Growing like a weed... a beautiful, amazing, loving little weed.
Monday, December 31, 2012
Saturday, June 16, 2012
Favorite Things - 29 months
Right now, I think it'd probably be easier to list the things he *doesn't* like to do... which actually probably only includes one thing - brushing his teeth. The kid has so many toys thanks to his daddy's obsession to stock him up with every cool thrift store find. Cars, trucks, games, puzzles, mega blocks (from a friend), Fisher Price Little People (both the vintage ones and the newer chunky ones whose playsets almost all require batteries and make obnoxious noises and songs), baseball cards and other trading cards, books, balls, Smurfs, superheros, miscellaneous character toys, plush toys, and so on. I keep pointing out our lack of space and J's overabundance of playthings, but Daddy just can't help himself. If we had more storage space, I'd box up about half of his toys and start a rotation schedule with them. He plays with everything, though, and seems to rotate through them on his own. I'd bet that he plays with about half of every kind of toy each day and then the other half the next day. :P
His most recent acquisition is a Fisher Price Little People Racin' Ramps (I think it's called) parking garage.
He's had it for about a week now and plays with it several times every day for at least half an hour each time. Another recent favorite is a puzzle map of the United States. I originally picked it up intending to store it away for a few years, but J wanted it as soon as he saw it in the cart. He leans over it and studies it - checking out the pictures, colors, and shapes. He can actually do that one better than a simple 9-12 piece Playskool board puzzle. I'm guessing that's because each state is an individual picture in itself rather than a separate part of a big picture. He loves puzzles and still works on some of the more "age appropriate" ones almost every day, but he LOVES the U.S. puzzle. I'll have to look into finding a world map puzzle next. :)
Sensory bins are still fun - mostly water but rice, ooblek, and various beans and baubles, too. We found a water table at a yard sale last year, and he loves bringing different toys outside to play with in there. I try to save that for warmer days to keep it a little more "special" so he'll enjoy it more and for longer, but it's nice for beautiful days, too. So relaxing to just stand around in the shade dumping water back and forth from one cup or toy to another. He has a play kitchen with a removable sink, so he'll ask to have water in there sometimes, too. Sensory "bins" have been great to occupy him while I'm trying to cook or wash dishes. Sometimes, if I pull out one that he hasn't played with for a while, he'll spend a good thirty minutes with it. Other times, though, he just wants Mommy's undivided attention - no matter what he's playing with at the moment.
It's so cute to watch him play - imagining, making his little noises, singing parts of his favorite songs, imitating bits and pieces of his interactions with us and others. Sometimes he asks us (or PULLS us!) into his room just to stand there while he plays. Other times, he seems to get self-conscious when he catches me peeking around a corner watching and listening to him. "No, Mommy, noooo! Go 'way, Mommy!" His soft little mousey voice growing into a squeaky shriek. He's just now nearing two-and-a-half... and I'm already feeling sad thinking that one day his voice is going to change.
His most recent acquisition is a Fisher Price Little People Racin' Ramps (I think it's called) parking garage.
He's had it for about a week now and plays with it several times every day for at least half an hour each time. Another recent favorite is a puzzle map of the United States. I originally picked it up intending to store it away for a few years, but J wanted it as soon as he saw it in the cart. He leans over it and studies it - checking out the pictures, colors, and shapes. He can actually do that one better than a simple 9-12 piece Playskool board puzzle. I'm guessing that's because each state is an individual picture in itself rather than a separate part of a big picture. He loves puzzles and still works on some of the more "age appropriate" ones almost every day, but he LOVES the U.S. puzzle. I'll have to look into finding a world map puzzle next. :) 
Sensory bins are still fun - mostly water but rice, ooblek, and various beans and baubles, too. We found a water table at a yard sale last year, and he loves bringing different toys outside to play with in there. I try to save that for warmer days to keep it a little more "special" so he'll enjoy it more and for longer, but it's nice for beautiful days, too. So relaxing to just stand around in the shade dumping water back and forth from one cup or toy to another. He has a play kitchen with a removable sink, so he'll ask to have water in there sometimes, too. Sensory "bins" have been great to occupy him while I'm trying to cook or wash dishes. Sometimes, if I pull out one that he hasn't played with for a while, he'll spend a good thirty minutes with it. Other times, though, he just wants Mommy's undivided attention - no matter what he's playing with at the moment.It's so cute to watch him play - imagining, making his little noises, singing parts of his favorite songs, imitating bits and pieces of his interactions with us and others. Sometimes he asks us (or PULLS us!) into his room just to stand there while he plays. Other times, he seems to get self-conscious when he catches me peeking around a corner watching and listening to him. "No, Mommy, noooo! Go 'way, Mommy!" His soft little mousey voice growing into a squeaky shriek. He's just now nearing two-and-a-half... and I'm already feeling sad thinking that one day his voice is going to change.
Saturday, June 2, 2012
Simply Amazing
As little J grows, I'm continually amazed at his development - all of the connections going on through that cute, little head of his. Lately, he's been coming up to me and engaging me with a word, phrase, or song that we haven't talked about or heard for months. We picked up the book If You Take a Mouse To the Movies a few days ago, and it's become his new favorite. He's been focusing on one picture where the mouse is running with his hand outstretched... and saying, "mihl... mihl..." (thinking of the ASL sign for "milk"). That's not exceptional in itself since we still talk about signing and he still uses a few every now and then. Today, though, he signed and said "Milk More" and asked to see the "movie". He was asking to see a fun signing video on youtube that we hadn't watched in at least five or six months! Amazing!
Over the past few months, J's learned all of the letters of the alphabet (uppercase and lowercase) and can enunciate almost all of their sounds when asked. He picked all of this up by choosing different letters on starfall.com during teethbrushing sessions (since we still can't get through brushing without an entertaining distraction). I think he can sing the ABC's pretty well, too, but it's not something I ask him to sing/rehearse or anything. Same with his numbers 1 through 10 (but might skip number 6?). Sometimes I'll catch him singing to himself while playing independently; sometimes he sings along with me and fills in letters/number if I stop at a certain one. Most of the time, though, he doesn't like for us to sing. ;P "NO, Mama, NO... no sinin'!"
We've always read at least one bedtime story each night - sometimes two or three. Then, of course, we read throughout the day, too, if he asks. He probably has at least twenty books that we've read about fifty times each and now sits down and "reads" a few to himself every now and then. It's so cute to watch him look at the pictures and turn the pages and then to hear his soft voice babble a few words that relate to the storyline for each page.
Over the past few months, J's learned all of the letters of the alphabet (uppercase and lowercase) and can enunciate almost all of their sounds when asked. He picked all of this up by choosing different letters on starfall.com during teethbrushing sessions (since we still can't get through brushing without an entertaining distraction). I think he can sing the ABC's pretty well, too, but it's not something I ask him to sing/rehearse or anything. Same with his numbers 1 through 10 (but might skip number 6?). Sometimes I'll catch him singing to himself while playing independently; sometimes he sings along with me and fills in letters/number if I stop at a certain one. Most of the time, though, he doesn't like for us to sing. ;P "NO, Mama, NO... no sinin'!"
We've always read at least one bedtime story each night - sometimes two or three. Then, of course, we read throughout the day, too, if he asks. He probably has at least twenty books that we've read about fifty times each and now sits down and "reads" a few to himself every now and then. It's so cute to watch him look at the pictures and turn the pages and then to hear his soft voice babble a few words that relate to the storyline for each page.
Tuesday, April 3, 2012
Jakey-Speak
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I've always wanted to make sure to keep an ongoing record of the cute and funny things that J says over the years. He's not old enough yet for much funny conversation, but he can be a very funny little guy and loves goofing around and being silly. When kids are this little, though, their interpretations are so literal... and it's amusing how small their literal world starts out.
A few months ago, our oven mysteriously stopped working and, after a couple of days, locked itself up on us. Seriously! We tried and tried to figure out how to get the lock to slide back open, but nothing worked. The landlord finally came over to check it out one day and was talking with us about the gas and how the oven ran on gas AND electric while the burners were just gas. Anyway, the word "gas" kept coming up and after a few minutes, J (standing next to me in the living room) started squatting down and grunting then popped up and said, "Gaaaaah! Gaaaaah!" And then he squatted down and did it all over again! Apparently he thought we were talking about a different kind of gas. ;D
His speech is still moving right along, but he has a few everyday words that he just can't pronounce right repeatedly yet.
cereal - cereGUL
Diego - Dee-LAY-go
binky - baybayKEY or buhbuhkey
banana - buhnahUH
roller coaster - rohlur pahsur
Wonder Woman (he's obsessed!) - ruhnruh RUHmin
He still uses sign language for some words (especially when I'm having a hard time trying to figure out what he's saying), butJ's really been persistent with his communication and gets frustrated when we ask him to repeat something or misunderstand him.
He's developed a fixation with his binky lately - wanting control of it throughout the day instead of leaving it in his crib or throwing it in the sink when he wakes up in the morning or after his nap. We have him leave it inside when he plays outside and have him take it out when he's talking to us. It's getting annoying having to remind him to remove it all of the time ("I can't understand you with your Binky in your mouth."), but I'm hopeful that this is just a phase that he'll outgrown quickly if we don't make an issue out of it. Fingers crossed.
