Dreams

I sold my violin today. Yes, once upon a time there was this little girl named Heidi who played the violin. I have owned a violin almost as long as I can remember. In fact, I think a violin is the one thing that I have consistently owned since the age of 8 or 9, I have never been without one. I bought this violin with my own hard earned money the year I graduated from high school because I fell in love with it. As I stood in a bathroom at MacPahail, while a 14 year old punk girl in a hoodie, flannel pajama pants, and chucks, who had taken lessons for the last 11 years, played my violin, I realized my violin was really being played for the first time ever. She was amazing. I could have stood there and listened to her play for hours. I have never been even close to as good as she is, never. I gave her the instrument, took the money, got in my car, and cried. I cried all the way home.

I don't even really know why, except now I know for sure that I will never play the violin as well as I always dreamed and wanted to. I guess I gave up on a dream today.

The good news? Now I am finally going to get a nice camera! I told Steve that I refused to sell my violin for anything except a camera. I almost changed my mind this morning as Steve got out his guitar and we played together...I played my violin for the last time. But, I am really excited about a camera.

They do look alike...sometimes :)

Berlin


Trynica


Berlin


Trynica

My babies!

Losing Tryn

Sometimes being a parent is harder than hard work. Like, for instance, the first time that you lose your child in a store. Yes, Tryn and I unintentionally parted ways last night and it was definitely a different kind of hard.

I usually have to be out of the house on Thursday nights. Steve has youth group at our house and so I take the girls and try to think of things to do. Sometimes we hang out with the neighbors upstairs, which is nice if it is especially cold or something. Sometimes I have errands to run and so we make trips to Super Target or Cub. A couple of days ago I heard that the Macy’s at Brookdale Mall was closing down, and so I thought I would take the girls to check it out. It was chaotic. There are just racks of unorganized clothes everywhere and tons of people milling around. Just crazy.

There we were, walking down one of the big center aisle and Tryn takes off ahead of me. She does this a lot, but usually doesn’t get too far ahead. Well, this time when I called out the warning, “Tryn, stop and wait for mommy!” She stopped, turned around and looked at me, and then kept going! Little stinker! At first I wanted to see how far she would go before she realized that she was too far away. She didn’t get to that point. Pretty soon I was running down the aisle trying to dodge people and center racks with the stroller. It got to the point where there was a center rack blocking my vision of Tryn and when I got around the rack I couldn’t see her anymore. Serious crap. I was the mother frantically calling out the name of my kid and racing around the jewelry counter. It felt like 10, though I am sure it was only 2 or 3 minutes before I heard her laughing behind a rack of clothes. I am not one to totally freak out, but that was a really long couple of minutes. Tryn and I had a pretty serious talk listening to mommy and not running away.

To top it all off, the really gorgeous Lucky Brand hoodie that I found (green with beautiful detailed paisley/flower pattern along the shoulders and sleeves, and in my size even! bummer that I can’t find a picture to show you), literally ‘the hoodie that I have always wanted’ that I found on clearance for $29.99 – with an additional 30% off, rang up at $72.50. I guess they have been having problems with tag switching and so the manager wouldn’t give me the price that was on there. Total crap night.

Berlin IS growing up...

Well, I am super bummed. Berlin is walking, and, no I am not bummed about that. I am excited actually because she is a much happier person now that she has a fighting chance at keeping up with Tryn. The bummer is that I have no camera to take pictures to show you how cute she is toddling around! I have this ongoing curse of no digital camera, long story. Anyway, she is so cute!! She is an early walker at 10 months old, and, for those of you who know her you know that she is already pretty small for her age, so to see this tiny little person walking around is kind of hilarious. She has to hold her arms up at about face level to keep her balance and her steps are short and jerky, but she is already to the point where she prefers walking rather than crawling. Crazy kid.

I was mentioning to Steve the other day how we had so much more one-on-one time with Tryn when she was Berlin’s age. Tryn knew where her eyes were and what part of her body her hands were. She had a vocabulary of at least 20 words by the time she was one, mainly because we were able to take the time to sit down with her and teach her. Berlin has not been so lucky. Berli communicates mostly with grunts, growls, yells, and pointing. Which is hilarious, but I have been thinking lately that we should be doing more to advance her communication skills. However, I was showing Berlin a picture the other day and I told her, “This is a baby.” She pointed at the baby and then grabbed her left wrist with her right hand and signed ‘baby’!! And people say that television is not good for anything! This is admitting an embarrassing fault as a parent, but Baby Einstein’s Sign Language dvd is a great babysitter. It not only works as a great distraction, but it is also teaching out little girl how to communicate.

