A Sweet Pea Note

Sweet Pea is now 13 months old, I don't know why, but I have a hard time thinking of her as that old.  Maybe is it is that she doesn't have a lot of hair so is more babyish in her appearance.  Maybe it is that she is smaller than the boys and much more dainty.  Maybe it is because no matter how many children you have, they are all different and so I have no idea what to expect from a 13 month old.

Sweet Pea has added another couple of words to her vocabulary.  She says papa and hat as well as an occasional mama, uh oh, ta da and this.   She also signs "more" consistently and we are working on "all done, "help" and "please".  She can sign all done but prefers to just scream and throw her food instead. Yeah, we are working on that one.

She cut her bottom molars over the past few weeks and is still napping twice a day and going to bed around 7:30.  She is waking up about 6:30 but has been content to play in her crib until the rest of us get up. (Little Man has been sleeping in or playing in his room until about 7:30 too and Peanut would sleep all day if we let him).

Sweet Pea is still our easiest to run errands with and our MVP on most outings since she is more content to sit and watch or play near me than the boys are but I see that changing over the next 6 months. 

Thanksgiving 2011

Thanksgiving has always been my favorite family holiday.  I always thought that everyone celebrated it the same way our family celebrated with over 50 people in a house of all generations, eating, watching football, catching up, kids running around stealing food from the table, drinks flowing only slightly slower than the fun and laughter.  This year was no different than the many many Thanksgivings before, only this year it was my children running off to the basement, following their bigger cousins around and sneaking desserts off the table, instead of me.  I love Thanksgiving.

Little Man was in heaven following his big cousin M around while she followed her bigger cousin E around.  He also spent a lot of time with Aunt Suzi and Uncle Dale and there was a story about a horse and some steaming poo that I won't go into on this blog.  He was at the perfect age to really enjoy Thanksgiving.  I don't think we saw much of him at all.  I caught him snagging cookies off of the dessert table but my Uncle covered for him by telling me it was the first one that he had eaten.  The chocolate smeared across his face told me otherwise but I let it go since I figured it was a bonding thing with my uncle and Little Man. 

Peanut had a good time playing but was probably our most difficult aged child at an event like this.  He is old enough to WANT to be independent but young enough that we still needed to follow him around to make sure he didn't get into any trouble.  It was also difficult to find food we could give him that was corn-free so he was a little punchy because he wasn't exactly eating a balanced diet on the trip.  He had a great time though and was very well behaved.  He was over MVP of politeness as he greeted anyone we asked him to with a big "Hi, I'm 2".

Sweet Pea stayed in my arms most of the day and was super easy and laid back in the crowd.  Sometimes she would want to get down and explore but would turn around and run back to my arms the second someone stopped to say hi to her.  My favorite part is that all of these people remember me as a baby so they can see the likeness between myself and Sweet Pea.  It is gratifying to have one of my children look like me!

My kids watched their first Thanksgiving parade (it was probably the 2nd one for Little Man) and got to spend a ton of time with their cousins M and Q and even got to sleep over in their rooms like big kids.  I love Thanksgiving!

Playing Air Hockey - Little Man is obsessed

Peanut and Cousin M

Little Man and Cousin M

Watching the parades on TV

Peanut Sitting on Q (Peanut outweighs him by about 10 pounds)

Cousinly Love

 

Peanut Prompting

Here is a video of Peanut's speech therapy session from yesterday.  This is hard work for my little guy but he is doing so well!  This is just a sampling of how he is working on learning to go from words in isolation to words in phrases.

He continues to be my hero.

 If you want to read more about Peanut's progress, you can head over to this blog....
http://findinghisvoice.blogspot.com/

Fall Fun

Peanut Screams

Sweet Pea Screams

We all scream for piles and piles of leaves

The "Little Man" in Charge

"I'm tired of cleaning and washing.  I am going to supervise instead"

Yes, those are the way too grown up words of my 4 year old while I was mopping the kitchen floor.  I had asked him to wipe down the kitchen chairs and he very cheerily took on the task.  About half way through he decided that he would prefer to supervise the process.  So I asked him what it meant to supervise.

"It means to look and to watch while someone else does something and see if it is ok or not."

So yes, he does get the purpose of supervising and has a firm grasp on the proper role of a supervisor.  When I was mopping the bathroom floor he decided that he wanted to be the helper again and asked if he could mop while I supervised him.  I do appreciate his willingness as a supervisor to get down and do the work as well because we all know that a good supervisor is someone who knows the challenges that someone they are supervising might face.  It was also very helpful because he is so small that he could get into the bathroom and mop with the door shut getting all of the places that I can't reach.  Thinking that maybe Papa Bear or I had taught him the fine roll of supervisor or that he gleaned this information from my Human Resources career, I asked him where he learned about supervising.

