We did a "staycation" this year with the kids. Yes, I know the name is lame. No, I'm not making apologies for it. Jason had a week off and we took that Monday and Tuesday to hang out with the kids. On Monday we went to the Reston Zoo; it's part petting zoo, part random animals, and part hayride. The kids LOVED it! They've been before, but they had a blast feeding the goats and the ducks. We even got them milk bottles for the sheep! This is the same place we went to about a year ago where the emu ate Alexis' shorts. (She still talks about it.) On Tuesday, the day of the earthquake, we took the kids to Splashdown, a waterpark nearby. They were totally fascinated! Alexis had no fear and went down (age-appropriate) slides with no fear and wanted to do everything she could. Micah loved it but had to figure things out for a little bit first. His favorite part was the water shooting out from the ground in the shallow pools. Seriously, he was fascinated by this and played with this for over and hour total. We were also able to take both of them on the lazy river, and they enjoyed that. It was really just a fun time together.
Jason and I did get to go on a vacation just the two of us while the parents watched the kids, which was AMAZING! We went back to the first B&B we visited on our honeymoon and hung out in Staunton and saw The IMportance of Being Earnest (my fav play) and ate awesome food and just had a great time.
Tuesday, September 6, 2011
Tuesday, August 9, 2011
Excitement Abounds. For One Child.
We went to a place called House of Bounce yesterday. It's a big room that has blow up slides you have to climb up to, and you bounce around and different things. I dont' know how to describe them if you've never seen them, but if you have kids, you probably know what I'm talking about. Alexis was fearless. Micah? Not so much. We were there a little over an house (Alex got tired after that), and Micah spent almost the entire time clutching to my arms if we tried to do something. It made it very tiring for me, but still lots of fun. We spent a reasonable amount of time watching ALex go down one of the slides while MIcah just at in my lap. He was pretty overwhelmed. But Alex just went right in and did it all, which was really fun to watch.
We've been working with her on being more involved when she does things and telling us about them afterwards. (For some reason she never wants to tell us details about different activities that she does.) We went to the Smithsonian a few weeks ago, and she spent most of the time being really uninvolved, which was very disappointing. I mean, it's the Smithsonian! We're working on that. She did go to music camp last week, and she had a show on Friday morning that was so cute! She sang with the other kids, although I ended up being only a few feet from her and served as a distraction for her at times! It was a thirty minute show, and towards the end she started to step back and just watch all the other kids and not really want to sing, but overall she did a great job and we have some really cute videos of her singing and doing motions.
Micah got stung by a bee at the playground the other day, and when we brought him home at one point he was saying really, really fast over and over again "go away bee go away go away bee go away go away bee go away" while shaking his head to get it off his ear. It was so sad but so funny all at the same time. He's completely fine though. He is actually starting to recognize some colors now.
Oh, and Alex is officially beginning the reading process I think in that we sat down with some three-letter words and were working on sounding out the letters and putting them together. She's getting so old!
We've been working with her on being more involved when she does things and telling us about them afterwards. (For some reason she never wants to tell us details about different activities that she does.) We went to the Smithsonian a few weeks ago, and she spent most of the time being really uninvolved, which was very disappointing. I mean, it's the Smithsonian! We're working on that. She did go to music camp last week, and she had a show on Friday morning that was so cute! She sang with the other kids, although I ended up being only a few feet from her and served as a distraction for her at times! It was a thirty minute show, and towards the end she started to step back and just watch all the other kids and not really want to sing, but overall she did a great job and we have some really cute videos of her singing and doing motions.
Micah got stung by a bee at the playground the other day, and when we brought him home at one point he was saying really, really fast over and over again "go away bee go away go away bee go away go away bee go away" while shaking his head to get it off his ear. It was so sad but so funny all at the same time. He's completely fine though. He is actually starting to recognize some colors now.
Oh, and Alex is officially beginning the reading process I think in that we sat down with some three-letter words and were working on sounding out the letters and putting them together. She's getting so old!
Wednesday, August 3, 2011
I DID It!
"I DID it!" This is Micah's current favorite phrase. Whenever he does something that he thinks we should notice? "I DID it!" Whenever he climbs the steps up to the house all on his own? "I DID it!" Whenever he sits in his carseat doing not much of anything? "I DID it!" We've had to have a little talk about professing your proud expertise when you really didn't actually DO anything... It's a work in progress. In the meantime, it's currently my favorite thing that he says.
