Planets

So yesterday Nana made Davy a diagram of the solar system, except he wanted all the little planets she had cut out. So he brought home from Nana's house an envelope of tiny little planets which he played with until he lost some of them. Then he had an epic tantrum. Finally we got him to go to bed for the night, but he decided to take his planets with him. Can you see where this is going to go? That is right, a night full of him losing his planets in bed and then crying because Jupiter is lost!!! So I finally printed out some large versions of the planets, laminated them and sent them to bed with him. When Jupiter is the size of a dinner plate it is difficult to lose it anymore.

While he was playing with them I started asking Evangeline which planet was which, to see if she has picked up anything from David's obsession. Sure enough she know her planets too! Crazy smart kids.

Words and ABCs

Recently we have been working with Evangeline with therapists, she has a developmental therapist and a speech therapist (who we haven't met with yet) and a physical therapist. Anyway her developmental therapist had us start making a list of words that she says and this has got me really listening to her to see what words she actually knows.

While I have found that she knows a lot more words than I thought she does I also discovered that she is saying phrases as well. Things like, "There it is!" "Where'd it go?" "Its a..." and more. I also found the other day that she knows most of her letters. I was putting away some puzzles and found a letter puzzle and thought, "Hey why not see what she knows." Turns out she knows all her letters except for maybe two or three. Crazy! She also knows some of her numbers and some of her shapes. I guess David is a good influence.

As far as David goes he has started to do basic math, such as basic addition. Smart kids!!

Transitions

Sleep, it is one of those rare things when you become a parent. When we had Davy it was rather easy, he slept exceptionally well for a baby and allowed me to get better sleep than what I realized. We kept him in a bassinet until he was like six or seven months, basically until he was too big for it. Then we moved him over to a crib. His bassinet was in our room, the crib was in his room. It was a big transition for me.

When it came to Evangeline things were more difficult. She was a cluster feeder. She liked to eat every two hours. So she woke me up a lot at night, and she didn't really sleep through the night until she was almost a year old. She started in a bassinet co-sleeper, and stayed there for a good long time, then I moved her to a crib but put it in the spare bedroom so I didn't have to trek all the way across the house to get to her, instead I just slept in there with her. Finally after Kevin protested enough times I left her in there and went to sleep in my own bedroom. This, it turns out was just what I needed to do to get her to sleep through the night.

So at this point she has been sleeping through the night quite well. I have been wanting to move her into the kid's room so that she isn't all by herself in the spare room. But I just haven't gotten around to it yet. Then today Kevin and I started talking about it and how it would be nice to move the hope chest out and put the crib where it was. Kevin was too sleepy today to help me with it before work so tonight before the kids went to bed I cleared out the area for the crib and drug it out of the spare bedroom and into the kid's room. I won't say it was easy, in fact it was quite a lot of work. But now it is done and based on how quiet it is I think it is successful so far. We shall see if Evangeline sleeps through the night or not. I am crossing my fingers.

Zip Zip Zippers

Davy has recently (as in within the last few months or so) figured out how to work zippers. He loves to use his new found knowledge on things like his jacket, toy containers that are closed with zippers, and his jammies. This has led to some of the more numerous of his toy messes, as well as his tendency to come out of his room in the morning without his jammies on. Today the kids were playing happily in the other room and I decided to check on them. I called both their names, Davy came up happily and said, "Hi Mama!" Evangeline giggled happily every time I said her name and eventually came over, as she rounded the corner I noticed that she was naked except for her diaper. "Someone" had helped her unzip her jammies and take them off. It is fun to see how "helpful" Davy can be when it comes to his sister.

Christmas

One of my memories from my childhood is going to look at lights. It usually happened when we went to visit my grandparents out in Iowa. Everyone would pile into one car and we would drive around the small town of Boone Iowa looking at all the lights. There were some nice houses but after awhile it got too warm and our little drive got too long and I would become bored and ready to go back to Grandma and Grandpa's house. I have thought about taking drives with Davy to go look at lights, but in the previous years he hasn't been all that interested.

