August 2007

08/10/07

Randomy bits of randomness...

• When Charlie sleeps in his crib, he almost always grips the lower edge of his cloth Pooh bumper with one hand. It's very sweet to see him sprawled out on his back with his arms stretched out and one hand grabbing the bumper.
• One of Tommy's favorite last-thing-before-sleep stories is about how a little boy named Tommy took a walk in the woods and found a giant egg.  He took it home and out hatched a tiny frost dragon.  The frost dragon became Tommy's pet and was useful because it kept Daddy's Cokes cold, could cool off hot food instantly for Tommy, and kept Mommy from getting grumpy and overheated.  He also likes my story about how one special day Tommy woke up and was so happy that when he jumped out of bed he FLEW.  I think I'm going to have to start coming up with more boring bedtime stories because sometimes he gets so excited about them that he can't fall asleep until he's talked all about them for a good long time.
• Charlie and Tommy and I have a game called "Roasted Boy for Lunch."  Charlie and Tommy take turns.  I'm the giantess who is doing the roasting.  First the boy lies on the floor and gets rolled out like dough (rolled back and forth on his back.)  Then I put raisins in him (pokes.)  Then I spread butter on him (pats.)  Then I shake salt on him (with a jingly toy.)  Then I cook him (pinching tickles).  Finally, I eat him all up because little boys are so delicious (nibbling tickles.)  They both love it.
• So far, Charlie likes green beans and pears, but doesn't like peaches.  He likes rice cereal a lot more than Tommy did, but then I'm more successful this time around at pumping enough milk to mix in with it.  I can imagine that the stuff was pretty yucky when mixed with water as Tommy often ate it.
• Tommy and I have been playing Super-Friends a lot lately.  I bought him both seasons of the 70s TV show and just found a set of action figures at Costco yesterday.  He has declared that he's going to be the Flash when he grows up because he's already the fastest three year old boy in the world.  I get a kick out of pretending we're the Wonder Twins because I remember playing exactly the same thing with my brother Ben.  "Wonder Twin powers activate!  Shape of a condor!  Form of an ice hammer!"

08/08/07

Tommy Tidbits...

I was cooking dinner yesterday and Tommy was drawing at the kitchen table with one of those "pens" that has a bazillion little tiny colored pencil nibs stored in the side that you can switch out and use to write in different colors.  It was his choice from the $1 bins at Target.  Anyway, after he was quiet for about five minutes he asked me to come look at his picture.  "I drawed you, Mommy!"  It took some fancy adjustments with my wonderful, amazing camera and a few Photoshop adjustments, but I managed to take a picture of it for you.  Tommy also pointed out that the line at the bottom is the (double?) chin and there are ears under the hair.  It's his first ever attempt at drawing anything representational, and I think it's really good.  As usual, he waited until he was sure of his skill to even try. 

And now for some mother's helper stories.  When we were interviewing young teenagers last week, Tommy had this to say at one point.  "I will tell you the truth about helpers and mommies.  The ones with earrings are the mommies.  The ones with necklaces are the girls.  The girls want to help my Mommy, but their mommies are just here to talk."  Sure enough, two of the mother-daughter pairs in a row had worn that combination of jewelry.  He's very observant, my Tommy.  Also, two minutes before one of the potential babysitters was about to arrive for her interview, Tommy was running naked around the house yelling, "Panic! Panic! Panic!" at the top of his lungs.  I'm not sure what that was about, but I'm glad we managed to get him clothed before she arrived.

There is no significance to the crown.  He just asked me to make one for him, "like you used to make when you were a little girl."  Then he wanted me to take his picture.  He's finally figured out how to do a nice smile for the camera.  Speaking of arts and crafts, he's very into cutting with scissors these days.  I don't know if this is a typical obsession for 3.5 year olds.  He will just sit and cut and cut and cut until the paper plate or construction paper or junk mail or length of yarn is in little tiny pieces.  Then he looks for something else to cut.

08/07/07

Charlie has his first tooth!  It's the incisor on the top right, the one next to where his front tooth will be.  He's handling the teething pretty well.  I'm glad my cry of "He's teething!" was finally correct.

08/05/07

Charlie says:  Sometimes I forget that I can roll over, because there's no reason to do it.  I'll do it for the Lucky Ducks though.  I love Tommy's Lucky Ducks.

Ok.  I'm officially exhausted.  Charlie's been napping poorly this week.  Once again, I blame teething even though he still doesn't actually have any teeth.  I think teething is a good all-purpose explanation for any fussiness.  His gums are even more lumpy than they were a month ago and some of the bumps look red and inflamed. 

