Maggie's Journal

It’s all ready been a very hot summer and it’s just the end of June! We’ve been keeping busy and having a good summer though.

Brenden started a class at the area rec center a few weeks ago called “fundamentals of preschool”. He seemed to be getting bored at home and had started to ask someone to play with him every 5 minutes. Even when we were playing with him. I also wanted to make sure there wouldn’t be behavior problems for when he starts preschool in the fall. I wasn’t entirely convinced he could sit still and follow directions. He’s been doing amazingly though and in just three weeks has learned so much. He’s got 3 weeks left and I think he’ll be sad when the class ends. He’s actually excited to get up and go every Monday and Wednesday.

On Friday’s I’ve been sending both kids to mother’s day out at the place Brenden’s been going to for 2 years now. It’s a good chance for them to run off some energy and play with other kids. I think Emily especially likes the change of scenery.

Brenden always wants to stay home and play with his toys on the in between days. He’s very much like his mamma. While it’s nice to get out and see friends, he needs his time at home too.

Emily is in the stage where so much personality is coming out now. She’s a stinker. Really sweet and cuddly and easy going. Most of the time. But man she has a temper and she’s stubborn. Actually, that applies to both kids. Brenden is very much a drama king and extremely sensitive. He can cry or get mad at the drop of hat. Emily usually is mad about food or sleep.

Brenden turned 4 at the end of last month. To celebrate on his actual birthday we took the kids to Chuck E Cheese for dinner and play time. Brenden had been wanting to go there for some time and he thoroughly enjoyed his first visit. There was even a little area that Emily could play in too. We stayed out past their bedtime and since Brenden ran for 2 hours straight, we had two very tired kids.

The next day was his outerspace themed party. He had been telling me all year he wanted a WallE cake from Target so that’s what he got. He had fun having all his friends over to play. He was excited about his presents and wanted them out of the packages right away. We also had to take his new bike out for a test walk right after his friends had gone. Oh, what’s that? You noticed I said walk? He got happily on right away with his helmet looking all set to go. But when he tried to peddle it was a little confusing for him. He was given a trike that didn’t have peddles when he was little and we never got him anything with them on it until this bike. So he’s still got to learn how to do that. After trying for a few minutes, he decided it would just be better to push the bike for now. It’s currently still in the house and he gets on it every day.

At his checkup he passed his hearing and vision tests and seems to be doing fine. He was very unhappy about getting 4 shots in the legs. He cried so hard he scared Emily who then started crying too.

His stats:
Height: 41 inches (64%)
Weight: 41.4 lbs (86%)

He’s growing more and more independent by the day, wanting to try to do more things by himself. And he is very much the talker.

We have a huge jar of pennies in our room that Brenden likes to dump out and play with whenever he comes in. Today he’d dumped them all out and then abandoned them to watch a movie. When Emily came into the room she stood in the pile of pennies and threw them everywhere. Brenden got mad at her and told her, ” Stop Emily. It’s not a circus!” Most days I have to disagree with him, but it made me laugh.

When we first started going to Hands Down support group meetings at Scottish Rite, someone asked what age the kids would become aware their hands were different. Several parents answered that it would be around age 4. Patrick and I thought this was crazy late. Brenden always played with his hands and he is so observant. It just seemed like he got it already. But as we are quickly approaching 4 (next week, yikes!), his level of awareness about his hand has really changed. He’s mentioned sweetly and not at all sadly several times that he wished he had two big hands.

Last week there started to be a lot of comments about not being able to do things because he didn’t have two hands. After listening for nearly 4 years to other parents say their kids never say they can’t do something, I was a little surprised to be hearing this. But the group had also given me the confidence to realize there were ways around this. I quickly told him oh yes you can do it. Then I spent a day or two taping cut up toilet paper rolls to things like pom poms, drum sticks and a jump rope. The drums were the first thing I “fixed” for him and he just couldn’t have been any prouder of himself drumming with two hands. Emily and I had to join in him in a marching band and then later that day the band was reformed with Patrick in my place.

So we’ll get through it all just fine, but for a moment there I remembered this can be hard.

Emily is getting to be such a big girl. She cruised for about 6 months before finally decided to walk a couple of weeks ago. Now she is bravely taking more and more steps everyday. I think she likes that if she walks, it’s easier to carry stuff with her.

Grandma and Grandpa taught her to sing Rollin’ on a River and roll her arms. She’s eager to try and repeat words when she hears them, but when she wants something she just points and screams. She loves to laugh at her brother and when he’s not in the room she calls for him by name. She still wakes up at least once most nights, but she goes to bed so easily I almost don’t mind. Unless of course she isn’t in her own bed and then she puts up a huge fight. But still, a nice contrast to little Mr. I can stay awake in my bed until 11:00 p.m. before I have to give into sleep.

She plays has a baby doll she loves and she gets excited and loves on it when ever she sees it. She like to put the toys coins in the toy piggy bank and the pretend cookies in the toy cookie jar. And she also like whatever Brenden is playing with.

