Learning New Things

Jonah’s vocabulary has just been exploding lately… phrases combined with subtle little sounds and gestures that just leave us in stitches… like frumpling up his eyebrows, smooching out his lips, shaking his head no and say “umm, I don’t really need to go night night right now” or the little lip smack and sigh followed by an exasperated little “you know that!” cause obviously… I should know these things. Everything is “I love” right now too. “I love our furniture”… “Oh I really love grapes.”  “I love my bed (talking about our bed)… it’s all comfurbal.”

That’s the other thing he’s been working on trying to figure out… what comfortable means. He had a flap book out that has touch and feel parts on it, like this padded angel. He was poking it and say “oh, it’s all comfurbal” So I try to tell him that comfortable is something that feels nice to sit or lay down on… so then he sits on the brick fireplace hearth “It’s all comfurbal?” hehe not so much kid, but you’ll get it eventually.

I have a video that I’ll have to load up from tonight too… his first attempts at trying to tell us about a song he sang in Sunday School today. Our church just did “Promotion Sunday” (where the kids all move up to the next level class) a month or two ago. He’s no longer in the “baby hall” where all they do is play for 2 hours. His new Sunday School class actually has tables and chairs, they do art projects, sing songs, learn Bible studies and all that. In fact, if I can remember to, I’ve been intending to scan his first Sunday School art projects and post them here. Ironically, they learned about the story of Jonah and the whale. hehe Anyway, he’s been telling us for weeks now about “sing songs, and guitars” after church… so that’s how we know they have a music time… but tonight he was going around smacking his fist on his hand saying “Stand on rock” and then with prompting we asked him what else he sang about and he said “Fall down” and he wiggled his way to a squat and popped back up. So my video clip is of him doing the 2 of those together plus doing random flips all over the place. He was WOUND UP tonight. He actually worked up a sweat before bed! haha

Carly’s learning new things too, she’s rolling all over the place, and sometimes it looks like she’s actually rolling with a purpose. We’re sitting up now from time to time… not right after eating or bad things will happen, and not when she’s tired cause she’ll stiffen her legs and fall over… but if she’s happy, and especially if she’s busy watching brother… she can sit up for as much as a minute at a time without support from me. She’s also started “talking” to Jonah. They both take turns shrieking as loud and as high pitched as they can, giggling in between. Worse than a couple of parakeets I tell ya! Oye! It’s cute though.

Hard to believe she’s already 5 months old! We started her on her first “baby food” last night… mashed up avocado and milk. With the price of pre-packaged baby foods these days, I’m thinking I’m going to try making the majority of her baby food meals myself. The avocado thing is what most moms, who make their own baby food, start with… that and mashed up bananas, because they both have a lot of good vitamins, healthy fat content for brain development and such. She seemed to like it last night, so tonight I gave her a little larger serving size (about 3 tsp + milk) and that seemed to be just about right. She was getting a little tired of it right near the end, but did end up eating it all. Now if I could just get her to take the dang bottle! She just chews it and plays with it… not really drinking anything. :-\ Oh well. I’m learning to cope with it. So I guess we’re ALL learning new things!

Good news also to share, Jason got a promotion this week! We’re on such an ancient cell phone plan (one they don’t even offer anymore cause it’s TX calling only, no mobile to mobile, no family talk, no free texts… nada) so we’re both excited about getting iphones in a month or two (after we save up for the phones themselves, the pay raise increase will pay the extra monthly service charges.) We don’t generally blow pay increases so “frivolously” but we have both been wanting to upgrade for a very long time, our phones are both having some battery life issues recently, and on so many occasions, we’ll be talking and Jason will ask me something and I say “I don’t know, let me get out my iphone so I can tell you” hehe. So this was actually a planned budget move… planned for whenever the next pay increase came. There’s also talk of a possible performance bonus coming that’ll get us the savings for the phone sooner… and maybe a decent Christmas tree since I “blew” all the money I made, painting Audrey’s kitchen, on Christmas gifts, a clearanced patio furniture set, and a portable outdoor fire pit, instead of buying myself the new tree I’ve wanted for 3-4 years now. We’ll see though. I’m just thankful that Jason’s finally getting some recognition for all the hard work he’s been putting in.

