Big Day

I have no idea how to rotate or edit videos. My apologies. That is Q singing his solo from Music Theater Camp. He chose the song ("Two of Us" by the Beatles) and no one seems to hear the same song he does. You'll have to crank the sound way up.

I expected to have a blog entry about how funny and sweet the performance was yesterday (and it was). But the cough that I attributed to a summer cold, and which woke him (and us) early Friday morning with unrelenting hacking turned into a disturbing wheeze in the afternoon. J took them to the pediatrician, then for x-rays at the clinic, then back to the pediatrician and then the pharmacy.

When I got home everyone seemed fine, although a bit jazzed up from all the excitement. The tip off for how stressed Q is physically was that he took a nap, at 5 pm.

J and I left him in Grandma's capable hands, and returned to her looking a bit distressed. Once I sat with him, I understood why. His wheezing sounds like a fireplace bellow. Noisy, shallow, quick breaths. Since he'd taken a late nap, he needed to burn off mental energy, but had no physical energy. We watched the dance routines from an episode of 'So You Think You Can Dance' (cheesy title, great dancing). Q was impressed and asked if he could be on that show some day.

J dosed him with more inhalants and he is considerably better today. The cough is still there. We're still in managing breathing crisis mode for a while. I'm kind of freaked out (especially about the inhalers, which I will need to do solo with Q this evening), but I'm relieved that Q is markedly better. Hopefully since this is the first distinct asthmatic incident, we'll learn how to manage it before school starts.

Assortment of snippets

Q pet Savannah (the cat) as she balanced on the arm of the glider rocker the other day. "Cats snuggle to say I love you." He informs me. "They have to snuggle because they don't have words. But we have words."

I picked up a bunch of jammies for the kids yesterday. I indulged and got Noodle a 3 piece jammie outfit that includes a tutu. Seriously. Much to my bemusement, the jammies she excitedly chose for last night were the 'car jammies'. Girly, but lots of little cars on them. Cracked me up.

They didn't have many summer jammies for boys, so Q's selection was more limited. (I picked up some for next fall.) He chose to wear the hand me downs left by his cousin. Very sweet.

"When I grow up..."

Driving home from the library today, Q starts a sentence, "Mommy? When I grow up-"

Q's voice drops. Preparing myself for something I might need to pay close attention to, I quickly roll up the windows to listen.

"...when I grow up, I'm going to wear a pencil behind my ear so I'll always have a pencil when I want to draw something."

Thank goodness. "That seems handy."

"Yeah."

I continue driving.

"And mom? When I grow up, I'm going to marry you."

Awww.

"I love you too."

Birthday Ruminations

One of the ways in which our slacker parenting style comes out is that we'd rather not do high stakes parties with all the preschool friends and outside friends complete with games and party favors and headaches. I'm sure if we were good parents we'd do this. I just can't drum up any enthusiasm for it at all.

What we did instead was an Adventure. Q has been asking to go to New York City for months. It's less than 2 hours away, so it seems like a reasonable request. But we don't have any real reason to go - other than his little heart's desire. So we planned out a day in New York City: Train, subway, Museum of Natural History, Central Park, back again. In some ways it feels so wasteful. There is so much you can do in the city that to keep to so small an itinerary seems a shame. But more than this would overwhelm all three of us.

So Sunday we left Noodle with Grandma and had an Adventure in the city.



All day long his delight warmed my heart. Entering Grand Central Station, he looked up, awed. "Wow. This is beautiful."


He seemed to enjoy the museum and the dinosaurs, but when you can't yet read much and your grasp on evolution is nonexistent, the museum has a hard time holding your attention. After two hours, he was begging to go to Central Park.

Park means something different to Q. Park means 'playground'. He loved climbing the huge rock we found almost immediately outside the museum, but it took us about twenty minutes of walking to get to the playscape.

On the way he waved to park employees in a small electric vehicle. I heard him say, "Hi!" and looked over to see he was greeting pigeons. We passed a long row of benches with people sitting and Q carefully looked in everyone's face. A bald, older black man stared right back at him, then twitched his eyebrows up and down rapidly, keeping his expression deadpan. Q showed no immediate reaction, but when I cracked up, the man twitched at me as well, a corner of his mouth curling up. Another man simply greeted Q, "Hey, how's it going?" and returned to his cell phone call.

It was totally worth the long walk. After running around the castle like structure for a while, we stripped him down to his underwear to run in the fountains.



It was a really lovely, long day.

