Our Own Brand of Busy

I would say we've been busy lately but busy has a weird definition in a house with a toddler and an infant.  We have been busy:  trying to go potty in the bathroom, learning how to eat solids, and learning that every color isn't "red" but it isn't the kind of busy that sounds very exciting to people who actually leave their house on a daily basis.  Be that as it may, it is the kind of busy that creates a lot of laundry.

What we've been up to:

Little R has been busy suddenly looking older.  When did she turn into a kid instead of a toddler?

Sweet Z has been busy sorting through the toys we dump on his lap.  Now that he can sit up with some degree of confidence Big R and I have made the progressive parenting decision to sit him on the floor and surround him with as much stuff as possible in the hopes that he will be entertained for more than 5 minutes.

 Little R is not a climber and wasn't able to get onto our chairs or couches.  Until yesterday when I was doing the dishes after dinner and found her sitting here like this.  I guess she figured it out.  She couldn't look more smug about it, could she?

She has also been taking an active interest in taking care of her Naked Babies.  All of them.  This here is definitely a result of her watching us feed Sweet Z solids this week.

Sweet Z  has been busy trying to eat his own fist.  He'll figure out how to get the whole thing in his mouth by the end of the week, I'm sure.   Also, real men don't wear shirts.  Even in Fargo when the temperature hasn't entered the double digits in days.

Oh, and as mentioned above, Sweet Z has been eating solids.  They are usually received better than this, thankfully.  In fact he is eating his way through all of the Stage 1 foods with a real vigor which definitely assuages our fears that we are incapable of raising a child who eats vegetables.

We're Not Rollers Around Here

I thought it was just a quirk of hers when Little R didn't roll.  She was a back sleeper who hated tummy time and I figured it was probably just my inability to enforce the APA suggested time on her stomach that kept her from every bothering to figure out how to roll forward or back.

Fastforward two years to Sweet Z who is now just about to turn 6 months old.  He, too, doesn't roll.  So now I'm thinking maybe it is genetic.  Although, I never enforced tummy time with him, either.  Nature versus Nurture then.  I should probably reevaluate my relationship with the standard protocol for helping your children reach basic milestones.

We do get this far but then that arm that is stuck underneath him becomes too much of an obstacle and he just hangs out like that.  Until I feel bad and pick him up.  Usually about 45 seconds after he shows any signs of distress.

Taunting him with the toys is starting to become more effective, I'll admit.  At least now he bangs the ground in front of him until he is able to move the blanket close enough to reach the toys.  Muscle strengthening it is not but he is going to be a champion problem solver.

We can now safely say he sits on his own.  Which does have a tendency to make the jungle less effective.  No one likes to have those butterflies banging them in the head all day.

4am

Since we've returned from our Christmas trip to England we have been stuck in a bit of a cycle.  A wake up at 4am cycle, to be specific.  It isn't the worst jet lag ever.  At least not in the traditional sense.  It is the perfect storm of unfortunate events; Little R getting sick, Sweet Z getting sick, weather radios alerting us to snowstorms we already knew about, that kind of thing. It all has come together to convince CleverDog that this is our new routine.  Which is why she took it upon herself to run around our bed this at 4am when we were, for the first time in over a week, blissfully unaware that 4am had arrived.

There are benefits to waking up so early.  You realize the things that you can get done when half the day seems to have passed before most Fargoans have put on their Sunday best and their Canadian Goose Down as they head out to church in the sub zero temps.  In our house we've already had too many cups of coffee and planned ahead so we are able to structure our day to justify a level of productivity that includes cleaning the bathroom and making apple pie but still allows for a decent amount of time for naps and lounging on the couch with a good book.

Perhaps the kids are just itching for some athletic activity as they seem to think that 4am is a good time to run laps around the kitchen.  I give them thumbs up for the teamwork, if nothing else.

After some careful consideration and some New Years Resolutions regarding the amount of time spent on the iPad, not to mention realizing that there is more to say about the kids than I care to put into the little blurb boxes on Facebook, I decided to move pictures and daily anecdotes to my own blog. I'm not sure at this time whether it will evolve into anything more than a place to record our daily wanderings but we'll see how this goes in lieu of other forms of social media.