February Recap

To share a picture I take on Facebook from my phone takes a few seconds, especially since my camera app has a button to share right after I take the picture. To write a blog means taking a chunk of time to write something with the pictures, then go through and select the pictures and upload the whole thing.

For Facebook friends, the blog is simply more pictures and details that they might not otherwise get, but I tend to forget my other audience. I know of five or six, family members and friends off the top of my head that follow this blog faithfully to see the kids, but are not at all connected with Facebook. To you, faithful facebook-free followers, I apologize.

I will try to post more regularly on here as well.

Most of February was routine, and I am starting to take less pictures of routine activities. For example, we go to a park or a playground literally every day. Usually after her nap. I could take a picture of her swinging every day...but I don't, because to me, quite honestly, it is boring. It is her current favorite thing to do at the park though, so we do it. I've been working on my willingness to push her on the swings for the full park time, as much as I would prefer to have her do the slide or play in the sand, or something I could be less involved with.

We usually have a playdate or two a week, and we see my mom every week and my mother in law most weeks. For most of February, my mother in law took Grace to a tap class, which she loved.

But even these events rarely warrant pictures, since they became part of my routine.

The events in February got most of my camera's attention- Valentine's Day and President's Day. For the first, Grace went to a party with our playgroup, and really enjoyed passing out the Valentines to the other kids.

President's day, Blake had off, so we had a family park day. It really was a wonderful day, with a picnic and naps on a blanket, as well as her daily dose of playground.

In other news, Grace is getting good at identifying letters, and can even write a few! The picture of her with the G, is a G she did completely on her own after practicing with my mom a few times.

Remington is now 5 months old, and is sitting well enough for us to put him in a high chair at restaurants. At home, he got Grace's old seat, and she just sits at the table with us. More recently, we started giving him some oat cereal, and will be introducing new foods every few days. He makes faces like he doesn't want it, but then grabs the spoon for more, though even so, he is only eating maybe a teaspoon at each sitting.

He is making good progress towards crawling soon too. He can push well enough with his arms to go backwards, and can get into a good crawling position on hands and knees for short moments too. He has made very little forward movement at times by pushing off with his toes or twisting in a weird way, but definitely hasn't got crawling down quite yet.

So there is the much belated update. I'll put a bunch of pictures on too.

Conversations with a Two Year Old

Have you ever had a conversation with a two year old? It can be cute, but also very repetitive and needs a bit of guess work involved to keep a conversation going. I will be sharing just a few of my recent conversations in this post, followed by cute kid pictures.

Here are a few of the repetitive ones... ones that I have had at least 20 times with Grace, if not more, sometimes just a few minutes from the last time I had that particular conversation.

G-Pa? (what she calls my dad)
M- When do we see grandpa?
G- Church
M- That's right, after church

G- Gaga? (My mother in law)
M-When do we see granna?
G- Tap
M-That's right, you tap with granna

G- Ma? (My mom)
M- When do we see grandma?
G- Church
M- That's right, after church

G- A-Me? (What she calls her future aunt Jami)
M- When do we see Aunt Jami?
G- Run?
M- That's right, Aunt Jami and mom run together

(You get the idea)

Another repetitive conversation of late started after she got her shots last Friday... so it has continued for more than a week.

G- Ouch? (While pointing to a shot area)
M- Does it hurt where you got your shots?
G- All done?
M- Yes, your shots are all done for now, no shots today.

The above conversation has occurred as often as five or six times in a single car ride... it gets old, really fast.

There are a few animals that she is currently scared of- sharks and alligators. When she sees a picture of one of them, this is how it goes:

G- Ouch? (pointing to their teeth)
M- Yes, if a shark (or alligator) bit you it would hurt
G- No, no (Emphatically to the picture, like when she is telling the dogs no, so they won't take her food)
M- No, the shark (or alligator) won't bite you

Recently we went to a friend's house, and Grace encountered their talking, singing, dancing Elmo, and for whatever reason, it really freaked her out. So now, I also get this conversation on replay:

G- Elmo? (In a very scared worried voice)
M- Did Erin's Elmo scare you?
G- All gone?
M- Yes, that Elmo is all gone.

