29. She’s 29 months. Or really, she turned 29 months back on the 19th and it never even crossed my mind. I only realized yesterday I had missed it at all, when someone asked how old she was and I said she was almost two AND A HALF. I’m going to try to stick it out and keep these up until she hits 3 – WAY TOO SOON! – but I’m sure the rest of them will be late too.

Caroline no longer approves of nicknames. I used to call her “babe”, which was short for “baby baby”, but now she shouts “DON’T CALL ME BABE CALL ME CAH-YINE!” (She has trouble saying Care-o-line. A lot of trouble. It probably doesn’t help that we say “Care-line” with just a tiny “eh” where the “o” should be. And like I said, she doesn’t approve of nicknames.) Evan has realized she hates being called babe, so of course now he does it constantly. We’ll all be sitting on the couch nicely, everyone getting along and being adorable and homey like a Norman Rockwell painting, and Evan will look at her and go “BABE.” Then it’s like The Scream up in here, but with sound effects.

She’s just about the bravest 2-year-old I’ve ever seen. She likes people in animal costumes. She likes petting sharks. She likes when her Daddy jumps out from behind things and roars. She likes old ladies in the grocery store who talk to her. I’m sure she’ll get some stranger danger awareness at some point, but right now it sure is nice not to worry about it. I’m pretty sure I could drop her off at the mall and she’d take care of herself by conning the pretzel guy into feeding her and the lady in the educational store into playing with her and the security guard into giving her rides on his Segway. I WON’T, obviously, I’m just saying.

Of course, she’s also VERY VERY TWO sometimes. So very two. She’ll look me right in my big, stupid face and do the thing I just told her not to do. She insists on putting on her own shoes and coat and backpack and hat and doing her own top buckle on her car seat. She is very bossy about the radio and wants me to play “More Macklemore! MACKLEMOOOOORE MOMMY!” in the car, although she’s also a fan of Beethoven and Laurie Berkner.

She absolutely REFUSES to look at the camera when I want to take pictures.

Likes including singing, dancing, jumping, water, running, ducks, apples, watermelon, juice, cheeseburgers, dogs, kitties, sharks, the aquarium, boats, princesses, pants, sparkly things, lollipops, rainbows, caterpillars, school, making a mess, ruining things, “helping”, insisting on going potty in disgusting public bathrooms, Phineas & Ferb, Diego, Minnie Mouse, books, more books, socks, ALL THE BOOKS, cuddles, Daddy, Mommy, Evan, cheese, sprinkle donuts, and swinging.

Dislikes include nicknames, being told “no”, going home when she’d rather be at the playground, getting stuff in her eyes, and when people won’t share food.

p.s. ERIN DON’T LOOK THERE ARE BIRDS!! (Erin doesn’t like birds.)

Humidity makes her hair super curly. I’m so jealous.

29 Month Milestones (BabyCenter changed their milestone chart so it’s just a list. I’m using Evan’s old milestone posts to see specific months – here’s his 29 month post!)

Mastered Skills (most kids can do)
• Brushes teeth with help – She mostly brushed them on her own and does a great job – no cavities! AND AND AND she let the dental hygienist brush her teeth at her appointment without a single complaint.
• Washes and dries own hands – Washes, yes. Dries, yes, if you mean “wipes them on Mommy’s pants EVERY TIME.”
• Draws a vertical line – She draws circles. Just circles. Counter-clockwise circles. It’s a little creepy at this point, like she’s trying to convey some alien message.

Emerging Skills (half of kids can do)
• Draws a circle – See above.
• Balances on one foot – Balances on one foot ON A BALANCE BEAM because my kid is totally better than yours.

Advanced Skills (a few kids can do)
• Puts on a T-shirt – Sort of. She can put on her jammies but usually backwards.
• Names one color – She can name a whole bunch of colors, but mostly only notices if stuff is PINK or PURPLE.
• Names one friend – I just asked her if she had a friend at school and she said “Yes! William! William just pushed me at school!” so apparently she has a friend named William and also WTF WILLIAM??  Mostly she tells me I’M her best friend (or Daddy, or Evan).

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Being a stay at home mom is hard. It’s thankless. It’s monotonous. There’s no such thing as sick days. It involves way, way too much poop.

Right now, being a mom seems like CAKE compared to my husband’s job. Especially since the kids are at a sleep-through-the-night, put-on-their-own-shoes, can-be-entertained-with-television-if-I-need-a-break stage and E’s job has none of that. He never gets to sleep through the night, no one at work seems to be able to tie their own shoes without asking for help and even when he’s home in front of the TV he’s thinking about all the stuff he has to do tomorrow (or in 20 minutes, if work calls him in AGAIN). He probably won’t get to go on vacation with us at all this summer and he probably won’t get any real time off until 2014. He doesn’t get lunch dates and trips to the playground and lazy days at home when he’s so tired he can’t keep his eyes open. So even though he gets paid in actual dollars and people (in theory) value his work and give him awards and tell him “great job”, I wouldn’t trade places with him for a second. Well, maybe for a second, but only because he really deserves a break. Although putting me in charge of a nuclear reactor for even a second would be a terrible, terrible mistake.

