I keep losing things.  Yesterday we had out our fancy-schmancy thermometer, and now I can't find it.  I've looked lots of places.  I even dug through the top two garbage bags in our dumpster, because today is garbage day and I'm afraid that Grant will have thrown it away, and I don't have time to look every where else first before the garbage truck comes this morning. 

It was a $50 thermometer that reads across the forehead, which is why I care so much.  Many it's in the same place as the $24 worth of trans-clear headlight bricks that I can't find.

Grant shook his sippy cup at me yesterday and then said, perfectly clear, "All gone."  I was shocked by the use of two words (even though it is one phrase; but still, two syllables is kind of a break through) and the use of the ending consonant sounds.  He's going to really start learning to speak in the coming months.

Grant also got a new toy train from my aunt Marcy yesterday.  If you shake it right, it will drive forwards very strongly.  Now Grant shakes it and lets it loose on the tables and desks we have, knocking off LEGO mosaics, pushing full glasses of beverages around a bit.  Great....  yet another peril to avoid around here.

Toodles!

November 25, 2010

Happy Thanksgiving!

Apparently it got down to -7 degrees yesterday.  And now there is a freezing rain advisory for Friday, when we might get a quarter of an inch of ice.  This has been the craziest November I can remember.  Usually November is just foggy in the mornings, with low clouds and/or sunshine in the afternoon.  That’s the November I remember.  This November featured a crazy windstorm (gusts to 84 mph at Hanford, I think; to 78 at the airport, and over 100 mph on top of Rattlesnake), followed by a crazy snowstorm, followed by a crazy cold snap, potentially followed by a lot of ice.  Exciting!

Madeleine is really confused by the snow thing.  I’m not even sure how confused she is, but she somehow is mixing up snow, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and the ability to put up Christmas lights, either by us or by other people.  In her mind, snow = Christmas, but snow also means you can’t put up more Christmas lights, and then…. This gets muddy.  Then if it’s Thanksgiving it means --  um.  Something.  About having to put up lights, or maybe that there can’t be any snow, or if there’s snow it’s not Thanksgiving…  I’m not exactly sure.  She wasn’t explaining it well.  I tried to give the talk about how snow has nothing to do with holidays, but I don’t know if she gets it.  Then don’t even get me started about the confusion of the seasons, with all this winter weather while it’s still fall (even meteorologically it’s still fall; meteorological winter doesn’t start till December). 

I haven’t even remembered to mention yet how Grant woke us up at 4:30 a.m. or so.  He had lots of milk, and then we cuddled, and then we read books, and then we had more milk, and then he wanted to get up.  So much for my hope that that second round of milk would mean more sleeping.  At least Brian is off work, so I can take a nap later if I need it. 

Speaking of Brian, it took him over two hours to get home in the snow storm Monday night.  But other people took up to 4 hours here, and I heard that over in Seattle some people took all night. 

Also speaking of Brian…  I had the craziest dream two nights ago.  Brian was giving me a Valentine’s Day card.  On the front of the card there were five words spread out:  SEX SEX POOP POOP POOP.  (I think there were some graphics too, but they weren’t important.)  Then when you opened it up, it said, “Things that only happen once a year.”  I laughed so hard I cried when I told this to Brian.  The thing is that I had been telling Brian the other day about how I sometimes don’t get the chance to do my thing in the bathroom because the kids make it difficult.  The kids make certain other things difficult, too. 

Brian asked me how I reacted when I got that card for Valentine’s Day, and the answer is that I didn’t react to it at all.  I just felt guilty because I hadn’t remembered to get Brian a card, and I told him I didn’t have it and would give it to him tomorrow.  In real life I forgot to get Brian a card for his birthday (even though I did make him one as an example to show Madeleine how to make Daddy a birthday card).  Obviously my guilt over that is spilling out into my dreams. 

Back to the weather (because I find it exciting):  It’s supposed to be a La Nina winter, which could mean lots of snow.  I didn’t think much of these predictions until all of this snow and crazy weather came, but now I could believe it.  Or, maybe we’ll go back to low clouds and fog and call it good.

I’m so glad my best friend Google helped me light the pilot light on our gas fireplace.  I’ve been using it a ton recently.  It’s right next to the computer desk, and I love to scoot right up close to it and try to get all warm and toasty! 

It started snowing last night, as expected, and this morning we woke up to maybe 3 inches of snow.  When Madeleine came into the room I was in and we looked out the window, she didn't have much to say.  I think I asked her something about what is all that?  And she said she didn't know.  Then she asked, "Is it... snow?"  and I said "Yes!"  And then she looked rather crankily at me, as if I had done something wrong, and asked, "Is it Christmas???"  It was almost as if she was upset that I hadn't properly prepared her for it being Christmas.  And when you're little, snow = Christmas, I guess.  There certainly is a great preponderence of snow only appearing in Christmas books. 

Grant is really excited by it too.  He says "No!" for snow, and keeps looking out the windows.  Then he'll say "tree!" to point out that there is snow on the trees, and then to point out our Christmas lights on the trees outside, he'll say "ah!" for "on".  He went to our bathroom and grabbed Brian's hand to take him to the window and show him everything outside.  It was pretty cute.

