Back to work

I told Lily we were going somewhere fun, but it was a surprise. Here's her face when she realized we were at Como Zoo:
And Willow's face at the same moment:Checking out the new baby (born this winter, named Willow):

They had fun smelling all the flowers in the conservatory. Seriously - they had fun. I didn't have to force them like I remember from my own childhood. Willow loves to give hugs at her discretion. If you ask for one, you will NOT get one. She started with Papa this day and kept moving around the room. Until she got to grammy - she STILL will not hug or talk to grammy!

It took my dad three set of training wheels and three bikes to find a combo that worked so Lily can ride her big-girl bike to the park while I ride my bike with Willow on the back. We are no where near getting rid of training wheels and I'm not pushing it. Thanks for the wheels dad!

Willow's babtism was this morning. Jen and Ross are her God parents. Pastor Bud did a beautiful job declaring God's purpose for Willow here in our family. Willow was happy and laughing most of the morning. Lily and I wore shirts from Guatemala. Willow wore a dress from Baby Gap - the irony!

Other random developments:
1. Willow cheers "HOME!" every time we pull in the driveway now. It's so cute that she knows and says that words. It's one of my own favorite words too.

2. I have taken Willow to two movies (Hannah Montana with Jen's family) and the new Earth one. She sits great eating her popcorn and eating M & Ms. She hollers "UH OH" if anyone, anywhere drops anything.

3. Jen's family, grammy and us King Chicas all saw the Paper Bag Princess at the Stages Theater this weekend. Again, Willow sat like a super-star. I am relieved to know we can do these sorts of things and she can enjoy them (and so can Lily and I).

4. Tonight we were with about 20 relatives at Aunt Jo and Uncle Rick's house. Willow ran around laughing, dancing, doing acrobats, throwing things at Uncle Dave and laughing, playing catch with lots of people, and acting completely confident and happy. It is amazing that after 7 weeks, she has come so far.

The girls will be spending the week with grammy as I go back to work. Lily is going to have a blast hanging out with one of her biggest fans. Willow and grammy have a lot of ground to cover. I wish I could peek into the future and read the next blog post to know how this goes for them.

Willow teaches me to listen

This morning as we were eating breakfast, Willow pointed to the pantry/closet bi-fold door behind me. I assumed she wanted something (chips? chocolate?) to eat, so I told her "No, no. We'll eat this" and patted her dish of yogurt. She kept pointing, I kept interrupting and repeating in my rushed style all too familiar to most readers. She tapped my forearm with her finger, stopping me in my tracks to finally listen to her. Once she had my attention and I was STILL and focused, she pointed to the door again, and gestured sort of in front of herself, across sort of, with her hand/arm. She wanted me to shut the door. This is amazing for many reasons:
1. She is so patient with me and reminds me to be patient with her
2. She has many thoughts and ideas - most of them she can't communicate yet. I'm sure these incidents happen countless times each day and she lets them go unnoticed, unless it's tantrum-worthy. This might explain some of her tantrums: They might seem to be over nothing, but might be the 100th nothing for her that day and it pushes her over the edge
3. I have GOT to quit rushing!
4. She's a neat-freak just like Lily
5. She's brilliant at figuring out creative ways to get her point across. Lily and I are learning that skill too.

I am reminded today of all Willow is teaching us and not just what we are teaching her!

Easter Week

I let the girls have their chocolate bunnies for breakfast Easter morning. Willow ate the entire thing. Lily ate the ears and put the rest in a baggie for later (hers is still in the pantry).

That thoughtful bunny put balloons in Willow's basket.Shani gave them matching dresses, and Lily was so excited she wanted to wear them for Easter. She loves matching her sister - I wonder how long that will last!We had Easter dinner at my parents' house with my sister's family (hi Grace!), Jeff and Debbie, uncle Bob, and grandma King.

