Kid Updates

Toodles is 8 months and JD will be 3 tomorrow!

Wow, how time goes crazy when you're not looking.

Toodles is a great joy to us. At 8 months, her favorite things are finger walking, playing with action figures and blocks, and eating real food. I don't recall whether I blogged about this, but at about 10 weeks or so, she was creeping, as much as 10 or 12 feet at a time. I think that stopped when she got too big to push herself easily. Or it became boring for her. She is doing it again, moving to get toys she wants or to face her mother, brother, or me.

At the table, she went from pureed baby food to finger food in less than six weeks. As soon as I started giving her Cheerios she was hooked. Back to pureed carrots, squash, and peaches. No way! So I've had to change my routine to having various veggies and fruits ready to go. This becomes challenging in two ways. First, having the things on hand while keeping a variety. Second, the time it takes to prepare. I went from pre-packaged food to having to cut everything, every time. Green beans, grapes, banana, avocado, nectarine, blueberries, carrots, zucchini . . . But in the end, when I'm putting a piece of food up to her mouth and she attacks my fingers gums first, well it's all worth it!

JD is a typical 3-year-old. He loves attention and misbehaves when it doesn't come his way. He knows his ABC's, single digits, and his way around the keyboard. We used Fisher-Price's website to help teach him the alphabet. This morning, I asked him to find each animal, from Alligator to Zebra, and he got the letter on either the first or second try. I've learned that counting to 10 every time there's a countdown is bad. Now, he only knows to count to ten. When I'm being extra-conscious, I will count to 7 or to 13 or any other variation. The next step will be to count to 100 by tens.

JD continues to love playing hockey, but his sports repertoire includes soccer, bowling, golf, and baseball. When I take the time to figure out posting video, I'll show you. He's a big boy, too - when asked what size clothes to buy him for his birthday, I'm telling people 5T shirts and 4T pants. Crazy! He sill loves playing peek-a-boo, though in more sophisticated and high-energy ways. Some of those include the beginnings of hide-and-seek, while others are more like meteors colliding. He also loves when I throw him in the air (we get about 2 - 3 feet of separation, much to my wife's dismay) and wrestling.

When we take the time to read and write, he's made his first intelligible drawing and, for a while, was obsessed with drawing people riding skateboards. I don't understand why, but he would always tell Wife or me, "Draw Mommy riding skateboard. Draw Uncle Matt riding skateboard," etc. He would try, too. Markers over crayons, unfortunately, is the preference. He loves reading, though we have inadvertently made it a bedtime thing, not an anytime thing. He's memorized about 15 books, including Dino Hockey by Lisa Wheeler and Barry Gott, Too Many Toys by David Shannon, Green Eggs and Ham by Dr Seuss, Thump, Quack, Moo, Click, Clack Moo, and Giggle Giggle Quack by Doreen Cronin and Betsy Lewin.

The kids are great and give me great, big headaches. Well, I don't get headaches, but if I did, they would be great big ones! But when they wake up and are talking to each other (JD talks, Toodles coos) it's so sweet, I forget about the nagging, the crying, and the messes and can only think of hugs, kisses, and laughter.