A couple of videos

Funny Pronunciations & Sayings to Remember

I don’t want to forget all the funny little things that Jonah says, cause before I know it, he’ll be a big kid talking right with no problem at all. And then it just won’t be as funny when he botches up his words. Here’s a few for me to reminisce on someday…

Ham-main-gr = Hamburger

Hopped-stick-el = Popcycle

No light *gasp* dark *gasp* nufin’ scared of! = *reminding himself, as we often do* There’s nothing to be scared of in the dark.

try you LIKE it. yo dabba. = *repeating the words from a song from the show Yo Gabba Gabba about trying new foods* “Try it. You’ll like it!”

sit down! getta spankin! what I tell you?! right now! no! don’t touch! go time out. 1 . 2. 4. 5! no sir! *in varying order and repetitions* = every discipline tactic mommy has had to use lately to keep this wild child reigned in. He yelled these refrains repeatedly all the way to Tyler and back this past weekend!

Eat our friends = Eat WITH our friends. BIG difference there, ya lil’ cannibal.LOL

Nope, Thanks = No thanks

Go back road = Going somewhere via our alley… I can’t seem to get him to call it an alley yet.

Sim-in-soup-t = Swimming suit

Hi Carly. You wake now? You smi-win? *usually done with a gentle rub of the head, a kiss, and a hug… all met with a big grin from her now* = Hi Carly. Are you awake now? Are smiling at me? (the phrases he hears me ask her when I get her out of her crib) *melts my heart THIS is why people have more than one kid!*

What’s Prob-bly Sister? = What’s your problem Sister? *when she’s crying*

May-Yale = Mail (very hick sounding and I can’t convince him that mail only has one syllable! lol )

You wake now! / Help you please! / All by you self. = I’m awake now! / Help me please / All by myself (though he’s starting to get that one right sometimes) maybe one day he’ll know his I/Me/My stuff.

You don’t. touch. trees. = I think he means just that, too, but it’s because he’d misheard me say ” You don’t touch these” and I think he thinks I mean it’s not ok to touch trees. haha

Name This Fail

I am a fan of the failblog.org and as I was on my way to the baby shower yesterday, I pulled up behind this truck. I just started laughing out loud and grabbed my phone to take this pic. I wanted to submit it to the failblog, but I couldn’t think of a good title for it. The red text, if you can’t read it, says “MANDATORY UP” with the arrow pointing to the left. So I think I’m going to submit it as “Mandatory” Fail. Any other good suggestions?

"Mandatory" Fail

Scared of Bugs?

I have no clue one earth what triggered it, but just in the last two nights, Jonah has started having a real fear of bugs… namely the moths and such that gather around our front porch light at night. He will try to jump out of Jason’s arms, kicking and climbing up him, just to get away from them, and then he winces and ducks away from them as we go in or out of the door. He seems genuinely scared of them for some reason now, and just as genuinely relieved when we get away from them… he tells them “bye bye bug” in a very “good-riddance” kind of tone. Heh, I feel bad for him, but at the same time it’s really cute and funny to watch. We’re trying to show him that they won’t hurt him, but he wants nothing to do with them!

In other “buggy” news, I have recently started trying out some of the ideas on the FLYlady.com website, about how to get your household in order and stay on top of chores because I’m just not very self motivated. They are real touchy feely about some things, and a lot of it seems really corny to me. There are, however, some really good tips that have helped me, in the past week and a half of trying their ideas out, become more motivated and leave me feeling more accomplished at the end of the day. I’m breaking their basic “baby steps” idea into my own categories and am going to try to implement them 1-2 ideas/week to try to ease myself into this new routine and create new habits for myself. So far so good. Here are some of the tips that I am, and will be, doing for myself. I’m currently on week 2.

