Vocab explosion

Kaitlyn's vocabulary is really taking off. I hear new words every day, and I'm told about new words by Nathan too. Yesterday he told me that she said "Kona".
Oh my goodness... Kona just barked really quietly, and Kaitlyn just mimicked me... "Hush up!" On no! ;)
She also just said "sleep" as she laid her head down on the couch. She says "thank you", "please", "duck", "foot", "toes", "paper", "side" for outside, etc. Her favorites still are NO and OWIE. :)
Update: It's now about a week later, and she has added "Jack", "Ashley", "sorry", "broccoli", "Grandma", "bird", "car", "go". Obviously I can't keep this up forever, but I think it's fun to keep jotting some down!

Wiggle and Giggle

This morning I took the kids to see Mr. Richard sing at the Jewish Community Center. It was free concert and I figured since I had never seen Mr. Richard it would be fun. Fun it was! And crowded it was!
When we were waiting for all of the people to show up and holding some seats (which turned out to be pointless since we went and sat on the floor later anyway), I told James who Mr. Richard was. I told him, "See that man over there in the blue shirt? That's Mr. Richard! He's REALLY nice!" A few minutes later, I saw James run over to him and say, "HI MR. RICHARD!" very excitedly and then, "Can we dance and sing with you?" Ha ha. Mr. Richard said of course he can, and then James ran back to me and proudly announced that he had talked to Mr. Richard. So sweet.
I think Kaitlyn and James thoroughly enjoyed themselves, although it was pretty crazy trying to keep Kaitlyn in one spot. The kids got to go dance and sing in front of Mr. Richard while he played, but Kaitlyn was distracted by the play house that was smushed into the corner of the "stage". She liked dancing though too, and was entertained by all of the other kids around.
I had had it by about 30 minutes into the whole concert... but I held out... good Mommy.

Naaathaaan?

Why is it that toddlers sometimes like to refer to their parents by their first names rather than Mommy or Daddy? James has gone through this phase a couple of times. It amazed me too, since he actually pronounced my name near perfectly, when other kids or foreigners (ha) usually butcher it.
I remember about a year ago (maybe?) I had James sitting on the naughty step for some reason or another. He was really upset and MAD that I was ignoring him, and then he melted and started crying. I went around the corner into the kitchen so he couldn't see me anymore, but he was still trying to get my attention and get me to look at him. "Mommy!" I heard. "Mommy! Mommy! Mommy!" ... and then, "MEREDITH!" I have to admit, even though my son was in tears and very upset, I was cracking up. Am I a bad mother? Ha.
Tonight we had our family photograph taken at our church for the directory, so the kids and I got dressed up and drove over to Saint Margaret Mary to meet up with Nathan. I'm not sure in the rush of things did I tell the kids that Daddy was going to meet us there. We pulled into the parking lot and parked the van... then James says, "Naaathaan?" in a whisper of disbelief. "Is that DADDY?" he said. "Ha HA ha ha ha HA!" He just laughed. Now why did he call him "Nathan" at first and not "Daddy". Silly, silly boy.
Kaitlyn has a new word, "stowie" for stories. Every night before bed Daddy or I will read her a few books. She has a glider chair in her room, and next to it is a TV tray that we have set up to hold her CD player and 5 books or so.
I've noticed that she favors some books over others, and to make sure of this I always try to add one that I know she's not as fond of into the mix. If she's interested, she'll sit there on my lap and be still. If she's NOT interested, and favors a different book, she'll lean over me to the table and say, "bear" or pick up another book instead. Right now I think her favorite book is "Put Me in the Zoo" and it's the one she refers to as 'bear'. She also really likes "The Little Train" by Lois Lenski (thanks Auntie Ana, you gave this to James). Story time is great with her!
James is throwing us for a loop recently with a later bedtime. We get him into bed at a decent time, but by the time he actually falls asleep, it's almost 10 pm. He always yells out, "Help" for some reason, which makes Nathan or I go up there to check on him. His reasons? Anything from having to go potty to, "my teeth are cold" or "I want socks so I can sleep with the covers off because the covers get bumps". Confused? Me too!

James' humor strikes again!

