(See years 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5)

God, these kids just keep getting bigger, and older, and what the hell it’s freaking me out.

I’m sorry. Wasn’t this YESTERDAY?

Apparently not. It would seem nearly three full years have gone by. And my wee little ones are not so wee anymore.

Good lord, I’m going to blink and they’re going to be graduating from high school.

It was an anti-climactic ending. It felt like it should have been bigger, more ceremony, more weight. But not really. We picked them up, as always, though M took the day off from work to be there. We lingered in the lobby for a while, a few extra hugs and a couple of pictures. I was totally holding it together until the school administrator came up to me with a pout and tears in her eyes, and then I was gone. But that was pretty much it. We collected our kids and their things, and walked out the door and drove away.

It hasn’t always been smooth sailing, and it wasn’t without its flaws. But I am so grateful for our three years of Montessori in this beautiful little school with teachers who did the very best they could in taking care of my kids and helping them learn and grow.

I miss it already.

She hasn’t worn a pair of jeans in over a year, claiming they’re too uncomfortable. I went through the same phase as a kid. She’s quite capable and bright in school, but would rather do the same tasks over and over again, and gets anxious with new things because she REALLY hates being not-perfect at something. (ahem.)

To my absolute delight, she seems to share my love for music. We heard the Boston Pops were doing a concert of music from Fantasia, complete with scenes from the movies, so she and I went to her very first concert together. I was excited to point out as many things about the orchestra as I could, and she was excited to hear pieces that were already familiar. It was a total win.

I always have music playing in the car. I don’t understand people who drive in silence. Either I’m flipping between radio stations, or I have something playing through my phone. The kids throw out requests from the back of the van and I accomodate as many as possible, so they’ve gotten to know my playlists pretty well. Rebecca, like me, is usually singing along by the third time she hears a song – it’s like she can’t help it. (Neither can I.)

I was the one who brought up the idea of getting Becca her own iPod. It’s a big deal, so she needed to want it and earn it, but I was excited for her to get one. After six weeks of chore charts, she earned enough stars last week and the little purple iPod Nano is officially hers.

(Daniel, for the record, was offered the same deal and was thoroughly uninterested.)

So now, my little girl can be found at bedtime with her headphones on, in her own little world, occasionally singing bits and pieces of songs of her choosing – an eclectic mix of Disney songs, Glee covers, Taylor Swift, LMFAO, and a few tracks from Pitch Perfect.

Yep, that’s my girl.

I hemmed and hawed and whined “I don’t know!” Our current town’s school system doesn’t have the greatest reputation, and while we’ve talked (for several years) about moving, it hasn’t happened yet – partly because of some weird job stuff, and mostly because we’re incredibly lazy and fear change. Then, after Daniel’s evaluation, we started wondering if we should consider sending the kids to private school. At which point we were pretty much laughed out of the room, because applications were due months ago.

But here it was, Sunday, May 5, and I had the sudden realization that I am an idiot. It’s freaking May. Their current school ends in a month. We need to have a damn plan for where they will go in September when first grade (!!) starts. I need to get over myself and register them at our neighborhood school.

So, today, that’s what I did.

What a weird feeling. I mean, the building is new and bright and the woman at the front desk was incredibly friendly and immediately knew the two kids on my block that already go to that school. It was a perfectly lovely first impression. But I’m standing there, and it’s such a… Real School. There’s older kids there, there’s 4th-grade artwork on the walls. There’s a gym and an art class and a cafeteria. I’ve been in a little bubble of denial in our teensy little preschool, it’s a little jarring to suddenly stand in a Real School.

The folder full of paperwork and residency verification was a little ridiculous. I don’t think I brought that much to the closing for my house. Utility bills and birth certificates and immunization records were all handed over. But then I felt like I had no control over the situation, no choice. They’re going to that school because that’s where a kid with our address goes to school. End of story. It’s hard to explain, but it was a strange feeling. Not to mention the slightly irrational fears of dropping my kids off at this unknown place and just hoping they’ll be safe and happy.

Oh man, I’m going to have some serious anxiety dreams in August, aren’t I?

Anyways, it’s done. We’re registered, they are all set to start first grade at our neighborhood school in the Fall. Maybe something will change before then, maybe we’ll get off our asses and sell this house. But if we don’t, then little local school, here we come.

I wish I could fully describe, to non-Bostonians, what Marathon Monday means in the Boston area. It’s Patriots Day, a state holiday. All of the schools are closed, and many offices are, too. There’s Revolutionary War reenactments and parades all over Lexington and Concord and all of the other historic towns. The marathon starts at about 9 in the morning in Hopkinton, and you couldn’t miss the coverage if you tried. At places along the marathon route, crowds are five and ten deep. People take their kids to watch the runners, and the finish line is right in the middle of the city. There’s always an early home Red Sox game, which lets out in time for the baseball fans to walk the quarter mile to the marathon route and watch the thousands of runners finish the last couple of miles. It’s the most festive day of the year, it might as well be 4th of July. It’s not just a big race and some inconvenient street closings.

