Sammy on the move!

We first noticed Sammy doing a sort of Navy Seal crawling thing last week, but the day before yesterday I caught it on film. He's highly motivated to capture the most potentially dangerous toys, especially balloons.

Four years and one month!

This is Olivia. She's four years old. She's having a little nap inside the tent Chris and I made for her birthday. She looks so sweet and yet full of ideas, dreams, deep thoughts, people to be and places to be. Her absolute favorite thing to do these days is to play, but more specifically to create a situation and assign roles ("I'm an evil princess, you be a dragon.") and then use props, sing songs, and make up dialog for all of the players. It's pretty funny and never really goes more than one scene before characters are changed and sets are replaced. Chris is much better an playing in these one-acts than I am. I'm not much of a thespian. I can never think of good dialog beyond "You will never live in the castle again, evil princess!"

Other than the dramas, Olivia makes up songs (tunes and lyrics), stories that basically follow pictures in her books, and tons and tons of drawings. In fact, she's so prolific that I've taken to making little books of her drawings and giving them to strangers. (Not really, but I might have to soon.)

In her outside of the home life, she's enjoying her time at Little Lights where she's made friends and admirers. We're thinking ahead to kindergarten and starting to research different schools and programs that she might enjoy. We still have time, but it's good to see what's out there.

Some challenges have been getting ready in the morning and helping to clean up toys and messes during the day. I've found that if I can make it into a game or laugh about it, she is much more receptive. But, I'll admit, most of the time I get all General Patton on her ("Put on your coat now, because I said so!") and shockingly, that approach never works or ends in tears. So, I'm aspiring to make helping a positive thing in the new year.

Four + one month is fortunate.

My favorite picture

This picture kills me for many reasons: first, it's rare to get a smile out of all three of these folks at once. I mean, look at Sammy! What a cutie-pie! And Olivia with the outfit he picked for herself in the dead of winter: purple shorts. And Chris, what an awesome dad.

As 2013 comes into view, this is what I'm grateful for. 

Like mother, like daughter

I love this picture of Olivia and me getting pretty on Thanksgiving. She's doing her eyebrows.

Olivia is Four!

Olivia turned four yesterday! That seems a lot older that three, doesn't it? Maybe it's just me, but "four" seems solidly into little girl territory. Far, far, sadly far away from baby and toddler. She is a beautiful little girl, though. Cheerful and full of light. Her teachers love her, say she is a joy to have in class. She plays with everyone at school. They know her as outgoing and friendly. Alisa and I visited her at school for a little party, and she reverted to her shy self for a bit, a side her teacher says they don't see very often. That doesn't worry me much. The fact that she can be outgoing without the support of her parents I take as a good sign.

Right now Olivia is into wrestling and storytelling and writing "notes" to her friends and family. The notes are mostly little drawings of faces with feet, but she takes time to translate each one verbally, except at bedtime when she slips them under her bedroom door, signaling to us that she is still awake and playing. Olivia still likes to be held and carried. She likes noodles, juice, cheese and crackers. She dislikes bedtime and dinner. No surprises there.

Her favorite word lately is "helpful" - as in "Daddy, will you be helpful to get me some juice?"

4 months old!

Here's Sammy at four months old. My golly, what a cute kid. Since we went to his pediatrician today, we have his exact stats:

Height: 67cm (2' 2.38") 91%
Weight: 6.3 kg (13lbs 14.2oz) 17.8%
Head circumference: 42cm (16.54") 59.59%

So he's a tall drink of water for a baby. We do need to get some more fat in him, i.e. fat in me and that means I can eat to my stomach's content over the holidays. My mom also suggested that I let Sammy nurse longer and that makes sense. Sometimes I think I rush him because he's nursing every two hours and if I don't hurry Mr. Slowpoke along, I could spend all day nursing. We also got the go-ahead to start solids... hello, avocados!

But who is Sammy? He's a sweet, sweet baby. He's incredibly cuddly, giggly, drooly (he's got little tiny teeth buds coming in!) and loves Olivia like crazy. Chris says he's "loaded with charisma and has a great smile--everyone says so." People also marvel at Sammy's beautiful red hair and peaches-and-cream skin. His eyes seem to be changing to brown so he'll have Chris's eyes.

It seems like everything--all of the developmental milestones--are coming fast and furious. It's probably because we're not sitting around staring at him as we did when Olivia was little. But I'm really enjoying him. In fact, after we went to the doctors and ran errands, I had my perfect hour, watching a super-glam decorating show while holding my sleeping Sammy. Heaven. 

Four months is fantastic!

3 months old!

Here's Sammy on election day just a few days ago. Hopefully this photo won't come back to haunt us when he's a conservative Republican whose parents tried to indoctrinate him into the liberal ideology... But until that time *shudder* he's an Obama Baby. :)

At three months, Sammy is doing all of the baby stuff he's supposed to be doing, i.e. drooling, smiling, giggling when tickled, playing with his toes, sleeping every two hours for about a half hour (not long enough, however), and generally being cute as a button.

Our life is very changed by having a baby and I remember someone telling me that having two kids is not double the work, it's more the work is exponentially more challenging to even attempt. Chores that used to take a few minutes now take forever (and are forever interrupted) such as emptying the dishwasher. We have more laundry that I thought possible. Then again, I remember growing up with my four sisters, we had a laundry room with a heap of clothes that was as tall as I was. I'm not kidding. Socks were not put together but all were put into a "sock basket" never to be paired again. So I shouldn't complain. I only have two kids and that's doable.

Part of the struggle is helping Olivia find words and outlets for her depth of feelings about everything from what she's going to eat to exactly how to play the games she wants to play. Let me just say there are lots of tears. And not just from her.

But about Sam, he's awesome. He has beautiful auburn hair, sweet eyes that look like his dad's, and a great disposition. I couldn't ask for any more. Other than a housekeeper.