Kid News - April 2007

Katherine: 2 yrs, 11 mos. old

Current favorite...
Things to do:
- play on the computer (www.starfall.com, a learn-to-read website, or play with TuxPaint, a free program for kids) - now that she has in large part learned how to make the mouse on the computer do what she wants it to do.
- play outside with water. Scooping water out of a large container into smaller ones. Filling items from our recycle bin (which lives on the deck) with water and sunflower seed hulls and dirt (since we feed sunflower seeds to the squirrels and birds on our deck). Play outside in general - hooray for spring!

Toys: Duplos. The Eye-Block (see my prior post).

Books: Carl's Christmas and Carl Goes Shopping. Sometimes, she likes the kids' version of the Little House books. I recently swapped out most of the paper-page books on her living room shelf with board books, since Emily learned how to take them off the shelf. So now Katherine is rediscovering (and liking again) her old board books too.

Fun things she has said:
- "I'm going on this coaster to Coster-ica (Costa Rica)" (well, it was a hot pad for a pan, not a coaster, but that's what she called it as she put it on the floor and sat on it.)
- "Notch is climbing the screen saver." (Notch is one of the only squirrels we can identify, and she knows that if she climbs the screen of our sliding glass doors, we'll pay attention to her and feed her with some sunflower seeds.)

Ongoing mispronunciations:
- "new-seum" (museum - referring to the children's museum that her Grandma Peggy took her to some time ago)
- "smelling things" (she means, sPelling things with her alphabet magnets on the fridge).

Cousin Collin was here for a visit

She loves to be tickled

She wanted me to take a picture of her finger

On Daddy's shoulders for a wild ride to her bed

Coloring in Sunday School

Emily: 9 mos. old

Happy playing with rods

She now crawls mostly on hands and knees, though occasionally still uses an army crawl instead. She's getting faster every day. Today for the first time (April 30), she started "cruising" - walking her way around the footstool in the living while standing up at it. Today she also successfully climbed up onto our Vitalizer (exercise trampoline) several times, which she had never done before. Now we get to teach her how to get OFF safely...

"Standing" up

She eats anything (almost) that you give her, edible or not. The inedible things get rolled around in her mouth until Mommy notices and says the refrain of the day, "What are you eating?!" and fishes it out. Anything from crumbs in the kitchen (I could sweep three times a day...) to acorn tops and sunflower seed hulls and bits of string. At least she's never choked on anything, and doesn't seem to try to swallow the inedible things. Yet.

Is this banana peel edible?

I'm not sure...

She finally learned how to eat Cheerios by herself (instead of grabbing one with her whole hand and then putting her thumb in her mouth while still holding the Cheerio in her hand)

She's extremely easy-going, not easily fazed by things out of the ordinary, like getting sat on or bumped, or falling over (unless it really hurts or scares her).

She likes to play with whatever Katherine is playing with (sometimes to Katherine's chagrin... a common refrain is "no, Emily, no, no, don't play with that!")

Whatever Katherine is playing with must be interesting

Duplos

Sometimes the lid is more fun to play with than the Duplos

The Eye Block

Katherine's new favorite item is the "Eye Block" - the Duplo square piece that has an eye on two sides so that you can use it to make an "animal" with eyes. Her initial reaction upon seeing it was little short of terror. I made an animal with it and showed her how the eyes on the block made the animal have eyes, and suddenly in the space of minutes, the Eye Block went from a source of terror to her favorite item in the world (for now).


After making animals with it for a week or two, she switched to just playing with the block by itself, carrying it around, etc. We've nearly lost it a few times because she'll take it with her to her room or elsewhere and then leave it and forget where she put it. She still somewhat likes Schtoompah and his tuba, and at least she'll say his name now (she used to avoid saying it); she sometimes still puts her blanket over her head to say it's her "tuba". And she still likes to see cement trucks when we pass them on the road. But the Eye Block definitely wins over them both at the moment.

Emily is crawling

After 3 months of "army crawling", Emily has finally started to crawl on hands and knees. She started a few days ago and is slowly doing more of it each day.

Oh, and she is suddenly into everything. I used to be able to assume that she'd be generally where I left her, and playing with what I expected. Now she is increasingly reaching more, moving faster, and trying to eat every speck of fuzz and dirt that she can find.

She's definitely "her own little person", and a sweet one! She's still getting me up at least once a night to nurse, but I love her anyway and know they all outgrow it someday. Sometimes she needs her "Mommy time" - after getting up from her afternoon nap, she'll often want to be held (or carried in the baby carrier) for half an hour or so, and then she's happy to be down and doing her usual things.

I thought this only happened in Iowa...

... snow at Easter time! Well, the day before Easter. Granted, it melted by midday, but still, few here can recall any other time in recent years where we had snow in central NC in April.

Emily's first snow to get out in

Eating snow (well, it was more like little chunks of ice)

One effect of the weather-down-to-the-20's on Easter weekend was that many of the apple and peach crops of NC will be small this year. The trees had already budded, and the hard freeze killed most of the blooms. One news article estimates that up to 90% of NC's apple and peach crops could be gone this year, and possibly 40% of our blueberry crops too. Some farmers lost everything this year. What a mercy, to know that even though we don't understand, our God is still in control of the weather and our lives.

