Once we had gotten past the initial shock of disgust and pity, the situation felt pretty comical: a baby slathered in dried vomit and fresh poop is...well...a sight to behold and smell and feel. It's why, as a friend who chose not to have kids put it today, he'd rather have someone else raise the kids.
*****
Besides sickness, last week we also dealt with a prolonged bout of feeding refusal from Raya, which also, strangely, explains why I took almost no pictures of the kids. When every second thought I have is occupied with the subject of what she has eaten, what I need to make for the next meal, which song to learn next so as to keep her entertained while eating (Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer is the latest...), I rarely know where in the house the camera is, let alone have the impulse to reach for it at the appropriate moment. So, this week's slivers will be spare, noting some good moments that were had with friends--
Reading The Polar Express, which made both Rado and me cry
Sava and Tyler have the absolute best time riding their scooters together
The Mini Kick Scooter is a work of genius, & one of our all-time favorite toys so far
Amazingly, Tyler took this picture of Sava!
--and some silliness--
And there is so much to say about Raya, that I don't know where to begin. The girl is a genuine hoot.
She is not fourteen months yet, and knows, give or take, about twenty words (all Bulgarian...as with Sava, we are trying to stick to our exotic language for the first two years). She happily says hi and bye, including to strangers (a woman came out of the house while we were walking yesterday, and Raya shouted hi!, and when the woman got in her car, Raya shouted bye!...it was too darling). She knows everyone in the house by name and, just in the last few days, has started saying her own name also, which sounds more like Yaya. She also says no and yes purposefully, though her yes sounds like yeeow (and nothing like the Bulgarian da). She loves to sing, and especially loves to do it while taking turns with someone else; if grandma sings a tune, Raya would follow and, when she is done, would point at grandma to sing again, then sing again herself, etc. Here is a video of her singing with Sava, who is practicing his newly-learned French song; he had just spent the morning throwing up--
On the Sava front, this week he demanded and got nail polish. I will admit that the let-your-boy-be-whoever-he-wants-to-be mama in me happily took him to Target to choose his nail polish, but when he zeroed in on bright pink, my heart skipped a beat, and before I knew it I'd blurted out, But what about other colors? Let's check out the other colors. Sensing my involuntary uneasiness, he blithely obliged and picked a green-blue color, which we then applied on his thumbs only when we got home. Parenting is never more humbling than when we pitch the strength of our beliefs against the practical experience of raising children. It's one thing to say that we accept our children for who they are, but another altogether to live it.
This week Sava said goodbye to his beloved train table, which had long been outgrown and was taking up floor space in his room that is now available for large-scale track building--
He also finally wrote his letter to Santa. Despite signs of dawning awareness that this dude Santa might not be all he is hyped up to be, Sava still buys into the whole fantasy, and we have decided to nurture it until it self-implodes. We answer as best we can questions like Does Santa die? (answer: maybe, but not anytime soon, so do not worry...), and we've adopted the wonderful trope of The Polar Express, which is that the bell of Christmas can only be heard by children and grown-ups who believe. This will give us the excuse later to point out that, yes, belief is what it's all about, and we've been saying so all along.
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