UPDATE: Around the 15th, I noticed his two-year molar peeking through the gum line on the right side. I'm guessing this must be the reason for the extra binky need recently. He had a horrible screaming session the following night that was only helped with letting him wake up to play out in the living room for about an hour. No other bouts since then, but the left side molar has yet to make an appearance. Hopefully, once those both come in, the binky usage will go back to normal and maybe someday soon we can be done with it completely. Fingers crossed.
I've always wanted to make sure to keep an ongoing record of the cute and funny things that J says over the years. He's not old enough yet for much funny conversation, but he can be a very funny little guy and loves goofing around and being silly. When kids are this little, though, their interpretations are so literal... and it's amusing how small their literal world starts out.
A few months ago, our oven mysteriously stopped working and, after a couple of days, locked itself up on us. Seriously! We tried and tried to figure out how to get the lock to slide back open, but nothing worked. The landlord finally came over to check it out one day and was talking with us about the gas and how the oven ran on gas AND electric while the burners were just gas. Anyway, the word "gas" kept coming up and after a few minutes, J (standing next to me in the living room) started squatting down and grunting then popped up and said, "Gaaaaah! Gaaaaah!" And then he squatted down and did it all over again! Apparently he thought we were talking about a different kind of gas. ;D
His speech is still moving right along, but he has a few everyday words that he just can't pronounce right repeatedly yet.
cereal - cereGUL
Diego - Dee-LAY-go
binky - baybayKEY or buhbuhkey
banana - buhnahUH
roller coaster - rohlur pahsur
Wonder Woman (he's obsessed!) - ruhnruh RUHmin
He still uses sign language for some words (especially when I'm having a hard time trying to figure out what he's saying), butJ's really been persistent with his communication and gets frustrated when we ask him to repeat something or misunderstand him.
He's developed a fixation with his binky lately - wanting control of it throughout the day instead of leaving it in his crib or throwing it in the sink when he wakes up in the morning or after his nap. We have him leave it inside when he plays outside and have him take it out when he's talking to us. It's getting annoying having to remind him to remove it all of the time ("I can't understand you with your Binky in your mouth."), but I'm hopeful that this is just a phase that he'll outgrown quickly if we don't make an issue out of it. Fingers crossed.
UPDATE: Around the 15th, I noticed his two-year molar peeking through the gum line on the right side. I'm guessing this must be the reason for the extra binky need recently. He had a horrible screaming session the following night that was only helped with letting him wake up to play out in the living room for about an hour. No other bouts since then, but the left side molar has yet to make an appearance. Hopefully, once those both come in, the binky usage will go back to normal and maybe someday soon we can be done with it completely. Fingers crossed.
Wednesday, March 28, 2012
You Know You're a Mom When...
You know you're a mom when...
you're excited to hear thunder after three days of no rain for the sole reason that this now means your little one will have puddles to play with the next time you take a walk.
you're excited to hear thunder after three days of no rain for the sole reason that this now means your little one will have puddles to play with the next time you take a walk.
Monday, March 19, 2012
First Haircut *sniff, sniff*
Pre-baby days, I alway used to say that - if I had a boy - I would just let his hair grow out and let him decide if and when to cut it as he got older. J never had much hair when he was a baby, and it took a good year-and-a-half for it to grow long enough to even be worthy of a little trim. I did a little snipping last summer when it started hanging in his eyes (just because I couldn't stand it myself) and have trimmed it a couple times again since then. Just his "bangs" and then a little around his ears.
Summer's coming, though. And midwest summers are HOT. and HUMID. There's a picture I took last summer of J toddling around outside with a "mohawk" I gave him made possible only because of how much his face was sweating with all of the heat and humidity. :P It was time for Daddy's spring haircut, so we took J in, too.
He sat next to me in the waiting chairs watching the barbers snip and buzz away on the other men. He pointed at the piles of hair on the floor ("Mama... Mama... look hair.") and at the stray clippings that fell on the capes. Daddy hopped up for his turn; J watched and pointed and watched. His turn came, and I think we were more nervous FOR him than he was. I snapped a
couple of pictures and sat down while Daddy stood there and held J's hand. I think J probably would have been fine without the hand-holding, though. Sometimes, Daddy's still a little too overprotective. ;) In Daddy's defense, though, J *was* just sitting up on top of a box in the chair and was a little unsteady.He just sat still, though, and tried to follow
the barber's prompts to either look at me or look out the window at the cars and trucks passing by. No fussing... no hesitation... no apparent nervousness whatsoever. I was a little surprised with how well he did, but then again... J's a pretty mellow, easy-going kid - especially out in public. So far.The barber cut it quite a bit shorter than I was envisioning, but I'm sure it'll grow back pretty quick. Plus it will be even cooler for summer.
Wednesday, February 15, 2012
Bad Mommy Blogger and the Beginning of Year Two!
Yes, yes... I'm a terrible mommy blogger. You can thank our computer, though. It's been having issues for close to a year now... probably due to our lack of upkeep - but still! Most days it will take us two hours just to do things (click on links, read emails, etc.) that would normally take someone maybe twenty minutes to do! It's super slow, freezes up for minutes at a time (sometimes blanking out the screen), and sometimes just shuts the browser window down for no apparent reason other than it feels like it. We're working on getting it cleaned up, but in the meantime I really haven't felt like blogging and dealing with all of those issues. Anyway, I hate writing blogs without including pictures. To me, a blog entry without pictures is like a... I don't know. I'm terrible with analogies. ;P It's just incomplete. You can read a book about a person's life, but pictures and video BRING the life. Ya know? And the majority of my pictures haven't been edited (for sharpness, brightness, red eye, etc.) because it takes forever to edit them on this slow computer. I suppose I *could* have been blogging all along and then just go back and throw the pictures into the posts whenever I got around to it, but that just didn't feel right at the time. Now, though? Now it's been waaaay too long since my last post that, at this point, I just don't care anymore! I need to write!
Little J. Where do I even start? These past few months have both dragged by and flown by at the same time. Not having much disposable income at all, we really haven't strayed far from the house very often. I feel like he's leading a pretty sheltered life, but what can we do? I take him for walks around our neighborhood, but there aren't any kids close to his age at all. The ones who *are* here are in school most of the day. So, we visit the neighbor's backyard rooster and chickens (through the fence), poke around in the dirt and gravel for cool rocks, sticks, acorns, nuts and so forth and play with them in his water table, squish berries between our fingers, splash in puddles and throw things in them, look skyward for hawks and airplanes, and say "hi" to the neighborhood dogs. He's getting much more stable on his feet and his pace is getting quicker, so we've actually been making full laps around the neighborhood lately. Well, we were until it started getting colder and raining more often, anyway. I usually try to get him outside for at least fifteen to thirty minutes a few times a week. On the nicer days, we're outside for close to an hour-and-a-half.
In my last entry, I wrote about Halloween... but I forgot a cute story. At the downtown merchants' fall/Halloween festival, there was a little boy in a cow costume at one of the stores. J leaned in and gave him a hug... and the other boy hugged him back. As we were leaving, the little cow looked so sad... apparently confused as to why J was leaving and not staying to play with him. This became a story that J talked about daily for weeks on end. And he still talks about it from time to time even now. "Caaahw. Huuuug. Sah-ee. Ticteee. Can-ee. Puuuh." "Yeah. You were trick-or-treating, and you saw a little boy in his cow costume. You gave him a hug. He wanted to play, but we had to say, 'Sorry. We have to go trick-or-treating so they can put more candy in my pumpkin!'" Adorable.
We had Thanksgiving at my brother's and sister-in-law's house. My mom came down and my SIL's family was there (her mom, dad, brother, and aunt) as well as one of my brother's longtime friends and his parents. Jacob was happy to see everyone and loved spending some time with his baby cousin. He doesn't tend to eat well at social gatherings - too much to see, too many people to hug -, so he was down from the table within five to ten minutes running from person to person to baby person and trying to hunt down their fuzzy kitty cat.
Our Christmas tree was still stored away up my dad's house, so we spent the weekend up there two weeks before Christmas and then put it up down here just a week or so before Christmas. Jacob loved helping put it together and then decorating the bottom half with his ornaments. Of course, he wanted to put all of the ornaments on the same branches, so he needed a little help with helping. ;) We had him open his stocking and a few presents on Christmas morning and then headed back up to my dad's house to get settled and then head over to my mom's for dinner.
He really got into unwrapping presents this year, but he was still distracted enough with playing with everything once we got home that it took several more days before he finished unwrapping all of his presents from us. We kept the tree up until after his birthday, and he still points to the corner where we had it set up and talks about fairly often.
My dad gave him a talking father-and-son teddy bear set last year with the daddy bear reading "Twas The Night Before Christmas" and the son interjection off and on during the story. Jacob loved playing in his room and pressing it over and over again to get it to play. As soon as the story was over, it started all over again.
