Month-by-month: September & October

Whoa, a lot happens in a couple of months!

SEPTEMBER

--First haircut: We finally made time to give Annika her first haircut. I admit I was in no real hurry -- that white-blond bit at the very ends of her hair was fascinating -- but if we waited any longer it might have become both troublesome (it was already almost long enough to tuck in her waistband) and A Thing for her (getting too attached), so. One afternoon, we went out on the deck, put her on a barstool, and R. did the chopping. I saved the cut-off locks, of course, and her hair did (and does) look fabulous afterward. Yay!

--Family movie night: We have that giant projector screen, and we figured Annika finally had the endurance to handle a feature-length movie, so we ate early one Friday night, got her in her PJs, and settled in with R.'s homemade popcorn and Toy Story. It was awesome! A couple of weeks later, we did Toy Story 2 (and repeated that one again when Mamalah was here) -- but we're not foolish enough to try Toy Story 3 (it was scary, and parts of it were SO SAD); we have also screened The Muppet Movie (she kept asking where Buzz Lightyear and Woody were) and tried Finding Nemo ... but that one was waaaay scary (the sharks, that weird fish in the deep that has a light on its head, the terroristic little kid who kills fish "accidentally" ... yeah, we forgot about most of that. Ooops.) Maybe next we'll try The Incredibles. At any rate -- so much fun!

--Starting Pre-K: After the school break, Annika moved with a number of her classmates into the Pre-K/Kindergarten class (aka "Mr. Alex's class"). The main differences appear to be that they can choose whether to nap or not, and they're actually working on reading and words. She seems to really enjoy it, and so far, the only "issue" in the teacher notes has been that they are "working on how she deals with disappointment," which -- wow, that is a mild, Montessori-nice way of putting it! The kid will go into this trancey fugue state over some trivial detail when she wants something and the answer is no -- she'll repeat repeat repeat repeat until one or both of you has a friggin stroke. But at least we're "working on" it both at home and at school, eh?

--Soccer Shots: Another extracurricular, and the one with the most irony for me personally ... I hate soccer SO MUCH (playing it or dealing with it -- I had the world's worst experience with soccer in third grade; most of what I remember is freezing-cold misery, boredom, incomprehension, and the knowledge that I had done it to myself all by myself, having pestered my mother to sign me up pretty much exclusively because you got a free sno-cone after each game). And but so at school one day, they asked all the kids if they wanted to try it, and Annika did, and came home raving about it and begged to go to the real thing. So I signed her up, paid the $130 for the semester, and now it's her favorite day of school every week. I'm really glad she enjoys it, and I am going to leave it at that and hope we never get beyond the during-school-hours, mostly-messing-around, no-actual-games level of soccer involvement ...

--First real classmate birthday party: Her little friend Genevieve, always on the cutting edge of what comes next (she has a maniac of an older brother), had her 4th birthday at Color Me Mine (a DIY-ceramics place). I took her to the thing, and she enjoyed it immensely. Which led us to ... (well, read October's entry).

OCTOBER

--Mamalah visits: Thanks to a great fare sale earlier this summer, Mamalah got a bargain flight and came out for another visit in October. We had a lot of fun, including the two of them working a lot on the castle (it has turrets now!), and a movie night.

--Annika's 4th birthday, in two parts: I got all flustered and crazed about what to do for her birthday. Annika, influenced no doubt by Genevieve's bday thing, told us she wanted a "real" party; that plus my own birthday baggage and inability to decide anything at this point led to the outcome. The details are boring and unnecessary, but what happened was, we had two parties.

The first: On her actual birthday, we had the local members of the usual gang over for a couple of hours. She and I made a castle cake, entirely from scratch (this involved me ordering baking tools and pans from the Internet -- I told you I went kind of crazy; see The Quotable Annika for the background on the castle cake phenomenon). There were streamers and balloons (thanks entirely to the M&H family, bless 'em, who also got pressed into service bringing up furniture to the baby's room from the garage), sammies, presents. It was a beautiful day and fun was had by all.