The kids across the street made snow angels and a snow man, and my kids have been staring out the windows at them.  We were going to go out and play, too, but both kids went through screaming and fussing fits about who knows what, so now we're suspending the plans to go outside till a bit later.  A little Dora is helping them all get over their bad moods, so that we can finish getting dressed.

11-21-10 -- Part 4:

I see the end in sight! The end for catching up with all these notes that have been hanging around since the summer….

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7-22-10 -- Madeleine asked me, “Can you see the funny one-est ever?” (The kids were climbing over the bed frame onto a pile of blankets. I liked the grammatical construction.)

Grant managed to climb up onto the Queen bed all by himself today.

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8-10-10 -- Madeleine said (about Grant): “I love him when he’s soaking wet…. ‘cause that makes me laugh a little bit.” (The kids were playing in the water out on the deck.)

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8-7-10 -- Madeleine fell asleep on a table at the mall today while we were eating dinner. Brian and I both thought that was hysterical. She just put her head down on the table and conked out.

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8-1-10 -- Madeleine exclaimed, “Salt, salt! I missed you!” She was getting salt for an egg with her daddy.

Madeleine said: “Grant’s my baby!”

When we were giving kisses for bedtime, Madeleine wanted 17. I asked if we could count by 17s to get there, and she told me that that would be only one kiss.

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7-29-10 -- Grant said “air!” for airplane, and pointed to it. He was very excited.

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7-23-10 -- I wrote down a list of events. I’m not sure what the common theme is, except that maybe they all were a hassle to me? Or involved me not having any clean and dry towels around?

--Grant brought the running hose into the house, all the way to the kitchen
--Grant was in the kitchen drawer
--Madeleine cleaned up her own potty mess
--Madeleine had a big fit
--Madeleine got towels soaking wet in the sink so she could clean off the coffee table
--Madeleine was upset because I didn’t play Daddy’s blanket game right.

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7-29-10 Madeleine yells “boke!” at flies to make them go away. But they don’t, so then she wails, “He doesn’t hear me!” Or maybe he just doesn’t know that “boke” means, “shoo fly”?

Madeleine “roars” at Grant to get him to go away. She literally yells “ROAR!” right at him.

Madeleine told me, “I just really like you!” I told her I liked her too. She asked why. I said because she was fun. She asked, “You like me ‘cause I’m fun?” I guess so.

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7-19-10 -- Madeleine was crying a lot, and we had this dialog:

Katie: Why are you crying?
Madeleine: I don’t know!
Katie: Do you need something to make you happier?
Madeleine: Yes!
Katie: What do you need?
Madeleine: I don’t know. (Then she cries and cries.)

I thought they weren’t supposed to be like that till they were teenagers….

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7-19-10 -- Grant says “O” and points to the letter “O”; the washing machine broke yesterday; Grant is scared of sirens; Grant loves to point out to us the beeps from ovens and phones and timers; Grant got sunburned when we went to the beach, and I felt really guilty about it; Grant has a brown spot on his tooth; I was upset because one of my LEGO patterns got put into a blog about swastika art, when I was trying really hard to make it not look like a swastika.

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7-20-10 -- I had some LEGO columns (1x1x5, for those keeping track at home). Madeleine was using them to measure things. She said to me, “The sippy cup is 3 bricks high,” and then she said, “It’s 3 units tall!” I couldn’t believe she was measuring things in “units”. I think it came from watching Team Umi Zoomi, a cartoon about superheroes with “mighty math powers”.

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7-22-10 -- When Madeleine’s done peeing on the potty, she always tells me, “That’s all I have.” I think it’s a cute way to say that she’s done.

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7-23-10 -- Madeleine was talking about a plane, and said, “I don’t know why it’s so fast.” A short while later she said, “Maybe it’s so fast because it’s running out of time!” Wow. I love it.

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8-10-10 -- Grant climbed up three of the platforms at the McDonald’s play area. Madeleine followed him. Brian and I had always said that Madeleine wouldn’t go up till Grant went, and it seemed to be the case. (Though since then, they don’t really go up anymore, as of November.) We went with my mom to visit with Terry F., my old babysitter, and some of her grandkids.

We bought the kids some flashlights of their own. My mom got a book with a Dora flashlight, but we were supposed to leave it at her house. Then the kids wanted to play with our flashlights, but they broke them. So we bought kids flashlights at Wal-Mart. The kids have lots of fun playing with them, especially in the closet in the kitchen. Even Grant will close himself in, even though he can’t open the door to get himself out. Another favorite is to get into the van in the complete darkness (by not turning on the lights or opening the garage door), only using the flashlights to see the way. Then they love sitting in the van in the dark and flashing their lights all around.

We were singing “Happy and You Know It” at my grandma’s house. Grant was being really funny, and when the song said “pat your head”, he’d pat my head. When it said to blow kisses, he’d reach down and put his hands on my mouth for me to blow kisses.

