Birthday Updates

A lot has been happening this month, and I feel like we have really thrust ourselves into the excitement of summer. To keep this post a reasonable length, though, I thought I would just focus on the birthday celebrations that we had for Sam and Lucy. We had a great time celebrating these two special people in our lives.

Sam wanted to have a Lego party this year, and once again we held it in our front yard. My Aunt J was in town to watch our local C cousins (her grandkids), and my Ant Bee and her family drove up from Oregon to see everyone. Sam was thrilled that his cousins M and Z stayed at our house. We had a fun time having a party and a family reunion on the same weekend! I didn't get to visit with everyone as much as I would have liked - I was scurrying around making sure the party games/food were in order, and then I had to leave to perform with my choir - but it was still fun to see everyone for a little bit.

Sam wanted doughnuts served this year instead of cake. We got some Lego brick and Lego figure molds and made white chocolate treats with them. We also used the molds to make crayons for the kids to take home in their goodie bags.

Guests included my visiting family members, plus Bop (and Gram, who was behind the camera for this shot)

The kids built towers out of candy lego bricks and also played some Lego Movie activities (crossword search and a maze) while waiting for the guests to arrive 

"Pin the Head on the Lego Guy" 

J was the Master of Ceremonies and helped to make sure that all of the activities ran smoothly. Here he is coordinating a Lego relay race.

Right now Sam is into Legos, Minecraft, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, "Magic Treehouse" and "Secret of Droon" books, and playing "Hall of the Mountain King" on the piano. We have started piano lessons in earnest this summer (J and I are teaching him), and Sam likes to play a few tunes on the piano (which also includes Star Wars theme music and the beginning of "The Sound of Music"). He still loves to read and goes on "binge reading sessions" whenever I make a trip to the library. He also still loves to pretend, especially with his BFF Lewis. A few months ago, Sam and Lewis had a running imaginary game at school that they named "The Legend of the Ruby of Fire."

Lucy's birthday was a multi-day event, because we had a little dinner celebration (J's brother B was also in town visiting) one her actual birthday but then took L to the zoo later that weekend.

We thought she would be excited to open her present this morning, but she was more excited to see Sam come into the living room while carrying a stuffed animal.  

This is the little yellow chair that we gave Lucy. The bottom of the seat lifts up to reveal a small storage compartment, and today Lucy spent several ten minute stints placing her stuffed dolly (a darling hand-me-down from Cousin Z) in and out and in and out of the compartment.

Sam wanted to be the same as Lucy, so he brought his green stuffed chair downstairs and sat next to her. 

 Sam is showing Lucy the book that he gave her as a present

She loves her new Elmo doll! 

A birthday girl in her party dress and party shoes

She was very interested in the candle and after we lit it she opened her hands with the palms upwards, which is her way of querying, "What is it?" or "Where did it go?" 

I remember that Sam was very timid and didn't want to eat his cupcake - he didn't know what it was, since I had never given him a sugary treat before he turned one. That wasn't the case with Lucy, though! She had already had some treats and knew exactly what we were giving her. She dug right in! In fact, she saw me make these cupcakes and smacked her lips together when she saw them sitting on our kitchen counter before the party!

 These pigs are the first animals at the zoo that Lucy saw up close. She got so excited and couldn't believe her eyes. Pigs!

She loved the penguins! She laughed and kicked her legs in delight when they dove in and out of the water.

Lucy was somewhat bewildered by the carousel. She liked the horses and kept pointing them out to us, but she was was a bit overwhelmed by the lights and music. 

Lucy is crawling around everywhere right now. She still likes to practice walking by holding onto our fingers, but she is also content to crawl. She likes to have her hair combed (she makes a little "ooooh!" sound when we brush her hair), but she also likes to run her messy food-laden hands through her locks while she eats during meals.

The word she consistently says is "Bam" ("Sam"), and she says this word almost immediately after she wakes up from sleeping. She wants to be near Sam all the time. We think she may have also said "Dad" a few times. She also says "uh-oh." She also understands a lot of words: hi, hug, pat-pat-pat, kiss, eye, nose, where, uh-oh, no, spit, bath, milk, and bye-bye. She tries to make the noises of a few animals: horse, sheep, cow, bunny (sniffing), fish (gaping mouth), monkey, and dog.

