Tahoe!

We decided to give Tahoe a try!

Iain took a skiing lesson, went sledding twice, and had a GREAT time....he skied without poles, COOL! Ria didn't like the snow, though, so Mona didn't get out as much... Zoom in on this picture to see the labels...

(There's some other cool pictures over on Bex's camera, I think, but I'll have to obtain those and post them later ;-).

A day to draw, and a cool new shirt

Hi ;-)

The kids were drawing on the chalkboard today:


And you HAVE to check out the cool new T-shirt Iain just got as a gift....its Godzilla thumbing a ride to Tokyo!

4 1/2 Years Old!

Iain is now 4 1/2 years old!

He's about 41 inches tall and 41 pounds.

His biggest change since his last report 6 months ago is that he is working a lot more on his social skills. He tries to encourage other kids to join in what he is doing, and is trying to figure out how to change their minds effectively when they don't want to do what he wants to do. Predictably, he's not the best at this yet, but he's making great progress! Once in a while he is willing to change HIS mind and do what the other kid wanted to do!

He likes to build things out of legos for "little guy" (the little Lego guy that came with the set), and will often go to bed reading the "manual" -- the little idea book for things to build -- to decide what we're going to build next for little guy. He gets lots of nice houses, and cars, and places to put his tools.

He is often frustrated by the way that Ria doesn't act like a proper 4 year old -- he tries working his social leadership skills on her, but for some reason she doesn't respond as well as Sarah or Perry or one of the kids at school. Then he blows his top at her, and she's oblivious. She seems to willfully persist in being 3 years younger than him. Other times, however, they cackle with glee together. My new books is on sibling rivalry.....ah, the joys!

I'm so funny!

A video of Ria finding herself utterly amusing at the dinner table.

More Mormor

Here's some cute pics from Mormor's camera, of her visit in February. Post-dating appropriately!

Iain and Ria "playing" a game called "Tuck":

Yet another child enamored of having Ernie and Bert on her face:

Daddy and Iain build at the Palo Alto Junior Museum:

Mormor amuses TWO kids at ONE TIME!:

Snuggly food:

Mormor visits, and a new hat

1st, check out Ria in her new hat:

On to other things now ;-)

Mormor came for a nice visit. Shame about the weather, though, it rained for almost the whole time she was here, clearing up nicely the day after she left. *sigh*. We had a nice time despite the rain: visited the Children's discovery museum, went to the Palo Alto Junior Museum, played games.

These are just the good pictures from our camera....i'll have to put a few other nice ones from Mormor's camera in the next post ;-).

Mormor and Ria play "Lilla, Totilla...." with their fingers:
Big Bubba Iain listening to music:

William and Iain help Mormor with her computer:

...and Ria helps Mormor practice her piano lesson.

Brotherly Love, Teething, and a video

Iain built a nice blanket fort the other day:

...and, Ria's teething again! We're up to 13 teeth now (1st molars fully in, and 1st evil eye tooth is in), and 2 of the remaining 3 eye teeth seem to be actively bugging her, so I'm sure we'll be up to 15 teeth before the end of the week. Can you tell that she likes to chew on a wet cloth when teething?

Iain found the eye teeth particularly nasty, and Ria seems to agree with him.

Speaking of Iain:
I was talking to Iain today about the trip we're taking in April, and what the sleeping arrangements will be. I said that at Mormor's house we'd either have him and Ria sleeping in the little bedroom with Daddy and I on the pullout couch in the living room, or Daddy, Ria, and I would be in the little bedroom and Iain could sleep alone in the living room.

His answer:
"I don't want to sleep alone. I want to sleep with my sweet, sweet Ria."

**SNIFF**
Total "Birgitta Moment" ;-).

Wow, the video is STILL loading, so I'll keep chatting! Can't close the window until its done.

Ria is now 16 months.

Still not walking, but still making progress. At this point she preferentially "cruises" (walks while holding on to things) rather than crawling whenever furniture is available to hang on to, so she's continuing to make progress towards an expected walking "Eureka!" somewhere between 17 and 18 months. Hopefully just in time for the visit to her NH cousins.

Other than walking, her motion skills are fabulous. She can both climb stairs and descend them safely. She can climb up her high chair if its on the lowest setting. She can climb onto all the beds in the house, and loves climbing on the playground structures. She climbs the big step stool in the kitchen to see what I'm cooking, and can climb on to most of the smaller step stools we have around the house. It is just this walking thing that is coming slowly!

