Words

May 31, 2016

Blue Eyes

A couple weeks ago Hubby & I took a short trip to visit his sister and see her husband graduate with an advanced degree. With left the kids at home with my sisters. On the way up I commented that Blue Eyes hadn’t really said any words yet since his first birthday is coming up. The other two were saying Dada, Mama, and a few other things by now. Sometimes when Blue Eyes is really upset it sounds like he is saying Mama but maybe I’m imagining it. It used to seem like he was saying HI but I hadn’t heard that for quite a while. Anyway, he put his aunt through the ringer at bedtime but eventually went to sleep. The next morning she sent me a text saying that he slept all night and had said four words in less than five minutes that morning. I was like, WHAT??? I replied asking what they were. She said, “thank you” and “all done”. Later that night when we got home she told us that he drank his bottle and then acted like he wanted more so she made him some and as she gave it to him he said “thank you” then when he finished it he said “all done”. A few minutes later we heard him say “done!” He did variations of this for the next couple days. Two days later, he started saying DADADADA!!! After a bit I asked him to say MAMA, he just grinned at me and replied DADA!!!!!

Buddy

Around this same time Buddy started covering his eyes saying “My Hide. My Hiding.” He now does this almost every day at some point. Of course his favorite word is still “why” but he has been slowly adding words. I know there were a couple more but I can’t think of them now. Oh well. He has really been trying to tell us about his day or things that happen.

Sometimes we can understand or figure out what he’s saying but sometimes we can’t. It’s quite different from the way Princess was at this age. I don’t usually compare them but sometimes the contrast just hits and startles me. We have a memo that Hubby recorded of Princess at almost exactly Buddy’s age, it somehow got added as a song on my iPod and added to a playlist we often listen to. Her voice and words are so clear as she tells us about the things that God created and interacts with us. Soon I hope we are able to record Buddy in that same way.

One night last week Hubby was helping Princess get her room cleaned and organized. Buddy was with them. At one point Buddy came down and was babbling, as he gestured to the basement door. I asked him if he wanted to go down there and he said yes so I opened the door. A few minutes later he went upstairs with something in his hand. A minute later Hubby calls down to me and asks if Buddy asked me for a trash bag. I replied no and then asked him why he sent a child that can’t talk well to ask for something. He said he realized that as soon as Buddy headed down but thought he’d wait to see what happened. Buddy had went to the basement and pulled the base of an electric kettle out of the trash to take to Daddy. We aren’t sure why he got that but he did. He was happy to return it to the basement and help Mommy bring Daddy a bag.

After lunch today, Hubby gave him some Dots candy. Princess asked if she could have some; Buddy emphatically said “no, my can’y MINE.” She asked again, he said no. Then Hubby reminded her that the Dots were Buddy’s so she can’t have them she can have some of her own. He usually gets his point across using words and actions, today it was just words. J

Princess

The other day we were in the van returning home from somewhere, when Blue Eyes had had enough. He started crying and screaming. Princess was attempting to calm him by talking and singing to him. It usually works and he loves to hear her make up silly songs for him, but that night he wouldn’t be calmed. Princess calls up to us, “Parents, my brother Blue Eyes is apparently tired and screaming. I can’t get him calmed down as he apparently wants to go to bed.” We looked at each other and marveled at her use of the word apparently. We asked her about it and she told us that apparently was absolutely the right word to use. I hope she continues to love words and books. J  

Cabin fever and Mother's Day

May 15, 2016

Well, It’s been a little over a week since I posted, guess I didn’t make my goal. Oh, well, if at first you don’t succeed try, try again! Right?

Anyway, it’s been a long, eventful month. Today I got to go to Church after missing the last 3 Sundays due to various kids’ illnesses. It looks like we are all finally well, I hope it stays that way!

A week and a half ago, we were all feeling a bit of cabin fever as the boys and I hadn’t been anywhere, except a couple car rides to pick Princess up from school, for a couple weeks. So, I loaded everyone up in the van, swung thru the drive-thru at McD’s for a coffee drink and hash brown patties, then drove to a park north of town that has a small lake. I parked so we could look out at the lake while we enjoyed our treat. I also brought along my ipod to plug into the van’s stereo system. When Princess saw what I brought she said “yay! We get to listen to adult music!”  Adult music?? We are just going to listen to the same list we are listening to now. I said. “Yes, but it will be different than the van music.” Princess replied.  Guess I need to add music to the van as she is apparently getting tired of what is in there. J Anyway, after watching the lake for a bit we left and drove around a couple different neighborhoods in town. One of them had big houses which Princess really enjoyed looking at. This past week she wanted to do it all again, especially looking at the big houses. We weren’t able to, but I told her we would again sometime soon. I know that when the kids aren’t able to get out they are benefited by just taking a drive but I often forget that it is so easy to do. I need to remember that especially this summer when Princess won’t be going to school two days a week. She is likely to have serious withdrawal as she is very much a people person.

