fill her up

when cruz was a year old (london's age now (i know, right? she was born like five minutes ago)), working from home was a breeze for me. after breakfast i would take him to the backyard for "outdoors time," and he would crawl around after the dog, grab sticks, or gaze at passing airplanes until naptime. he was so so happy out there doing his thing. i would take my laptop outside and sit at the table chatting to him while i worked. it was idyllic and i didn't even know it.

then came london, my sweet london. look, she is the world's easiest baby as long as she's with you. she's not introverted, let's just say. she doesn't respond well to mommy ideas like independent play time. do you remember how cruz would (still does) wake up early in the morning and then play happily in his crib until we came to get him? this has never happened with london. london only likes to be with people. the bumper in her crib has a permanent fold in it because the moment she wakes up, she crawls to the corner of her bed closest to the door, scrunches the bumper down so that she can monitor the door, and hollers until we scoop her up. the baby gesture that she mastered first? blowing kisses and arms straight up to be held. let me say this again, she is happy and easy beyond any baby i could have ever dreamed up, but an introvert she is not.

this makes working from home a challenge.

in a perfect world, i wouldn't work too often around the kids, but it's not a perfect world and i often need to get work done while the kids are up and about. cruz wants my one-on-one attention more than he used to, but i don't mind letting him play a game on the ipad or watching a little curious george while i finish up some work. obviously london is too young for this and has no patience for her jumparoo or other independent play time encouraging activities. the best i've been able to do is put her in the high chair (this makes me feel guilty most of the time because she'll lay her head down on the tray so that she can see me under the kitchen table, and then through the living room to my desk).

my new friend kelly is both wise and beautiful. we were at the park the other week talking about the differences between our kids, and when i mentioned this difference between london and cruz, she gave me great advice: fill her up first.

fill her up with lots of face-to-face time and play and kisses and snuggles, and she'll be more likely to play by herself later on in the day. cruz has the same needs, but he doesn't need that kind of togetherness before he plays independently.

in such a simple way, it has totally reframed my mornings and made it much easier to work while london's awake. the kids get as much of my attention as possible, from the time they wake up until london takes her morning nap. we do lots of snuggles in bed, books, breakfast, a craft, singing. i very, very intentionally fill them up (and tovi too, if he's home that morning). while london's napping, i work and cruz does something specific (usually two episodes of curious george). we're all better for our new rhythm (and especially grateful to have wise friends!).

a twitterature linkup: what i've been reading lately

today i'm linking up with modern mrs. darcy's monthly twitterature. these are my short reviews of recent reads.

reading is one of my absolute favorite activities. thank goodness i'm a fast reader, because i really only read at night before i go to bed! because of that, i have no problem stopping books that i don't feel connected to. this month i stopped reading three books: still life with breadcrumbs (anna quindlen), the headmaster's wife (thomas christopher greene), and doctor sleep (stephen king). i am also making my way through the luminaries, but i'm no where close to the end (or middle. this book is long!)

code name verity. this is billed as young adult fiction, but plucky young brits during world war ii might be my love language. #crackingstory #goodtwists

the invention of wings. beautifully and painfully told story of abolitionist sarah grimke and hetty, a slave gifted to sarah on her birthday. sarah is a real american hero. there are some graphic scenes of slavery, but that's a part of our history we should understand. #absolutelyrecommend

the dinner. this one is... weird. i liked it, though. for fans of we need to talk about kevin and defending jacob (i liked both of those books better). herman koch does a great job of building tension. couldn't put it down. #badkids

the elite and the one. books two and three of the selection trilogy. essentially, the bachelor meets divergent (i would say hunger games, but that would really be a stretch). this is just fun, popcorn reading if you're into young adult fiction. it's a fun love story, and someone actually calls out the heroine for always (thoughtlessly) taking matters into her own hands. #readin24hours

and you, dear friend? what have you been reading lately?

the day date

the day date! what a magical invention. one of tovi's sweet clients gave him a gift certificate to andersen's, one of his favorite breakfast spots. the last couple of times we've been there, it was with our kids, so i did not have a good time, and was willing to try it again, just the two of us.

everything about a day date is the best. we dropped the kids off with tovi's mom really early in the morning and the two of us were sitting down to breakfast by 8:45. we sat outside to people watch. we alternated between coffee and champagne, pastries and eggs. we talked. we dreamed. we agreed that, given the opportunity, we'd move to germany. this is the kind of crazy talk that only happens when our conversation is uninterrupted and unhurried. and it was only 9:15! the whole day was ahead of us!

before our date, tovi had proposed that we each pick somewhere to go after breakfast. i chose the new santa barbara public market  and he chose a walk along the breakwater. it was a simple morning, walking around, checking out the fresh pasta at the market, and the crabs scuttling on the rocks in the harbor. it's so good for us to pause, in the daylight and sunshine, and really see each other and connect. there was something so refreshing about being out together during the day. can't wait for our next day date. 

all the beauty

 my amazing mom came to visit us last week, and because it was a short visit, we had to make every single minute count. once the babes were up from their naps, we headed out to ellwood mesa, which is just a few minutes from our house and one of the most magical places on earth.

once you convince your three year old to walk up the hill, you're rewarded with huge fields of wildflowers, gorgeous views on the mountains, the pacific ocean, and if you're really lucky, a pod of dolphins leaping through the waves (we were lucky). we wandered and talked. cruz sang to himself as he walked slower and slower behind, trailing sticks by his side. 

i stretch my arms out, throw my head back, and sometimes i simply can't get over what a beautiful world God created.

sticker charts for the perfectionist child

cruz turned two and a half right around that london was born. as much as i'd like to tell you that the transition from one to two children was easy, it was not. partly due to his age, and partly due to sharing mommy and daddy with another child, cruz had a rough time. i haven't written too much on this because i understand it and i want to respect cruz's right to have had a tough time with all the change. so yadda yadda yadda, we've been using a lot of sticker charts around here.

i've tried a lot of different sticker chart strategies, and it took some trial and error before we found a system that seemed to work for us. like everyone, we work on multiple behaviors at once. we're being sweet to sister, carrying our dishes to the sink, saying please and thank you without prompting... cruz responds really well to sticker charts, so we used them, but all of a sudden the doors of my kitchen pantry exploded with charts. and there seemed to be a different system for each behavior we were targeting. there are only a few times a day that cruz could earn a sticker for putting his clothes in the hamper, but a seemingly endless number of opportunities for saying thank you! not to mention the times i wanted to give a positive reinforcement for a behavior that didn't have it's own chart.

like a normal person would, cruz was getting frustrated with the array of color-coded charts i had for him. everything he was doing got reduced to a checklist. the rules were constantly changing and he never seemed to get to the end reward. aggravating, right?

so we threw out the old sticker chart rules and ushered in a new system that's been working very well for the last few month: the tower of stickers.

the idea is simple: whenever we want to positively reinforce a behavior, we put a sticker on the chart. the stickers start at the bottom of the page, and we build up until there's a "tower." if there's a tower by friday, cruz gets to have a "jammie movie night." the reward is big enough that he cares about getting a movie night, but he understands that he needs to wait until friday to watch his movie. we aren't stuck with handing out rewards at random times. and importantly, because there's no set number of stickers cruz needs to earn (we're looking at a general positive growth model #statnerds), there hasn't been a sense of despair over "not having enough."

best of all, it's working. cruz understands that good behavior = praise + stickers = movie night. he loves adding to his tower and we've seen his behavior improve because we're able to be consistent with the praise and reward. the other day he was upstairs. i heard him sneeze and then he hollered down, "i said bless you to myself! i'd like a sticker, please!" how could i not, right?