Show Off Day

Ms Mimmie did a show off day this week for the parents to come and see what we've been doing in class.  Predictably, some of them were reluctant to show off and spent the time huddled in mom or dad's lap.  I took a bunch of video and pictures today during class to try to get a more accurate representation of the day.  They all love it- it's really fun to see them marching around and blasting off. 

You can tell the minute Remy sees me filming him.  All moving stops immediately and he just stares at me suspiciously.

Some more fun blasting off shots.  This whole month they've been grooving to the space music from an old Mother Goose Time theme.  It's actually one of my old CDs.  I ripped them all to my iTunes and gave them to her so she could use them in her classes.  The kids are somewhat familiar with the songs since they hear them when we play music during meals and it's been fun to keep the same theme going all month.

Merryweather wanted so badly to be dancing with the big kids.  She was singing and kicking so much that Mimmie decided to give her a turn with the log roll.

SUCH CUTENESS I CANNOT STAND IT.

Catching Up

All the tutorials about blogging always say that you should never start out a post with an apology for how long it's been since your last one.  So I won't apologize.  But I'm thinking about it.  It's been a month!  I haven't even done Friday Focus or anything.  Oh well... real life is happening, and I guess that's more important than documenting it.

My Merrybabies are getting so big.  They're sassy and fat and happy and oh my I love them.  Merida is actually shaping up to be a possible redhead, I think, although it could certainly change.  She doesn't have a ton of hair yet and it's still in that state where it could go either way.  She's gotten super smiley lately and is a joy to be around.  She's rolling and scootching a pretty good amount these days too and sometimes is five feet away from where I laid her down in a pretty short time.  Pretty great for four months old!  Her grip is amazing too.  I can't find the post, but I know I've talked before about how if you take something from a firstborn, they may cry, but they give it up easily.  A second child knows from day one that the older sibling will try to take stuff away and they hold on TIGHT.  We refer to it as the second child grip, and pretty much every second child really does have it.  Well.  Miss Merida is a third child.  The other day I went to pick her up out of the exersaucer and she lifted it off the floor with her.  The girl is serious. 

Merryweather is a champion sitter and loves to play the piano.  She doesn't care much about rolling just yet- she might do it once if she feels like it, but at this point she would rather use her newfound loud and shrieky voice to see if I will bring her things instead of working on getting them herself.  Can't say I blame her much on that count.  It gets quick attention and it's easier.  :)  My current favorite thing about her is her fierce love.  When you pick her up, she lunges at you with both arms, wraps around your neck and hugs you tight, all while trying to kiss your face ferociously with her wide open drooly mouth.  It's sometimes a tiny bit startling, but it is very awesome.

Only two weeks left before Mater and Lady go off to their new school.  It's definitely going to be different.  I've already started rearranging the playroom a little and trying to figure out the best toys and space for my new crew.  Well, not new, because I don't have any new ones starting right away, but it makes it feel all new whenever I add or subtract anybody from my mix.  I got a new braided rug for the playroom and Mater spent a lot of time diving onto it and rolling around today.  It was pretty cute.  I'm glad they are enjoying it- I love it.  Makes it seem much more cozy and we spent most of the morning all lying on it and playing.



Remy has learned to take off his pants.  He takes them off sometimes during his nap, and most days I can tell they've been off because they're a little twisted, but it's not too bad.  The other day though, he was magnificent in his inability to fix his drawers.  It made me laugh a whole lot and then he got his feelings a little hurt.  Lots of pant-fixing and hugging after this shot.  :)



Ms Mimmie is still coming every Friday and the kids are really enjoying tumbling time with her.  I think she wants to do a showoff day soon so all the parents can come watch.  Should be fun.

 They're doing pretty well at sitting in a line and waiting for their turn.  Sometimes they wander, but they're getting the hang of it.

And not to be left out or undone, Alice and Perdita love my Viking hats.  They call themselves "Fakings" and they run around wearing hats.  Perdita usually makes me sing songs about it too.  And when I took this picture I may possibly have been wearing the tall pink hat from Duchess's Mad Hatter costume.  Maybe.

Stream of Consciousness

My little people chatter all day long.  Some of them never stop talking- not while they eat, while they play, or while they're in bed- right up until they fall asleep mid-sentence.  I like to talk too.  Most of the time this works out nicely.  They tell me things, I ask more questions, and life carries on.  Other times I'm in the middle of something and not paying 100% attention so they trail along behind me talking and talking.

Today I was trying to get dinner going.  It takes all day and I forgot to rinse the beans last night so I was setting them up for a quick soak.  I had help.