Last night we had our birthday picnic. Noodle fell in the water while wading, reminding me that I should never leave home without spare diapers and clothes for her. The kids happily played in the water and sand.



I try to remember that I don't have to do it all perfectly. Q doesn't have to get a birthday party. He can have an Adventure and spend the day actually enjoying our attention all day, rather than our stress over hosting a fleet of preschoolers. It's fine to do it differently.

There is a recent study which determined that children under 2 who watch television get far less adult/child interaction and suffer from language deficits. I read this with pangs of guilt for my toddler, who, due to accident of birth, gets far more television than her older brother ever was exposed to. Look! I thought, she's going to be behind in - wait, language development? Never mind.

Sometimes it's hard to remember that the experts are not always talking to me. The teachers at Q's next school who told us that we should read to our kids and take them to the library, they don't know that I'm a librarian and that Q can sound out words.

They might be experts, but they're not experts on my kid.

Q conversation

"Noodle, I'm going to make sure your testicles are okay."

Noodle Conversation

"The log babber gabs logs and puts them in jail!"

(It's unclear whether she said that originally or just started repeating it when Q told her logs don't go to jail.)

Pollywogs

I've resisted the croc fad. Sandals, especially nice water proof sandals with velcro, are so sturdy and practical for summer, that I felt crocs were redundant. They even seemed impractical. Can you really run and climb in them? There are rumors of crocs trapping feet in escalators. (I've heard the same thing about shoelaces, but that never deterred me. Not to mention that the nearest escalator is probably a 30 minute drive that I rarely make.)

But I've been trying to find some of the sturdy water sandals for Noodle, and I cannot find anything that resembles them. Sandals for toddler girls are flimsy, pretty little things that fall off, trip the kid, and fall apart. Sandals for toddler boys make it clear that it's only the age restriction that prevents this kid from joining the Marines. I just want what we had last year, in a bigger size, and perhaps not black this time. (Those were hand me downs that she loved; they looked just like Q's.)

So I caved. I took the kids to the outlet and managed to direct them away from the brilliant pink crocs long enough for Noodle to spot these. (I believe these are not the 'croc' brand, but called 'pollywogs.') I put them on her and told her to run. I put a pair on Q and told him to match her speed. Hopping, skipping, jumping. They passed the test. And after watching another toddler effectively climb the side of her porch in a pair recently, I'm satisfied they're fine for the playground. I'm still looking for a nice pair of water sandals for Noodle, but I don't feel desperate any more.



...and their obvious enjoyment of the shoes makes me feel my reservations were those of a crank.

Noodle - Sentence of the Day

Upon being put down for a nap:
"Pacifier. At Night. Fall Out. My Mouth. Far Away."

Not quite a haiku.

Quick Catch Up - but not thorough

Lately the kids have been doing so many cool things, and I'm not getting it posted in the blog. I'm going to lose track of the progress they make if I don't document it, and that will make me so sad later.

Mother's Day 2009


Today we went up to Kid City, which is free the 3rd Thursday of the month between 5 and 7. We didn't make it there till 6:30. But the kids had a BLAST.

Wandering into one space, sort of made up to be a fortune teller's room: silver ball, dark, mirrors at all different angles on the wall. Noodle says, unprompted, "That's Fan-cy!" I've no idea how she knew it was the right phrase to apply. Her favorite phrase lately is, "That's si-ee-y!" (silly)

Verbally, I think she's wildly precocious. She used the word 'tangled' the other day to describe a pretzel. Today she used the word 'gobbled' correctly. (That's assuming I understood her, which I think I did.) She uses 'I' and 'me' and 'you' often and in reference to the appropriate person. She also uses the third person to refer to herself ("Baby do it!") and other people ("Mommy help?"), but for a 2 year old, she's way ahead of the game. I'm blown away by her long sentences sometimes. Today's masterpiece: "Q's balloon way way up there."

The verbal competence seems to help a lot with her cooperation. We can get her to tell us most of what she needs, and we try to insist on this instead of whining/crying. We understand most of what she says...

Last night she was crying late at night. I went in and asked what she needed/what was wrong. She usually needs her pacifier, but she actually had it for once. She kept repeating something that sounded close to her "pass-i-fy-er" but not quite.

This morning I finally figured it out. She wanted her pirate shirt.

Q performed in his first concert last weekend. I was really looking forward to him singing. The kids were going to sing, then kazoo, then sing. Unfortunately, the kids had never met the kazoos before, and they were so exciting that some children, including Q, forgot about the singing part and kazoo-ed all three verses.

