Trick or Treat!

Last year Sylvia was too little to take trick-or-treating, but THIS year she was all over the neighborhood!  It didn't take long for her to get the hang of asking for candy.  We couldn't get her to say "Trick or Treat," so instead she just said, "Peeeeees!" which was fine with me because at least she was being polite!  I thought we'd only do a couple of houses but she wanted to keep going and going and going....until she finally crashed.  Her bag got too heavy and her legs got too tired and she needed to be carried home.  Sweet thing. 

Here are our Halloween highlights:

Yesterday we snapped a pic with Sylvia and her BFF - the hallway witch!

Our little monkey!

Sylvia and "Nah-noe!" (Cousin Nolan)

You want me to do WHAT now?

Baby Cecilia came to visit!  She's a cute little cow straight off her Grandpa's farm!

See ya, Papa!  I've got places to be!

Here are some videos of her first couple of houses.  Mom says when she runs in this costume she looks like a little wind-up toy! 

She kept her little hat on the whole time, probably because she saw all the other kiddos running around in costumes and she figured out what this whole thing is all about.  She really had a blast, until we got home and I made the mistake of trying to explain to an 18 month old why you can't have M&M's for dinner.  I lost that battle.  She ate M&M's (while I hid the rest of the candy) and then ate her supper.  It's Halloween!  Why not have dessert first?

Needless to say, she was one worn out monkey by bath time.  I'm sure she'll sleep well tonight!

A Year and A Half!

Dirty face from eating all her supper.  Bumps and bruises all over her clumsy head.  Clutching onto Daddy's leg as he snaps the camera at just the right moment.  Melt my heart.

Sylvia's talking like crazy now, and she's saying so many words that only we can decipher.  I don't know if she's speaking French or English, because it all comes out as a sort of controlled babble with lots of inflection and facial expressions that help quite a bit.  There are quite a few words anyone could understand (nigh-night, bye-bye, Mama, Dada, choo choo, etc.), and a lot of her words are just the beginning sounds of words.  For example, "muh" means milk, "reh" means red, and so on.  But...sometimes she comes up with the weirdest way to say something and I wanted to write a couple of her weird words down before I forgot:

airplane = "nay nay"

Nolan = "Nah-noe"

Cecilia = "Ya ya"

She spent most of her morning asking for Nah-noe.  When she found out he wasn't going to be at the sitter's house, she went up to my Aunt Patty, threw her arms in the air, palms up, and questioned, "Uh Nah-noe ooooh?"  Which clearly means, "Where'd Nolan go?"

Another funny story:  Sylvain ate a piece of pizza and set his plate and dirty paper towel down on the couch next to him.  Sylvia walked up to him, took his crumpled paper towel, smelled it, said "P.U!" and ran into the kitchen to throw it in the trash can!  Somebody has trained her to clean!  (It's not me, that's for sure.)

We're Taking This Show on the Road

I caught Sylvia jammin' to some sweet tunes at Barleycorn's tonight, and when I went to put it on You Tube I found another gem from the summer where she's shaking it to some Devo.  I'm so glad my daughter loves to dance!  (I guess I don't know many kids that don't, but we haven't blasted this much loud party music since college, so I'm having TONS of fun!)

Good Thing Joyce Uses a Camera!

Here are some pics Mom snapped recently.  Can you believe how big she's getting?

Somebody has become quite proficient at using a spoon.  See that giant soup spoon?  She shoved that entire spoon in her mouth, heaping full of applesauce, and you would have thought it was the world's greatest meal. 

Hello October!

Where in the world did you come from?  You totally sneaked up on me and tackled me from behind.  This past month has been a blur and I can't believe how long it's been since I posted!  I blame it on being laptopless (the word makes me giggle, but the truth is so sad) and on being homeless.  A situation which we will remedy soon - we're officially looking for a house!  Yippee!

Much has happened in the last month and each event really deserves it's own post, but for times' sake, I'm going to summarize as best I can.  I hope I don't get too wordy.  If I do, just skip to the end and look at the cute pic.

We closed on our house two weeks ago today!  I sat across from the people who bought our house and held back tears when they explained that they've been looking for a house for two years and they probably looked at a hundred of them.  They liked ours the best.  Thank God!  Selling a house quickly involves a lot of stress, a lot of waiting, and a LOT of money on our part (boo), but we closed exactly four months from the day we listed.  Not bad for a fresh start in a new town!

Sylvain and I are growing more in love with our schools every day.  Sylvia is growing more in love with her sitter and her sub-sitter (my Aunt Patty!) every day.  We have nestled into a lovely routine here which would be almost perfectly normal and manageable if it weren't for this dang cold weather.  All of our cold weather clothes and bundle-uppers are in boxes at my Grandma's house and I'll never find them again until we unpack all of that mess somewhere else.  They would have really come in handy this weekend - more on that later.