"Kelli?  Whatcha doing?  Those are beans?  What beans?  Pin- TOE beans?  Oh. You put water?  You cook them?  Is that a clock?  oh, a scale?  You get beans?  I have nipple!"

At that point I did a double take and stopped my bean patter.  Sure enough, she's standing there pointing at it.

"Actually, you have two of them."  I mean really, what else is there to say at that point?

"Oh!  Yes!  I have two nipples!  I cook beans with you?"

And we're off and running again.

Friday Focus: Lady

Lady is my oldest kid!  I know I say all the time how quickly it flies by, but it's so true.  She's getting ready to graduate and it seems like just yesterday that she was a new baby. 

I have trouble getting good pictures of her because she usually lunges forward and wants to look at the picture on my phone before I've finished taking it, so I get big chunks of nose and forehead, or else her eyes are closed.  This one turned out really well though, finally!

She's not one of my more adventurous eaters.  This was Green Eggs and Ham day.  Note the clean spoon and untouched food.  Milk maid at work.  She'd probably drink a gallon a day if I let her!

The story of this picture makes me laugh- she was fixing breakfast with various plastic peppers and asked Mater to come sit down by her.  He did.  And then she gave me this look, like "you see what I have to work with here?"  I'm not sure if she thought he should sit in a different place or what, but he did exactly what she asked and then it made her mad.

This one happened this morning- it's not really a great picture of her, although it's more representative of the type of shots I generally get.  She was engineering a "let's hide from Kelli" game and had everybody bring the chairs in.  They were all lining them up in a row and then they stood behind them.  They didn't sit or crouch or anything.  But their legs were behind chairs and I guess that meant I wasn't supposed to see them at all.

Then they yelled, "We hiding!!" at me for about ten minutes while they laughed. 

She likes to be the queen bee, but if somebody else comes up with an idea, she's a good team player too.  I think she has a good balance there.  She plays really well with Girl Friday, who is about four months older and is getting into actual play with friends, rather than just the parallel play that a lot of the kids here do.  She's going to have an amazing time when she gets to her new school and is one of the younger ones- she'll have no trouble keeping up with the older kids and will LOVE all the new stuff she gets to do.  I'm excited for her!!

Reasons My Friends Are Crying

On facebook last night I saw this blog called Reasons My Son is Crying.  Basically it's just pictures of him crying, with very straightforward captions underneath.  If you've spent any time at all around a toddler, you will recognize these as absolutely true, and the more of them in a row I read, the funnier they get.

Now of course, it would be a bad thing to make your kid cry just to take his picture, or to keep from giving him things he legitimately needs, or do things that are unsafe.  But there's really no sense that any of that is going on.  It's stuff like "This milk is not juice."  "He asked me to butter his rice.  I buttered his rice."  He probably asked his mom twenty five times to butter the rice, and the instant it was done he changed his mind.  It's a very accurate depiction of life with little kids.

And wow, it looks like they're on Good Morning America because of this.  On the one hand, I wish I'd thought of doing it first with my kids, and on the other hand, wow, that's a lot of pictures of the poor kid crying.  I feel like they need a companion blog where they show him eating cotton candy and running around with unicorns.  And I hope it makes them some money, because those boys are gonna be mortified by this whole thing in about 13 years.

Crying kids that don't belong to me are a different story though.  Yes, you know intellectually that your child probably has a tantrum or cries at daycare at some point.  You don't really need to see pictoral evidence of it though.  If Duchess and O'Malley had been in daycare as toddlers, I doubt I'd have wanted pictures of that. Even now, if the kindergarten class did something like this, I'd be sad that O'Malley cried at school.  There's too much mom guilt in the world already for that!  This blog is for cute things and art and funny anecdotes, not for sad faces.  However, I have been captioning some of our little episodes in my head this morning.  And like the dad said in the video, this are tiny things that last about seven seconds and then the kids get happy and move on.

Actually, it's made for a very cheerful day so far (at least for me) because crying is not bothering me one little bit.  Thinking of interesting captions is a lot more entertaining than getting frustrated by whining. When you break it down to such a small thing, it's actually easier to be sympathetic.  You wanted to be naked.  Kelli made you put on your pants.  Yeah, that's sad.  But look!  Now you have pants on and we can go play!  It makes a lot of things easily fixable and gives me more patience even if it's not fixable.  He still can't hold his shoe while he walks around wearing it.  But he wants to and I get that.  :)

So here's my morning:

• The block I threw up in the air fell down and hit me in the head.
• Ms Kelli cleaned the smelly poop off my leg.  Oh, and my hand now too.
• I just realized that I can't reach the shoe I tossed over the gate half an hour ago.
• I can't find the otoscope.  (And yes, she was saying that as she cried)
• I asked him to sit down next to me.  Now he is sitting next to me.
• The movie that I asked to watch is on.
• The second helping of breakfast that I asked for repeatedly is in front of me.
• I want to run around naked and Ms Kelli made me put on my pants.
•  I just woke up from a long nap and I am starving.  Ms Kelli is feeding me.
• I want to hold my shoe while I wear it.
• My friend is sitting beside me, not touching or bothering me in any way.
• I am convinced the cup I left in the playroom is in the fridge.
• This water is not milk.
• This water is not milk.
• This water is not milk.