Yesterday the kids and I headed to the YMCA after naps so I could get some exercise. I usually don't work out at that time of day, but since I hadn't showered yet and still was in my workout clothes from the morning, I figured... why not? The childcare center opened at 4, and my kids were the only two there for a while. James really had a good time, fewer kids and more attention from the gals working there. This might be my new favorite time to work out. Plus, Oprah is on. Ha. Although I much prefer Ellen's show.
While in the childcare area, James got to make some jack-o-lantern people out of paper plates and construction paper. He made two, one for him and one for Kaitlyn (yeah right-ha).
He was holding the "people" on the way home in the van, while making them dance on his lap. He was signing, and I wasn't really paying attention to the words or tune he was singing, but all of a sudden I heard from the back seat, "BREAK IT DOWN!" What? I asked him, "James, did you just say 'break it down'? That's so funny!" He didn't really respond and was a little confused because he has NO idea what the heck that means. :) I love this kid.

Progress report

I noticed on the sign by the local public grade school that progress reports were already coming out this week. Seriously? It's only been a month! Anyway, I took this as a sign that I could do my own little report on what James has done in school.
James LOVES school. He loves it so much that every day I pick him up he tells me that he doesn't want to go home. Every time! Last week I walked up to his class instead of picking him up in the carpool line. I was carrying Kaitlyn, so I was a little uncomfortable in the heat, and James would not get up from sitting in line. His teacher, Mrs. Wilhite, was even trying to convince him that he could go and come back next time, but that didn't work either. It finally came down to her picking James up and making him stand up to go with me. Jeepers James.
This month has been exciting at school. His class has been studying colors: blue, red, and yellow. On certain days, the kids get to wear a certain color for a shirt, first was yellow, then the next week it was blue, etc. That is a lot of fun. They also put together a collage of things with that color on it such as stickers or magazine ads, etc.
Nursery rhymes have also been big this month. They have learned about Jack jumping over the candlestick, Humpty Dumpty, and Jack and Jill. So far James has come home with treasures he has made, like a candlestick made out of paper and red saran wrap, and a picture of Humpty Dumpty broken on a brick wall. I'll be excited to see his Jack and Jill activity on Tuesday.
So all in all, I think we're making great progress with school, and I'm thankful that he loves it so much.

Books a billion

I've been waiting to enter this information into my blog because I've had a few surprises under my belt that have finally been revealed. This summer, I took upon 730 slides that were living in a box at my parent's house. These slides were shot in the 1950s and 1960s of my mother's childhood, mostly captured by my grandfather, Delos and my uncle Terry (the oldest of the 4 children). I had never seen these slides before, and judging by the shipping address on the box, neither had anyone else since the early 90's. This made me terribly excited. One by one, I scanned and scanned, even the garbage shots, until I reached 730 (or so), I wanted to be able to put ALL of them on a DVD for backup. The scanning alone took me a few months, as I would just do some when I was working on the computer on other projects. Each one that popped up on the screen was a little surprise for me, and usually my mouth was agape at what I was looking at... scenes of my mom when she was 3, making Christmas cookies with my grandma (which she now does with my kids, her grandchildren), and what really surprised me the most is how much I looked like my mom at that age and how much Kaitlyn already resembles her!
The whole process was emotional, from seeing photos of my grandfather (whom I NEVER MET), to seeing photographs of the famous trip to the 1964 World's Fair in NYC where my parents met for the first time. I got to see my grandmother as a young, vibrant mother of 4, laughing and enjoying life as I am living now with my little ones. I got to see my mom go through her geeky stage, as all of us do at some point, and also go to see her become a beautiful woman. I really felt like I was let in on a secret that had all been a mystery to me before this project. Yes, of course I've heard stories and seen a few photographs, but nothing like this.
Originally I was going to make a DVD slideshow and put the best of the best photos on it, and then the idea morphed into a book. I found blurb.com from another project that I was working on, and just had to make the book. It was the perfect idea.
I almost caved and uncovered the secret to my mom about 4 times during the process, partially because I could hardly contain my excitement about the whole thing, and partly because I wanted her help in editing and understanding who these people were in some of the shots. I suppressed that urge to share with her, and was able to present the book to her on her 60th birthday, a complete surprise. I cried, she cried, it was great. :)
Then mom turned the idea into a surprise herself. She ordered more books, one for each of her siblings, and gave them to them as a surprise a few days ago since they are all together at the house in Utah. I was thanked by everyone, which was nice of course, but really, just knowing that they had that experience to see those photos together at the same time is enough for me. I wish I could've been there, but we don't always get what we want (I tell my son this all of the time-ha). I know they will treasure these books forever, and then their kids will treasure them for years to come. I just wish I had done this a few years ago so I could've shown my grandmother.
The second book that I mentioned above was a book that I made for Courtney, my cousin, of her blog. She's been blogging for three years, and started when her second son Gabe was just a newborn. What a treasure. I admit, I didn't read all of her entries while working on this project, but the ones I did read cracked me up. The book has the entries from 2005 and 2006 in it, and that alone got to be HUGE! I had so stop at that point and publish the thing! I included all of the photos that she had uploaded and even put captions by most of the photos. It was a lot of work, but so fun and totally worth it. I also presented it to her on her birthday, and told her to open it with me on the phone. She was a little curious as to why I was so excited about a book that I was giving her, but when she saw what it was, she clearly understood. Apparently I won for giving her the "best present in a long time" award. I'll happily take that honor. ;)
She has already taken it upon herself to finish the project. I would've done it for her, again, of course, but if she wants to do it, that's fine with me. Ha.
This entry came to mind because I just noticed that I'm approaching my 100th blog entry. Time to publish! :)

