No Go on the Shower

 A couple of weeks ago, Wednesday, January 19, to be exact, we decided to try something new at bathtime.  Audrey had started asking to take a shower.  Once, when she was pretty little, I showered her off because she had thrown up on herself.  Things didn't go well then.  She cried and cried and we've never tried it again since.

Audrey still doesn't like water on her face or in her eyes, which is weird because she was fine with going underwater in her swim class.  But in the bath if you get one drop of water in her eye she freaks out.  So Matt and I thought a shower might not be the best idea.  But she was insistent even when we told her the water would get in her eyes.  She wanted to take a shower.  Matt was skeptical but I decided to give it a try.

The one thing I was sure about was that Truman would love it.  Truman loves baths and loves the water.  We have to be quite diligent with him because he will sometimes half drown himself with his splashing, "swimming," and dunking his face in the water to get a drink.  He loves it so much that he actually enjoys it when Matt dumps giant cups of water over his head to rinse out his hair.  So I knew Truman wouldn't be a problem.  I also had high hopes that Audrey would have matured to a point that she would be okay with the water getting all over her face.

Wrong.

As you can clearly see both kids immediately started crying the minute they were in the shower.  It was so comical that I started cracking up laughing and was laughing so hard I could barely breathe.  Matt was downstairs and heard us so he ran up with the camera, but I wish he had brought the video camera.    It was hilarious.  Still, you can get a pretty good idea from the picture.

In all honesty, Truman might have started crying because he got upset right before I put him in.  I had to get him undressed and stand him next to the tub while the water warmed up.  I told him not to pee on the floor and he of course immediately started peeing on the rug.  I wasn't upset but I did say, "Oh no, Trumey.  Don't pee!"  He started crying and ran out of the room and stood in the doorway dancing and crying for a little bit.  When he calmed down I put him in the shower and then the waterworks really began.  Audrey got in right after him and might have started crying because Truman was crying and she has started doing some of the things he does because she wants attention.  Either way I had two crying kids in the shower.

But Audrey had made her choice and I made her take a shower and wash her hair.  Truman just sat in the tub and cried the whole time.  When she was finished I ran a tub of water for Truman and gave him a bath.  After all, he had no choice about the shower.

So I would say the shower was a failure.  Which is fine with me because I think half the bathroom was soaked by the time I finished with Audrey.  Maybe in a couple more years we'll try again.  Not too soon though.  I don't want to traumatize my kids more than necessary. 

Leaps and Bounds

I'm amazed at how much babies change after they turn one year old.  I know they grow and change a ton in that first year, but for me it seems that the changes become more obvious during the second year and that things happen so quickly.  Since Truman turned one he has been rushing ahead at full speed.  He has his 15 month check-up next week so I'll be posting the long list of his stats and changes then, but these pictures are too cute to wait.

 Truman can now open things that until recently he could not open.  Markers, for example, now present no challenge at all.  It used to be that letting him play with Audrey's box of markers was a safe activity.  He likes to chew on them and scatter them and I think he likes all the colors.  But a couple of weeks ago I discovered him sitting amongst the markers and chewing on something.  I realized it was a marker tip and that several others were opened and lying on the floor.  Luckily they were the ColorWonder markers so at least I didn't have an enormous mess to clean up.  But still.  I took these pictures after I pulled the marker tip out of his mouth and closed all the caps.

 He just pulls those lids right off like they're nothing.  We now have to be careful with all the markers but especially with the real markers.  I do not want to find a green/blue/red/purple-mouthed baby.  Truman has also learned he can move the chair that we keep in front of the hutch drawers where the art supplies are housed.  Up until now it was an effective, if somewhat ghetto, form of childproofing.  Now we've either got to move everything or figure out a new way to keep him out.

 The two markers he destroyed before I realized his new skill.

 Another of Truman's great joys is dishwashing.  He loves the dishwasher, or, he loves pulling things out of the dishwasher and playing in the water on the door.  He especially loves any kind of tongs he can grab and carry around.  But recently he was introduced to the bubbles of hand dishwashing.  Every night we run a sink full of soapy water and wash everything that shouldn't go in the dishwasher--anything made of wood, nonstick pans, certain baking pans, etc.  Truman discovered the bubbles and now loves to sit on the counter and play in the water.  Or sometimes he runs around and squeals when Audrey puts bubbles on his head, nose, or hands.  It's nice to have a big sister to play with. 

 I love his little bubble beard. 