Thursday, July 28, 2011
Reading
Alexis: We are currently reading Charllote's Web to her. She got REALLY into a Frog and Toad book that we got at the library the other week, so I actually found the collection at the used bookstore. She has gotten really excited about chapter books, so I want to foster that in her. However, our next library choice was a BAD one. I got the first two Junie B. Jones books, and this girl is one massive brat without any redeeming qualities. I read the first one to her on Sunday afternoon and was having some issues with it, and Jason started reading the next one to her, and we both decided that there would be no more Junie B. Jones in our home. Long live Ramona, if I could not just find all of my old copies... I checked the first two out at the library, though, for when we finish wastching Charlotte's Web. I'm hoping this really starts to kick a desire to read in gear. She's been doing a great job with some workbooks about figuring out which letter begins which word, and she's starting to write some words, and I want to teach her some sight words. We'll see how it goes! (I tried the sight words a month or two ago and they didn't take, so I'll wait a little longer and see. No pressure or anything.)
Micah: His current bedtime favs are Goodnight Moon, Oh My Oh My Oh Dinosaur, and Inch by Inch. We started reading Inch by Inch about a week ago, and for some reason he thought it was really, really funny. Maybe because I pretended to try to gobble him up like the bird threatens to thr inchworm in the book. Regardless, he was laughing really hard at each page. Until last night, when for some reason when Jason was reading to him he decided that the ultimate reading experience for him would be to pretend to grab the inchworm on each page and eat him up! Then Jason would tell him that he needed to spit it out, so Micah would pretend to spit the worm out so that he could grab and swallow again. Jason told me about it this morning. So cute!
Micah: His current bedtime favs are Goodnight Moon, Oh My Oh My Oh Dinosaur, and Inch by Inch. We started reading Inch by Inch about a week ago, and for some reason he thought it was really, really funny. Maybe because I pretended to try to gobble him up like the bird threatens to thr inchworm in the book. Regardless, he was laughing really hard at each page. Until last night, when for some reason when Jason was reading to him he decided that the ultimate reading experience for him would be to pretend to grab the inchworm on each page and eat him up! Then Jason would tell him that he needed to spit it out, so Micah would pretend to spit the worm out so that he could grab and swallow again. Jason told me about it this morning. So cute!
Wednesday, July 20, 2011
Micah at Two
34 inches and 25 pounds. Even his doctor said that he's going to catch up to Alex pretty soon. All was fine with his appointment, except for the fact that he decided to cry and be afraid of Dr. Theodore for some unknown reason. Maybe he thought he was getting a shot.
Micah thoroughly enjoyed his birthday presents and said "wow" when he opened them, especially his Handy Manny tool bench. He loves the noises it makes, and overall it was a big hit. He was also obsessed with this sticker book I got for him and sat in my lap three nights in a row until he had finished most of it. (This ended up being an awesome gift because it cost about 15 cents at the library.) He also enjoyed his cupcake and literally face-planted into the icing, which was the main part he was concerned with. It made a mess, but what is a birthday for?
Micah thoroughly enjoyed his birthday presents and said "wow" when he opened them, especially his Handy Manny tool bench. He loves the noises it makes, and overall it was a big hit. He was also obsessed with this sticker book I got for him and sat in my lap three nights in a row until he had finished most of it. (This ended up being an awesome gift because it cost about 15 cents at the library.) He also enjoyed his cupcake and literally face-planted into the icing, which was the main part he was concerned with. It made a mess, but what is a birthday for?
Sunday, July 17, 2011
No More Babies
If I thought there was even a slight tinge of babyishness surrounding Micah, I would probably want to grab it and hold onto it. That is not, howevever, the case. In the least.
My son turns two today.
And he is very much a kid, not a baby. He wants to do everything Alex does, which means that he wants to do TONS of things that he is way to young to do. He copies her and looks up to her and wants to be big like her, which means that he does things like make his bed in the morning and puts his dishes in the sink when he's done, but it also means that he thinks he should be able to write letters like she can and brush his teeth by himself. It's a mixed bag...
He is definitely amazing, though. In the past few weeks I really feel like he's starting to work out how to work through his frustration. He knows that we won't tolerate him throwing fits, and he is resorting to them less frequently and, even when he does try to erupt into crying, he is letting go if it much more quickly and finiding that life is much better when he chooses to be happy instead of sad. I'm amazed at how much he knows right now, too. As of him being two right now, he knows all of his capital letters, most of his lowercase letters, numbers 1-10, and shapes. he can also not only count to ten and try to say the alphabet, but he understands the concept of counting and what it is, so he'll actually try to count objects sometimes.
