Sweet darling angel babies

For two nights and a row, both my children have slept through the night. Meg slept both nights from about 7 p.m. until around 6 a.m., which is a welcome relief. Andy has been struggling with a cold this week, but even he managed to sleep uninterrupted from about midnight until 7:30. I hope I'm not jinxing anything, I just figured they need some credit where credit is due. And certainly sleeping better makes us all like each other more.

Andy's language has really been taking off. He just sounds so grown up sometimes.
"Would you like some dinner?"
"No thanks. Not just yet. I'm not hungry right now."
"?"
I know. How do you argue with that?

He's also getting closer to reading, which amazes me. We now talk about what letters words start with and he's good at most of them. Inexplicably, he confuses M and N. I say inexplicably because there is an N in his name and he knows how to spell it, he just somehow thinks the two are the same somehow (in his defense, they do look alike). They tested his letters and number comprehension at school and that was the one letter he confused out of the whole uppercase alphabet. Lowercase, he's about 60 percent. He also now knows all his numbers and can easily count to probably 25 although after about 13, he tends to drop a number here and there. "11, 12, 13, 16, 17, 19, 20."

Meg is really rolling over and it's precious and adorable. She can easily flip from her stomach to her back although it still seems to surprise her a little. She could easily get from her back to her stomach if she wanted to and she can get from her back to her side, but so far, she doesn't seem to have any need to get back to her belly. She's also sitting up pretty well on her own. Although I'm usually right there to catch her, she has figure out how to fall forward and avoid face-planting by falling on a shoulder or onto her stomach. I know the days of being able to leave her on the floor and know where she'll be when I come back is short and I can't believe I'm looking forward to it. She's also eating like a champ, and can easily chow through at least one stage-2 jar at a sitting without blinking (or, more likely, smearing it all over everything).

As for me, I'm getting better and better getting these kids up and out of the house. I am using the Hotsling my mother gave me and using it to carry her on my hip without killing my arm. It's pretty handy, but I don't always remember to use it.

Turns out with a little bit of sleep, life is pretty good.

Inside joke

It all started with an innocent nursery rhyme. I heard Andy singing it under his breath a few weeks ago, "Mary had a cat throw up, cat throw up, cat throw up." He wasn't saying it to be funny, he just likes to change the words around without really thinking about it. But it cracked me up. We laughed about it and the phrase "cat throw up" became our little inside joke. Now we like to spend time working the phrase into other songs and phrases. It's actually quite adorable.

In other news, my cat Coltrane (the chubby one) has fallen in love with Andy's bath letters. I have them in a bin beside the bathtub and I find she's taking them out and carrying them around to various parts of the house. By the afternoon, there are usually two or three different letters littering my bedroom floor. I am convinced she's trying to send a threatening message as the letter K continues to be one of her go-to letters. What do you think she's trying to say?

Shoes, letters and tantrums

It's official - I have now spent $30 on a pair of kids' shoes. I had tried to avoid it as long as possible, but I finally broke down and did it, buying a pair of Merrell shoes from Nordstrom. In my defense, I did have $20 left on a Nordstrom gift card. He has been wearing a pair of hand-me-down Stride Rite brown saddle oxfords that I love (and Bjorn hates, naturally), but he has now outgrown the size 6 shoes. I figured he needed another somewhat nicer style shoe, you know, for all the formals and proms he goes to, or more likely the occasional event where just sneakers wouldn't be enough.

Andy continues to amaze me with his numbers and letters as well as his ability to throw a temper tantrum. He now proudly can point to A, O and Y when he sees them. Just this morning he pointed out about half the letters on my George Mason t-shirt and managed to get most of them right. He also points to things and counts them. He can usually get to four or five before he starts skipping to seven or nine. I'm quite impressed. Similarly, his ability to just throw down and have a temper tantrum is impressive. I guess I thought a tantrum was him jumping up and down demanding more ice cream, but his is different. Rather, he just starts to scream/cry hysterically often because he can't have something (like going outside when it's 20 degrees). I try to be mindful that he's like that when he's tired and hungry, but in those situations, usually he won't let me feed him or console him to calm him down. It's not his most attractive moments, nor mine for that matter.