Kaitlyn adds to her vocab

Kaitlyn has really added to her vocabulary this last week. She now attempts: cracker, sticker, stairs, go, shoes, pasta, pizza... but her favorites are still NO and OW! :)
I've had a busy week so I've been slacking on the blogs. I'm so tired at the end of the night that I sit down ready to type, and then completely forget what I was going to type about. Hmmmm... maybe I need a vacation. LOL.
James has entered the "WHY?" stage as of tonight. It's already driving me crazy. For a long time now he has been asking, "Why not?" for everything, not really understanding that what he is saying isn't making sense. But now it's why... why... why! Oh NO!
I've tried saying, "Well why do you think James" and he responds with, "I don't know, why?" DOH!

Up at 6:40.

I got up a bit early this morning so I could get dressed and have my breakfast and coffee before the kids wake up. I'm going to attempt the YMCA this morning with them, as I did on Saturday. You'd think that the childcare center wouldn't be full on a Saturday morning, but, to my surprise, James told me when I picked them up, "Mom, there were too many kids!" Awww, poor thing. I don't think it was that there were too many kids at all... I think it was that he really didn't know any of them, and there wasn't any structure or teachers like at school. Plus, there were older kids than him, probably not caring if they were blocking him from getting to his desired toy.
We'll try again. I really hope it works out, I need to get on the program and stick with it!

The memory of an elephant

James remembers a lot, I mean a LOT. He remembers thing that I don't even remember, and he doesn't remember things that I WANT him to remember. :)
Today we were walking out the door to go run some errands, and he saw a dent in the wall by the door that goes out to the garage. He said to me something like, "I did that. I slammed the door into the wall, and made that dent because I wanted to go with Daddy. I cried!"
He was right. About 6 months ago, no kidding, Daddy left to go get a hair cut and James wanted to go. He was so upset that he couldn't go, he opened the door so hard that the door stop couldn't stop it, and it dented the wall where the little lock juts out of the handle. Temper, temper.
I just can't believe he remembers this incident! Just for your info., he cried for 30 minutes until Daddy came home. He's never cried that much at one time.

Pajama pants

Kaitlyn likes to sit down and try to put her pajama pants back on. She'll sit there for 20 minutes and just put them on and take them off. Silly girl.
She earned a trip to the doctor today, since she was up last night from 10 until 2 a.m. Sure enough, ear infection. Poor baby.

The only good thing about having sick kids...

... is that they cuddle with me on the rocking chair. I remember James doing this when he was one, and he still is NOT a cuddler. I just rocked Kaitlyn to sleep in the rocking chair and I was having a moment. One of those, "God, don't let me forget what it feels like right now to be holding my child when she is so young. I don't want to let her go, ever."
Well, I did let her go, put her back into her crib, and now she's awake AGAIN, and babbling. Silly girl. GO TO SLEEP!

M&Ms or bananas?