 His favorite thing to do with the bubbles is eat them.  What a goofball.  We usually have to cut him off at some point because we don't want him eating too many bubbles, at which point he yells and stomps his feet and has a little tantrum.

 I love this little bubble boy!



Chomp!

Audrey has never been an overly aggressive child.  She is usually only aggressive when she is trying to defend herself and her favorite form of defense is to push.  Typically it happens because someone is irritating her or has taken or is trying to take a toy she has or wants.  When she was much smaller she would very occasionally try and bite someone who was taking her toys.  I can only think of two instances where she actually succeeded and both times she didn't bite the kids hard enough to make them cry.  That's what makes last Monday's incident particularly perplexing. 

It was MLK Jr. Day and after going to work in the morning and finding no one there Matt came home around lunchtime.  After lunch Truman went down for his nap and Audrey stayed up, something that is becoming increasingly common around here.  When Truman woke up Audrey went upstairs to play with him.  She loves to get in his crib and play with him when he wakes up and I've given up trying to keep her out of it.  After a couple of minutes I heard a lot of commotion on the monitor so I went upstairs.

When I got into the room both kids were sitting in the crib crying.  Really crying.  Red faces, tears, the works.  Audrey was saying, "I'm sorry Trumey!  I'm sorry Trumey!" over and over.  I was alarmed so I picked him up and asked her what happened.  When she could finally answer me she said that she bit him!  I asked her why and she tearfully replied that she didn't know.  Then I looked at his little face and saw the bite mark.  At this point she was crying harder than he was so I didn't punish her more.  I figured that she had suffered enough.  But we did have a talk about it after everyone calmed down.  I still don't know what possessed her.

She did bite Truman once before.  When he was very little we were playing with him and pretending to gobble his hands and feet.  She wanted to play too and grabbed one of his hands and bit down right on his little fingers.  He immediately started crying and she was confused and sad.  We explained that we were just pretending and she has never done anything like that since.  I can only think that maybe this time she was playing and got carried away.  He does have very chompable cheeks, after all.

 The poor boy.  These first two pictures were taken a full hour after she bit him.  She really got him pretty good.  She's got those super sharp, pointy Holyoak teeth too so I imagine that it really hurt.

 These last two pictures were taken a full four hours later.  That mark is as bright as ever!  In fact, the next morning you could still see it.  By then it was much more faint and you probably wouldn't notice it if you weren't looking for it, but it was there the entire day.  It wasn't until day three that it was finally gone.

I guess I'm grateful that Audrey was immediately remorseful after she hurt her brother.  I do believe her that she didn't know why she did it.  She's got a good 22 more years before the decision making part of her brain is fully developed.  It's just such a weird thing to do.  And it's so out of character, especially since it was unprovoked.

Luckily, Truman quickly forgives and forgets and loves his big sister as much as ever. 

Maybe we just need to feed her more.

Princess Tea Party

Monday is often such a blah day, especially when the weather is overcast and gray.  So when Kim suggested that we have a princess tea party for the girls I jumped at the idea.  At 11:00 this morning the three of us traipsed down the street.  Audrey was wearing her Snow White dress, red bracelet, and CTR ring.  She carried her new Minnie Mouse ears and Snow White slippers.  I carried Truman, the diaper bag, camera, and a plate of tea sandwiches.

 Kristen and her daughter Lydia were also there and the girls had fun playing with princesses before the tea party began.  Look at how well little Lydia smiles for the camera.  It cracks me up that both Audreys smiled at the camera in almost exactly the same way.

 While Kim got the food ready the girls had a dance party.

 Do you know how hard it is to get a good picture of three little girls dancing?

 Impossible.

 Truman and Max were there too.  Truman was pretty clingy and wanted me to hold him the entire time.  I finally just refused to pick him up so he'd play.  He eventually decided that it was fun to push Max in his swing.

I like this one because you can actually see that Audrey is having fun.  I love that big smile on her face and wish I had better luck capturing it on film.

 This might be the best picture of the three girls dancing.  They were really getting into it!

 Finally it was time for the tea party to start.  I made tea sandwiches: peanut butter and grape jelly hearts, cream cheese and strawberry jam butterflies, and ham and cheese flowers.  Kim made the amazing banana muffins.

 They also had a delicious lemony fruit salad and hot chocolate with marshmallows.  Yum! 

My little Audrey wouldn't eat anything other than hot chocolate and the sandwich I forced her to eat.  Sometimes she can be so stubborn.  But she still had fun.  I think we all had a good time.

What a nice way to start the week.