In much sadder news, the night before we closed on our house, my Grandma Stine passed away.  If you were a guest at our wedding, you might remember her cuteness on the dance floor when she and Grandpa won the Anniversary Dance-Off.  At the time they had been married for 55 years.  Now it's more like 60.  She was the world's greatest Grandma.  She thought that every tiny thing every grandchild ever did was AMAZING.  And she told us so, all the time.  For the last few years she hasn't been feeling very well, so I think it's safe to say that her passing has brought her a well deserved peace.  I will miss her dearly, but when I think of her, it's impossible not to also think of the wonderful family she raised and left behind.  And they make me smile, so it's not so bad.

In much happier news - Sylvia is growing like a WEED!  I wish I could take a scan of her brain every day to show you how it's absolutely exploding with new learning.  I can't believe how much language she understands!  She can follow directions to almost anything.  She knows people's names, she answers questions, she knows her animal sounds and she recently learned to say her colors - well, the names of colors.  Most color exchanges go like this:
Me: Sylvia, what color is Grover?
Sylvia: Lell-ooooo!!!!!!
Me: No, he's blue.
Sylvia: Booo!!!!!!
She can say all the color names, but the sweet thing guesses the wrong color on the first try every single time!

Also, we are constantly spelling the things we don't want her to hear, which I thought we'd never do, but now I get it.  Example - After she chugs an entire cup of milk and puts it down and walks away, I know she doesn't want or need any more.  But if Sylvain looks in the fridge and shouts, "Do we have any MILK?" she will suddenly remember that milk is her life force and she can't survive another minute without it and...

OHMYGODDIDYOUJUSTSAYMILK????? 

INEEDITNOWNOWNOWNOW!!!  

This involves screaming and STOMPING (a recently acquired skill) and head shaking and fist flailing....it's quite a sight to see, really.  Sometimes I laugh at her.  Sometimes I have to walk away because these tantrums totally wear me out and I don't want to lose it.  But usually I just stand there and wait for her to finish so I can talk to her like she's a normal person.  Anyway, that's why we now say, "Honey, do we have any m-i-l-k?" Or better yet, just avoid that word altogether.  We also avoid "pretzel," "Elmo," and "outside."  Oh heavens, don't say "outside."  You'll want those ears later.

One final newsflash - we went camping this weekend at the Annual Humbert Family Camp Out!  Well, not really.  Sylvain went down last night to meet my Dad and brothers.  Sylvia and I took John's girlfriend, Jess, down with us today in an attempt to join the fun.  But it was way too cold.  So we sat around the fire and ate s'mores until we couldn't take it anymore.  Fun fact - kids have absolutely no idea how cold they are.  Sylvia was wearing many layers (all of her REAL winter clothes are waiting patiently in Grandma's basement), and it made me cold just to look at her, but darn it, she ran around the campsite and had a dandy old time!  She probably would have run around naked if I'd let her!  After three hours of trying to keep her under a blanket (didn't happen), we decided to call it quits.  Here's the proof that she had a good time.

 
I am not sad at all that we came home, because Mom had beef stew on the stove and now Sylvia is sleeping in her nice, warm bed.  All the boys are still down there, freezing their butts off, I'm sure.

That's our month in a nutshell.  Hopefully I'll have a new laptop soon and these posts will start to pick up again!  Happy October, everyone!

Seventeen Months

Dear Sylvia,

Yesterday I looked at you and said to myself, for the hundredth time since you were born, "Wow, there's no way she gets any better than this."  I guess that's the perk of being the oldest or only child.  We have no idea what's around the corner, so every time you do something new, it's just the most amazing thing EVER to us!  I realized yesterday that you are so much easier to take care of than you were a few months ago.  You can walk, you can go up and down the steps without any help, you can climb onto a chair or the couch all by yourself and you can slip down to the floor when you're done.  Also, you're starting to chill out on the whole "I have to put everything in my mouth right now" thing, thank goodness.  It's like I can finally SIT DOWN and watch you play.  It's amazing!

We've been staying with Grammy and Grandpa while we're in between houses, so they get to watch you grow just like we do!  They are always amazed at how much you understand, in English and in French!  You can point to all of your body parts and you can make a few animal noises, but the other day you really surprised me.  You were on the back deck drinking a juice box and I said, "Okay, Sylvia!  Let's put it in the garbage can!" And you walked right to the door, I opened it, you ran into the kitchen, opened the cabinet under the sink, and tossed the box in the trash!  HOW DID YOU KNOW THAT???  I'm positive I've never tried to teach you "garbage can."  You just knew.  Because you're a genius.

You have become very playful, Nugget, especially since you've been spending your days with Eva and Claire.  You like to run and jump and climb on and over everything you see.  You like to stop what you're doing, look at one of us, and grin with all of your teeth showing, nose scrunched, head tilted back.  You love to wear Grammy's necklaces and bracelets.  Today I came home to find you in your tutu, and you ran up to me and TWIRLED around!  That's new.  I don't know where you picked that up, but I'm going to go ahead and blame Eva for that one.  You love hanging out with those girls during the day.  Sometimes you get frustrated and bite them, but I think (I HOPE) that's a short-lived phase.