Standin' Tall series

When I was growing up, we read books (and listened to the accompanying tapes) from the Standin' Tall series by Brite Music. I especially liked "Dependibility," "Obedience," "Love," and "Happiness." My brother sent Sam some mp3 files of these tapes for his birthday, so it has been fun for us to listen to these stories and songs together. Sam seems to like the same stories that I liked when I was little. Curiously, my mom never purchased "Cleanliness" and "Self-Esteem" for her children. Perhaps she felt like we didn't need to work on these attributes?

After listening to snippets of the audio from these stories, J commented that he can understand why I latched onto certain characteristics in the books (and musicals in general) as a child. Perhaps the concept of dependability resonated with me? I'm glad J is getting familiar with these too. Just last night, when J decided to do a task right away, I teased him that he must have taken a "Do-It-Now Wafer."

We don't have the books that go along with these tapes right now, but just two days ago I found some YouTube videos which have the audio combined with pages of the books. Here are links to the videos (since embedding is disabled):

• Standin' Tall: Obedience
• Standin' Tall: Honesty
• Standin' Tall: Forgiveness
• Standin' Tall: Work
• Standin' Tall: Courage
• Standin' Tall: Happiness
• Standin' Tall: Gratitude
• Standin' Tall: Forgiveness
• Standin' Tall: Love
• Standin' Tall: Service
• Standin' Tall: Cleanliness
• Standin' Tall: Self-Esteem
• Standin' Tall: Dependability

Goals for the Summer

Write OSP object tour

Write complete one-hour OSP tour (six objects?)

Complete all three SAM tour assignments

Read new Amy Buono articles before school starts

Read four Open University books:  
- Viewing Renaissance Art
- Locating Renaissance Art
- Art & Visual Culture: Academy to Avant-Garde
- Art & Visual Culture: Modernity and Globalization

Books to finish:
Noah Charney book on art forgery
The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland the Led the Revels There
Annotations for the Phantom Tollbooth
Tin Woodman of Oz with Sam

Crawling!

Lucy just barely started crawling this past weekend, a few days after she turned eleven months old! Sam noticed her crawling first, and he excitedly called me and J over to see. Lucy still doesn't like to use crawling as her main means of transportation (she prefers to walk with help at any given moment), but she will crawl if she wants to get (or get into!) something.

Last night, Lucy and I were in Sam's room while he was getting ready for bed. Sam kept scooting his books on the floor out of Lucy's reach, but she kept crawling over to get at them. She finally went all the way over to Sam's bookshelf so she could systematically remove all of the books onto the floor, one by one. Sam said (in a slightly joking but slightly exasperated tone), "Oh no! Why did we ever teach her how to crawl?!?"

And so it begins! We are now entering a new phase of keeping things out of Lucy's little mobile grasp.

Lucy update

Our Lucy Loo is eleven months old! It's hard to believe that she has been with us for almost a year. For about the past month and a half she has been very interested in learning how to walk. She grabs the pointer fingers of whatever person is nearby or holding her, and either stands up or slides out of their lap onto the floor so she can begin walking. She uses our pointer fingers as her little "walker" to help her get around:

 

She also likes to practice walking up stairs with help, and likes to lift her feet up onto each step. I'm trying to teach her how to crawl up the stairs, but she doesn't really like it. In fact, Lucy is not interested in crawling at all, despite our best efforts. She can twist and turn on the ground, and she can even rotate in circles while on her stomach. She can get up on all fours and even lean forward to twist onto all fours from a seated position, too. But she never wants to propel herself forward. Sometimes she scoots herself backward while she is on her tummy, but I don't think she consciously realizes that she is moving. So, in contrast to the happy "walking Lucy," this is what we usually see if we put her on her tummy:

She is still nursing a few times a day, but she is getting better at eating solids. Right now she has two teeth, and hopefully she will like to experiment with more foods as teeth begin to grow in. She is still a picky eater, though. Whenever she dislikes a food, she loudly spits it out (often so that the food sprays everywhere in the process). She doesn't mind getting messy when she eats, which is so different from how Sam was as a baby.

Right now she loves the crushers from Trader Joe's, especially the applesauce and the carrot-apple sauce. She will usually eat most baby food combinations that have either a pear or an apple base. She also will eat some little rice puffs, the maple-cinnamon crushers (that taste like churros), teething biscuits/cookies, and small pieces of hot dogs. This morning she ate a few pieces of scrambled eggs, but I don't know if that will become a trend. I just keep offering things to her, in hopes that she'll change her mind.