There have been plenty of times in the past 5 years where the scales went the other way and I was practically homicidal with rage over how I did ALL THE WORK and ALL THE CHILDCARE and ALL THE CLEANING and he was “busy” spending 8 hours rearranging office furniture with a 2 hour lunch thrown in the middle. He’s wasn’t slacking off, he just wasn’t at a very demanding command. But this job he does now? Makes up for every second of relaxation he ever had. If he worked for a civilian company they’d be paying him bazillions of dollars in overtime (or perhaps they’d be in jail for inhumane work conditions) but since it’s the military they can demand all of his time and give him nothing but a terrible headache and a family that missed him.

You know it’s bad when I consider a letter writing campaign to President Obama asking if maybe he can issue a presidential order giving E just ONE weekend off to visit us on vacation. And then I realized even if I was that crazy, E probably wouldn’t take the weekend off, since he’d be screwing over whoever had to fill in for him and might miss something important. He’s a good guy.

Anyways, here’s some photos of the kids and I doing fun stuff over the weekend. The plan is to keep them so busy they don’t notice Mommy is tired and Daddy is gone. Fire trucks are really good for that. So are surprise fairs at the high school with free bounce houses and balloon animals and rubber duckies. It was pretty awesome. Fun fact! It was in the parking lot for my OB’s office and right outside the building where both kids were born.

Tiny speck on the left is Caroline, running to check out the helicopter on her own. I figured a Safety Fair was probably a safe place to let her run around.

She LOVES people in costume.

I hope this is the very last time he is ever in an ambulance.

Learning about ice rescue techniques. Evan said “It’s like a pool noodle!” and the guy was like “Well…yeah. Basically. But we probably paid more.”

Apparently she also loves animatronic cars with voices.

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Sunday:

Buying myself a few extra minutes to sleep in on Mother’s Day.

Crazy joy riding kids

Cheesy cheeses

Monday:

There’s a snake (and a ginger) in my bed!

Thinking deep, piratey thoughts.

Brutus would sleep in here all night if I let him.

Tuesday:

And then my uterus started crying

Evan is skeptical of the safety of these extremely sketching swings

Get outta my way, tiny ginger COMING THOUGH!

Wednesday:

I think they do better push-ups than I do.

Oh look, basically my entire childhood on a table.

Reading to dolly

Thursday:

I think she found her summer job

How does your garlic grow? BIG. SO BIG.

Yep, definitely putting her to work on the farm.

Friday:

She just realized her shoes are adorable.

Some days it’s hard to believe this is real life.

They tricked the deli lady into giving them way too much cheese

Saturday:

Emergency response gingers, to the rescue!

Evan was surprisingly good at the hula hoop. Caroline tried really hard.

Best birthday party ever? I THINK SO.

SO MUCH SUNSHINE this past week. I need to buy some more sunscreen immediately. Or maybe I need a super cool hat so I fit in with my kids. Right now I’m hoping I FINALLY managed to tire them out past a 6 am wake-up call, but I’m not holding my breath and plan to go to sleep right now. Soon. Probably. Maybe after to more glasses of wine.

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If you tracked down a copy of my high school senior year yearbook, there’s a mini-interview with me where I declare I’m going to be a marine biologist when I grow up. I didn’t want to study dolphins or train whales or anything – I just really really liked the ocean. After just ONE college-level biology class I realized the actual sciencey biology stuff wasn’t something I wanted to make a career out of, but that didn’t changed how much I love the ocean one bit. It’s why we go to the aquarium at least once a week and why my kids have seen the episode of Diego with Baby Humpback Whale more times than any other episode and why Star Trek IV is indisputably the best (original) Star Trek movie. It might also have something to do with why I married someone in the Navy, but don’t tell him.

Sterling Publishing sent me – well, the kids – a copy of Shimmer & Splash: The Sparkling World of Sea Life a couple weeks ago and it’s been in heavy read and fake-read rotation ever since. Caroline likes to lie on the floor and open up all the cool fold-out pages while she points out all the animals she knows. “Look! Orca! Look! Barracuda! Look! Fishy!” (she’s only two, I can’t expect her to know the proper name for EVERYTHING yet.)

It’s more of a reference book than a story book, with interesting facts and information on various types of sea life from jelly fish to whales and everything in between. The pictures are very detailed and include cool stuff like life-size shark teeth and big fold-out pages. The drawings are gorgeous and life-like – besides the amazing color drawings there are pencil sketches of extras, like the anatomy of a sting ray. It’s like a visit to the aquarium without leaving our house.

I can already tell it’s going to be a much-loved book for many many years. I recommend it to anyone who has marine biologist dreams (past or future), loves the ocean or even just really loves beautiful drawings.

Sterling has kindly offered a copy to one of my readers. To enter just leave a comment on this post and I’ll draw a winner randomly on Monday. You can find the book on Amazon here, and check out the author’s website here.

Reading about whales in her narwhal shirt. LOVE.

I received a review copy of Shimmer & Splash for the kids but no other compensation was provided for this post. Links are not affiliate links.

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