When Grant has pooped now, he will pull on his clothes and then run to the diaper stand. He’ll do this even if he’s not poopy if I say the words “diaper” or “poop”. (He also has a really cute grunt that he will do whenever you ask him if he’s poopy. It’s especially great if he actually is poopy.) He comes to me if he is poopy and clearly wants to have his diaper changed, but he’ll still scream through the whole changing. And try to grab his poopy. It’s such a battle, every single time. It’s nice to have two people to help, one to hold his hands, and one to do the actual changing.

And……… that’s it! The end! I caught up on all my notes! Woo hoo!

11-21-10  Part 3

Now I just have some super-duper old notes to write down, and then I’ll be all caught up!  Though I keep thinking of more things, like how Grant was with Brian yesterday, and pooped in his diaper, and then got his hand in it, and it was just covered with poo…. Oh yuck.  And then he kept trying to eat it as Brian brought him upstairs to change his diaper.  Yuck yuck yuck.  It was a terrible mess. 

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6-21-10 (Yes, this is from JUNE):  I forgot to fasten Madeleine’s seatbelt when we got in the car, and she told me, “You’re a silly girl, Mommy!!” 

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7-5-10  --  Madeleine wasn’t able to stay awake to watch the fireworks on the Fourth of July, but Grant was.  We watched them from our upstairs bedroom window.  We could see the upper half of the ones at the baseball stadium.  Grant was scared a bit at first, but then he got into the spirit of it, and said “oooh” with me and Brian.  The next night, he went to the window and looked out and started saying “oooh”, remembering what he had seen the night before.

Richard, my friend from college, came to visit with his wife.  That was fun, and he made crazy things with our Simple Machines DUPLO, including a machine that converted circular motion to linear motion.  While he was here we apparently didn’t get Grant upstairs for a nap fast enough, because he eventually fell asleep on the floor underneath the chair Brian was sitting on.  That was highly unusual.

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7-6-10 --  Grant has been excitedly pointing to airplanes and birds.  And Madeleine can see Toyota Corollas everywhere.  She recognizes them way better than I do.  (Brian got a new Toyota Corolla in April, which is why we care about them now.) 

11-21-10, part 2

Okay, time to catch up on old notes.  They will be in no particular order:

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10-5-10  -- Madeleine made a traffic light out of some DUPLO.  She told me, “It’s unusual.  That means it’s lumpy.”

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10-10-10 – Hey!  It’s 10-10-10! …  Grant is a book worm; he loves balls, and to play ball; he insists on eating with silverware.  He says “A” for lots of things, especially letters, counting, shapes, “apple”, generally any of the school-ish kind of things…  Grant tried to get in the potty water again today.  Sigh…. I thought we were past that….  Madeleine tries to make things for Grant, and give him things:  a LEGO tower, LEGO snakes, food, etc…  The kids both like to do lots of somersaults…  Grant is a lot smarter now; he really is starting to understand lots and lots. 

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9-22-10 – Out of nowhere this morning, Madeleine said to me:  “It rained a lot last night so we can go to Howard Amon Park if you want to.”  Um…. It did NOT rain last night!  And I don’t know why she thought that would make it okay for us to go to the park.  You know, I’d just take you if you told me you want to go, you know…

Also, Grant knows how to say “star” (“ta!”), as well as variations of “right there” and “over there” (sort of).

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10-5-10  --  When we were driving home from my mom’s house, Madeleine told me:  “Red Mountain is echo-y…  that means it’s egg-shaped.  ‘Echo-y’ is a special word for egg-shaped.”  Oh wow.  That made me laugh on all sorts of levels.

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9-28-10  A dialog:

Madeleine:  Why did you leave the fan on in there?  (the bathroom)
Katie:  Because it’s stinky.
Madeleine (wailing a bit):  But then it will run out of its fan batteries!!

Several times recently I tell the kids to make sure to turn things off (e.g. flashlights and the electric tea lights) so that they don’t run out of batteries.  I guess Madeleine is taking the lesson to heart. 

Also on this day, we were skyping Merrie Jo, and I told Madeleine that we were going to go to Alabama to visit Merrie Jo when the new baby was born.  Then Madeleine wailed a lot, and when I finally got her to explain what was wrong, she said, “I don’t know how to get to Alabama!!!” 

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10-8-10 --  Grant can point to lots of shapes, colors, even letters.  When we were trying to show off his skills to my parents at IHOP last night, he would point to the wrong shape on purpose, then shake his head “no” and laugh.  He did this repeatedly.  Ah, you gotta love 20-month old humor.

Also, Grant loves to put on Mommy and Daddy’s shoes, and then laugh about it.  Madeleine never did that, but Grant thinks it is hysterical.  It’s very cute.

I’m not sure how much I’ve written about Madeleine’s love affair with Jupiter yet, but she loves Jupiter.  I wrote some notes here about how Jupiter picked his Mommy and his brother… I think it’s the part where he stretches out across the sky to get them to come to his birthday party.  Every night Jupiter has a birthday party and all the stars come.  If Madeleine can’t see the stars because it’s cloudy, she’ll say they are playing hide-and-seek.  We’ve written several books about Jupiter now.