Story from a Princess

Tryn is very serious about her stories. She will explain things in great detail and you can always tell when she is really serious because her nose crinkles up in this certain way. This is one of her explanations to me the other night, especially cute as she was completely decked out in princess gear.

Explanation...

Nose crinkle...

Listening to my response...

More explanation and nose crinkle...

Concerned ending.

My morning with Berlin

I love waking up with Berlin. Granted, she gave me many nights of very little sleep and I used to have the completely opposite feeling. However, she really seems to like getting up just in time to see me before I have to head off to work.

We (as of Tuesday) just put the girls together to sleep in their own room during the night. [Side note: I LOVE being able to use my bedside lamp again! I really haven’t used it for the past six months as there has always been a little girl sleeping by my bedside. AND, it is really, really, really great not to have to try and find an outfit and get dressed in the dark anymore!] It has been a little tricky because Berlin goes to bed ½ an hour to an hour earlier than Tryn and also gets up earlier. This little lack of sleep on Tryn’s part could account for the total meltdown that she had last night when I took her shirt off for her after she had tried herself for a good 5 minutes or so. Total meltdown. Anyway, as Tryn went to bed close to 9:00 (after dealing with said meltdown for a good 30 minutes or so) I didn’t really want her waking up with Berlin at 7:00 this morning. I snuck in, grabbed Berlin, and snuck back out with as little noise as possible, then I said good morning to Berlin. She whispered, “Ma, ma, ma,” and reached up and placed her little hand on my cheek. Then she leaned in with her lips pursed and planted a little, “Mm-ah,” on my lips. Ah! I am in love. Then she looked around and whispered, “Da, da, da.” I asked her if she wanted a bottle and she said, “Ba, ba.” While I was waiting for the water to warm up, we danced around the kitchen and she laid her head down on my shoulder to snuggle. She pointed at everything that caught her attention and whispered to me about it and we had ourselves a great time sneaking around the house, trying to stay quiet.

Then I had to pass her off so that I could get ready to go to work…I was definitely a little late. These are the mornings that I definitely don’t mind being late and that make me want to quit my job.

Missing Tryn

I miss Tryn. This is the longest time that I have ever been away from her in 2 ½ years and I can’t wait for her to come home. Steve and I had to come home to get back to work after the Christmas holiday and so I decided to leave Tryn up with the rest of my family. Her cousin Brendyn, who is two months older than her, was still up at my mom and dad’s and he is her little bff Brendyn calls Trynica ‘my Tryn’. I thought it would be great for them to get to spend some time together and also figured it would be a nice break for us to have her away for three or four days.
All was fine until I woke up on Sunday morning with the thought of making our usual weekend pancake breakfast. Once I realized that there would be nobody there who really cared about pancakes as much as Tryn does my idea lost its steam. It’s not worth it to go through all the work of pancakes where there isn’t someone there jumping up and down and squealing for her first bite of a pancake. Tryn can eat almost as many pancakes as I can.

I also thought it would be easier to do the whole running-around-Steve-dropping-me-off-at-work thing with only one kid to worry about. Great until I realized that there was really nobody else in the car who cared intensely whether I stayed or not. There was nobody to earnestly tell me, “I will pick you up,” as Tryn does every time I get out of the car. There were two other people who cared a little bit, but Tryn is so passionate about her feelings.

I also missed sharing my dinner with her. We still have not made it to the grocery store after coming back from our Christmas holiday and so we got asian take-out. Tryn and I always share a dish, which usually limits my choices (as I don’t want to get anything with too much spice that she can’t handle). This time I realized that I don’t really like any of the choices that she can’t eat anyway. And I just missed her sitting next to me telling me whether she would like a bit of chicken or rice next.

I have talked to her on the phone every morning and every night since I left her on Saturday morning. It’s great, she will tell me about her day and what she has been doing. I will ask her, “How are you, Tryn?” and she will say, “Good. How are you?” and I tell her that I am doing good too and that I miss her and she says, “Yeah.” She asks me how Berlin is and what Berlin is doing and then, usually without warning she says “Bye,” and suddenly a grownup in on the phone with me. I am glad that she is having fun and that she is not heartbroken that I am not there with her, but I don’t know how excited I am about suddenly realizing that I will probably feel this way many times over the next several years. Sad that my baby is growing up. Sad that she is gaining independence and doesn’t need me twenty-four-seven anymore. And a little sad that having a ‘dance party’ in the living room is more exciting that talking to her mom on the phone…oh well, this is what we train our kids to do, right? Be independent? I am glad that it is working.