I was on my computer as the news of the explosions broke, a little before 3PM. I pretty much haven’t stopped shaking since. It was right around the four-hour mark of the marathon. The elite runners were long gone, the packs headed towards the finish were made up of people who were running for charity. Running as a partner for a blind man. Running to benefit kids with leukemia. I had friends who crossed the finish line 5, maybe 15 minutes before it happened. Friends who were watching from that exact spot two hours earlier. Friends who had been watching with their kids and had only just left. A friend who works a block away and was on lockdown in his office building for hours.

I am fine, my family is fine, it appears all of my friends are fine. But I am completely shaken. Injured kids taken to Children’s Hospital – I know that lobby too well. One of the fatalities – eight years old. I just can’t. I cannot.

I’m trying to focus on the immediate outpouring of good. In the split-second after the explosion, dozens of police officers and paramedics ran, without hesitation, towards the smoke. Runners who had just completed a grueling 26.2 miles kept going straight to Mass General, to donate blood. People all over my twitter feed were offering up spare bedrooms and food and wifi and phone chargers to stranded runners – so much generosity, Boston.com set up an open Google spreadsheet to help match up offers of space with people in need.

Mr. Rogers was right.

“Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.”

We were stagnant for a while, in the feeding sphere. No real improvement in skills or interest. Not uncommon in the brutally slow world of teaching a kid how to eat, but frustrating nonetheless. We were due for a breakthrough, but how to get it?

Apparently, the answer is to try to teach Ellie what it means to be hungry. In two years, she has barely ever been hungry. She is fed an exact amount on an exact (ish) schedule. And it’s a completely passive process for her, she doesn’t have to do anything. She long-ago lost the connection between a rumbly tummy and any version of “eating.” So the question is, how do we get it back?

About a month ago, we cut 100 calories out of her daily ration of formula. And while the difference wasn’t striking, she suddenly seemed a little more attentive and willing at her feeding therapy appointments. We even progressed to little bites of soft food – bananas, sweet potatoes, bits of American cheese, as well as some favorite crunchy ones like graham crackers. But while those were good for new tastes and textures and oral-motor skill-building, I certainly wasn’t getting enough into her belly to make up for those 100 calories.

Enter: prescription medication. Our GI doctor wrote us a script for an appetite stimulant. (Which is apparently also an antihistamine, and also helps settle her GI tract after she gets sick? I don’t know, man, I just work here.) Though the first dose made her a little bit loopy, it seems to have had a near-immediate effect.

When I try to feed Ellie at home, I can never get as much into her as our feeding therapist can. I don’t have as much practice or as much patience, and sometimes I think Ellie is deliberately being a pill just because I’m her mom. So the best I can usually do is to get an ounce or so into her, with a lot of stress and cajoling and the need to rest afterwards.

This morning, with the help of an appetite stimulant and a generous helping of iPad games, I got the vast majority of a 4-oz container of yogurt into her. No fighting. No stress. Stopped after 20 minutes, and I could actually see the bottom of the cup. By my math, nearly 120 calories. And while that was the best I’ve ever done, I had three or four times last week that we did nearly as well.

Three cheers for modern medicine. Three cheers for getting a big enough volume and enough calories into her belly in a short enough period of time that she might actually start to connect “eat food” with “my tummy feels good.” Miracle of freaking miracles.

There are so, SO many other skills that we need to work on, it blows your mind to think about having to teach someone how to do it. Use your upper lip to get the food of the spoon. Use your tongue to move the food to your teeth so you can chew it. Tastes and textures galore. But this particular barrier, making the connection between hunger and food, feels like such a huge step that will allow more of it to happen. I think we’re getting there.

There was less than a year that I was free from the world of diaper changes, and then came Ellie. Honestly? Diapers aren’t that bad. I don’t mind changing them, it’s not really that much of a hassle in the grand scheme of things. Sure, eventually I’ll have to potty-train Ellie, but I’ve been down this road before, and seriously, what’s the rush?

Yeah. Try telling that to her.

I swear, every third word out of her mouth is “potty,” “bathroom,” “diaper,” or “change.”  For a long time, I’ve been sticking my fingers in my ears and singing LA LA LA LA because I just cannot add potty training to my list of daily responsibilities. And honestly, I think she originally thought “potty” meant “get down from the table,” because that’s what her brother and sister always did at dinner when they used that word.

But I think I underestimate this clever little girl of mine. I am too quick to assume she doesn’t get it. I’m starting to fear that, in this case, she actually might. She might be all but freaking BEGGING me to potty train her. And sure, yes, it would be lovely to cancel that particular Subscribe-and-Save order on Amazon. Having a diaper-free house would be quite something. But the process of getting there? Always having a change of clothes and a portable potty and having to DROP EVERYTHING as soon as she says the word? Oh, I could really do without that part.

