Saturday, March 26, 2011

Florida, x2


We're hanging out in Florida with my family for a long weekend. We went in the pool today, but mostly it was an excuse to put Molly in her cute bathing suit. She was pretty serious about the whole thing, but not unhappy.

Molly has decided that babies don't need to nap during vacation, so she has been a little sleep deprived (the plane ride here was not fun...). Tucker has decided that he likes to stay up and play after bedtime. Last night he was awake for at least an hour and a half after a later-than-usual bedtime, shining a green light he found all over the room. We found him conked out half on and half off the bed, asleep in the middle of playing.










We went on a boat ride on the Banana River, which is part of the Indian River lagoon system. The whole river is only a few feet deep, and doesn't have a current so we were in a pontoon boat. We saw manatees mating right at the side of the boat. They were oblivious to us and put on an amazing show. We also got good dolphin sitings, though they weren't as much in a mood to play.









Crazy Kiddo Gets Crazier




A few nights ago we checked on Tucker before bed, only to find the lights on in his room and him completely dressed in a new outfit. His pajamas were strewn on the floor and replaced with jeans, three socks on each foot (all mismatching), a yellow sweater base layer with a long sleeve shirt over the sweater. He was totally content and conked out in an utterly ridiculous fashion. (It was easy to get a good picture because the light was on.) This morning he came into our room wearing yet another outfit.

Friday, March 25, 2011

Dancing man

Lots of Videos

We're visiting my mom right now who has a fast internet connection so I can actually post videos without the connection timing out. Here are videos of Molly eating for the first time, wiggling like crazy on one of our first warm days, rolling over, trying desperately to roll over, squealing and generally doing all sorts of good baby things.











Wednesday, March 23, 2011

My crazy kiddos


Crazy Kiddo #1:

-Emerged from his room during rest time yesterday in a red vest, Mickey Mouse hat and socks on his hands to do something unidentified in the bathroom (ie not using the potty). He saw me in the hall and turned around and ran back to his room. The pic is of his outfit on Saturday. He picked it out himself, if you couldn't tell.

-Came into our room this morning with wet sweatpants. Upon inquiring, he told us that he decided he didn't want to wear a pull-up to bed and took it off after Austin had put him to bed last night and put on different underwear and pajamas. Good show of ingenuity and independence... poor wet bed! (When he doesn't wear a pull-up, we have to wake him up to go potty, which is hard to do when you think he's wearing a pull-up.)

Crazy kiddo #2:

I swear, Molly June is crawling. She motors around her crib like no other. We put her down in one spot and we come back and she has flipped over, rotated 180 degrees, and is at the total opposite end of the crib. How in the world does she do this? Yesterday she managed to do this move-to-the-opposite-end-of-the-crib trick and push herself up against her mobile, which meant she was hitting her head on the plastic. That scared her, so she picked up her head more, which meant she banged it more on the plastic. Not her finest moment. I need to spy on her and see what exactly she's doing to be able to move that much.

A few more pics...

Molly loves it when we put our head on her tummy, so these are pics of Tucker making her happy!







Tucker trying to play the tackle game while Austin tries to watch basketball

Quotes of the Day

"No, Tractor! Go back to the farm, Tractor! Tractors are only supposed to be on the farm!!!" -Tucker, in near hysterics upon passing a tractor in the road yesterday

Unconventional way to answer the phone: "Here I am!" -Tucker [I guess "hello" is so yesterday]

And another one from Sunday...
Tucker: Mama, do you like deer?
Me: Sure, they're fine.
Tucker: I don't like deer. They smoosh cars.
Me: Well, cars only occasionally hit deer.
Tucker: Deer are mean. And angry. Angry mean deer smooshing cars!!!!

Friday, March 18, 2011

Catching up, or at least hanging on

The past month has been a doozy around here. I've been sick for five weeks, no exaggeration. A cold I caught in Florida turned into a lung thing which turned into a sinus infection. Now, two antibiotics later I think I'm turning a corner. I hope. I have new empathy for my father-in-law who has chronic sinus problems. It's awful!

All my energy of late has gone into all of us reaching the end of the day alive, fed and clothed, preferably with the house not on fire. (These seem like lofty goals to me, too!)

But of course, the kids have been anything but static over the past month. Molly especially is changing rapidly. She learned a couple weeks ago how to roll from her back to her front, and she is excited with her new powers. In fact, when she first learned she lost all interest in nursing for several days. I think her thought process was something like this: "I'm so powerful! I can roll over! I no longer am subject to normal human conventions like eating!" She likes to be on her stomach now just because she can do it herself, and she just feels stronger to me. She no longer likes to be in a reclining position, and spends her time in a crunch trying to sit up straight. Her other major accomplishment is trying to grab hold of everything so that she can put it in her mouth. This is a delicate operation because she REALLY wants it in her mouth and if all doesn't go according to plan, I have a passionately frustrated little girl on my hands.

Tucker's favorite thing right now is playing a tackle game where he finds an unsuspecting parent to sit on the rug so he can run over and tackle us to the ground. The other day he had a stomach bug and the first thing he said in the morning when I walked into his room was "I don't want to play the tackle game" (not that there was any chance of me wanting to play the tackle game at 6:30 am with a sinus infection after spending the night cleaning up vomit....) It was like telling me in flashing neon lights "I feel sick, Mommy."

One of the other highlights from the last month was a concert that Tucker participated in at the Bible study we go to. It was ridiculously cute. Tucker did the University of Florida gator chomp throughout most of the songs, and was quite the little wiggly-dancing-singing enthusiast. He had a lot of the audience laughing out loud. It's funny; Tucker will be too shy to hold hands with the other leaders in our little prayer circle beforehand, but he can be the absolute center of attention on the stage and think that is the best thing since sliced bread.

Another milestone in my little boy's left happened yesterday: he climbed his first tree, much to the delight of our 86 year-old neighbor, Althea. He also filled out his first NCAA basketball bracket yesterday, with a little help. I told him yesterday morning we needed to fill it out ASAP if he wanted to be in our extended family pool. He promptly got down from the breakfast table and ran to get his football helmet, and to get me a ridiculous hat shaped like a birthday cake. Apparently, picking a tournament bracket is predicated on the proper headwear. Who did he pick to win it all? Notre Dame. Why? I told him their mascot was like a leprechaun. Other favorite teams were Michigan State because they wear green, Richmond because they are the spiders and Aunt Liz went there, and Washington because that's where Uncle Mike lives.

There is, of course, much more I could add, if I could think of it. It's even possible that one day all my brain cells will collect in one place and I'll start speaking in complete sentences again. :)

Quote of the Day

"Daddy is marching home right now to tackle us. He will also tackle a deer. And he will tackle a fish for a bear."
-Tucker, on when Austin will return from a Bible study at church

Tuesday, March 1, 2011

Quote of the Day

"Molly's looking like a dragon and she's twins with me. I love that! And I'm twins with you, and with Benny." -Tucker

Obviously.