I planned a birthday party for him at home and went with a monkey theme. He's still loving the book "Hug" (where a monkey in the jungle goes searching for his mother and encounters many other wild animals all with *their* mothers getting hugs) and still loves bananas... so I went with a monkey theme. I didn't have any help planning, baking, decorating or anything, so it was all pretty simple... but I think it looked nice. We had thought that he would have at least three kiddo friends at his party, but none of them could come for one reason or another. One was having a bad day, one was sick, and the other had just become a "big sister" that weekend. Our place is pretty small, so we still had a decent house-full with my mom, her husband, my brother, my SIL, my nephew, and two of our friends. Jacob enjoyed the company, but I think he was actually a little sad that none of his friends made it since we had been talking about that happening for several days. He's all about hugs, though, so he got and gave plenty of those.
A few weeks ago, some of our St. Louis area friends came down, and J finally had his first hiking experience. Sadly, we got going too late and had to turn around and head back down the hill before the daylight completely disappeared, but J had a great time. It was already getting dusk when we got there, so I only got two half-way decent pictures. This is one of them.
D and I got our taxes done and sent out last week, so hopefully we'll get our refund back fairly soon and be able to get "out and about" a little more often... at least for a little while. Our refund is a decent amount, but so much of it is already "spoken for" - car repairs, credit card bills, and hopefully a washer and dryer. We were hoping to be able to take a trip out to the east coast to go visit D's parents (J's never met them yet... and, after eighteen years of being with D, neither have I!), but I'm not sure we'll have enough after everything's said and done. I guess there's always next year. :/
Little J. Where do I even start? These past few months have both dragged by and flown by at the same time. Not having much disposable income at all, we really haven't strayed far from the house very often. I feel like he's leading a pretty sheltered life, but what can we do? I take him for walks around our neighborhood, but there aren't any kids close to his age at all. The ones who *are* here are in school most of the day. So, we visit the neighbor's backyard rooster and chickens (through the fence), poke around in the dirt and gravel for cool rocks, sticks, acorns, nuts and so forth and play with them in his water table, squish berries between our fingers, splash in puddles and throw things in them, look skyward for hawks and airplanes, and say "hi" to the neighborhood dogs. He's getting much more stable on his feet and his pace is getting quicker, so we've actually been making full laps around the neighborhood lately. Well, we were until it started getting colder and raining more often, anyway. I usually try to get him outside for at least fifteen to thirty minutes a few times a week. On the nicer days, we're outside for close to an hour-and-a-half.
In my last entry, I wrote about Halloween... but I forgot a cute story. At the downtown merchants' fall/Halloween festival, there was a little boy in a cow costume at one of the stores. J leaned in and gave him a hug... and the other boy hugged him back. As we were leaving, the little cow looked so sad... apparently confused as to why J was leaving and not staying to play with him. This became a story that J talked about daily for weeks on end. And he still talks about it from time to time even now. "Caaahw. Huuuug. Sah-ee. Ticteee. Can-ee. Puuuh." "Yeah. You were trick-or-treating, and you saw a little boy in his cow costume. You gave him a hug. He wanted to play, but we had to say, 'Sorry. We have to go trick-or-treating so they can put more candy in my pumpkin!'" Adorable.
We had Thanksgiving at my brother's and sister-in-law's house. My mom came down and my SIL's family was there (her mom, dad, brother, and aunt) as well as one of my brother's longtime friends and his parents. Jacob was happy to see everyone and loved spending some time with his baby cousin. He doesn't tend to eat well at social gatherings - too much to see, too many people to hug -, so he was down from the table within five to ten minutes running from person to person to baby person and trying to hunt down their fuzzy kitty cat.
Our Christmas tree was still stored away up my dad's house, so we spent the weekend up there two weeks before Christmas and then put it up down here just a week or so before Christmas. Jacob loved helping put it together and then decorating the bottom half with his ornaments. Of course, he wanted to put all of the ornaments on the same branches, so he needed a little help with helping. ;) We had him open his stocking and a few presents on Christmas morning and then headed back up to my dad's house to get settled and then head over to my mom's for dinner.
He really got into unwrapping presents this year, but he was still distracted enough with playing with everything once we got home that it took several more days before he finished unwrapping all of his presents from us. We kept the tree up until after his birthday, and he still points to the corner where we had it set up and talks about fairly often.
My dad gave him a talking father-and-son teddy bear set last year with the daddy bear reading "Twas The Night Before Christmas" and the son interjection off and on during the story. Jacob loved playing in his room and pressing it over and over again to get it to play. As soon as the story was over, it started all over again.
I planned a birthday party for him at home and went with a monkey theme. He's still loving the book "Hug" (where a monkey in the jungle goes searching for his mother and encounters many other wild animals all with *their* mothers getting hugs) and still loves bananas... so I went with a monkey theme. I didn't have any help planning, baking, decorating or anything, so it was all pretty simple... but I think it looked nice. We had thought that he would have at least three kiddo friends at his party, but none of them could come for one reason or another. One was having a bad day, one was sick, and the other had just become a "big sister" that weekend. Our place is pretty small, so we still had a decent house-full with my mom, her husband, my brother, my SIL, my nephew, and two of our friends. Jacob enjoyed the company, but I think he was actually a little sad that none of his friends made it since we had been talking about that happening for several days. He's all about hugs, though, so he got and gave plenty of those.
A few weeks ago, some of our St. Louis area friends came down, and J finally had his first hiking experience. Sadly, we got going too late and had to turn around and head back down the hill before the daylight completely disappeared, but J had a great time. It was already getting dusk when we got there, so I only got two half-way decent pictures. This is one of them.
D and I got our taxes done and sent out last week, so hopefully we'll get our refund back fairly soon and be able to get "out and about" a little more often... at least for a little while. Our refund is a decent amount, but so much of it is already "spoken for" - car repairs, credit card bills, and hopefully a washer and dryer. We were hoping to be able to take a trip out to the east coast to go visit D's parents (J's never met them yet... and, after eighteen years of being with D, neither have I!), but I'm not sure we'll have enough after everything's said and done. I guess there's always next year. :/
Tuesday, November 1, 2011
"Tick Teet!"
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While I would love to live in area where it's possible to map out a vegan-only Halloween trick-or-treating route, we don't. And while I would love to just have an all-vegan kid Halloween party here, our friends with kids are spread too far apart. And since D~ can still down candy like he downs soda, he'll be getting all of J~'s candy this year anyway.
The Friday before Halloween, we went to my brother's and sister-in-law's place for his annual Halloween party. Now that he's a daddy himself, his parties are a bit more tame than they used to be. Most of the people there had kids in tow, and there was a DVD projector in the backyard playing "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown!" on the fence.
I made some butternut squash and leek soup and some yummy, fluffy pumpkin muffins, but I don't think more than one person tried either food. It was more of a snacking, grab-food-and-mingle type of party, so finger foods or sweets probably would have been a better choice if I had actually expected to take less stuff back home with us. D~ and A~ are usually awesome about making sure there's something there that J~ and I can eat at smaller, family gatherings, but this time I'm glad I brought what I did. D~ was making burgers and hot dogs and threw a portobello on the side for me and the little guy, but every other dish, side, and dessert there was filled or layered with one animal product or another.
At any rate, we had a good time. J~ enjoyed interacting with the other kids and especially getting tickled by one of the older boys as he (J) did laps around the living room. We spent most of the evening chasing after him and keeping an eye on him in and out of the house. They had a fire going in their fire pit, so we all sat out there for a while. J's really been into fire and candles lately, so he has pretty captivated with the flames. :P
Carbondale had their annual Halloween kid's festival and merchant trick-or-treating in one of the shopping plazas in town on Saturday. The papers apparently had the ending time wrong because the people managing the inflatables started letting all of the air out of them a good hour before we had expected. So, J~ didn't get to bounce around that afternoon, but he had a great time seeing all of the other kids in their costumes and walking around trying to figure out what trick-or-treating ("tick teet!") is all about.
On Sunday, we just went to the park and enjoyed the fresh air.
Not wanting to worry about the cold weather and having to walk and/or carry him from house-to-house, we just took him to the mall on Halloween night. It's funny... that's probably the busiest I've EVER seen our little mall. He did great walking around on his own, holding his pumpkin, saying "tick teet", and signing "thank you" for close to an hour, I'd say. We passed the little Science Center, and J almost had a full-blown meltdown when he couldn't pry the glass wall sections apart to get to the train table. He's never been there to play before, but he's played with train tables before. :P We stopped by and visited with D's dad afterwards, so Papa got to see him in his costume, too.
He was content to just play with the candy the next day - dumping it out of his pumpkin and stuffing it into the openings of his shape sorting toys. I had Dave pick up some Yummy Earth Organic lollipops, so he tried a few different flavors of those. I bought a couple of dark chocolate mini bars from Equal
While I would love to live in area where it's possible to map out a vegan-only Halloween trick-or-treating route, we don't. And while I would love to just have an all-vegan kid Halloween party here, our friends with kids are spread too far apart. And since D~ can still down candy like he downs soda, he'll be getting all of J~'s candy this year anyway.