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11-1-10  --  Grant has a shoe fetish.  He loves to get shoes, for himself, for Madeleine… when Jameson was visiting Grant would get his shoes and carry them around my mother’s house.  Grant also has a new fun habit.  He loves to “help” with the toilet paper.  If you go to the bathroom, he gets some toilet paper, and then tries to put it into the toilet bowl while you’re doing your business.  Lately I have been taking the toilet paper away from him, so then he’ll point to the toilet bowl and say “there!”, clearly letting me know where it is that I’m supposed to put it.  He also loves to flush the toilet for us.  Because I need that kind of help, you know…

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11-6-10  --  Grant picked out Madeleine’s clothes for her today, underwear, pants, shirt, and socks.  She didn’t want to go get anything to put on, so we asked Grant, and brought her things.  It was pretty funny, and made Madeleine laugh, which was a plus, since she’d been rather pouty up to that point.

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10-29-10  --  The kids were taking a bubble bath together.  Grant loves to put his head in the water, and then comes up all covered with bubbles.  Madeleine then wants to get in on the action, and puts more bubbles on Grant’s head.  Then she complained to me:  “I keep giving Grant a bubble costume, but he keeps splashing it away.” 

Grant loves pumpkins.  He calls them “bah”.  Is that for ball, because they look like balls?  I’m not sure.  If you ask him how many pumpkins there are, he always answers, “A!”, which I think is “eight”, which is his all purpose answer for any time a number is required.  He loves to roll our pumpkins down the sidewalk, and sometimes they even fall out onto the street.  (Hey, in “5 Little Pumpkins” the pumpkins do roll away at the end.)  Then he’ll throw quite the tantrum when I make him stop. 

We went to a pumpkin patch with Al, Ellen, and Karen yesterday.  It was pretty fun.  We went on a hay ride to get pumpkins in the field, and also went on a train ride around the premises.  We petted animals, went on a carousel ride, and climbed to the top of a pyramid made out of hay bales.

We were cuddling up together under a blanket in bed, and Madeleine started telling me how all the bumps in the blanket were really all of the hills that we have around.  She said one was Thompson Hill, and another was Eagle Butte.  She’s really starting to get imaginative these days.

Grant loves to be naked.  Which wouldn’t be such a problem, except that he likes to pee on the carpet.  Sigh.  He really fights having his diaper and pants put on some times. 

And then there’s this:  Grant pulled off his diaper and went off to play naked, and I let him.  Then there was lots of screaming.  I went over, and he’d gotten his balls stuck in the wheels of the DUPLO train that he’d turned on.  Those wheels can pinch you, and boy had he gotten pinched.  He had a red spot there for several days.  Poor sensitive skin. 

Some of Grant’s favorite words:  tree, arm, cheese, milk, shoe, sock, boo!

Madeleine is scared of some kids’ shows now, even shows like Dora.  Anything that’s spooky like Halloween, or mean characters, like the bad dump truck on Umi Zoomi.  Grant can get really scared too and will start yelling when he sees bad characters, like witches or monsters. 

Grant really loves to climb on things, and sometimes amazes us with his ability to climb on crazy things at the parks. 

And the last note on this page is:  Madeleine loves Google Earth.  She knows how to use it and look at things.  We’ve labeled a bunch of houses, parks, mountains, etc, and she’ll zip around the world looking at places.  It’s such a cool program.  Some of her favorite things to look at are the hills around here, our relatives’ houses, Merrie Jo’s house in Alabama, Mount Everest, and the stars in the sky, many of which we’ve declared to be members of Jupiter’s family. 

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11-17-10  --  Madeleine tells really cute stories about Jupiter.  Jupiter’s Mommy’s house is by Wal-Mart (hmmm, sounds familiar).  Jupiter likes to go out and play, but then he gets tired and goes inside.  (I should say “she”, I suppose, since Jupiter is a girl – but it’s hard.  I’ll try.)  Jupiter’s great red spot is where her arms and hands are.  When we were looking at the sky mode on Google Earth, I started labeling all the brightest stars in the sky as Jupiter’s Mommy, Daddy, brother, grandma, grandpa, auntie, uncle, and cousins.  I asked if Jupiter had a sister, and Madeleine said that Jupiter was the sister.  So Jupiter is a girl, despite all the mythology of it being a guy.  I’m sure I confuse Madeleine a bit by always saying “he”. 

The neighbor girl has been coming over to stay with us during the day on Wednesdays (she is home-schooling this year).  Madeleine is so funny when Haley comes over.  She gets so excited and hyper, and then tries to show Haley how to do things, such as play on Google Earth.  She starts saying “Okay” a lot, over and over again, while she tries to think of how to explain what she’s doing next.  She really adopts a teaching tone of voice, they way I do when I’m trying to explain things to her.  It’s so adorable. 

Grant has been saying a few more words lately:  chair, mole, mouse (“mou”), truck, boots (“boo”).

Grant wanted to put his own shoes on, but he can’t do it yet.  He screamed at me when I tried to do it for him.  So I let him try.  When he realized he couldn’t, he threw both of them across the room.  He’s got a little temper there.

He really has a temper when picking out his clothes.  He screams and screams if I don’t have his favorite shirt for him (the airplane one, as previously mentioned), and will try to rip it off of his head.  But usually if I get it on him and then carry him out of his bedroom and downstairs, then he’ll calm down and move on with his day. 