I also have an incredibly affectionate son who loves to be in a lap having his back scratched or simply lying down in your lap. Unless he's on the move, that is. I'm going to miss when he no longer has his little toddler run, but for now he still have the cutest way of moving throughout his life: at full speed with a little bit of bouncing to his cheeks and a soundtrack to accompany said bouncing. Another of his latest obessions? Playing tag with his sister, although Alex only wants to play about half the time. He still loves playing hide and seek and will get behind a chair in the living room, count to ten (from three about half the time) and then burst out, saying "HERECOME!" before trying to find someone. His favorite book right now is Oh My Oh My Oh Dinosaurs, and he laughs at every page, especially the page where they are singing a dinosaur song and we sing the text to him. He has this way of bursting into laughter recently that cracks me up so much. It's not that it's less natural than it used to be, it's almost like the laughter has built up inside of him and he has to let it out with a guffaw. For a while baths were a nightmare, but he now seems to have recovered from whatever trauma he experienced with water and is now mostly back to normal when taking baths. (He still doesn't like his head to be wet and would never volunteer to put his head in the actual bath like Alex did, but as long as he's not screaming, I'm content for now.)
He is also starting to be fairly polite and will frequently say please and thank you without any sort of prompts. I was pretty proud of him, too, because my parents were here taking care of me and the kids for a few days while I was recovering from sinuplasty, and Micah was behaving pretty well and listening to my parents when they told him no. He was also fairly gentle with the kitten that they brought with them, whish was fun to see.
More birthday updates later since it's five in the morning. We're not doing a party for him, but after his nap today we'll open a few presents and have some cupcakes. (And he BETTER be excited about cupcakes because he always wants to talk about this favored form of dessert...)
My son turns two today.
And he is very much a kid, not a baby. He wants to do everything Alex does, which means that he wants to do TONS of things that he is way to young to do. He copies her and looks up to her and wants to be big like her, which means that he does things like make his bed in the morning and puts his dishes in the sink when he's done, but it also means that he thinks he should be able to write letters like she can and brush his teeth by himself. It's a mixed bag...
He is definitely amazing, though. In the past few weeks I really feel like he's starting to work out how to work through his frustration. He knows that we won't tolerate him throwing fits, and he is resorting to them less frequently and, even when he does try to erupt into crying, he is letting go if it much more quickly and finiding that life is much better when he chooses to be happy instead of sad. I'm amazed at how much he knows right now, too. As of him being two right now, he knows all of his capital letters, most of his lowercase letters, numbers 1-10, and shapes. he can also not only count to ten and try to say the alphabet, but he understands the concept of counting and what it is, so he'll actually try to count objects sometimes.
I also have an incredibly affectionate son who loves to be in a lap having his back scratched or simply lying down in your lap. Unless he's on the move, that is. I'm going to miss when he no longer has his little toddler run, but for now he still have the cutest way of moving throughout his life: at full speed with a little bit of bouncing to his cheeks and a soundtrack to accompany said bouncing. Another of his latest obessions? Playing tag with his sister, although Alex only wants to play about half the time. He still loves playing hide and seek and will get behind a chair in the living room, count to ten (from three about half the time) and then burst out, saying "HERECOME!" before trying to find someone. His favorite book right now is Oh My Oh My Oh Dinosaurs, and he laughs at every page, especially the page where they are singing a dinosaur song and we sing the text to him. He has this way of bursting into laughter recently that cracks me up so much. It's not that it's less natural than it used to be, it's almost like the laughter has built up inside of him and he has to let it out with a guffaw. For a while baths were a nightmare, but he now seems to have recovered from whatever trauma he experienced with water and is now mostly back to normal when taking baths. (He still doesn't like his head to be wet and would never volunteer to put his head in the actual bath like Alex did, but as long as he's not screaming, I'm content for now.)
He is also starting to be fairly polite and will frequently say please and thank you without any sort of prompts. I was pretty proud of him, too, because my parents were here taking care of me and the kids for a few days while I was recovering from sinuplasty, and Micah was behaving pretty well and listening to my parents when they told him no. He was also fairly gentle with the kitten that they brought with them, whish was fun to see.
More birthday updates later since it's five in the morning. We're not doing a party for him, but after his nap today we'll open a few presents and have some cupcakes. (And he BETTER be excited about cupcakes because he always wants to talk about this favored form of dessert...)
Thursday, June 23, 2011
An Addition
I forgot to add this last time, and it's too cute not to include. A few days ago, Micah randomly started to "act" for Guapo. He first started it by making him talk to me and wave his hand. Then he had Guapo ask for a kiss and hug, and he started to make him pray when we pray with him at night. He'll also have Guapo throw up a high five to you if you ask. Cuteness defined.
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