Sunday, November 15, 2015

John, lately

Man...a kid turns two and loses all his glory!  So, I wanted so share a bit about John these days so when I am much older and more forgetful, I have some history....

John is nearly 27 months.  He loves to sing, especially the ABC song, Old MacDonald, Twinkle Twinkle, and many others. His favorite activities include playing "dance" (music party, everyone gets an instrument), doing puzzles, playing blocks/building blocks, and "painting" his Water Wow books.  He has several types of blocks and each type of block is a different game. With the giant legos, he builds birthday cakes and sings Happy Birthday. (Like every time.) With the large wooden square blocks, he plays "Dinosaurs taking a nap" in which we build a home for the dinosaurs and they each get 1 or more blankets and pillows and all get put down for a nap. Sometimes they also get fed some lunch.  With his normal "blocks" we build towers and normal block things, although lately a lot of couches for the dinosaurs if they aren't napping. And finally his ABC blocks he just likes discussing all the letters and pictures and putting them back away.  And THEN (I thought I was done) his animal Duplos set he got for his birthday, with those we build the different animals that were shown on the box.   Clean up happens a lot around here, obviously, although maybe not as much as I would like!

John is very specific about meals.  When given food in a bowl, he only wants a spoon to eat it. (I've really tried to convince him that a fork is more useful for some foods. He doesn't believe me.) Identical food on a plate? FORK.  Also, if given a divided plate, a unique food must be included in each section of the plate, otherwise he spends most of the meal pointing out the empty square and asking it to be filled. Luckily, he usually suggests peas. Unfortunately, he only eats like 3 of them.

John loves pointing out the alphabet wherever he sees it, and calls my Cal Poly shirt an "ABCD Shirt" because it has the "ABC's" on it. Same goes with anything else with letters.

John is a great big brother and loves to take care of Isabelle, bring her toys, and help her.  She in turn is very entertained watching him.  I've tried to encourage him to read the books he's memorized to her, or to help me read them to her.  He can usually finish most of the pages.  He still loves his books! His attention span is longer than I realize with longer books (sometimes longer than mine.) Despite memorizing books, he doesn't complain when some pages of the more annoying books might be skipped when trying to finish them just a *little* faster.




Isabelle at 6 months!

I'm going to have to add pictures in here later, I got a new phone and they're not available right now.

Isabelle Jean at 6 months - gosh we just adore this girl! She is nothing like her brother, who we are also quite fond of,  and I love their differences.  At her 6 m checkup she was just barely over 13lbs (2lbs smaller than her brother at that age) and 26 inches (1 inch longer than him!).

She still loves baths, her bouncer, and now also loves eating. If you don't feed her fast enough, she grunts and grunts for more.  She is a decent sleeper, 3 naps a day, and nighttime is...managable. She can sit up on her own, hold herself in a stand (if I help her get there), and likes to play John's piano and other musical toys.