Coming home, Q asked me if I ever wanted to play an instrument. I told him I took piano lessons when I was little. Then I asked if he wanted to play an instrument. He repeated his musical desire, "I think I want to play the French horn." I don't think I had the foggiest idea what a French horn was when I was 5...

Saturday was busy. In addition to the concert and a birthday party (source of the beautiful face painting), we had the start of some serious septic problems. Which were finally resolved Tuesday with the kind assistance of a helpful and adorable excavator:


Q, of course, was thrilled by the septic guys. He and J hung around while they did the exploratory digging to determine the problem, whispering to J that he'd like to get closer to the actual tools, repeating and summarizing how the plumbing and septic system work. Earlier in the week, he'd helped the plumber at Grandma's house find a leak, trekking up and down stairs following Joe (seriously, he's named Joe) and asking questions. Joe offered him a job at the end of the day. His face lit up with pride.

Prelude to a Meltdown

Today we went to a 'Touch a Truck' event. This was fabulously cool. They had excavators, backhoes, skid steers, ambulances, garbage trucks, big rigs, a fire engine, a school bus, a tractor, fancy tow trucks, dump trucks. Whoa I don't even know all they had.
Q tells me this is a backhoe

So from 10 to 11, we chased little kids who swarmed trucks and tried dismounting without safety nets.
Q's friend driving what Q informed me is a garbage truck

At 11 (the event went till mid afternoon) our kids were done. Noodle was muscling kids out of her way and smearing the EMS lollypop on the Mickey Mouse car's leather seats.

Noodle on a tractor. Pre-lollypop.

The adults were reeling from the sound of big rig horns. We managed to bribe the kids with the promise of pretzels and hit the playground next to the parking lot. They each ate 1.5 pretzels before moving on to the slides and swings, followed by digging for treasure on the beach.

It was a blast. Followed by the inevitable meltdowns and cranky sibling interactions. They crashed hard at bedtime. I love adventures like this, but I'm grateful we don't do them every day.
Q and Noodle on the beach being picturesque.

There and Back Again

The kids have come home after exhausting the Massachusetts grandparents. Noodle was a champ, appearing to be unworried that her parents were nowhere to be found. Until bedtime, when Q sang her to sleep. Everyone was grateful.

Q was quiet and well behaved and seemingly relieved to come home where he can be naughty again. "Next time," he asked me, "Can you come too, Mommy?"

The break was lovely lovely lovely. Just having a morning or two to wake up at my own speed is incredibly nice.



And having our children snuggle between us as we read bedtime stories, Noodle's curls damp from the bath, Q's hand in mine, that is all more than lovely lovely lovely.

Scrambled Eggs

Q went to a friend's birthday party last week. Watching him romp, another mom commented, "Have you noticed that Q is being chased by 3 girls?"

I responded, "And loving it?" Q's ideal play date is for his friend KtR to beat him up. And how can the girls resist, when he's so adorable?

Okay. Requisite doting parental moment is over. I promise.



Q loves arts and crafts. Specifically using scissors and paint. Marker is good if he can come up with a good excuse for it to get all over his face and hands. So we painted the eggs for Easter this year. Then when Q was in bed, I dyed them as well. And desperately called J to direct him to the one store still open to bring home candy so Q wouldn't be disappointed. It's a little tricky when they're this age. You know they're likely to be thrilled, but you don't know exactly what they think the holiday entails.

Happily for us, J found candy on his way home from work. We filled plastic eggs with enough chocolate calories to fuel an insurrection. Q, sure enough, bounced through the Easter egg hunt. Noodle took it very seriously. Nearly every photo you can see her thinking, "They're all filled with candy?"



She's kind of amazing these days, using complicated sentences with correct pronouns when she feels like it. I'm stuck in that parenting rut where you wonder how much of your kid really is unique and wildly different from their sibling, and how much is just that parenting robs you of your memory, making each kid's discoveries unique and new.


(Noodle and her Daddy contemplate the spoils.)

The two are off to visit the Concord grandparents tomorrow. Everyone is thrilled - especially the kids. Noodle has been repeating Q, "Grampa L, Granmary, Soon?" The drive to meet them is likely to feel very long.

And I'm going to miss them far more than I can admit.

Writhing with Germs

Above photo is the epilogue from the previous post. Q saying good night to the finally sleeping Noodle. She fell off that mattress an hour later, without waking up, and was put to bed in her crib. The light of the room is nearly entirely from the camera's flash.

