I realized that it is time for me to write down some things about our kids again so I can remember these cute stages and silly personalities forever.
Bobby:
Bobby is 2 1/2 years old. He is just starting to talk a lot. The only problem is that he is really hard to understand! The fact that I can barely understand him doesn't slow him down. I just respond by saying things like "oh really!?" and "I see" a lot. He is at the stage where he asks "why?" all the time. One time he hit his head on the counter and we heard him crying and saying "why?" to himself. He also has his grumpy voice when he's not happy. If I start singing him to wrong song at bedtime he starts into his grumpy voice and says "No Mommy! Don't sing that song!" complete with mad eyebrows and everything. Its hard not to laugh when he uses his grumpy voice.
Bobby is also the sweetest little boy. He always wants to give hugs (and he even squeezes you tight when you hug him). He gets so excited when Rob gets home from work. Partly because this means he has someone he can "fight" with. We have a rule that he's only allowed to hit, punch, or kick daddy and only when they're playing. Bobby is always eager to get a chance to fight and just be a boy. Don't be fooled by his size though. This kid is solid and can cause some serious pain if you're not prepared! Sometimes he just runs at you and slams his whole body into you. He hasn't learned the concept of "gentle" yet. But, if he gets hurt, he still just wants me or Rob to kiss it better. It works to calm him down every time and he always shows us exactly where to kiss. The only problem is when he bites his tongue and wants me to kiss it better.
Bobby is a good kid . He doesn't do anything super naughty (yet). He does love to torment his sister though. Whenever he gets in trouble he says "I just be funny!" in the cutest little voice and we have to explain that teasing is only okay if both parties are laughing and having fun. His usual punishment is to put his nose on the wall. This works great for him. If I don't specify where on the wall to put his nose, he chooses himself and sometimes ends up with his nose in the most awkward positions on the wall! (see picture below!) This is also a good punishment when we're not at home because there is always a wall or a pole or something that he can put his nose on. Its his public time out. Even when he's being naughty in the car I can tell him to put his hand on his nose and he'll do it. There's always a second punishment if he doesn't keep his nose on the wall, but it rarely gets to that.
For the most part, Bobby is a good eater. He loves fruit and would eat it all day if I let him (as the main diaper changer in the house, I feel the need to restrict the amount of fruit he eats!) Strawberries are probably his favorite food. He also loves hot dogs, chicken nuggets, scrambled eggs, and anything sweet.
He likes to count but skips numbers a lot. He can count to 20 but usually skips numbers 13-15. Sometimes he skips a whole bunch of numbers and then other times he surprises us by counting perfectly. He's not very interested in learning letters yet, but knows a few. He pretends to write his name and is getting better at "drawing." I asked him to draw a bubble the other day and he drew a shape that was not very circular then looked at it when he was done and said, as if he were surprised, "hey, that not a bubble!"
Bobby loves water. He loves to swim in it, play in the bathtub, pour water from one container to another, splash in it, water the plants with the hose, squirt water guns, spray water in his hair, stir his cup of water with a fork or spoon, wash his hands, drink from the bathroom sink, blow bubbles in his drinks, and spill it! We have to be very careful not to leave cups with even the littlest bit of water (or any drink for that matter) left in them or he is guaranteed to find a way to spill it. One of his favorite things to do is sit outside with bowls and cups and squirt bottles and just play with water.
I think he also has an instinct to throw things. He knows our rules that he is only allowed to throw bean bags, balls, and stuffed animals with no hard parts and he has had countless "nose on the wall" and other time outs for throwing things, but I think he almost can't help himself. Sometimes he throws things without even thinking. For instance, if he is finished with a toy he might absent-mindedly throw it over his shoulder. Maybe he'll be a shot-putter, baseball or football player when he gets older.
He is just physical all around. He has taught himself how to do a "flip" (summersault) and is always jumping off things! I plan to put him in a gymnastics class this winter.
Bobby loves anything silly. He is a very happy kid and laughs hysterically at the simplest silly things like tickles (or tee-toes, as he calls them), blowing raspberries on his belly, making a silly face, making a funny sound--if its remotely silly, he will love it!
Bobby doesn't love books like Adeline does and usually can't focus through a full story when we read them. But he does love when we tell him stories that we make up. Especially ones about dragons and a little boy named Bobby and girl named Adeline.
Even though Bobby doesn't love when we read books together, he likes when a teacher read to a class. I can see a definite difference between his personality and Adeline's in this. Bobby likes being a part of a class. He likes listening to teachers and participating in a lesson. This is not Adeline's style! We try to go to story time at the library and Bobby will sit and listen and participate. Adeline, on the other hand has no interest in the lesson and would rather roll around on the floor, try to escape, or do her own thing. I can see the conflict in Bobby when he sees her do these things because whatever she does, he does. So he tries to copy Adeline and still participate in the lesson at the same time. Needless to say, we are very disruptive in story time!
Bobby's very favorite thing in the world is his sister. He loves Adeline so much and is her constant shadow. He calls her "my Adeline." The first thing he says every morning is "where my Adeline?" After we visited family this summer I asked him who his favorite cousin was and his answer was Adeline. I love that they are becoming best friends.
Bobby has me under his spell. He could probably get away with just about anything and still somehow win me over in the process. Sometimes he can be totally frustrating, but I can't help but love him to pieces. I don't know if there is a more lovable kid out there.