The second: On the following Saturday, we had invited all her classmates, plus the cousins and I&K's family, to a joint called SwaRay, a children's party venue in Sunnyvale. There were bouncy houses, a climbing wall, dress-up clothes, all kinds of toys and bouncy balls and who-knows-what-all, plus a cake from Costco and a giant balloon piñata. The 16 or so kids who came all seemed to have a total blast, and it was 2 hours start to finish with no cleanup, no setup, and no hassles. It was actually even fun to circulate amongst the parents (all but one kid's parents stayed -- I guess that's local custom), get to know some first names, talk a little bit, so we had a great time too. The birthday girl got so many presents that we held a few back for later, or maybe for Christmas -- that was nuts, and honestly I hope next year we can do something with just a few kids ... but we'll see about next year when we get there. :-)

--The new big-girl bedroom: R. had been working over several weeks to re-do the big bedroom at the front of the house for Annika to move into. He took down those awful tchotchke shelves and the badly-done, ill-advised moldings, filled and sanded and texturized the divots they left, primed and painted the entire room (final color: a beautiful light purple we chose together, with white trim on the baseboards and windows), and hung sheer white curtains (we're STILL on a so-far fruitless search for decent-looking thermal/blackout curtains for the inner rod). He put together the new tall bookcase, replaced all the electrical outlets, replaced the stupid plastic Winnie-the-Pooh closet door pulls with nice metal ones, and replaced the ugly granny-looking ceiling fan with a handsome, quiet, efficient model (with a dimmer on the light). The last bit was to get the big furniture moved -- her bed into the new room, and the changing table, crib and glider into the baby's room (aka the Sesame Street room), which our friend M. helped with at the party -- and the night of her birthday was the night she moved in! It really is beautiful now, and she loves it.

--Four-Year Checkup: On the 21st, she had her four-year checkup. We learned that she had grown 9 inches in the last year! She totally killed the vision test (letters this time, not shapes), her blood pressure is great, her weight and height are right around the 50th percentile, and she's got excellent hearing (this is the first time she'd done the earphones/raise-your-hand testing). She had to get shots (MMR, chicken pox), which she took like a champ, and got the flu vaccine via inhaler. The three of us went out for lunch afterward, which was a nice treat after spending the morning at the doctor.

--Halloween: We are really getting into the Power Years for Halloween! She talked about it for the whole month, coming up with dozens of ideas for her costume (including but not limited to: "a Superman," a policeman, a spider, a nice witch, a butterfly, a scary ghost, Mike Holmes, a ballet dancer, a princess, Buzz Lightyear, and a circus ringmaster) before finally fixing her mind on the tooth fairy. I bought the basic part of the outfit at Target -- a short pink fairy costume with wings, to which I added a pair of sparkly silver shoes and pink tights, and R. outdid himself again on the sewing machine, making a big smiley tooth emblem that he sewed to the chest of the costume and a stuffed tooth pillow wand for her to carry around. We went to Sunnyvale to trick-or-treat with Cousin A. (who was a black widow spider, in a great costume fashioned by Aunt A.), and while we couldn't hear her actually say "Trick or treat" or "thank you," she insists that she did say them, and came home with a bucket full of candy that we're still trying very hard to keep her from eating all at once. Heh.

--And in new baby news ... I'm about 39 weeks now, officially on leave (WHEW!!!), and occupying my days with baby prep (upstairs and downstairs changing stations, Target and Babies R Us shopping trips, hauling out the bottles and the pump, putting sheets on the crib, etc. etc.) and nesty things like paying all the bills, cooking and freezing a bunch of meals for us, etc. But I'm also just enjoying the time -- no work, GORGEOUS fall weather, naps, thinking about baby names, talking out loud to the baby (including encouraging him or her to stay put at least until my mom gets here on Nov. 9). As ungainly as I look and feel right now, this is a really nice interlude before we get started all over again.