My parents came to visit this past Saturday. This is, for me, always anticipated with excitement and a small sense of dread. I'm going to have to clean. It never fails that this dread keeps me anxious with little productivity until approximately one minute after they arrive. Then we finish what is absolutely crucial (groceries, bed linens) with no worries and forget about all the other grime encrusted parts of my house until their next visit.

Saturday started out well. I got up before the kids woke up and got in a run. But when I returned upstairs for a shower, Q wailed from my spot in my bed, which I had finally yielded to him at 6 am. "I can't open my eye!"

I have inherited my mother's lack of sympathy for illness. Most of the time, I figure that the kid is scamming me. This particular complaint (combined with the fact that he joined us in the middle of the night claiming something was in his eye and I told him that if he shut his eye, his eye would wash it clean) got my attention. I got a wet wash cloth and gently wiped his eye. Funny, but when you see pink eye, it's pretty obvious.

Since Q is riddled with contagion, he is bumped out of his seat for the grandparent pick-up in favor of Noodle. She is good as gold. At lunch, she blatantly flirts with her grandfather and charms everyone with her enthusiasm for noodles with red sauce.

We return home to find Q in his jammies still. I don't get too uptight, although if my husband's parents were coming to visit, I would definitely have the kids out of their jammies by 2:30 pm. The mystery becomes clear when I eventually locate J, sprawled on our bed, close to drooling. It turns out he has lost all track of time while busy fighting a stomach virus. He had bribed Q with one video before passing into the land of misery, and Q had gone feral, without food other than the ample droppings from the kitchen floor. To keep himself busy, he produced this masterpiece in the newly usable, and quite close to finished, downstairs bathroom:



But despite the conjunctivitis and stomach flu and my mother's allergies to cats, the visit went very well. We took a trip on Amtrak to the Mystic Aquarium.


(A repeat of one of Q's absolute favorite adventures ever.)



Noodle wandered happily around saying, "Baby fish! Baby fish! Baby fish!"



Sadly, Noodle is incapable of handling a train ride, plus a trip to the aquarium, without dissolving into hysterics. She had to be removed from a closet sized restaurant when other patrons began suffering from hearing loss.

After Grandma got to watch Noodle's music class on Wednesday, we returned the grandparents to Florida where we got them.


Today, through no fault of the grandparents or themselves, the kids are wiped out and Q is coughing badly. Later in the morning he was diagnosed with an ear infection that I am sure my mother will nod her head with sage recognition, having commented that, "Q just isn't himself."

But before breakfast, I doctored them both with honey and made 'honey tea' from honey and warm water just for Q.

I told him that his honey tea was on the table (he's spending inordinate amounts of time admiring the new bathroom). Sitting down next to Noodle, she informs me in her slow, pausing, language. "I - like - hun-ee - tee."

I begin eating my oatmeal.

She repeats herself: "I - like - hun-ee - tee."

I ignore her hint.

Once again, "I - like - hun-ee - tee."

I try the golden oldie, distraction. "Oh, Noodle! Do you have oatmeal this morning?"

She looks at me reprovingly. "Talkin - 'bout - hun-ee - tee."

Noodle is sad tonight

Q is out at a play (his first real evening play!) with J. And Noodle, while happy to play with Em instead, is now very, very sad. Sobbing in bed and screaming sad. Exhausted, but heartbroken and not wanting to even try to sleep sad.

Poor Noodle.

Later: I finally persuaded her to fall asleep on a mattress next to Q's bed...

You know there's a problem...

When you get to Preschool and one of the teachers pulls you inside, holding a backpack, but no Q. "Q's mom? Q is in the nurse's office..."

Evidently Q was wrestling with another child, I hope playfully, when they rolled off the wood chips onto the black top, where Q's head made contact. Loud enough that Miss K heard it. When she asked if she could take a look under his coat's hood, the formerly stoic Q, burst into tears.

When I got there, not long after, Q was in freeze out mode. He'll answer some questions, but only the ones he deems necessary. "What happened?" is not one of them. "Does it hurt?" is always answered with 'no.'

It's funny to me that this is Q's second remarkable head injury at preschool. Third if we count when Miss Wendy hit him in the face with a wiffle ball. In normal home life, injuries are pretty rare. Does he just play harder at preschool? The fact that I find it unusual that my kid has been to the nurse's office 2 times in 2 years perhaps indicates how few injuries we've had to endure.

