Sally Says: Sally David and Tommy Epp

April 2007

04/30/07

Tommy got to play on our friend Megan's piano a little bit yesterday. In the car on the way home we were talking about someday paying piano movers to move my family's piano down to Albuquerque so he can take lessons. He got all excited. "Yeah! Let's do that!" We tried to explain to him that moving pianos costs a lot of money. He thoughtfully considered that information. This morning, he found his play purse and pulled out two quarters and a penny. He gave them to me and said, "Here you go Mommy. Now you have money for the piano. You can pay this money to your mom and dad so they will give you the piano for I can play it." I said thank you and explained that it would cost a lot more money than 51 cents and that the money would be for movers. He thoughtfully considered that new information. Later this morning, he asked me to bring his piggy bank down from the top shelf. He dumped all his coins out and tried counting them. He got stuck on 15, so I helped him count to 37. Then he looked sadly at his money and pushed it all into my lap. "Here Mommy. You can have all of these money. Is that enough for movers? It's a LOT of money. I'd really like to play the piano." Kind of breaks your heart doesn't it? Sorry kid. We need new stucco and roof repairs way before we need a piano.

In other news, Tommy was pushing on the screen door on Saturday. We told him to stop. He stopped pushing on it, but started rubbing his face on it instead. His face was getting really dirty from the screen, but we figured it wouldn't do any harm. He does strange things like that sometimes. Then David tried to wash all the dirt off in his bath. The dirt on the sides of his nose just wouldn't come off and Tommy said it was hurting him. It wasn't dirt. Somehow he managed to scrape all the skin off both sides of his nose. It looks pretty horrible, but doesn't seem to hurt much.

04/27/07

David accidentally took my keys with him to work yesterday. We couldn't go to the grocery store or someplace fun because I didn't have a car key. We couldn't even go for a walk because Charlie's stroller was in the trunk of my car and I didn't have a house key either. It was a long day. What do you do on a long day in the house? Clean the bathrooms? No. Laundry? No. You drink milk from wine glasses and play around with the camera and watch movies of course. Then you have Daddy bring you take-out for dinner to make up for his error.

04/26/07

You can't see it really well, but the foot of Charlie's pac 'n play is at one end of the freshwater fish tank. Sometimes when he's cranky he likes to lie there and just chill, watching the fish swim around. It must be soothing.

04/25/07

Tommy: Mommy, you be Lasso Girl.

Me: Lasso Girl? Oh, I think you mean Wonder Woman.

Tommy: What's she wondering about?

Me: What do you think?

Tommy: She wonders everything there is to wonder. She has many questions. But she has a super lasso for catching bad guys. That's why she's Lasso Girl

04/23/07

Charlie was two months old yesterday. He lifts his head really well, and seems to enjoy tummy time. He likes to smile, especially when you touch his face or bounce him up and down. He seems to be a more serious baby than Tommy was. He likes to look around and observe and saves his smiles for when you're interacting with him. He's starting to grab for things, but it's still very much accidental.

He has slept nine hours at night for three of the last four nights, and when he does wake up at night it's usually just once at 2 am.

He's wearing size 2 diapers because I've finally figured out this second time around that wearing bigger diapers means no leaks. He's still in 0-3 month sized clothes. At the doctor today, he weighed 13 pounds, 3 ounces and was 24 inches long.

His newborn hair is starting to fall out, but it's too soon to see what color the new hair is. I know it looks like Charlie's hair is much darker than Tommy's newborn hair was, but the color is quite similar. Tommy's was more auburn than Charlie's. Charlie just has so much more dark newborn hair than Tommy did that it's very noticeable in pictures.

Charlie does have a darker skin tone though, so I wouldn't expect him to be quite a fair as Tommy. It seems like Charlie has coloring more similar to David's while Tommy's coloring is like mine. I even suspect his eyes might turn green. It's impossible to tell right now though. The pigment next to his pupil is lightening, but it could still turn out either blue or green. Other than his coloring, though, Charlie looks a bit more like me than Tommy. Charlie's eyes and nose are more like mine, but he has David's mouth. Eh, he is his own person, but it's always interesting to look for similar features.

Here's a comparison...

Tommy at 2 months Charlie at 2 months

04/20/07

Whenever Tommy wants to remember something he says that he puts it on a sign on his back. I asked him to help me remember to buy something at Target yesterday and he said this. "I really, really will! I put that on a sign on my back. See? It's right here. It says BUY SOAP. That will help you remember."

When Tommy's playing detective he says "SuhSpinach!" Translation: "Suspicious!" He's said it that way so consistently despite our best efforts to coach him with the proper pronunciation that he now tells us we're saying it wrong when he hears the actual word.

"Take my picture Mommy. Everybody's going to think I'm so cute. Cute like baby Charlie."

Tee Hee Hee!

I'm on to your tricks. You are very SuhSpinach.

04/18/07

Tommy: Mommy, I got my, my, my, my...foot finger stuck in here.

Me: Your toe? That's called a toe.

Tommy: Oh right. I knew that. That's the little name for my toe.

Me: Foot finger is a nickname for your toe?

Tommy: Yeah.

Tommy: It's still stuck. You help me?

Me: Sure.

