This weekend we feel tired. Baba Vili left on Tuesday, and between then and Sunday night it has been the longest time without a grandparent helping us since Raya was born eleven months ago. Hard to believe but true.
The last five days have been almost as wonderful as they've been exhausting. It's almost as if this week, for the first time, we got a chance to feel the parents of
two kids. And, for the first time, our kids have only two people to care for them, as opposed to three.
Sava stepped up to the plate really fast, and he found ways to amuse himself while Rado tinkered with Raya and I hustled in the kitchen
He did things like figure out how to put on his shirt by himself--
--and the trains came out of their drawer where they had been gathering dust for the last few weeks, their primacy overtaken by the all-important Legos--
--and he even registered progress riding his big-boy bike, which had been sitting in the garage unused--
For her part, Raya decided to work on her top teeth, which so far has meant several days of 5.30 am wake-up calls, plus loads of random crankiness and some serious character starting to emerge; the left side of this picture is a face we see all the time, and it is a face which means,
"I want that thing over there RIGHT NOW! And I don't care that my brother or somebody else is using it. NOW!"
She is doing well after the laser treatment, and does not seem to be in pain. We make sure to slather her face with vaseline several times a day, hoping to forestall a belated scabbing of the sort that occurred last time. Though we try not to give in to her consistent and irrational requests to touch things like the piece of paper her brother is holding or the hot pan burning on the stove, every now and again we humor her; and since her obsession with Sava's blue bottle continues, the rare moments when we allow her to have it (when it has water in it, not juice), she becomes one content and happy baby; check out that smug little face full of satisfaction--
She continues to practice rock-climbing--
--and one of her favorite things is hanging out in her crib after a good nap--
Now that there is no one to carry her all the time, she is also becoming a more integral part of mealtimes, which is a great thing any way we look at it; we put her at the table after she's eaten her baby food, and give her things like pasta and couscous to explore; since she has a major issue with textures--spits out anything that is not puree or that does not melt immediately in her mouth--it looks like we might be playing with food for a long time before she begins to eat it; she is pretty hilarious at the table, as I believe most children this age are--
*****
If I had energy for one of my more philosophical musings this week, I intended to write about the American obsession with "doing" stuff, which comes only second to "having" stuff, and which presents us with parenting choices all the time. I'll try to come back to the subject another week.
For now, getting used to life as a foursome feels like doing plenty.
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