"Winnie the Pooh.  You know when Rabbit supervised everything"

Well folks, there you have it.

Cronkite, Moving Streets and Compulsions

Cronkite
Peanut's new nickname around this house is Cronkite because he is constantly giving us ground breaking news reports.  His love for being able to say more than one or two words in a sentence has manifested itself into saying EVERY sentence that pops into his adorable little head.  As breakfast is halfway over (and we are all eating) - "Mommy, Papa made cheesy eggs for breakfast!"  We get minute by minute updates when he is on the potty and when he is in bed at night we are still privy to his innermost thoughts as we hear "How big is Lexa?  So big! and 1,2,3,4,5,6,9,11".  Little Man no longer gets away with the I didn't do anything excuse because will give us the skinny on any basement skirmish or toy battle.  I love every news report we get and cherish even most mundane update because my boy is talking and working so hard to tell us what is going on in his adorable little head.

Moving Streets
We were on the metro train heading into D.C. and I was answering an onslaught of questions for Little Man about the workings of the train, the cars he was seeing, if we would see worms when the train went underground etc.  I love his questions.  Then he says "Mama, why do the cars all move at different times?  Why don't we just have moving streets with batteries under the ground so that everyone can get where they want to go at the same time".  Brilliant.  We discussed why it might be better to have cars moving like if a part of the moving street broke down everyone would have to stop but if a car broke down everyone else can keep going.  We talked and discussed the pros and cons of each situation and he is still convinced he is the brilliant one and moving streets is better than a moving car.  It finally came down to it would be cooler that way.  Love how his little mind works and I love that he questions the things that I just take for granted as being the way that they are.

Compulsion to Dance
Sweet Pea just can't help herself.  If she is in the middle of a tantrum or fussing because one of her brother's took her toy, just start singing any song.  Anything.  Really, she doesn't care what you sing.  Hum a tune and her head starts to go back and forth, her knees bend and her little booty shakes.  She just can't help herself which is why Papa Bear and I were singing the entire way back on the metro.  She wasn't upset but she was being her usual loud self and we didn't want to disturb the other passengers so whenever she would start yelling, we took up singing and she would dance instead of yell.  I just have to love simple solutions to Sweet Pea dilemmas.

A Day In DC

Last night Papa Bear and I lay in bed racking our brains to come up with Family Fun activity that we could do for very little or no money in weather that would start off fairly cold and if we were lucky warm up to the mid 50's with all 3 kids with little to no prior planning.  We sure do love living just outside DC!  We checked a few metro schedules, unearthed old metro cards from our days working in the city, checked museum opening times, packed snacks and a lunch and our plan was hatched.

We (by we, I mean Papa Bear who blessedly let me sleep in due to a long night with kids) packed the lunches, snacks and diaper bad and caught a metro at 9:23 in the morning and headed into the city with some very excited little boys.  Little Man had a million questions about the metro and Peanut just wanted to "go super super fast".

Sweet Pea was happy to be along for the ride.  (See her back there behind Peanut in the purple hat?) She was our MVP of the day.  With no nap, a piece-meal lunch and a bunch of graham crackers (HFCS-free of course) she was a trooper and happily hung out and took in the sights.

We took the metro for 13 stops while the boys alternated between staring out the windows and walking from seat to seat hoping the sway of the train would knock them down.  We arrived in still chilly buy beautiful DC weather and walked, ran and skipped to the Natural History museum.

We visited with the dinosaurs, lions, foxes, whales and butterflies.  Peanut was scared of the giant whale but loved the T-Rex.  Go figure.  Little Man took more time at each area, asking questions and showing more interest than he has before.  Peanut was a blur.  He ran from exhibit to exhibit taking each display in for a second before moving on.  I learned that I had to tell him to look up because he tended to take in each display from his eye line and when I told him to look up we heard "Awww, wow! So big" but then we would have to remind him to look down again when he started walking because you can see how that might be a disaster.  Sweet Pea loved walking around and touching any object at her level.

Peanut measured up against the leg of an elephant and even our Peanut wasn't as big as an elephant.  I think he was a bit disappointed about that.  And then we tried to get a picture of all of the kids together which was a challenge and good for a laugh.

(At least the monkey and Sweet Pea were looking at the camera)

After a lot of fun, we ate our picnic lunch on the Mall in the sunshine, played a little chase and then headed back on the metro.  We arrived home with happy and tired children and then we all took naps.  Total cost = .84 in added metro fare; Total fun = priceless.