My staff/friends at church had a shower for Willow (and Lily) last night. The girls were both showered with gifts and blessings! We all got these adorable matching aprons from Kathy Williams and Lily put hers on before the sun was entirely up to cook us eggs this morning.

On the way to the shower she said "Mom? I might not like their shower as much as ours." I said "What are you talking about?" She goes "Am I going to have to stand up in their shower?" She thought we were taking showers at the gal's house! I can't believe she just climbed into the car willingly - no questions asked - thinking we were taking showers.

As we were leaving the shower I noticed Lily had a gallon size ziplock bag, and was filling it with potato chips from the table. I gasped and stopped her - "We do NOT take food home with us". I asked the hostess if Lily had asked her for those chips (hoping fiercly that the answer would be "No. I asked her to take them home"). She said "No. She asked me for a bag". I was mortified. Lily asked her for a bag to fill with chips to take home with us! As soon as I started scolding, Lily started crying, then Barb was smoothing things over and I was trying to undo the shaming I'd started, etc. etc. I know this is a conversation we should have in private, but I wanted the people at the shower to know I didn't ENDORSE this, and I truly wanted to drive home the point that this is definitely not good manners. On the way home I apologized for embarrassing her and admitted it was partly my fault because I hadn't ever taught her that it's not good manners to ask for bags of food to take home (except at grammy's house). Lily was fine with all of it and added "My foster mother never taught me anything about manners, mom." She has been "remembering" a LOT about her foster mother lately (ever since Willow's foster mother has been mentioned on a daily basis). Those poor foster mothers are getting blamed for a lot of bad behavior in my house.

I will go back to work on April 27th. My mom will watch the girls that first week to ease the transition of me being gone, then they'll go to day care together for the last 5 weeks of my school year. Last week we all went to the day care home for an hour together and Willow didn't go far away from me. Today I dropped them off for a couple hours without me and Willow did GREAT! She cried at first, but only for about 10 minutes. Then she'd look at the door once in a while and holler "MOM!", but no more tears over it. I did about a million errands in those 2 hours and couldn't wait to see her. Lily stayed for the rest of the afternoon because she missed her friends.

It's finally warm enough to hang out at the park without coats and mittens!

This face just melts me:

Willow loves to hear me say words to her. We spend most of every meal saying the name of the food she's pointing to over and over again. She says "MOM!" like a big kid now - until yesterday it was "mmmmmma" or "mama". It's really cute! She said "kee" for kleenex today (I knew what she wanted because of where her finger was when she said it). She says "All done" after she's done eating or drinking or playing or in the tub. She says "wa wa" for milk and water. I'm praying every day she keeps adding a couple words to her vocabulary. There will much less stress when we can completely understand each other.

She was chatting on her play cell phone this afternoon and handed it to me to play along. I pretended to talk to grammy. She still won't interact with grammy at ALL, so I was laying it on thick with "I love you grammy. Thank you grammy. You love Willow too, Grammy? OK - you can talk to Willow..." When I handed Willow the phone she shook her finger at me and said "No! NO! NO!" She refused to pretend to talk to grammy on a play phone. This could be because I've had to leave her 3 times (for church choir rehearsals and the movie with Lily) and each time Grammy's been with her). Or it could be because of the memories of Guatemala. Or it could be because Willow knows this drives us all CRAZY and she is stubborn enough to just keep doing it.

Tomorrow we're going to Como Zoo to see the baby giraffe named Willow. Lily doesn't know where we're going - it's a surprise. Shhhhh!

Spring is here

We had a bunch of outings this week. The first couple were rough for Willow because she had so many tantrums. Today and yesterday she was great on our outings, which leads me to believe she just had to figure out the same rules apply as at home. One day we went to the Mall of America and she had about 5 major melt downs. One was because her ice cream was too frozen and she couldn't get big bites with her spoon - she cried the whole time she ate it, refused to let me help her, and ended up throwing her cup of ice cream on the floor (then SCREAMED that it was gone). She had another tantrum when I wouldn't carry her - that was in Barnes and Noble. She screamed and layed on the floor several times. I kept patting the stroller and holding out my hand saying "sit or walk, Willow". People would stop and try to cheer her up and she'd make that killer face and shake her finger at them. She knows at home if she throws food she gets down from the table, but this was a new setting so it seems like she had to test the rules. We went to the zoo yesterday and she never once tried to get me to carry her -she either walked holding my hand or sat happily in the stroller.

