Tickle Tickle

The other day I was tickling Davy with my ponytail and was saying, "Tickle, tickle, tickle." Davy was giggling and giggling and then he looked up at me and said, "Tickle tickle little star?" It was so cute! Lately he has been saying more and more of songs that he likes. And very often he will talk along with shows that he likes and has watched multiple times. It is a lot of fun to watch him pick up more and more words.

I also discovered recently that Evangeline is super ticklish and that I can get her squealing and giggling pretty easily because of it. It has been a lot of fun tickling her and getting to know her sweet little personality. She and Davy get along pretty well. She loves to watch him and he likes to pet her and try to give her things.They are cute to watch together.

Visitors

Recently we had visitors! Kevin's sister Kathi and her family came out and visited us for their Spring Break. Even though it was a surprise visit for us it was a lot of fun and the kids had a great time with Kathi and her kids. Kayleigh, Thomas and EV all took turns holding Evangeline and all mastered "The Walk of Love" which was the way to get Evangeline to stop crying. All of them got really good at keeping little Evangeline happy, which was a great help for me! Evangeline even fell asleep on them a few times. We got to take Kathi and her family to church with us, and also got to have them hang out with us quite a bit. The dogs loved the walks they got taken on, and Kevin and I loved the company. But I think the one who loved it the most was Davy! He got to play with his cousins all day long for about a week! It was great fun for him and he was quite sad when they were gone. We really enjoyed the visit and can't wait till we get to see them again!

Shapes

As I've mentioned before Davy loves to learn. He loves colors, numbers, letters and lately shapes. We got a book for him that goes through different shapes and helps and learn them and he's got most of the shapes down. So far he knows circle, square, triangle, heart, died (diamond) and rectriangle (rectangle), he still working on octagon but eventually I know he will get that one too.

Sharing is fun! Except when deadly...

Recently I brought home a Bumbo that my parents have for the grandkids. A Bumbo, if you are not familiar with them, is a little seat thing that you can put babies in that helps them to sit before they develop the muscles for it. I started putting Evangeline in it and because she is such a strong little baby she has been doing great with it. Lately I have been using it when I need to do something where I can't hold her but need her not to start crying. Often I put her in it when I am feeding Davy or something similar.

Today I needed to give her a bath, she has been spitting up a bunch the last few days and today she had a bout of spitting up a bunch on Kevin and myself so she was super stinky today. So while I looked for the clothes I wanted to put her in I placed her in the Bumbo and sat on the ground to go through some of the hampers of newly washed clothes. While I dug through the hampers Davy came over and kept sitting on my lap. Because Evangeline was sitting right in front of me I had to be careful with Davy and her, I didn't want Davy to accidentally kick her and hurt her, so I tried to make sure that I was careful with how Davy was sitting on my lap. Davy did really great and brought over some shapes he was playing with. He had a triangle and square and he was showing them to Evangeline. He even tried to put them in her hands, which didn't work too well because she isn't quite to the point where she will hold things you give her, but she was able to hold the triangle for a bit. I was really proud of how Davy was sharing with her. Then he got up and got some goldfish crackers. He came back over and ate a few and then took one and tried to give it to Evangeline. Super cute, and I figured it wasn't bad unless he put one in her mouth, which he wasn't able to at his first try. Then he tried again and popped the goldfish cracker right in her mouth!

I must admit that I kind of freaked out a bit. I said, "Oh no!" and did a finger swipe and got the cracker out of her mouth right away. This caused Evangeline to start crying, and then Davy started to cry. So I had to reassure both of them that everything was alright. I made sure to tell Davy that the baby was ok, and that it was very nice of him to share with her, but that she was too little to eat crackers. Thankfully everything turned out ok, but I will have to make sure to watch them when they are together to ensure that Davy doesn't share something that could hurt little Evangeline.

On another note, later in the night I was nursing Evangeline and Davy was playing on my tablet, one of the games he was playing with froze up and he got frustrated by it. I had to turn the tablet off and then on again to fix it, but in the meantime while he waited for the tablet to turn back on he began to cry. When he began to cry Evangeline stopped nursing, looked up at me with big eyes, stuck out her little lower lip and then began to cry too. So I calmed Davy and calmed Evangeline and got her nursing again. Then Davy started crying again and she popped off, pouted and started crying again as well. I thought it was cute that Davy being sad made Evangeline feel sad too. It has been really fun to watch the children interact with each other and watch their relationship as siblings develop.