This year however things are changing. Wednesday night we went over to visit my parents, they were setting up their tree and wanted us to come over to help. After helping and then socializing for a bit we got ready to go home. Nana took Davy outside and walked down the sidewalk with him a bit to look at the neighbor's lights, Nana hasn't had a chance to get her lights up yet. Once we got everyone in the car and took off all Davy could talk about was the lights and the colors and how it was all "so pretty". So I decided to drive us around a bit before going home. We drove through my parent's subdivision and there were some pretty houses. Then I started on home. Davy was happy as long as there were lights to look at, but as we drove through town the houses got sparse and the businesses became more frequent. He was a bit upset by this by the time we got to our street. So I decided to explore our neighborhood a bit before going home. I drove down a few streets and then down one I saw a house that was flashing and bright. So I drove down the street and discovered it was a house with dancing lights. Dancing lights (as I like to call them) is where the homeowner has set up the lights on their house to flash or dance to songs. They usually have everything set to broadcast the songs to a radio station, so you pull up in front of their house, tune your radio to the station they have posted in their front yard and then watch the lights dance to the music. I don't remember how long we sat and watched and listened but Davy LOVED it! I foresee more light viewing drives in our future.

On Thursday we set up the tree. Davy helped us to decorate it, and now keeps trying to take ornaments off the tree. We have tried to erect a barrier around the tree, but it doesn't deter him much. He is excited by it all though. I have made a few paper ornaments this year, which are currently on the tree but may end up hanging from the ceiling. We will see.

The chopping of nails

I am blessed, I guess you could say, with the natural ability to grow my nails rather long and rather quickly. While this is useful for many things, not the least making my short fingers look a little better, it can get annoying quickly. Today I ran into one of those things.

We went to the mall today after my 3 hour glucose test, which I hope I pass, we met up with my parents for lunch before we had to head home. My mom and I chased Davy around, which was rather fun at times. However during his escapades I reached for him and caught a nail on his clothes right as he was running away. Needless to say my nail snagged and broke, to the point that it ripped into my cuticle a bit and caused me to bleed. Yes it hurt. And it brought to my attention the fact that my nails needed to be chopped again. Usually I wait until they are uncomfortable when typing and then I chop them, but nails getting caught and broken tends to lead to chopping as well.

So tonight I got some nail clippers and my file and cut my nails short again. Then after cutting them all I decided that I should make a night of it and chop Davy's nails too. Anyone who has ever had a small child in their house knows just how fast children's nails grow. Well his nails were getting to the point that they were almost talon like, and he was beginning to scratch things, like me. So I chased him down with his own nail clippers and chopped his nails too. Nail chopping with Davy is much like nail chopping with Ronan, a wrestling match with a being that does not want their nails cut. Although Davy is much smaller, weaker and does less damage to me than Ronan does when cutting nails. After all his nails were cut, Davy did his usual after nail cutting ritual, he took the nail clippers from me and played with them for awhile. One would think that if he hated his nails being cut so much that he would want nothing to do with the clippers, but no, he loves playing with them. Which I don't blame him for, I remember playing with nail clippers as a child on a regular basis. What I find to be amusing about the whole thing, was that after he had the nail clippers he then pretended to clip his toe nails with it. Another nail trimming he hates.

When I brought out the nail file he was a bit more interested. At first he wasn't sure what I wanted to do with his fingers again, but once I showed him how the file worked he thought it was great! He played with it a good bit, but also let Mommy use it every so often so that I was able to finish my nails too. Fun stuff!

Costume time!

So this year I have been wracking my brain as to what to make for Davy's Halloween costume. Last year as some may remember he was a Viking, complete with horned hat and beard. This year I was really trying to figure out what to make him. At first I thought maybe a jaguar, since he likes Diego, but my plan was to make it out of a sweat suit, but I couldn't find any sweat suits in his size that were the color I needed. So I thought that maybe I could make him a dinosaur costume out of a sweat suit, because surely I could find a green sweat suit. Nope, that was a no go too. As I was looking around the internet for some ideas, I came across a cute pattern for making a fox costume. Though I am an amateur sewer at best, having just started sewing last year I thought that this might be a hefty undertaking for me. But I was able to get it done, in just three days and less than what it would have cost to buy a pre-made costume for him. Here are some pictures of the cuteness that is a Davy fox.

Wow, stars!!

Today Kevin and I put a few constellations out of glow in the dark stars on Davy's ceiling. we put up the Big Dipper and Orion, we also put the North Star and Sirius on the ceiling as well. As we worked on it we let Davy play with one of the big stars, it is the size of half of his face so there is no fear of choking. While we worked on the ceiling Davy brought me his "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" book for me to read to him and his glow in the dark star. It was fun having him point out the stars in the book and show me the star in his hand. After we were done with the ceiling we put him down for a nap, and he did not want to give up the star. We finally had to trade it for one of the stacking stars from his stacking toy.

