a fun week at home

Every morning they work as a team to feed the dogs.  it is very cute, so I finally got a picture of it.  This morning it was Whitney's turn to divide the food in two bowls and Tucker to open the door.

Filling Sammy's bowl.  They both know which bowl is which dog's and keep calling which ever dog they just fed to come over and eat.  That's pretty cute, too, to hear them saying "Sammy" or "Rocky" in their little voices

Tucker opening...

...and closing the door

Working very intently on someone else's workbench

learning to get some significant swing motion to make it fun!

Whitney decided to lay down in her bed.  It's the pad underneath the swing.  She thought this was funny

Tucker concentrating on getting a good swing

I missed the really cute pic.  They were both sitting in their chairs, each with a flashcard of a music note in their hands, singing My Heavenly Father Loves Me




Whitney getting down and dirty in her really cute outfit she picked out that morning

This week was a fun and relaxing week.  The babies played really nicely and cute most of the time this week.  It was cooler on some days, so some days were in the house and others were not.

I have some video of them just playing.  I decided to try to get on video how they talk to each other and some of the songs they sing.  I did catch some good ones, but have no idea how to find the video on the card.  Whatever.  That's for the tech guy.

Monday for family home evening, Jim decided the activity was to play hide and seek.  I thought they would be too young, but not so.  It took a few rounds to teach them, but they loved it.  Whitney likes to tell me where to hide now, and it's in all the places I hid on Monday night.

We took care of a friend's chickens this week.  The friend wanted them in the coop while she was gone. When I got there, they were out of the coop.  I was pretty annoyed.  I hate chasing chickens.  Took a half an hour to get them back in and the only way they went in was because I prayed them in.  They didn't go in before that, even with the leaf after leaf of lettuce I was throwing into their coop.  Apparently her neighbor was doing some other things at the house and her kids must have left a door loose.  After that Tucker and Whitney went with me and kept saying, "the chickens need more food!"  They loved watching the chickens, though.  As long as the chickens were in the cage and they were outside the cage, that is.

This week a friend and I planned to go kayaking during the day.  She has a teenager that is old enough to babysit them and a 9 year old, so we rotated around.  Whitney and Tucker got another kayaking ride.  Whitney told me all about it today.  She said that she "likes to kayak, just like Mommy".  And "Tucker likes to kayak, just like Mommy".  Good!  Maybe I'll have some buddies.  They had a blast playing with the 9 year old.  Whitney loved being coddled and carried around the playground like a baby and followed her around the whole time.  Tucker liked how she went in the water and played with him, too.  We drove her home and Tucker was visibly upset when she got out of the car and went home.  I'm not sure if he was upset because he wasn't getting out to play with her, or if because she wasn't riding all the way home with us so she could play with us at our home.

Tucker really, really likes pretending to swim in the water.  He likes me to hold him floating on his stomach so he can kick his legs and move his arms like he's swimming.  Jim keeps asking me what sports we're going to put  them in.  A bit young, but now I might have a smart-aleck answer for him.  It's either swiming or gymnastics.  At the park we were at, there was a hanging slider thing where you hold on with your hands while you hand down and you can glide around.  Whitney saw some other kids.  She wanted to try it, so I put her on and she loved it.  For one swing.  The length of this thing was about 20 feet or so.  Tucker got on and really loved it.  He held on to it to glide 3x across.  Down, back and down again.  A couple of times, like that, too!  I let him hand freely and he loved it too, but I couldn't believe how long his hang time was.  60 feet or so!

We went to a baseball game as a date Tuesday night.  It was scheduled to go until 11 pm, and I figured with traffic and all, we wouldn't be back until midnight or so, so I asked a college student to come babysit.  She knows them, but hasn't watched them.  It was then I realized how weird the bedtime schedule is around here in parts.  She called me around 8:45 and asked if I had any tricks to putting Tucker to sleep.  I felt like answering her, "No.  Do you?"  but instead said, "Oh yeah.  Tucker plays in his room until about 9:15 every night, so he probably won't sleep until then"  Then she said, "even in the closet?"  Yep.  Even in the closet.  Kind of embarressing the lines we draw.  I don't really care what he's doing in there, as long as he is not doing any bodily harm to Whitney or anything dangerous.  And that he stays in there.  So the closet is fine.  They like to be in there and play watching movie or driving in the car to the playground.  Or taking all the clothes off the hangers and throwing everything on the floor.  That's really annoying to pick up in the morning. When we came home, the babysitter said that when she went to check on him, he had fallen asleep behind the door, so she moved him.  When I went to check on them, I laughed because Whitney had fallen asleep on top of nest.

