Peace Out!

I was putting John down for a nap and the routine is that I read him some books, and then sing twinkle twinkle little star. Apparently John has figured out what is going to happen after I am done singing twinkle twinkle little star. He wiggled down from my lap and calmly crawled for the door. He wasn't going as fast as he can to escape. It was more of a "I am not doing this - see you later!" So I picked him up and put him in his crib. He didn't protest too much.

It Happened Earlier Than I Expected

I had my first experience with Emma pretending not to know me in public. At the end of her gymnastics class her teacher pointed her in my direction and she said, "No, that's not my mom." Then she pointed to another area of bleachers where a ton of parents sit and she pointed in that direction and said, "she's up there." I was sitting 20 feet away from her and the bleachers were 50 feet away from her. Hmmm... Really I think that the call of an unexplored place was too strong to ignore. I don't think she is embarrassed to be seen with me in public just yet but maybe I am in denial. My guess is I have 2 years before that happens.

Christmas

We had a wonderful Christmas. On Christmas Eve we had the missionaries over for dinner and then recreated the nativity with a little people set. Emma and John opened up their pajamas and then went to bed. Oh and we did our family tradition for desert. This is something that they do in Australia. First you get a a cup of hot chocolate. Then you get Tim Tams - they are kinda a chocolate graham cracker with a chocolate cream center sandwiched between between the graham crackers and then all of this is covered in chocolate. So the closest thing that would be a chocolate covered Oreo but in a rectangle shape. So you bite off opposing corners and then dip it in the hot chocolate and drink the hot chocolate through the cookie like a straw. Then the cookie becomes this ooey gooey squishy cookie of chocolatey goodness. It is so rich that you can only eat about 2 before you go into a sugar coma but they are good.

On Christmas morning, Emma woke up and we kept her up stairs until John woke up. John actually slept in that morning. He doesn't really sleep in. Emma was about to die at the thought of waiting any longer. Finally we woke John up and went down stairs. Emma saw her bike and was elated. For months she has been waiting for Santa to bring her a bike with petals. She loves the color green so we scoured the internet to find a bike for Santa to get her. It was not an easy task because green is not pink or purple. I am thinking that the resale value of a green girls bike will be relatively low. But she loves it. She rode her bike in the kitchen for a while and wasn't interested in opening any other presents for some time. After that she opened all of the remainder of her gifts. Her other big gift is gymnastics lessons. She rode her bike three times that day. We went for walks a few times so Emma could ride her bike. One of the other presents we got her was a Mr Potato Head. Emma opened it up and said, "It sweet potato head!" Apparently we have been eating more sweet potatoes than regular potatoes lately. I have tried to correct her but it is in vain. There will be a come a time when she is playing with friends and they will be totally confused when she asked them to play sweet potato head. Oh well. I tried and failed and now she has trained me to say sweet potato head.

John got a variety of Christmas toys. None of which he has any interest in. In fact he won't even touch some of them. He got a walker thing that turns into a car to ride on. He used it a couple of times but would rather push a chair around. The one thing he did like was the orange that I put into Emma stocking. He put it in his mouth and I thought this would be a self correcting problem but he took 3 bites out of the orange peel. I think I give up on trying to find toys that babies like to play with. Babies are like the house in Vegas - you can't win when you take a gamble on toys. I am guessing that he will love them in a few months.

At the end of the night Emma said that her favorite toy was the sweet potato head. I could have been knocked over with a feather. I thought it would be the bike, but apparently I was wrong. She has loved playing with the potato head. She is funny and a stickler for for rules. You can't put a nose where the eyes go or give it two sets of eyes or hands. She also puts mustaches above the nose. Apparently she hasn't seen too many mustaches in her life.

We have started a family tradition of going to the zoo in December. Turns out nobody goes to the zoo in December so it was perfect!

