Tuesday, February 14, 2012

Long Overdue Update

So we are finally getting to updating our blog for the first time since Thanksgiving (and yes, that was a lame entry). Feel free to peruse all the pictures below and make some educated guesses about the content: gingerbread house making, cookie-making, etc. If I am feeling particularly ambitious tonight we might get around to adding little captions, but I think most of them pretty much speak for themselves (unless any of you are wondering why Rebekah, age 3, was allowed to go to a Valentine's Day Sock Hop. Answer: it was at the library, she went with her dad, and they did the hokey-pokey).
So now we get on to the important stuff. Here's a little about what our kids have been up to lately:
Andrew:
*Walking: After months of his unique, patented "monkey walk" (in which he would "crawl" on his hands and feet, no knees touching), he is starting to walk more like a biped. Right now its about 60%/40% (human walking/monkey walking), but I think that is mostly because he can basically run when he does his monkey walk and thus get to his destination faster. As soon as he figures out how to run like a humanoid, he'll be at 80/20 (running/walking).
*As you can imagine, he's quite active. Always into something, always frantically grabbing for something or trying to climb on something, whatever. Except that when you put him in a stroller and take him outside, he is eerily calm. Just sits back and soaks it all in.
*Trying to potty train himself (or something like that): we are not sure what is going on, but often he will go all day (ALL DAY) without a single wet diaper, depsite drinking quite a bit. Then we put him down for the night, and when we go get him in the morning, he is soaked, as is his bed, sheets, blankets, etc. His diaper is literally disintegrating and little diaper remnants are all over his body. I thought that maybe he just doesn't like having a wet diaper on so, under that theory, I once tried putting him on the potty before we put him to bed; he just squirmed and twisted around.
*He has got a high tolerance for pain (and low tolerance for not getting what he wants). He will bonk his head (sometimes pretty hard) and the kid cries for maybe 10 seconds. I once took him to the doctor for a routine checkup and the doctor informed me he had an ear infection (although I hadn't noticed anything unusual). Teeth coming in? Not a problem. But you try to change his diaper and he wails. Open the front door but don't take him outside, game over. It takes a while to get him to calm down. Whenever I change his diaper, he contorts and twists his body around, right now I can still pin him down and get the diaper on somehow, but not sure how much longer that will last... (my ability to pin him down, that is. He gets stronger every day).
*Taking one nap a day: which is anywhere from two to three hours. I love it.
*Adores his sister: follows her around, laughs at her when she's being silly. Whenever she is not around, I ask him where Rebekah is, and he bolts to the stairs and goes right up to her room.
*Eating exclusively from one of the following basic food groups: bread with cheese, vegetables with cheese, cheese, and fruit. But he will not drink whole milk, not with chocolate in it, or sugar in it, or vanilla, we've tried everything. He will drink a little strawberry milk if it is warmed up, but only in small sips. Doesn't matter how thirsty he is. If he doesn't like it, he won't drink it. Same thing with food: he went from eating basically any solid food I gave him to refusing all baby food almost overnight; then he went from eating any table food I gave him to refusing anything other than the aforementioned food groups.
He is a quirky little guy with a lot of personality. So easy to get him to smile and he has such an infectious giggle. His monkey walk cracks everyone up at church. I think I am going to miss it.
And now a little on what Rebekah is up to these days:
*Princesses (Ariel, Belle, Rapunzel, Jasmine, Tiana, Cinderella, Aurora): this is her current obsession du jour. I am not sure exactly how she got hooked on them, but kudos to the Disney marketing team. You start with a Cinderella toothbrush (gateway drug) and the next thing you know you've got a shelf full of princess DVDs, soundtracks, the piano music, the books and the figurines.
*She is a very polite little girl. She says "excuse me", "thank you" (sometimes "thank you very much"), "bless you". My favorite is when she talks to inanimate objects (Rebekah while trying to move a kitchen chair past the trash can: "excuse me, trash, excuse me" or while rummaging through the drawer looking for a flashlight: "excuse me, tape; excuse me, markers")
*You scared? She is always asking everyone around her if they are scared of things. "Mommy, you scared of fire?" "Daddy, you scared of the Beast?" or my favorite "Mommy, you scared of butter?" Then we say, "no I'm not scared. Are you scared?" Rebekah's answer: "Yes, I'm scared of butter".
*She is very concerned when others get hurt or are crying. She always wants to comfort whoever it is. I also love when Andrew is crying and we can't get him to calm down. Once our usual efforts fail, she'll say "Andrew needs a nap".
*Potty training: she is still in pull-ups (princess pull-ups, of course!), but is down to about one "accident" a day. She ocassionally even goes all day without any accidents. Its taken her some time to start to get it but she's made a lot of progress. She still will only go when we take her and has trouble telling us when she has to go, but she's improving.

As far as the rest of the family is concerned, Scott is going to Intel for an internship this summer, and after some back and forth between Arizona and Oregon, it looks like we will be in Arizona. But we want to make sure its final before we arrange anything in terms of housing.

And now for some more pictures:
Andrew's cuteness:



Andrew's birthday:


And for Scott's birthday, here was my first attempt at a "real" cake (nothing from a box or a can): chocolate raspberry cake with ganache. Andrew got the same one since I had so much left over ganache from Scott's cake.

No comments:

Post a Comment