Toddler fun and teethy girl

Here are some pictures that really show off Dominique's pearly whites. (If you click on the last picture, it will blow up and you can see them well). We have started having to tell our little darling "no" and have noticed another difference with her and Ivan. Ivan's first reaction when we started telling him "no" was to laugh. Dominique's is to cry. I think her tactic is way more effective. When Ivan laughed it just made us angry and more determined to get him to obey. When she cries, it makes us feel sorry for her and like we should let her have her way. Yikes! We'll have to watch that one. It really is pitiful though. Maybe she'll be really obedient. It is kinda tough in that we start to figure out what works with Ivan and have to have a whole other approach for Dominique.

Funny Ivan:

-When he says: "Dominique sharing me" I know he is about to take something from her. He often claims he knows what Dominique wants, which is really what he wants. Like the time he wanted strawberries before dinner, he said she wanted to share, then after dinner, when he wasn't going to get desert because he hadn't eaten his vegetables, again, "she" wanted him to share his vegetables.

-He asks permission to pretend eat the food pictures in his books.

-If we ask him to do something, like throw something in the trash, he says "thank you" For example:
Ivan, can you throw away this diaper?
Yes, thank you.

-We are making a house book with cut out pictures. We pasted a picture of a pool on the backyard page and he took his bath toys and asked me if he could put them in his (pretend) pool.

-Ivan is loving a little einstein video where they are always going on missions. Now he goes around the house, reciting parts of the movie and saying he is on a mission. When I asked him what his mission was, he said it was green, and showed me a tiny lego lightsaber (his mission).

What were your best and worst moments today?

Cling-on

I've read somewhere at sometime that children become more clingy right before a stage of independence. I hope this means Dominique is about to start walking on her own. She is a total momma's girl right now. We spent last night trying to sleep on the couch, with her moving every 5 minutes to a new position on top of me. She screams if I leave the room, if I don't nurse her to sleep or if she wants anything. She has found that I make an easily accessible walker and wants me to take her for scenic trips around the house or elsewhere, pretty often and all the time if I'm trying to make supper.

Now that I think of it, I'm surprised more babies don't adopt this way of walking. She just comes up behind me and pulls herself to standing then holds on (screams) and walks with me. I wanted to capture it on video. While it may be slightly annoying now, I know I will miss it when she stops and think back to how cute it was.




If you have children, what do you miss that they used to do? What do you miss doing from your youth/childhood?

Time will tell

I used to think most of boy/girl behavior is taught, but today is making me re-evaluate. I'm keeping a little girl, age 3 and she plays so different than Ivan. At first I thought maybe it was because she was older, or her personality, then I started thinking maybe there is something to the boy/girl thing.

All morning, she has been taking care of Dominique's doll (which Ivan never plays with)- carrying it, holding it, feeding it and putting it to bed. She actually listened and obeyed when I told her not to make any noise for 2-3 hours while Ivan slept (she got here at 6am). When we played cards, she played while Ivan threw the cards all over the room. She colored while he threw the crayons. She finished her picture while he climbed onto the office chair (on wheels) to retrieve a stick (we had put out of reach), so that he could pretend he was using a weed eater in the house and then used it as a baseball bat- again, in the house.

We go on a walk and she sat with Dominique while Ivan got past 2 houses, jumped out of the wagon and proceeded to hunt down fallen branches, walk through uncut grass up to his chest, pull and push the wagon, pick up trash and chase through yards.

She saw a foam pad in the sandbox and used it to sit on. Ivan was already in the sand, covered with it all over. He lasted about 5 minutes before he decided to climb all four corners of the gazebo. Meanwhile, she played in the sand a good 30 minutes.

It will be interesting to see how much is personality/age or gender and how Dominique will act as she continues to explore her world.

I captured this hilarious mealtime moment on video for our enjoyment. And don't be mistaken, she isn't looking down at her food, her eyes were totally closed. It was even more obvious before I brought out the camera. If you can believe it, she woke up some when I was filming.



What were your best and worst babysitting moments?

Life is full of interest with a two year old around

Ivan decided to re-arrange his room one day and his dad got pics of the final result.

These videos are him helping us play Spanish bingo Mother's day.






Dictionivary:

-what are you doing up to?

-bedrooms are called livingrooms (example- I'm going to go to sleep now in my livingroom- not that he would ever say that sentence)

2 actual conversations we had this week

-Where's daddy, mommy?
-He's at work, hon
-my name's Ivan, mommy, it's not hon!


-Where is it?
-What?
-I want it!
-What do you want?
-I want something. Where is it? (tears and crying)

(I did use my super sleuth mommy powers to figure out he wanted cinnamon on his waffles like mine).

What's your favorite board/card game?

MY mother's day!

One day last week, Brian took the kids with him to go do an errand. They were gone extremely long and I wondered where they could be. Then I thought about how mother's day was around the corner and thought they were probably out scheming. Upon their return, Ivan proudly announced that the flowers were all gone. Brian said he didn't know what Ivan was talking about.

I chose to ignore the comments, but was thinking- how could a store run out of flowers right before mother's day? Maybe they didn't have the flowers Brian wanted?

Later in the week, Ivan tried to clue me in again when we went to pick Brian up from work. Again he repeated "the flowers are all gone".

Mother's day I learned what he meant- the flowers were hidden at Brian's work.