So fast forward to tonight. I knew he would be up late because he napped from 1 pm to 5 pm this afternoon, which spelled out "Davy will not fall asleep until after 11 pm tonight." for me. So about 10:30 pm I get him ready for bed and put him to bed. He chose the Twinkle book again to read tonight and pointed at Orion during bedtime story time, stating for me, "Star!" After getting him tucked in with a song of "I am like a star shining brightly." I gave him his stacking star, which he seemed to prefer over his current sleep toy, Twigs his giraffe, and then turned out the lights and said goodnight.

Things seemed to be going well at first, he was quiet, didn't cry when I closed the door. I figured I was home free. I did some work on the computer for awhile (I teach seminary in the morning and use the time after he goes to sleep to prepare for each day), and then suddenly I heard what sounded to be him crying loudly in his room. So I rushed over to his door and as I listened I realized it didn't quite sound like crying. So I put my ear to the door and listened closer. Imagine my confusion when I realized that I wasn't hearing crying, I was hearing him cheering. "Yay! Wow! Yay! Yay! Yay!" Was the words I was hearing coming from the door. What was the cause of the cheering, I will probably never know, but secretly I think it was the stars. They did look pretty awesome glowing there when I turned off the lights. Davy is seriously such a cute kid!

Doors

Today while finding clothes for Davy he went into his closet to play with some of the toys we have stashed in there, then he closed the door, at first I thought I would have to open the door for him, but instead he opened the door on his own. I hoped it was a fluke, but after he did it two more times I am at the realization that my son now knows how to open doors! Why did he have to figure that out so soon!! 

I seem to remember feeling this way when he learned to climb on things, and learned to climb over things. He is such a clever boy, but sometimes I wish he wasn't growing up so fast and learning things I am not quite ready for him to learn yet. We will have to buy some more baby proof door devices, so that he can't get into the rooms we don't want him in.

Naps, letters and bedtime

Let's start with the biggest issue at hand here. Sleep. You don't really realize just how precious it is until you become an adult and start to get less of it than you would like. You really don't get it though until you have your own child to disrupt your sleep schedule. Lately I have been taking the age old advice of, "Sleep when your child sleeps." Well the best time for that sleep is right after Kevin leaves for work, which is around 3 pm-ish, but this means keeping Davy awake until that time. And it also means that he will often sleep until about 5 or 6 pm. And that can be a problem. Though it is wonderful to get a good long nap in, it also can mean that when it is bedtime Davy does not want to go to bed. And this can take his usual 9:30 pm bedtime and lengthen it to 11 pm or even Midnight. Ugh... Not the time that I want to go to bed, especially when I am waking up at 5 am the next morning to teach seminary. And here is the big kicker, I don't usually get a chance to work on my lesson for the next day until AFTER Davy goes to sleep. Yep, can we say no sleep for the Rachel? So today I put him down for his nap at 1 pm and he only stayed asleep until 2 pm. Which is a much shorter nap than I wanted for him, but when I put him down for bedtime at 9:30 tonight, he went right to sleep. Much better, but shorter nap time for me. Boo, but better than no nap at all.

Moving onto the next topic, letters. Davy has a little magnadoodle that he plays with and loves to have us draw on. Lately we have been writing letters on it, and have been practicing them with him. At this point he knows almost all the vowels by sight. He really likes O, and is pretty good at getting A, and he is beginning to love U because he likes to say "ueueueueueue" (it sounds like youee). Super cute! He is pretty good with I, but still struggles with E. We have been working with some of the consonants as well, but have been hitting the vowels pretty heavily because they are some of the easiest letters for him to say. Yay! Now we just need to work on his body parts with just as much enthusiasm. He knows where his bellybutton is, and his nose. But the other parts he has not really gotten down yet. We will get there.

Testing

Tomorrow is the day I have my pregnancy test. I am really excited and nervous. So much so I had dreams about it last night, I dreamt that I took a home pregnancy test and it came out positive. Hopefully it is a good dream and will come true tomorrow.

Davy was sick last night we will see how he is doing this morning. But there is a good chance he is staying home from church. Poor little guy. Today should be a bit crazy.

Thoughts on children

Tonight I was thinking back to when we lived in Utah and how at the time there was little chance of us having kids. I remember seeing my friends and watching their families grow and realizing that there was a chance that we might never have any. Now that I am someone's mother I am so amazed at how blessed we are just to have our little guy. And even if he turns out to be the only child we can have we are still so blessed to have him.