Nest is the plastic covered changing pad that she hauls all around the house making it be different things.  It is often the door to her "house" in the empty open cabinet space in the bathroom.  Or sometimes it's part of a tunnel.  Or sometimes it's nest.  She likes to sit in nest and eat "gusanos"  (worms in spanish). It is usually a hot item of choice amongst the toys at the moment.  I got a laugh because it sure looked like Whitney was asleep on it so Tucker wouldn't take it from her and she would still have it to play with in the morning.

Monday Tucker cracked me up.  He was in the changing table (in the closet) playing nicely for awhile while I was doing housework.  He was being good for so long I decided to check up on him.  He was still playing nicely.  I opened the door and he gave me a big grin and said "Hi Mom!  I'm watching a mooovie", with his lips pursed way big and a long accent on the o as well as a proper spanish pronunciation of the v as a b sound.  With another huge grin after.  Made me smile!

Wednesday we went to Jake's house.  That was fun!  As we turned around to park in the shade in Jake's neighbor's driveway, Tucker spotted a playset at the neighbor's and said "Oh! You found a playground!"  He was a bit bummed about not playing on  it until he started playing with Jake's collection of very small Thomas the train figures and his toy vacuum that even makes the noise.  Tucker almost didn't eat his fish cracker snack because of that vacuum.  He didn't have enough hands to hold open his fish cracker bag, get crackers out and hold on to the vacuum so the other kids wouldn't play with it.

I'm not sure how my kids pick up on charactor names so fast, but part of it must be from reading books about them.  We do have a Thomas the train book for counting.  And we also have a book about Clifford.   In the bath on Wednesday, Whitney took the bath drain strainer and turned it upside down.  She said "Mom, don't dump it out.  I made it for Clifford's birthday".  Turned upside down this thing does look a bit like a cupcake and the Clifford book we read that day was about his birthday.

On Wednesday the apples in our neighbor's orchard finally attracted the resident deer we have.  We have two resident deer that are not afraid of humans, let alone baby humans.  We can get pretty close.  They were picking apples off our neighbor's tree and Tucker walked up to them about 10 feet away, with no fence or anything between them.  The deer kept right on eating.  I couldn't believe it.  I let Tucker do it, but finally dragged him out of the street and down the driveway when he was considering getting even closer.  As I pulled him away from his deer watching spot, he said "Mom!  The deer are picking apples!" 

Thursday was a long day of housework and more housework for the babies.  It was a cooler day, so I decided to actually do some stuff that I keep ignoring for want of being outside this summer.  They played really nicely together most of the day, I didn't have to get after them too much about fighting.  Which was amazing for how hungry they must have been.  Since we've been at parks and playgrounds most days for 2 months, they pretty much have had fish crackers once a day for lunch or snack in the car.  I decided today would be a good day to try to get them out of the habit. They really might be addicted.  They didn't eat too much of anything all day until dinner, which they wolfed down.  But right before dinner, they were pretty cranky.  Whitney was so hungry she could barely stand it.  She kept asking for fish crackers. Realizing she wasn't getting them, she tried another food.  She yelled out "I want chocolate!"  But the part made me laugh even more was that she pronounced chocolate in spanish.  It was pretty funny.  Yeah, me too, Whit.

After dinner, when they were in a good mood, we went outside to work in the back.  They invented a game using the shovels.  Tucker dug out dirt from my pot and put it on the big shovel for Whitney to dump on the ground.  I have a video of that, too.  It looks pretty funny to see little Whitney working with the regular sized shovel.

Daddy knew he would be watching the kids this weekend, so he got prepared.  With the really good stuff.  Later, when I was talking to them about what they did, Jim asked Whitney what she had for dinner.  She said she had special O's.  I was wondering what special O's were as he went on to the next question.  "Whitney, what color were your special O's?"  She responded "pink, no red.  No, yellow!  No, blue!"  Ahhh.  She had fruit loops for dinner.  Then Jim asked Tucker what he had for dinner.  Can you guess?  Yep.  he said "fish crackers!".  Of course.  Since I had deprived them of them previously.  I tell you what.

I'll let you know how fish cracker weaning goes this week.