Little Helpers

Okay, while I'm at it, how about some pictures?

Dave has always been much better than me at directing the girls energy in a useful way. He finds great ways to engage them in what he is doing, rather than getting annoyed when they disrupt him or ignoring them, both of which are, admittedly, behaviors I occasionally employ.

Sometimes I find myself creating projects where they can be helpful, like baking cookies. But then we have cookies in the house that we didn't need. The other night we had tacos, Clio's a-number-1 favorite meal (Eleri's is holding steady at noodle with pesto), and the girls helped. Actually, truly helped.



The focus always amazes me. And isn't Clio cute, sneaking tastes?

It's funny, I know how very competent they are, and sometimes I have to remind myself that they are ONLY 2 and 4 as I expect so much of them (okay, closer to 3 and 5, but still.) But most of the jobs I find myself needing help with don't use the safest tools. Hence Clio cutting tomatoes with a plastic knife and me checking on Eleri every 2 seconds to make sure she wasn't taking the skin off her fingers with that peeler.

Also, how cute are those aprons? I think they were $3 a piece at Ikea, and the girls LOVE to wear them. I think it makes them feel that their helper status is official.

Worst Blog Month Ever.

Well, it is SHOCKING that March is almost over. And after writing my weekend posts for the other blog tonight, I waltzed on over here and realized that I have posted TWICE this month. That is my worst clio confidential record ever.

I think about this blog almost every day. I write content for it in my head. I think about all the things that are going unrecorded. I struggle with whether this is a good thing or a bad thing. I know that I won't give up on this blog, but I also know that I need to figure out what I want it to be now. (This is not the first time I have talked about this struggle, I know.) It's no longer my main creative outlet--love your space is. That blog is about decorating, sure, in the way that this blog has been about parenting, but it is also about writing. I mean, I know it's not "real writing" (Dave!), but it's about expression. Storytelling. Sharing my voice.

At the same time, starting a business and design blogging daily is fairly all-consuming, and I have moments of sadness that I never seem to be completely in any one role at any given time. I wonder if I was more present with my girls if I might be more present here on their blog.

I can say this, though. All of a sudden, these last few weeks, I look at my girls and I see miracles. We were lucky in our easy, quick pregnancies, our healthy children (Dave, yes, I'm knocking wood), yet there they are, miracles all the same. I look at them all the time, but these are the moments where it feels like I see them. I tell myself that having that feeling in that moment is more important than capturing it for the future.

I was organizing their memory boxes the other day, and I found myself thinking about what we keep and what we throw away. It feels, in a way, arbitrary, the things we think to treasure. And I wonder about this with our memories and stories, too. I saw Lizzie today, at the school we both attended, where she now works, and she was saying names and mentioning traditions that each brought a vague and hazy picture to my mind, unreliable visions that may or may not have anything to do with what she was describing. She told me of the high school seniors standing in white gloves and silence for flag raising, and I wasn't sure if I remembered doing this, nearly 20 years ago. Part of me wanted to go look it up, but the truth is, the picture, if it exists, likely does not convey the feeling of that moment, may, in fact, take something away from it.

These are the things I think about when I record too much, or not enough, of our lives. There probably is no good balance, is there.

Saturday at the Walker

We headed to the Walker Saturday afternoon for the free kids day, and Papa came along to see the girls (and give me a hand, as Dave was working). We made little clay guys, but did not wait in the 2 hour line to turn them into our own claymation videos. We checked out this in-museum "empty tree house"


(not sure why I wasn't using the flash), had a BIG snack in the cafe (thanks, Papa), oh, and saw some art. It was fun to try to explain conceptual art and cinematic space as we walked through the Tacita Dean exhibit.

But naturally Eleri's favorite may have been making her own game out of the lockers in the coat room as we packed up and headed home. She opened a row of lockers and went through closing them, one by one.

Overheard

Eleri, spelling her own name:

"E -- O -- I -- 6"

Can I just mention

That this is Eleri's school picture this year? (That's me holdig her up I was the volunteer who got all the kids form their classrooms and in and out of the photo set up. This did not prove to be a good thing where my own children were concerned)

Oh, and can I also mention that Clio doesn't have a portrait this year, because she refused to have it taken, and then somehow got passed over on retake day?

Yeah.

Clio writes

Clio is DYING to read on her own, and to write words, sentences...books.
She is getting there, but, a bit like her mom, she might like to skip a few steps.

She "writes" around the house a lot, stringing together letters and then asking us to "read" what she has written, and the resulting dictation is a practice in sounding out vowel-less words. Recently, though, her guesses are getting closer, and while she still doesn't seem to think voewls are needed to connect the more impotant consonant sounds, many of her strings of letters are now recognizable as words.

I love this one, from earlier tonight.

Eleeeerrrriiii!!!!!!!

The title to this post is best understood if it is said loudly, while shaking your fists.

Here's the thing: you can't turn your back on that girl for ONE SECOND. She is super stealthy, and she gets into EVERYTHING.

Tonight I was almost brought to tears of exhaustion, and made statements to Dave that had this kind of ring to them: "I'm clearly not cut out for this." "I always thought I'd make such a good mom, but..." And when Dave suggested that perhaps school would be canceled tomorrow because we've clocked in over a foot and it is STILL SNOWING (ahem), I made a face that must have been sheer terror, because Dave couldn't stop laughing.

Just for fun, I thought I'd share all of the foibles that I can remember from today. That's right, this list is JUST today. Apparently I turn by back a lot. You know, when I am folding the laundry or making lunch or shoveling the car out of the snowbank that once was known as the curb.

-- removing the floor vent and sending toys into the heating system, like a playground slide
-- bringing a stool down the hall to gain access to the top drawer in the laundry room, removing all band-aids from the box and from individual wrappers; using the band-aids as stickers in the bottom of the drawer
--at the movie theater, licking the cup holder in the pushed-up arm of the seat in front of us, then trying to scoop out the condensation of someone's slushy drink with her hands
-- also at the movie theater, eating discarded chips from the back of the lobby settee
-- coloring blue crayon designs all over the table in her room
-- unrolling the entire roll of toilet paper in her bathroom onto the floor
-- filling the toy tea set with water, sprinkling it all over the room
-- removing most of the wipes from a wipes container, using some as blankets for disney princess dolls, others "to wipe my nose," then crumbling them into balls in the corners
-- removing her own (wet) diaper and dropping it on the floor

I'm sure I'm forgetting some. And of course this isn't counting the run-of-the-mill daily messes. If I wasn't so tired, I would go into the other room and settle in with "Setting Limits With Your Strong Willed Child," which comes highly recommended by a friend. My mom laughed when she saw it on the coffee table, then lamented that they did not have such books when we were little. From what I understand, my brother Rory was something of an Eleri. Rory is the youngest child. I have a feeling Eleri will be, too.

It really should be no surprise that she looked like this by the time we got home from the movie.



It's pretty much how I felt, and still feel, and will probably feel until she is...I don't know, a grownup? Ever?