Spring has sprung around here in Boston, trees and flowers bloomed. Always right after Josie’s birthday. I could do with a bit less rain, but the flowers need it. We go outside and play games like ‘mommy I’m hiding behind the car, come find me!’
Smelling the flowers
And visiting the easter egg tree!
Our neighbor puts up a holiday tree every so often and Josie enjoyed repeatedly picking up the fallen eggs and replacing them.
Two days ago Josie woke up with a completely dry diaper overnight for the first time! Not ditching those night-time diapers yet but it’s nice to see a real end in sight.
This Saturday we met up with Lee, Lynn and Seth for a fun morning zoo trip at the Franklin Park Zoo. They graciously tolerated our lateness and we had a fun time walking around the park. We haven’t taken Josie to this one in a while, maybe not since last mother’s day. She spent most of the time asking to go on the carousel as that’s what she wanted to do. I think she enjoyed some other parts too though. The baby gorilla was crazy cute and the new budgie exhibit was fun because they sell some bird seed on a stick for too much money, but then the birds do this to you.
Josie dropped the first stick much to our chagrin, but we got the hang of it with the second one and Jordi had the birds literally eating out of his hand, and all up his arm. That’s Lee, Lynn and Seth in the background there. Lee and Lynn also accommodated my request to take a few family pictures of us in the beautiful weather, I’ll show those later.
Celia loved watching all the people and Seth, I’m not sure she noticed the animals too much, except for the Zebra, she noticed them a lot. Can’t wait until the giraffes are finally put out for exhibit, it’s too cold right now for them.
This past Friday Josie turned 3! We celebrated with eating, playing and of course presents. We opened up a big slew of gifts here at home including a kids table and chairs, doll bed, umbrella, candy land (the game), a suitcase and puzzles. We played a quick round of candy land even before Jordi went to work! Then we played a bit more with the gifts before we grabbed some breakfast and some celebration munchkins to bring to our Friday morning playgroup. We played a short while before we headed off to Panera for lunch with grandma and grandpa. Home again for quiet time and to pick up the cake from Quebrada before everyone came over here again for more presents, dinner and cake. This morning we had an official celebratory breakfast at Flora!
At three, Josie has really become quite the little girl. No more baby hanging around at all, except when she wants to pretend to be the baby. Most everyone, strangers included, can understand most of what she says. Except when she makes up new words without defining them. She will do some funny action on the bars or on the floor and say ‘that is clonking’ or something like that. Her sense of humor has been clearly developing into little kid humor!
Our days have a pretty steady routine lately, she comes into the room at a minute or two before 7 by our clock, proclaims she ‘waited for the 7!’ and we start our day. She eats some yogurt and cheerios and plays with us as we get ready for the day, showering and dressing. She’ll dress herself when she feels like it, maybe a third of the time now. We get ready for the morning activity starting usually around 10 and we head out of the house. Back again for lunch around noon before quiet time where she does puzzles and listens to books on tape. I do some chores like laundry and cleaning before we hopefully head outside again around 4 for time to play before dinner and Jordi getting home. Then it’s dinner, reading or massage, and bed at 7:30.
She’s been exploring a lot about what things in life she has control over. She has given up the pottying battles with her body thankfully and pretty much now just goes to the bathroom when she needs to without incident. But she often tells us how she’d like things done and what she’d like to do. For instance, we went to the zoo and she wanted to listen to her songs and stories on the way there and home and had a hard time accepting that perhaps mommy and daddy should get to choose one way. Also at the zoo she decided that she wanted to ride the merry go round first, but we were with friends and did it in a different order, and so we heard about that the entire way through the zoo until we did in fact take her on the merry go round as promised. We do a lot of negotiating and helping her to express her wants and views politely and deal with the disappointment that other people have needs and desires as well. And then we also just let her wear her sandals when it’s cold outside too since she won’t believe us anyway.
A lot of her previous struggles we had been having have now thankfully passed on most days. She’s a lot more easy going and she’s also been eager to learn some new tasks. For instance, in the kitchen since she’s been doing a great job listening she’s gotten to learn how to crack an egg and cut fruit (with a butter knife). She’s eager to learn new skills and it’s such a pleasure to help her figure them out and watch her master them.
She’s still taking gymnastics class which she’s been enjoying. Those will end soon though for the summer.
