…apparently isn’t fond of playdough.

Its a rainy day, so I got out the playdough this morning.

Madeline says

“ooooooh play dough…I eat it.  mmmmm. I hungry”

And proceeds to take a big bite out of the blue hunk of playdough that I gave her.

Apparently she didn’t like the taste because she spit it back out and said

“ew.  I no eat it.  Yucky”

In the last 3 minutes……my dear Madeline has:

1. Pinched me (in the inner thigh…can you say ouch!)
2. Pinched her sister
3. Yelled at me because I won’t turn on Diego
4. Put her stuffed giraffe in the air conditioning return (well, tried to…..”SQUISHHHHHH SQUISHHHH”)
5. Knocked the keyboard off the computer desk
6. Tried to swallow a cap from a bottle of water
7. Wrote on my leg with a pen. (where she found that I have no idea)
8. Knocked over the toy shelf.

I think it’s time to go outside or run an errand or something.

Instead of writing an incredibly boring narrative trying to explain where the heck we’ve been in the last 2 weeks, I thought I’d share it via photos.

Madeline has a BIG drink. (don’t worry friends, it’s water)

Amanda rocked the house as Gabriella Montez in High School Musical

“Mommy, I’m doing my ‘nastics’ in here.  Is this too dangerous for Madeline?”

(well at least she asked)

Cookie visits!  We have a great time, with the exception of the worst concert ever (at least the people sitting in front of us were nice).  He taught Claire how to ride a bike and we only had a teensy bit of medical drama (everyone is fine!)

I also finished 2 knitting project which I can’t post here until a reader receives them.

We’re back with a vengeance now!

…in the other room.  I was doing dishes and the girls were in the family room.  Since we weren’t home for the majority of the day, I never did open the blinds.

Usually, quiet is a bad thing.  I peeked around the corner and saw this:

I asked Claire what they were doing and she said “playing nap time”.

Cool.

The next time you are 19 months old and attempt to climb on the kitchen table and eat a marker cap and squish a half empty Diet Coke can….please wear the appropriate safety equipment.

OK yes before you call Child protective, the camera was in my hand because I was taking pictures of her in the helmet. :)  I was arms reach from her when she climbed on the table.

….crayons and play-dough are non-toxic.

Let’s just leave it at that.

Actually when Madeline was eating the playdough, she took a bite and said EWWWW Ball, and then threw it all off her high chair tray.  Something tells me she’s not the artist of the family.

I’ve been struggling with what activities to do with Claire that stimulate her little mind . She really thrives on structure and being that she’s been in child care/preschool her entire life, this being home with mom routine just isn’t working for her. So we’ve started to do a specialized “learning activity” every day during Madeline’s nap. A homeschooler friend recommended the book Teach Your Children To Read in 100 Easy Lessons. The name of the book is pretty cheesy but the content is great. We’ve been doing lessons this week and Claire is taking really well to it. It’s a phonics based approach, which is a challenge for me to teach since I was never very good at phonics. Anyway, 5 lessons down and she knows the sounds for M, A, S and can recognize them in words and can associate them together….like…am, as, ma. Pretty cool.

This was our art activity for the morning. And now we have a lovely gallery in our sunroom of her very prolific art work.

On the Madeline front…it turns out her saying “A Potty” all the time really is a request to go to the potty. Last night she said it about 80 times, I checked her diaper and it was dry, and I put her on the potty….and she went! Claire and I did a happy dance for her in the bathroom. She went a little again this morning before her bath. Pretty cool. I wonder if this is the beginning of potty learning for her….

No matter where we are, everyone comments on how big Madeline is.  Most people think that she’s at least 2 and are usually shocked when I tell them that she’s just 18 months old.

At her 15 month appointment she was 32 inches tall.  Today at her 18 month, she was measured at a whopping 35 inches tall and 27 pounds. That makes her off the charts in height and in the 90th percentile for weight.  If she continues at this growth rate, and the whole “take your height at 2 years old multiply it by two and it’s your adult height” thing is true, she will be WAY over 6 feet tall.

Jonathan and I are both on the tall side — I’m 5′7 and he’s 6′2, and we both have height in our families (I have two female cousins that are over 6 feet tall and Jonathan is the shortest of his male cousins).  Maybe we should start investing in private basketball coaching lessons now.

…..everytime I get the children clean, they do something to get themselves dirty almost immediately?

I gave the girls a bath this morning.  Then we had breakfast…scrambled eggs…one of their favorites. (Yes I remembered to put butter in the pan Keith).  I go to pop some more toast in the toaster and I hear “HAT. HAT”  which only means one thing…Madeline is wearing *something* as a hat.  I turned around and the entire plate of scrambie eggs is on top of her still wet and very clean hair.  Ugh.

I think I combed out most of it.  The doctor will just have to deal with a kid with eggs in her hair at her doctor’s appointment.  I guess she gets another bath after naptime.

I’m really not sure which one of them is the teacher, but I think this a good first lesson.

