Language Smiles

With all this vocabulary explosion from so many kids, we're back into the land of fun misheard words and silly pronunciations.  It makes me happy.

Alice:  HA-YO!  (hello.)  SO happy to see us when we go in to get her up from nap.  Usually followed by, "I POOP!  BUM!"

Hercules: Have-a-doctor.  I think helicopter is my very favorite word because there are SO many silly variations of it.  He'll say, "Have a doctor and a airplane!" and for awhile I thought he was telling me that he had a doctor and an airplane.  But no.  He has a helicopter and an airplane.

Roo: Melon.  She's very big into play food and ordering off the restaurant menu and constantly asks what we'd like to eat.  Whenever we say LEMONade, it turns into melonade.

Our summer boy likes to eat "manny" for breakfast rather than banana. I always want to ask him if he's handy.  He also says "there he are" instead of "there he is", which I love because when I was in college we had friends with a little boy who said that and I haven't heard anybody do it in about 15 years. 

Friday Focus: Tigger

Tigger has turned two with a vengeance.  He's at that age where you want to squeeze his fat cheeks and love him and he pats your face and tells you he loves you.  He's obsessed with squirrels and chases after them like they're exotic, never-before-seen creatures.  He plays with trains and makes sound effects and shows you fun insights into his mind.  He's got large chunks of his favorite books memorized and will sit for a quite a while pointing and telling you what will happen next.  He's a doll.

He's also at that age where the pictures of him are cuter than the reality.  The reality is a snot-laden, pouty, defiant mess.  He lies on the floor and screams for no reason.  He sticks so close to Kanga that she can do nothing alone, and yet he still manages to run away when she calls him to come do something.  He jumps off furniture constantly, antagonizes Roo and his friends, and has smashed his mouth so it bled four times in the past two days. He's a beast.

Basically his day goes dollbeastdollbeastdolldollbeastbeast until your head spins and you never know what is coming next.  The highs are so high, and the lows are so very low.  Welcome to the downward spiral into "two and a half".   This is pretty standard, and it's this age where I've heard parents say they must be failing at their jobs because the kid used to mind and now he doesn't.  It's just the age.  Tigger will be all doll again soon.  :)  I'm not always this candid about behavior on the blog, but he is Kanga's and I love him like my own.  I'm not saying anything we haven't discussed at length, and we take turns talking him off the ledge when he gets into a mood.  In fact, there are times where he listens to me so much better than he does to his mother that I have to talk HER off the ledge.  Also normal.

You'd never think he misbehaved, ever, judging by this wide-eyed goodness:

Take my picture, Auntie, he yells as he RUNS at me.  This is what I got by the time the camera clicked, and I actually like it a lot.

Water fun during Songkran.  Love to squeeze the fat doll baby...

Suspicious beast...

I have no idea what you're talking about.  I'm just sitting here eating my pizza nicely.

Where Does the Time Go?

It has been way too long since I posted.  I've got three Friday Focus posts in draft that I haven't quite finished.  We got a new little boy who started the first week of June and is only here for the summer, and I haven't even mentioned him.  Alice is talking.  Perdita is walking.  Roo is potty trained.  It's ridiculous, all the monumental occasions that are passing us by without being documented.

I still want to go back and do all that, but my good intentions fall by the wayside every now and then.  So here are a few quick shots:

 Here is cutie pie Summer Boy.

 We're working on The Little Engine That Could for our "read it once again" program and pretty much everyone is big enough to color now.  Alice, Mater, and Lady are especially pleased to sit at the table with the bigger kids!

Perdita thinks my kids are hilarious and they chase her around and make her laugh so hard she falls down.

Summer is flying by- come schooltime O'Malley will be going off to kindergarten and Duchess will be in fourth grade.  Aurora's new baby sibling is slated to be arriving sometime this fall, and we've still got a slot available.  Give us a call if you need childcare!  :)