20 Weeks

It's a….

Surprise.

It seems we're in that phase where all the toilet paper rolls will all have been rerolled and the tissue boxes all have clean but scrunched up tissues on top of them. Sorry guests. 

Jack is a climber. I need to just not have any furniture anywhere near the counters, but the house is not that big. He can scale everything anyway. Including the oven handle. Bad news there.  And once he gets up, he seems to bee line for the knife holder. Or the sink sometimes.

Sometimes it's easier to just not fight it

What goes around comes around. There are three babies under 4 months on our street, all with big brothers, so they end up here a lot. And that is totally fine, because Bobby disappears for hours sometimes too. I just hope he's not watching tv over there, but you can't control it all, and when Jack is sleeping, I'm not going to complain. I'm sure I was the same with Jack, although he was a summer baby so got a lot of ergo and outside time.

Boy Day

Sometimes, V comes and sees me, even when Jack is asleep, so I don't get all my laundry and DVR watching done, but it's okay and then Jack wakes up and we're all happy.  She is seriously outnumbered on this street. The only other girls are 6 months, 7,9, and 10years, but she really seems to like me and my house, which is a little weird b/c there's not that much to play with here.

Lunch date

Big news in the house this week is that we got bunk beds! I was going to wait until summer, but now Pop can stay on the bottom - cancel those Ritz reservations! And I think Bobbys friends are nearing the sleepover age. Maybe. Maybe. Either way, Bobby loves them. He sleeps up top every night without incident. They are a bitch to make and change sheets - as if I weren't bad enough at that already. 

It did come with a ladder which Jack LOVES. He also loves jumping on the top bunk, so we are all on super high alert anytime he disappears down the hallway. It makes great forts though so that's a bonus.

Adding a few grey hairs 

Update

It's as if they read my blog I make liar of me. Jack is totally into books now. He doesn't like to be an audience member when bobby is being read to, but he loves flipping through board books with someone and pointing things out. 

Look at that form. He loves basketball and basketballs. 

We had a real sporty day the other day and bobby got to try out his new racket. He's not half bad of course. But could use regular practice which is tough with the ever so slight downhill grade on our street!

This is how I've spent a lot of grandmas visit. We pushed through our regular schedule so jack has gotten a few car naps. Which is fine because 5:30 comes early. And he's a terror in the bowling alley and just wants to walk down the lanes. This is during indoor trampolining though which I know he would adore. Toddler time goes a few more hours so we might make an appearance. 

I 

Catching Up

Halloween - good, Batman and Robin. don't ask me to recap. I knew I was bad at blogging this period so I tried to be more descriptive in the flickr pictures.

Thanksgiving - nice to play it low key. Lucky we had wonderful friends to cook us dinner (Thanks Jen!) and send us home with leftovers (my second favorite part).

Christmas - seemed like we were waiting for it forever, then I was too exhausted emotionally and physically to do all the things I wanted. Rick went away for two weeks in early December, but it actually went by really fast - too busy to notice. We skipped the boat ride, but did do a train ride. We watched the boat light parade, did some tree lightings, toured lots of Christmas lights. Bobby was one of the three kings in his school pageant. 

Okay, this is even boring me. Christmas morning was pretty fun. Jack wasn't into it for the presents, but enjoying climbing as usual and batting some ornaments around. Bobby opened his tennis racket first and Jack just played with that most of the morning. The Hess truck was a big hit.  Some lego sets got big reactions but it was cute to see Bobby open his blue guitar which he had asked the two Santas for. 

We went to the Safari Park in there sometime, Long Beach Aquarium, lots of playgrounds, the beach a few times, but have spent a lot of time with our friends just playing and playing some more. There's a pretty solid revolving door of kids throughout all of the houses on our street. Which means my garage is full of ride on toys, trikes and scooters that aren't ours, but will make their way home soon.

Maybe I'll try to blog more often to get some interesting details in here next time. But at least I'm putting up a lot of photos (hint hint!)

Bobby...

Bobby is a handful to say the least. I really blame myself for any issues, but he has some good moments too.

We were listening to Blue Christmas by Elvis, and he asked me if it was Captain Hook.

He suggested "we should make a fake daddy, then he could sit at work and we would hook it up so when someone checked on him, it would say 'I'm fine, thank you'" You'd have to hear him say it in his little voice.

He has a creative little mind and is fun to hear him tell stories. He is also a smart little punk with an amazing memory. Don't ask me for examples (my memory is crap).

He loves Lego. He builds them all alone and I don't even supervise anymore, if it's wrong (which it isn't) who cares. I wish he would build from scratch or play with the models he builds, but he does a little and will more in the future I'm sure.

So many blogs in my head, so none written down.

October 12: The first time jack slept through the night. 7:30-6:30; and then woke up happy.  Originally, I would have said - and that was the last time that happened, but it's gotten much better. At 15 months, we'd had enough of the waking up, so he just had to cry through it. He was always good at falling asleep on his own, he just wouldn't stay asleep. So then we got through that and he would make it until 5:30am, then daylight savings blah blah blah, mama is tired. Recently his molars have finally come through the skin, and we've had a lot of 3/4/5am wake ups.  We are in between two naps, but generally down to one. If he sleeps in the jogging stroller for 30 minutes, he can get a long regular afternoon nap.

Other than that, he is a freaking awesome kid. Seriously, he is so happy and smiley and easy going.

He's doing his age appropriate behaviors - naming body parts, dancing at every piece of music that comes on, he waves at garbage trucks, when he hears the train horn miles away, he points to the sky, he loves to look for the moon and stars. He's really good at stacking and building. 

He copies everything Bobby does, good or bad. In the bath, on the trampoline, with toys, making noises, he is a complete mimic for good or bad.

The doctor thinks he should be saying more words, but he communicates with grunts and whines and points just fine. His comprehension is excellent and I'm not worried.  We are trying to read more books but it's still not a productive venture.  He is really into the lift the flap books.

He does the cutest palms up shrug the shoulder 'where is it?' move when looking for something in a book. And sometimes he does it on purpose like he's quizzing me.

He also can pee on demand which I'm fascinated by. I've tried putting him over the toilet with mixed success. But once he gets his diaper off, he will stare down at his legs and do this little grunt strain and usually get something out. Hopefully that will help us in the future…

Which reminds me - he LOVES being naked. LOVES. When I take off his pants for a diaper change, he tries to get away and take off his shirt. When he gets naked, he will take off down the hallway going to nowhere in particular but just needs to run fast!

He loves to go outside so much. He will make a break for any open door. I am glad we have this mild weather because he is often outside before 7am. He loves to walk our street and makes himself comfortable in all the neighbors front yards, especially with their Christmas and Halloween decorations.

He also LOVES screwdrivers, scissors, and knives. The biggest tantrums he throws are when you won't give him some dangerous item or make him get off the counter or some other dangerous perch.

Alright that's enough Jack for now until I remember more.