J-Walking

Joseay is quite the walker these days. It is so stinking cute because she is so little, and I'm just not used to seeing someone that little walking around. They told us at the pediatrician appt last week that she is in the 25th percentile in size for her age.
I wanted to get some video of her walking around yesterday while she was following Brown and Curt around the house. Brown is finally starting to figure out that he can use his big brother status to his advantage if he can get Joseay to do what he wants. Took him long enough...

Happy 1st Birthday, Joseay!

Well, what to say on your daughter's first birthday? "What a long strange trip is has been?" Perhaps, though this is probably true for most kids. It is almost hard to remember those months of sleepless nights, of screaming days. Almost.


So as you can see, we did get a cake for her to celebrate, and had not planned on her having a taste, but as we (I use that term we loosely as the pictures are all my wife) were trying to get everything arranged for the picture, we neglected to see the obvious: there is a bright shiny cake with a candle within Joseay's reach. No need to explain what happened next except to say no one was burned despite the fact that the picture appears to show me holding her hand in the fire. Icing was the only casualty.
If you haven't seen her in a while, I guess I should mention she is walking when she feels like it. She has had the balance for about a month but no real desire. And I am not sure when to mark the day of her first steps being taken. She has for weeks been taking one step and then falling forward. Technically maybe a step. But not really. Then she started this thing where she would move one foot and just sort of pivot. Does this count? Questionable. But just about 3-4 days ago, she started walking. Easily taking 10-15 steps and going where she wants. Fun to watch!

But unfortunately she has been sick the last couple of days (105, snotty, cough, fussy, etc) so her walking time has been limited, but that should change this weekend. We hope to post some walking pictures soon. Yes, Brown is well. He has been sick with the same thing this week but continues to grow in many ways. His language has improved drastically with new words and combinations popping up all the time. His favorite phrase now is "mommy, look!" It is super cute now and we must have heard it 50 times already. Wonder how cute it will be after the 50,000th time?
We have tried to keep him from having an overwhelming taste for sugar and it may be working. In the picture above, he has cake in his green bowl which he has been crazy excited about for weeks now that he understands what cake is (thanks so much school!). But after about half of a tiny piece today, he started asking for yoghurt and cereal. Brown did get a similar cake on his first birthday (http://brown-chaffin.blogspot.com/2008/12/firsts.html) but I think Joseay was much more cooperative with smiling. Maybe it was because his hat didn't have the pink balls hanging all over it. Its tough being the oldest.

Soccer camp has begun!

All is well

All is well at the Chaffin house. We spent 3 straight weeks at the lake which was a wonderful way to finish the summer, but it is good to be back home and begin to get into some sort of rhythm again. But we ALL love the lake!

We ran out of swim diapers... I think this diaper is at capacity.

Joseay continues to be a joy and is all over everywhere. Up and down and making noises and just generally having a good time. She is cruising along furniture and just yesterday stood up from a sitting position. Of course she was immediately back down, but her day is coming. Or rather our day is coming. Not sure.

Brown is enjoying school. Still “eating all his snack” in case you have been following along. He is doing all those things that to us are amazing and fun, but to the rest of the world are just normal kid stuff. He has begun to play under his bed somewhat. The other night, I went in to check on him after he had been asleep an hour or two, and all I could see was two feet sticking out from under the bed. He was asleep on the wooden floor. Not sure why we spend money on sheets and mattresses.

The Joseay/Brown interaction is also taking a fairly predictable course as Joseay is more mobile and just wants to be doing whatever Brown is doing which of course is exactly opposite of what Brown wants her to do. Sharing hasn’t entered the mental vocabulary yet but we are working on it. This may explain Brown’s new love of running – it is the only way to outpace her right now. But again, the day is coming…

But the boy loves to run. Put him in a big yard and he just takes off. And does circles. Last week, he even finished a run by lying in the grass and rolling around he was so happy. (yes like a dog)

Now that I think of it, this may simply be the beginning of a trend. We built him a sandbox the other day. When we showed it to him for the first time, he played for a few seconds, then laid himself facedown in the sand and sort of made a sand angel. I think he likes it.

Personal Swimming Pool

Well, to keep the swimming pool theme going and divert attention from our bruiser mugshot of Joseay, lets talk about Brown and his recent water experiences. He is getting into the routine of school and all its strange protocols ("well, Brown still likes throwing his lessons on the floor" says his teacher) but all in all it is good. One of the "life skills" at this age is to figure out the toilet. I can see why it would be strange to a two year old to begin using the toilet when they can just poop in their pants. But hey, that thing has a lever that makes a big whoosh, and it involves water, so Brown is in! So they are basically just trying to introduce him to the toilet. Evidently, Brown got a bit to into it as you can see from his daily report:
Now, focus on this part of the report:

So evidently, he really is getting personal with the toilet at school. Nice.

The other thing we are learning about the reports is that sometimes, they are just not that relevant for what is going on with your child. For instance, this line:

This line is completely irrelevant for Brown. He always will eat everything. There is never a time when the "I wasn't hungry" box will be checked. If it is, please call an ambulance. He is a snack eating machine. His first day, while I was there observing, they gave him one cheese stick off of a huge pile, I mean a pile of 30 or more cheese sticks. So after the 2 seconds it took to cram the whole thing in his mouth, he was back at the basket grabbing more cheese sticks with both hands causing much consternation. "wasn't hungry," ha! give me a break.

Terrible mommying

We were up on the dock at the lake enjoying a beautiful day this morning. Joseay was crawling around and I didn't want her to get a splinter so... I had a brilliant idea. The big inflatable pool was empty so I thought she would enjoy crawling around in there for a few minutes - splinter free. About three minutes into this great adventure, the wind picked up quite a bit. Suddenly, as I turned around, I saw the pool take flight with a huge gust of wind, flipping it over in mid air with Joseay being tossed up and over and flat down - face first onto the wooden deck - with the big pool on top of her. Holy cow!!! It was unreal. Poor thing was scared to death, crying hysterically. Scared me, too. She looks like she got beat up pretty good. But she's tough. She shook it off after a few minutes. But she's looking kind of rough right now.

Montessori update

Ok... So the first 2 days were rough, but this video is when I was observing him the third day behind the one way glass. I felt so much better after watching him this day. He had a great week and seemed to thoroughly enjoy himself.
Hmmmmmm