Ready and Waiting

Last night Matt had a basketball game.  Which meant that I had a couple of hours completely to myself since the kids were in bed.  What to do?  I sometimes think that when Matt's gone for basketball or church meetings I should do something fun, or at least sit around in my pajamas and watch TV.  But that is rarely the case.  Usually I'm productive.  My thought process behind this is that if I use my alone time to do the things I need to do, then I won't have to use family time to do something like write a talk for church.  When I was in the Primary Presidency I would use that time to plan my sharing times.  Now that I'm in Relief Society I use the time to plan my lesson when it's my month to teach.  I also use the time to catch up on the blog, wash and fold laundry, clean the house, or occasionally paint my toes.

Last night it was prepping for taxes.  I spent a good two and a half hours getting our documents ready so that when it's time to input everything into TurboTax we can do it in a quick and timely manner.  I organized our mortgage statements, tithing slips, paystubs, and medical statments and receipts.  I totaled everything.  Our medical insurance statments have now been reconciled with our receipts and the totals have been checked and rechecked.  I even figured out our medical mileage--450.14 to be exact.

I always get a little queasy when I see what we've spent on medical for the year.  Although last year was the least we've spent since 2006, mainly because since Matt changed jobs he now has insurance through his company so we can pay our premiums pre-tax.  If we couldn't do that we would have spent more in 2010 than we did in 2009 when I had a baby.  Ugh.  We only had four premiums we had to pay after tax this year, but those four helped push us over the 7.5% of our gross income we need to itemize.  Disgusting.  And yet there are still those who think the health care system is fine and doesn't need some type of change.  A healthy family of four shouldn't have to make a mortgage-sized payment to an insurance company every month just for the priviledge of some moderately decent health insurance.  But I won't go any further into that.

So this is the neat version of the mess that was our dining room table last night.  Organized and categorized.  Now we're just waiting on church, banks, and employers to mail us all of our tax forms.  They've got a couple more weeks.  And we'll be ready.

Just Because

Some pictures of Audrey, just because she wanted me to take some.

Forward Facing

Today we turned Truman's car seat around so that he is now forward facing.  So far he seems to like it.  It feels a little strange not to see him in the little baby mirror.  But today he did well with the change and even managed to hang onto his cups. 

I know the new recommendations are to keep kids rear facing until they are two or as long as possible after they turn one and are 20 pounds.  And I had planned on keeping him backwards longer.  But our decision was based on two reasons. First, Truman is getting pretty tall and his little legs were squished up against the seat. Second, he has become...discontented in the car. He fusses and cries and can only be consoled by his pacifier and sometimes even that doesn't help. We're hoping that his new perspective will help him be a little happier, which would in turn, help the rest of us stay a little saner.

We also took this opportunity to remove the pacifier from the car. If all goes well then he will be down to having his pacifier in his crib and at church only, and we'll be getting rid of it at church pretty soon because he's doing better at the 9:00 time. He does love that thing though so this could be a disaster.

 My baby is growing up.  This is just the latest manifestation.  It seems like we've been giving up a lot of the baby things lately.  Two weeks ago I discovered that he had, not too recently, cut two upper molars, bringing his tooth count up to 10.  And last Monday he had his last bottle.  It was the morning bottle, and that is the one that's the hardest and last for me to give up.  But he gets a cup of milk in the morning now which means there is no chance he will ever go back to bed for awhile after his morning bottle.  Which means Matt and I are getting up a little earlier these days. 

And now I can't believe I've got two kids facing forward in the car.  It makes it look like Truman's not a baby anymore.  But he is.  They both are, really. 

They'll always be my babies.

I sure do love these kids.

A Boy and His Calculator

Every once in awhile Truman will see something and immediately become attached to it.  A couple of weeks ago we were at Fred Meyer and I was buying some rolls for dinner.  He fussed and turned himself around in the seat until he managed to grab that package of rolls from the basket.  He then proceeded to hold them the entire time we were in the store.  I tried to take them away and give him something less vulnerable to his strong little hands, but he would have none of it.  It had to be the rolls.  When it was time to check out he cried tears until the cashier handed them back to him.  And when I put him in the car the only thing that consoled him, because I was not letting him hold the rolls in the car, was his green pacifier.

