I don't easily get on to post lately...

Finn has lately taken to adding the word "easily" to a lot of sentences, and in a couple of different ways. It can mean that the thing really is difficult to do--"It doesn't easily come off." (about one's pants, say)--or it's really just not a thing I want to do--"I don't easily do that, Mommy" (about eating dinner, using the potty, etc.). It's quite endearing. Makes it a bit more difficult to say "Sit down and eat your dinner, kiddo!"

By the way, a week or so ago, miracle of miracles...A couple of peas passed through those lips, through those most sealed of gates when it comes to all things vegetable and fruit (excluding juice). And I mean voluntarily! I'm not saying it's happened again since then, but perhaps things are looking up!


I recently looked back at old pics of Finn and noticed that, relative to what Kate looks like, he seemed much further developed at 6 months. I don't just mean bigger... he was certainly that, but I look at how much longer his hair was and even his face seemed less little-babyish. My friends say it's just a second-baby perceptual thing, but I don't know. I'll have to get a very recent pic of Kate onto my work computer and then I'll post them side by side for comparison. Maybe I'll get to that later today.

Keeping it equal

Here are some pics of Finn. I wouldn't want to look back and find that I had posted Kate's pics and then not found the time to put up a few for Finn, so here are a couple; the frontal view pic is fairly recent (3 years, 4 months).

On that subject--how to keep it equal--Christmas is coming up, and while this year it won't be such a big concern, it is in the back of my mind that somehow I want to find a way to keep Christmas (presents and such) fairly equal for my two kids without (and this is the key and the point of difficulty) making myself insane at the same time. I'm certainly not planning to worry about the actual dollars and cents of it, but on some level I do feel that fairness should come in here somewhere. On the other hand, I don't want to feel compelled to run out on Christmas eve some years in order to find that last little thing that will make the two sides even. An interesting quandary...

My first blog pics, and Kate's first rice cereal

So here's the first (well, actually the second, but the result was largely the same) foray into solids for Kate! Rice cereal went down nicely. No particularly funny reactions, but then again, this stuff is about the most tastelest thing on the planet. She liked playing with it in her mouth and pushing some of it back out. As you can see, she also decided she wants to be a "big girl" and do it herself.

Sorry the pics are little blurry... we're having camera troubles. But yay me, I figured out how to add pictures (yes, even I can eventually figure out what the little picture-icon button at the top of the screen means). Next step... figure out how to get everything laid out nicely on the page. A task for another night.

Finn told me about a dream he had the other night that apparently involved pirates and falling into the sky. The funniest part was the end. This was apparently a "bad" dream, not a "good" dream, and I was trying to figure out when it happened, so I asked him "Was this why you were crying when you woke up from nap today?" His response--"Yes...(pause, clearly changing his mind)...no, I wouldn't cry from that dream, Mommy." Ah, the inner workings of the 3-year-old mind.

Kind of going along with the above, one of Finn's favorite things to do these days is to tell stories. His favorite topic is Mario. Yes, I know... my 3-year-old does play Mario games... he's catching one of his parents' main vices. I spend a lot of time feeling ashamed and/or apologetic about this, but I'm not feeling up to that right now...so sue me. While there are a lot of things I don't like about his playing these games, let me tell you what I do like. His memory and/or his communication about his memory has been developing amazingly through this. He likes to go over the story line and tell you all about the little things that Mario did in great, great detail. A lot of the time this will include the person playing the game (e.g., "Mommy tried to climb the roof, but she couldn't do it." or "Daddy swam through the tunnel and he went on the blocks and he got the star."). Other times he just talk about Mario as the main character. He's so eager to tell his stories that he's started trying to get the attention of other kids his age. It's the first completely self-initiated non-parallel kind of play that I've really seen in him.

The other thing I like about it is that it emphasizes the importance of sequencing. You've got to break the block, then raise the water level, then swim down into the hole. You can't do those things in a different order. A lot of life has this kind of sequencing in it (e.g., you have to put your arms into the sleeves and then button the shirt), and I think it's really neat to see him picking that up. See, now, don't you feel better about all this game playing. I know I do. For now.

We have started using a chart system with stickers to try and limit the TV/computer time for Finn. He gets a certain amount of time per day (broken up into half-hour blocks) and he puts a star sticker into the grid when he uses up one of the blocks. Then, once he's filled them all in for the day, he doesn't get any more (no, I'm not going to say how much time it is total; it hits too close to my shame/guilt button). We're trying to use stickers to reward potty behavior, too. So far, not much progress on that end (haha) and I think, lately, a little regression away from the ultimate goal. Sigh.