The Friday before Halloween, we went to my brother's and sister-in-law's place for his annual Halloween party. Now that he's a daddy himself, his parties are a bit more tame than they used to be. Most of the people there had kids in tow, and there was a DVD projector in the backyard playing "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown!" on the fence.
I made some butternut squash and leek soup and some yummy, fluffy pumpkin muffins, but I don't think more than one person tried either food. It was more of a snacking, grab-food-and-mingle type of party, so finger foods or sweets probably would have been a better choice if I had actually expected to take less stuff back home with us. D~ and A~ are usually awesome about making sure there's something there that J~ and I can eat at smaller, family gatherings, but this time I'm glad I brought what I did. D~ was making burgers and hot dogs and threw a portobello on the side for me and the little guy, but every other dish, side, and dessert there was filled or layered with one animal product or another.
At any rate, we had a good time. J~ enjoyed interacting with the other kids and especially getting tickled by one of the older boys as he (J) did laps around the living room. We spent most of the evening chasing after him and keeping an eye on him in and out of the house. They had a fire going in their fire pit, so we all sat out there for a while. J's really been into fire and candles lately, so he has pretty captivated with the flames. :P
Carbondale had their annual Halloween kid's festival and merchant trick-or-treating in one of the shopping plazas in town on Saturday. The papers apparently had the ending time wrong because the people managing the inflatables started letting all of the air out of them a good hour before we had expected. So, J~ didn't get to bounce around that afternoon, but he had a great time seeing all of the other kids in their costumes and walking around trying to figure out what trick-or-treating ("tick teet!") is all about.
On Sunday, we just went to the park and enjoyed the fresh air.
Not wanting to worry about the cold weather and having to walk and/or carry him from house-to-house, we just took him to the mall on Halloween night. It's funny... that's probably the busiest I've EVER seen our little mall. He did great walking around on his own, holding his pumpkin, saying "tick teet", and signing "thank you" for close to an hour, I'd say. We passed the little Science Center, and J almost had a full-blown meltdown when he couldn't pry the glass wall sections apart to get to the train table. He's never been there to play before, but he's played with train tables before. :P We stopped by and visited with D's dad afterwards, so Papa got to see him in his costume, too.
He was content to just play with the candy the next day - dumping it out of his pumpkin and stuffing it into the openings of his shape sorting toys. I had Dave pick up some Yummy Earth Organic lollipops, so he tried a few different flavors of those. I bought a couple of dark chocolate mini bars from Equal
Sunday, October 2, 2011
Room Redesign!
After my last post about struggling with time and creativity, I set to work in J~'s room creating corners, special play areas, an art wall, and more. I spent four hours (after he went to bed, of course) moving furniture, boxing up toys that I wanted him to take a break from for a while, figuring out where to put what, and trying to make the room more inviting than just another play space. What previously was just a room filled with extra toys and a place to store his clothes is now a playroom/discovery room complete with an art space, a comfy place to lay around and read/look at books, a table for free play/building block towers/doing puzzles/experimenting with play-doh, and a dress-up corner with a full-length mirror. I was so happy with myself - and sooo ready for bed! - when I stood back and looked in from the doorway... and so excited to see J~'s reaction the next morning.
When I opened the door to let him in the room, he looked around with a puzzled look at first... but then his lips turned up into the biggest smile as I talked about each area that he was looking at. I think his favorite area that morning was the closet-turned-comfy-reading-nook. Brown Bear, Brown Bear and Polar Bear, Polar Bear have been two of his favorite books for a while now. We cozied up on the blankets and read the books while playing with the stuffed bears and looking at the pictures I put up on the walls.
It took J~ a week or so to really check out everything in the dress-up basket and start using the mirror to see how he looked. He's still not really into trying to "dress up" yet, but he takes at least a few of the various items out every day - usually the hats or headbands (bunny ears and devil horns). D~ had given him some mannequin heads a while back (with Mexican wrestling masks on them), and I took those out recently to show him that he could dress them up, too. After dressing up one of the heads myself with a hat, some sunglasses, and a lei, I picked out different items one-by-one and asked J~ which head they should go on. He was happy to point and pick between the different heads and even tried to place a few items on by himself.
He played with the blocks and Little People quite a bit for the first few days, but lately he's been using the table more for the puzzles, Play-doh, and free play.
I have an old alarm clock radio in his room and pull out the box of music toys every other day or so in an attempt to increase his interest both with the instruments and with dancing/silly-movement in general, but he mainly just likes it for background noise. I act silly and move around with the music hoping that he'll follow my lead, but he just smiles at me, bops in place once or twice, and goes back to whatever he was doing. Oh well. Whatever makes him happy.
For the first round with the Art Wall, I decided to put up four different pieces of construction paper and taped a blank greeting card in the middle of each piece. This gives him an idea of where the coloring should stay (with a little initial prompting). I hung some stickers in a chip clip on a mug hook above the paper. Ideally, I want to give him freedom to use materials freely, but I really don't want stickers all over his floor, door, carpet, table, bookcase... you get the idea. ;P For the same reason, I put the crayons in a cup on top of his bookcase so that he has to ask for each of these if he wants to use them. He loves the crayons... but moreso to carry around from room to room than to actually color with on the cards. :P J~ will make a few vertical or diagonal lines with one, two, or three different colors on a few of the cards, but then he's done. Since I've been pretty focused on just being a Mom for the past year-and-a-half+, I haven't done any art myself... so he hasn't really even seen anyone coloring (aside from brief encounters with kids at our town's Friday Night Fairs). Anyway... so I've put some more paper in the room and try to spend a little time every few days just making doodles and letting him see me color for enjoyment. He loves finger painting, but that's definitely not a good art medium for carpeted floors and independent creativity time. :P
J~ really seems to enjoy his room a lot more now that there are more defined activity areas... and just more areas in general. It's been almost a month already since I did all of this, and he's still enjoying it. I want to try to change it up every so often, though. Not so much the furniture or layout of the room but the activities at each "station". Regular building blocks (or other open-ended materials) instead of the Mega Bloks... different books in his bookcase... different posters in the reading nook... different wall-friendly art activities... more dress-up clothes and accessories.
I want to start introducing weekly/monthly/seasonal themes and create a little more structure to our weekdays. Maybe have different activites for each day... but that's another post in itself.
When I opened the door to let him in the room, he looked around with a puzzled look at first... but then his lips turned up into the biggest smile as I talked about each area that he was looking at. I think his favorite area that morning was the closet-turned-comfy-reading-nook. Brown Bear, Brown Bear and Polar Bear, Polar Bear have been two of his favorite books for a while now. We cozied up on the blankets and read the books while playing with the stuffed bears and looking at the pictures I put up on the walls.
It took J~ a week or so to really check out everything in the dress-up basket and start using the mirror to see how he looked. He's still not really into trying to "dress up" yet, but he takes at least a few of the various items out every day - usually the hats or headbands (bunny ears and devil horns). D~ had given him some mannequin heads a while back (with Mexican wrestling masks on them), and I took those out recently to show him that he could dress them up, too. After dressing up one of the heads myself with a hat, some sunglasses, and a lei, I picked out different items one-by-one and asked J~ which head they should go on. He was happy to point and pick between the different heads and even tried to place a few items on by himself.
He played with the blocks and Little People quite a bit for the first few days, but lately he's been using the table more for the puzzles, Play-doh, and free play.
I have an old alarm clock radio in his room and pull out the box of music toys every other day or so in an attempt to increase his interest both with the instruments and with dancing/silly-movement in general, but he mainly just likes it for background noise. I act silly and move around with the music hoping that he'll follow my lead, but he just smiles at me, bops in place once or twice, and goes back to whatever he was doing. Oh well. Whatever makes him happy.
For the first round with the Art Wall, I decided to put up four different pieces of construction paper and taped a blank greeting card in the middle of each piece. This gives him an idea of where the coloring should stay (with a little initial prompting). I hung some stickers in a chip clip on a mug hook above the paper. Ideally, I want to give him freedom to use materials freely, but I really don't want stickers all over his floor, door, carpet, table, bookcase... you get the idea. ;P For the same reason, I put the crayons in a cup on top of his bookcase so that he has to ask for each of these if he wants to use them. He loves the crayons... but moreso to carry around from room to room than to actually color with on the cards. :P J~ will make a few vertical or diagonal lines with one, two, or three different colors on a few of the cards, but then he's done. Since I've been pretty focused on just being a Mom for the past year-and-a-half+, I haven't done any art myself... so he hasn't really even seen anyone coloring (aside from brief encounters with kids at our town's Friday Night Fairs). Anyway... so I've put some more paper in the room and try to spend a little time every few days just making doodles and letting him see me color for enjoyment. He loves finger painting, but that's definitely not a good art medium for carpeted floors and independent creativity time. :P
J~ really seems to enjoy his room a lot more now that there are more defined activity areas... and just more areas in general. It's been almost a month already since I did all of this, and he's still enjoying it. I want to try to change it up every so often, though. Not so much the furniture or layout of the room but the activities at each "station". Regular building blocks (or other open-ended materials) instead of the Mega Bloks... different books in his bookcase... different posters in the reading nook... different wall-friendly art activities... more dress-up clothes and accessories.