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11-15-10  --  Grant learned how to open up our doors today.  Oh no! Brian didn’t at first get why this was a bad thing.  I was explaining how he will now be able to open up the door to the bathrooms and go play in the potty water, among other things.  But he hasn’t done that yet.  Instead, he’s tried to go in and wake up Madeleine, and he’s run away from me when I’ve tried to brush his teeth.  Now he really likes to barge in on me if I’m using the bathroom, even if I tried to leave him with his Daddy. 

Grant is really obsessed with counting.  I used to sing to him to calm him down to sleep, and then I started reciting some of his favorite books.  Now I can just count, and he’ll calm down and listen.  We read the same books over and over, and he tells me to count certain things in those books over and over again.  He’ll point at something (e.g. a mouse or a pumpkin), and say “E!!” which is a weird version of “A!!!” which means “eight”, which means he wants me to count.  Hey, we understand each other.    He also likes me to tell him the names of all the colors in the Color Train book, over and over and over again….  I’m kind of looking forward to the time when he can actually speak more coherently.  He’s going to be able to count to 50 right off the bat, at this rate.

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10-1-10  -- I had another note about Madeleine telling me about Jupiter, his mommy, his brother, and the birthday party that he has every night with all the stars.  So cute.  It’s a good thing kids are cute, because they sure can be little pills sometimes.

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11-9-10

Grant also says “bot” for “robot”.  He said “in”, “out”, and “carrot” to my mom.  He possibly said “brown bear” – it sure sounded like it.  Also, “buh” = bubbles. 

Grant is a terrible book flap ripper.  He rips off lots of flaps on those pop-up books.  I try to tape them back, and he rips them again.  Finally I take those books away for awhile.  It’s just frustrating, because he doesn’t learn.  He also likes to rip stuff off of the walls.  We have a little school area on the landing of the stairs going upstairs, with letters, shapes, colors, words, etc. stapled to the walls.  And he will go and rip them off over and over again. 

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11-21-10  (today, Sunday)--That last entry reminded me that I did spank Grant on Friday.  Brian and I are trying to not spank the kids very much, but on Friday Grant just was asking for it.  He figured out that with the couch in the new position, he can reach up to the pictures on the wall and move them back and forth.  It was scratching the paint on the wall, and I told him “NO!” and took him down.  But he kept trying and trying to get back up there.  After quite a few tries, I finally spanked him and set him down in a chair by himself.  Oh, he screamed and screamed.  Friday was just a bad day for both kids.  Madeleine was whining and screaming all day, and Grant and several uncharacteristic tantrums and meltdowns.  By dinner-time I was frazzled and exasperated.  Then my husband had the temerity to question where I was in my cycle.  Seriously????!!!  The answer is nowhere emotional, thank you.  The next day when we were trying to go pick up the car from getting the snow tires on and Madeleine threw a screaming-bloody-murder fit because she didn’t want to go and I had to force her into the car, I asked Brian if that was just my hormones?  Thankfully I think he realized that she was being more moody and emotional and unreasonable than sometimes. 

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11-17-10  --  Madeleine’s head is cold a lot.  Or so she claims.  She has lots of things that she whines about a lot, and this is one of them.  She doesn’t want hats, though, but will occasionally let us put a blanket on her head.  I figured out how to re-start the pilot light on the gas fireplace (thank you, Google – even Madeleine knows that Google is “Mommy’s best friend”), so sometimes now she’ll consent to me putting one blanket down in front of the fireplace for her head, then she’ll lie down and I’ll put another blanket over the rest of her body. 

But it’s kind of a weird complaint, and I rather think her head actually isn’t cold.  I think she wants attention, maybe?  Her litany of complaints seems to be that:  she’s tired; she’s thirsty; she’s cold; her head is cold; her side hurts.  She’s always whining about being tired, but she usually won’t fall asleep for a nap.  If she spends some time cuddled up with me in a bed, though, she’ll perk up.  Then she’ll say she went to sleep, even though she didn’t.  I don’t think she really understands about going to sleep, yet. 

Oh, and we had a great addition to Madeleine’s stories about Jupiter today.  She told me that Jupiter has a radio at his (her) home, and on the right channel it sings “I like Jupiter!  I like Jupiter!  I like Jupiter!”  I think I want a channel on my radio that sings, “I like Katie!  I like Katie!  I like Katie!” 

I really ought to write down the book that Madeleine wrote about Jupiter.  Oh – but it’s in the backpack, probably, and Brian took the kids to the library.  Oh, but he took the books out before he left.  Great.  Here’s the story Madeleine told me.  She even told me where to write down the title.  All I did was copy what she said; I didn’t even ask any clarifying questions.  The only thing is that I had made a book of a certain amount of pages, so she wanted to keep writing to fill them all up.  So the story might be a bit longer than it would have been otherwise.

“Jupiter and his House” by Madeleine W., November 16, 2010  (I wrote the date down)

“Once upon a time, Jupiter and his house played hide-and-seek.  Then they turned into a snowy ghost.  Then they looked at the mountains.  Then they went back to his house to get a drink.  Then they got back outside.  Then they found a dump truck.  Then they found a car.  Then they found a big car.  Then they found a shirt.  Then they walk to a tree.  It had ornaments on it.  The End.”