Teeth, as mentioned, are continually moving and causing pain.

Words: she's not hit that talking spurt yet. Iain hit it around now, but that was quite early. Ria seems to be doing her talking on a more typical schedule. She is picking up hand signs for things VERY quickly, though. In the last week she's picked up (a non-typical form of) "swing", "fan", as well as the proper sign for "medicine". She's got a muddled understanding of the signs "more" and "milk" as well. We don't really try too hard on the signs, but she clearly has developed a strong desire to communicate more properly, so she's picking up the signs despite our half-hearted usage. Hopefully this means that the words will be following soon!

Still no video....but I'll describe it, I guess, and then go to bed while it finishes ;-).
The video includes several of our "noisy" toys....Ria plays some music and does a "butt dance" to it, shows us her new skills of climbing onto her noisy truck push/ride toy as well as scooting around on it (both new skills of this last week). Finally, she proves that we will REALLY have to worry, in 14.5 years, about her tendancy to talk on the phone while driving! Women Drivers!

Sweaters and Family pics

I was taking a few pictures of Iain in the sweater that his Grandma-in-law Judy knitted for him when he was born, so I could send her some pictures (if you check this blog, Judy, you'll get them in the mail, eventually!), and the pictures were so cute, I just had to share them!


A happy Daddy with happy kids!

And "Big bubba" Iain helps his "Little Sissy" at the sink:

A Day at School - 29 Jan 2008

A day at school.

Iain biked, and they played "firemen saving Teacher Monica from the burning playhouse." In the lower left Iain has one of the coveted paper towel rolls with blue construction paper that are the official water hoses. Later, he has no hose, but has one of the hats and the single coat!

Kids, Food, Not-Food, and Friends

Catching up again!

Just some pictures.
Iain playing with his friends Sarah and Perry:

Ria on her 1st playdough experience. Mommy made the mistake of introducing her to playdough on her food tray, so the food-like substance was assumed to be food. Mommy barked "NO MOUTH" at Ria, and much sadness ensued. (Ria considers it a sin to refuse her the right to put things in her mouth, although she respects the command.) A binky and a waffle blankie fixed things so she could enjoy the playdough after the meltdown. From here on out, playdough occurs on the table, not the tray!

Another "Ria with food" picture! Actually, she's generally getting MUCH neater, but she plastered herself pretty well with the (nice oily) salmon that night, and Iain requested a comparision photo showing how neatly HE eats his salmon!

Oblivious

I've had a request for videos, so I'll put up a few!

I like this one because of how oblivious Ria is to the fact that Iain's pillow projectile has whapped her head!

Rules Following Boy!

Oh. My. Goodness.....

Iain and William and I just finished playing a game of "Go Fish", in which Iain followed the rules of the game for the ENTIRE GAME. No wingeing or whining when he didn't win, no devolving into "silly rules" part way through because he couldn't handle things not going like he wanted them to. He just played the game and had fun. By the rules.

He's actually starting to act like a kid who will be a Kindergartener in 7 months! WOAH!

Last week I even managed to get him to switch his grip on the crayon/pencil to the "mature" grip, thanks to a timely note from his NZ cousins that had much smaller letters on their names than Iain could manage. I noted to him that they could make their letters so small because they used "Kindergarten Grip".... and he finally was willing to try out the other grip, and has stuck with it, and now HE can make really small letters too! Check out his spiral:


...and we have the camera back ;-). Here's Ria with her "scribble grip".

It is timely for Iain to finally start the 1st steps out of preschooler mode, what with me signing him up for Kindergarten this Friday (eep!). At his school we just did Gesell testing to evaluate "Developmental Age". Iain tests out quite advanced for reading and math (as expected), but was so resistant to complying with some of the tests (he got tired of the testing, basically), that the teacher was concerned about his social/emotional readiness for Kindergarten. Around here, at least, there are a lot of people who "red shirt" their kids and hold them back from Kindergarten one year if they are a fall birthday. So, with a fall birthday for Iain, there's definately a bit of pressure/recommendation that we hold him back a year so he can mature socially. We don't want to hold him back, so its nice to have our decision start being supported by Iain promptly starting to improve on his "deficient social skills".

