Kids These Days

Prepare to be overwhelmed by newness.  The kids have been busy!!

Melinda drew a fun picture the other day.  It seems to me that she has a lot of good imagination, and a fairly decent drawing ability, but it's harder and harder to encourage her to sit down long enough to draw anything anymore.  But here's what she came up with: Her and a friend sliding down a really fun slide (it's on the back of a math paper, so excuse the other odd things that scanned through - I toned them down as best as I could):

 

In just a couple weeks, Melinda has gone from being completely unable to hula hoop, to becoming a quick expert.  I'm amazed at how quickly she's picked it up!!

We also bought a jump rope a few days ago.  Again, something she was completely unable to do when we brought it home.  But with a little time and determination, she again figured it out all on her own.  She's up to doing 4 jumps in a row! 

I don't really have any fun pictures of Jacob, but he's gotten extremely comfortable with computers in the past couple weeks.  A month or so ago, he was completely unable to get a handle on using the computer mouse.  Now he clicks everything, much to our dislike/  Because, yeah - do you really want a 3 year old helping himself to anything and everything on your computer?  He can your change task bar's size, location and type faster than you can even realize that he's standing in front of your computer, messing with things!  The kids are allowed to play on Jesse's computer, which is mainly just for internet usage and games, so there's nothing sensitive there.  But Jesse is frequently annoyed these days, trying to figure out how to undo what Jacob has rearranged.  And the rule is that he's not allowed to even touch my computer, but that doesn't keep him from trying.  He's particularly fond of clicking the pause button when I have music playing.  Over and over and over.

Jacob's also learned how to use the potty "Daddy's way".  Standing up.  Oh, the messes...  He hasn't quite mastered how to get that aim right at the very beginning yet, and we frequently end up with wet potties, wet socks, wet shirts....  but he's bound and determined to keep right on standing up for potty time.  A shame, too - he was so comfortable just straddling the toilet, when even Melinda never was, and still isn't.  She's still nervous without a toddler-sized potty seat.  But Jacob just keeps on trying new things.

With summer coming up, and both Melinda and Jacob still being fairly uncomfortable with water, I finally bit the bullet/got on the ball/admitted reality - whatever you want to call it - and signed them both up for swim lessons.  They'll start in Level 1, geared toward the kids who still don't put their face in water (yup, that's them!), and have half-hour lessons just down the street every Wednesday for 6 weeks.  Melinda's super excited that I'm finally getting her lessons, after probably a good year of talking about it, but she's still doubtful about the part where she's going to have to put her face in water.  Hopefully the instructors are as good as I've heard they are!  Plus, they don't chlorinate the pools, so hopefully it will be easy on their eyes.  From their website:

If you notice a slight salt taste in our pools it is because they are state-of-the-art! We brought these systems in from Australia. We add salt to the pool, raising the salinity to 4500 ppm (the human tear is 8000 ppm). Then we run the salt water through a low voltage electrical charge in the backroom that converts the salt (NaCl) water into natural chlorine. We never have to add harsh chemicals to these pools.

Alex.  Now, Alex is constantly doing something new!!  Can you believe the little guy turns one year old on April 1st?!  Just a couple weeks away!  (*sniff, sob, sniff*)
He's really mastered climbing on our chairs now.  One of his favorite pastimes is climbing up the front room chair, climbing over to the couch, sliding down feet first off the couch, and starting the whole rotation over.  He'll do it for a good half hour before he gets bored!  He loves to climb up onto the computer chairs and see what treasures he can find up on the desks.  And last, but not least, he figured out the dining room chairs.  For a couple days, we got away with just making sure the chairs were pushed in after we were done using them.  Now, though, if he's feeling really determined, he will pull the chair out, and then climb up on top.  And of course, the table is easy pickin's after that.  And what toddler in his right mind wouldn't go ahead and climb up on top of the table if he already got as far as the top of the chair?  So, nothing is safe anymore.  What an adventure...

