Sissy Talk

Sissy's vocabulary is picking up speed here. My favorite recent word of her is meatball, which she delivers as "meat...BALL!" always said with delighted exclamation point at the end.

Up, book, teddy (bear), uh-oh, no-no, jooz (juice), bye-bye, mine!, Nama (Grandma), goat, neigh neigh, moo moo, keetee (kitty), K2 (our cat's name), love you, night night, blue, green, toas (toast), watuh (water), cack-ker (cracker), teeth, go-go, waf-fuh (waffle), shoes, and AJ's favorite...Aaah jah (AJ). He was delighted when he heard her say it and ran to me excitedly reporting "Sissy did it! She finally said Ahh jah!"

Camping in the Living Room

Santa brought the boys an indoor pretend camping set this year, complete with tools, a fake campfire and toy sticks and hot dogs and marshmallows. I am trying to encourage more imaginative play this winter as we are stuck indoors and sometimes fall into the same old rut in what the boys are playing with. The camping set seems to help. Today they holed up inside the tent with all of the food from the kitchen set, talking about how they were going to become the world's best chefs (definitely want to encourage this one, as it could lead to me needing to cook less!) Then they made guns out of bristle blocks and went sneaking down the hallway to go hunting for an animal to cook for supper.

This all reminded me of a little story I have been meaning to share about AJ. In an effort to encourage more empathy in AJ, I decided to buy a copy of Bambi to expose him to the sadness of the baby deer losing its mother to a hunter's gun. I recall this being one of the saddest stories from my childhood. I played the movie for him, carefully watching for his reaction. When it was over, I asked him, "Did the movie make you sad? Were you sad when the hunter shot Bambi's mama?" I was ready for a good conversation about the circle of life and maybe even my own mortality as his mother if he made the connection that I might die someday. He got quiet for a minute and then said he wanted to whisper something in my ear. Here it comes, I thought, he is going to whisper that he is scared I might die. I steeled myself and leaned in. He whispered "I want to get a gun and shoot an animal!" confessing a deep desire to hunt. Experiment completely failed on my part.

At first I was disappointed that AJ didn't comment on the sadness in the death of Bambi's mother. Then when I told this story to my brother, he laughed really hard,and this led me to do some thinking. I remembered that parenting is helping to shape each child by responding to their own unique nature, rather than molding them into my own picture of how a kid should think and react to a particular situation. I am trying to be open to the idea that AJ might choose to be a hunter someday. It's not that I think hunting is wrong. I get that I am a meat eater and what that entails for the meat to get to my plate. And I like the idea of being more directly involved in getting that food to the plate. I am just hoping he doesn't try to bring anything back to my house to clean it. I can handle cleaning of fish caught out of the lake, but I am not quite there yet in cleaning something furry.

The Green-Eyed Snowman

We had a great time with the 5 inches or so of snow that fell in Des Moines this weekend. Man, am I glad that I have a mom who loves winter and snow and who is willing to take the grandkids outside in it to burn some energy. Here is my favorite green-eyed snowman made with peas for the eyes at AJ's suggestion. And after poor Julia was stuck at the window watching all the fun from inside, Grandma made time to take her out to make her first snow angel.

Snowfall

We are getting a big snowfall here in Des Moines. More pictures and fun to post soon!

Hello, Kramer

Sissy has been sporting some major Kramer hair lately. She has beautiful little curls that look pretty but go a bit crazy some of the time. I am going to need to look into barrettes.