So every once in a while I decide that I love you at whatever particular age you happen to be in.  I can't possibly imagine any better age than that, but you always get better, month my month and day by day.  I was looking back at some of my old posts and I can't get over how grown up you look these days.  You're losing your chubby baby-fat cheeks, your hair is getting longer and thicker (pigtails are right around the corner!!), and your arms and legs just keep growing and growing!  You're turning into a kid and I adore watching it happen.

Here you are watching the bulldozers on Grammy's street and looking like such a big girl!

We love you forever and ever.  Thanks for being you.

Love,
Mama

Therapy

I'm forcing myself to sit down at the computer and get through with this post.  I realize it's been over a month since I've logged on, and I don't want to look back on this time and see a gaping hole in our family's history, at least not a hole any bigger than the one I've already left.  I have so much to say, but I'll try to make it as concise as possible.

Our house is alllmmmoooossssttttt sold.  We are so close!  All we're waiting on is a closing date, but I refuse to let myself get excited about this until I'm sitting in a lawyer's office, handing over the keys.  The inspections are over, the repair requests are over, the appraisal is over....but we're not done yet!  That being said, we are officially a "dual city" family!  We go back to our old house as often as we can to pack up boxes and mow the lawn, but all of our day-to-day goings-on happen at Casa Eiben.  We moved in with Mom and Jay almost a month ago, and we couldn't be more grateful for their open arms and extra bedrooms.  Sylvia sleeps as well here as she ever did at our house.  We have a giant basement for our TV, computer, and toys.  We have in-house babysitters who agree to watch Sylvia at any given moment.  Not to mention, we both started our new jobs and we absolutely, one hundred and twenty percent, LOVE our schools and our students. We could not be any more blessed.

So why am I so sad?

Well, I realized something about memory while I was watching HGTV.  Memory is visual.  There was a woman who got emotional about tearing down a wall in her house because she could picture her grandma sitting against it and doing...whatever she did, I can't remember.  But I thought to myself, "Seriously?!  It's a wall, lady!  Get over it!"  Then I almost lost my breath when I realized EXACTLY how she was feeling.  I only get sad about our old house when I visualize our old house, which I force myself not to do almost every night.  I picture our backyard, and Sylvia with her plastic wagon, or Sylvain watering the garden, or my red rocking chairs on the front porch....and ohhhhhhh, how I miss it SO MUCH!  All it takes is a split second of green grass or hydrangeas or roses for me to absolutely LOSE IT. 

So I put off this post for a long time.  I didn't want to sit down and cry.  I don't have that kind of time to waste, especially since we're back in school.  But our staff meeting was cancelled this afternoon, and I left all of my work at school on purpose so that I'd have nothing else to do but sit down and write after Sylvia went to bed.  And here I am.

I think just putting down in words how much I miss that place will help me not miss it so much anymore.  If I admit that we had wonderful summer and post some pictures to prove it, I won't feel guilty about a month of not blogging.  I thought pretty hard about the first picture I'd post after such a long hiatus, and I think this one is the best.  It's how I always want to remember our first sweet house.

Look at my sweet Nugget!  She has grown so much lately.  She understands everything we say, which is scary.  And she has so much spunk and energy that it's hard for me to keep up with her at times, but I always, always, ALWAYS admire her for being so raw and honest.  When she screams, she's got something to say.  When she cries, she's truly and deeply hurt.  And when she leans forward and slobbers a kiss all over my mouth, or when she throws her arms up and wraps them around my neck, it's nothing but pure, innocent and true love at it's finest.  Oh, she is my world!  She does this crinkled nose, toothy grin that melts my heart.  She bounces and dances and laughs like no child I've ever seen before!  I can't help but smile every second I'm with her, especially now that we're not together all day.  On that note, let me shout out a giant THANK YOU to our awesome care giver, Laura.  She and her girls are a saving grace for our family.  I don't worry about Sylvia for one single second during the day because she has so much fun playing with her new friends.  I love them dearly, and I love my Nugget beyond words.

So when all is said and done, when I finish crying about how much I miss our back yard and my own bed, I come to the conclusion that I have absolutely nothing to cry about.  Because at the end of the day, we have each other.  We may go our separate ways in the morning, but I go to bed next to the sweetest husband a girl could ask for, across the hall from the sweetest baby a Mama could want.  We may not know where we're going to live in the near future, but we'll live somewhere together.  In the midst of hurricanes, and deployed soldiers, and starving babies in Somalia...I'm just a big fat wuss crying about nothing.


I have a lot more to post about our transitional journey, but I think that's enough for tonight.  I still need to add pics of our awesome vacation to Lake Erie at the end of JULY.  Yeah, I'm a little behind.