I want to start introducing weekly/monthly/seasonal themes and create a little more structure to our weekdays. Maybe have different activites for each day... but that's another post in itself.
MINE!
Property Law As Viewed By A Toddler
1. If I like it, it's mine.2. If it's in my hand, it's mine.
3. If I can take it from you, it's mine.
4. If I had it a little while ago, it's mine.
5. If it's mine, it must never appear to be yours in any way.
6. If I'm doing or building something, all the pieces are mine.
7. If it looks like it's mine, it's mine.
8. If I saw it first, it's mine.
9. If I can see it, it's mine.
10. If I think it's mine, it's mine.
11. If I want it, it's mine.
12. If I "need" it, it's mine (yes, I know the difference between "want" and "need"!).
13. If I say it's mine, it's mine.
14. If you don't stop me from playing with it, it's mine.
15. If you tell me I can play with it, it's mine.
16. If it will upset me too much when you take it away from me, it's mine.
17. If I (think I) can play with it better than you can, it's mine.
18. If I play with it long enough, it's mine.
19. If you are playing with something and you put it down, it's mine.
20. If it's broken, it's yours (no wait, all the pieces are mine).
I've seen this online a few times, but all of this has just recently started to apply to J~. He doesn't get the opportunity to interact with many kiddos right now (at least at home). So when the one neighborhood tot comes over to play and starts pushing Jacob's lawn mower around... J~ gives a little protest cry and looks over at me as if in disbelief that someone else is touching his stuff! He does great when we're in the house pretending to share things with his Cabbage Patch baby, but I guess it's a little easier to share with an inanimate toy rather than a real life nemesis. ;O)
I've seen this online a few times, but all of this has just recently started to apply to J~. He doesn't get the opportunity to interact with many kiddos right now (at least at home). So when the one neighborhood tot comes over to play and starts pushing Jacob's lawn mower around... J~ gives a little protest cry and looks over at me as if in disbelief that someone else is touching his stuff! He does great when we're in the house pretending to share things with his Cabbage Patch baby, but I guess it's a little easier to share with an inanimate toy rather than a real life nemesis. ;O)
Friday, September 2, 2011
Struggling With Time and (Lack of) Creativity
Finances are pretty tight, but D~ and I are trying to make a go of me taking some time off work to be a SAHM for a while. I feel like I've missed out on so much of little J~'s life up to this point. He's grown so much, and I missed out on so much of his babyhood. Now that I've been home with him 24-7 for a couple of months, though, I'm having some mixed emotions about our days.
Most times J~ and I just "hang out"
and spend the day playing around the house - trains, cars, playing with his baby (cabbage patch boy) or other toys in his toy stroller, blowing bubbles, reading books, playing with play-doh, playing with his kitchen set, etc. I love watching him play and trying to get into his world. I love talking with him about things, seeing his little mind processing what I say and then listening to him trying to babble-repeat the important word(s) of what I just said.I love this stage right now, but I literally can't get three minutes of peace while he's awake. If I'm not by his side playing, he seeks me out within a minute or two and tries to pull me to wherever he wants us to be. If I don't go with him or try to tell him to wait a minute, he screams/cries. I want to savor this time with him because I know this won't last for too long, but sometimes I get so frustrated with his inability to entertain himself for just five minutes.
I used to be a pretty creative/crafty person before he was born and literally have done *nothing* (save for three scrapbook pages) since he was born. I miss my crafty time, but I just don't have the energy (and my mind is zapped) after he goes to bed at night. I thought that after being home with him for a while, his clingy-ness would die down and I would be able to have a few minutes to just sit down and do *something* creative. I hoped that maybe I'd be able to sit down with a sketch pad for a few minutes and draw and that he'd either want to draw, too, for a few minutes or else go about doing his own thing. But that just doesn't happen. Maybe a lot of you have kiddos like this, too... always on-the-go from one thing to the next and always wanting you to be right there with them. Yes? Please say "yes"! :P
A while back I "liked" this one mom's blog on facebook but never really took a look at it. I just spent a little time browsing through the entries she tagged for when her kids were 15-19 months old, and I'm amazed at the things she did/does with them. I'm jealous of all of the educational/sensory toys and art supplies she has for them - not to mention actually having a home big enough for everything! - and envious of her enthusiasm and patience at letting her kids do so many art, cooking, and life skill activities at such young ages. I guess maybe I just need to try to work on "loosening up" and not worrying so much about messes. We just don't have much practical space for being messy (EVERY room in this place is carpeted except for the eat-in kitchen!) and we don't have a dining table at the moment.
*Bubble Art at the Friday Night Fair - He loooved this... and loves seeing his art displayed and talking about it.
I guess I should sit down some night and evaluate the house layout, the furniture arrangement, and so on... figure out what I activities I want to focus on with J~ and what I need to do to make the place more accessible for him (a lower clothes rod in his closet and maybe one of those hanging organizers so he can pick out his own clothes, bowls/cups/silverware at his level somewhere in the kitchen, etc.). Make a list of art/craft/cooking/learning activities that I want to do, find/gather/buy the supplies, and find a good spot for them. I think I'll feel better about our time together (and my lack of solo crafting time) if I can find more ways to be creative and productive WITH him.
Saturday, August 27, 2011
Pottying Update
August 14, 2011
Pottying was going fantastic once I was out of school (work) for the summer. I’ve heard/read that cloth diapered babies generally catch on to pottying quite a bit sooner than babies diapered in disposables because they can actually feel the wetness since cloth diapers don’t magically absorb the pee instantly like chemical-laden disposables ones do. At just seventeen months old, J~ was down to only two accidents during the day on most days and even had a few dry-all-day days after just a week or two of working on it all day long. And even when he had “accidents”, it was typically that he had just started to go a little, realized/felt what was happening, came to tell us “paaah” (his word for “potty”), and finished going in his potty. I was so proud of him and really felt good about my efforts in making a go of it.
Unfortunately, moving really threw things off. I knew to expect a decrease in his consistency for a while after a change, but I didn’t realize how bad it could get and for how long. We have yet to have an all-dry day here, and Jacob typically has accidents at least five or six times each day. Most times, J~ will wet himself just minutes after he’s gently shaken his head and answered, “Nooo”, when we ask him if he has to go or when he’s gotten off of his toilet from us trying to get him to go. It’s so frustrating, but I guess I just have to keep reminding myself that he’s still really just a baby still. Most kids don’t even start making the connection - and most parents don’t even start trying to *attempt* pottying their little ones - until they’re at least two. Thankfully, he’s very consistent with letting us know that he has to potty for the “big stuff”. ;P Hopefully that doesn’t start diminishing over time!
August 27, 2011
Well, I may have “spoken” too soon. Over the past few days, J~’s had a few “big stuff” accidents. I think they all happened when he was playing in his room and then came out to let us know that the deed was done (by saying, “Eeeew” and patting his pants). Sigh. Everything’s just hit-and-miss these days. Sometimes he’ll agree that he has to go and go into the bathroom with us happily. He pees and gets all kinds of praise. Or he at least tries to go and gets praise for trying. Other times he’ll say “no” and start fussing if we try to take him… so we back off and let him resume whatever he was doing. I know it’ll click in one of these days (months/years). It’s just tiring knowing how close he was before the move.
Pottying was going fantastic once I was out of school (work) for the summer. I’ve heard/read that cloth diapered babies generally catch on to pottying quite a bit sooner than babies diapered in disposables because they can actually feel the wetness since cloth diapers don’t magically absorb the pee instantly like chemical-laden disposables ones do. At just seventeen months old, J~ was down to only two accidents during the day on most days and even had a few dry-all-day days after just a week or two of working on it all day long. And even when he had “accidents”, it was typically that he had just started to go a little, realized/felt what was happening, came to tell us “paaah” (his word for “potty”), and finished going in his potty. I was so proud of him and really felt good about my efforts in making a go of it.
Unfortunately, moving really threw things off. I knew to expect a decrease in his consistency for a while after a change, but I didn’t realize how bad it could get and for how long. We have yet to have an all-dry day here, and Jacob typically has accidents at least five or six times each day. Most times, J~ will wet himself just minutes after he’s gently shaken his head and answered, “Nooo”, when we ask him if he has to go or when he’s gotten off of his toilet from us trying to get him to go. It’s so frustrating, but I guess I just have to keep reminding myself that he’s still really just a baby still. Most kids don’t even start making the connection - and most parents don’t even start trying to *attempt* pottying their little ones - until they’re at least two. Thankfully, he’s very consistent with letting us know that he has to potty for the “big stuff”. ;P Hopefully that doesn’t start diminishing over time!
August 27, 2011
Well, I may have “spoken” too soon. Over the past few days, J~’s had a few “big stuff” accidents. I think they all happened when he was playing in his room and then came out to let us know that the deed was done (by saying, “Eeeew” and patting his pants). Sigh. Everything’s just hit-and-miss these days. Sometimes he’ll agree that he has to go and go into the bathroom with us happily. He pees and gets all kinds of praise. Or he at least tries to go and gets praise for trying. Other times he’ll say “no” and start fussing if we try to take him… so we back off and let him resume whatever he was doing. I know it’ll click in one of these days (months/years). It’s just tiring knowing how close he was before the move.