On the Kate front, things are well. She's still super vocal, chatting all the time with whoever will sit with her, or with her blue froggy (seems to be the forerunner in the favorite-toy race), or just by herself. Once she starts talking, we are definitely in trouble. She's just about exactly 6 months now, so we should be starting some solids (rice cereal, etc.) very soon. Stay tuned!

First teeth and more

Kate just got her first 2 teeth. Both of my kids have been early teethers. It's such a vindication when teeth first come in. In my experience, when this happens, the baby has been fussing more than normal for a few days at least, and possibly drooling a lot and chewing on his/her fingers. You've been telling yourself "Maybe he/she's teething" without any real sense of whether that explains the extra long time it takes to put him down to bed or the sudden bursts of crying when nothing apparent has happened to her. So when teeth finally show up, you silently say to yourself "YES!" and then go on with the rest of your business.

An extraordinary event occurred yesterday morning. Finn had blood drawn without a single fuss or tear or fidget or anything! It was miraculous. He and I both needed to have blood drawn, so it made sense to me to get it all done at once. I had mine done first, naturally, and I'm really pretty good with giving blood, so I tried to get him to watch the fact that I was not bothered by it. I was much more tense, myself, when it was his turn. I consider myself a pretty relaxed mom when it comes to the bumps and bangs of childhood, but I was honestly dreading the idea of sitting through a 3-year-old giving blood.

For Finn's turn, he sat on my lap. They tied the blue rubber thingy around his arm and asked him to squeeze his hand really tight. I had him hold my other hand and squeeze that really tight, too. An interesting fact about children (mine at least) is that they are better at doing things with their whole body rather than just part-way--better at squeezing both hands than just one. This fact was illustrated for us during swimming lessons. The difficulty our 3-year-old had with moving his hands at a slow crawl-pace while kicking his legs quickly was comical. As soon as the kicking began, the arms would speed right up to match the legs. Really, though, we're all familiar with this phenomenon, even as adults--think of the pat your head and rub your tummy scenario, which is pretty hard at first for everyone.

Anyway, he squeezed his hands and he watched the needle the whole time. Just like Mommy--I hate it when someone tells me not to look at the needle. Thanks for the tip, but I know how I want to do it. I am absolutely fine having a needle as long as I can watch the whole process.

So the needle goes in, and you could practically hear all four adults in the room holding our breath, waiting... and nothing happened. No movement, no noise--no crying, no flinch... nothing! For a second, the blood wasn't coming up through the tube, and I saw the phlebotomist just barely moving the needle. I know we were both thinking how much we didn't want to have to do the stick again... and then next thing you knew, the blood was flowing through. I said to Finn, "Look, there it goes. That's your blood." He said "Yeah", and that was all there was to it. When we were all done, Finn had a whole bunch of stickers (they gave him 6 or 7, I think because they were so happy that it was an easy job), and a bandaid on his arm to match Mommy's.

Wow... I can't imagine it will ever happen so smoothly again!

One of the lesser-known side-effects of potty training...

is when your son says to your hubby while he (hubby) is on the toilet: "Good job, Daddy! I'm so proud of you!" Who knows, possibly when hubby gets much older, he'll appreciate that kind of encouragement!

One of Finn's very common word errors, which he has had for a while and doesn't seem to be getting past yet, is to say "They don't rhyme!" when something doesn't match. It can be a rhyme-related mismatch, or something completely non-vocal, so that the idea of rhyming doesn't fit at all. Sometimes he even says it when he just means that something isn't right. For example, if I say: "Does the kitty wear a hat?" (while holding a hat on the kitty), Finn is liable to say, "Mommy, that doesn't rhyme!"


Kate discovered an important new fact about the world on Friday. She very distinctly told us that "Ya ya ya ya ya ya ya ya ya." I'm so glad to have her here to tell me these things. How else would I ever know?!

Seeing things

Finn asked me to use my finger to make the popping noise on the inside of my cheek. His response when I did it: "I see that sound!"

One of Finn's most used phrases: "Oh, I didn't see that before," which half of the time translates into "Oh, you're showing me something brand new and really interesting" and the other half of the time translates into "Oh, it was there all along but I didn't see it."