a week of bliss

I forgot how fun the week after Christmas is.  They still love their toys and play independently quite a bit.  I've been getting caught up on random projects, none of which you can see or include cleaning the house of course.  Maybe I'll get to the point where I can paint my room the color I have painted in swatches.  Put those swatches on almost 2 years ago.  Don't even notice my four toned walls anymore.  I don't know.  Painting sounds really ambitious.

Whitney is going to really love Activity Days when she gets old enough, I'm sure.  Today she said "activity days is for eating cupcakes" randomly. Last time I made cupcakes and/or did activity days included that.

We had a blast today.  We went to a new park.  They had an education building that included following a water cycle.  You pick a ping pong ball with a number on it and put it in different chutes, starting at the ocean.  These pipes went all over the place.  Thank heavens we were the only ones there for much of the time.  We were there 1 1/2 hours just doing that activity.  Forget about the rest.  Whitney and Tucker were running wild.  Another great thing is that a grandma was running the place today and didn't mind all the ruckus.  She was just glad they loved it so much there.  Even after such a long time, I had to tell them we were leaving.  They didn't even want to eat goldfish crackers for snack.  What made the activity even better is that they found (by themselves to my amazement) the number one ball and the number two ball, so every time they found it in some other chute, Tucker would exclaim about how it is number one for Whitney and number 2 for Tucker.  This Thing 1/2 carries over to a lot of their life.

Speaking of which, my grandma called today with very important news.  At least that is what she said on her voicemail.  She said the Rose Bowl Parade has Dr. Seuss as the theme, so that's what we need to see on New Year's Day.

Today I caught Tucker reading books.  Normally, if he even plays with books, he sits and just turns the pages.  But today he was reading his book.  He had the Cat in the Hat book open in his lap and making all sorts of comments about various pages.  Like "No, no, Thing 2.  Don't bonk that!"  or "Keep your hat on Cat in the Hat" and then "Good job Cat in the Hat" when he turned the page and the Cat in the Hat had his hat back on.  He also ran over to Whitney and asked her "What's in the box, Whitney?"  for the page that the big red box comes out.  It's a question I ask them sometimes when I'm not speed reading it before bed.

Tucker has lost a lot of his hesitation of talking in front of strangers.  Lots of my friends have commented lately about how good he is at talking and how much he talks.  Previous to a few weeks ago he was mute in new or different environments.  I keep telling them that he's talked this clearly for awhile, they've just never known.  But he is only just recently coming up with his really silly stuff.

He is the one that most often gets disciplined, probably because Whitney screams bloody murder when he hits her for Whitney hitting him or taking a toy from him.  This translates to him telling Whitney, his Thing 2 or truck, or Mommy what to do or what the rules are.

He also is quite the commedian in training.  He seems to understand humor to a point.  Whenever they squeeze out play dough he does this perfect teasing "Wha ha ha Ha!" exclamation and gets Whitney to do it with him.

Other times it's just us coming out of him in a funny way.  I'm always getting after Jim about how much toothpaste he puts on their toothbrushes because they always swallow most of it.  I say "it's too much!" when Tucker comes back with a ton of extra from Jim helping him.  So the other night he ran to "use Papa's" and brought it to Jim yelling "Papa, put too much on!"

A couple of days after Christmas Jim was playing with the train with Tucker and decided to put batteries in Thomas.  As if Tucker wasn't in love with Thomas before.  Now Thomas is alive and real.  Who cares about Santa.  Tucker ran around and around the track chasing Thomas most of that night.  Whitney would lay on the track and lift her hips up just in time to make a bridge for Thomas.  Thomas gets lots of How are you's and I'm happy about equal to Thing 2 now.

Jim also has been having fun with the doll house.  He stuffed Snowflake into the baby high chair and put Thing 1 in the doll house bathtub one night.  Whitney didn't seem to notice, so after waiting a bit for her to start playing with them, he asked Whitney where Thing 1 was.  Without skipping a beat she said, "In the bath".  Jim was shocked about how observant she is.  Yep.  She doesn't miss much.  Always been my observer bear.

One thing that I'm not fond of during vacation breaks is not having a lot of fun with time off, so we've actually done a lot of getting out of the house.  We went to the fish hatchery.  Not a new place, but since it was raining, I discovered the indoor section that lists the fish life cycle names (eggs, sac fry, fry, fingerling, etc).  We had a lot of fun learning those together.  I also said I would follow Whitney where she would go, and she loved that.  It was totally fine to walk in random patterns, since, for some reason, the rest of the sane world was not outside in the wet during non spawning season.  Surprisingly there were some fish big enough to see in the profile, though.

We went to the lake, taking a path purely for the sake that I knew Tucker needed to get some serious energy out.  It turned out to be really fun because there was a stream on the side for them to splash in almost all the way down and back to the lake.  Tucker managed to fill up his boots again.  He doesn't seem to mind the wet and cold if it involves big splashes.  I wear my boots simply to protect myself from his big splashes.

Thing 2 in his bed.  Looks REAL comfy, right?

Whitney looking out on the lake while raining.  She decided it looked like snow

splashing in the creek

Whitney and Tucker both like to know what are things are girls and what things are boys.  Whitney tells me in no uncertain terms that girl cows have udders and boy cows (don't mind the cow thing meaning a girl) do not.  She can say all that very clearly and did so during church.  Good thing she has a quieter voice than Scott and Tucker.

Whitney also likes to snuggle her "girl pasauvas" raisins in a blanket of oatmeal.  I love this new game.  There is a lot less picking out of raisins only and a lot more eating of the actual oatmeal since this game began.

She has also come up with all sorts of observations about girls and boys. She comes up with this stuff all by herself.  She first started saying that "when I grow up I will turn into a mommy".  This has evolved to several other observations like "when I grow up I will turn into a mommy and visit the temple" (this last bit came from a conversation we had about how no one lives at the temple, only visits). Or "when I grow up I will turn into a Mommy and Mommy will turn into a Whitney". Sadly, yes, I'm sure I will have to yield my independence to her, but I decided to correct her observation and so now she says "when I grow up I will turn into a Mommy and Mommy will turn into a Grandma".  Today it finally transferred over to boys and her and Tucker were having multiple conversations about how "when Tucker grows up he will turn into a daddy and Daddy will turn into a Grandpa" using her cute "grampa" pronunciation.

Happy new year!