I don't like to overreact, and Q hates to be messed with. So instead of going to the pediatrician's office right away, we opt to go home, have our scheduled playdate, and see how much blood keeps coming.



Well, at bath time (not the one pictured above, but they all basically look like that), I took a wash cloth and gently checked out the injury with just warm water. Oozy. I decide to call the pediatrician's office before they close. I meant to only ask advice, but they tell me to bring him right in. Armed with jammies, firefighter boots, and bedtime books, we enter the office to find the place deserted. We're seen right away and Quinn gets what they call a 'Glue-it' - basically a bit of something like glue that seals the injury shut. Like stitches, without any. Nifty. Q is good as gold. He moves back into freeze out mode, but cooperates.

On the way home, he asks me, "Mom, why do they ring the bell and say, 'All hands on deck!' at Trader Joe's?"

More and more we see a bond between the kids that we're just in awe of. Tuesday night we settled in to read bedtime stories. Q snuggles under the covers and says to Noodle, "Noodle, do you want to sit here next to me?" Ohhhh yes. She ditches her usual throne (the lap of the reader) and joins Q under the covers.

Photo Sampler: February Vacation Week

They are genuinely this sweet. It's crazy. Good thing it's not constant or I'd suspect their father of drugging them.

This past week was February Vacation Week. In Florida they don't get a week off randomly in February. Here in Connecticut, everyone who can afford to take time off, goes to Florida this week. In Florida, they don't need a week off to go to Connecticut in February. It all makes sense now.

Since we weren't going to Florida, we decided to sign Q up for 'Circus Camp' at his gymnastics school. Nine to twelve each morning, they did fun things like this:


The boy has slept hard.

Wednesday, while Q was playing at Circus Camp, Noodle had her second professional haircut. As you can see in the top photo, she was looking a little shaggy. I was expecting some trouble, but here we go:



And twenty m&ms later, we're done:


I'm already missing the shag.

In this photo you can see the top of her boots. She wears these every time we leave the house, and about 50% of the time she's inside the house. If I mention that we're going somewhere, she gets all excited. "BOOTS!" she says, and takes off for the kitchen where I put the boots after I've tripped over them.

Valentine's Day

Every once in a while I realize that the true genius of preschool teachers is that they work a little bit on a project every day for weeks. Q comes home with amazing crafts, but what I don't realize is how many days it took to finish the project.

I didn't start early enough.

Tuesday night I drew hearts (folded paper so that each side would come out as a mirror of the other) and Q cut them out. I cut out the 'card' part. It was really difficult for Q to stay on task and keep cutting until there were enough hearts (and he was doing two at a time). That should have been the tip off for me.

But in addition to Valentines, I'd also promised Q, and then his teacher, that we'd bring cookies to school on Valentine's Day. (Or rather, Thursday, since there's no school for him on Friday). So we have a serious deadline ahead for 12 valentines, plus 3 teachers, plus thematic cookies.

And I'd like to say now, in case I ever consider this again, perhaps it was too much work in a short amount of time. Perhaps in the future we can start making Valentines as soon as we are done writing thank you notes from Christmas.

We started out great: writing names on the front, gluing hearts on, putting stamps on the inside (they're gingerbread men and snowmen, but Q doesn't care) and having Q write 'from Q'. He adjusted that to 'love' at least once. And 'frve' another time. At least I'm smart enough to let that go. But then Q started to rebel. He was tired. It's hard to write that much, even if Mom tells you what letter comes next. Then the glue stick was exhausting. He had lots of energy for the stamping though. He was delighted to discover that if he stamped first in red, then in blue, he got purple! "They're going to love these valentines." He says this in his soft lovey voice he uses most often when he's talking about his beloved kitty, "Kitty is a newborn kitty. I'm nursing kitty."

Okay. So we keep plowing ahead. I am now writing the names on the front, Q stamps the inside, writes his name, I put glue on the front and Q picks out one of the hearts he cut before and puts that on the front. Done. Again. Exhausting.

But I'm not giving you the full experience. While this is going on, Noodle is going feral. She has discovered Q's craft box and pulled out the crayons. I hand her a piece of paper. She looks at it once, takes the crayons and disappears. I can't pay attention because I have to keep Q on task and keep feeding him letters. "Done!" he declares. I look. Half his name is missing. Try again.

