Category — The YaYa Sister

She was gently moving her “friends”, some ants, from one spot to another with a clothespin.  Good times.

Sometimes you just have to.

I’m a tough mom. In my family, once you’re able to hold a spoon in your chubby tiny fist, you’d better be feeding yourself, or you’ll go hungry.

Well, it’s not that bad. But my kids generally did feed themselves. That is, until we met up against the formidable obstacle of the grandparents. Otherwise known as the ones who would like to halt the development of my children.

Or so I thought. Because I’m tough like that.

I can’t count the number of times I’ve come back from the bathroom, during dinner at my parents’ house, to find my dad guiltily jumping violently enough to spill four glasses of water, holding a spoon next to some child’s mouth. Some child who should be feeding herself. Sometimes he would go so far as to post my mother as a lookout. “She’s coming!” I’d hear, as I walked down the hallway as quietly as I could.
I was gracious about it, of course. “It’s fine to feed the kids,” I’d say, “as long as you don’t mind making my life about a thousand times harder.” Notice how well I share the raising of my children. All about the village I am. As long as everyone does things my way.

Anyways, now we are here, and we are here with Jaya, who, though she rarely gets involved with kid stuff, informs me that my kids are too small to eat by themselves.

And I am giving in. Perhaps I am just too pregnant and tired. But the end of every dinnertime sees Jaya coming back to the table to feed YaYa the food that she hasn’t finished. I mean, the girl is practically a teenager. She’s four, right? So she’s only nine years away.

I think, though, that the reason I’m giving in is because I love it that YaYa doesn’t even protest. Even when my parents would feed her, she wasn’t silent like this, accepting bite after bite gallantly, gulping water in between when it’s spicy. I know a good thing when I see it. About 25% of the time.

Pics of the kids with their new clothes on.  YaYa is wearing a Salwar Kameez, a traditional Punjabi garment that is now worn all over India.  I think I may dress her in them from now until forever, because they suit her so well.

And because it is almost pointless to be a mom with a blog unless you can include your cute kid anecdotes, I will tell you about this conversation between Leafy and I. ( Just so you know, I’m not some kind of psycho mom who buckles my son down for school at age 2; the kid feels left out and wants me to teach him as well.)

“Ok, Leafy, what is this letter?”

“A T!”

“That’s right!  And what’s this one?”

“A O!”

“Uh huh!  Good, and what’s this one?”

“I don’t know. It’s an umbrella!”

“Well, kind of… It’s a U.  U is for umbrella.”

“Me is for umbrella?”

“No, not you is for umbrella.  The letter U is for umbrella.”

“The letter me is for umbrella?”

And so on.  Sometimes Leafy seems like the very stamp out of what someone would make if they were inventing the quintessential toddler.  Totally cute, totally crazy, totally mischievous, throwing out quotes left , right and center.

And as for our shipping.  I really think I understand the term now, when our ship comes in. Before you tell me to shut up already about it, you have to know that it contains my entire curriculum, all of our books, all our toys except for the five that are here with us, that have been with us since Turkey, our instruments, oh, and the mattress.  Sigh.  They say two to three weeks for processing through customs.  Sigh again.  When our ship comes in.

Four years ago you slipped out so quickly that we almost didn’t catch you. In the ensuing pandemonium, I clutched your still-wet body to me, peeked down, and gasped, “It’s a girl.” I was so, so happy. I still am.

I do want to put you in a sound-proof box sometimes, though. Just for a little while, until my eyelid stops twitching from all that, um… protesting, of um… completely normal circumstances, like our need to walk places sometimes, using our legs, or the shocking fact that when we get in the car we put our seatbelts on, and it takes a little effort.

And at the same time, when the emotions zoom up and down the freeway with no apparent governor on them, I really completely understand. I mean, I myself have been known to collapse on the floor upon occasion. And there was that time that I dissolved in tears when someone ate my ice cream. I think I was about 25.

I do understand.

You are a delight. Sometimes you are unbelievably sweet. You sit and touch my face and put your “loving” look on. “You’re ssooooo beautiful,” you say in your softest voice. “I’ll love you forever and ever. You’re the prettiest girl in the world. You’re the best mama in the world.” I don’t think that I knew that these kind of compliments would come out of the little pink slippery baby that I first held that day, four years ago and a bit.

Let’s see… this year you have figured out so much of the world. Cutting and gluing, which always involves a LOT of glue. Drawing beautiful, intricate pictures of people who have dots for eyes, dots for noses, dots for cheeks and foreheads and chins. Dancing. Making conversation on the playground. I love seeing you do this, making friends with the smallest of commonalities, like, “YOU’RE FOUR? I’M FOUR TOO!” There seems to be no end to the amusement I get from comparing the social ways of children to the social ways of adults. Like if I were to give a lady in the supermarket a high five for being TWENTY-SEVEN! WHEEE, SAME AGE? Wouldn’t that be awesome?
This year your love for your older brother has reached entirely new levels. You often run to him and cling to him when in distress, a fact made slightly comical in a really heartbreaking way when he tries to walk away from you in annoyance and you get dragged along the carpet, crying all the way. Sometimes, though, his heart wakes up a bit and you get the comfort you desire.