Instead of sad, here's this.  I've never had a big kid fall asleep upright in a chair before.  They used to do it all the time in the little buckle chairs with the tray, but this is a first.  Remy was super sleepy this morning!

Of course, as soon as I laid him down in bed he popped right up and was mad.  I could have titled another one.  "She put me to bed because I fell asleep in my plate."  And seven seconds later, back down and asleep in the bed.  Love my Remy boy.

Playtime

There's not been anything especially new or exciting the past couple weeks- but every day is fun.  We've been working with Mr. Potato Head more lately- they are all enjoying it a lot, even Merryweather, who can sit up on her own for a couple minutes now.  She's been thinking she's one of the big kids now that I have Merida.  It's really amazing how fast kids get skills.  She loves to sit in the living room with a bucket of toys to practice her grabbing and sitting.

And really, Mr. Potato Head just never gets old.  We spent a large portion of the morning discussing body parts and making real faces and silly ones.




Alice is convinced that she is Doc McStuffins. It pleases her greatly. She wore that stethoscope all morning.



Merryweather watches the boys with wide-eyed interest.  They move too fast to even take a clear picture.

I also was able to take them out a couple days last week in the new stroller.  I love the view both looking down and looking out.  :)  My kids are teaching the walking ones what to do.  (I used to call my big kids the walkers, but after the Walking Dead I just can't do it.)  Only as far as the next mailbox if a big kid is running with you, otherwise stay with the stroller.  Freeze your feet when a car comes.  Don't touch dogs.  All that good stuff....

Alice, on her way back to give me a high five.  Mater and O'Malley stomping acorns up ahead.  All is right with the world.

Baby toes!  Best thing ever.

And as previously mentioned, here's Merryweather hanging out in the living room with her own personal toys.  She's getting pretty good at the sitting thing.

One of the most fun things about Mr. Potato Head is trying to wear the glasses on your own head.  It never works well, but it continues to be super cool to try.

Smile Like you Mean It

Lots of times when I'm thinking of something, I'll click over to read Mary P. and see it written much more eloquently than I ever could.  Like this post about mood, for example.  If you don't feel like clicking through, it's about how the adult in the room sets the tone for the day, because toddlers WANT to be happy.  As she says, a child stuck in a funk is usually tired and can be fixed with a nap, but almost no kid can stay happy in the face of a grumpy adult.

This morning my big kids had some issues that they needed to work through- shoes that wouldn't stay on and painting that should happen NOW instead of later, and I started thinking that if they spent half the energy trying to fix the problem instead of just whining, how much easier would it be?

And then I turned it around on myself and thought, Oh.  Right.

So I asked them what would make them happiest for breakfast, and now they're eating baked oatmeal and smiling, and we're going to have a great day today!  The babies are milk-drunk and passed out happily and I"ll have some time for big kid curriculum stuff and more box-sliding and all kinds of good things.  Even if I started out the day feeling a little crabby, now I'm smiling and I do mean it.

And for real, when you get to hear this kind of laughter at work, HOW could you possibly feel grumpy about anything?

I think this is the easiest first day transition for a two year old that I've ever had.  She's sunny and delightful.  She ate well and slept well and is happy to come for hugs right away.  I mean, listen to the great laugh!  I love it.

Had I known beforehand that she was a redhead, I might have waited to name the new baby Merida.  But it's done and I do love my Merrybabies so I need to find a new name for this cutie.  I haven't used Rapunzel yet, or Tiana.. can't think of what else is new off the top of my head.  Oh, Wreck-it Ralph is the newest Disney and I do like the little racer girl character, but I think that spelling Vanellope is going to be tiresome.  I had to look it up just now to manage it once.  :)  We'll see how it shapes up.

I put the box in the playroom yesterday thinking they'd go inside and build a fort or something.  I didn't expect them to turn it into a slide.  It works well though and they are all really enjoying it!

And here's my cue that breakfast is over.  Remy would like some help with his escape!  Off to have a fabulour morning!  Alice tells me we need to go play library now.  :)