Ivan's other cute saying: Sunday he kept saying: it's MY mother's day. At age 2 the world revolves around him. It may be mother's day, but it's "mine, my, MY mother's day" and he even said "Ivan's mother's day" to make it totally clear. Sorry to all the other mother's of the world. My son's being a bit of a hog.

Hope you had a good one.

Have a happy Mother's Day!

Being a full-time mother is one of the highest salaried jobs... since the payment is pure love. ~Mildred B. Vermont

You don't really understand human nature unless you know why a child on a merry-go-round will wave at his parents every time around - and why his parents will always wave back. ~William D. Tammeus


Making the decision to have a child is momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body. ~Elizabeth Stone

What's your favorite mom memory?

More pics from our trip

Nana got a couple of awesome shots of the kids (the close-ups). We enjoyed being at Nana's and Pawpaw Terry's. Ivan's back in his routine of waking up and wanting to go to Nana's house, or a party if he had to have a second choice.

Latest in learning and growing.

Ivan has been watching a video a friend lent us called Leapfrog Letter factory. I highly recommend it. It's fun and Ivan has already learned the sounds of all the letters. He can't recognize all the letters yet, but he knows their sounds pretty much. The funniest part is that he can't make the "k" sound so instead of saying: "C says k-k-k, it's cold in here", he says "C says t-t-t, it's told in here".

Dominique is cutting her top two teeth. She's had fever some- which my friend's pediatrician is convinced is not related. Some 20 teeth into it, I'd say he's wrong. My two have often gotten fever when cutting teeth- nothing high or lasting days, just coming and going.

Do you remember losing and growing teeth? What was your preferred tooth extraction method? Did you get money?

Bodacious beach

Our visit to what I erroneously label the ocean. 1st pic- Ivan making a sand angel. Next pic, his sand slide. Apparently, this is not the ocean. It is a gulf. Perhaps we can mark this up to me being from a landlocked province. Landlocked as in half a week to get to any substantial mass of water like an ocean or perhaps it comes from my total dislike of social studies- but I still don't get it. This supposed "bay" gets water from the ocean, sends it's water back to the ocean, mixes at some place with the ocean, but here it's now a bay. They should call it an ocean suburb or ocean outlet, maybe ocean cul-de-sac.

This is like when one of our main streets suddenly changes names. The poor visitor drives down the large, totally straight thoroughfare called Mockingbird- innocently looking for an intersecting street when suddenly, he looks up and discovers that not only has he not found his 2nd street, but he has also lost the very large thoroughfare called "Mockingbird". Without turning, or blinking his eyes, he is now on "Barrow" and very much lost. Someone in the street naming department is having a good laugh.

To all you Galveston, Texas "gulf" people- this is just to let you know that this Saskatchewanean will not be fooled. Change the name all you want. The water is salty and there are waves. I know about lakes and rivers, puddles and burst pools (ask cousin Kris- it wasn't me!), but what you got is a bunch of ocean water lapping onto your gulf's shores.

We had a blast as you can tell. I think I could go to the beach everyday and not get bored. And thanks to everyone for the encouragement. Ivan has raving reviews about the ocean and beach and doesn't mention his fierce sunburn. They are both turning a very pretty brown color. It may have cost dearly, but they are definitely no longer neon white (their birth color).

Have you been to the ocean? What's your favorite: ocean, lake, river, pool, waterfall and why.

Happy birthday Sis (2x)

I had my parents to myself for 2 1/2 years, but my life was forever changed with our family's new addition. 31 years ago today, I gained more than a sister, I gained a life long friend. Happy Birthday sis- my one and only.

Bad momma

I think I just committed my most horrific goof ever as a mom. I slow baked my children. It all started out very innocently. We had a total blast at Galveston beach today. They discovered the tide and salty water. Ivan kept yelling, "here it comes" and running out to catch the waves. He kept going at it even when the waves knocked him over and put him under a couple of times (with momma close at hand to scoop him out of course). He was buried in the sand multiple times. Dominique also had a blast crawling all over and checking out the waves. We had a picnic lunch all lightly coated in sand, collected a few seashells as cheap souvenirs and thought the day was a fabulous success.

Then Nanna said she'd gotten some sun. What? It had been drizzling and cold when we'd gotten there, to the point where Ivan was cold and shivering (he had run out into the water in his clothes), so at some point in the morning since they were both in cold, wet, sandy clothes, I'd changed them into swim diapers and left them unclothed. At one point the sun peeked out and I said "I should have put sunscreen on them", but wasn't sure how to accomplish this since they were both coated in sand. Each time I'd rinse them in the water, they were wet, or sandy still or wet and sandy. That wouldn't be good to put cream on wet sandy skin would it? That was the moment when the parent police was supposed to come give me a citation and tell me to get them either in clothes or sunscreen.

Yep, I've got two fried children now- you know, scary red- cheeks, shoulders, back, chest and top of legs- everywhere that has not seen sun yet this summer. The rest that already has a tan was fine. Dominique has been totally cooperative letting me put aloe vera on her every 3 minutes or so. Ivan is not wanting anymore treatments. She still has suptle cool skin. His is starting to get hot and dry- so I'll torture him through the night, applying aloe while I cry inside. I've almost come to tears a few times as I look at them and pray this will have no long lasting implications.

What a perfectly horrible way to finish off a great day. May this at least be a lesson, so that I'll never burn them again.