18-Month Check-up
August 11, 2011
We haven’t gotten around to looking for a pediatrician in our new town yet, so we took a little road trip last month to visit my dad for a day and take J~ to his 18-month appointment the following morning. He was so thrilled to see his Papa N~ again and all of the toys we had left up there solely for these kinds of visits. I brought a bag of toys with us that he plays with regularly down here, but he was so excited to play with the “lost” toys that the only favorite toy he cared about was his barn with the stacking rings - his “bracelets”.
J~ spent a little time on the computer with my dad, but he didn’t seem to have much interest in that this time - probably because he had all of his old toys to play with. He was overly happy watching the youtube videos that he and I used to check out every night, though. Like most toddlers his age, he really enjoys nursery rhymes and “finger play”/movement songs now. Two of his current favorites are “Where Is Thumbkin?” and “Itsy Bitsy Spider”. He’s pretty good at doing the motions for each part of “Itsy Bitsy Spider” and smiles every time while trying to move his fingers for the Thumbkin song. Too cute!
His appointment with the pediatrician went well. Raising him vegan (not following the typical Standard American Diet), I’m still worried about making sure he’s getting all that he needs in regards to nutrition - mainly healthy fats. (He gets the bulk of his B and D vitamins in the fortified - and usually organic - soymilk that he drinks with or between each meal.) I’ve been trying to be vigilant about adding healthy fats wherever I can in his diet and try to feed him good snacks throughout the day now that he’s finally actually *wanting* snacks. (When he was younger, his tummy was just too small. He filled up with his milk and meals, and I didn’t want to push more food at the time since he was still having reflux issues back then.) Since healthy vegan meals typically don’t *have* much fat, I’ve been trying to make sure to give him healthy fats in at least two good portions of his meals and snacks each day. So far, that’s basically consisted of adding full fat coconut milk (the kind you find in the “ethnic” section of the grocery stores) to his soy milk, natural peanut butter on whole wheat bread/crackers/or by the spoonful, hummus on crackers or by the spoonful, and 1/4 of an avocado with meals. I need to try to remember to grind some flax seed and sprinkle that over some of his foods… but anyway. He’s still following his curve as to his weight, so I’ve apparently been doing a good job. He’s almost at the 45th percentile for his weight (almost right in the middle of the range of kiddos his age) and the 65th percentile for height. Supposedly he has a pretty small head comparatively - only in the 34th percentile. Personally, though, I think he looks almost perfectly proportioned right now.
He’ll be nineteen months old tomorrow. The days and months have really flown by. I’m so glad to have this time off from working to watch and help him grow and to see his personality emerge. The Terrible Twos are already rearing their head, but - while I was pretty irritated with his whininess for the first week or so of the fussiness -, I’ve been trying to collect myself and deal with each little fit in a more calm and collected way. I look at him and shake my head with a disapproving frown and remind him or prompt him to “use your words”. If he’s nearby, I’ll crouch down to his level and say, “No crying/screaming. Tell Mommy what you want.” If he wants something that he can’t have (another “sugary” snack, something dangerous, etc.), I try to redirect him to something else and just let him throw a little fit - and ignore it - if that doesn’t help. Hopefully we’ll get through this stage without ALL of our hairs turning gray. ;) J~’s pediatrician said that the Terrible Twos start around this age and continue all of the way through the threes! Supposedly after that come the Fantastic Fours… but my friend, C~, says she’s seen some four-year-olds... and begs to differ.
We haven’t gotten around to looking for a pediatrician in our new town yet, so we took a little road trip last month to visit my dad for a day and take J~ to his 18-month appointment the following morning. He was so thrilled to see his Papa N~ again and all of the toys we had left up there solely for these kinds of visits. I brought a bag of toys with us that he plays with regularly down here, but he was so excited to play with the “lost” toys that the only favorite toy he cared about was his barn with the stacking rings - his “bracelets”.
J~ spent a little time on the computer with my dad, but he didn’t seem to have much interest in that this time - probably because he had all of his old toys to play with. He was overly happy watching the youtube videos that he and I used to check out every night, though. Like most toddlers his age, he really enjoys nursery rhymes and “finger play”/movement songs now. Two of his current favorites are “Where Is Thumbkin?” and “Itsy Bitsy Spider”. He’s pretty good at doing the motions for each part of “Itsy Bitsy Spider” and smiles every time while trying to move his fingers for the Thumbkin song. Too cute!
His appointment with the pediatrician went well. Raising him vegan (not following the typical Standard American Diet), I’m still worried about making sure he’s getting all that he needs in regards to nutrition - mainly healthy fats. (He gets the bulk of his B and D vitamins in the fortified - and usually organic - soymilk that he drinks with or between each meal.) I’ve been trying to be vigilant about adding healthy fats wherever I can in his diet and try to feed him good snacks throughout the day now that he’s finally actually *wanting* snacks. (When he was younger, his tummy was just too small. He filled up with his milk and meals, and I didn’t want to push more food at the time since he was still having reflux issues back then.) Since healthy vegan meals typically don’t *have* much fat, I’ve been trying to make sure to give him healthy fats in at least two good portions of his meals and snacks each day. So far, that’s basically consisted of adding full fat coconut milk (the kind you find in the “ethnic” section of the grocery stores) to his soy milk, natural peanut butter on whole wheat bread/crackers/or by the spoonful, hummus on crackers or by the spoonful, and 1/4 of an avocado with meals. I need to try to remember to grind some flax seed and sprinkle that over some of his foods… but anyway. He’s still following his curve as to his weight, so I’ve apparently been doing a good job. He’s almost at the 45th percentile for his weight (almost right in the middle of the range of kiddos his age) and the 65th percentile for height. Supposedly he has a pretty small head comparatively - only in the 34th percentile. Personally, though, I think he looks almost perfectly proportioned right now.
He’ll be nineteen months old tomorrow. The days and months have really flown by. I’m so glad to have this time off from working to watch and help him grow and to see his personality emerge. The Terrible Twos are already rearing their head, but - while I was pretty irritated with his whininess for the first week or so of the fussiness -, I’ve been trying to collect myself and deal with each little fit in a more calm and collected way. I look at him and shake my head with a disapproving frown and remind him or prompt him to “use your words”. If he’s nearby, I’ll crouch down to his level and say, “No crying/screaming. Tell Mommy what you want.” If he wants something that he can’t have (another “sugary” snack, something dangerous, etc.), I try to redirect him to something else and just let him throw a little fit - and ignore it - if that doesn’t help. Hopefully we’ll get through this stage without ALL of our hairs turning gray. ;) J~’s pediatrician said that the Terrible Twos start around this age and continue all of the way through the threes! Supposedly after that come the Fantastic Fours… but my friend, C~, says she’s seen some four-year-olds... and begs to differ.
August 10, 2011
I’m sure most kids grow up loving books - at least in their first few years - if they are surrounded by them and if their parents read to them on a regular basis. J~ has a ways to go before he understands the stories inside them, but he loves books and has a growing collection of favorites. It’s a good thing we have a big selection for him to choose from, because his favorites seem to be changing about every two or three weeks now.
I started out reading him Goodnight, Moon before bed every night from the time he was about six months old until a little after his first birthday. One night, I decided to offer a different story - Goodnight - A Touch-and-Feel Bedtime Book -, and he started choosing that one each night for a while. Every now and then, he alternated between the two. At some point, I brought in a few more books… and it all went crazy from there. ;P We went from three or four book choices to around ten in just a few weeks time!
These are the books that have ended up in regular rotation -
Goodnight, Moon by Margaret Wise Brown
Good Night - A Touch-and-Feel Bedtime Book
Kitten’s First Full Moon by Kevin Henkes
Five Silly Monkeys illustrated by Steve Haskamp
Three Little Dachshunds by Margaret G. Otto (Copyright 1963; an old book that Dave got somewhere along the way - First published as Pumpkin, Ginger and Spice c. 1952… I’ll have to look for that one!)
I Howl, I Growl by Marcia Vaughan
Brown Bear, Brown Bear What Do You See? by Bill Martin Jr. (illustrated by Eric Carle)
Polar Bear, Polar Bear What Do You Hear? by Bill Martin Jr. (illustrated by Eric Carle
I like bugs by Lorena Siminovich
Quack! Quack! (baby touch and feel) by Louise Rupnik - a 2011 Easter gift from his Grandma Taylor in Connecticut
Sesame Street - A Sweet-Smelling Garden by Gina Gold
Sesame Street - Elmo’s World - Puppies!
I am a Bunny by Ole Risom (illustrated by Richard Scary)
And his current favorite… Zoom! Zoom! Zoom! I’m Off To the Moon by
With most of the books, there’s usually a certain page or two that grabs his interest the most. Sometimes it seems that he only wants to read whatever book he chooses for the sole purpose of seeing the images on those pages and/or having me talk about them.
· With Zoom! Zoom! Zoom!, he’s fascinated with the pages that show the rocket with numbers on the side for the countdown (5 to 0), the page with a lunar rover driving on the moon followed by a picture of “moon rocks in a box”, and then the page with the lights, buttons, and dials on the control panels.
