Growing Up Meehan

On Friday, I dropped off Dani to her usual chiropractor appointment. Once we found a parking space, Jeffrey and I went inside to wait. Obliviously, I walked right past the three (3!) signs which read, "Please don’t let your children play in the Physical Therapy room." Oops. We were tugging on the stretch bands , which was fun watching him try to stretch it from the table leg where it was tied and realizing that it’s stronger than he is. Then I let him do bicep curls with the 1lb weights. He didn’t quite get it, so I demostrated and then told him, "to the chest, then down… up to the chest and down." Then I saw the sign, and we got out of there before we got in trouble. We spent the rest of the visit reading Highlights .

When Phonemom was done, we walked out and I recounted the tale of our mischief. Jeffrey immediately chimed in with, "to the chest, and down. To the chest, and down". I lamented that if I’d known that he was going to parrot the phrase so well, I would have added something more colorful, like, "Feel the burn ! Over the top !" Dani chimed in too.

"Jeffrey, say, ‘My name is Jeffrey, and I will PUMP you UP !’"

He thought about this, and then shouted defiantly. "NO! YOU can’t pump ME up. You are not Jeffrey. I am Jeffrey."

Those pronouns are coming along nicely , I think.

Danielle put a good post over at Phonemom on the origins of our two name selections. If anyone’s interested in why we chose Jeffrey Loren or Elena Renée, check it out.

Yes, there’s an accent on the first “e”. “Uncle Joe” Laboda, my high school French teacher would approve. It comes from the French verb renaître, which means “to be reborn”. I think that’s pretty appropriate for a second child. The past participle is rené. However, to make something feminine in French, an extra “e” is often added on the end. Thus, Renée.

As far as Elena goes, we had a quick conversation at the ultrasound. Dani had always spelled it as “Elena”, and I had thought it was “Elaina”. Since I didn’t really have such a strong opinion, we decided on Elena. I’ll probably call her “Ellie” anyway.

Jeffrey reads to his babies

Yesterday we went for another Elena picture show. There were some bright spots on the first anatomical ultrasound from last week that, in order to be cautious, the doctors wanted to rule out. Our sonographer did another complete anatomical ultrasound and the doctor confirmed that she looks healthy, through and through. The sonographer also was able to confirm that it’s really a girl in there.

So there. It seems strange that this will probably be our last ultrasound. With a veritable flip book of imagery from Jeffrey, something seems like it’s missing. Oh, that’s what it is… the drama.

In the meantime, Jeffrey still exists. In case you thought I forgot. Last night, he grabbed his blanket and sat on the floor in his room and read to his “babies”, Grrrr and Elesent. For those of you casual readers, those are a stuffed tiger and elephant, respectively. It was the first time he didn’t thrust the book at me, demanding that I read it to him. It was interesting to watch him mimic the way I read a book to him, only he was delivering the story to the stuffed animals. He asked the toys, “What’s this, Grrrr?”, the same way that I would quiz him on the story’s items.

He’s becoming us. That’s cool.