The joys of being at home

Brown loves playing outside, and running around, and drawing, going to "cool" (school), but there is truly nothing more that he seems to enjoy than when the 4 of us are home and playing together in the living room. He just has joy coming out of his pores. He loves to dance and spin around and wrestle with curt and bring us books and give Joseay toys (and sometimes kisses). It is definitely sweet times and I love to see him so happy. Joseay LOVES her big brother, and she cackles and laughs so much when brown is dancing around and spinning around near her. She loves watching him. The hardest I've ever seen her laugh was last week when he was playing peek-a-boo with her. She was howling - and he was eating it up. None of these pictures are spectacular - just recent from around the house.

Pictures and Progress

Well, the kids are growing and changing. I know that is news to no one, but we have reached a point where we can peek our head above the water and and look around a bit, and we see change.

Joseay is finally sleeping through the night. We put her through baby boot camp a week or two ago, just letting her yell it out. I slept downstairs with her the first night, and listened to her cry for about 2 hours straight. Checking on her every 20-30 min to try and replace the pacie etc, but she would have none of it. Chris did the same the next night. Then, since we weren't doing anything to help her anyway, the next night, we just slept upstairs, checked on her the next morning and she was fine. Imagine that. So we are now catching up on sleep which is improving our outlook on life and Ms. Joseay immensely. She is also getting pretty handy about holding her bottle on her own which is quite nice as well. She is just about out of the bassinet phase as she is beginning to roll around and get wedged in sideways, so we have to get her in the crib soon. That means her big brother gets transitioned to a bed in the near future.

The Brown continues to roll on. He is a joy to be with and play with. He is starting to talk a bit more which is a relief to us both. He has summertime knees which is evidence that his still tries to run faster than his legs want to meaning he has skinned knees most of the time. Yesterday, he got his first wasp sting which was no fun for anyone. His hand is swollen quite a bit but he continues on his way. We finally got in the lake this weekend, rain and all and he mostly loved it. He is quite the tentative guy, but once he gets in he loves it. Joseay hasn't invaded his space in the water yet, so that will be coming soon. He spent last evening running around with his 5 cousins with Sarah, the 11 year old babysitting him most of the time while we enjoyed the food and company. What a nice stage this could be! Yeah for responsible, patient, 11 year old cousins!

The quickly disintegrating bear

I know many of you had your favorite stuffed animals or blankets including an annoying little sister in my house who carried her blanket around until all that was left was a section of the satin hem that used to be pink in color but was last seen as a pinkish brown streak of material that you would never touch if you saw it on a park bench. With nightmares of this discolored material still floating in my brain, I was hoping Brown would not latch onto something like this. I even thought we were well past this point but several months ago, he latched onto a bear that we have successfully (mostly) confined to use only in his naps and bedtime. Somehow, he has gotten into the habit during reading at night of picking hair off of the fur, and stuffing it in his nose. Yes, you read that correctly. No idea where, how or why he acquired this pattern. Aside from being bizarre and quite gross especially after he gets up, it has the effect of hastening the deterioration of this particular collection of fabric. For many months, this fur merely smelled like an old shirt. Then it started smelling slightly of urine which was only mildly offensive and was worth the trade off of a happy sleeping boy. However, during a particularly feverish night, it was a collecting point of vomit not once but twice during the night. Despite our efforts, this smell could not be removed or countered. So we put this non washable bear into the washing machine which it largely survived. However, we can see that its days are numbered. It did take a few trips to the Good Shepherd playground during a few weeks of separation anxiety during which time it picked up more than its share of small, prickly pieces of mulch which we are still trying to remove (it did wonders for the separation anxiety however). A few more washings, and more of the stuffing may begin to come out. We envision the time when the Brown is carrying around a piece of fur with an eye or two attached to it. In light of that, we have been looking for a look alike bear out there, but have had no luck. If you happen to see a bear that looks like the one in the picture, please let us know. We may buy 4 or 5 of them so that we can avoid the fate of that well used blanket of yore.

That dreaded bath time event...

We had a good time at the Discovery Museum today. Two is much harder, but doable. Joseay just had to be carried the whole time, but Brown did a good job playing and exploring without me having to be right near him all of the time. He loved it. Joseay did a good job holding her bottle on the way out to the car. She's a pretty coordinated little thing.

So when we got home, Brown had lots of sand on him from digging for dinosaur bones, so I stripped him down at the door and he ran to the bath. He had a great time in the bath and was happy for 20 minutes or so. And then… UH Ohhhhh… the moment we knew would come. Suddenly, something in the water was really scaring him. He stood up and kept trying to get away from it – crying, squealing… yelling…


POOOOO POOOOOHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!

