A new phase

Lex has entered a weird, though probably
normal, hitting phase. He does it more out of curiosity than
anger, it seems. And he frequently announces his intentions
before actually doing anything. “I’m going to hit Eve,” he’ll
say. Or “Mommy, sit down so I can hit you.” Ummm…. right. He
also likes to throw things and has started doing weird role
playing sometimes, like this morning when he put Snoopy Dog in
a bucket and then put the school bus on top of him and told me,
“I’m hitting Snoopy Dog with the school bus.” All very
experimental and not angry, but I still don’t like it. I need
to reread the Love & Logic books because we are definitely
getting into new territory here. We were visiting with friends
tonight and Lex picked up a plastic snake and flicked it at
Tallis, not knowing how much it would hurt. Poor Tal ended up
with a welt on his neck and we headed home. Oddly enough, at
that same moment, Mike (Tallis’s dad) and I were talking about
the book Raising
Cain
and another similar book they had read, both of
which discuss the nature of boys. I’m definitely going to have
to work on my parenting skills in this department. Sometimes I
miss the tiny boy he used to be. Sometimes he’s still a tiny
boy that curls up in my lap for stories and says, “I love you
mommy.”

Fun with K’Nex

This is super dorky to post, but I’m going
to anyway :) Lex and I had a great time this morning playing
with the K’Nex toys he got from his friends Luca and Tallis for
his birthday. We made lots of things, but these are what we are
most proud of. Lex made the car with the red bumper and helped
with the garage. I made the “creature,” but he made it do
Tae-bo. We had fun.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JK65lw61rP4]

No naps = no good

Lex hasn’t had a nap since Monday, which
was a nap on me on the couch. I decided this week to stop
forcing the issue and see how he does. Lesson learned: still
not ready to give up naps! He has been falling asleep between
6:00-6:30 each night and usually half asleep all day. He’s also
been getting up at 5:30am all week, possibly because of the
early bedtimes. These past few days he even takes pretend naps
and tells me that he’s sooo tired. But when I offer to let lay
down in his bed and listen to some music (code for take a nap)
he always says no. We are going out tonight (bringing dinner to
the Diehn’s with their new little bundle) and I decided that a
nap is a requirement. I figured I’d fight the fight if
necessary. Instead he was taking play naps all morning and went
upstairs about a half hour ago and went right to sleep. It
would be nice to think he’s starting to appreciate the value of
a nap, but we’ll see.

Along the lines of
sleep (or lack thereof) we are moving him into a twin bed this
weekend. He’s been coming into our bed a lot lately and I often
find him sleeping in his bed with his legs hanging off the
side, or hear him bumping into the wall a lot. He started
coming into our room in the morning a few months ago and it was
sweet, then he came in earlier and slept with me for a bit
before we got up, now he comes in several times a night. He
just crawls into the bed next to me and keeps sleeping, but it
wakes me up. Then I have to decided if I should bring him back
to his bed (knowing he’ll be back again anyway) or just let him
sleep with us for the rest of the night. I think a bigger bed
is definitely in order. He’s very excited about it too. We got
new sheets this week and I was going to set the bed up
yesterday, but it’s so buried in the storage room I decided to
wait for Alan’s help this weekend. Maybe we’ll all get a little
more sleep after that.

A few movies

These are each about a minute long.

Lex and Eve wrestling. She’s such a trooper.
It’s fun to see them playing together and she even initiates
the rough-housing sometimes :)

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Zqur5Vg1EI]

Eve’s new skill, climbing up on the chair to
full standing position and letting go. She usually does this
quite quickly and ends up very giddy and proud of herself.
She’s a little cautious in this video though and I suspect it’s
because big brother is so close by. You gotta be on guard with
him around!

