Life in the Clark Lane: Another Month Comes to an End

Enjoying her Valentine's Day donut from Jim

February has flown by with lots going on and very few blog posts, so here's the last few weeks in a nutshell.

Yesterday, I taught the ninth of ten SAT classes (not that I'm counting), and while I love teaching them, I can't wait to have my Sundays back again. The one thing I will miss, however, is coming home after teaching and tutoring and hearing about Lilly and Jim's day together. There's always a story...an adventure of some kind...and a ridiculously long nap so that Lilly can recover from her morning. Over the last few Sundays, Lilly and Jim have:

played hide and seek in Bed, Bath and Beyond for 45 minutes. I thought this was a joke when I first heard it but it's true. And, according to Jim, Lilly loved every second of hiding behind curtains or under beds. I'm sure the sales people loved it too!
gone to Target in their pajamas (which is a cute Dad thing to do), while Lilly stands up and rides around in the shopping cart (which I'm not as big a fan of).
ordered pizza. This is Lilly's new favorite expression. She asks multiple times a day if we can order pizza. I think I'm the culprit here, as I seem to have an unnatural obsession with the various pizza places in our area. But yesterday, we had leftover pizza in the fridge, so Jim pretended to order pizza for lunch, waited 20 minutes, delivered it to the door and explained to Lilly that they had to heat it up this time. She loved every second of the experience!
watched a "moonie" or two
gone grocery shopping together. I don't ask too much about what goes on in the grocery store although I can only imagine. I'm thrilled that they're getting the groceries!

I have to say that while I give Jim a hard time about some of the things he and Lilly do together, he's an amazing dad. In fact, I think that Lilly needs do to things with Jim, like the ones mentioned above, because I am inclined to focus more on "behaving properly"...which is such a mum thing to do, I know. Don't get me wrong--Jim is a stickler for rules too. He makes Lilly clean up after herself when they're playing and won't let her get away with asking for something without saying please. But he's able to mix just the right "dad amount" of fun in there. When Lilly was being a little bit stubborn yesterday (I know it's hard to imagine a child of Jim and mine being stubborn, but it's true), and she decided that she didn't want to throw something in the trash that Jim had asked her to throw away, Jim made her come back, he put the trash in her hand and said, "I think that's an even trade...I make your life possible, you throw away a little piece of trash." Jim won--Lilly threw away the trash and we had a good laugh. And I'm sure she learned her lesson.

This past week, I also got to catch up with good friends that I haven't seen for ages. On Thursday morning, Lilly and I met Kelly half way between here and Boston, at a mall in northern CT. Kelly found the mall and it was perfectly smack in the middle. It took each of us about an hour and 20 minutes to get there so we met up, wandered around, did lots of chatting and laughing, had lunch and then made our ways back home. It was so much fun and we agreed to do this more often! There's nothing like an old friend to make you smile, and seeing Kelly just made me a happier person.

Then, on Saturday morning, Jim, Lil and I drove into the city to visit my friend Jenny, from high school, and her husband Nils. They're moving to Sweden in a month so we decided to get together for brunch before they left. They had us over to their apartment and we had a fantastic time. Lilly loved every second of it as Jenny and Nils have 2 cats (who will probably never be the same after this little toddler invaded their apartment and proceeded to follow them around for the better part of 2 hours). She loved them! She'd put her face right up to theirs; she "booped" their noses; she tried to touch their eyes; she patted them (albeit a bit too vigorously for their liking); she chased them around in circles; she even got them to hiss at her, which she loved and which Jenny took as a sign that it might be time to put the cats away in her bedroom for a little rest (aka, break from Lilly). Seeing Kelly and Jenny this week reminded me of the importance of keeping in touch with good friends; something that I'm going to try to be better at.

Lilly's becoming such a little girl, it's unbelievable. She talks more and more every day and is trying so hard to put together sentences. She gets really frustrated when we don't understand what she's saying. For example:

Lilly: "Didi huck, Daddy"

Jim: "Oh no, is Daisy stuck?"

Lilly: "No Daddy" (with this expression on her face that says, That's not at all what I was saying. Why would you think that?)

Jim: "What's wrong with Daisy?"

Lilly: "Didi huck, Daddy...come" followed by a quick sprint into her room, waiting for Jim, pointing to a little sock on the ground that she wants Jim to put on Daisy.

Jim: "Oooooh, Daisy's sock. Do you want me to put it on?"

Lilly: "Yes peese Daddy..."

Just so you understand the difficulties experienced when communicating with a toddler, "huck" in Lilly's vocabulary can mean, "stuck", "sock" and it's also how she says our neighbor's name, "Scott". So you can see where the confusion lies.

Lilly also loves saying, "apple juice". She enjoys drinking it, but really she prefers inserting the expression, "apple juice" into as many conversations as she can. She'll say it when she has nothing else to say. When you put her in her crib for a nap or at bed time, and say goodnight to her, she'll respond with, "good night mummy...apple juice?" She'll say it when she's in the bath or playing with Mr. Potato Head. It comes out at many different times during the day, and we have no idea why. Maybe it's just fun to say. She's a little sponge and soaks up everything she hears. And have I mentioned that she never stops talking?

Although I hate the fact that the months are flying by, I'm not really sad to see February go. I'm ready for spring and some warmer weather. March is going to be an exciting month! Mum and Dad are coming up to visit at the end of this week. We're going back to the City Winery in NYC to see Citizen Cope next week. Jim turns 30 next Friday!! (which he's thrilled about...) and we've planned a trip to London, where Jim's sister, Sarah, is currently living so we're going over to visit. Lilly's heading down to DC to stay with Gigi and Papa, which will be a vacation for her too. Lots of fun things to look forward to. And it's Lilly's last month as a one year old, so I'm going to try and enjoy every second of it.

Here's a few February pictures:

Some of the icicles from the ice storm on February 2nd.

How Lilly entertained herself during this storm! Lilly Lamb is wearing Mrs. Potato Head's earrings and Lilly spent much of her day playing in the tent that Jim made her.

Trying out my bike, while Dad was visiting, and making sure that everything was working the way it should.

These are from Owen's 1st birthday party, where Natasha, Lilly, Parker and Owen's music teacher, came and sang with the kids. Just like in music class, Lilly took everything very seriously and spent her time dancing in the middle of the circle.

"All done shoes"

Eating a ridiculous amount of cookie dough before getting in the car and driving up to the Lake for the weekend. I think we have the cookie dough to thank for Lilly's stream of chatter between the hours of 11pm and midnight in the car.