Conversations

When you receive pictures like this in emails, you end up with interesting dinner conversation.

Christopher is talking up a storm these days and Daniel is starting to read. I'm having trouble keeping up. I think that is because Daniel has recently quit napping at home on most days. We will get the occasional nap on a Saturday, but naps rarely come on the days we are home. I was very spoiled with almost 3 years of a 2 hour nap in the afternoon. The boys have been napping at the same time in the afternoon for as long as I can remember. It's so different now and my learning curve is steep.

Christohper mimics everything and is a real studier. He will listen, repeat, look for the thing again, and tell us about it. You can almost see him thinking. Backhoe was the word he learned in the video. His long babbling sentences are starting to take form. One of his favorites is, "What is this?" I'm also impressed with his ability to know what he wants. Christopher has been asking to go down for bed or a nap for many months now, and has been requesting food when he is hungry since his first birthday. Now that is extending to finding a certain picture in a book or a specific kind of food. It can be frusterating as a parent to figure out what this specific thing is, but he's a good enough communicator to get the point accross without too much distress, usually.

You will notice that Daniel is singing the chorus to American Pie. That is his latest bedtime song. Matt was really happy to move on from "Outdoors" to the tune of "I'm Yours" which he's been singing for almost two years. Daniel loves the song so much that I had to print the lyrics off the internet so that I could sing the song, too. We need to teach him more songs. He really seems to enjoy singing. His imagination is starting to blossom. The stories and roleplaying that I get to overhear are wonderful.

Alright enough of this rambling. Matt was accusing me of being an infrequent poster, so I've responded with a double post today.

The Definition of Dammit

On Monday I received a panicked call from Matt as he was on the way to school with the boys, "Rachel, Daniel just said 'dammit'. What do I do?" Not knowing the situation or the use, I thought we should just see how it evolved from that moment. Well, tonight Daniel tried out the word again. He just said it as we were walking up the stairs to go to bed. So Matt and I decided to have a little chat with Daniel unrehearsed. I asked Daniel if he knew what that word meant. He thought about it for a while and responded, "When you forget something, you say 'Oh Dammit' Then you turn around and you go back and get it. Then you say, 'Here it is.'" Matt remembered all the times that happened in Daniel's presence and in a moment of irony had to restrain himself from saying, "Oh, dammit." There was no debate over where Daniel picked up that nice token phrase. We told him that it's much better to say, "Oh darn," or "Oh gosh, oh gee." He seemed convinced. Hopefully, we won't be hearing from the teacher about this one.

Word of the Week: Tricky

Christopher's vocabulary is expanding by the minute. It is really fun to hear so many new words from him. He is also starting to say multiple word phrases like "tricky puzzle" or "I did it" or "Mommy snuggle Bucky." Then there are the times that he babbles paragraphs and ends with "ball?" as if he had just asked you a very involved question and needed input from you. I just have to guess during those times.

Christopher has had a little fever during the past couple days, which has made him a little more cuddly than normal. When we put him to bed now, he always requests a book. So we did the book, then we said prayers and sang songs, and he just wanted to snuggle. Usually he would be crawling out of the chair and pointing to the crib saying, "night, night." He loves to go to sleep and it takes him about 3 minutes to get from in the room to asleep. He's a dream sleeper.

Anyway, I just decided to enjoy the moment and rock him to sleep. I'm usually the Mom who is looking forward to the next stage or accomplishment, but occasionally things catch me off guard and I get a bit sad that they are growing up so quickly. Rocking Christohper to sleep was one of those moments. Before I knew it I was sitting ther in the dark with tears falling down my face. I didn't realize how long it had been since I snuggled one of my boys to sleep. It was a nice treat. I guess that is the upside of a slight fever. It slows them down enough that they will pause for a snuggle every once in a while.

Perspective

Last night we had some friends over to do a little project and for dinner. Christopher had gone to bed and the adults were sitting down to eat dinner. At one point when we were eating Daniel siad he needed to go to the potty. That sounds good to me. We spent a year tyring to encourage him to use the potty, and a few weeks ago, he finally go the hang of things. He is doing great now, and I'm just thrilled that he is using the toilet regularly. So Daniel heads in the direction of the bathroom and sits down on the floor outside of the bathroom and takes his underwear and pants off and walks into the bathroom. Although a little unconventional, I really did not have a second thought about his approach. Now our dinner guests, who thankfully are very good friends, were slightly suprised by this little show while we were eating dinner. So I asked Daniel to close the door. Well, he did that, but his clothes were still outside the bathroom. We had a second showing a couple minutes later. I've been so focused on getting Daniel to actually use the potty that I've lost all concept of ettiquette. I guess that can be our next project. I just wonder what other things have become the norm in our own little world that are not in any way appropriate outside of these walls?