Numbers

Andy is really figuring out his numbers. He recognizes a few on site now and loudly points them out. Like when the news is on, he points to the corner of the screen and shouts "Four!" It's awesome when he's right. He also can count in order (most of the time) up to five and sometimes 10. It's really amazing to watch the learning. Somehow I thought we'd be sitting around a book one day and he would learn his numbers that way rather than just picking them up through life. Same goes with his letters. He's figured a few out and happily points them out, like the O and the A, when he sees them written somewhere. Watching this stage of development is really pretty amazing.

The new antibiotic seems to be working, at least he's less cranky today. I think the stuff tastes terrible, but he doesn't seem to mind. I am irritated though that this one says to give him three CCs when the other was teaspoons and the Tylenol is in mL. Seriously, what's up with that? I'm a fairly bright person and usually read labels. I worry that other parents are accidentally overdosing (or underdosing) their kids, which could be pretty dangerous. Why all the different measurements? My flaw with this dose was not asking for it flavored. Apparently if you ask the pharmacy, they'll throw in a bubble gum flavor (or similar nausea-inducing gunk) to make it more palatable. Good to know for next time.

Christmas after

I'm still sorting through everything. Take a look at this picture and you'll see there is a lot to get through. I'm still missing my new running shoes that I wore on Christmas morning. Certainly no one else wants them so they're clearly stuck under something in this house. I suppose that means I need to clean. With both of us just trying to get through the day all week, the house is a total mess - even more so than a regular Christmas. It's all good though. Hard to believe the long holiday week is almost over though and we have to go back to work on Tuesday. Sigh.

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Updated to add that I found my new shoes. They were under Bjorn's side of the bed, where I kicked them off while hanging my awesome new curtains that match my new duvet cover. Phew. The mystery of the missing shoes was really getting to me. Now if I could just find those wooden letters.

Gone?

Last week, Andy refused to go down for his nap. I left him in there for a while to relax, well, so I could relax for a bit only to find out that he somehow pulled a picture off the wall and broke the frame. Impressive actually. So the picture is now repaired and hung in another room, but now every time he gets in or out of his crib he points to wall and says "Gone?" We explain that he broke it and now it's in another room so now he gets out and runs to the computer room and points to it and says "Gone." I am thinking I will now hang his wooden initials BAB on the wall that he loves so much (preferably higher than the picture). Unfortunately, in his love affair with the letters all I can find is one B. I've scoured the regular places and I can't find them yet. I have a feeling they'll reappear in a drawer somewhere random.

Christmas cards

We spent about a hundred hours this morning (okay, maybe one) trying to get a nice picture of all five of us for a Christmas/Hannukah/Kwanzaa card. The older kids were late because they sleep later and Andy was starting to need his nap by the time we finally got started. It was a little tense, but after some trial and error with the self-timer, we got a decent picture of all of us. This isn't the picture we selected, but Andy's expression sums up what we were all thinking. After we finally got a good one though, we all liked each other again.

I ordered them again from Costco. It's cheaper than Ofoto/Kodak Gallery with the huge bonus of the cards (allegedly) being ready tomorrow. With that pace, these might go out before Christmas after all. Maybe.

Andy's new thing this weekend (in addition to his cold) is his letters. A while ago, I bought the letters B, A and B, painted them white and planned to hang them on Andy's wall. It's been a while now so I currently make a point of explaing the letters to him and having him repeat after me. The funny thing is he's become so attached to two of them "AB" that he calls for them by name, rather insistently I might add. He even took a nap with them yesterday. I got him a wooden puzzle that says "Andy" for Christmas. I'd say based on this he's ready for it.