W started calling E a slug. The reason? His hands are slimy. But later this week I let him crawl out of the bathroom with his towel over his head and back and he looked just like a blue slug. Except he crawled really, really fast.
E has been having a lot of fun. He loves to push. He gets on top of paper or books with just his hands and slides along the floor. His push car is dirty and an outside toy unlike when his siblings were small, but he improvised just fine.
He is also into the open/close discovery phase of life. Really likes opening and closing pretty much anything. But then he gets in a tizzy when he shuts himself in a room.
He is also in the I-don't-like-mommy-out-of-site phase. Oh yeah. I remember this phase. Either I get worn out by listening to crying when I step out of his vision or I'm tired by carting him around.
He gets a huge grin when he sees people, especially me. He loves to bend his head down coyly to initiate play with someone. Usually Mina or some of his other church girlfriends that love to take him and snuggle him. But now he likes to do it from the comfort of mommy's arms. He also bends his head down toward the phone when he hears grandma's voice or when doing facetime. It amazes me that he already knows how to use a phone.
But he had no smiles for Papa at his first reappearance at the dinner table after being gone for 11 days. He looked at him and got the cute pouty lip that only babies can do when they are truly terrified. He was crawling to get out of his booster seat and turning away while screaming. I had to hold him before he calmed down. But then Papa fed him later that night and they made up.
E really likes to crawl through things. Anything that looks like a tunnel. My legs, a chair, an obstacle course that Papa sets up for him.
He is also super cute whenever he feels something soft. A teddy bear, my fuzzy hooded sweatshirt, W's fleece blanket, or his own. He lays his head down and sucks his two fingers while feeling it with his other hand for a minute. I guess he and W both love feeling of soft stuff.
He keeps practicing standing in the tub. I call him maniac baby because of how much he loves to move around in the tub. He goes really crazy. Kind of freaks me out. He loves baths, but it's a lot of work to have him in there. And none of the big kids like sharing much with him because he crawls all over them.
He likes to play forehead. Just like T did. He also uses his forehead to tell me he is poopy. He head butts my leg if I take too long to smell a dirty diaper.
One day W came to me and said "I want to play a game that boys can't play." She was walking around the house with a sheet dragging behind her. E was chasing her and thought it was sooo funny as well as when the sheet would pass over his head. She had just tried to get away from playing with T but he had taken over her bed by jumping on it. Brothers.
E is very ticklish, laughs at blankets flapping or blowing wind at him, and when we walk into his room after sleep. He is standing in the crib and has a fabulous smile I've never captured on camera, but hope I never forget.
I think T loves this smile. T continues to love being a big brother in these regards. Mixing his food, feeding his food, picking out his diaper, supervising the change of poop and whether or not he needs diaper rash cream and "checking to see if the baby is standing in his crib". For all the frustration of E and his slimy hands and touching of their toys, I think they love him because when he wakes up, they are happy to see him and want to get him when they hear him moving in his crib.
W makes us laugh when she figures things out. I heard her tell Papa this: "Papa. Did you get bubby (aka soda) from the store? That doesn't make our mouths happy." Papa answered and said, it doesn't make our mouths happy? He wasn't sure where this came from. She responded back: "Yeah. I went to joy school and McKinley's house and her mom taught me that soda doesn't make our mouth happy. I learned it there". Then Papa had to acknowledge that it's true, soda isn't good for our teeth.
J also made a huge mistake in not waiting to eat dessert out of sight of the children. They were all convinced that is was suddenly Monday and FHE night, so they should be having FHE and hence dessert. He quickly vacated to the basement.
This past weekend I made something for a baby shower. W was watching me cook and asking what a baby shower was. I told her my friend was having a baby and the food was for all the people that were coming to the party for this friend's baby. W was very very confused. She told me "you didn't have a party. You went to the to hospital when baby brother was born".
I was playing with the kids and were on top of some pillows they wanted for something. I was pointing out to them that they had all the rest of the couch cushion that I wasn't using. T protested by trying to pull the pillows out from under me. W protested by informing me of all the other items in the house that I owned, like my pillows upstairs and such. Bummer. She uses my logic on me.
T loves his new pjs. Why? "They have stars that are very sparkly!" they are all star pjs about baseball, but have sparkly stars around the baseball stuff. He's never had sparkly stars on his shirt like his sister.
T was walking around the house with his big fleece blanket around himself like a huge diaper. I asked him about his big diaper and he yelled "NO! These are magiky underwear!" My bad. I got it wrong.
We did another T with Papa day and W with Mommy day. Mostly because I think T missed his Papa so much. They went to the tire store. T came back with hands that showed me he had hand tested every tire. He was also pretty cranky. I found out he ate a doughnut, popcorn and a full thing of chocolate milk. That would explain the crankiness.