Last Sunday was Mother’s Day. Blue Eyes was still sick so Hubby took Princess and Buddy to Church. After Church, he took them out for lunch then over to a flower shop to find something for Mommy. They each picked out nearly identical flower bouquets but as they got in line to pay, Buddy looked up and saw a giant balloon. “Ba’oon, Mommy, Ba’oon, p’ease?”  Hubby asked him if he wanted to get the balloon for Mommy, Buddy said he did so they put the second bouquet away and got the balloon. After swinging thru Culver’s drive-thru they came home. Buddy came into the house and patted my leg saying “ba’oon, ba’oon Mommy!” He was so excited about it! It was a nice day with my family, even though we had to cancel plans with my parents, Grandma, and most of my sibs.

A few more updates

May 4, 2016

 So here is a brief (I hope) summary of how & what the kids are have done/are doing.

Princess

 My little girl is now 4 ½ years old. Last summer she got glasses—she has broken one pair but has been doing really well with wearing them. In August she started Preschool at our local Christian School. She had to be in the 3 year old class as her birthday missed the cut off by a few days! This means that she currently goes 2 days a week in the morning. This fall she will be in the Early Kindergarten class and will attend every day in the afternoon. She is really looking forward to this as she asks us all the time why she can’t go every day! I’m thinking this summer will be rough, we may need to try to find some organized activities for her.

She finally got potty trained last fall—it only took 11 months! Now some days she tries to get Buddy interested (actually a year ago he was further ahead than she was but as he was still quite young lost interest) by telling him he can have candy if he goes. On the one hand it might be nice to have help, on the other I am NOT READY to start that up again, certainly not before our vacation this summer. Also, Buddy is still not verbal enough (more later) to tell us when he needs to go, so I would rather wait!

She has become quite the little helper (when she WANTS to) around here. She is often able to get me things I need for the boys. She likes to help unload the dish washer and usually likes to help sweep the floor. We have recently made it her job to sweep after lunch. She does this with varying degrees of completeness but it’s a step in the right direction. She LOVES to tell her brother what to do; sometimes he listens to her better than to us! We tell her that it is not her job, but I’m not sure she believes us. She likes to treat Blue Eyes like a doll. Tries to pick him up, move his body around, pick out his clothes (I think she’d try to dress him if I’d let her.) Considering that he weighs almost 2/3 what she does and is quite tall while she is short, it looks funny and scares me a bit. In case you are wondering Blue Eyes usually takes her in stride and doesn’t complain her treatment of him!

Buddy

My little boy is now 2 ½ years old. He has more words than he did a year ago, although there are also words he used to say but does not anymore. However, he is often hard to understand. Last fall my brother noticed that Buddy wasn’t raising his tongue up to the roof of his mouth. It’s hard to say certain sounds without doing that. He is doing a little better now but still drops or doesn’t say some sounds. I talked to his doctor about it and she said to keep working with him for now but that if he doesn’t improve in a few months we will probably have to get him some speech therapy. He has really liked the books I’ve gotten him that use the same letter in various parts of words and in the different ways and has been doing better the last month or so. He still doesn’t pronounce the first letter of his name, but is VERY insistent that it is his name. His sister has always tried to add an “a” or “ie” to his name, lately when she does that he points to himself and says “NO, I …” dropping the first letter but pronouncing the rest. She added the word boy to his name as well as his middle name and was corrected quite strongly by him too! He can’t say her name so he calls her “Girl”. She told me that she didn’t like that and he needed to call her by her name. I explained that he couldn’t, but that if she really didn’t want to be called “girl” then we needed to come up with another name that he could say for him to call her by. She decided he could just keep calling her “girl”.  

Last summer he had a rough time with the kiddie swimming pool. He kept landing face first in the water. For a while after that he hated the bath but now likes it again. We will have to see how he does with water this summer. J

His sense of play and imagination has really blossomed. He loves to play fix-it, build, and cooking, as well as turn anything and everything into a weapon (including his body!)

Blue Eyes

I had a terrible time coming up with a blog name for my baby boy. Nothing seemed to fit. Since he has beautiful blue eyes and appears to be keeping them I decided to call him that. He is now 11 months old! In many ways this year has flown by fast. He has done some things earlier than the others while other things took a little longer. He is still not in the same room as his brother. We moved him into our closet a few months ago, and keep talking about putting him in Buddy’s room but there are always reason to put it off!