James has been pee-pee potty trained since he turned 3, but has struggled a lot with going #2 in the potty. Ever since he started training, we've tried bribery, a parent's best friend. However, M&Ms after poopy in the potty and a sticker on the potty chart apparently aren't quite enough to convince him that it's worth it. Once in a while we've had a success story, but it's usually when he's got his undies on and he can't hold it in, if you know what I mean. We get there just in time! :)
So for three months of being pee-pee-trained, he has still been pooping in his diaper that we put on him for naps and bed time. Ugh, I guess it's really true that you can't make kids ready to do it, they have to be ready by themselves... OR you have your RN at the doctor's office tell him that poop goes in the potty now that he's 3. Sandy, a great friend of my Mom's, has been great to us at our pediatric office. James went in for his 3 year check up (late-yes, I forgot), and had a nice talk with Sandy about pooping in the potty. She first asked him if he likes to poop in the potty. He said no, because it gives him a bad feeling. She then told him that if he kept trying, and went every day on the potty, that bad feeling would go away. She also said that when he gets a tummy ache, that it means that his stomach is saying, "YOOOHOOOO! Time to poop in the potty!" Sandy re-iterated that since he's 3, his poop goes in the potty now, and that we should keep her up to date on this issue. What a nice lady.
Alas, that night, James pooped in the potty. He got his M&Ms and sticker the next morning, along with the best part... a call to Sandy to tell her that he pooped in the potty. She was so excited for us, and especially for James. We've had a few incidents in the diaper since then, but he's working on it, I can tell. He also really likes to say, "YOOOHOOO! Time to poop in the potty!" :)
Today, after the last of the M&Ms were eaten, we had to head to Walgreens to buy more. As we were driving there, I told James that we were going to get more M&Ms because we were out. Then I said something like, "Unless you want to start having bananas for your special treat after you poop in the potty, how about that? Do you want M&Ms or bananas?"
Stinker says, "Bananas! I want bananas! That way, if we run out, we can just go to the store and get more bananas!"
My jaw dropped. My kids are strange. Very strange. :) We still went to Walgreens and got M&Ms though, and he was stoked to be able to carry around that large bag of M&Ms around the store and tell everyone that we were buying them. He's just a friendly little guy....
I was emptying the dishwasher tonight before putting the kids to bed, and Kaitlyn toddled over to me and cried a little, looked at me, and said, "poopy". Sure enough, she was in the process. I got her to the potty, and nothing else happened, but she sure thought that sitting on that potty was a ton of fun! Ha ha. She'll probably be trained by 2. Ha.
Kaitlyn got whatever this sickeness is that James has had. She was up with a fever last night of 103.5, and didn't sleep for about 2 hours or so. Poor thing, she must have felt terrible. Tylenol helped, but she was still uncomfortable. Waaaa.

Baby babble

Last night Kaitlyn really made me laugh, the half cry/half laugh thing. She's starting to look forward to reading stories before bed, and now she's proven to me that she really is listening. We were reading one of my favorite books by Sandra Boynton called The Going to Bed Book. James and I used to read this book too, and it has only been a few months that the book has been on Kaitlyn's bookshelves instead of James'.
As I was reading to Kaitlyn, we came across the part that all of the animals in the big bath tub take a bath and "scrub, scrub, scrub". She looked up at me before I started saying the first scrub, and she said it first! The words weren't right, but she had the repetition of three. Then she did it again when we came to the part of the animals all going up "to exercise!" She babbled that too, once again, not the right words, but perfect in syllables. It was so cute it made my day!
She was also sticking her index finger in her mouth, getting it wet, and then feeling the glossy pages. I really don't know why she was doing this, but it made me crack up. It must feel so smooth! ;)
We are big fans of Sandra Boynton's books. We also have Snuggle Puppy, which was given to us by some friends when James was born. Both kids really like that book, and Kaitlyn now even knows when to give me kisses at certain points. So cute!
James is sick today. He woke up last night at around 10 and said he had to go potty. He was burning up! I took his temp and it was 105!!! I freaked out momentarily, then remembered to calm down. I took it again in a few minutes, and it had gone down a bit, and then it kept decreasing. Whoa. I gave him Motrin, he puked it up, and then finally fell back asleep. He still has a temp. this morning, but just sat up on the couch and declared that he feels better. Better living through chemistry! I can see in his eyes though, that's he's not feeling better, he just thinks he is. Ha.

Green TV?

Nathan has been working very hard to get our TV set up with new HDMI (whatever does THAT mean?) cables to hook into our new sound set-up. See? I can't even remember what the stupid thing is called, I'm so tired. Anyway, he worked very hard the other night drilling holes to feed the wires, etc. and about 10 p.m. left his project to go pick up my Mom at the airport. At this point I went to bed. Next thing I knew, he was showering at 2:30 in the morning. He told me, following the shower when getting into bed, that he had to "cool down". He was all fired up because he had worked so hard on this and it wasn't working.
We have been watching TV for the last few days without any RED in the picture. It's very bizarre, the colors that show up are mainly blue, green, and gray. It definitely puts a new spin on the freaky shows like CSI! Ha ha.
We are getting a new cable box from the cable company, so hopefully that'll fix the problem. It's so weird!