I've talked to eleven girls about the cleaner/mother's helper job.  I've taken and made so many phone calls Charlie is starting to think the phone is a part of my head.  I've done four in-person interviews and am pretty close to making a decision.  Those of you who know me personally understand that this is probably why I'm feeling so exhausted.  I've talked to more people the past 3 days than I did in all of July.  I have three more interviews scheduled with older girls who are too busy after school for this particular job, but who might be available for baby sitting.  Even considering leaving the kiddos with a teenage baby sitter is a big step for us, as they've only had adult family friends and relative watch them in the past.  I'm rather proud of myself for doing all this work to find nice, employable kids to help me.

  We went to a company picnic at Sandia yesterday.  It was my first time on base, so I was pretty impressed with how big the place is.  Of course, David's told me it's big, but it's different seeing it in person.  It was nice to see all of David's co-workers and their families.  I never really enjoy these sorts of things with a baby to take care of because I don't get to really eat or talk to anyone, but Charlie did pretty well.  It was his second evening outing and I think I'm getting a feel for how he reacts.  Getting him to eat was difficult but essential for soothing his anxiety.  He was fine as long as I was holding him, but tended to randomly lose it when too many people smiled at him.  And he did not at all like it when random toddlers poked their heads into his stroller.  As you can see in the picture, he was pretty overwhelmed and exhausted by the time we left.

Tommy had a grand time playing on the playground, talking to his favorite adult friends, playing with older boys and running away from us.  Luckily lots of people know who he is, so there was usually someone around to bring him back to us.  I thought this picture was funny because I imagine this is what pre-school is often like for him.  Get used to being ignored by chattering groups of girls, kiddo.

08/03/07

Charlie decided to start rolling over from back to front yesterday.  He keeps getting stuck that way.

I don't have time to write much because I used the neighborhood association e-mail list to put out an ad for a mother's helper yesterday.  I got a bunch of responses, so now I have to figure out how to do phone interviews and in-person meetings.  I guess I should have expected that, but I kind of thought just one or two kids would respond.  I'm happy to do what's necessary to find someone to help me after school 2-3 hours a week, but I think my head's about ready to explode.  Charlie's being super shrieky every time I set him down and Tommy's going through some sort of intense clingy stage.  It's going to be next to impossible to make a bunch of phone calls today, but I don't want to ignore the kids who were nice enough to contact me.  So that's all for now.  I'll let you know how it turns out.  Maybe by the end of the weekend we'll have a nice phone list of potential baby sitters plus an arrangement with someone to clean our bathrooms and to play with Tommy and Charlie while I take a shower.   

08/01/07

Tommy has graduated to listening to chapter books.  It was rather sudden.  We've tried Winnie the Pooh and Paddington Bear and Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle occasionally in the past few months.  Even though he seemed to enjoy them at the time, he never wanted to pick the books back up the next night.  This past weekend, he got an book-on-CD as the toy in his Wendy's kids meal.  It was the first book of the Magic Tree House series.  We listened to it in the car and he loved it.  I should have thought to try that series earlier.  The first book is Dinosaurs Before Dark, so of course the dinosaur part caught his interest.  I ordered the first 8 books in the series.  They're about 60 pages long with lots of white space and a picture every third page or so. 

They arrived yesterday afternoon and he was so excited.  He looked through them all and decided which one he wanted to read first.  After dinner, David played with Charlie and I read all of one of them to him.  It took me about 35 minutes to read him the whole thing and he absolutely loved it.  Then, he wanted another one after his bath.  I read a third one to him during Charlie's nap this morning.  So far, we've read the one about mummies, the one about the rain forest and the one about pirates.  He's been carrying his books around in he backpack and sorting them by number and setting them out on tables and shelves just to see what they look like.  He's that excited. 

I can't really read to him while taking care of Charlie, otherwise we probably would have read all eight by now.  I guess we're going to have to invest in the rest of the series.  Hopefully he'll retain a bit of his picture-book-reading mindset and be willing to re-read them.  This jump opens up a whole bunch of book-reading doors for us.  I'm all excited to try more beginning chapter books with him like Captain Underpants and Commander Toad and Time Warp Trio and the Littles and the Borrowers and Nate the Great and Hank the Cowdog.  (Ok.  I'll stop. Those should take until he's at least five.)  I don't think he's ready for older favorites like the Oz books or Roald Dahl or the Redwall books yet, but he will be soon! 

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