He is bigger than the other two were at 15months! When he stands up under the table he hits his head. He isn’t walking on his own yet, but is standing and walking along furniture. There for a while we thought he might skip crawling but he didn’t. Over the course of about 10 days last month he went from scooting backwards and spinning to change direction (and being able to walk holding onto someone/something) to doing a funny sit scoot (similar to what Princess did) to actual crawling to crawling with one or both feet flat on the ground. He acts like he is just going to take off walking any day now but so far hasn’t. I haven’t seen how he does it but he is standing up in his pack in play, which must be some trick as there really isn’t anything to grab onto.

He eats more solids than the other two did at this age. At 4 months he WAS sleeping 10 hours a night but then he started teething and the time changed so he didn’t really do that again for about 4 months. Since then it’s been an off and on thing. Lately he hasn’t been again. L I’m hoping that changes quickly as I’ve been pretty much sleep deprived for the better part of the last 5 years!

Overall he is a content little guy, though lately he falls apart if I leave the room. I know this is normal but it is still hard to have him screaming as he tries to follow me. He loves to crawl all over the main floor of our house. We took down the baby gates last fall and haven’t put them back up because with two older siblings it’s kind of pointless to try to block off the front part of the house. This means though that he can get to the stairs now. He made it to the third step the other day and then started to lean back when I grabbed him. A couple days before that he fell backwards off the bottom step. He’s fast when he wants to be. The other day as he headed down the hall, I followed. When he got to the bathroom doorway he paused, looked back at me and then put on a burst of speed to try to get in before I could stop him. I shut the door just before he would have gotten in. He knew he wasn’t supposed to be in there! Sometimes Princess and Buddy will crawl around so he can follow them in a circuit around the house. He loves it but gets so tired trying to keep up!

Well, I should stop now. It was longer than I intended but oh well. J I may fill in a few memories of the last months in future posts as they occur to me or are relevant. 

Almost a year: I’m BACK!! I hope!

May 4, 2016

It’s kind of hard to believe it has been so long since I posted, but then again it’s not. At first I was just too tired to post, then I didn’t feel like I had time as every time I would sit down I would be interrupted. However, I think it then became a habit to not post because I would think that I didn’t have time, but would then spend hours in the evening surfing fb or amazon etc, really just killing time non-productively. I have always thought that you make time for what is important so if you say you don’t have time you are really saying that it isn’t important enough to you to do it. With kids that is partially true, there are days that you are prevented from spending more than 5 minutes on any one thing and that you have 10 partially completed tasks and nothing gets finished, but there are other days that if you tried to do something you actually would have been able to finish it had you started in the first place. Lately, I have had a lot of those. Late in the day I will think/realize that I could have done more had I actually worked at it. So anyway, I’ve been thinking of starting up again here. I will even plot out a post in my head as I’m doing laundry, dishes, or cooking, but then FAIL to actually write it out that evening, instead surfing online, playing multiple games of candy crush type games, or reading.  I am planning to post at least once a week now, hopefully a little more often, but at least once every week for the next several months. Then we’ll see how things go. I know of someone who has been posting every day for weeks now and has been doing great! I haven’t read them all but have been encouraged by what I have read. I’m pretty sure that I would fail massively if my goal was every day, so instead it will be every week. Feel free to send me a message if you see that I’m slacking off or just to say “HI”. J

Random moments, events, and sayings over the past months

Here are the things my Hubby or I have recorded on Fb over the last months. Sadly, we didn’t record many of them. It’s amazing how easy it is to forget these things. L

 August 27, 2015

Today was Princess’s first day of Preschool!! She thought it was great and wanted to know why she couldn't go every day. J

            (She still LOVES it. She didn’t like snow days or breaks because she couldn’t go to school!)

Oct 5, 2015

I'm very thankful for the Lord's protection and care of my children. Two years ago today, we were supposed to take Buddy home from the hospital, but instead he spent two days in the NICU. We never really got an answer as to what caused his problem but we know that his quick recovery was from God.
This evening as I was cooking supper, a dish exploded in the open door of the oven. All but one small chip of glass stayed inside but sauce splashed the base of the bouncy seat where Blue Eyes was sitting. Nothing got on him, and Princess and Buddy were playing in another room instead of being in the kitchen where they like to be while I am cooking, so they were safe too.

From Hubby’s fb:

Oct 7, 2015

Tonight Emily came running out of her room upset because she couldn't find her glasses. I got her calmed down and said, "Honey, they are on your face." She reached up and touched them and was then relieved that they were ok. I guess she is getting use to wearing them. J

Note: She got her glasses in July. I don’t think I put that in the last post I wrote.