Not My Home

I woke up too early and couldn't fall asleep again this morning, thinking about all the things that were wrong with the world (or with my little world), and frustrated at not being able to make things be "as they ought to be" - whether it relates to getting large groups of ladies together to pray for missions - or the thought of some wacko liberal getting elected as president next year (neither of which are under my control).

So often I carry with me a vague downcast spirit, because so much is wrong with the world. People we know of get sick and die. Children get inoperable tumors. Friends who wish for children are infertile. Fruit trees die of bugs and disease (ok, maybe that's not in the same category - but it's still disappointing). Work (for husband and friends) becomes unfulfilling.

We are chasing "the American Dream" - that elusive ideal of a great job, happy children, a nice house, and healthy bodies. And we want it without death, pain, disease, or sorrow added in. We imagine that heaven can exist on this earth, and are downcast when it never materializes.

This world will never be heaven - not till it is made new. If we but realized this, and lived for what really lasts - the things unseen - then all the disappointments would not drag us down so much.

We would see Earth as but the place we sojourn in, and not as home. We would remember that the goal we pursue here is not, a worry-free, pain-free, disease-free life; it is rather, to bring glory to God in the midst of the trials of life.

God doesn't want us to get comfortable here. He sends us trials and disappointments to remind us that this is not Home; to help us to live for what we do not see. To live by faith, and not by sight. To love Him the Giver, instead of making idols of His gifts. To be happy in God and not in circumstances.

To live here in America as though we were our friends in the Far East; they don't settle down in their adopted country and try to make it be "the good life" there, and get downcast every time there is a difficulty. They go, knowing there will be daily hardships, and accepting those, having as their goal, to glorify God among the heathen, rather than to pursue a trial-free, pain-free life. If we lived so here, as strangers in an adopted land, rather than as citizens who strived for comfort, we would rejoice in God and labor for Him with greater zeal.

This world is not my home, I'm just a-passin' through...

"Your timer's beeping, Mommy!"

Several days ago I was down the hall in a bedroom and heard my timer in the kitchen going off. I didn't go immediately to turn it off, and heard Katherine say "Your timer's beeping, Mommy!" This is the first time I remember her addressing me as "Mommy". She would talk about me, or to me, but never call for me by my name, or use my name in asking me something. It's cute - now she'll tack on "Mommy" or "Daddy" to many of her "running commentary on life" comments, if one of us is around, as if to share her comments with us rather than talking to herself (or at least before, we had to guess as to which it was - talking to us or to herself). Just one more little step of verbal progress (which, we thank the Lord, is not lacking!).

Kid News - March 2007

Katherine: 2 yrs, 10 months old.

She likes to be outside; it's a blessing to have a fenced-in back yard. She finds flowers and sticks and rocks, and puts things in the abandoned chipmunk hole under one of the trees.

One of her current games with Daddy is to put something in his pocket, which for some reason is "supposed" to be "big cats" (i.e., leopard, tiger, ocelot, etc., all from her play animal set of "Big Cats"). Of course, whatever she puts in his pocket, never is such things, so when Daddy pulls them out and "discovers" that they are not Big Cats, she says "you get..." (meaning she will get... tickles or pokes or something like that) and then Daddy goes to tickle her.

It seems she is getting more willing to interact with people who are not Mommy, Daddy, or grandparents, and even to play with other children. For which we are so thankful, since she would immediately shy away from others and want them to go away. We pray this new trend will continue and improve more.

Here are some pictures from March:

Dollies eating... bugs?


Setting up the bugs for the dollies to eat (she calls the dollies her "friends" - "look, all my friends!" when she sees the screen saver pictures of them)

Dollies eating... numbers, apparently

Wearing Emily's clothes

Magna-doodle fun

Emily: almost 8 months old.

She's growing fast. Her first tooth came in yesterday, and thankfully, she hasn't seemed much bothered by teething except for last night, when she couldn't seem to get back to sleep until we gave her some tylenol.

She started sitting up by herself a few days ago, and seems so proud of herself that she can do it.
She likes to watch the animals outside; we have glass doors out onto the deck, and we feed the birds, squirrels, and chipmunks on the deck. (See photos below). She likes to play with the piles of sunflower seed hulls when the door is left open.

She can crawls very fast, but still only crawls on her tummy. She has figured out how to go find Mommy down the hall if she's left alone in the living room. She's eating cereal, and has tried banana, sweet potato, applesauce, pears, and squash; she doesn't seem to dislike anything you give her.

She likes to be tickled and to play peek-a-boo. She likes to see cards with pictures on them (e.g. of fruits or birds) and likes the big word cards of different body parts (nose, knee, etc.), though I haven't been very consistent in showing them to her.

Here are some pictures from March:

I guess this grass stuff isn't so bad after all

Playing with favorite toys

Emily on the "big kids" side of the nursery (sucking her thumb there in the middle; she does that - lie down leaning on one arm and suck her other thumb). We had to put her on the toddler side of the nursery because she was too mobile for the non-mobile baby side; she would take the other children's toys and play with them herself.

Looking so proud of herself, sitting up

How does this glass stuff work??

Watching the squirrels (and chipmunk, who is climbing up on the table)

Watching the squirrels and birds again

Emily's favorite fridge toy