Sure enough… there were floaters and sinkers to dodge. The more he ran from them, the more they moved around in the water and tried to get him. Talk about saying “BLEEEHHGGGHHH over and over! He did not like it at all. He looked a bit terrified. So I got him out and stood him on the bathroom floor next to me while I fished for the nuggets. I put them into a bag and we dumped them into the toilet. He flushed and told them “bye bye”.

So then he had pooh pooh water all over himself, so we walked upstairs to mommy and daddy’s shower. As I got the shower water warm for him, he peed ALL over the floor.

Oye vey! Hilarious. This morning involved a lot of cleaning up time.

It's been a pretty long 5 months, but things are definitely starting to even out a bit. All of those people who told us that going from one to two kids was a HUGE adjustment... "word", is all I have to say. Holy cow.

Joseay is smiling and giggling more and more and loves showing off her 2 new teeth. She's doing better rolling over and she is really great at holding toys and banging them around. She loves the "freedom" of the exersaucer and jumpy thing. She is just SO READY to walk and run and do her own thing. You can see the frustration in her when she is being held and she just wants to do it on her own. She is going to give us a run for our money... she is making that very clear. She'll keep us on our toes for sure.

The Peace Offering (she's not too interested)

Does this count as camping?

Well we are planning a camping trip with some friends this weekend and last weekend we thought we better practice as we have 2 kids now. Shouldn’t be too much trouble right? As you will see, it didn't go so well. We pitched the tent in the yard up at the lake and began to put our stuff in for the night. But before we even got in to go to sleep, we decided that with the baby still getting up twice a night screaming bloody murder, we would try this first night with just Brown and let grandma keep Joseay. So that is what we did. Then we laid down for the night about 10pm. Brown decided it was play time and didn't even go to sleep until 11:30 while making frequent loud noises. About 1pm, just as it was getting good and cold, Chris reached over to cover Brown once again since he kept kicking the covers off. She realized Brown was soaked. Not just damp but soaked through his clothes and his sleeping pad with tee tee. So at 1am, Curt and Chris stripped Brown down in the freezing cold, changed his diaper, found new clothes, flipped the sleeping mattress over and tried to settle him down again. Well, he is not a still sleeper and kept waking up crying, moving around. This continued until about 4am when we decided to give up and go inside and put everyone to bed which is what happened. So Curt and Chris think that maybe this year is not the right one for camping with this age kids and maybe next year will be better. Even if we decided to tough it out, Curt thinks that no one else in the campground would get a good night's sleep listening to both kids scream alternatively through the night. Wouldn't exactly be fun for anyone. So this summer, anytime you hear us talking about a tent, you will know we are planning on “camping on the lawn.” It was so easy when Brown was 3months old and camping in the cold. What happened?

On another note, Joseay rolled over from her back to her front for the first time yesterday. Yep missed that one too (see last post)… Second children are so neglected…

Who said Madness?

Well, for those of you who think march madness started today, you haven't been to our house lately. The last two weeks have seen fevers in both kids, ear infection, RSV, breathing treatments, tylenol, amoxil, nexium, ear drops, up all night (ok not new) as well as vomiting on the favorite non washable stuffed bear. So in the Chaffin household, the madness is subsiding for a while. Joseay is celebrating the first appearance by the mighty mighty terriers as you can clearly see above. Wofford you know.

We are sort of using this blog as our public babybook (there isn't a private one) so I expect the kids may one day peruse through some of these entries. So Joseay, if you are reading this, I am happy to report that yesterday, you rolled over for the first time. Rolling over is one of those fun milestones. It means you are strong enough to start actually moving yourself around. You are no longer an immobile blob, but locomotion has come to your world. It is a glorious event, one for which we have kept a camera handy for weeks so that we could capture the moment on film. Unfortunately, we missed it. I don't mean that we didn't get a picture of it, we didn't even see it. One minute you were on your stomach, laying there on the floor, then you were on your back. we weren't even in the room. Brown, if you are reading this, don't tell Joseay. She might start complaining that we are treating her like a typical second child, missing important milestones and not nearly so many pictures. We are trying, but wow, there is so much to do. Like watch you both smile at each other while you "help" her. Like riding you on my back. Like watching her smile. Like helping you dump your diaper contents in the toiled and seeing the amazement on your face (more later. Uh, maybe not...) Like making her laugh. Like dancing with you. So much to do... truly march madness continues.

First Joseay REAL laughs! :)