna (big sis). 
• says "tck-a tck-a tck-a" (tickle tickle tickle) while tickling your feet.
• still loves her food. One day I shared a smoothie with her and she drank more than half of it. I seriously thought to myself, oh, no I cannot share food with her when she grows up. We will both be like, "Who ate my hamburger? / Where did my hamburger go??" Basically, we'll be really mad at each other.

Theo {3yr 3mos}:

• says "Oh, hi, ____!" when people are around, as in "Oh, hi, Appa!" The "oh" adds this element of surprise in his tone, like's so delighted to see you, which he is.
• said, "Can someone watch the kids?" when he saw me going upstairs one day.
• found an evangelism tract one day and decided to call it "my college." When he dropped it from his carseat, he exclaimed, "Oh, no! My college!"
• loves shaved ice. We discovered a couple places we like and it's our way of embracing/getting through winter. One night after dinner, he stage whispered across the table to Kathy, "Should we go to shaved ice?"
• responded when I told him we were going to Ace, "Oh, for popcorn? Paint? Wood? A new house?"
• said, "I can't hear you downstairs when I'm going upstairs!"
• told me "put your phone in your pocket" when it fell on the steps when I was going to the car.
• told David, "finish your coffee, don't spill" when he was carrying his coffee to the car. (Totally different day.)
• sings "the shadow proves the sunshine" from Switchfoot.
• ended one walk with the song "Mama Knows Best" because, even though he wasn't too reluctant to go for the walk in the first place, he wanted me to feel appreciated for making a good suggestion that we go for a walk. I guess he really understands how much work it is to get clothes on both of them and get loaded up to go! Especially when it is so gloomy and/or raining.
• slipped a small cardboard sleeve over his elbow one day and proclaimed that he was a "doctor for babies!" Maybe he remembered how I would always get my blood pressure measured at the OB/GYN when I was pregnant with E?
• folds up hand towels and "warms" them up over of the heater registers and calls them burritos. (He did this before he turned 3 but I forgot to write about this earlier.)
• told me "it will stop raining, when you go to your nap, in your dreams" when I told him I was tired of all this precipitation.
• asked David if he would "talk it over with umma"; "it" being getting a John Deere monster truck/tractor.
• asked Emilyn, "why are you crying? We're almost home" on the drive home yesterday. And when we chuckled over his sweetness, he deadpanned,"don't laugh, it's not a laugh game."
• fake-breathed in and out very quickly when he started getting upset on a walk, because I had taught him just the day before to take a deep breath when you get upset.
• asked me to get new sidewalk chalk, and when I said, "maybe in a week or two when it's more spring-like," he responded by going to the camellias blooming around the corner of the house, and said, "look, it's spring! Can we go get sidewalk chalk now?"
• uses a baby bird voice to call me "Mama!" every night when we play hide-and-seek before bed, and when he wants me to feed him a snack.
• says "have fun, good luck!" whenever we put him to bed/nap because he used to always say that to Uncle Kenny when he was playing games before T's bedtime
• asked me "you wearin' shoes?" when he wanted me to climb into his bed, and when I said, "no," he clarified, "just your feet?"
• is staying dry at night on his own. We used elimination communication very casually (which I loved) so he was using the potty before 1 (mostly for #2), day trained somewhere in year 2 (#1 didn't come until after 2yo), and now starting to night train himself. A few times we did a "dream pee" and it was so sweet to see him sleepily sit on the baby potty, his long, lanky legs propped up on the floor.

The two of them together are a such a sweet pair. It surprises me how extremely and mutually tolerant they are of each other. Theo is so gracious about sharing toys, noticing when she doesn't have something and getting it for her (or grabbing her purse and putting her phone in it), offering her water to drink, etc. And Emilyn doesn't mind his wrestling or pommeling her. She worships her oppa and wants to do everything he is doing.

Okay, and lol, the main reason I had to write this post is to share this hilarious series of drawings by Theo.

A couple of days ago, Theo asked me if Emilyn could be in his tummy when he grew up. (I said no.) So then a day or two later, he drew this picture:

"That's Emilyn in my tummy, when I'm a grown-up."

And then a minute later he drew this:

"That's Emilyn in my tummy. She lookin' for food."

There are no words.

(Also, we think it's amazing that he knows how to draw smiley faces because in all the drawing we do together we never taught him explicitly how to draw smileys. Maybe he studied those Costco receipts?)