But the most commonly recurring conversation is about our trips to the park, which have become our daily outing.

G- Walk?
M- When do we go on the walk?
G- Nap
M- That's right, after nap
G- Swing?
M- Sure, you can go on the swing
G- Slide?
M- Yep, you can go on the slide too.

She is learning a lot, and very quickly, it is really exciting to see. She is pretty good on colors now, and will point them out as she walks by or sees something in that color. She knows a lot of her letters, and is beginning to understand counting too.

One last cute Grace story happened yesterday morning, when Blake decided to try to leave out the brown sugar from her oatmeal and see if she would notice. She took one bite, then went to the cupboard and started to get out the brown sugar for him. No fooling this girl!

Random assorted pictures since the last post. Note, many were already posted on facebook, but for people who read my blog without facebook, I wanted them to see them too.

How Life is like the Movie Groundhog Day

I'm going to make this fast, because I feel like this is being typed on borrowed time as Blake is downstairs with Remington, and wants to watch TV with me.

I feel like many days, my life is like the movie Groundhog Day in that many of the events are the same in essence, but I keep trying to make little tweaks to avoid the previous days mistakes. Some tweaks improve the situation, some don't, but I keep learning and trying to improve on them.

One of the biggest examples with this is trips to the park with Grace. We have made going to the playground a daily excursion after her nap. She loves going to the playground, going on the slide, playing in the sand, and being pushed on the swings. She hates leaving. So, every day I try different things to try to make the trip home easier. Blake had some good results with a special snack on the way home, but I goofed it up by letting her see the snack first. When we got to the playground, she just wanted to eat the snack instead of spending time playing first. I even got a full blown tantrum about it. Lesson learned...don't let her see the going home snack first!

I have Groundhog Day moments with potty training too, trying to figure out why and when she has accidents so that I avoid those kind of accidents in the future. These moments happen with Remington too, mostly with his sleep at night. I keep trying to have his schedule worked out so I only feed him once at night, and he sleeps soundly the rest of it...but with the minor daily changes, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't and I have to keep trying to figure out what causes the difference.

Grace's tantrums are yet another area where many minor changes are made in attempts to stop or avoid the tantrums that come when I say no to her, she doesn't get her way, or we have to drive in the car somewhere (so pretty much all day long). I have had some success with dolls and roleplaying, some with stickers, and some with playing the game of "guess what made Grace mad" and then talking to her about it. Sometimes I have no success!

But unlike the movie, kids change all the time, so my changes are just guesses, and I get to keep trying!

Enjoy the random collection of kid photos from the last few weeks.

Snapshot of Life at the start of 2014

Life with an almost four month old and a two year old is not always easy but it is fun. There are challenging times like when I was nursing the baby with my daughter on my lap and talking to someone on the phone to schedule a doctor's appointment. Or when I felt ridiculous using my daughter's doll to try to teach a lesson about what to do when you're mad or how to tell Mom when you need to go to the bathroom. This, by the way, worked rather effectively. And I don't particularly enjoy when I have to leave my son crying somewhere because my daughter decided that was the moment she neeeed to go to the bathroom.

But, I love when my son starts to talk to me or smiles at me. I love seeing his determination to roll over. Which he has done both ways now...but only once. It cracked me up to see my daughter try to give the stick back to the tree on our walk yesterday. Or when she copied my using the doll to take the doll to the bathroom multiple times during the day. I love seeing her vocabulary grow even when I least expect it, and the cute way she says, "helwo." The conversations we have about shadows or just about her favorite people is how we set the foundation for a great relationship in the future.

My days are filled with the mundane of bathroom trips, nursing times and keeping two little ones happy, but I wouldn't trade them for the world.