It’s the way it goes, I guess, living with brothers. You love each other to death, but I can see that sometimes you just don’t want to play games with any fighting involved. And sometimes Kid A doesn’t want to have a “Mommy lightsaber” and a “Daddy lightsaber.” He just wants to whack things.

You are a puzzle, my girl, with so much softness within you, and yet, a will of steel. I’ve never met anyone with such a core of stubbornness. And yet, because you are usually so agreeable, so willing to be the epitome of helpfulness and sweetness and amenability, we don’t run up against that will all too often.

Except for those days when you wanted the red bowl and didn’t get it.

Really, sweetie, I wouldn’t want you any other way.

All Photos are Chinua’s and he is simply amazing.

I say almost because there is that great lump of grief waiting to pounce on me when I can finally make myself vulnerable to it.

But, after yesterday, which was one of the most insane days ever, and the two days before, which were also insane, we are done with this part of our move. We got to the ranch last night just after midnight, after finally finishing and then driving for the five hours.

I could barely walk this morning. But this is one of the happiest places in the world to me, and I am recuperating.

I’ll write more tomorrow, when I actually have some brain cells firing.

Today was YaYa’s fourth birthday celebration (the first one, we’ll probably have another one when we get to my parent’s house) and she did a guest blog over at the Ranch on Salmon Creek, which is pretty much adorable, and you should definitely read it instead of reading any more of this, because I am nodding off and drooling on myself.  Time for bed.

Rae and YaYa, originally uploaded by journeymama.

Tonight we drove out as far as we could (okay, not as far as we could) to see the eclipse. It was wonderful, except for the occasional whine from a child who was JUST SO COLD. I would love to see these children in an actual winter climate. Although they would probably contrarily be ecstatic.

Anyways, even Leafy said, “The moon is so boodiful!” And we saw Saturn. And I showed Kid A and YaYa Orion, which has always been my favorite constellation, ever since it was my connection to Chinua, when we were thousands of miles away from each other, long before we were married. I would sit on the beach in San Diego and listen to the waves and when I saw Orion, I would breathe a prayer for my friend, the man who would one day become my husband.

There is a reason that I reposted this old picture. And it’s not because I’m really admiring that knit head band thingy (where IS that thing? I really LIKE it) but because I have never been more proud of YaYa than I was today.

Because today she wore a sock on her hand all day.

She has sucked those two fingers ever since she was about four months old. We have numerous pictures of YaYa as a baby, YaYa as a toddler, YaYa as a three-year-old, sucking her fingers. She does it ALL. THE. TIME. Not just for bed, not just for consolation. ALL THE TIME.

But I have this funny list of things I need to do before we go to India. Things like, Find storage, Find a good shipping company, Train next bookkeeper, Buy sleeping bags, Buy kid back packs, Buy stroller. And then these odd things like Help YaYa stop sucking her fingers, Potty train Leafy.

And you can guess which one we are working on today.

I really didn’t know how it would make me feel. I didn’t realize that my rush-in-and-protect instincts would swarm all over me and smother me and almost make me say “Never mind! Just joking! You can just keep those fingers in your mouth until your boss complains!”

I didn’t say it.

It is time, and my brave, strong girl met the time to quit head on. Her teeth are visibly shifting. And I completely do not want her touching things on trains and buses in India and then putting her fingers in her mouth. Nope.

I also didn’t know that I would almost burst with pride. That I would see her thousand little reflexive moves toward her mouth, and then the stifling of the reflex, and then the hand that didn’t have a place to be and so tentatively lay in her lap, and her mouth moving self-consciously around itself, that I would see all these things and my heart would melt, for her strength.

I don’t know that I’ve ever witnessed as much determination in overcoming something so deeply ingrained, in any of my kids before. This is no small thing. She doesn’t remember ever not having this habit. It’s all she’s known. When at rest, left fingers go into your mouth. When you are hugging your mom, when you are reading a book, when you are watching a movie, when you are walking through a crowd…

This is her mountain. I love to be here to see her climb it. (Even though I am a nervous twitchy wreck.)

I haven’t got a photo of Leafy in his Indian Prince costume yet, but I will.

(Can you guess what I’m saying to get Kid A to smile like that?  Works every time…)

Life has been so busy lately. I think pretty much my strategy is going to be “ceasing to expect it to calm down”.

It’s just not going to happen in the near future (the calming down, that is). Today is the day that I am taking my kids to get their passport photos taken. From here on in I believe that life will be a whirlwind of passports and visas and applications and packing. I’ll be sure to let you in on the fun.

The other day, though, I had a list as long as my entire body of things to do. It’s tax receipt season, the kids and I weren’t quite done with school for the day, and I had bills to pay, things to mail, furniture to polish. Well, no furniture to polish. But photos to edit, emails to write, laundry to do, dinner to make.

But it was sunny for the first time in weeks. We did all that could be done. We jumped.

We climbed.

We slid.

And we went around the world.

(New post up today at LJUrban.  Wherein we wander the streets of Paris, looking for a home. Or a restaurant.  Something like that.)

IMG_5969, originally uploaded by chinua000.

I completely forgot how adorable she was.