Naked Spiders

Morgan and I love to sing the Itsy Bitsy Spider song. We sing this over and over with all the actions.

The other day we were outside and the sun was shining, after days of rain.

I said to Morgan “And what happens when the sun comes out?”

Of course the correct answer, and the one I was expecting is “Out came the sunshine and dried up all the rain…”

Well Miss Morgan replies, “We go outside and get naked!!”

So there, all you hopeful bare naked spiders!

Morgan is talking so well now, and in such a short time, we are totally blown away with her verbiage. I asked her last week what her Mom might be doing.

With all her acting and mannerisms she replied that her Mom was at home. I said, and “what is Mom doing at home?”

With a huge sigh and dramatic rolling of eyes she replied that “Mom is cleaning up my room.”

“Why?” I asked innocently.

With much more eye rolling and huffing she declared “Cause it is a MESS!”

So there Beth. You know you are most appreciated in time for Mother’s Day.”

Whining Children

The other day Beth was taking trying to take a time out from the girls.

She was sitting with a glass of her favorite white wine when Morgan came up to her insisting that she get some of whatever mommy was drinking.

So thinking that she would teach her daughter a sharp lesson, she gave the glass of wine to Morgan.

Morgan took a good gulp…

…swirled it around in her mouth, and then swallowed it down.

She thought about it for a good 3 or 4 seconds before declaring, “Oh Yum!“.

Easter 2012

It’s only been a few weeks since our last update, but it feels like ages have elapsed.

Morgan is now a very independent little girl that is three going on thirteen, complete with attitude.

The other day I said, “Morgan, could you please go put on some pants?”.

She turned and said, “Maybe” long pause, “Maybe Not”.

…

She has to brush her teeth by herself (we still have a turn, but she’s quite insistent that it is her job), she has had us change all the doorknobs in the house so she can more readily open them (we agreed, as this allows her easier access to the bathroom at night), and she’s quite the little helper in the kitchen (Beth and her make all sorts of wonderful creations).

She is also 100% certain about the things she likes and wants.

Grandma asked her what she wants for her birthday and she said, “cake, outside”.  When we followed up and asked what kind of cake, she said, “a kitty cat cake”.

Morgan is now counting to 3, can spot many letters of the alphabet, and knows most of the animals (and their sounds) in her books.

She can now carry on a pretty complicated conversation, but still signs many of her basic words.  I asked her to say thank you to Grandma the other day and she didn’t do it.  I said, “Morgan, how do you say thank you”.  Without skipping a beat she turned and said, “with my hands”.

Her imagination is starting to kick in big time.  Every night we sing a little song that we invent each night.  She directs me to what I’m supposed to sing about and then I try and rhyme something together (sometimes even successfully).  Lately she’s been mixing and matching all sorts of weird things and then starts laughing before I even begin, because she knows it’s just silly.

Morgan is also an engineer in training.  We have these bath ducks that have little LED’s in them that blink away when they contact water.  Her green duck ran “out of juice”.  Morgan asked me to help her open her blue duck (which I did) and then she proceeded to “get the guts” from the blue duck and put them into the green duck so that it works again.  Fricking cool!

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Charlotte is now baby running around the house.  She can say “momma” and “dadda” and we are pretty sure “bath”.

She has her sister’s infatuation with the fountain, and just loves the water.  She is [knock on wood] sleeping better but seems to be having a heck of a time with her teeth still.

She just howls when we brush her teeth, but we think that might not be a pained sound but just a “I don’t like this” sound.

Charlotte is such a loving girl.  She snuggles into all her stuffed animals and if you pick her up she’ll just curl right into your arm and neck.

She’s even started giving little kisses.  Wet kisses.  If you ask her to if you can give her a kiss she’ll swoop right in and either pucker her lips or give you the crown of her head to kiss.  You never know which one you’ll get until your lips press against soft wet lips or a your teeth break against her hard head.

And now she’s trained her sister to do the same trick.  *sigh*

Charlotte is also REALLY big into piecing things together.  She loves her toy blocks and stacks them from one tower to another.  She loves putting the blocks away into containers.  Today she was sitting in the recycling and was finding the old milk lids and placing them on the old milk containers.  That’s tough stuff to do.

And today when we did our Easter Egg Hunt, I found that any place that Charlotte had found an egg, she had gone back and placed a rock from the fountain in it’s place.   Adorable.

…

We’ve been doing a ton of work around the house and the girls have been busy doing their best to destroy it.

Beth and the girls are putting in a garden this year (this will hopefully be our first year without deer).

We’ve had a good Easter this year, with the girls being mostly good almost tolerable.

