Twinkle Twinkle

Every night, right before we put him to bed, I read Davy a book. Lately he has really begun to like the books that sing a song. We currently have "The Itsy Bitsy Spider", "The Bear Went Over the Mountain", "Baa Baa Black Sheep" and "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star". Last night he chose to read "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star". I took a different tactic than usual and began pointing out the stars since we have been practicing the word "Star" with him. He has a stacking toy that is made up of stars and we say "Star" every time he gives us one of the stars. So while we were reading the book we were pointing out the stars, each page I would say, "There is the star." We finally got to the last page and I said to him, "That's the star" and he repeated to me in his garbled toddler tongue, "That's the star". It was awesome! It is the longest sentence I have heard him say so far. Sure it was difficult to understand, but I did hear him say the words. It is so exciting that he is trying to say more words.

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.

Slides and Labor Day

Lately Davy has discovered slides. Previously every visit to the playground was filled with Davy playing with whatever was being used as the ground, this meant wood chips, small pebbles, strange chopped astro-turf, anything that was ground material was what he was interested in. But this summer he discovered the playground equipment, in particular the slides. At first he needed help, one of us would carry him, or lift him up to the other parent who would wait at the top of the slide to help him slide down, meanwhile the other parent would hurry back down to the bottom of the slide to catch him and start the process over again. But lately Davy has figured out how to climb up the playground equipment on his own. This has led to much more fun and a much more tired little boy. It also means that Mommy or Daddy can take Davy to the park on their own without having to have the other parent with them because Davy will do the leg work on his own.

This brings me to Labor Day. Labor day we decided to go apple picking as a family. So we met up with my parents and my sister and her family (Jake, Sydney and Payton) at a local apple orchard. I had suggested that orchard because they had a children's area and I figured it might be fun for the kids to play in. We went apple picking and then I purchased an entrance ticket to the kids area, figuring that Sydney and one of her parents would want to go into the area as well. I didn't realize that was not the case until it was too late. So I took Davy in anyway and we had some fun in there together.

The first place we went to was this corn silo which was basically like a sandbox with corn instead of sand. He liked playing with the corn and helped another little boy fill a toy truck bed with corn. Then he discovered a slide in the corn silo and decided to start going down it. At first he had some trouble navigating the steps on his own, but eventually he got the hang of it. About that time I noticed a large wolf spider that was on the slide. It was right near where Davy was placing his hand when he was climbing up the slide. So I started throwing corn at it to knock it down. I got the spider off the slide and chased it over to the wall of the silo. Then I switched my attention back to Davy, glancing at the spider every so often. Well during one of my glances I noticed the spider was no longer there. So I put it out of my mind, until I saw it on the slide again. But now it was worse, it was no longer trying to hide on the side, it was trying to climb up the main part of the slide. So at this point I kind of started freaking out, which gathered the attention of the other mothers in the silo, which I am sure thought I was kind of crazy or something (from the looks they gave me) because I was freaking out over this spider. One of them pretty much got the spider off the slide and chased it somewhere else. At this point I decided that Davy and I needed to go somewhere else. Because I really didn't want to stay in there anymore if the spider decided to come back.

So we went over to the petting zoo area. At first we walked around it, and Davy waved to all the animals, then I decided to take us in. Davy wasn't really sure about touching any of the animals. So I picked him up and let him watch me pet some of the animals. This gave him some courage. So together we petted a calf, a donkey, a llama, a sheep, and I think a goat. He was fine with petting the animals as long as they didn't try to get their face in his face. I think the calf reminded him a bit of a dog. About the time we got out of there I saw Kevin and found out that everyone else had moved inside and was talking about leaving. So I figured that I should probably just bail on the idea of doing any more in the children's area.

After the apple orchard we went to a park in DeKalb and ate a picnic lunch, after lunch Davy and Sydney went to a playground that was at the park and played a bit, they didn't end up playing for long because it was hot and the grownups were getting way too hot (and I think the kids were too). We went home after that and all three of us ended up napping for a very long time. All in all it was a great day!

Holy Crazy Tantrum

Davy just threw a crazy tantrum. It all started when Kevin left for work. I told Davy to tell Daddy "Bye bye" at that point Davy ran to Kevin, threw his arms around his legs and started crying. Kevin brought him back to me and headed out the door with Davy still bawling. I tried a few things to calm him down, food, drink, TV. None of it worked, at this point Davy was laying on the ground and seemed to be bothered by the snot in his nose, so I got a nose sucker and cleaned it out which didn't help the crying. Cheerios didn't help, he would stop crying, eat a few and then begin crying again. He got happy when I opened his bedroom door, but only until he shut it and then he cried. Finally I decided, even though he had already had his nap for today that he obviously needed another, and the silence in the house tells me I was right. Which when it comes down to it is actually pretty good for me because it means I can get a nap too. 

Pink Pink

On Monday of this week we had our anatomy ultrasound and found out that we are having a girl. We did a gender reveal party afterward with a cake that was pink and had pink frosting inside. The frosting was bubble gum flavored. After having Davy I have gotten into the habit of always looking for boy things and ignoring the girl stuff. Now I have to look for both. I think it will be fun to have a little girl, but I am guessing that it will be much different than having a little boy. It will be interesting to see how it all goes.

Chatterbox

Every so often I run into or hear about people with children around the same age as Davy. Sometimes I see or hear about how well their children can talk. "Oh she says at least 50 words already" or, "He will tell me, I love you too when I say I love you to him. " or "He says all done when he is done eating." And then I think about my own little guy.

Every morning we are woken up to the sound of chattering, "Mamamamama Daboo dadoo dadoo dadadadadoo de da No bababababa, (giggle giggle) Yay!" Then comes the sound of him blowing raspberries after awhile and we know he is spitting on things. So far Davy knows a few words:
No
Yeah
Yay
Dada
Mama
Nana
Thank you
Uh oh
Go
Diego (Deego)

So that is what? 10 words total. So the other day I was talking about it with my sister and she looked it up. Turns out that for a 18 month old he is just fine. He has linked at least two words together, and says some words but chatters mostly with a few real words interspersed. Still there are quite a few words we would love him to learn, all done, milk, cracker, I love you, puppy. There are more but those would be nice so that we would know a little more about what he wants at different times.

On Monday I had my birthday, it was nice. We went shopping, watched a movie (Pride and Prejudice) and went over to my parent's house for dinner and cake. It was relaxing. We also got a super wide baby gate. We have very large openings in our home due to a super open floor plan (not exactly a fan of it myself). Anyway we don't really want Davy getting into the kitchen so we have been blocking him off from it with some large boxes that Kevin taped together. Well after discovering that there was a baby gate wide enough to reach from the wall to the cabinets and after Kevin nearly broke some of his toes a few times we finally decided to buy the baby gate. We installed it on my birthday (which I was actually rather excited about). The gate works perfectly and not only does it keep the baby where we want him, but the dogs have not yet tried jumping it as it looks far too tall for them in their estimation. This means we can section off the baby and dogs depending on how we want them to be sectioned. Feeding the baby and don't want the excuse of dogs to lead him to throw food on the ground, gate the dogs out of the kitchen, don't want the dogs in the kitchen when we leave the house, gate them out. Want the dogs to leave the toddler alone when we first get home, gate them in the kitchen. It works great!! Even though it is not one of my presents I still feel happy about it because it has been working so well. I think it will help to make some aspects of seminary easier as well. Yay for gates!