 A couple other fun, random things that Alex has done:  He really likes to "play" the drums from Guitar Hero:

Alex also likes to take the stairs out of Melinda's dollhouse, and then crawl right on into the bottom floor.  Like he's Clifford the Big Red Dog, or something.  ;)

 

You think we're done yet?  Not a chance!  Alex also has started to figure out the fun little pop-up toy that seems to be a standard in every home, and has certainly been in ours since the early days of Melinda:

And, being such a busy boy, it's always nice to crash on a cuddly Daddy at the end of the day:

 

Alex has been mimicking for a long while now... but we just hit a pretty major first.  We've had a letter Z and letter Z words hanging up on the wall for a couple weeks now, and Jacob and Melinda like to point at them and name them.  The other night, I took Alex near the wall, and he started pointing at the pictuers, too.  So I told him the names of each one.  Pretty soon, he was saying the "zzzzzz" sound right along with me, and clearly proud of himself.  The next night, which was last night, we did it again, and he said "zzzzz" even better than before.  And when we went and sat back down with daddy, we pointed to me, saying "Mama".  Pointed to Jesse, saying "Dada".  Pointed to Alex, saying "Alex".  He paid very close attention, clearly interested in this new thing.  We repeated it a few times.  Then, he pointed just like we had been doing, right on Jesse's chest, and very clearly said "dada"!!!  Of course, then he tried to call me "dada", but didn't sound as sure about it.  But I think we can call that his first word, can't we?  (And, for the record, he doesn't really say "mmm" sounds yet, so I don't think "mama" will happen anytime soon.)

This next thing is not so much completely kid-specific, but I still wanted to include it.  We had a few friends over for a playdate yesterday.  I had wanted to do a playdate this Tuesday anyway, but when I saw it was also St. Patrick's Day, we (okay, fine: I) decided to make it a little bit fun, too.  We ran to the store and got some green lei's and some shamrocks (which we hung on the walls), and some St. Patrick's Day plates.  We set out every green food we could manage:  Sliced green apples, cut up broccoli, celery, cucumbers, pickles, green grapes... I would have done sugar snap peas, too, but they looked awful and wilted at the store.  I also made little "rainbows on a stick":

 

And the fun part: Green juice.  I can't remember clearly whether this is something I found a couple years ago on the internet, or if maybe Jesse's mom, Nedra, gave the idea to me.  But basically, it's spinach and apple juice.  Put enough apple juice into the blender to provide liquid, add a whole bag of baby spinach, and blend it all together.  Then, put it all through a strainer, leaving out the really thick bits of spinach, add in the rest of the apple juice, and you're left with a very green apple juice with a surprisingly enjoyable and refreshing spinach flavor.  We gave this to Melinda to drink when she'd get constipated.  But it seemed like it would be fun to enjoy on St. Patrick's Day, too, so I added it to the menu for our playgroup.  :)

 

 

And the playgroup was really fun.  A nice full house, with a total of 9 kids and 4 of us adults.  All those yummy fruits and vegetables were plowed right through.  And when the veggies were gone, Melinda wanted more and requested some carrots and dip.  Of course, she was also given the option of extra bug-shaped graham crackers that our friend brought along.  Can you believe she declined that in favor of the carrots?  :)  Jacob, in the meantime, was working hard to remind me how hard 3-year-olds are.  I guess I had forgotten.  But when he went from perfectly fine to throwing a big ol' giant fit over bike-sharing issues, I exclaimed in exasperation, "Are all three-year-olds like this?!?  Because I seriously can't remember!"  And, in unison, all my friends piped in with a hearty "YES!"  Sigh.  I guess that means I get to do this all over again in a couple years with Alex.  Ugh.

We continued our green fun for dinner:  We had a soup that included green onions and spinach, followed by a leek/spinach/broccoli quiche.  Which was very yummy, by the way.  Although now I'm starting to wonder if maybe the kids wouldn't have enjoyed some corned beef and cabbage.... oh well.  The all-green-all-day thing was fun, too.  :)