Toddler Bed

Monday night Davy did something that I was not expecting. It was bed time and we were getting him ready for bed. I went to get a book to read to him and he was running free in his bedroom. Before I could scoop him up and sit in the rocking chair with him he had run over and climbed up on his toddler bed. He had never taken an interest in sleeping in his toddler bed before. He had climbed up on it and played on it and sat on it and stood on it but never had he acted like he wanted to sleep in it. Kevin and I have been working on getting the room toddler-proofed in preparation for him to start sleeping in it, and so far the room is basically there. There are a few things I would like to have set up, but they are not absolute necessities. So Monday night we decided that we would let him try out sleeping in his toddler bed. We read him his book on the bed and then tucked him in, turned off the light and closed the door. Before going to bed we checked on him, he was asleep on the floor beside his bed, so we picked him up and put him back in bed. In the morning I heard him fall out of the bed and went to get him. But overall he did pretty good. I gave him the "big boy blanket" that I had made out of his crib bumpers, we made up the bed with the blanket and tucked it in under the mattress to make it more secure.

Last night I decided to let him sleep in his toddler bed again. We went through his bedtime routine and I tucked him in and put him to bed. He cried this time and I was worried that he would crawl out of bed and I would have to put him back in it. But when I checked on him later in the night he had fallen asleep in his bed under his new blanket. I tucked him in a little better since he had moved a bit while he slept. In the morning when he woke up and Kevin went to get him he was still in his bed playing.

This is a rather exciting development for us! I knew that we needed to get Davy into a toddler bed soon. The baby will be able to sleep just so long in her bassinet before she grows out of it and will need to move to the crib. I wanted to get Davy moved into his toddler bed before that happened and get him settled and used to sleeping in it. The fact that he took the initiative to start sleeping in it makes everything much easier. The fact that he is staying in his bed even when he doesn't want to go to bed make me feel better about the whole thing. Now I just need to get Kevin to finish the last few changes to the room and I will be happy with everything. It is strange to realize that my little boy is growing up and has moved out of his crib and into a big boy bed finally.

Colors and Shapes

In case I haven't mentioned it before, Davy's favorite color is yellow. Growing up most of the members of my family liked the color blue, in fact it was my Dad's favorite color, my Mom's favorite color, and I think my brother's favorite color as well as my own favorite color. My sister's favorite color was neon orange. When I married Kevin I discovered that his favorite color was red, which worked out just fine for me because he could have red things and I could have blue things. When Davy was born I clothed him in a lot of blue, which was fitting because he was a boy, and as he grew older I found that I began to wonder what his favorite color was. He has this dog toy, Scout, who talks to him, I think I have written about it before. Anyway when setting it up I had to choose a favorite color for Davy, I figured that he probably liked blue so I set that as his favorite color. Lately we have been working with Davy on shapes and colors, and what I have learned from it is this. Davy likes Yellow. He likes to say the word, he likes to find yellow things, he just plain likes yellow. He also likes circles, hearts, and triangles. He can say most of his colors (the basic ones not fancy colors like magenta and such), he can also say most of his basic shapes. He loves working with flashcards and will bring us the bag they are in just so he can go through them. And if we are busy he will go through the bag on his own and name the flashcards off to himself. He has down a good amount of the words that go with each flashcard. He is also learning what letters each word starts with. As this year goes on I wonder just how much he is going to learn, I am excited to see what he learns to do and say.

Valentines and growing babies

Today is Valentines day, and for the first time Davy is old enough for it to be fun. So yesterday I made a few heart shaped cards and supervised Davy while he colored them. He decorated them with scribbles, quite a few letters and numbers as well as some smilie faces. After he went to bed I finished the decorations by making a snowflake heart to stick on the front and also wrote a little message to the person/people the card was for. We made two cards, one for Daddy and one for Nana and Grandpapa (my mom and dad). Today we delivered the cards to them. Davy gave Daddy his card, and then later in the day we visited Nana and Grandpapa and Davy was able to give them their card. He even signed each card, granted the letters weren't all in a line or even necessarily close to each other but the letters DAVY were all on the card in some place. For a Valentines present from Nana and Grandpapa, Davy got some magnetic numbers, which he loved. All in all it has been a fun day. Kevin got me flowers and some chocolates which I shared with Davy and Kevin, they were Lindt petite desserts which are chocolates designed to taste like popular desserts. The other part of his present to me will come later this year, I asked him to take me to the Japanese gardens up in Rockford at some point later this year.

For his present I am going to take him out to eat up in Rockford on Monday, it will be our first date since we had the baby. And our first date so far this year. Needless to say we are looking forward to it. I have saved up some frozen milk for my parents in preparation for babysitting.

In other news Evangeline has been spitting up a lot lately. So I took her to the doctor, he suggested that I eat less dairy for a week and see how things went. So I stopped eating dairy and she began to throw up more. So I said "to heck with it all" and went back to eating dairy and she is not throwing up as much anymore. Crazy. While at the doctor I found out her weight, she is now 7 lbs 5 oz, which is less than what Davy was when he was born. She will be two months old next Tuesday. It seems pretty crazy that she is still so tiny. She is just beginning to grow out of her Newborn clothes.