Tuesday, October 2, 2012

Simon x Twenty Five

Yesterday it was pointed out that I favor Cecie a little on my blog. In my real life, this of course is not the case; I am as involved in Simon's every day happenings as Cecilia's. I won't deny, however, that there are more posts devoted to C as well as many more pictures.

There is a very logical explanation for this. First of all, Cecie is an ever-changing baby in her first year of life. There's a lot going on there. Second of all, she smiles and looks at me when I get the camera out. When I tried taking Simon's picture the other day he told me to "stop being annoying." 

I'm going to try to even it out a little today, though. Apparently it's common practice for bloggers to write lists of twenty five things (maybe that's just a rumor, I don't know). So I'm going to write twenty five things about Simon at 4 and half years old.


1. His favorite "dessert" lately is a bowlful of plain frozen cherries (they are pretty darn good).
2. When we play hide and seek he tips me off to his location by yelling "I love you Mumma!" so quickly that is comes out mumbled, and so joyfully that I can literally hear his smile.
3. He said, "I know we can return that timer" about 15 minutes after starting to use one to monitor his screen time. He was excited about it at first, but quickly realized what it meant.
4. He gets really excited to go to Parker's, Macey's and Kaiya's because they all have video game systems. It finally dawned on him yesterday that we could, theoretically, have one at our house too some day.


5. When Grandpa Jimmy brings him candy he goes on the front stoop of our house to hide with it because he knows I will take it away.
6. He says he doesn't like what I made for dinner pretty much every night before sitting down. Eventually he tries and likes it almost all the time, but it's an irritating little ritual that we're trying to break.
7. He sleeps with a night light, his red and green blanket (his Auntie April made), his star blankie (from who knows where), his duck blankie (I think from Julie) and his turtle that lights up his room with colorful stars (thank you again April!). He likes to be carried upstairs at night claiming his legs are too tired, but if we say we are going to beat him upstairs he tears off so as to come away a winner.
8. He can read three letter words if he's focused and/or motivated.


9. He loves to play with other kids and asks who he can play with every single day.
10. His favorite veggies are green beans, edamame, broccoli, corn and peas and he'll never turn them down. He loves all fruit, which is his go-to snack request (along with string cheese).
11. He recently told me the he liked snuggling "more than anything fun" and he was most talented at loving me. All unprompted.
12. He has not retired the use of throwing tantrums when he doesn't get his way, but has gotten a million times better.


13. He thinks it's funny when people fall and get mildly injured. He may have learned this from me.
14. Whenever we play superheros together I never do it right. He is constantly correcting me.
15. He can add single digit numbers, but when he is bored or stumped he will throw out a "54!" or something on those lines without thinking about it.


16. He gets jumbled in the high teens when counting and tells me I'm wrong when trying to help him. Once he's past 19 he's good to go again for a while. He also fought with me once that the letter J was not actually a letter. He may or may not yet believe me.
17. When he is helping me cook he pulls up a chair to the counter. I struggle with this because he is in my way and inevitably makes a mess, but I always let him help when he wants to. I'll miss this one day.

(We normally have this up high, but here I am not paying attention to what is in his hand because I am trying to get a picture. Great parenting moment.)

18. He doesn't like mushrooms which is a big problem for me because as far as I'm concerned mushrooms make everything better. I will keep having him try them until one day - hopefully - he likes them. I bet my mom thought this about green peppers when I was little...we know how that turned out.


19. He will sit forever letting me read him books, but doesn't usually think to ask anytime other than at night. He won't typically sit reading a book on his own because he "doesn't know how to read the words." Classic case of the more you know, the more you know you don't know. We have to change this attitude. Or teach him to read I guess.
20. He always wants to know what we are doing today and tomorrow, like he's got plans he's trying to work around.
21. On the weekends, I am nothing to him. He is alllll about Daddy.


22. He loves to wear fleece footie jammies if it's remotely cold at night. In the heat of the summer, though, nothing but undies.
23. He is not usually excited to go on our daily walk, but he usually just deals with it.
24. He gets excited for the bus, for the dollar store, for the grocery store, for friends, for grandparents, for cousins, for food, for dogs, for dinner out, for playing games, for brushing his teeth, for haircuts, etc. He is excitable.


25. He has mostly grown out of wearing costumes every single day, but is still very excited about Halloween. He wants to be a vampire bat. Not sure how I'm going to make that one happen, but he is pretty dead set.