We spent Wednesday afternoon/evening at Gail and Tom's farm. Lily has spent so many days here with grammy, that she knew exactly what to do all over the property. She walked up to this rusty, mysterious apparatus and started shoving corn cobs into it (the corn cobs she gathered up off the floor of the chicken coop). I was just staring with my mouth open. Then she cranked the handle and all the corn fell off into the bucket she placed beneath:Then she showed Willow how to pour the corn into this contraption to grind the corn into meal to feed the... I can't remember what animal she was going to feed this actually. Willow mostly wanted me to hold her around all the chickens and other animals. She did crack up every time she heard an animal talk. These buffalo take my breath away, but Lily just hauls around these huge buckets of corn and tosses it over the fence like it's nothing. Willow got inspired, just once, to get off my lap to feed the buffalo like her big sister:

Yup. Gail just picked her up and handed her corn. It lasted for about 1 minute before Willow started hollering and reaching for me. YEA Gail!

We went to the zoo yesterday with yaya, grammy, Grace and Tate. Willow didn't have one melt down! She was happy and fun all day long. She let Grace hold her hand the whole way back to the car and she cracked up every time Tate did one of his hilarious stunts. During the bird show she got scared of an owl and he started doing the robotic dance - Willow cracked up. He'd hit himself in the head and she'd laugh. He'd pretend to fall down and she'd laugh. Etc. etc.

Grace and Willow (yaya got this picture):

This morning we went to the Nature Center for an Easter party. Lily was excited to show Willow the frogs and turtles and snakes:

Then a giant rabbit lead the egg hunt through the woods. The kids were supposed to LOOK for eggs hidden in the woods, but not touch. Lily ran with the bigger kids and Willow had a blast pointing to the bright, plastic eggs she spotted as we walked. At the very end of the hike, the kids were allowed to find two plastic eggs:

Then they exchanged these eggs with the giant rabbit for eggs with treats in them:

Then we colored our hard-boiled eggs in dyes made with natural pigments (berries, spices and herbs):

Willow was upset about a couple things. 1. She didn't enjoy the shirt she had to wear over her clothes for the dying. 2. She didn't want to dye any eggs (here she's shaking her finger at me for offering her an egg). I ended up just taking her shirt off and handing her a plain, white egg. She never did have a tantrum though - PROGRESS!

She loved her plain, white egg:

After the eggs were dyed, they got to color them:

Lily spent about 20 minutes petting the real bunnies. Willow loved watching Lily pet the bunnies, but didn't ever get close enough to touch them herself.

They each got to decorate a little cup and plant some grass seed to take home to grow:

And Willow loved digging in the sand table:

Tomorrow Lily's spending the day with Grace and Tate and Grammy. Willow and I will get some alone time. It's a treat for all of us! Thanks, grammy.

Willow is doing much more communicating with us. Tonight she patted Lily's bed and said "night night", so Lily climbed in and let Willow tuck her in. Then Willow puckered up and pointed to her mouth so Lily would give her a kiss goodnight. It was so cute because there was a LOT of exchange going on that she can only do because she's been with us long enough to know that routine. Willow has also started narking on her sister, which is awesome because she knows I'll protect her just like I protect Lily. She comes in the room hollering "La La" at me (that's how she pronounces Lily) and points to whatever part of her body Lily injured. I go in and tell Lily "Be nice to Willow, Lily!" just like I tell Willow every time she clobbers Lily. My favorite part of the whole thing is that Willow is learning how to communicate with us.

Happy Easter, everybody!