Eleven Months

So John is now 11 months old. He now crawls with his stomach off the ground, except when he wants to go fast then he goes army style. He is actually pretty fast. John likes to eat Cheerios. In fact that is pretty much all he wants to eat besides paper. For a while apples and edamame rated high but he just keeps going back to Cheerios. All other food goes into the mouth and then back out again and this happens several times. John still chews on everything he gets a hold of. He lights up when he sees Emma in the mornings and after naps. John follows Aaron around the house until Aaron picks him up. He loves to read books. One of my favorite times is before naps when I read to Emma and John. As soon as we sit in the rocking chair, John turns his head toward the book shelf and is super wiggly until I open a book and start reading. At that point, he is calm and relaxed and just listens to the book. If there is a flap, he will try and lift it. John spends a lot of time sifting through the kitchen toys and through the bins of toys. John is also like Emma in that he calms down as soon as we get out and go on a walk.

Emma is going through the second phase of acceptance. When John first came home from the hospital, she had to learn to accept divided attention from Aaron and I. Now the second phase is that John wants to play with her toys and get in the middle of whatever she is doing. Emma is learning to love playing games. It is in her genetics to love games. She currently loves a game called the ice cream game. You spin a scooper and it will show the colors brown, white or pink for chocolate, vanilla or strawberry ice cream. Then you pick up a tile of ice cream to see if you got a matching color. Whenever Emma spins the scooper, she sniffs her nose. It is pretty cute.

Conversations

Me: Fee Fi Fo Fum I'm gonna get me some Emma bum!
Emma: No, that hurts [note I haven't done anything because we are driving]
Me: What hurts?
Emma: You can't eat my bum because then I wouldn't have a bum to poop.

A different conversation:
Emma: A big scary monster took panda's pacifier away from him. It was not nice. But it was okay because Panda asked nicely and the monster gave him his pacifier back.

Therapy and More Cute Stuff

So every parent is imperfect but it does seem like there are things that could land my kids up in therapy some day. For one, I called Emma to the table for lunch. She brought Froggy with her and I noticed that there was a trail of water on the table leading to Froggy. It turns out that she had washed Froggy's hands with soap and water. There are a few things that Emma will talk about during her play repeatedly and washing hands is one of them. I think that if she ends up in therapy later in life, washing hands will be a topic.

For John, it will be hair cuts. We gave him his second hair cut last night. The sound of the clippers just sent him over the edge. The actual haircut is what will land him in therapy. He just cried and cried. I felt bad about torturing him but I also felt bad that he long hair growing over his ears. As it turns out, I was willing to risk a life of therapy so that John could join society. I will say this, Aaron did a great job on his haircut.

On another note, Froggy has been top dog on Emma's animal list. She rotates through several animals as her favorite but this week it was Froggy. It took us a while to get into the car this week because Froggy had to go potty and wash his hands. Then she would put socks on him and then shoes. She put her shoes on Froggy and since her shoes are too big for Froggy, they would fall off a couple of times on the way to the car so she would stop to put the shoes on. Then she would buckle Froggy in the front seat of the car. This routine added about 30 minutes to getting out of the door so I thought I would do what I could to help this process along. So I found some of Emma's old baby shoes and gave them to her for Froggy.

Emma asked me to put her hair up in braids and she then put a headband in her hair, bounded up the stairs and said, "I look good!"

Emma went to preschool just before Thanksgiving and at preschool the teacher took kids out on a ride on a thing called a Ranger. It is like a cross between a golf cart and a minivan and all covered in deer hunting camouflage. It holds 6 people and obviously there aren't car seats in this thing. The teacher took the kids out for a ride and Emma was ecstatic. For days after this I would tall Emma to get into the car and I would find her in the front passenger seat or even in the driver seat. She was ready to drive the car. It took some days to convince her that she in fact had to ride in her car seat.

Broccoli

Tonight we received a knock at the door. It was a friend's little boys singing a Christmas carol and and holding a plate of chocolate chip cookies for us. I showed Emma the cookies and asked her what they were. She looked at them and said, "broccoli." In her defense, the plate had green cellophane plastic over it. Once I took the cellophane off she said, "cookies!" So after she ate her dinner we gave her a cookie, except that she didn't eat the cookie in a normal way. She picked out the chocolate chips and ate them. Then she ate the rest of the cookie. We will need to practice how to eat a cookie before she goes to kindergarten.