Me!

I was asking the boys tonight who wanted green beans with their dinner. The boys were busy playing and ignored me, but sissy, delighted to be asked, responded "me!" without missing a beat. And she does love her green beans. When I looked at her in surprise, she was so proud of her conversation skills.

Resolutions

We are making our New Year's Resolutions here. Without further ado, here is the list:

AJ: learn how to read, learn how to chew bubble gum
Davey: learn how to ride a two-wheel bike with training wheels, learn how to use the potty (okay, let's be honest, mom set that last goal)
Julia: learn how to walk, learn how to beat brothers at Thomas Memory Match

Back when AJ was two or three, I read on my cousin's Facebook page that she let her daughter chew gum when she turned five and had a fun bubble gum themed birthday party to celebrate. Five seemed like an awful long way off to me back then, so whenever AJ asked if he could chew Joe's gum, I always told him he would have to wait until he turned five. Now that this event is a short six months away and we are in a rental that has lots of carpet, this seems too soon to me, but AJ is so excited about it that I think we are going ahead with this privilege. He often says five is great because I will get to chew gum!

Davey was showing interest in potty training before the holidays, but now that he has turned three and the day of reckoning has come, he is professing a new love for his diapers. He is on a temporary reprieve due to a current antibiotic prescription for a double ear infection, but some weekend in January or February we will have to pull the diapers like we did with AJ and just go with undies.

Julia got an early start with her resolutions and crossed that "learn to walk" item off her list. I had asked her if she could start walking for my birthday gift and she came in pretty close by figuring it out the next day. She is a little late to walk at 14.5 months, but once she started, she got good pretty fast. Her first time talking was Sunday, three days ago, but already she can walk 20 paces at a time and now prefers walking to crawling. She has a look of pure delight on her face every time she pulls it off, and her favorite thing to do is to walk right up to her brothers and look at them like "hey, did you just see me saunter up to you? You are now my peers. What are we talking about, buddy boys?"

Birthday Love

My birthday was last weekend, and it has been sweet to see how AJ is getting excited to celebrate someone else other than himself. He asked me what kind of party I would like to have. I told him it would be great just to have cake with the family. His response? "Would you like to have a princess party, Mama?" He obviously has been spending some time around the four year old girls in his daycare class. I could tell from the expression on his face when he said it that he thought he was offering me the thing every female in the world would be thrilled to have. He is at that developmental milestone where gender differences are very important and very black and white. Girls have long hair and boys have short hair. Girls like princesses and boys like Transformers. I try not to challenge his notion of girls versus boys too much right now while he is getting the hang of what he thinks are the "rules" but I don't hesitate to throw in a few of my own to mix things up. Like mama likes the color blue and AJ likes the color pink (both true). The other night Davey said "Mama clean the dishes. Dada works." That one had to be corrected.

Thanks to all of my family for the birthday love. I appreciated the calls, texts and flowers that made it a special day.

Robot Craze

Santa brought the boys these fun robot magnets for the kitchen refrigerator and they have had a ball making all sort of creations. AJ made a robot family that was supposed to represent AJ, Joe and me. I thought that was all very cute until he decided to add a new baby sister robot to my tummy (and even demonstrated how she would pretty forcefully "explode" straight out when she was ready to be born). I told him that he shouldn't get his hopes up because this mommy robot is retired from making baby sisters!