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-Dbx_9gcF0]

One neat thing about watching them
grow up is seeing how they handle the attention the other gets.
Some times Lex is indifferent to our attention to Eve, other
times he jumps in and praises her too, but some times he seems
to want the same attention and it’s interesting to see how he
goes about getting it. In this video he climbs up on the chair,
but even he knows that’s not much of an accomplishment for him.
Kids are so amazing to watch.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6tTld1-7xaY]

Confessions

I joined Weight Watchers tonight. It’s a
big move for me and kind of a final step into grown-up-ness.
Sigh. I’m still carrying far too much baby weight and I’ve
decided that you can’t call it baby weight after the first
year, after that it’s just plain fat! I’ve been thinking about
it for awhile and Alan’s health insurance offers partial
reimbursement for membership. I was looking at college
graduation photos (where I weighed about 15lbs more than I do
now and a whole lot more than my lowest weight pre-kids) and I
decided that now is the time! Anyway, this is probably more
than any of you really need to know, but such is life. Wish me
luck!

Doggie in the belly carrier

At bedtime tonight Lex said, “I think I
need to put doggie in the belly carrier.” He then proceeded to
gently place doggie on his belly, then wrap it up in the
blanket and wrap his blanket around himself and behind his
back. I, of course, dashed downstairs to get the camera
:)

Off and riding!

Happy June!

I
learned today that Lex can pedal his 2-wheeler (with training
wheels, of course). He’s had the bike since last summer (a
hand-me-down from Joshua), but was never quite big enough to
get the pedals around full circle. He was riding it with me a
few weeks ago and still having trouble. Alan took him out
yesterday and apparently he got the hang of it. I took him out
today and off he went, much to my surprise! He hasn’t yet got
the hang of steering while pedaling, but I’m sure that will
come soon enough. Guess who will be heading to the bike store
for a helmet ASAP? :)

Nap time in photos

Eve
patiently waits for her turn to nap. Some days I have to put
them down one at a time, so they don’t keep each other
awake.
(I
just noticed that when I did the red eye removal on this pic it
took the orange color out of her plug too!)

Lex
finally falls asleep on his “beautiful blue quilt” (his baby
blanket) with a “big blue pillow” — on the
floor!

Eve is
quite happy to be in bed. Of course she’s bopping around and
playing up there now.
She’s exactly 14 months old today, so maybe she’s
doing a little celebrating!

Apple

Sorry for all the posts in one day (in
case anyone’s complaining ;) ) but I wanted to give this one
it’s own attention. Eve said “apple” today! I was very
impressed. We had apples for lunch and she was trying to say
it, and then later, for snack, I asked her if she wanted apple
yogurt or blueberry yogurt. She pointed right to the apple one
and said “apple!” She has a pretty good vocabulary, I think. I
was trying to think of all the words she can say today and came
up with: apple, up, down, cup, bowl, water, more, no, mom, dad,
eye, ball, hat, cat, book, hi, hmm… I guess that’s all I can
think of now. She has several more, like sock and shoe, that
she’s working on, but can’t say it quite yet. It’s so much fun
to hear her talk. Lex likes to get in on the game too and says
“Eve, can you say water?” or whatever. It makes us all happy
when she talks. Probably good motivation for her :)

Beautiful day

We had a nice day today. The weather was
sunny, but not too hot. We went outside this morning and had
lunch on the new picnic table. They are so cute and LOVE eating
at the picnic table. To the point that when we go out Lex heads
for the table and immediately asks for a snack. I have to
encourage him to play for awhile before eating, since we
usually just ate before going outside! They both took a great
nap, then we headed to the Montshire for the afternoon. The
outdoor water park is open now and they had a blast! I love the
museum when it’s not too busy :)




What do you think of our new
widescreen picture setting?

Over the
past few days I was able to get pictures from Lex’s birthday
party up on photos.datdec.com.
There are a lot of them, but I didn’t post anywhere near the
total number taken! We have a photo happy family :) They are
also a bit out of order because they came from 3 different
cameras and I am too lazy to go rearrange them into the proper
order. Instead you can see the party unfold three times,
through three points of view :) Sort of. Anyway,
enjoy!