Growing up too fast

Last night at dinner I was extremely concerned when Zane pronounced that “I have the biggest stick in the WORLD!” But see, it came out sounding a little different, and I didn’t realize he meant stick. In any case… I’m still reeling.

Evie never smiles for the photographers. We need to take them to a real sitting and get some really good portraits beyond just the preschool portraits.

Still… I think they are some cute kids!

In celebration of Father’s Day Evie (finally) started calling me Mommy.

Up until Sunday she has been saying “Daddy,” “Zeeee” (for Zane)… and “Gigi!” for me.

She has a bunch of other words now, too. Her favorites by far are “eat,” “more,” and “book.” She says “Baby Bear,” although the “r” at the end isn’t quite right. She also says “ball,” “sock,” “uh-oh,” “dolly” (actually, dolly was her first word back in February!) “doggy,” “ducky,” “kitty,” “poly” (for roly-poly… long story) and a few others I can’t think of right now. Oh yeah, she started saying “Poo poo” and “pee pee” this weekend. She also understands pretty much everything and answers yes and no to questions using head shakes.

For Father’s Day we never quite got our act together to go on a hike as we had hoped, but did eventually hit the pool for a while. Zane is once again really close to swimming. We have to really try to get to the pool often enough that it “sticks” this summer. Evie, on the other hand, is way too little to really learn to swim, but she won’t have any of that! She is constantly trying to dive or jump into the water, convinced that she is a fish. I’m glad neither of my kids are afraid of the water, and yet part of me really wishes they had a healthy fear of it!

Evie and Zane provided live entertainment at our garage sale last weekend.

An interesting article:

Women’s lib arrived on bicycles

Tonight we enjoyed a homemade pizza dinner over at Maya’s house. As the kids played I found myself frequently explaining little things they were doing. For example, Evie was sitting in my lap at the table and lunged forward, grabbing a bib that was sitting on the table and tried to put it on. I explained Evie’s obsession with bibs (and put one on much to her satisfaction). I also mentioned she is pretty much the same with shoes, which at some point later on she also illustrated. Zane as usual didn’t go for much more than 30 seconds at a time without talking. I’m used to it, although it does drive me crazy sometimes. He still comes out with random funny tidbits on a regular basis. Tonight, he announced that he needed to go potty. I’m proud to say all I had to do was tell him to go ahead and to please make sure he lifts up the seat first. Yay! He’s getting independent in useful ways now :-). So he disappeared into the bathroom and several minutes later, when he was still in there, I called out to ask him if he was done and ready for help washing his hands. He replied that he wasn’t done because he needed to poop. Since he had left the door open, I asked him to close it. He replied “No, mommy, I don’t actually need some privacy right now.” It’s been a long time since I had a poop story to tell, hasn’t it?

As of now, we are on Zane’s third trip out of bed and downstairs tonight. Last night, it happened 7 times between 8pm and 10pm, when he finally conked out. Then he came in at 2:30am with a “bad dream.” Evie woke up shortly thereafter, and eventually Zane came in to Evie’s room while I was trying to settle her back down. Of course, when he came in and started talking, she popped up completely awake and I spent the next hour trying to get both of them back to sleep and trying my hardest to remain calm as my frustration built. Tonight, I decided to nip it in the bud and told Zane he was going lose toys if he gets out of bed. When he got out of bed, I brought him back in and took a box of toy airplanes out of his room. I thought that would do it, especially because I told him he could have the toys back in his room tomorrow if he doesn’t get out of bed any more. Nope. I just had to take away another toy, and now of course I can’t give back the toys tomorrow. I am so frustrated right now with discipline! Nothing rational seems to be effective, and he’s getting increasingly defiant. It’s also tough since often I am trying to juggle both of their needs. It’s hard to enforce a time out or calmly explain something to him when she’s going bananas over something. He also runs away and fights over every. little. thing. Sigh.

Oh, he started another thing tonight in the car on the way home. He must have picked this one up at day care and I don’t want to make a big deal out of it because I know it will snowball out of control quickly! I asked him to do something (like stop climbing all over and get in his car seat so I can buckle him) and he started repeating what I said in a whiny voice over and over and over again with his mischief-face (mischieface!) on. Wow, that is annoying. It must not continue!

Zane:

Evie:

More in the gallery.

Evie, like pretty much any one year old kid, loves to knock things over. This morning (prior to the sun coming up might I add), she decided she liked to knock over the block tower so much that she would build it up again so she could do it again and again. It was like I could see the lightbulb turn on. Previously, she would knock the blocks over faster than I could stack them back up, but today, after one or two rapid knock overs and squeals of laughter, she looked at me expectantly. When I didn’t start stacking up the blocks again, she picked one up and started to build her own tower. Turns out, building it up is just as fun as knocking it down.

I have said to many people that one of my favorite things about having two children is seeing their love for each other. Certainly this is not the case all the time. Zane gets very annoyed with his little sister for all kinds of reasons, usually involving her existing within a small radius of any of his toys. Evie tries to crawl in between Zane and me if he is cuddling with me on the couch, and of course forget it if I’m holding him… she shrieks and demands to be picked up as well! But for the most part, she gazes at him with complete adoration, and he is fiercely protective of her. They play together and laugh together, and while I know (from experience as an annoying little sister) that through the years there will very likely be a ton of fighting, that they have something wonderful — a sibling to grow up with and a lifelong relationship with someone who understands them as nobody else can.