Last week I was sitting at the computer balancing our checkbook and Truman saw my calculator.  It's an old TI-30 that I've had forever--since sometime in high school.  Well, he saw it and he wanted it.  Since it's pretty much indestructible I let him have it.  He pulled the cover off and that little card out that tells you how to do crazy math stuff that no one but my husband and other math...people...actually remember how to do.  Then he carried that calculator around all day.  We went to Toys 'R' Us for diapers and he cried real tears and screamed the entire time we were in the store because I left it in the car.  When we got to Costco I didn't want a repeat so I let him take it in.  He held it the entire time we were in the store.  In fact, he carried it around the rest of the day and was upset when we wouldn't let him have it in his crib at bedtime.

 Since that day anytime he sees that calculator he carries it around all day.

 Seriously.

 No joke. 

He would keep it with him all night too, if we'd let him.  Matt made the mistake of letting him take it to bed one night because he cried when Matt took it away. A few hours later when he was fully awake and playing in his crib (not something our boy typically does) I went in and and took it away. He cried for a little bit but then went right to sleep and we didn't hear another peep that night.

 Matt thinks it's funny.  I think it's funny.  We both hope it means he's going to be a math genius or something.  Or it could mean something else.  But I'll stick with the math genius thing.

 This picture makes me realize it might be time to toss that bib, but I had to include it to show you that this has been going on for awhile and wasn't just a one day thing.  This is first thing in the morning when we getting ready for breakfast. 

 Last Saturday Truman saw me using this red calculator since my usual one was no longer in my possession.  He immediately had to have it.  So now my little "Do the Write Thing, Texas" calculator is his.

Some kids have a stuffed animal.

Some kids have a security blanket.

Some kids have a pacifier.

Our boy has a calculator.

Once There Was a Snowman...

If you read my last post you know that we (meaning Matt while Audrey gave instructions) built a snow princess this morning.  She was built around 9:30 A.M.  I just took another picture of her.  It is 9:00 P.M.  Poor girl.  She must have had a hard day.  Notice her Craisin mouth, carrot nose, and rock eyes and necklace on the ground.

At least the roads are clear.

Each One Unique

Monday night for Family Home Evening we decided to do an "actibity." Last week we played a game, which Matt and I both thought was an activity, but Audrey informed us that it was not. She explained that an activity is something like a craft. So this week we wanted to make sure we got it right. After the song, prayer, and a story from the Friend magazine, we talked about how Heavenly Father created each of us and that we are all different. Each one of us is unique. Then we explained that every snowflake that falls is unique. No two are alike. And then we proceeded with our activity, which Matt planned and happened to be making snowflakes.

We all had a good time cutting our paper and trying to guess what our designs would look like when the paper was unfolded.

Audrey was thrilled by our choice of activity and did quite well for a little three year old trying to cut through multiple layers of paper. A couple of her snowflakes ended up in several pieces, but overall I was impressed.

She really focused on the task at hand and made several beautiful snowflakes. It was fun to see her excitement each time one of us unfolded a new creation.

After we finished we hung the snowflakes on Audrey's window. She opens her blinds each morning so she can see our masterpieces all day. You can probably guess who made which, but Matt's are the top two on the left, I'm sure you can tell which three are Audrey's, and mine are the remaining three.

We've had some real snow flurries a couple of times over the past week but last night it really snowed. Before Matt and I went to bed everything was covered by several inches and it was still coming down. This morning I saw that we got five inches. When we got up this morning it was raining and significantly warmer than freezing so we had some really wet snow. All the schools were closed and Matt decided to go into work a little late to give the roads some time to improve. Being an amazing Pops he took Audrey outside to play in the snow and rain. You couldn't sled, but you could build a pretty good snowman in the backyard.

They (meaning Matt) worked really hard on it. I took pictures from the sliding glass door.

Our snowman turned out to be a snow princess, complete with beautiful rock necklace.

Pretty cute, and not bad for an hour in the rain.

I must mention that poor little Trumey was crushed that he couldn't go outside and play too. Actually, I think he was crushed because he didn't get a chance to eat all the delicious snow that was so temptingly close. He cried and banged on the door for awhile, but when it was time to come inside he got his chance. Some snow fell off Audrey's mitten and he was right there to get it. And then he was happy. Oh, the simple joys.

The Inevitable

When you have a big sister...

 something like this is bound to happen!

 He's her little playmate so she likes to dress him up too.  Maybe we should invest in some dress up clothes for boys before he's old enough to know he's wearing a tutu.

 I know that one day Truman will probably be less than thrilled with me about these pictures, but he looks so cute and so funny.  And he's a great sport even when Audrey puts her princess crowns on his head.  I've still got to get a picture of that.

This is a picture of our boy blowing a kiss.  Adorable.