And then the next day we added a bit onto the back cover:  “He has a radio that on the right channel says, ‘I like Jupiter!  I like Jupiter!  I like Jupiter!’” 

Later on we went to my mom’s house and printed up a bunch of pictures from the internet to glue into the book.  The shirt that they saw is actually a shirt that says “I love Jupiter” on it.  I really think we should get a shirt like that for Madeleine for Christmas. 

Also, the “turned into a snowy ghost” comment was because while we were writing the book, Brian was playing with Grant and pretending to be a ghost by putting a blanket over his head.  The blanket had snowflakes on it.  Thus, a snowy ghost. 

The other story Madeleine wrote about Jupiter was called “Little Star”, and was written on October 9, 2010:  “Once upon a time there was a little star named Jupiter with a wonderful cake.  Jupiter stretched his long arms to get his Mommy and his brother.  He gets them to his party.  Yay!  The balloons were pink at their party.  The sprinkles on the cake were red.  They eat the cake.  The End!”

The focus on Jupiter started because it’s been very bright in the sky this year.  We used to make our wishes on Little Star Venus, but Venus got too close to the sun (and is now bright in the early morning).  But Jupiter has been bright all night long, and Madeleine can see it almost every night.  Now we even watch some youtube videos about Jupiter, and look at pictures in books, etc.

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Man, I’m getting tired of typing.  I have lots more to do…. But it will have to be a bit later.  I need a break!

11-21-10

It’s supposed to get cold and snow. I saw a possible low of 3 degrees. 3! In November? Really? Now I want to get all the Christmas lights up outside before it snows, because it is pretty to have lights underneath snow. And because I have to do it anyway.

Grant really throws fits about his wardrobe choices now. He pretty much only has one shirt he likes, an airplane shirt. Every morning when we get dressed he goes to the closet and says, “air!!!” If it’s there, great. If it’s not, he starts crying. Then he runs to the laundry room and tries to open the dryer so he can pull it out of the dryer. A few times I’ve been able to do that, so now he thinks it will always be there if it’s not in his closet. But sometimes he has spilled all over it just the day before. I do laundry almost every day, but I still can’t make the same shirt available all the stinkin’ time.

Madeleine is so cute about it. We moved Grant’s shirts down to the lower rack, so he can look through them (not that it matters; he only wants the one). Madeleine will go through them and pick different shirts out and say, “Grant, do you want this one with the truck?” or “Here’s a bear shirt.” And Grant will just scream and fuss. Sometimes he’ll go over to the side of the rack where Madeleine’s clothes are (still looking for his airplane shirt, but in vain), and she’ll say, “He really likes my clothes!” But no, no he doesn’t. He just likes one shirt with an airplane on it. We have another shirt with a little airplane on it, among some other things, but that one is a no-go.

The kids are really getting excited about Christmas lights now. We saw some on last night, and Grant just loves them. He will say “anh!” (on!) and point out the window at the lights down the street. He’ll also say “chree!” (tree) and point, too, although those lights are mostly on a house. I think he mostly associates Christmas lights with trees right now, because at the store they have lots of Christmas trees with lights. It’s fun to have kids excited about things. We did put up our tree with some new pretty ornaments, one of which I put too low. Grant ripped it off the tree and broke it, and Madeleine screamed and screamed, because it was the gold star she had picked out. I re-threaded it, though and we hung it higher. I will get out our other ornaments sometime soon, and put the non-breakable ones on the lower half of the tree.

I really need to catch up on this blog, because the kids have been so super-duper cute lately. And also super-duper fussy, both of them. Well, Grant was a wreck for quite awhile this morning, and don’t get me started on Madeleine. She threw a screaming fit the other day because I wasn’t hungry. Really, little girl? She had a Luna bar she hadn’t eaten, and I said to save it. She said to throw it in the garbage. I said to save it. She came and tried to have me eat it. I wasn’t hungry yet. Screaming and screaming. Sigh.

Anyway, off to church we go now. I never sit through church anymore, but spend half the time following Grant around and keeping him out of trouble. I think I’ll bring more books today, since it’s getting colder outside.

Toodles!

I wake up too early in the morning, but then I can’t sleep because I keep thinking that I could get up and have some time to do something by myself.  So I get tense and don’t sleep and don’t get up and it all gets pretty uncomfortable, and then I finally do get up.  Sometimes.  Then I hope the kids keep sleeping and I didn’t waste too much time making up my mind.  I feel a lot of guilt about different things, and I think even that is one of them.  Maybe not guilt so much as “oh no, I’m wasting time”, in this case by not using it for sleeping or for getting up and doing things. 

It’s my dad’s birthday today.  I’ll have to help Madeleine make a birthday card for him.  And Grant could make one too.  He loves to scribble.  He especially loves to scribble on the floor, the walls, the fridge…  Thank God for washable markers.  (Really, I really am thanking Him.  It’s more than just an expression.)

