Change Happens

On Friday morning the girls and I drove up the hill to St. Mary's School and officially registered Anja for half day morning kindergarten. I'm not feeling especially sentimental (yet) about the fact that my oldest baby is going to be heading off to school in the fall, but at the same time I AM feeling sentimental about the fact that she is no longer, in any way, shape or form, a baby.

For one thing, she has completely sprouted in height. She and Greta spent a long time being roughly the same size, but suddenly Anja is an entire head taller than Greta! She's leaned out too--you might remember that she was quite the chunk of a baby... and toddler... and three year old... But she's not like that anymore. Now she's all tall and skinny and her face isn't round anymore; it's a very delicate and feminine heart shape. She's taken to wearing her hair in braids every day instead of double knots, which somehow seems more school girlish and less toddlerish. It's a funny thing... she's trekking her way through her 5th year of life and is most definitely a Big Kid.

Greta, meanwhile, has made a giant leap through the final ring of the "Throw-Me-Out-the-Window-I'm-Begging-You Three's." I'm telling you, these past few months have been BAD. Like, "I don't know what to do with Greta, she's ruining our family's life" bad. And even though I laughed heartily at all the ridiculous things other people's three-year-olds were doing because they were excactly like my life (go ahead and google "46 reasons my three year old might be freaking out,") everything that was happening with Greta seemed to be constant. CONSTANT screaming. CONSTANT freaking out. CONSTANT emotional instability.

And then one day everything magically changed.

I blame the mantel.

Every year at Christmas we bring out this fake mantel/fireplace thing that was in our house when we moved in. It's totally pretend, but handmade... and it's a little bit goofy and cheesy, but it's a little bit charming at the same time, not to mention the only place to hang our stockings, since we don't have a real fireplace. So every year we move our furniture around and drag this big thing up from the Big Back Room and decorate it and take Christmas pictures in front of it, blah blah blah. It's usually the last thing that gets put away, long after becoming victim of AnotherFlatSurfaceToFill Syndrome, sometime around Valentine's Day. In our case, it happened two or three Saturdays ago, when Greta (who'd had a rough and tantrum-filled morning) mentioned that she missed her little rocking chair, and asked us to take the mantel away and bring that rocking chair back up. So, we did.

And ever since then, Greta has been completely normal.

It's the oddest, most remarkable thing! And it's WONDERFUL. There are no more outrageous fits about events happening out of order. She is able to leave the house on time without deciding to change her clothes fifteen times as we're trying to walk out the door. If her socks are "wrong" she only cries a little bit before deciding that our idea to change socks to ones that fit might be a good idea after all. She hasn't cried about her baths being too wet since that day. It's like she's become a four year old a couple of months early!

Well... almost. This morning I did accidentally put peanut butter on the wrong slice of toast and had to make her a new piece..... but the crying from that one event didn't last all day long. It didn't snowball into Greta hating the world. We still have bumps in our daily life, but that's all they are now--bumps. They are not occurrences that make me think I'd rather be thrown into a fiery pit full of vipers wearing flame resistent pajamas.  It's nice! Really nice.

And Elka. Elka has two teeth now. Elka is "cruising" still and trying out the stairs. She's pretty much mastered the one step at my parents' house... she likes to go up and down over and over and so far she has NOT fallen on her face. Not even once! She weighs over 20 pounds now. She's a pretty great baby. I'm looking forward to her walking because I feel like babies get to really show off their wardrobes once they become walkers!

Martin is working his way through his first semester of grad school, moving toward a degree in Library Science. Martin was the librarian at our highschool when we were dating and engaged, and I feel like he'd make a really good "real" librarian. Our evenings have been super cozy, with him doing school work and me knitting. I'm almost finished with a sweater called "australorp" which turned out to be a pretty fitting name. Australorp is breed of chicken, and this sweater turned out to be shaped pretty much like a chicken. It was awful. So I cut it, in a shaped form, up both sides and sewed it back together on my sewing machine. Then I decided to knit the sleeves... and I've got one done, and I'm having the hardest time working up any motivation to make the second sleeve. This sweater is just.... well, it's just not the best. So I'm working my way through a quick baby sweater for Elka (which I know will be cute because I've made it once before) and have plans to make a Shalom Cardigan next.

And last but not least... we are contemplating some Major Life Changes. A great simplification. A downsize of mammoth proportions. We haven't made a final decision, but....... well, we'll just see what happens.

So, there are big changes happening around these parts in all the corners of our life! Most all of them very good, with the exception of Elka's pesky 6pm nap that has popped into her daily schedule, making bedtime later than I would prefer. (I say this as she sleeps in my lap RIGHT NOW.)

I really like February. It's the month when every once in awhile you can smell that Spring is coming.