W went shopping to find flip flops for her. She doesn't fit in Target or Payless flip flops because they are made for girls with wide feet and she has very very narrow feet. So we finally found some that stay on her feet at Osh Kosh outlet. That was fun shopping with her. I usually loathe shopping, but when you have cute W to keep you company, it's pretty fabulous.
She also chose to make cookies. And frosting. Duh. She did make fabulous cookies and I just mentioned three of her friends that have birthdays within the week and she wanted to bring them cookies to share, as well as "share with the boys in the family, including Grandpa". Grandpa, you have a cookie waiting for you here in the freezer.
And of course she loves reading books, so we sat in the sun and snuggled. And the best part for me? She finally grasped reading two words on her own. From a book that was not previously memorized, so I knew she was really reading. She read the word "art" and then "good". It was in the book titled "I am good at making art". Very inspiring to her.
E has six teeth. Yesterday was his last day of nursing. Actually this is a bit unrelated. He never bit me, but has lost patience with nursing. He wants instant milk and it just doesn't happen for him like a sippy cup, so sippy cup it is. I thought I would nurse for a year, but almost 10 months isn't bad. We are almost done with cold and flu season and I think that has made quite a difference. I think he has only been seriously sick 2-3 times this year, including Christmas at Grandma's.
Sometimes I get a little annoyed at having to cook at a slow pace so my children can help and learn. One day I was getting annoyed because I wanted it to be done before E lost interest in a toy and started screaming. But he didn't. And I was so glad that I didn't because I had my two chefs in their chefs aprons snuggling me from both sides while we were waiting for the water to boil. A very sweet mommy moment.
W got down from helping to cook and T said to me "I want to snuggle Mommy. I'm happy with that choice"
I think one of the hardest adjustments of switching from the workplace to working at home with our kidlets is the definition of productive. Previously I had been able to check off stuff on a list of mine in my head with dizzying speed, but I can no longer do that. Maybe one thing a day, max. Then I realized the other day my list has changed dramatically and I just need to remember that the list is just different, not set to what a professional with no kids would do. My lists include looking my kids in the eye everyday, spending one on one time even, for only a few minutes, everyday. Snuggling, helping, teaching, reading, etc. And lucky me! Isn't that what all the professionals crave and rush home with road rage in their hearts to enjoy.
T has been working hard these past couple of days to make gear creations. He doesn't like it if I wreck one of his "creations" moving it. So I didn't. E saw it while T was in time out for pushing him. E knows the role of baby of the family very well already. He beelined it for the table and could hardly contain the joy in his body to finally touch and move all those colorful spinning gears. I've never seen him shake with joy before. He was also yowling with joy very loudly. He has a loud deep voice that nobody but Mommy loves. Good thing T's time outs are four minutes long. This was almost enough time for E to enjoy the gears.
W has an incredible memory, especially for sugar. We took a trip in the summer and on this trip, she had strawberry chocolate milk. How do I know this? She referred to it this week. She said, mom. Remember that trip that we drove a lot and we had chocolate milk? I honestly couldn't remember. I was trying to think of a trip to grandma's or something, but she kept describing the trip until I remembered. Amazing.
But then she is also good at remembering details of lots of stuff. She remembers that she went on the light rail a year ago. She remembers it whenever we pass the elevated train part. She also remembers that we made frost balls. We walked by the path that we have only gone down once since December and she mentioned it. Good! I will have to remember that she has a good memory that serves her well when she remembers all of my faults as a teenager.
W is also starting to learn to play with E. She set up a desk for E to play with gears below the real gear desk. She gathered a blanket and two boxes for E to play on the couch with the cushions pulled off. He loves soft blankets to snuggle, jump on the couch with the cushions off and climb on the couch using the cushions to get up.
E can scale an entire set of stairs in about 1 minute. But he hasn't figured out how to go down yet. Still very young for that.
T is starting to look like a boy to me. He has these little mini biceps and deltoids appearing and the bone mass in his legs is so different from W. My boy is growing up! Both of them. E fits in 18 month size no prob.
T used his manly strength to keep his mom's house safe from ants. He squirted each on one on the trail with vinegar. When he found the ants starting to encroach, he found me right away. After he squirted a few, he said, Gross!! It sounds so cute coming from his mouth.
The videos are of baby slug and T at the skate ramp park. he totally figured out how to get up and down these things with enough speed and momentum with plastic wheels. He also totally knows how to drift on his bike in our driveway.
By the way, for anyone closely reading. There will be no change of scenery for us next month like we thought. Very funny, hubby.
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| E using his "desk" and token gear |
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| My boys |
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| Blue chalk T |
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| E happy with gears, but not shaking |
We are done with looking at stars until the fall. It is much too light at 8pm for them to appear. Our last night of it for the season was last night. But we did see an amazingly bright planet. Perfect to end with.
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| Who doesn't love this baby?! |
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| W working the gears. She makes gardens of purple flowers with a fences around her gardens. T connects as many as possible and plays "seizing up" the gears by preventing movement |
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