Ugh. The paranoid school parent issues start early!

If we were planning to go to one of the psychotically academic schools (where they have Kindergarteners doing worksheets and daily homework, and basically expecting them to act like they are 7 years old), maybe his youngness relative to peers would be a problem, but we're planning to do a developmentally based school, where 5 year olds are expected to act like 5 year olds, etc, so I'm just figuring that in the next 7 months he'll mature about, oh, say, 7 months worth, and be right on target socially/emotionally.

In some ways it's nice to live in the time we do, but in others its just downright annoying.... It's just wierd to have to defend the right of a child to go to Kindergarten, when he is already advanced in reading and math for his age. The idea they seem to have is that if they aren't yet reading before K, they should be "given the gift of time" so that they can have reading skills when they start K....but if they ARE reading before K, then they should be "given the gift of time" so that they can be socially skilled like a 1st grader when they start K. It's a wonder they ever think ANYONE should start Kindergarten!

Luckily, by deciding to have kids "later in life", I have a reasonable amount of confidence in my gut feelings about what is right for my kids, so I'm going with what I feel to be the right choice for him, despite the preponderance of "young 5's" preschool courses around here.

For the moment, however, I can just exult in the fact that he is starting to show interest in the rules that come with games, and enjoy a nice game of Go Fish!

No camera for a few weeks

Check out the cool image artifact on our 3.25 month old camera (click on the image to zoom it up to full size for a good look):

Its been sent in for fixing....so no pictures for a few weeks....sorry!

15 months old!

Whee! Ria is 15 months old!
(Well, technically that was last week, but the pediatrician visit was yesterday, so we only now have the all important stats ;-) Weight: 24# 11oz (11.2 kg) = ~75%
Height: 32.5" (82.5 cm) = ~95%
Head circumference: 47.7 cm = ~90%

11 teeth (that's 1 more than yesterday!)
stands & pulls to standing
cruises along the furniture
crawls properly
can climb the full flight of stairs (but can't go down)
1 nap

She's not yet walking, but we saw her let go for maybe 1 or 2 seconds the other day while standing, so she's contemplating to start working it soon! She is completely stable when "standing" on her knees, and when standing on her feet she just holds on with one hand.

We've been forced (largely by her crankiness at us feeding her) to allow her a spoon and full access to her morning bowl of applesauce and yoghurt. Its somewhat terrifying, but not as bad as we'd feared.

There are meals where she spends her whole time working her fork technique, and I swear no food gets in, but she's happy.

She's finished with "Qaaaaaaak", and has moved on. She no longer calls cats "ki-i", now they (and all animals) are labeled with their sounds. "Eeeow": cat, "hoof": dog, "ooooo": cow, "ba": sheep, "thzz": bee. We still have "ma ma", "da da", "buh buh" (brother), "na na" (banana). She seems to be working on "own" (down). A strong shake of her head, with a push on her hand and an "OH" is "no". "yes", on the other hand, is merely a calm shake of her head (not a nod, but a shake). We'll need to work on differentiating 'yes' and 'no' over the next few weeks.

She no longer eats her books quite so obsessively. She likes them to be read to her...but FAST. She actually stops what she's doing when i say "NO", or "no mouth". Sometimes she comes when we say "come come" (more likely if mom says it than if Iain says it, which annoys Iain).

She is no longer howling like a banshee when we brush her teeth.

She likes to crawl from the back door to the car by herself....which is a LOVELY turn of events with that 24#11oz weigh-in.

That pretty much covers it, I think....

Two days in early January (WITH power ;-)

So, we were planning to grow Ria's hair long. Iain (and, I think, all the kids at Rachel's) felt that as a girl, she needs long hair. Rachel told me stories of braiding Jo's front hair to the side when she was 18 months old and having it last 2 days, so I figured we just had another 3 months to go until Ria was likely to be stopping the bit where she rips the hairbands and/or clips out of her hair and stops with the "feeding my hair" bit.

Well, it turns out Jo NEVER ripped the hairbands out, not even at 12 months. So, the hairband ripping out issue is more of a personality thing than an age thing. That knowledge, coupled with Ria's recent decision to MASSAGE her food into her hair at most meals (imagine soaping up your hair with shampoo, and you get the drift) has caused me to throw the long hair plan out the window and just chop it all off. So, now she looks like a boy. Rather a lot like Iain, in fact. Same haircut (since that's the one haircut I do). We'll recontemplate long hair when she eats more neatly.