From my sister’s fb: (there was A LOT more to this conversation so this is a paraphrase)

Nov 7, 2015

Mom: is mommy the prettiest girl? (The “Mom” here is my mother whom the kids call “Nana”)
Buddy: yeah
[Uncle J]: are the nursery girls prettier?
Buddy: yeah

Later

[Uncle J]: is [Uncle B] going to take your girl?
Buddy: (looks at [Uncle B]) growls!

Later

[Uncle J]: are you saving all the girls for yourself?
Buddy: yeah

Hubby’s Fb

Nov 22, 2015

Today in church Princess (4 years old) tenderly whispered into my ear. "Daddy, I love you, and I want money." (sigh). They start so young. J

            She actually wanted money to put in the offering plate! She has done this a few times since, and not always for the offering.

Jan 3, 2016

Princess is walking around the house singing "Gloooooooria, in a shell stable" at the top of her lungs. J

Jan 30, 2016

Wow! Today Blue Eyes is wearing this outfit that Buddy wore a year ago! (I mean this literally, before seeing this post [A picture from the previous year as a look back.] I put this shirt on him! Only difference is that Blue Eyes is wearing 12 mon pants and Buddy was in 9 mon pants.)

            Yes, my baby is bigger than the other two were at this age and a lot older than he is now. Blue Eyes is just a few pounds less than Buddy and a couple inches shorter. They can almost wear the same clothes. Not sure what I’m going to do this summer if Blue Eyes is the same size as Buddy because Buddy does not like seeing Blue Eyes in his clothes.

Hubby’s fb

Feb 3, 2016

We were answering questions related to marriage today from Princess, and she was concerned that she didn't know who she was going to marry. Then, she was VERY distraught because she didn't want to have to wear a wedding dress. She just wanted to wear a normal dress.  J

Feb 21, 2016

Today on the way home from church we passed a pet store that we have visited before. Princess asked if we could go back sometime to see the animals. I said that we could and added that we could even buy some fish to take home next time. She liked the idea, but added happily that we could take the fish home and mommy could cook them and we could eat them. Apparently, she needs clarification on what having a pet means. Of course, she is probably thinking of the times when I told her that I was going to take her fishing. Oh well!

April 5, 2016

Princess (our 4 yo) has developed some interesting doctrine. Earlier she found out that daddy was a teacher. She immediately announced that daddy couldn't be a teacher because teachers had to be girls. When asked why, she responded that it is in the Bible. I then asked her to give chapter and verse. To this she responded, "The entire New Testament."

Later, she informed Mommy that "The Bible says children can do anything they want as long as its not bad." J

April 21, 2016

SO about an hour ago the kids came racing into the family room from playing in the other side of the house. Princess had liquid dripping down her chin and wet spots on her shirt. Buddy's face, shirt and pants were soaked.
Princess: Mom, we had so much fun we were taking drinks of Buddy 's drink and spitting them out at each other. We are wet!
Buddy: Yeah! (Gobbledygook)
So I wipe their faces and search the couch for clean pants for Buddy --A full couch and NONE to be found! Grabbed a pair that is too short for him and headed upstairs as it occurs to me to ask WHERE this wonderful fun took place.
Princess: We were behind the couch. Don't worry Mom I don't think any got on the floor, it just went on the blanket that was back there!
Where do they come up with these things????

May 3, 2016

So Buddy still doesn't have a lot of understandable words, but the ones he does have...WOW! About six months ago he started saying "girl" & "pwetty". He might go weeks without saying them then he'll do something like this:
I was on FB this morning and saw that a couple people had shared a song about kids growing up to fast and needing to slow down. J At the end of the song Buddy looks over and says: "Girl, pretty, mine please?" 
Me: You want to hear the song again?
Buddy: Uh huh!
Me: Okay, lets change you first. (We then head upstairs.)
Buddy: Girl, pwetty!!
Me: Do you think girls are pretty?
Buddy : Uh huh! Girl pwetty Daddy?
Me: Does the Girl have a daddy? I'm sure she does.
Buddy: Daddy's pwetty girl?
Me: She probably is her Daddy's girl, Buddy. Are you Daddy's boy?
Buddy: Uh huh, daddy's boy. Pretty girl, Mine?
Me: Someday you'll have a pretty girl.
(We head back downstairs.)
Buddy: Pretty girl Please Mine? Please?
Me: yes, you can watch the video.
Buddy: Ok!

I forgot the second part of the story about Buddy. I told Hubby about the conversation at lunch. Then this happened...
Hubby: So you like pretty girls?
Buddy: uh huh!!! Girl. Girl. Pretty.
Hubby to me: I can see we are going to have to watch him. (Meanwhile, Buddy is chattering away and the only words we can understand are girl, please, and pretty.)
Hubby to Buddy: Son, we are going to have to have a chat about girls and cooties.
Buddy: WHY??? Why?
Hubby: You don't think we need to talk?
Buddy: No.