What else do I feel guilty about?  Oh, a ton of things.  Spending too much money, perhaps.  Letting the kids watch too much TV.  Not having a strong faith in God.  Not eating healthy enough.  Not exercising more.  Not blogging more.  Not corresponding with my friends and family more.  Not wearing my mouth guard more.  Grant’s tooth.  Having clutter around the house, though I’ve really been trying to clean it up again lately.  (I go in spurts.  Clean clean clean, relax.)  Etc., etc……  all day long there are little things that bug me.  Then I guess it’s a matter of trying to do a better job, so I don’t feel guilty, or just letting it go. 

I’ve been working on cleaning up the house a bunch lately.  That always makes me feel guilty, too.  I have things, but I feel like I have too many things, and ought to get rid of some of them.  But then I feel guilty getting rid of things – or is it sad?  I feel nostalgic about old things, or feel I ought to keep them because someone gave them to me, or because they might be useful someday.  It sort of feels good to clean them out, but it kind of hurts, too.  I think I got rid of a shirt the other day that my sister got in middle school, or at least in high school.  I got rid of other high school clothes, too.  Brian was rather flabbergasted that I would have such old things still.  I assume that there is a spectrum of hoarding behaviors, and I have stronger tendencies than he does.  To some extent I try to not to get too many new things, so that I don’t have to get rid of them later.  (I’m having a hard time writing this morning.  The language and its phrases don’t seem to be coming out very clearly.)  I save save save, and then have a cleaning binge.  I suppose lots of people do it that way. 

I really am struggling to write this morning.  Phrases come to my head that I think I will write, and then I second-guess them and think that they’re not the correct ones.  And my fingers are cold and I am typing slower and I’m all out-of-sorts!  But I find that when I’m feeling like that, or feeling excessively guilty or anything like that, writing it out helps.  I use the opportunity to talk myself back into good sense.

I haven’t been building much with the legos this month.  When I don’t build, I feel guilty, like I ought to be building.  That’s so weird.  In what universe should I feel guilty for that?  I’m trying to catch up on the rest of my life, so to say – blogging and cleaning and organizing photos and stuff like that.  But I find that there never is an end to the blogging and cleaning that one can do, so at some point I’ll just have to consider it good enough, and feel like I can build again.  Though I felt like I was in a rut, but I don’t think I would know how to get out of that rut.  Then I think well, I’ll just start from the beginning learning how to do a different style, but that is less exciting, because everyone might think:  wow, she was so good at this, and now she just sucks.  Okay, fine.  It wouldn’t be like that.  But you can see how the thoughts go through my head.  Now that I write them all out, I realize how many there are.  And this isn’t even a comprehensive list.  I could go on and on with my guilty thoughts. 

Maybe I’ll go on and on about other things instead.

Yesterday I told Madeleine that it might snow this weekend, and/or next week.  And her immediate response was that that meant we could put up the Christmas tree.  Apparently, snow = Christmas.  Which makes a lot of sense, actually, because most of the books that we have only have snow in them if it’s a Christmas book.  We had bought some Christmas ornaments at the store the other day, and hung them on the wall until we put our tree up.  (The kids wanted to see them, but they were fragile, so I hung them up high, so they could see them without breaking them.)  Madeleine really wanted the tree up, so I put it up for her.  Then we put the new ornaments on it.  Then Grant broke Madeleine’s favorite ornament.  Madeleine was very upset.  So I had to fix it, and then move all the ornaments up high, where Grant can’t reach them.  When we get out our old ornaments, I’ll only put the sturdy ones down low.

Grant loves trees, and Christmas trees too.  He’s been pointing out trees for awhile now:  “chree!!!”  Now that there are lit-up trees at Wal-Mart, he’s been extra excited.  He points and yells out “chree!” and insists that we go see all of the Christmas trees, one at each of the main doors and a whole bunch in the garden center.  When we were putting up our Christmas tree yesterday, he was a bit unhappy, because he didn’t really understand what was going on.  But then once it was up, he was very excited and pleased.  Now I’ll just be thankful if we can make it through the season without him pulling the tree down on top of himself. 

Suddenly I felt the urge to be done writing, but then I felt guilty about that because I have so much more to write down about the kids.  Then I felt guilty about putting any of this in a public blog for people to read, but then I realized that I like knowing that maybe someone might read it.  Which made me feel guilty for being an exhibitionist.  Then I wondered if my guilt was assuaged by having typed out some things, but then I felt guilty because I ought not be feeling better yet, because I haven’t done enough yet.  Then I tried to give myself a talking to, saying that it’s okay to not write down everything my kids have ever done, that I do enough, that they’ll have a nice sampling of their lives as children, and that’s okay.

And now my neck is hurting even more than it did while I was in bed, and that’s not surprising at all.

Wow, from the way I’ve been writing today, you’d think I was pretty unhappy, but that’s not the case.  I think that I’m quite happy in life.  Though I do have all these nagging thoughts.  Oh, and then there’s the whole set of nagging thoughts about death, about people dying, about how my life could change horribly at any moment; of doubts about an afterlife, of sadness for bringing my kids into this world – or is that guilt?  Hmmm.  Also, reading the news is almost always a bad idea, and can really leave me feeling awful for a few days after I read about some terrible occurrence.  So – don’t read the news.