· With Kitten’s First Full Moon, he loved “acting out” the pages where the kitten had a bug on her tongue and when she leaped from the porch and tumbled (“bumping her nose, and banging her ear, and pinching her tail”)… probably because he thought it was funny the first time I acted it out reading it to him as he sat in his crib watching and listening
· Brown Bear, Brown Bear - I have no idea what it is about the teacher, but he’s always been fascinated by the teacher at the end of the book. At first, he liked seeing all of the children with their smiling faces, too, but he studies the teacher intently.
· Goodnight, Moon - For the longest time, J~ seemed to like the cow, the kittens, the clocks, and the balloon. Around thirteen months (I think), he started really focusing on the difference in lighting/brightness on the pages showing the whole room (as the moon rises outside the window, the room gets darker inside). He started noticing more detail and would point out the areas of the room that were illuminated by the light (or the shadowy areas). I talked to him about it getting darker outside and needing the light to see and shadows, etc. I don’t know any other moms with kids his age, but I think that’s pretty perceptive for thirteen months.
I tried reading Where The Wild Things Are to him tonight, but he lost interest after the second page. I let him off of my lap to play and kept reading it anyway. Oh well. Maybe in a few more weeks.
Babbling the Day Away
August 9, 2011
J~’s communication is coming along pretty well, and he has his first three-word phrase - “There it is!” - when he finds something that he’s looking for or when playing peek-a-boo with a toy. Of course, it’s more jumbled and strung together as if it was really just one word… but it’s definitely a three-syllable word. He’ll also say “Teere” for “Come here”. We’ve been working on having him add “please” to single-word requests, but that might be a while yet. He understands a TON more than he can say, of course. He tries to say the first letter or syllable of every word that interests him or is important to him, but the only clear words (recognizable to any random person) he has are “mama”, “dada”, “bye bye”, “hi”, “no”, “yes/yeah”, and “papa”. I guess his versions of “down” and “up” are pretty understandable since he points in the direction or lifts his arms when he says them. And “shoe”. I think “shoe” would be pretty clear, too. He doesn’t say “nana” for banana anymore. He knows that it starts with a “b” sound, so he says “Buh” and tries to do the sign along with that. He says “Taaaa” (with the short “a” sound) for cat (again, while trying to do the sign), but hasn’t made the connection of the beginning “c” for that word yet.
Here’s a list of other words I can think of that J~ tries to say - beginning sound or first syllable with the correct short/long vowel sound - that we generally understand (since he points, tries to sign, or since the word is something related to what he’s looking at or talks about a lot… or is a repetition of something we say fairly frequently) -
Abacus * Airplane * Art * Avocado * Baby * Back * Ball * Banana * Bath * Bear * Beard * Bell * Belly * Bike * Binky * Bird * Bite * Block * Blue * Book * Box * Boy * Bracelet * Branch * Bread * Brush * Broom * Break/Broken * Bubble * Bug * Bus * Butterfly * Camera * Candle * Car * Cat (but said as described above) * Chair * Chin * Clap * Close (“coe”, when closing a door or box) * Cold * Couch * Crayon * Crib * Cry * Cut (“tuuh” or “tut”) * Dinosaur * Doctor * Dog * Door * Drink * Duck * Ear * Eat * Egg (his plastic Easter eggs) * Dump (dumping toys out of buckets, etc.) * Eye * Fan * Fish (“ish” or “iss”) * Flag * Flip-flops * Flower * Friend * Fun * Ghost * Girl * Go * Grapes * Green (“deen” or “geen”) * Hat * Hear * Help * Hot * Ice * Jam * Juice (“deuce”) * Knock * Lady * Leaf * Light * Lunch * Mad * Mail/Mailman * Man * Medicine * Melon * Milk * Mix * Moon * More * Moss * Mouth * Mushroom * Music * Neck * Nice * Nose * Noodles * Not * Nut * Open * Ostrich * Outside (“siiigh”) * Pants * Paper * Pat * Play * Play-doh * Pom-pom * Potty (“pahpah” or “paaah”) * Pop (pop-beads, ball popper toy) * Pour * Pull * Puppy * Puzzle * Sad * Sauce * Silly * Sit * Sleep * Stay * Slide * Snack * Smack (“Mack!” as he’s trying to smack us or one of the cats) * Snack * Sock * Swing * Table * Take * Tap * Tear * Tired * Toast * Toe * Toy * Truck * Tummy * Umbrella * Van * Vacuum * Watermelon * Water * Wet
He’s making more connections with his signs, too. Just over the past few days, he’s suddenly started signing some words that I’ve been doing for months - like “flower” and “silly”. However, with “silly”… it was pretty weird. I had been doing the same sign for months (learned from one of my co-workers at school) and happened to look it up in two of my sign language books that I have here. Apparently, my co-worker hadn’t remembered it correctly (or else *I* didn’t remember it correctly from when they showed me!), and I had been signing it wrong this whole time. The next time I told J~ he was “silly” and signed it correctly, he immediately did it the way I had been doing it all of that time! So he signs “silly” now. Maybe not the correct way… but *I* know what he means. ;P I never found a sign for “flag”, but Jacob loooves pointing them out everywhere we go. So, I just started extending a straight hand and waving it back and forth a little (like a flag waving in the breeze)… so now that’s how he signs flag.
Here’s a list of some of his newer signs - some just in the past two or three weeks and some over the last few months (since the last time I blogged about his signs). He isn’t doing them every time he says the word (because I’m not always consistent in using them when talking either, but I *try* to remember!), but he’s signed his version of each of them several times in context. Oh, and like I mentioned with “flag”, a few of the signs are ones I made up that seem like good enough imitations of what the true sign might be. :P
Baby * Banana * Bear * Bed * Broke/broken * Bubble (new?) * Bunny (our own version) * Car/Drive * Cat * Clean * Cold * Cracker * Dad * Door * Eat (new?) * Fish * Flag * Flower * Friend * Girl * Hard * Hear/Listen * Hippo * Hot * Kiwi * Later * Lion * Monkey * Mouse * Music * Pear * Rain * Sad * Shoes * Squirrel * Thunder * Turtle * Wait * Watch/Time * Wet * Window
I wish I had taken a sign language course or two in college along with my Special Education classes. Most of the signs I know I picked up over the years at my different jobs from kids and/or staff who might not have actually had the correct sign down or else learned on my own through sign language books or web sites. And the signs I learned on my own, I’ve either been doing a few of them wrong all along or somehow transformed them into my own version. I usually try to check a few different sources before starting to use a sign with J~, but sometimes that doesn’t always work out as planned. Oh well. I guess as his speech improves, it won’t be so important… but it would definitely be nice to actually teach the right word from the start.
A New Place To Call "Home"
August 7, 2011
It was never our intention to live at my dad’s house after Jacob was born. It was never our intention for me to even spend the summer pregnant at my dad’s house. Life is always throwing us for a curve. The most recent major curves came in the form of more costly, unexpected car repairs and then a derricho that ripped through Southern Illinois and demolished what was going to be our home.
Anyway…
Jacob had grown up knowing my dad’s house as “Home”. Dave stayed home with him while I worked, so he never went to daycare or anything. In eighteen months, he’d only ever seen the inside of about six or seven other houses(/apartments/etc.) and never spent more than a few hours at any of those places (my mom’s house, Dave’s dad’s apartment, and four friends’ houses).
He was really good during the whole moving process. My mom watched him for a few hours a couple of times, but he was great even while we were packing and moving everything all over the house and out to the moving truck. I showed him the moving truck the day we first picked it up and opened it up while trying to explain moving in toddler language.
We didn’t get to our new place until past his normal bedtime, but he was still in a decent mood. He had fun running back and forth from one end to the other and messing around with his toys. When bedtime came, though, he was scared and confused… crying and stomping his little feet outside of the doorway refusing to come into the room for his Binky and his puppy blankie. I picked him up and cuddled him in my lap for a few minutes trying to explain that this was our new home, but it just wasn’t right to him. (“Playing somewhere new for any length of time is perfectly fine, but you simply *don’t* sleep anywhere new, Mommy!”)
I couldn’t bear leaving him alone crying his little heart out in a new place on the first night, so I tried lying down with him in our bed. His chest heaved for a little while still trying to calm down from crying. He moved around a little but fell asleep within about fifteen minutes. He slept there next to me all night - not even waking up once. That hadn’t happened (him sleeping next to us) since he weaned himself from bed-sharing over three months ago. It was so nice cuddling next to him again. I’ve missed that so much.
The next morning, one of the neighborhood dogs came over to 
meet us. Jacob was so happy and excited to see a dog; he was grinning from ear to ear. Foxy always comes wagging her tail and ready to sniff and roll over onto her back for a quick pet or two. Jakey smiles whenever he looks at her, tries to say her name (“Fah… Fah… Fah”), and goes over to her to give her a little pat on her tummy or to point at her nose. He giggles when she runs ahead or follows behind him. Actually, he giggles and smiles almost the entire time she’s here.