Adeline:
Adeline is 4 years old. She is destined for great things. She is a visionary and a planner. Her flow of ideas never stops, just as her explanation of those ideas never seems to end. She is the queen of the verbal run-on sentence. Sometimes it is exhausting listening to her tell me her plans because she has a never-ending stream of ideas that come to her while she's talking so she just keeps going. She is the most imaginative kid I know and she doesn't quite understand the line between imaginary and realistic. For example, she wants to plan a party for her friend the fairy queen and wants to invite everyone in the whole world. The party will be in a big field by our house where our family will build the fairy queen a castle so everyone will have a place to stay at the party and we will fly there. And she is fiercely serious about her plans. Another one of her plans was to have a "scrub party" where we each have our own bathtub that is a different color and we dance in our bathtubs with bubbles. She wanted to make the bathtubs and paint them with ink and feather quills. She had a specific bathtub color chosen out for each member of our family. I asked her how she planned to make a bathtub and she said with rocks and wood, so I gave her a bag and sent her to the backyard to collect rocks. Thankfully she got distracted from the idea of making bathtubs, but not before she cleared most of the rocks out of the flowerbeds, so that was nice. We have to find a delicate balance between encouraging her while breaking it to her that some things just aren't going to happen!
Adeline wants to be a scientist when she grows up so she can "study everything!" This is very fitting for Adeline because she loves to learn about things and loves scientific stuff. She is still fascinated by volcanoes. She loves bugs and plants. She always wants to know how different animals' hearts pump. She loves helping Rob save the seeds from flowers to plant later. She likes to crack acorns open to see the seeds inside them. She loves to bake and mix ingredients together. She loves finding creatures at the beach. She likes learning about space. She loves to go on walks to "bug land." I asked her if she wanted to start homeschooling and she requested that we do "science school" instead.
She is always looking for new girl friends to meet. She's at the stage where she only wants to play with other girls, and Bobby. She goes to the kids club at the gym 3 times a week lately and that is helping her get lots of practice meeting new kids. She is always so excited when she makes a new friend, however, every time I pick her up she's either playing with Bobby or by herself.
Adeline loves to be "naked." (She keeps her underwear on!) She has quiet time every afternoon while Bobby sleeps where she has to stay in her room. Everyday she takes her clothes off to play. I don't care though because its hot here and the less she wears her clothes, the less I have to wash them. It is a little awkward when we have friends over and she says she wants to be play naked! I would say that 3 out of 5 workdays Rob comes home to kids who have no clothes on.
Adeline is also very artistic. She loves to draw, paint, color, and do anything crafty. She is actually pretty good at it too! She is really good at staying in the lines when she colors pages from her coloring books and she is pretty good at copying something if you draw it first for her. I'm hoping to find an art class for her to take. Her favorite things to draw right now are butterflies and flowers.
Adeline is a picky eater. Dinner time is always stressful. When I make a dinner for the family, I make her eat whatever I cook. I don't want to get in the habit of letting her eat something different than the rest of us. Her favorite food is fried chicken and she mostly just likes the crunchy skin. She also loves to eat the chicken skin from rotisserie chicken as well. She THINKS she loves dessert, so we bribe her with it a lot and that gets her to eat the food I made. But when it comes time to eat the dessert, she usually just takes a couple bites and says she's full! She definitely takes after Rob on that! One thing she does love is cereal!
She loves to make up songs. They never have any melody or tune but they are always entertaining. Sometimes she sings words and sometimes she sings "la la la" through the whole song. She always wants to teach us a song that she makes up and then have us sing it back to her. This is a very challenging task! She loves to dance to her songs and her dancing is usually ballet-like. She dances with her eyebrows up, eyes half-closed and rolled up as if she is being as elegant as she can be. She likes girly things like princesses, and fairies and ballerinas.
Adeline is a good kid and doesn't get in trouble very often. She is usually on the receiving end of Bobby's torments. When she does get in trouble, it's usually for not doing something she's been asked to do like to put shoes on or go potty or get dressed, basically anything that would require her to stop what she's already doing in order for us to get out the door. Hence the reason we seem to always be late for everything! Sometimes I think independence in kids is overrated. I could put her shoes on for her and get her dressed in 1/10th of the time it takes her! I think she is just too easily distracted.
We never had problems with Adeline sleeping when she was a baby. She was a wonderful sleeper and was in her own room by the time she was 3 months old. She slept through the night from an early age and she took great naps until about 2 1/2 years old and now takes maybe 1 nap a week. She goes to bed between 7 and 8 most nights but now she has gotten into the habit of waking up in the night. This freaked us out at first, but it is a nightly occurrence now, so we're used to it. She comes downstairs between 12 and 3 every night and sometimes sleeps on the couch and sometimes tries to sneak into our bed. We have a king size bed, so sometimes she is able to creep in without us knowing until we wake up to a foot in our face the next morning. Sometimes we wake up in the middle of the night to Adeline staring at us next to the bed (creepy!) and we take her to the couch. Its not sleep walking because she seems completely coherent when we ask her questions. One night she said she just didn't want to sleep so she came downstairs to read some books. I'm not completely sure what time she wakes up in the mornings because I have found that if I leave a box of cereal, a bowl, and a cup, and a coloring page on the table, she won't bother me until I'm ready to wake up myself.
Adeline loves to watch movies and her favorites are Disney movies. Fantasia 2000 is still probably her favorite but she also loves Hercules and any princess movie. We always play the movies on fast play and there must be an advertisement for Disney Parks on them. One day Adeline told us that she wanted to go to the place where dreams came true. We asked her where that was and she said "Disney Parks." She's been watching too many Disney movies! But seriously, I think she would absolutely love Disney World at this age, so hopefully we'll be able to take the kids sometime soon!
Adeline definitely keeps us on our toes and keeps us entertained, that's for sure! She is so fun to talk to and we love her creative and fun personality. She's growing up fast but she is still our sweet little girl.
