We're in trouble now

The problem is that they're making these kids videos TOO SMART! Ivan has now surpassed both his mother and his father (music major) in music vocabulary thanks to a "Little Einsteins" video. He's watched at least one episode a day for the last 14 days (there are 3 episodes). They talk all about music and the arts and go on missions. It's cute. I've watched snippets of all three. One of the episodes has a train character in it chasing down some lost balloons. The main characters tell the train to go allegro and sing a song about allegro being faster- so I had that one covered.

Tonight, I changed Ivan's sheets to Thomas the train and he looked at the train and told me it was going "adagio" ??? I smiled and told him how wonderful that was- knowing full well I had no clue what it meant. Right then and there, I should have humbly admitted my ignorance and asked him what adagio meant. Instead I went to what I THOUGHT was my best music theory source- Ivan's daddy.

"what does "adagio" mean?"
"faster"
"I thought that's what "allegro" was"
"d--ope (in homer simpson voice)- I always got those two mixed up. Hold on I'll look it up"
(types on computer)
"ok, it means slower"

You see that would make sense! Of course it would be going slower if it was stuck on his pillow and getting ready for bed. Smart little guy. Does this mean I have to actually watch those kid videos? What ever happened to shapes, numbers and colors- I already had those covered?

Ivan also told me the other day that a helicopter sounded like a violin. It did too! Just listen next time.

Well- at least Brian and I can do web searches, so we're still a step ahead of Ivan who doesn't have that much knowledge of the web. He's pretty good at deleting programs though- stupid trash can right on the screen. And us adults are potty trained- so I guess there are a few things left for us to teach our 2 year old!

I would love to know how those without language view the world. Can you imagine the possibilities?

What has surprised you or caught you off guard this week?

laughter is good medicine

While Dominique learns to walk, Ivan is learning to climb trees.

Dictionique (Dominique's dictionary): "Nana" & "bye" are her most used words of late. Most used as in she doesn't say anything else. And yes it is "bye" and not "buy" because she uses it when I'm about to say it on the phone and sometime she waves too. I don't think she actually means "Nana" when she says it as in grandma Nana (hate to burst your bubble), but Nana obviously chose the best nickname to get called on easily.


Dictionivary: I love the way all the K sounds come out as T.

the tat= cat
the tar= car
Oh tay= OK
tum on= come on
Domineat= Dominique

The dance

I meant to tag Pamela with this picture on facebook, but she beat me to it, so I'll just post it here for you- my loyal, nothing-better-to-do, related or totally-addicted-to-the-kids readers.


This video is too hilarious, if I do say so myself. Dominique is seen dancing, then Ivan starts dancing and singing, but to the wrong song (the computer is playing one song and he's singing a different one that the computer also plays). Then he dances so hard his soggy diaper starts to fall off! Yep, wild times at the Baggett's.

7 shades of green

The call went something like this: ANGELA!!!!!!!!!!! When I got there, Brian was turning seven shades of green, handing over a wet, squiggly, happy baby, with soapy hair. Ivan was dancing naked in the small, confined, smelly room, singing: "Dominique pooped in the bath!!!". The cataclysmic event occurred with both children in the bath. Luckily Ivan had already been rinsed off and was rapidly removed. Brian didn't say anything after the cry of terror for quite a while. He didn't look so hot as he executed the removal of aforementioned offending (very offending) output matter.

The moral of this story is to look at your home with new eyes. Those without kids may find this fixation on poop stories a little extreme. Just remember, children will change your home forever, your tub, your bathroom, your clothes, other's clothes, your carpet, your car, your sense of smell, your sense of decorum, your standards, your attitudes... your heart. I mean what are some possessions compared to memories, laughter and love for a lifetime?

one giant leap

It's hard to tell from the video, but Dominique has taken her first step. She started to take a step a couple of nights ago, then stopped before going loose. So, yesterday I kept putting her up to the couch and reaching out for her. By the time we recorded, Ivan was totally jealous, so he's in the middle distracting you from Dominique's shinning moment.



Do you know how old or where you (or your child) took your first step?

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.