Happy Easter 2012!

Here are some shots from March, my Dad’s birthday, and Easter:

Sister Love: Hot Buns

Beth has been having a pretty tough time of it with these two.  Charlotte’s been having a rough time sleeping (or rather, she’s been waking up at 5 and will not stay still (or quiet)).

Morgan’s 2 going on 16 and is a constant hand full.

But there are still sweet moments that make you smile.  Like this morning, I had warmed up some dinner rolls for the girls to snack on for breakfast.

I gave each of them a roll and as I was making my coffee I watched Morgan go to take a bite of her bun…

She thought the buns were too hot so she  jumped across the little kids table and snatched up Charlotte’s bun saying “No Guggy Hot!“.

Charlotte started to cry and grab for her bun but Morgan kept a hand on her and kept her back.

Charlotte started to really let loose so Morgan broke off a piece of her own bun, blew on it real quick and then handed that to Charlotte.

As Charlotte was munching away (somewhat content), Morgan continued to blow on Charlotte’s bun… when it was cool she handed it back with a “Guggy bun not hot”.

She sat down and continued on with her own bun.

My coffee was ready and the day got under way.

Morgan at 2.5

Morgan can say almost every word you ask her to repeat.

She knows her basic colours, can count to 5 and can sing Happy Day Guggy.

She still signs ‘thank you’ but verbalizes most other words.

She is totally day potty trained and now likes to sit on the big toilet. Today Morgan and Ashaya played on the computer and with the big exercise ball.

Auntie Berta came and we made playdough animals, worms, and cookies, and danced.

1 Year

We had Morgan for half a day today and we all were grieving the shortness of her stay.

It  has been one year since she came to stay with us one day a week.  What did we ever do without her visits?  Charlotte (Guggy) is now almost one year old.  Morgan is very protective and loving of her little sister.

We can’t wait to have Charlotte on Wednesday’s and Morgan on Friday’s. [editors note: ok, maybe this last bit was added by me]

Counting Children

Don’t teach your children to count.

Because if you do, then they take that knowledge and turn it against you.

Over the weekend, Morgan asked for a cookie.

I said you get one and held up a single finger.

She held up three fingers and said “three?”.

I said, “one“, with firmness in my voice.

She held up two fingers, tilted her head and blinked her eyes, and said, “two?”.

The rotten child got two cookies.

Water, Water, Everywhere

We have had rains of Biblical proportions. Water, water everywhere.

Our back creek ditch is running with lovely, rippling rills of cold, clean water.

Miss Morgan discovered this delight, and proceeded to float her boats down this children’s dream of watery amplitude. Her boots filled with water, her hands and cheeks turned bright red – still she wouldn’t give up her nautical pursuits.

She laughed so hard and worked so relentlessly that the boats seemed to float away on her glee. I think she was glad to get into dry clothes and have a nice warm snack before nap time today.

Oh Yeah!

The other day I was picking Morgan up from my Mom’s .

She had run down the stairs and was playing with the stuffed bears on the bench on their landing.

While we were talking she reached up and turned off the lights to the entry area.

She makes this amazing impersonation of Bruce from Family Guy: “Oh Nooooo” Bruce, Oh No

She then got this big grin on her face and flicked the lights back on with a classic Cool-Aid Man “Oh Yeahhh” Cool Aid Man, Oh Yeah

Ass Over

I slipped on the stairs this weekend and darn near took a tumble.

Beth asked what happened and I said, “I’m not sure, but I almost went ass-over-tea-kettle.”

Morgan poked her head around the corner and said, “no no daddy, t e a c u p“

Walking and Talking

So these kids are just growing in leaps and bounds.

The big news: Charlotte has taken her first steps!  She’s 10.5 months and starting to take those first steps away from whatever she is holding onto.

And she is just loving it!

This new found mobility combined with her tummy finally settling down has made for one happy baby =)

And she’s even started to say “da da”  – wow!

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Morgan’s speech has continued to develop and she is now able to communicate some pretty complex thoughts and ideas.  She still uses a really interesting blend of speech and sign language… but her meaning is almost always understood.

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Grandma Lehmann stopped by on Sunday with a special treat for the girls… a sled!

We took turns pulling them around the yard and the girls just loved it… With more snow on the way, I’m sure we’ll be getting our exercise.

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Beth took the girls to strong start last week, and although they had a lot of fun, they also brought back the inevitable cold.  The girls seem to have gotten over their sniffles, but mom and dad are feeling pretty hang dog.

Beth has it the hardest, as she has early morning with Charlotte and a long day of chasing two VERY active kids…queue the scowl, mom =)

Guggy Happy

Morgan’s attachment and dedication to her baby sister is heart warming.

