One small step for Simon

Simon loves crawling around on the porch, and we've been out there a lot lately with the nice weather.  He manages to go up the step quite easily, but sometimes he falls on his face going back down it.  Let the record show that Zac is the one who put the hair bow on him.

Mud soup

Sera: Are you making mud soup?

Alice: Yeah.  It's for my dinosaurs.

The Grapes of Youth

As a parent, I feel a constant tension between wanting to encourage Alice's creativity, exploration, and experimentation, and needing to develop her awareness of what is socially acceptable.  An example of this constant dilemma was today when Alice decided to drop two pieces of her cheese stick into her water cup.  On the one hand, it's kind of cool that she thought to do that--to see what would happen.  On the other hand, it is obviously not socially acceptable to drop one's cheese into one's water glass.

Similarly, one does not put giant grapes in one's cheeks, but still, it was kind of cute and she looked really funny.

For the most part, Zac and I respond mildly, letting her complete the current experiment, while making it clear that she should not do it again. 

I think it's all part of her growing imagination.  Sometimes she'll scoot around on her belly and say, "I'm a lizard!"  This evening, she spent a long time with a bowl feeding her dinosaurs supper.  Most of her pretend play is quite harmless, but occasionally she'll imagine she's a dinosaur and try to bite my leg or something, at which point I have no qualms about squashing her creativity.

Spring hike

Our plan for Sunday morning was to go to Umstead for a hike.  When we arrived, the parking lot was kind of full and there was a group of people in the large picnic shelter right by the trail head.  We overheard one person say to another, "That something only an alcoholic would understand," from which we inferred that it was an AA meeting of some sort.  As we walked by on a sidewalk, two men from the group were walking towards us, headed to the parking lot.  When Alice saw them, she abruptly did a 180 and started walking very quickly back to the van.  When she turned around to see if I was coming too, she noticed the men were following behind her.  She burst into tears and sprinted into the woods beside the path.  Now, these two men were rather grizzled, with scraggly beards and biker bandannas on their heads, but I have never seen Alice react in terror the way she did to them.  I just hope causing a sweet two-year old girl to spontaneously burst into tears and run away in terror doesn't lead to a relapse.

Despite its inauspicious start, the rest of the hike was quite enjoyable.  It was one of those lovely mid-seventies, sunny, bug-free days that are almost unbearably pleasant.  We went down the trail a bit (to put some distance between us and the men who terrified Alice) and then went off the trail to find some nice logs for Alice to play on.  Staying true to form, as soon as I sat on a log, Alice sat down next to me and declared, "I want a snack."  So we had our mid-morning snack, then she played with sticks and leaves and wandered around a bit.  Zac showed her how new trees sometimes grow out of the fallen down, rotting logs, so Alice spent a good deal of time picking apart a rotten log and putting a stick in it to grow into a new tree.

After a while, we went further down the trail until we got to a little creek.  After another snack, Alice played happily at the water's edge, throwing sand and rocks into the stream.  But, eventually she realized she could take her socks and shoes off and wade in the water.  Zac showed her a crawdad, and later they found some tadpoles, which was super exciting because she had learned about those at school.  We also saw some frogs on the sandy beach.

The hike back up the hill and all the way back to the van was a bit rougher than the way down, mainly because Alice was worn out and needed carried most of the time.  But all in all, it was a gorgeous day to spend in the woods.

What we do best: snack.

Alice pulling apart a rotting fallen tree

Alice planting a "new tree" in the rotten one

Wading

First dip

Let the record show that today, April 26th, Alice took her first swim of the season.

It started with her hosing the pollen off of the pool and sand toys that sat in her pool on the porch all winter.  Then she sprayed herself.  Then she played in the water and got all wet, which she didn't like, so she started taking her clothes off.  So I had her put her suit on.  Then she sat in the water.  It was cold.  She did not last long.

Exploring nature

We went to the arboretum today, since it was so beautiful out.  We took Simon out of the stroller a lot so he could enjoy exploring nature, now that he is better at crawling.  I remember the first time we put Alice in the grass, around this same age, she kind of freaked out and started crying. Similarly, Alice was scared the first time we put her next to a bush outside.  Simon felt right at home though, and seemed to love exploring nature.  Perhaps the difference is that, because of Alice, he goes out a lot more as a baby than Alice did when she was a baby.

Sometimes you've just got to stop and pick the flowers.

Alice also enjoys exploring nature.  In fact, sometimes she likes to taste it.

Alice was eating a leaf (because she thinks it is the same as salad), so after she spit it out, Zac found her a wild onion to try.  She didn't like it either.

Peek-a-boo

Simon is getting better at standing for brief periods of time.

Simon absolutely loves riding on Zac's shoulders.

This girl was getting photos taken at the arboretum, probably for her quinceanera, and she came over to Alice, thinking Alice would like her dress.  Alice was terrified and hit behind her hands.  Afterwards, she kept telling us she didn't want the lady in the dress to come get her.

Where's Simon?

For my birthday, Zac got a little tripod for the camera, and since we also have a remote to make it take pictures, we can now easily take family portraits.  The only problem is getting both kids to sit still and look at the camera at the same time.

The Banana Incident

Zac had a work function to attend this evening, so I picked the kids up from daycare and was on my own for the night.  After coming home and getting everyone unpacked and washed, I went to the back bedroom to nurse Simon, leaving Alice to roam the house unsupervised for a few minutes.  I could overhear her talking about bananas, and I could hear her moving a chair to get up and perhaps reach the bananas, but I still wasn't prepared for the banana corpse I found on the table when I came back out.  So, I turned on the camera and interrogated the suspect.