Here is Ria post-food massage last night (there's some women who would pay a hairdresser good money to get that "do"), and post haircut (the one picture I managed this morning where she looks less boy-like).

Some silly pictures of us playing at the table:

And a boy and a girl taking a bath together:

I was a bit apprehensive about bathing them together without me in the tub too to ensure Ria stays sufficiently vertical (we've been doing baths lately with 3 of us in there), but there were no problems with kids bumping eachother into water faceplants, the bath was fun and reasonably uneventful. I'm quite pleased with this, its easier to bathe them from outside the bath.

Finally, after the angst of molar number 1, this morning I noticed Ria already has molar #2! Not sure when it came in (now THAT'S the kind of tooth entry procedure we LIKE!). I'm guessing yesterday or the day before, as I'd noticed a rather raw, red knuckle on her right hand recently (she has a tendancy to gnaw her hand when teething...ouch!). In any case, 10 down, and 10 to go!

(I got the Kindergarten registration papers for Iain today--eep! he's almost 5!!)

83 hours

From Friday 4 January at 10:15am to Monday 7 Jan at 9:15pm we had no power. 83 hours.

We had hot water (bless pilot lights), but no heat (pilotless with electric safeties hardwired without an easily accessible plug). Our neighbors Shane and Ann rotated their gas generator around a few houses so we had power to our fridge twice a day for a few hours to keep the food good. Martha and Rick fed us warm dinners, and Becky and Chris let us hang out warmly in their house during the day. It was "an experience". (See William's blog posts for more words: http://fairly-accurate.livejournal.com/28755.html and http://fairly-accurate.livejournal.com/28992.html.) I love having underground power lines in general, as it looks nicer, and we don't lose power as often as people with their power lines up in the wind/tree/ice zone, but boy, when underground power lines go down, its takes a long time to get the power back up.

Iain spent several evenings directing us in taking photos in front of the fire (after Ria was in bed). Here's Iain's and my favorites.


On Monday at 4:30 pm I just about lost it, I was DONE with the experience, but as I dialed the number of the local hotel on the phone, I was call waited by PGE saying there were crews on the way. Just under 5 hours later, we were finally back on!

I'm putting "get furnace rewired to allow us to plug it into a gas generator" on my list of projects to do for the house.

Happy New Popsicle Year!

Happy New Year!

Ria had her 1st popsicle ever....a lovely tangy lemon one that Iain and William made up from a recipe they found on line.

We had friends over for a rollicking game of Don't Break The Ice.

And Iain and Ria snuggled in their blankets and worked in the pantry, respectively. (Iain particularly likes this photo, hence its inclusion.)

Only 11 to go!

Teeth, that is ;-). Ria now has 9 of them!

Ria is up one more tooth, her 1st molar. If our experience with this molar is any indication of what is to come with the remaining ones.....well.....just pity us.

This tooth has been torturing the family for over a month. We thought it SHOULD have broken skin a month ago, her gum has been looking like a boa constrictor that swallowed an elephant for weeks. But after a week of rubbing the gum once a day with a rough washcloth wrapped around an ice cube.....the elephant disappeared (must have been a cyst or something, oops!), and the next day we broke skin!

Whee!

Now, just 11 more to go.

Happy Christmas, etc!!!

Happy Christmas, God Jul!

We had a lovely little holiday here, the four of us. Ria helped Daddy blow up a globe, Iain and Daddy built with Iain's cool new marble maze, we had many fancy meals, and then Ria looked cute hanging out in her new tent, and wearing her new crown:

We finished up Ria's room:

And Ria and Iain watched as Daddy wired up his new electronic toy!

Ahhhhh......

After 3 months of concerted effort, Ria is FINALLY out of our bedroom! She has her own room upstairs now. (Its not "set up" properly, so no pictures yet.)

We really didn't expect it to take so long to complete the process, but clearly we'd been dumping stuff more than a bit in the one remaining "extra" room, so there was a lot to get rid of. Between computer and server re-setup and updating, and curtains, and just generally loads of old CR** piled up in there, its taken a while.

But now....we can turn the light on in our room when we go to bed. Maybe read a little. We're even allowed to snore without fears we'll wake Ria up and end up with a "bad night".

What Joy!