I think I hear Madeleine up.  Yes, here she is.  She told me, “I don’t think I got any kisses!”  And I told her I remembered we didn’t do kisses last night, so we just did 40 now, counting by 4s.  She didn’t want to give any back, so we hit it evenly.  Now she wants to know about how to turn on the Christmas tree.  We are going to go find out. 

http://brickpop.com/2010/11/10/petals-by-eilonwy77/

11-9-10

I’m going to try to write out this sheet of notes I wrote from earlier in the week.  Wish me luck.  Grant’s liable to attack at any moment.  Even as we speak he’s grabbing at me.  Bah. 

11-4-10

Brian expressed some concern about Grant’s speaking abilities, or lack thereof.  I said that Grant was doing fine, and that he knew how to say about as many words as a kid his age should.  Actually, I should go look that up now (at babycenter.com), to be sure.

Well, I found this first, about Madeleine, which is so true: 

“Your 3-year-old now

Sometimes, when you watch your child playing, you might wonder whether he's headed for a future in the theater. Three-year-olds spend a great deal of time supplying dialogue to their dolls, imitating adults' conversations, and using different kinds of voices for different characters — high little voices for babies and deep and powerful ones for superheroes, for example.

“These sophisticated variations in speech are evidence your child is internalizing the ways people use language. Listen closely and you may hear familiar phrases or pitches. Your child is catching on that grownups talk differently to one another than to children, for example, or that you sound one way when talking to your mom compared with your boss. Then he unconsciously practices these various modes of speech in hisplay. It's another reason preschoolers are such chatterboxes!”

Ah,here’s the part about toddler speech development:

19 to 24 months
Though he probably says about 50 to 70 words now, your child may understand as many as 200 words, many of which are nouns. Between 18 and 20 months, he'll learn words at the rate of 10 or more a day (so watch your language!). He'll even string two words together, making basic sentences such as "Carry me."

By the time he's 2, your child will use three-word sentences and sing simple tunes. His sense of self will mature, and he'll start talking about what he likes and doesn't like, what he thinks and feels. Pronouns may confuse him, which is why he might say "Baby throw" instead of "I throw."

Okay.  Well, Grant doesn’t put two words together.  And all the words he says are one syllable in length, sometimes repeated.  But he uses 50 to 70 “words”, though outsiders might not know what he was saying.  And I started telling Brian all the words that Grant says, and finally went to make a list.  It’s probably not complete, and I don’t know if I’ll have the patience to go through and write down how Grant actually says the word.  Maybe I will for the ones that are quite different and unintelligible.

Words Grant says, as of 11-2-10:

Mama
Daddy (Dah)
milk
more
woof
meow
boo
ooh
hoot
hiss
quack
moo
neigh
oink (sometimes)
baa
Madeleine (mah)
go
ball
book
up
on
off
oh
moon
star
shoe
sock
arm
eye
ear
nose
teeth
hot
blue
TV (T)
tree
train
choo choo
vroom
clock
oval (o)
eight
A (the letter)
O (the letter)
two
grandma (“Ma”)
banana (“neh”)
yeah
no
map
backpack (“bah”)
pop
belly button (“beh”)
car
dry (“dry dry dry!” like my mom says, and now he says it for any sort of wiping)
yay!
bye (“bah!!”)
hi
airplane (“air!”, always accompanied with lots of pointing and excitement)
black
whee! (said for when kids go down slides in books, or down a hill on a sled)
yum
there
bug
bee
butterfly (“buh”)
balloon (“bah”)
carrot (“care”)
bar (for granola bars or Luna bars)
shhh
ah
wow
bear
hop

Then here are some words he’s said, but not much, maybe just once while repeating what I said. 
foot
juice
down
you

Then there are the ways he names some objects that don’t have the right sounds at all:

pumpkin = “bah”  (maybe “ball”, because it looks like a ball)

sun = “moon” (I guess it’s easier to say?  But he knows the difference between the sun and the moon, because he will always correctly point to which is which in a book, or even in the sky if they are both up at once)

sippy cup or drink = “bah”.  Or maybe it’s “pah”, like “pop”?

Any number = “eight”, though really it’s “A” (no T sound on the end).  Any time he’s “counting” or sees numbers (or letters) or wants to answer a “how many?” question, he’ll say “A!” though he means “eight!!!”  He can also point out the number 8 from among other numbers.  And he knows a few more too, though I’m not sure exactly which ones.

Apple = “A”, because we have an alphabet chart with an apple on the letter A, and now he associates the two together.

So all together (and only counting “eight” one time, though it appears twice in my above list), that’s 82 “words”.  That’s plenty.  And he can point to about a zillion and one objects in books, almost everything in every book we read.  So I’m not worried.  Brian compares him to Madeleine, and then I’m not even sure if he remembers exactly where she was at this age.  Then I give him the spiel about how boys can develop a bit more slowly in the verbal department than girls tend to.

Anyway, it was all quite a spiel trying to defend my baby boy as being perfectly on track, too.  Now, it’s true he only does one syllable words, and doesn’t put two words together, but I don’t think he needs to be doing that yet. 

The End.