The Godmothers, Part I

AJ's godmother and Julia's new godmother came together for a visit a couple of weekends ago, which made me very happy since they are two of my closest friends who I have known since childhood. Julia was treated to lots of cuddle time with her godmother, Ali, and even got to read her first book, Good Night Moon. Ali loves to read, so I am hoping Julia will catch Ali's love for books and be a lifelong reader. AJ's godmother was an art minor in college and painted an awesome tree mural on the wall in Julia's room. I will post pictures of the finished room soon.

Overheard

The other night at dinner, Joe picked up Julia, who was hungry and rooting around for some food of her own, and started talking the type of nonsense to her that adults tend to lapse into when we talk to babies. He said to her "Are you hungry? Do you want to bite me even though you don't have any teeth?" As he held Julia near his face she tried to nurse his nose and he said "Are you going to gum my nose? I'll gum you!" AJ heard this and quickly said "Dada, sissy is just little and doesn't know who's who or what's what yet. You shouldn't turn her into gum! We have to protect her." In his mind, gum is chewing gum and he was worried that Joe was threatening to turn his little sister into a stick of gum. I laughed at the statement that Julia didn't know who's who or what's what yet, which Joe said is a Papa special, an expression that his dad says often. Very sweet to see the big brother protection instincts coming out.

I'm Stuck!

Davey has had his "language explosion" as our pediatrician calls it where his vocabulary starts to expand rapidly and he adds several new words a day. One of my recent favorites is "yuck!" which he now says when pointing to his diaper to tell you that it is dirty and he wants it changed. He is also just starting to do a couple of two word sentences. The other day when our nanny was waiting with Davey in the stroller outside of AJ's preschool classroom, Davey was trying to climb out while buckled in and after several frustrated attempts said very clearly "I'm stuck!!" He also yelled "that's mines!!!" at the top of his lungs yesterday when AJ was trying to confiscate a train Davey was playing with.

In addition to adding new words, Davey is also proud to show off his language skills. Every evening at dinner he will do a roll call of who is present at the dinner table, pointing to each person and stating their name. "Dada!...Mama!...JJ! (his word for AJ)...DeeDee! (pointing at his own chest. DeeDee is his way of prounoucing David/Davey). I remember AJ doing a similar roll call when he was learning to talk. AJ is definitely noticing all of the attention that Davey is getting for his language and seems to be jealous. He has reverted to repeating whatever Davey says in baby talk pronunciation in an effort to get the same attention. We keep telling him that we want to hear his big boy words, but he is intent for the time being on using some baby talk as well.

The Different Ways We Play

This toy highlights the different developmental phases the boys are in right now. It is a sorter toy that I decided to find after seeing it at the local preschool. AJ is able to pick through all of the little items and sort them by color or by type of vehicle. Davey enjoys spreading them all over the floor as fast as his little arms can fling them and likes seeing the chaos that results, as well as piling them all into a single bowl and pouring them out.

Captain Underpants

Say hello to Captain Underpants, or as Joe calls him, my future blackmail victim.

My Airplane

Both of the boys are in a tinker toy phase. AJ likes to build things with them and Davey likes to put them in their storage case, dump them out all over the floor and put them back in again. He also does some of the basic putting a stick into a wheel building. Here is a picture of AJ's creation, which he called his airplane that was going to fly to the moon with a space guy in it. They did a unit on outer space at his preschool recently, so I would guess that was the likely inspiration.

Princess Leia's Ear Shells

Here are Julia's EarWells, or Ear Shells as we call them at our house. So far she doesn't seem to mind them and we think they may muffle some of her brothers' shouting and screeching. She is still sleeping like a champ 22 hours a day.

Princess Julia Leia

Julia was born with an ear that is folded over--the medical diagnosis was a combination of cupped ear and Stahl's ear. It has no impact on her hearing and is just a cosmetic thing. Someone pointed out that it would also make wearing eyeglasses or sunglasses difficult because the folded ear wouldn't be able to hold them up.