04/17/07

Just so you know, baby sleep patterns aren't linear. Charlie's back to sleeping from about 7:45 pm to 7:00 am, and waking up at 2:30 and 5:30. He's usually awake for about an hour at 2:30 and will only sleep if held on my lap after 5:30. That's not too bad for less than one month old. He'll randomly sleep longer stretches like he did the other night, but I wouldn't expect it to become a regular habit for a while. If he's like Tommy, he'll sleep really well from about 2.5 months to 4.5 months and then he'll start teething. Hopefully we'll instill some good sleep habits by that time, so that teething doesn't mess things up too badly. I'm optimistic since he's already falling asleep on his own in his crib at bedtime.

We pulled out the play mat today. Charlie is much less in need of stimulation than Tommy was at this age. He enjoyed it, but doesn't seem to desperately need it to keep from being bored like Tommy did.

04/16/07

A riddle from Tommy: "I spy with my little eyes something clean-y and blow-y and white."

Answer: Klenex tissues

04/14/07

This baby? This baby right here? He slept from 8:30 pm to 5:00 am last night.

04/13/07

Tommy has some pretty cute mannerisms at this age. I certainly don't want to forget about them, so here's a short list of things to remember.

He likes to stand and make announcements with one hand cocked on his hip.

When asked if he wants to do something he usually answers "I really, really do!"

He is more likely to do 100% pretend play than to use toys. When he's acting out whatever he's pretending, he says appropriate verbs instead of sound effects. For example, when he's pretending to put on a Spiderman suit he says "put" every time he pretends to insert web into his web-slingers.

His favorite shoes are his orange sandals and his red boots. I think he likes them because he can take them on and off without help.

04/11/07

We picked up the newish Marvel Encyclopedia at the library Monday. Tommy has a fascination with Spiderman and saw it on the new book shelf. He just had to have it. We actually looked at it together for almost two hours yesterday morning. He can't read yet, so he looks at the pictures and asks "Who's that?" and "Why is he doing that?" over and over. The book is now on his Amazon.com wishlist. He loves it that much.

Here are some of the superhero related tidbits Tommy has come up with...

When looking at a woman in the Marvel Encyclopedia, you can tell a hero from a villain by their hair. Good girls have nice hair.
The Incredible Hulk has purple teeth to match his purple pants, but his pee is yellow just like Tommy's.
All the good guys are friends. It's hard to tell who the good guys are, but if they have an X on their clothes then they must be friends. That's because Wolverine gave all his friends Xs to wear.
It's OK for Hulk to smash bad guys, but he doesn't hit anybody else because he's a good guy.
Bad guys have hairy faces and claws...except for Wolverine and Beast. "Why are they so hairy Mommy? They're good so they shouldn't be hairy."
Venom is a kind of poison, so that's why the Spiderman called Venom is a bad guy. Plus, he has an ugly tongue. Bad guys have ugly tongues.
Namor has a tail. It doesn't matter that the pictures all show him with legs. The pictures are wrong. If he lives in the ocean then he must be a merman and they have tails.
The Thing's supersuit is made out of rocks. He must have had a very strong hammer to build a supersuit out of rocks.
The best supers have lots of pictures. They looked really different a long, long time ago.
Green Goblin has a purse to carry his bombs in.
Red spidersuits make Spiderman good. Black spidersuits make him bad.

04/09/07

Here's a smorgasbord of Easter weekend pictures. We just had a quiet weekend with home with a simple ham dinner on Sunday. The Easter Bunny left a nice Easter basket outside Tommy's door. I asked Tommy on Saturday if he thought the Easter Bunny would bring Charlie a basket too. He said, "No. Charlie's too little. He can't eat candy or play with toys yet." The Easter Bunny agreed. Charlie will get one next year.

04/06/07

Yesterday was Charlie's six week birthday. I think he's reached the "social smile" milestone, but of course he only does it for his Daddy.

04/05/07

Happy belated birthday to my Dad. We were sad he couldn't be with us on Tuesday (his actual birthday). We had lots of fun with my Mom this week though. We went to Old Town and the Aquarium/Botanic Gardens. I managed to successfully schlep the baby out at less than 6 weeks post-partum.

We discovered this week that Charlie seems to be turning into a "leave me alone to sleep" sort of baby. We have absolutely no experience with this. I keep rocking him and trying to nurse him to sleep when he's fussy and it just over-stimulates him and makes him more fussy. Plus, he doesn't seem to have the knack for usuing me as a human pacifier. If his stomach is full then nursing just makes him over-full and grumpy. We're actually using pacifiers over here. Shocking, I know. One time, I got frustrated trying to get him to sleep so I just set him down for a few minutes in his crib to take a break. He immediately fell asleep. Now we have to figure out a whole new set of protocols. The "absolutely, positively do not try to move the baby until he's been asleep in your arms for at least 10 minutes" rule doesn't seem to apply. We can't just plop him in the crib at any old time either though. We'll figure it out eventually.

Tommy's quote of the day: "There's somebody on our ceiling. It's a bird! It's a plane! It's a chair! It's Spiderman!"

Anyway, here are the last of the Grammy Nancy photos.

Coloring Easter Eggs