But it’s getting to the point that I can’t deny it. I can’t pretend I don’t hear her saying it ALL THE TIME. It’s time to give it a go and see if she’s actually… ready. So now I have to go to Target and get a damn potty, and a few packages of cheap underwear that will be absurdly large on her teeny-tiny, maybe-she’ll-grow-into-size-2T-when-she’s-5 little bum.

Ugh. It’s a good thing she’s cute.

Daniel has his first loose tooth. Two of them, in fact. The bottom middle pair are both wiggling, not surprising since those were the two that came in within a week of each other when he turned six months old. I have no idea how long it will take them to come out all the way, but either way, we have now entered the world of losing teeth. When did my kids get old enough for this? When did I?

Existential crisis aside, please talk to me about what you do about the tooth fairy in your house. I don’t intend to make a HUGE deal out of it, but I think it’s a fun tradition. And no, I will not be forking out more than a dollar per tooth. And no, I will not be KEEPING the teeth. Eew.

But tell me, friends, is there anything I should know before I ready my fairy wings?

Oh, poor third kid. There was no fanfare made about this birthday, whatsoever. Hell, I couldn’t even blog about it in a timely fashion – she turned two on Monday, and here it is, Wednesday. LAME. Coming at the tail end of the big kids’ school vacation week, and on the same day as M and I had a meeting to get the results of Daniel’s neuropsych evaluation, I didn’t even manage to make a cake. Thankfully, of course, she could care less. She’s too little to understand birthdays, and she doesn’t eat cake, anyways. She was happy enough to get serenaded with “Happy Birthday” about a hundred times.

She is a riot at two. As you can hear in the above video, one of her favorite new words is “funny!” Any time something makes her laugh, she scrunches up her shoulders and says “funny!” She has also, just in the last couple of days, started adding the word “I” to things. So instead of shrieking “did it!” when she accomplishes something, it’s “I did it!” (Or, in her actual prononciation, “hi did it!”)  When she stumbles and falls, it’s “hi’m fine.”

Every time she sees my camera or my phone, she yells “cheese! picture!” But being a busy girl, I’m lucky to get one in ten to be even roughly in focus as she runs out of frame. And there are no recent pictures without some combination of messy hair, messy face, or a new bruise from running into lord-knows-what.

She loves to draw, and constantly requests I draw a kitty (a skill I needed to remember from when her brother and sister requested the same thing at her age). She is completely obsessed with the dog, a feeling that is far from mutual.

Oh, she can throw a screaming tantrum if she wants something and I won’t let her have it. That’s what two is for, right?

Happy birthday, funny girl. We’re so glad you’re here.

Ellie’s feeding therapist wanted her to have a swallow study to make sure she isn’t aspirating when she swallows liquids. Her last study was when she was only one month old, at which point she was still having a small amount of aspiration of thin liquids. That day in March 2011 was the last time she took anywhere near a full feed by mouth. (Which she promptly puked up in spectacular fashion – aspiration was only one of our problems.)

Anyways, we have no reason to believe she is still aspirating now. She drinks small amounts of water from sippy cups without a problem and has never had pneumonia (a tell-tale sign of a kid who aspirates). But we wanted to be sure, so there we were.

Ellie did exactly as I thought she would. She was slightly anxious in the waiting room, but completely lost her mind as soon as we were brought down to the radiology suite. She screamed like she was being stabbed, and was only momentarily calmed by iPads, bubbles, and songs. But in the end, I got her to calm down enough to take a few sips from her cup (before she realized the barium was nasty), and they saw five or six successful swallows.

While I was pretty sure this was going to be the outcome, it feels really good to have this particular box checked off for the time being. Our issues with swallowing and eating are far from over, but at least for now I can definitively say “she does not aspirate.” Huzzah.

BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE.

At 2:30, Ellie had her usual physical therapy appointment. For the vast majority of her two years, we have had PT with our beloved Janet every week. We’ve had ups and downs and plateaus, but it seemed like once she started crawling, it has been a really steady improvement.

This afternoon, we watched her all-but-run from activity to activity. She scooted, she climbed, she squatted, she walked up and down stairs (with help). Give her two hands to hold and she can jump and clear both feet off the ground.

We had started to spread our appointments out to every two or three weeks, and talked about going to once a month. But as we watched this crazy almost-two-year-old careen around the room, we were hard pressed to say why. Does she have totally typical agility, balance, as strength for a two-year-old? Not quite. But nothing she needs to work on is going to take anything other than time and practice. Not specific exercises and tasks, just running around like the little kid she is.

Ellie graduated from physical therapy today.

Sure, if she stalls in her development or I get worried about something, we can always go back. But as of right now, we are done with PT.

When you have a kid with a big asterisk next to her name like Ellie, seeing so many doctors and specialists, the numbers just seem to multiply. Someone always wants to suggest you see ANOTHER doctor. Audiology! Endocrine! Is there any department you haven’t visited yet? Get in there! I’ve started a Google Doc to keep track of everyone because I can no longer remember all of their names.

So, to be able to cross one or two things off of the list, or at least tuck them away on a shelf for the time being, is such a lovely turn of events that I burst into tears on the way home.