Wilmington Visit

Ah, what summer should be about at this age!

The Dark

Brown is suddenly afraid of the dark. I don’t know what happened or how he got this way, but it is kind of weird. In the evening, if there is a room with out a light on so that it is dim, he will run to the door and just stand there, either wait for someone to go with him, or just turn around and go elsewhere. It is very strange to us. I really thought this would not come until later, until someone had let him see some sort of movie or TV show which would then make him scared of the dark, but it seems he has come about this quite naturally.

Joseay is quite the talker these days. Ok, not words or anything, but she loves to just babble on for a while – I am sure she is expressing deep emotion, mostly how she lives her parents and the Brown, but we will have to wait until later to hear the full story. She is beginning to get her knees under her so we guess crawling won’t be too far away. Doesn’t look like we will get the army crawl like we did with Brown. They are so interactive these days and both love it. Especially since Brown can leave whenever he gets tired of her. Things may change when she starts following... The picture is of them looking at Goodnight Moon. Both enthrawled.

Brown starts a half day of school this fall – just about a month away now – and I am not sure that Chris or I are ready for this adventure. We have loved keeping him at home and being able to go whenever. But he loves to be out with other kids and loves to learn, so we are going to try this and see how it goes. I haven’t given up on eventually home schooling both kids within a larger community, but we will see where this takes us.

Sweet Summertime

Well, the updates are few at this point because our lives are full. Spare time is simply non existent so carving time out of time with kids to write about how good the kids are doing seems silly. And again, I have to apologize to Joseay as this is effectively her baby book that we are neglecting at this point. Yep, we are not recording this very well, but know that we are loving hanging out with both of you right now and Chris is snapping lots of pictures. Someday, we might go back and record some of the stories.

Brown is now sleeping in his big boy bed (don’t tell him it is just his crib with a side removed). He has been doing pretty well in it though the last time he was in it, he did sort of end up hanging off onto the floor for a bit. But he loves sitting in bed and having us sit there and read to him. He has gotten to where he will pat the bed beside him and say “daddy” indicating that I am to get over there and sit down.

Joseay is sleeping well, waking up smiling and generally being agreeable. She is eating Cheerios by the dozens now and it won’t be long before she will be eating off of our plates. She has been sitting easily for a while now and we really don’t even worry about her falling over anymore. She spins around on her belly but has not really begun to motivate to crawl as of yet. It looks like her two teeth will be the only ones for a while. She loves to be tipped upside down and generally giggles if you kiss her belly – she is quite ticklish. Hair, well still not so much.

Brown and I had a great night on the dock a few nights ago. He and I were mostly sitting in the small pool but he was doing his fair share of running around and we were both singing and yelling as the sun went down. The lake was getting quiet as he kept asking me to get in the pool with him. We laughed and smiled and had an evening that is hard to capture except to say that it is my favorite memory with him so far.

Did we mention Joseay’s first trip to the beach? We all had a great time. Joseay ate quite a bit of sand and seems to have survived it just fine, Brown finally had fun in the waves and it was hard to drag him off the beach most times. We had a babysitter so Chris and I were able to escape for some lazy bike rides around town and get to a wedding and associated dinners without hassle and with MUCH fun. We had good weather, good food, good kids (with babysitter), good friends at the wedding, and a quiet beach. This will be the vacation we try to emulate in the future. The one the kids will get tired of hearing about. (Joseay, I remember when you were just 7 months old, we took you to St. Simons Island…)

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)