Week 1: Shine Your Sink & Get Dressed to Shoes Daily
Week 2: Make the Bed & Tidy The Hot Spots Daily
Week 3: Spend 15 Minutes on the Zone of the Day (Weekly Chores)
Week 4: Swish & Swipe the Bathrooms & Spend 15 Minutes on the Zone of the Week (Monthly Chores)

Some of them may seem silly, like “shine your sink” but honestly, it DOES make me feel better to walk into our kitchen and see our stainless steel sink sparkling, free of water spots and dirty grimy dishes. It just takes one really good cleaning, and then the continued diligence to wipe it dry with a hand towel every time you use it so that it stays sparkly. Another that I didn’t have much faith in at first was getting dressed and putting shoes on first thing every morning… but it really makes me feel like less of a lazy slob and I am more motivated to get my morning chores done before I sit down to the computer. I’m also more likely to make it to things like a 10:15 toddler story time at the library with Jonah cause I don’t wait until the last minute to scramble and get ready and then miss it. Making the bed is one that I started in week 1, even though I didn’t plan to until week 2, just because I LOVE the feeling of getting into a made bed. The sheets and blankets being neatly aligned and smoothed out is just such a nice feeling to slip into at night after a long day… kinda like a nice hotel. I am just now starting to work on the “hot spots” (the catch-all places, the dumping ground in your house, that seems to get cluttered daily) which, for us, is our wet bar area. I’ve got plans for next week to start doing basic cleaning in a zone (a room or set of rooms) each weekday and then expanding that idea the next week to do that AND spend a little time each day on one particular zone for the week so that I can tackle some more thourough cleaning and organizing in each zone every month. I’m hoping this will get my “nesting” instincts focused on more useful things and help get our house in order before we bring our little girl home.

Videos Galore

Trying to see if I can figure out how to upload videos to the blog. Just testing a few recent ones out…

A Jonah Post

I keep thinking that I need to post about some of the funny stuff that Jonah’s saying and doing these days because there’s not a place in his baby book to write it, now that he’s over a year old, and I just don’t want to forget it all! So with no particular rhyme or reason, here’s a few funny and strange things about our kid, at age 21 months.

He calls a peanut butter and jelly sandwich a “peanajelly” and I think it’s so cute, I’ve let it stick. We all call them that now. Of course, I think he thinks all sandwiches are peanajellies now, though, cause he calls his tuna salad sandwich a peanajelly and when I correct him, I say, “No, it’s a TUNA sandwich” and he replies back with “peanajelly NUNA!” hehe

If you see Jonah, and you notice a green spot on his forehead, yeah… that’s his perma bruise. He’s thrown a whole lot of tempertantrums in the last 2-3 weeks and part of his drama routine usually involves head butting whatever is close by… the dryer, the cabinet, the wall, my face… not so funny when it’s happening, but it is sorta funny that he has this real faint bruise on his head cause of all the fits. We’re really trying to get him to stop doing that though, but at the same time, trying to not give the head butting much attention because it’ll make him do it more if he knows it’ll get a rise out of us.

I am loving how he likes to help around the house. He will clean up his toys (with guided assistance) and put his laundry in his “turtle” (his laundry hamper has a turtle lid. He’ll drag his hamper to the laundry room on the opposite side of the house, and he usually wants to help me with putting the laundry in and out of the dryer. He’s started helping unload the dishwasher too, which is nice cause he’ll hand me plates from the bottom shelf of the washer and I don’t have to bend over my pregnant belly to get them myself. He really likes to put the pots into the cabinet cause that’s something he can do all by himself. He loves taking stuff to the trash can, and surprisingly he hasn’t thrown anything away (at least not to my knowledge) anything that wasn’t actually trash. His newest obsession, though, is feeding the dog. We get her to bring the bowl to the door and then he holds the bowl while we fill it and he’ll carry it back to the sliding glass door and set it outside for her when we open the door. “dog dude” he says when he’s ready to get the dog food, and he’ll repeat us telling her “Penny, SIT!” with all the fervor he can muster “Denny, DIT!” hehe so cute.

His 3 favorite bed time stories right now are all “Big Ones”… “Bears”, “Bunnies”, and “Deekadoo” and he has a hard time choosing just one, but most nights it’s “Deekadoo”.

He’s also started calling Jason “dey dief!” trying to repeat me calling him “Hey Chief” haha I remember seeing my friend Katrina’s blog post, not to long ago, about her little girl calling her dad “Babe” but she’s much older than Jonah, so I just didn’t expect that out of him so soon! Makes us laugh, and Jason is kind enough to respond to him when he calls. Cute.

Oh, and now that he’s gotten pretty good at putting duplos together, he loves making “boats”. Don’t ask me why, but they’re all boats he says.