I'm going to have a sister!

So, lately, Elena has been insisting that she's going to have a baby sister. Sometimes it's a brother, but most often, it's been a sister. I would say, "Well, maybe someday dear, God willing," and she'd say, "No, I'm going to have a sister!" And I would respond back, "Well, not yet, unless you know something we don't."

Kids are always wanting siblings.

Except that we just found out today that we're expecting! We told Elena. She wasn't surprised. It was old news to her. She went back to what she was doing. It seems to me that the time of conception (about three weeks ago) was about when Elena's intense interest in her sister picked up. Sure it might be a coincidence, or maybe God told her already, but either way this time I'll be particularly interested in what the sex of the child will be. I want to see if she's right.

Attachment parenting at night

Most of you know (whether you agree with our practices or not) that we generally cosleep and have generally avoided any "cry it out" when it comes to going to bed. My typical practice has been to take Elena to bed with me when I hit the sack around 9. This has worked quite well because
1. I go to bed relatively early (for an adult)
2. Elena doesn't need to be up at any particular time in the morning and can thus sleep in as late as she needs
3. In the past (when I didn't leave for work first thing in the morning) this gave me several hours un-interupted every morning to do whatever non-baby friendly tasks I wished. And I'm a morning person, so having this time in the morning suited me
4. This also gave erich several hours in the evening alone to do whatever he wished without me or the baby bugging him. This also suits him well. He needs regular alone time.

Lately (for perhaps six months or so), we have been altering this routine and encouraging Elena to fall asleep even when there's no one sleeping next to her. (Previously, whenever she needed to go to bed and no parent was also going to bed, we rocked with her until she fell asleep and then laid her down. But lately she has been requesting to "rock for a little bit" and then will just go lie down.) We've been working on this because 1. due to my dissertation, I have been needing to stay up past her (and my!) bedtime and 2. Erich has been getting frustrated and worried with "will she ever go to sleep alone?" thoughts. Erich was actually tempted to just switch to cry-it-out, not realizing that there are intermediate options (because he hadn't read the Sears Sleep Book).

So lately, we've been using one of the options mentioned in the Sears Sleep Book. It involves putting the kid to bed (or even laying down with them for a bit, though we don't do this much anymore) and essentially saying "you stay here, and I'll check on you in a little bit." Then you go in every five minutes (or an interval that works for the kid) and "check," saying each time (unless they really know the drill) that you're coming back in just a little bit. Until you come back and they're asleep. Or, for me, I come back and it's just time for me to hit the sack myself (Elena still sleeps with me because Erich strongly prefers sleeping on the bunk bed by himself... something about liking the mattress for his back...).

This has worked surprisingly well, and had almost no "adjustment pains." She seemed really ready for the change.

Anyway, the whole reason this came to mind to write about is something Elena said last night. Erich was off playing games with the Griffins for the evening. Elena was sitting with me a bit before going to bed (while I was working on my dissertation, of course). At some point, she seemed ready to lie down, so I suggested that she just head to bed to lie down and I would come check up on her "in a bit." She said "Papa checks up on me a lot."
I said, "Do you want me to check up on you a lot, too?"
"No. You just check up on me a little."

And, some 15 or 20 minutes later when I finally got around to checking up on her, she was fully alseep. That was that. Yet another example of how healthy kids tell us what they need--and as she grows, she does this telling more and more verbally.

"I don't want to run in circles. I want to run in squares."

Elena has been going out walking with my mother lately. Instead of going in the stroller, though, she has just been walking herself, typically about two miles. She greatly enjoys this. Most recently, she's been running for large portions, particularly through parts of the park where there is "flat dirt." She's been looking forward to going to a place where there's flat dirt just for running (my mother promised to take her to a track). I asked her if she wanted to run in circles.

She said "I don't want to run in circles. I want to run in squares."

April Summary

So we've apparently neglected to document anything in the entire month of April. Wow. I'm going to chock this up to a very busy end-of-Lent and Holy Week. We did have two birthdays (mine and Erich's). Erich and I haven't normally celebrated our birthdays much, but given Elena's enjoyment of the festivities, we've stepped up our celebration of our own birthdays at my mother's prodding. For Erich's birthday, we made another whacky cake. This time, I cut out the letters "PAPA" out of fruit leather to decorate the cake. The Griffins gave him a gift of a strategy card came that he's been enjoying since. And the kids made him birthday cards. Young Liam Patrick's card included a rather good drawing of Saint Patrick on one side and Wall-E on the other. And it had shamrocks on the front of the card which were coloured red. ("Do you know why they're coloured red? For the Blood of Christ!" Liam told me.) For my birthday (in bright week this year!) my mother took us out to sushi (a birthday tradition from my childhood) and we got to have the Griffins over for cake that evening. Highly enjoyable.

We experienced our first Holy Week and Pascha with our current parish, St. Andrew's. It was a glorious experience that reminded me in a very pleasant way of our first parish in Illinois. We also had the joy of watching our friends the Griffins be baptized. They've been at this parish far longer than we have (two and a half years, I think), so it's strange to be reminded of how new they are in the faith--I forgot many times over this past year that they were catechumens. Elena slept in on Holy Saturday and missed seeing the baptisms per se (she arrived for the chrismations). She was highly upset to miss this experience and asked several times whether they would be baptized again so that she could see. We tried to explain that it just doesn't work that way... She was relatively consoled once we were able to show her pictures. And she very much enjoyed being able to hear the story of her own baptism.

Speaking of stories, she has been very interested in hearing stories lately. This started with "The Story of Mama in the Ambulance," which is the story of when I was hit by a bus and taken to the hospital in an ambulance. I'm not sure why Papa chose to tell her this story, but it has been frequently requested since then. I tried to take advantage of her love of stories during lent as well. Normally, when combing her hair after a shower or bath, we let her watch Ni Hao Kai Lan or Word World, but during lent I tried to tell her stories relating to the current happenings or recent feasts at church. She enjoys hearing about Lazarus being raised from the dead about as much as the Mama in the Ambulance story (although I think the most popular church story is the presentation of Mary in the Temple).

And the memory that prompted me to make a post in the first place: for a while (though not too much recently), when Elena would sing a song like Twinkle Twinkle, but when she would get to the end, she would end with...

"Now and ever and unto ages of ages, Amen."