Stay At Home Day

Today is my stay-at-home day. It's raining. I have nothing against the rain, except that it lowers my productivity by approximately 50%.

I need to go to the grocery store. It shouldn't be that big of a deal--the girls will be delighted to sit in the car shopping cart together. But the mere idea of loading everyone up (in the rain) and then unloading and carrying in groceries (in the rain) is enough to keep me sitting here in my pajamas.

The best thing about right now--Zuzu is 2 years and 10 months old, Coco is 9 months--is that they entertain each other. They've actually started playing together. This still requires supervision (newsflash: I'm not going to the grocery store and leaving Zuzu home alone with Coco!) but it doesn't require much intervention (except the occasional reminder that Coco's head is not to be covered up with a blanket, and when she starts crying that means she's saying "STOP IT"--toddlers can be real A-holes).

It just about makes my heart explode when Zuzu makes Coco laugh, and Zuzu loves it, too. She'll say, "My sister loves me!" or "Coco wants to hold Zuzu's hand!" Coco is pretty content to sit anywhere and watch Zuzu run around, but she'll get in on the action, too. One evening they were all wound up and Zuzu had a handful of fruit snacks from the peepee prize box (yes, we're still bribing her). She was running in circles around the living room and kitchen, and Cooper was following right behind her, wanting a fruit snack, and Coco was crawling behind them, getting lapped frequently, but totally trying to keep up.

My work out plan has been going... ok. I've managed to walk/run with the stroller three times a week for the last three weeks, so that's a good thing. Of course it's complicated--I feel guilty for not bringing the dog even though I can't bring him because he can't (or won't?) keep up with me so I don't actually get my heart rate up if I'm walking Cooper.

If I take the stroller to a park with a playground (they ALL have playgrounds), then I have to turn up the music loud enough to drown out Zuzu's whining. She is rarely satisfied with my explanation that we'll go to the playground AFTER the stroller ride. It works out ok if we go somewhere that the playground isn't visible the entire time, but I still find myself saying, "We are GOING to the playground. It's this way!"

As indicated in this post, Zuzu is pretty fearless on the playground. I have made a conscious decision not to be a playground hoverer, and I also let her take off her shoes. I worry a little about this because it seemed like it would be easy for her to get hurt (I got a splinter in my own foot the other day when I stepped on what appeared to be a rogue piece of mulch on our stairs inside the house) but this article makes a pretty persuasive argument for bare feet. Bare feet also allow for lots more agility on the playground equipment. She can easily climb up the slides and use her toes like a little monkey to grip the climbing bars.

I wonder if I was being judged by a mom at the park yesterday, whose two-year-old boy was trying to copy everything Zuzu did but couldn't really keep up because he wasn't as coordinated and he was wearing clunky sneakers that didn't give him much traction on the slide. Still, he kept after it. His mom kept encouraging him to climb up the smaller slide because he couldn't quite do the big one, which I thought was silly because obviously he had mastered the small one and wanted to move on! But I decided not to worry about it and Zuzu had a ball playing looking like a little barefoot ragamuffin and playing with her new little friend.

And clearly she's honing her climbing skills at home, too:

Meanwhile, Coco took two steps today while holding on to the shopping cart! I couldn't get my phone flipped to video fast enough, but I snapped a couple of photos of her in action. In the first she's (unexpectedly) moving, and then her face is like "holy crap I just walked."

Yesterday at the park, there was another mom front-wearing a baby in an Ergo carrier. She had another little boy who was probably three and she was trying to lift him out of the swing. His big tennis shoes were caught in the leg-holes of the swing, and she couldn't get a good grip on him because of the baby on her chest. I was passing by with the stroller, so I asked if I could give her a hand and she said yes, so I hauled her little guy out of the swing.

It was such a little thing, but I've been in that position where you're awkwardly trying to wrangle one kid while wearing the baby, and it made me feel ridiculously good to help out someone else in a small way.

Today I'm riding that goodwill wave even further, because I donated to Momastery's Love Flash Mob. The three stories they are featuring today are really remarkable and incredibly deserving. $25 is the maximum donation they're accepting--or you can give $5, 10, or 15.

David is such a grouch about charitable donations (seriously, he's awful) because he's always suspicious that the money doesn't go to the people who really need it, but instead covers administrative costs or something. (Ironic, since he IS an administrator who is certainly not overpaid for the work he does.) Anyway, Momastery is entirely volunteer and nobody gets paid anything for what they do there, so 100% of donations go to the people whom they are helping to rise up. It's such a good thing. And you know I left a comment saying my donation was in memory of Eliza.

The rain let up, so we headed to the store. It's the little things that make these girls so happy!

P.S. A few pictures of Zuzu when she was the age Coco is now. Less hair but equal cuteness!
And a few pictures of the doggies, back when I was pregnant with Zuzu.