The first week in town was pretty hectic, but we managed to throw in a few outings, too. It’s quite a challenge trying to move into a new place - unpack, arrange furniture, etc. - while trying to maintain a fairly normal schedule (eating, naps, etc.) with a toddler running around. Oh… and while trying to keep on top of pottying him, too!
We checked out Carbondale’s Friday Night Community Fair (music, vendors, kids area) where Jacob and I spent the majority of the night at the kids area playing with a ball toy & Play-doh and occasionally crawling through the tunnel when the older, rambunctious kids weren’t rolling around inside. Jakey could’ve easily spent the entire evening there playing with the balls, but we took him around to see the music, art, and everything else a couple of times. He tried blackberries for the first time and had fun feeding a few to me. J
The next morning, we headed back into town to the Farmer’s Market. We had moved during the hottest week of the year, and it was pretty miserable there since most of the market is in direct sun. Dave took Jacob around so that I could see who had what, and I picked up an eggplant, a zucchini, and some donut peaches. There was a harpist playing across from a shaded area, so we stopped there for a little while and Jacob listened and watched her play.
My brother and sister-in-law invited us over for dinner that night at their new house. It’d been a while since we’d seen them, so we got to catch up on what they’d been up to… and Jacob had a blast. He was excited to see his Uncle Derek and Aunt Ali again and their dog, PJ, but he was a little overwhelmed with PJ’s energy level (crying and running away when PJ came bounding towards him with his toy). He tried to get their cat to play, but Waffles was more interested in trying to appear invisible. They had the baby’s room pretty much set up already (Jakey will have a second cousin sometime next month!), and Derek got out a turtle constellation light and spent some time showing it to Jacob. He put it away after a bit, but Jacob took Derek back in there and insisted on checking it out again. Derek decided that Jakey needed one of his own, so he ordered one just for him.
We didn’t make it to any of the Thursday night Sunset Concerts this year.
It was just too hot each week, plus Jakey’s bedtime usually falls just thirty minutes to an hour after the bands are scheduled to start. He wakes up during the night a LOT more frequently if he doesn’t get to bed within the usual time frame. And since I’m always the one to get up to respond to his cries in the middle of the night, I’d rather keep to a schedule even if it means missing out on something that might be cool. Being a parent really changes your perspective on things.
*Sweat mohawk from the heat and humidity! ------->
Stalling and the Beginnings of the Terrible Twos!
August 5, 2011
I never knew it could start so early, but somewhere around fourteen or fifteen months, Jacob learned that he could stall bedtime by asking for a series of things that he knew by name or sign. He’d ask for another book… a drink of milk or water… or tell me that he had to go potty. Or he’d just start babbling trying to get me to talk about his favorite things or exciting things that happened that day. At first, I gave into his requests - happy that he was communicating more and more. When it became apparent that it was becoming a nightly ritual, I started incorporating each thing into our nighttime routine to prevent any uncertainty as to whether he actually needed those things or not (drink, potty). Since then it hasn’t been much of an issue (and I haven’t been doing all of those things consistently for a few weeks now, save for pottying), but it was amazing seeing how young all of that can begin!
Apparently stalling (trying to figure out how to get his way) sets the stage for the “Terrible Twos”.
Our little guy is really starting to test his boundaries these days. Not listening… looking at us when he’s doing something he’s not supposed to be doing (to see if we’re watching and get a reaction)… getting our attention to show us that he’s doing something that he’s not supposed to be doing… fussing, screeching and/or crying when he doesn’t get his way or when we remind him that he’s not supposed to be doing something. :P It’s pretty funny to see but not so fun to actually have to deal with all day long. And then there’s his “Pull… pull… pull” all day long as he says that and tugs on my pant leg trying to get me to come with him - usually for nothing more than to sit with him to play (after just getting up from sitting with him for an hour straight!) or to show me something that we’ve already talked about a zillion times that day. Argh! I’ve taught him to say “Come here” (“Teere… Teere”) instead of “pull”, so at least it *sounds* nicer. :P We just need a maid and a chef to do everything that I need to do so that I can devote my time to playing with Jacob instead. ;)
Further Taming of the Domestic Squirrel
July 15, 2011
My dad has had a family of squirrels living in the maple in his front yard for as long as I can remember. Jacob spent most of last summer and fall babbling away at the branches and leaves swaying in the breeze, but this summer he was actually able to see and focus on things running around… like the squirrels. About once a week, I would go outside and throw some bread bits around the yard and by the base of the tree. Jacob would go out with me and throw a few pieces, too, but they generally ended up right by his feet. He’d pick up bits and try to throw again only to have it land in pretty much the same place. We’d toddle back to the sidewalk together (or else a patch of grass a short distance from the tree) and sit down to wait for one of them to scamper down the tree trunk. There’s always been a brave one in every bunch, and this year we had the bravest one I’ve seen yet.
The last week of June and the first week of July, Jacob and I 
unintentionally started tossing out bread and dry, unsalted peanuts on a daily basis. It wasn’t long before the brave squirrel got brazen and started jumping and climbing up the storm door wondering why we hadn’t come out to feed him each morning! Oops.
The first morning it happened was the first day that we hadn’t fed them that week. Dave and I were sitting in the living room (while Jacob was taking his first nap) and heard the cat smacking and scratching the door trying to get a bug. Or at least that’s what we thought the noise was… until I turned around to take a look and saw the squirrel up on the handle of the storm door! He leaped down (probably unable to hold his precarious position any longer) and stood by door looking in. He slowly walked back and forth in front of the door and then tried to jump up to the doorknob again. “HEY! Where’s the food, people?! I’m HUNGRY!”
Dave thought it was cute and insisted that we should throw something out to the little critter. I felt bad for having made this “wild” creature so tame as to approach a human dwelling for food, but I was pretty certain that it would start foraging again - for nuts and whatever else town squirrels eat - once we moved and it wasn’t being fed any longer (by my dad). Winter was still a ways away, so it had plenty of time to become “wild” again.
This happened again the nex
t morning, and Jacob was awake to see it. He sat down in the doorway with Dave… and Grace. Jacob was so excited to see the squirrel so close. I love kids’ natural adoration for animals. Dave tossed some peanuts onto the sidewalk, and the three of them sat watching until the peanuts were gone. Squirrely stood around waiting for more but was content to lay around on the sidewalk and poke around in the grass once we left the doorway.
Wednesday, July 6, 2011
Potty Time!
I bought Jacob a potty chair around his first birthday and introduced him to it shortly afterwards. He would go almost every time I sat him on it, but I was working full-time at that point and wasn't around to try to be consistent with it. Dave was home with him all day, but he wasn't up for that. I'm just thankful that he's been with me on cloth diapering from the day we started *that*.
Anyway...
Fast-forward to the beginning of June after my job at the elementary school dismissed for summer break. I started working with Jacob on pottying full-time beginning the first full week of break. I left his diapers on for the first week and got into a routine of taking him before and after every nap, before and after every meal, and probably about every twenty minutes or so when he was just playing around the house. (Just *writing* that sounds exhausting!) After the first day or so, he started making the connection and would say "Paaaah" and tap his pants when he had to go... or when he was wet. :P
During this first week, I took him shopping with me and he asked to go twice while sitting in the shopping cart. I was almost in disbelief, but he even held it and actually went on the big toilets! The next week we went out again, and he was wet THREE times without any indication whatsoever. Go figure. :P
I started having him "go commando" (no diaper, just pants) around the house starting with Week Two. Most days we would go through between five to eight pairs of pants or shorts. He had his first Dry-All-Day day last week (well, excluding naps, of course) and *almost* stays dry throughout the day every day now! Usually we have at least one accident daily (sometimes two) when he gets involved in playing and I get distracted with stuff around the house and forget to ask or take him.
I'm so proud of my little guy and proud of myself for starting this right away and sticking to it! Now I just have to hope that he doesn't start regressing as he grows and becomes more independent!
Anyway...
Fast-forward to the beginning of June after my job at the elementary school dismissed for summer break. I started working with Jacob on pottying full-time beginning the first full week of break. I left his diapers on for the first week and got into a routine of taking him before and after every nap, before and after every meal, and probably about every twenty minutes or so when he was just playing around the house. (Just *writing* that sounds exhausting!) After the first day or so, he started making the connection and would say "Paaaah" and tap his pants when he had to go... or when he was wet. :P
During this first week, I took him shopping with me and he asked to go twice while sitting in the shopping cart. I was almost in disbelief, but he even held it and actually went on the big toilets! The next week we went out again, and he was wet THREE times without any indication whatsoever. Go figure. :P
I started having him "go commando" (no diaper, just pants) around the house starting with Week Two. Most days we would go through between five to eight pairs of pants or shorts. He had his first Dry-All-Day day last week (well, excluding naps, of course) and *almost* stays dry throughout the day every day now! Usually we have at least one accident daily (sometimes two) when he gets involved in playing and I get distracted with stuff around the house and forget to ask or take him.
I'm so proud of my little guy and proud of myself for starting this right away and sticking to it! Now I just have to hope that he doesn't start regressing as he grows and becomes more independent!
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