Noodle tries to steal the glue stick. I rescue it. I try to distract her with an unneeded stamp. "NOOOOO!" she screams, standing on the chair next to me, leaning as far into the table as possible, precariously balanced on the edge. I scoot the chair in, and now she's got a sturdy surface from which she tries to steal the scissors. I try to distract her with colored paper and chalk. She is momentarily engaged and I continue to try to keep Q on task. "What color do you think Jack should have?"

We're getting there. More than halfway through the valentines. Noodle is scattering items from the craft box around the room. She happily climbs onto a comfy chair, clutching the ziplock baggie of crayons. She dumps these into the chair, where they roll into the crevasses. I stay focused on Q. Sometimes you accept that your couch will fall to friendly fire.

Noodle leans off the chair to peer at a crayon that has fallen to the floor. The cushion tips her off and she lands on her head with a thud. Ooops. Switch kids. I hold the exhausted Noodle as she sobs. Did I mention that it's after 6 pm and the kids are usually in the tub by now? I call for back up. J emerges from the den looking confused.

I put J in charge of the valentines, direct him to the list of children's names and say Q can tell him how they're made. I take Noodle upstairs for her bath. Q talks J into letting him add glitter to all the valentines. Have I mentioned that the floor under the table is now a melange of crayons, chalk, scraps of paper Noodle stole from the trash, k'nex (they're like legos) and toddler crumbs? (Toddler crumbs are much larger than preschool crumbs. Toddler crumbs are how toddlers store food for future snacking.) Add glitter to that mix.

Somehow it all gets done. Noodle is bathed. The valentines are made, except of course the ones for the teachers which I forgot to mention to J. Q is in his jammies, and everyone collapses on our bed for book time. Noodle insists on "lie-barry" books. J, unhindered by a head cold, reads most of the stories. We tuck the kids in bed.



Downstairs again, I find myself comparatively relaxed as I frost the cookies that J and Q mixed, and J cut into the shape of hearts while Q played k'nex (much to everyone's relief). As I switch between pink and lavender frosting, I realize this kind of stress is crazy and I wonder if I'm going to lose my slacker mom status. Then I see the debris under the table and I realize I have nothing to worry about.

Can't Keep Up

Noodle is adding words too fast to keep track now. She's combining words into two word combinations and is very pleased with herself: "Kitty drush?"
"Kitty cat?" I ask.
"Kitty drush?"
Wait a minute - she's in the bathroom... "You want your kitty tooth brush?"
"Yesh."

But yesterday she added (among others) two words that made me smile. Bunny - which sounds like "dunny". She confirms you're understanding her by adding, "hop hop hop."

And really amusing, she opened our copy of "Knuffle Bunny Too" turned to the last page and said, "Epilogue!" (not that clearly)

Evidently that word made an impression.

"More more more!" said the baby

Today Noodle was 'helping' me unload the dishwasher. She pulled out the white bowl that Q wants his oatmeal in each morning.

"King." She starts to wander around the kitchen. "King."

"Is that Quinn's bowl?" I ask.

"Yesssh!" She's delighted with me.

Although we'd gotten an attempt at his name a few days ago, she hadn't repeated it until today. I drew Quinn's attention to her, "She's saying your name!"

"I don't want her to!"

Ah well.

Practice Practice Practice.

Last night we had dinner with Grandma Sue. Lovely. As we were leaving, she offered Q her fashionable dark glasses from her recent eye appointment. Q was thrilled. So thrilled in fact, that when he got home (Grandma Sue stop reading until at least Thursday) he told J he wanted to write Grandma a thank you note.

So evidently the Thank You Notes Lesson from the Christmas season stuck. I'm thrilled and amused.

He's a funny little kid. We see signs of him getting older and more competitive ("I'm first!" he says at the top of the stairs) but he's still also just a generous little guy. We were discussing shoveling this morning, one of Q's favorite activities lately. We have a couple of inches to clear away.

Noodle gets excited and manages to say, "Baby ho-VEL!"

We assure her that she can shovel too.

Then Q says, "Noodle can help shovel. She's a very good helper."




New word updates, and words I'd forgotten:

cack-a (cracker)
ho-vel (shovel)
previously she had 'nana' for hungry, but yesterday she came out with 'hunny' which threw us off for a while.
dink (drink)
cah (car)

Yesterday she also did a lesson in possessives: Daddy Nose. Mommy Nose. Daddy cah. Mommy cah.
It's like she now actually can hear us when we talk. Just an amazing process.

ALSO! I forgot:

brella (umbrella)
an-mul (animal)