There you have it. Twenty five things about our first and only son. A whole post, just for him :)

Monday, October 1, 2012

To three, or not to three

At book club this past weekend we had a discussion about whether any of us would like to have a third child (no, our book was not about this, but we don't restrict our conversations to the confines of a single book topic). When it was my turn to say what I thought would happen in our family, I said I didn't know. Everyone else was leaning one way or the other at least a little, but I was right there in center field.

Deciding to have a third child is much more than can we handle it, do we have room for it, can we afford it, do we have time for it, etc. It's all that, plus how do we get there? We can't just decide one day to try to have a baby and see a double line on a pregnancy test two weeks later. That's just not the way it is and I've come to accept it. It just means we have a little more to deliberate on and have to really, really know we want it.

For now, we are so happy with our little family and don't want it to change any time soon. Maybe in a couple of years we'll feel differently, but for now this is it and it sure feels like enough.

And I swear if I have to contend with one more child thinking they are too good for naps I might literally explode. I'm serious.

She looks so damn innocent...


Sunday, September 30, 2012

Eight Months

Cecilia napped for about 20 minutes this afternoon. Bad form. She is only eight months old, however, so sleep was going to find her whether she wanted it to or not. One minute she was jumping and the next...



About 45 minutes later we heard her start jumping again...it was like she woke up, realized where she was and wondered why she had stopped jumping in the first place. Love her.

--

Writing monthly updates on my little one is turning out to be a pretty awesome way to spend some of my time. I went back and read what Cecilia was like as a 7 month old and I love that I can get a clear glimpse into what life was like a measly month ago and see how it's changed (or hasn't, in a few cases).

There have been a handful of major changes since last month, one being that she can now feed herself little bits of food. I was saying last month that I looked forward to this stage and here were are!


The only problem is she eats them so fast that you have to be armed and ready to replenish her supply as needed or else. If she finds her tray empty she yells and slams her hands on the tray until she gets what she wants. We are working on teaching her "more" in sign language...much more civilized.


The other major change is with her mobility. She has retired the army crawl for the much cooler (and yet more traditional) crawl on the hands and knees.


This change seemed to naturally lead to pulling herself up on furniture and shuffling her little feet so as to get from one end of the table to the other. Walking along furniture is slooow right now, but it's amazing how much more adept she has gotten at this in just a handful of days.


One thing she has yet to conquer is playing with a toy while standing. Sometimes she will use both hands to put a toy in her mouth and down she goes....I do a lot of hovering when she is on the loose.


This improvement in overall body control has forced me to adjust the way I bathe her and change her. Bathing has actually gotten easier (HOORAY!!). She sits up on her own so she can just go wild splashing whilst I clean her and wash her hair (you have no idea what a project it is to wash this kid's hair).


Changing her clothes or diaper on the other hand has become nothing short of dreadful. I often find myself putting one leg over her chest to immobilize her. Trust me, it's necessary.


As I mentioned, a few things about little C have not actually changed much at all in the past month. She is still enamored with her brother. She still sleeps well at night and is somewhat sorta kinda consistent with naps (jumparoo nap excluded). She still laughs like crazy when I tickle her by her collar bone. She still eats a bottle every 3 hours like clockwork. She still gives 90% of new faces a dead stare and refuses to smile (and even some familiar ones...Tiffany). She still generally dislikes to sit up because there is way too much to explore. I got a rare shot of her doing just this with a toy the other day...


More than anything, she continues to be a delight (even when she is causing trouble). Love her to bits. I wonder what month eight will bring!

Friday, September 28, 2012

A little of this, a little of that...

Tonight Cecilia fell asleep in the car; I carried her in and she stayed sound asleep. There is something so wonderful about carrying a big sleeping baby. The bigger they are the sweeter it is, probably because the bigger they are the less often this happens. But tonight it happened, and I walked extra slowly from the car to the house and up to her room.

Today Simon wondered why it's called a forehead when you only have one head. Good question, son.

I've been itching to do something with Cecilia's hair lately. It's getting really long (several inches when pulled straight) and I wanted to do something other than put a headband in it. So I put my brave hat on, put her in her high chair with many many puffs and 30 minutes later we had a mini masterpiece. Okay so maybe it's not earth shattering, but I am a very proud vanilla mom right now :)




I have hopes that this style will stay in good shape for at least a few days. I also tried puffs this week and they weren't tough enough for this little lady, but they were worth a shot!



Simon is really into screens lately. I have to make sure to pay close attention to how much of his day is spent staring at said screens. Sometimes he steals my phone and hides in the toy room until I notice...we're working on that.

I don't really love little girl jammies. I want to buy her little boy ones because I think they are so much cuter (barring the leopard ones from Auntie Al).