Some mornings are like this

Thankfully Zac drops the kids off at daycare, because otherwise I would never make it to work on time.  I usually just get there with ten minutes to spare as it is.  The kids always find a way to sabotage us.

Simon in the bath

This is the sound of Simon

Now that Simon has figured out how to crawl, he seems to be playing with his sounds a lot more.  Here's a little sample.

Easter Bling

Alice, wearing her Easter bling during her breakfast of honey nut cheerios.

Sera's birthday

The best part of my birthday was Alice saying happy birthday to me in the morning.

The second best thing was the delicious trifle cake Zac made me.

The third best thing was having Alice help me unwrap my presents using her new scissors to cut the bows off (and sometimes just cutting the bows for fun).  She was a diligent and focused helper.

The fourth best thing was going out to dinner at Banana Leaf with Zac, Alice, Simon, and Laura.  It was nice not to worry about cooking supper or cleaning up, but a restaurant with two little ones is not exactly relaxing.  They did pretty well though, all things considered.  Alice was starving, so she eagerly gobbled up lots of noodles.  Simon was a bit fussy and required rocking most of the time, which Zac graciously took care of.

Easter Sunday

For Easter Sunday, we went to Izzy's for an Easter egg hunt.  Izzy is one of Alice's classmates.  We were invited last year, but Alice had roseola, so we didn't go.  We're so glad we went this year because it was a lot of fun.  The regular crew of daycare friends were there, plus some other miscellaneous relatives and coworkers that Natasha invited.  They live on a big property south of Raleigh, so it was a great place for an egg hunt.

Alice in the van with her basket, ready to go to Izzy's egg hunt.

Izzy, Natasha (Izzy's mom), Alice

On the hunt

Simon enjoyed watching the kids run around

Alice unwillingly shared the hammock with Simon for a moment

One of these eggs hatched!

Nothing better than playing with another kid's toys

Alice tries out the tire swing (while eating something)

On the way to Izzy's we drove by Lake Wheeler Park, so we stopped in on the way home to check it out, since was such a beautiful day.

Alice had a lot of fun playing at the water's edge, poking sticks in the sand.

At snack time, Simon happily sucked on a pretzel stick.  He might have even eaten a bit of it accidentally.

Tool use

Easter Egg Time

We celebrated Easter on Saturday morning.  Here's the wake-up video:

Once we finally got Alice dressed, we let her out to see what the Easter Bunny brought.  (It's a long video.)

We spent the rest of the rainy day playing with all the fun stuff the Easter Bunny brought.

Alice really liked the jelly beans, but did a pretty good job restraining herself.

Simon enjoyed his chocolate bunny.

She loved playing with her new glitter glue (Zac's idea).  What a mess!

She uses scissors at school, but we didn't have a pair for her at home until now.

We wanted to make sure she knew how to use them properly, so after opening them, but before handing them over, we grilled her on the rules:

Showing off his teeth.

Peeps!

Alice drawing with her paint brush markers.

She did a pretty good job dying the eggs, but she wanted to keep re-dying them, 

so they were less pretty as time went on.

Eating progress

Simon is getting a little better at the finger food, as in he hasn't vomited after putting food in his mouth. We've started putting a scattering of soft or dissolvable foods on his tray.  We figure even if he isn't really eating it, it's helping his fine motor skills as he works on his pincer grasp.  Plus, it's a great way to keep him occupied, and eventually he will learn to eat as he gets used to the foreign objects being in his mouth.  Here he is eating a specially designed food for babies learning to eat called "yogurt bites."  They dissolve really easily, so they stick to his wet fingers too.

Good Friday

Today, daycare was closed so Zac stayed home with the kids.  I went in for Alice's teacher-parent conference at 8:10 before work.  They had lots of positive things to say about her, and also gave me her progress report and some examples of her art work.  I think this is hilarious for a kid who's not yet three.  At the same time, it's kind of a fun record of what she can do at the different ages.  I'm glad to see that she has mastered painting and galloping, among other skills.

The black streaky circle is supposed to be a spider web, and the white paper towel pieces glued to black construction paper is supposed to be a moon.

My school was a half-day because it was a snow make-up day, so I got home around one, ate a quick lunch, then we headed out to enjoy the nice weather at a park.  The park was closed due to construction, so we decided to go to the nearby Trader Joes instead.  On the way there, Alice declared that she wanted to push around the small shopping cart. We were preparing her for there not being one available, but luckily, just as we went in the door, a little boy brought over his finished cart.  Alice couldn't have been happier.

I think her favorite part what unloading the groceries.

Then, after the store, we stopped at the nearby Science Safari store, where Alice had fun playing with the plastic dinosaurs and snakes.

Back at home, Alice took a nap and I took Simon to the doctor for his 9 month wellness visit.  He's small, according to the statistics, but he looks normal to me and the doctor wasn't worried.  This morning at school though, my coworker who had a baby around the same time brought him in and he was about twice as big as Simon.

Our porch has been inundated with pollen for the last two weeks, but it seems to be winding down now.  Zac put Alice to work using the squeegee to clean the chairs.

The kids played together for a few minutes, sort of.

Then, once the kids were asleep, Zac and I filled the plastic Easter eggs and hid them around the house.  We also got the baskets ready.  We're having Easter on Saturday since that's more convenient.