Claire would like to write her name:  CLAIRE

……that I get to do with the girls now that I’m home. The mall. I think I’ve been to the mall more times in the last 3 weeks than I’ve been the rest of the year. It’s just a nice, quiet place to take the girls in the morning when I don’t feel like cleaning up the playroom with them or getting out the playdough.

Claire really needed a haircut, so we stopped by Great Clips and hit the grocery store this morning for a few things for dinner. Then I thought, well…its deceptively cold outside, and the girls really want to play, so we took a trip to the play area at the mall. They have so much fun there and it’s nice and clean and never very crowded on a weekday morning. Good times!

Oh and just in case you’re wondering, tonight we’re having Bruschetta Chicken Bake - a recipe that my friend Michelle Huber brought over to us when Claire was born and we’ve made it often! It’s so easy I haven’t been able to screw it up yet.

Yeah I wrote this whole post without realizing that Jonathan wrote an entire post on this already. Oh well. My version is funny and cute too.

On Sunday afternoon, the girls were playing in the dining room playroom and Claire started yelling about Daddy and a cat. The child has a very active imagination, so I just assumed that she was making something up. Then Jonathan, who was working outside, came to the deck doors, opened them (just slightly) and told me to go get some food for the cat.

Food for the cat? We don’t have cats. We don’t have cats because I’m extremely allergic to the little fur balls and (secretly) I think they’re creepy. Jonathan however, LOVES cats. Always had cats growing up. (I’ve had this hunch that if I wasn’t around for some reason, the first thing he would do was get a cat)

I look out the window and there is an admittedly adorable black and white cat all loving on Jonathan. He’s petting it. I can hear the purring through the window.

I say, “if we feed the cat it will come back”. Claire is like…”Mommy, he’s so hungry, you need to give him the food”. Then she proceeds to NAME the cat that’s on our deck. (His/Her name is Spots in case you were curious). Jonathan gives me the boo boo lip, so I take a can of tuna out, put it on an old plate and hand it to him outside.

Grumble grumble grumble

The cat devours the food. I mean in record time. Kinda like Madeline eating anything.

So here we are…Jonathan’s outside with the cat and the lawn, Claire and Madeline and I are watching him through the doors. Madeline is pointing at the cat and screaming her terrified little head off and Claire is telling me the story of the cat’s life (”the kitty is so hungry because it lost its mommy and didn’t get any food today. and if we don’t feed it it’s going to be bumped over by a car and squished like a bug“)

After confirming with the neighbor that the cat is a stray but has been living in the neighbor’s 3 season porch (and they’ve been feeding it!), and after about 20 minutes of fun, the cat takes off.

Madeline, who has been previously pointing at the cat and screaming her little head off, now stands at the back door to the deck says “where puppy?” Over and over and over. She walks through the house the rest of the day, looks out the windows by the front door and says “where puppy go”.

I’m so in trouble.

Yesterday, I was out doing lawn care stuff, when a stray (presumably) cat popped up and attached itself to my legs, meowing at me and purring. I actually had to avoid stepping on it once or twice, so I went to the back porch (it following) and rapped on the window. Cats cause Anne to swell up like a balloon and she gave me a concerned quizzical look (and a warning that “we’re not keeping it”), but I managed to get her to give me a can of tuna on the plate for the cat (who, as it turns out, has been residing on a neighbor’s three-season porch). The cat ate the entire can and licked the plate completely clean.

Meanwhile, the girls were peering out the window. Claire, who loves anything that moves, kept asking Anne to let the cat inside. Madeline was severely concerned that this might occur, and kept pointing, yelling “puppy” and generally voicing her unhappiness. (No surprise - she gets the crying shudders anytime a dog gets too close.)

However, after I came inside and the cat left (and I thoroughly washed my hands), Madeline begain walking around and peering out various windows, and saying in quite a sad-sounding voice “Where puppy?” This went on for ten minutes, her wandering from window to window, asking the same thing. Finally, Anne said “Kitty went to home to see his daddy,” which (since Maddy is in a Daddy period right now) seemed to satisfy her.

Very adorable.

-j.

We put a pillow in Madeline’s crib a week or so ago.  I thought maybe she was uncomfortable without one, and that is why she never would sleep.  She sort of fussed at it for a few days, but now I think she’s embraced it being there, since this is how I found her this morning when I went in to wake her.

Incidentally, she has been sleeping better since we put the pillow in her crib and since she started on the medication for her asthma.  Let’s pray that it is a trend that will continue!

A trip to the Pediatric Allergist confirms that Madeline does not have a dairy “allergy” (nor a soy, gluten, corn, peanut or shellfish allergy).  Hooray!  She has a lactose intolerence yes, but not an allergy.  So this means we can try adding cheese or yogurt back into her diet and see how it goes.

She does however, have asthma.  I was sent home with a bunch of samples of different medicines to treat this.  But the doctor seemed to think that her sleep issues and very aggressive behavior may be related to the asthma (kids with asthma often have a constant runny nose, constant headache and stomach ache which would cause irritability, aggressive behavior and lack of sleep)

I suppose we’ll see how things go after she takes the medicines for a while.  We get to go back and see the doctor in a month — hopefully she’ll be improved by then!