Maggnificently Late


Maggie is a real trooper. We’ve been living in three different houses since the last post, which is supposed to be really disruptive and confusing and horrendous to a sub-two-year-old. But Mags has been fairly unaffected. She makes no more fuss before naptime than she ever has, and bedtime has actually gotten even easier. This entire week, no kidding, she has not complained about getting her into her crib. There have still been a couple of incidences where she didn’t want to brush her teeth or have her diaper changed, but once we get a page into her nighttime book, she’s a dream. Our ritual is to have Bill read a couple books while I do the diaper and pjs, then she gets to choose who will be in her crib with her (Neenee, of course), then she blows a kiss to Daddy and into bed Maggie and Neenee go. Usually there’s a little bit of fussing that occurs once she feels she’s being lowered to her mattress, but not this week. And she even gave Bill a real kiss one night. What a grown-up girl!

Her vocabulary and grasp of language is continuing to balloon. The other day, out in the mountains by a grouping of cabins, she kept repeating this word that sounded to me like “pan.” So I asked her, “what does ‘pan’ mean?” And she said “ocean.” Which gave the word absolute meaning right away, since we were walking toward and previously talking about a pond. You know, water like a little ocean.

Maggnificent Monday

Hop hop hop! This is Maggie’s choice mode of movement for going down trails. It’s not as safe as, say, walking, but it mostly gets the job done. She’s becoming an expert hiker! She loves to carry Eliza’s leash (for a good amount of time), which gets us up the trail at a quick pace — considering a not-2-year-old is in the equation. Then she’ll examine rocks, and we can get her to move a little by asking her to pick a special one and bring it to us for evaluation. She loves her rocks! She’s tripped a couple of times (what do you expect when you repeatedly jump in the downhill direction), but mostly we tell her to brush it off and she keeps on a-trucking. What a mountain girl!
Maggie has developed a security attachment. Well, maybe not quite that, but she does now only want one toy for naps and bedtime, and always the same toy. It’s funny; Neenee is the only stuffed creature who has hard plastic parts (her face), but that’s who Maggie chooses to sleep on. We always still give her the choice, listing out the names of everyone available, in a different order each time, and it’s always Neenee. Once she did choose another creature, but she immediately had buyer’s remorse and frantically called for trusty old Neenee. Poor thing has drool stains and permanently dusty feet from “walking” around the yard, but we all know nothing can tarnish the gleam of that security item in a young person’s eyes.
We’ve made some friends here in town. The other organic chemistry professor has a 2 1/2 and 1 year old, so we’ve been going around playing. Maggie is learning (begrudgingly) how to take turns. We’re babysitting the girls this morning; hope the neighbors are ready for a whirlwind!

Broken Mirror and Accompanying Luck

Here’s a recap of yesterday:

Maggie woke up half an hour early.
A beautiful hike ended with a loudly complaining child and multiple dogs lunging at ours.
Maggie pulled a mirror off the wall and broke it as we were leaving for our new house’s inspection.
Got lost on the way to the inspection due to shortcut taking.
Bushwhacked on bicycle (not mountain bikes) down a steep ridge.
Arrived at home inspection to find the current tenants had not been informed of the appointment and were there with their not un-aggressive dog, making us ask them to move him to the front, to the back, inside, to the back, etc.
Two and a half hours later, after learning that there was probably mold in the bathroom wall where the shower just pours down the sill-less window, Gretchen left on bike for home and Maggie’s nap. To realize she didn’t have the house key. Or car keys.
Bill returns six hours after the inspection began with the following bad news: mold under the house; standing water under the house; corroded and rusting pipes; termite damage under the house; an exceptionally small crawlspace means that any work down there will be 50% more; the furnace heats up so much that the metal floor vents reach a temperature of more than 600 degrees (the tenant said things routinely catch fire near the vents in winter); no insulation in the roof; a slew of electrical problems including no grounding and several dead outlets; rusted gas lines; and a toilet and sink that leak continually under the house.
Maggie vociferously refused to eat anything but french fries for dinner when we went out for comfort food (green chile cheeseburgers). Not even beans or chips.
We dropped and broke the remote for (i.e., the only way to control) the ceiling fans (i.e., the only cooling apparatus in the house) and lights.
Anyone else want a beer?

Maggnificent Monday

We continue to explore our new environs, going on little trips here and there. Mostly we take our bike-a-cycles, because Maggie loves to go on bike-a-cycle rides with her bike-a-cycle hat. She likes to point out boats on the river, the train, ladies running, doggies walking, other bike-a-cycles and motor bikes, and Tierney’s office. (Tierney is our realtor who has an office downtown. Maggie is constantly calling Tierney on her play phone and always points out “Tierney work” when we ride past.)
She is such an observant little girl. We never really know exactly how much she listens to us when we talk; most often she doesn’t talk back to us. But she’s picking stuff up. For example, we take the same trail up to the college to check our mail every other day or so, and there’s one section that gets water a lot and stays pretty muddy. When we step across it, I often say “gooshy gooshy.” Last time we approached, a little voice said “gooshy gooshy.” On the river trail where Junction Creek flows in, there’s a little water fall which I mentioned once to Maggie. Now every time we go past she points out the “river fall.” She’s learned the names of all the neighbors’ dogs by hearing us talk to them.
Maggie has already made a couple of friends here. Brianna is an almost two-year-old whose mom owns the furniture store we’ve gone to a couple of times. Maggie likes to go there and dance with her. And we ran in to them once at the swimming pool and Brianna inspired Maggie to go down the big water slide! Nora is a colleague’s daughter about 6 months older, but absolutely willing to show Maggie the ropes. We’ve had a successful babysitting experiment already! (Next time it’s our turn, guys. Swapsies.)
Sunglasses are a must here in the sunny southwest, so we’ve been doing our best to get Mags to wear hers. She’s not a really big fan, but occasionally we can coax them on. We’re trying to impart to her how awesome it is to be a sunglasses wearer. Strangers we pass on our bike-a-cycles probably think we’re being sarcastic when we say “cool shades,” (and maybe Bill and I are being so sometimes), but mostly we’re trying to point out that lots of people wear sunglasses and they’re cool cats for it.

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