Her pictures, cards, playdough; her whole being is about Guggy.  If you ask her about her sister she will say “Guggy happy.”  That seems to be more important than – Morgan happy.

TeamWork

Morgan and Charlotte have recently become quite the amazing duo.  They’ve discovered that they can accomplish much more working as a team, then they could hope to achieve by themselves.

During the Holidays,  I had a moment to sit and quietly read the newspaper.  Beth had taken the chance to slip away for a shower.

I think the girls had forgotten I was there because no sooner had the shower started than Charlotte scuttled into the pantry.  She slipped into this small nook where Beth keeps the microwavable popcorn.  She managed to pull the box out and grab a bag of popcorn.

With a HUGE grin on her face, she handed it to Morgan who had pulled over a chair and was standing ready at the microwave.  She popped the door open on the microwave, tossed in the bag, closed the door, and was hitting the popcorn button when I stepped in.  They both looked immensely pleased with themselves.

December 2011

December has come and gone in a wink of an eye and a twinkle of a nose.

We’ve been so incredibly busy with Kid Development that it’s hard to summarize all that has been happening.

Morgan hasn’t stopped growing and continues to eat as if she were a 13 year old boy.  She is skinny as a reed, but man, is she TALL (38+ inches for a 2.5 year old).  She is mostly day-time potty trained and seems to get a real pride from her skills =)  Beth made her cloth diapers with velcro snaps for her dolls and she is continually putting on their diapers, then declaring “wet bum”, taking off the diapers and then taking the dolls to the potty.

Her vocabulary has just exploded with development.  Although we’ve been eagerly awaiting this advancement, it has still taken us by surprise with how fast she is progressing.  The number of words she can say, the number of words she can combine into sentences, and the clarity of her speech is increasing daily.

Morgan has also stopped using much of her sign language.  We still have an interesting blend of spoken words and hand communication, but it is definitely leaning more towards speech every day.  She continues to teach her sister MSL (Morgan Sign Language).

Charlotte – oh boy, where to begin.  She has been crawling since mid-November, but now she is just flying down the halls.  She has mastered going up stairs and has some pretty good success on going down them.  She has also just zoomed through crawling to start cruising (9 months) and is just doing amazing.  She can reach just about anything she puts her mind to… and if she can’t reach, she gets her sister to fetch it for her.

When she is concentrating on something she can free-stand for about 10 seconds.

Charlotte is still having a lot of difficulty with her teething… which is affecting her sleep… which is affecting her mom’s sleep… which is pretty disrupting to the household.

When she gets her sleep, she is so happy and ready with smiles and the house is completely transformed… but this doesn’t happen too often =|

She has also taught her sister that if she makes this screeching noise she gets attention.  So Morgan has started screeching.  When they both get going – yikes!

We bought them a trampoline for Christmas – we have visions of sticking them out there first thing in the morning, leaving some food and water out for them, and then letting them back in the hosue sometime around bed time.  Right now Charlotte loves it but Morgan is a little reluctant to go on by herself… which is odd since she loves her cousins’ trampolines.

As the temperature increases, this should be a fun activity for them.  They now have a fenced front yard, a trampoline, and a wonderful new bubble machine from Grandma and Grandpa Lehmann.  Should be a kids dream yard!

For Christmas, we headed to Auntie Tracey’s for a wonderful get together.  Both Beth and I were pretty out of it as Charlotte hadn’t stopped screaming in about 10 months, including every second of the car ride to her house.  We were going to give her to someone to hold so that Beth could get some hands free time, but that wasn’t to be.  She just wants her mommy.  Wonderful child, but I cannot wait for these teeth to settle down.  (She has her two front bottom teeth, and about 3 on the way).  Morgan had a great time with her cousins.  They are so good with her.

And of course, the children were spoiled this year.  They got some of the nicest clothes you could imagine… and wonderful toys that they just love to share back and forth.  Charlotte is MUCH more into toys than Morgan ever was.

And the house is a mess =)   Our TV cycles through our photo library when it isn’t in use (think screensaver) and every once in a while a picture will come up that shows our house pre-children.  And Beth and I just stand there mesmerized by how clean and orderly things are.  We just sigh and stand there transfixed =)

New Years was fairly uneventful for us (bed at 10, iPod alerted me at midnight, Beth is in crash mode getting ready for her 4 am wake-up call).  Morgan had a strange melt-down but we fixed that up with a wonderful new invention: warm milk with a half spoon of hot chocolate mix…

Happy New Year to All!

Running

Noisy Toys

Riding