Tomorrow morning we have book club at a restaurant. I am really looking forward to this!! We also have two birthday parties later in the day; Simon is stoked. I told him he could pick something from the dollar section at Target today and he picked a pack of glow in the dark spiders. He has been obsessing about handing them out at Lily's party and made sure he had enough for all the kids. I thought this was quite thoughtful.

If you haven't been introduced to Momastery yet, I suggest you check it out. Yesterday she introduced me to a charity that helps young adults who have aged out of the foster care system (in other words, they turned 18 and are subsequently on their own in every sense). You can buy them things they need, donate money, help them find jobs, just plain offer them support in a variety of ways. This spoke to me. Cecilia could have so easily been a child in foster care. Her birth mother chose a more stable path for her thank God, but it really could have been. Eighteen years from now, Cecilia could have been left to her own devices with no family, no support, no nothing. She would have deserved help and love and to know that someone really cared about her. It makes me so sad to think that there are other people who started life just like her, and through no fault of their own had a horribly rocky life and then were expected to be fully independent, functioning members of society come eighteen. They could use some help. Check it out. It may not speak to you like it did to me, but it's worth a click.

It's getting late and I'm starting to feel pensive....I should go to bed, this post has gotten long enough. I will leave you with Simon eating a banana (in an outfit he picked out himself, can you tell?).


Thursday, September 27, 2012

Grocery Shopping

While grocery shopping with kids is definitely not my favorite adventure, lately it has been tolerable...amusing even. At Woodman's where we do all of our grocery shopping, they have these carts with benches attached to them so your bigger child(ren) can look at the younger child who is sitting in the cart.

This bodes well for us. Simon has the freedom to easily get in and out of the cart and Cecilia has built in entertainment. Barring two specific incidents in recent history that I am trying to block out, we seem to be managing our trips to the grocery store pretty well these days (and good thing, because we visit there often).

Anyway, here is a glimpse into what grocery shopping these days looks like for us...

Wednesday, September 26, 2012

30 Day Challenge Complete.

 Good Morning!

 
Today marks 30 days from when I started my no-coffee-exercise-every-day challenge. Coffee is no longer on my radar and I've only skipped working out 4 days...close enough.

A month ago when I would wake up in the morning, I would think about coffee and not much else. Now I just think about how I don't want to go to the Y. Despite my early morning internal protests, I'm usually warmed to the idea by the time Cecie is done eating and we're able to make it happen. All around, this was a great goal to have and I think it's really helped me to make exercise a regular part of my life again.

Now, what should my next mission be? :)

Thursday, September 20, 2012

Happy Dog. Happy Brother. Happy Update.

Happy Dog:

We're at that stage when I can put Cecie in her high chair with little food bits and she will be entertained for quite some time trying to eat said food. 


She manages to get some in her mouth with great effort and determination, but most of it winds up on her body or the floor.

Enter dog.


Elliot loves this and, frankly, I love it too. Not having to clean a single thing up off the floor (or even from the seat of the high chair) is pretty awesome. We have a living, breathing vacuum cleaner to happily take care of that for us.


Now if only Elliot could figure out how to get mashed food out of the deep recesses of her fro, we'd be all set.


--

Happy Brother:

Having Simon around to watch Cecilia grow up has been ridiculously fun so far. He was there when she first learned to crawl, when she started to crawl with her belly off the floor, when she first started babbling ("she said 'grandpa!'"), etc. He gets so excited when he sees her doing something new.


The other day, she was in her pack 'n play and reached up so that she was standing on her knees holding on the the side. Simon saw this and yelled to me, "Mom! Come quick! Cecie is doing something super cool!"


And then today, when she got all the way to her feet in there, he exclaimed, "Mom! She's standing! She's standing, Mom!" with pure joy on his face (she thought this was pretty cool too, as you can see).


I have always loved watching babies learn new things. It's just exciting for me to see tiny humans do something they have never, ever done before. But throw Simon's excitement into the mix? It practically kills me.

--

Happy Update:

Since August 27th, I've skipped working out 3 days. I intended to skip out zero days, but I'm fine with it. Taking a day off every week is reasonable in the grand scheme of things and I hope I can continue this trend indefinitely. Having a routine helps...every morning I get up, get the kids fed and ready, head to the Y, work out, head home and immediately put Cecilia down for her first nap of the day. I know when it gets colder out it's going to be a little more of a mental challenge, but we'll make it happen. So that's that.

And coffee? So last month. Caffeine too. I decided I couldn't live without a warm beverage every day, though, so I've made friends with herbal tea. Badabing.