Oh dear! Earlier last month Lucy learned to wield her gooey cookie like a paintbrush on the wall.

She really likes puppets (despite what you see at the beginning of this video) and stuffed animals. We have a few puppets and stuffed animals that we use to play with her, and she likes to give all of them hugs and kisses. She also likes the puppets in the Baby Einstein videos. She often watches an episode when I am getting ready for the day, while she sits in her exersaucer. Several times Sam has wanted to watch an episode with her, and for some reason he feels compelled to sit in a plastic contraption too, so he drags the laundry basket next to her exersaucer. This is how our kids watch shows together:

She is reaching for a teddy bear here. I took this photo today.

She also likes to open and shut drawers and cupboard doors. Last weekend she worked frantically to dump out a huge bin of Legos while we were out at RB (see video). She also likes to play with Sam - he is still the best at getting her to laugh (see video). 

Lucy is a happy girl and hasn't really had any stranger anxiety. I'm grateful for this, because I can leave her in the gym child care without really worrying about her crying for me. I also don't have to worry about leaving her when I go to work.

Lucy claps her hands together and waves "hi" and "bye." She also can sign "more," "all done," and "milk." She also knows how to sign "book," but she needs a little help with that one. She likes to read "Where's Spot?" and "The Hungry Caterpillar" right now. Just as of the past two days, I think she has learned to say, "Uh oh!" (although it sounds more like "Ah-ah!"). But she knows how to use it in context, since she intentionally drops things off the edge of her high chair tray before saying "Ah-ah!"

Here are some more pictures:

She can't move herself forward on this bike with her feet, so for now we push the bike for her from behind. She loves riding her bike.

She wouldn't look at the camera because she was interested in Sam's episode of "Phineas and Ferb"

"Where's Lucy?" (See her skills in this video)

"Peek-a-boo!"

I think this was the first time she was really aware of the idea of self-ornamentation. She learned how to lift this necklace over her head and drape it across the back of her neck. I made a little "Oooh!" sound and she took off the necklace, lifted it back on, and made a little "Oooh!" sound herself.

I think she looks like some of my baby pictures in this shot.

Lucy's first time going down a slide

Currently my absolute favorite picture of Lucy and Sam

Spring Planting

My family - particularly J - indulged me over the weekend and let me focus on some major gardening projects in the yard. J and I woke up early and started to work while Lucy was asleep. After she woke up, we even figured out a system to keep her happy in the garden for another hour or so while I continued to clear out one of the garden beds. J worked mostly in the front of the yard and driveway, pulling out weeds that started to sprout among the gravel.

This is how you can contain an imp while you work in the garden before breakfast. We even set up a little Baby Einstein show for her to watch for a while - she loves the scenes with the animal puppets.

At the end of the day, we made some major improvements in clearing out the bed and planting flowers. There still are some weeds in the flower bed, but we pulled out all of the grass and were able to work around a lot of the California Poppy plants. As for the flowers we planted, I'll think of them as my Mother's Day gift from J, since he was so patient and helpful with the kids while we worked over the weekend.

Here are the annuals that we planted in the bed this year:

•  Cumbanita (Red) Geraniums
• Trailing red verbena
• Mounding viola (violets)
• African Marigold (Sam's pick - I don't care much for marigolds but I do like the bright color)
• Some orange zinnias
• French Marigold (Dwarf) - this was in the verbena six-pack. I'm not sure if the plant tag was added into the pack by mistake, but we planted it and will see what opens when it blooms.
• Purple African Daisy (J's pick).

I think that this May Night Salvia is going to be me favorite addition to this garden bed. I bought three of these, and they are a mounding perennial. I love the color and texture that they add to the space, and I think I will get a couple more this week. I hope they do well in this space.

We planted this Ruby's Tuesday Dianthus to replace the Bowles Mauve Wallflower that we planted three years ago.The wallflower plant grew to be immense, but I think it might have grown too large for its own good. A huge root system began to pop out of the ground and the whole plant died over the winter. Hopefully this dianthus will thrive in the same location. It is supposed to bloom throughout the spring, summer, and fall.

We still have a lot of work to do. My sister sent a landscaper to look at our yard last week (as a present to me), and I hope to have his team help out with the weeding around the back. We want to pull out the weeds and put down some landscape fabric to prevent any future growth.