Of course, she is perfect to us and I find her little folded ear to be adorable, but after discussing it Joe and I decided that a 12 year-old Julia would probably thank us for correcting this and giving her a "normal" ear if the option exists. Fortunately there is a new product called EarWell that was just filed with the FDA this year as a class I medical device, and from what they have posted for other kids, the results are amazing. Copy and paste this into your internet browser if you would like to see the website: http://www.earwells.com or this if you would like to see a youtube video about it. http://www.bodysculptor.com/facial-surgery-chicago/earwell/
The device benefits from the fact that babies' ears are extremely malleable immediately after they are born due to high levels of estrogen in the baby's system from its mother's body during the pregnancy. Babies have ears and noses that are made of very soft cartilage at birth that hardens into regular cartilage in the first 4-6 weeks as the estrogen leaves their body. Apparently quite a bit starts to leave in the first 7 days, because the results with this device are best if they are applied by the end of the baby's first week. We learned this when Julia was 6 days old and then did some quick research and got an appointment with a plastic surgeon to install them last Thursday just as she turned a week old. (Don't worry--no surgery or anesthesia is needed to put the devices on, but the manufacturer said they prefer to use surgeons instead of pediatricians because plastic surgeons are more used to installing devices/reshaping/molding body parts.) So just wanted to explain why blog pictures of Julia will have her looking a bit like Princess Leia for the next 4-6 weeks as she wears her "ear shells" as we have described them to the boys. Here is a before picture as well of Julia with her cute little folded ear.

The Space Explorer and His Sidekick, the Train Conductor

We had a good neighborhood trick-or-treat outing this year. I took the boys around and was only feeling up to doing a few houses, so we visited about eight neighbors on our block and a couple of blocks south. AJ is still getting the hang of how Halloween works, so he insisted on pre-filling his bucket and Davey's bucket with candy from our house. I kept trying to explain that the idea is to take an empty bucket that you fill up as you go, but this did not make sense to him when there was prefectly good candy here for the pre-filling. When we went to ring doorbells, AJ and Davey would get their piece of candy and then thought they were supposed to give one in return and would pick one out of their bucket to offer the person who had answered the door at their house. I thought this idea of a candy exchange was pretty charming and much better than the gimme gimme attitude that can sometimes come with trick-or-treating, so who knows--maybe we will adopt this as our own little custom of candy sharing.

Davey was willing to put on his Halloween costume for trick-or-treating, which surprised me. I think it helped that we showed him his Thomas the Tank Engine candy bucket right when it was time for trick-or-treat. He was so excited about Thomas that he didn't protest when we tried to put his costume on. He dutifully trudged around the neighborhood with the huge Thomas bucket bumping along the sidewalk beside him, too heavy with the loot that AJ pre-filled in it to lift it off the ground.
AJ had a hard time keeping his hands out of his Halloween bucket. Joe estimated that AJ ate about 15 pieces of chocolate, which may explain why he had a hard time sleeping tht night. Davey was also a sneaky one with the candy and was caught twice trying to eat mini candy bars still in their wrappers.

The Existential TV Watcher

The other night when AJ was in bed trying to fall asleep, we had this conversation after a day when Joe imposed no t.v. due to AJ not listening to his instruction to stop eating Halloween candy.

AJ: Mama, what's tomorrow?
Me: A Tuesday. You have your preschool class with Mrs. M.
AJ: Mama, what happens when there are no tomorrows?
Me: (Pause) What do you mean, no tomorrows?
AJ: What happens when we run out of tomorrows and there are no more?
Me: Well, there is always a tomorrow. Tomorrow's another day. And there are always more days. (I was thinking to myself that it would be too abstract to explain anything else.)
AJ: After tomorrow is another tomorrow and after that is another tomorrow and then tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow?
Me: Yes, that is how it works (At this point, I was thinking to myself that this is getting pretty deep.)
AJ: (Pauses for a few seconds) So there will always be more t.v.?!? If I can't watch t.v. today, there will always be more t.v. tomorrow?
Me: Yes, AJ, there will always be more tomorrow when you can watch t.v. again.

Just when I was thinking that a three year-old mind is amazing (and it is) he brought things back to the practical level. Glad we got that one cleared up.