The Stats:
Weight: 21.8 lbs (33%)
Length: 31 inches (67%)

We had a low-key Easter today. We’ve been running around like crazy so we decided to just have a slow weekend. The kids were excited to wake up and find the Easter Bunny had come. But I did get to wondering how kids are ever supposed to feel safe at night when they think all these people come in the middle of the night. I mean, Santa, the Easter Bunny, the tooth fairy (which for some reason Brenden has been talking a lot about lately), who else is coming in?

She makes a cute bunny.

She figured out how to open and eat her chocolate bunny all by herself.

Making sure he got everything out of the basket.

Checking out Brenden's loot.

It was all Brenden's idea to put the ears on the dogs.

Sam is humiliated.

Ok, no music really, just trying to be funny. We got around 9 inches of snow on Thursday and Friday and all Brenden wanted to do was play in it. So we made several trips out and even took Emily one time. I was fortunate enough to have been given a snow suit for her, which at the time I thought we’d never use.

Brenden was actually a pretty good boy this week. He’s been sweet with lots of, “you’re the best mommy in the whole world!” And as long as we haven’t had to go anywhere and his sister isn’t taking his toys he’s been pretty agreeable. Monday night he was getting a bit sassy as we refer to it around here and so I decided we’d make a pizza. He loved helping put the toppings on the ready made crust. And though he at first did not like that I had bought mini pepperoni instead of the regular size, about half way through the bag he decided they’d be ok on the pizza.

He’s decided he doesn’t like to have his picture taken after nearly four years of having a camera in his face all the time! So I was very happy to snap this random picture:

Emily has really been growing and changing lately. She is in some ways a much easier baby then Brenden was but in some ways so much harder. She gets in to all the things he never even thought about. She plays in the toilet. She gets things out of the trash. She puts EVERYTHING in her mouth. She opens cabinets and gets cleaners out. But she loves to laugh and smile and as long as she isn’t upset she plays very quietly. But watch out for those lungs if she is upset about something. Luckily, that really only happens if something is hurting her.

Getting closer to a bow.

I’ve been working on taking pictures of the kids so I can enter them in the Regis and Kelly baby contest. No, I don’t want them to be models, but it’d be fun to see them on the cover of a magazine and it’d be great to have the money for college. Here are two cute ones of Emily today.

Be sure to click on the pictures so you can see them better.

He’s wearing my shoes.

You might notice there is a little recurring theme of Emily in chairs in recent posts. She working hard on climbing up in the chairs herself but can’t do it yet. But when I put her in the chair she seems so proud to be there. She just sits and smiles and kicks her feet.

The day before her birthday. She is so proud of herself for being able to get into Brenden's chair.

Stats:
Weight: 20 lbs 8.8 oz (41%)
Length: 29 in (46%)
Head: 17 3/4 (50%)

She got four shots and took those much better than her brother who got the h1n1 mist in his nose and freaked out!

After having a blowout of a 1st birthday party for Brenden, we decided to go low key for Emily’s big day. They say the party is for the parents at this age and since we’ve already had ours, we skipped it this time around. So I hope they are right about that and that Emily doesn’t some day say she hates us ’cause we didn’t have a big party!

Hard to tell but it's an E and then 1 candle on the cake. Brenden wasn't impressed. He thought there should be a number 1 candle.

Looks like it's Brenden's birthday doesn't it?

This man needs a 12 step program.

In case you can’t tell he’s using his laptop and the internet on his iphone at the same time.

Emily was excited to be driving in this car cart. All of the sudden she’s just big enough to do so much more. Both kids were in awe of all the blow up displays that Lowe’s had. 3 aisles worth. Who knew going in for a new kitchen faucet would be so exciting.

Last week we went to the park. The weather was beautiful all week and I was disappointed in myself that we hadn’t been at the park every day. But we all played hard to try and make up for it.

Brenden always looks at the rock wall and when I offer to help him climb it he moves on to something else. He’s climbed down it a little in the past, but never up it. I was watching Emily and when I looked back at him he’d climbed up. Quickly. I was so proud of him 1) because he’s never attempted it before and 2) because I’ve seen older kids with both hands need help with it.

He also climbed this for the first time:

And Emily immensely enjoyed her first time in a park swing. Love her faced turned up to the sun.

I swear she climbed in on her own. And when I saw her in there I told Brenden. While I went to get the camera, he shut her in, but she didn’t mind.

She is a very good eater. She wants to be independent and tries to take the spoon every time. She always ends up such a mess.

I don’t think to open the front door very often. I think I also avoid it because the dogs will bark at anything they see and it kind of drives me crazy. But it’s very nice to have the sunshine come in and the kids always enjoy it.

He wanted to be able to play trains by everyone else so we took the table off its stand and moved it out into the living room. No longer content to be confined to the table, he’s begun building tracks from one end of the living room to the other.

I wanted to get a picture of him watching tv because he was so intent but when he saw the camera, this is the look I got.

I won’t take naked shots of the boy, but I loved how focused he was on playing in the tub.

One night when Brenden was supposed to be asleep I walked by his room on my way to bed. I found him like this, with his book propped up on his knees reading.