Most days at quiet time she likes to wear her bathing suit and pretend she’s going swimming at the cape codder resort.
She likes to play with her friends but she is still wary of her sister getting so much attention, I hope it gets a little easier once Celia is able to walk and can move about herself and not need me quite so much for entertainment. We work hard to get some quality time in with just the two of us while Celia naps, but some days it just doesn’t work out because of the nap timing or errands.
Josie doesn’t nap anymore, although I wish she would some days, she’s clearly tired. We try on the weekends to get her to go to bed earlier at least to get a bit more sleep in. It’s hard to get her to sit still, even when she’s falling down tired. She just got some headphones which may help us get her to sit still to listen to stories and relax while tuning out the world around her.
She likes to play a lot of ridiculous games like. Hide and seek, when she tells me where she is. Simon says (without the part about not saying simon says), fishy fishy cross my ocean, and red light green light.
Physically one neat thing she’s learned to do very recently is step up the steps one foot at a time, one foot per step. I think that’s some kind of brain connection thing to do that.
These days I’m trying to get Josie to hang out in the ‘big girl’ swings more often and learn to get herself moving, but it sure is nice to be able to put Celia down at the park in the swing. She loves it. They often share a swing too! [photo from my ipod]
I have been accused by my friends of doing something like this to my children to produce such early walkers.
So I figured I might as well do it. My dad and I built it this weekend. They both love it, Josie uses it for gymnastics. Celia uses it to cruise. There is a lot less whiny baby at our house now. Give her another month and maybe we can pass it on to someone else for their calisthenics. I only wish we had this over the winter for Josie to get some climbing in on.
All the stuff on the floor is Josie’s easter loot. We are no-fun parents, she got no candy, just toys and other things. Wooden teething toys (both of them, cause all Josie wants to do is play with Celia’s stuff and wood figures can at least be used creatively in addition to being chewed on), a coloring book, bubbles, headband and underwear.
We spent the rest of Easter at my parents house doing an easter egg hunt and digging in the ground to plant some new raised beds for the plants we’ve been growing. I made a new vegetarian meatloaf (the all-time favorite one) which I highly recommend even though the recipe sounds weird.
Caught a family cobra pose during morning yoga! Don’t get many of Celia on her belly, she does not like it. Horrid lighting, but sometimes that’s all you can get in the moment.
Last weekend we got a visit from the Delancey family and the Summers family hosted the CMU crowd at their fancy new house. This video isn’t amazing except when I think about how 10+ years ago we were all hanging out at school together and now we’ve produced a pile of children that can run around and play games together (thanks Steve for playing with all our kids while we socialized!).
They are attempting to play duck duck goose, but no one has quite got it down yet. Exhibit A: my daughter constantly running in circles. She has fun. At the end I think they’re all being animals.
Tonight I went to the grocery store and had a long pause in the vegetable aisle. Celia is six months old this Sunday, the age at which we’ve decided to start feeding our babies actual food instead of exclusively nursing, for many reasons. Sweet potatoes are up first. Celia is literally chomping at the bit now to get her hands on some food although an empty cup and a spoon have been very exciting at the dinner table for a few minutes at least.
She’s getting so big and it feels so fast. She can stand on her own two feet now (literally) for a few seconds, she’ll be walking in two months if she continues to match Josie’s rate of mobility. She’s got opinions now on where she’d like to go and what she’d like to do and while they’re nothing compared to Josie’s opinions (often simultaneous and conflicting) about life, she’s only going to have more. She’ll hopefully start using baby signs in a few months to communicate with us even more directly than she does now with her body language. It’s so exciting to watch her discover about her body and the world.
Josie’s in her own big bed in her own big room and I can only imagine Celia will want to move to that room younger than Josie moved out as she just adores Josie. It’s our job to raise them so that they don’t need us and there’s obviously no question whatsoever that they are still totally reliant on us now but the difference between 6 months and three years has gone so fast. Most of Josie’s friends are going to preschool in the fall, we’re keeping Josie home one more year before we send her. Then comes real school.
I didn’t want to buy the sweet potatoes.
This was about the 6th video Josie urged to shoot of the two of them together jumping. I wish I could bottle this because I sure could have used some today after Celia woke up practically every half hour last night. Each one ends with “ok that’s enough pictures”.
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