Just stuff

We've been having cold weather, which is nice. Ryan has lots and lots of cute long-sleeved outfits, and Addie has some cute stuff too, so I'm glad to be able to use them. She can finally wear most of her 2T pants - they finally almost fit in the waist, but some are a tiny bit too short. A few of her 2T tops from last year fit. Ryan is in 12 month pants and tops, and a few 18 month footed pajamas. We haven't been too busy lately. Next week we'll go to the farm for Thanksgiving, then the week after that we have a Christmas party, breakfast with Santa, Christmas carnival, then more parties, then Addie will spend a long weekend with Grammie while I spend a long weekend at a spa resort in the Hill Country, courtesy of my wonderful mother-in-law. Matt and Ryan will have bonding time, I guess. Not much to really report right now. I have a gross fever blister that hurts a lot and looks really attractive, right in time for MOPS tomorrow. We're going to the zoo this weekend (sunny and 65) with our ABF class from church. Yay!

Yesterday at lunch, I brought over an orange to begin peeling. Before I even had the peel off, Addie said, "That's not bear! It's not bear, Mama!" I didn't know what she was talking about, so I said, "Not fair? What's not fair?" Addison said, "No, BEAR, Mama. Not Bear, that's what Boot's said - It's not bear!" I still assumed she was trying to say "fair", so I said, "Oh, Boots said it? Did he say it to Dora? What were they doing?" She said, "They were having a picnic and all the food and Boots said, "That's not bear" cause all the animals didn't have food." I asked if they had fruit, and she said, "Yeah, an orange." So she was trying to say "fair". When she saw my orange, she knew that it had sections inside and should be equally divided out. So we talked about what fair meant. It still amazes me when she makes these connections, even though it happens all the time.

Ryan is getting much more aware of what's going on around him. He loves to climb up on all the various stools we have around the house (they are usually in the bathroom so Addie can wash her hands, but often they get carried around and moved. He will push it up to the counter when he sees something up there, and will climb up and start grabbing things off the counter. Naughty! He can find the stools anywhere and bring them into the kitchen. He almost pulled the coffee pot off this morning because he saw his sippy cup up on the counter and wanted it.

Yesterday morning, before breakfast, he got up and walked into the kitchen while I was in the playroom. I asked him where he was going and I heard some jibberish. Then, little Mr. Fat Pants comes waddling in, holding the ziploc bag of Cheerios! He had gone in the pantry, gotten them off the shelf, and carried them back in the room. He was saying, "num, num, num". I looked at him and he grinned great big, then took off running across the room to Addie's little couch, where he flung himself down and immediately started stuffing Cheerios into his mouth as fast as he could. He was laughing and spitting Cheerios as I came over to get him. It was so funny. Guess he was ready for breakfast.

He and Addie are slowly, slowly starting to play more, or at least do some parallel play. Today the two of them were running back and forth and falling down on purpose on the carpet, laughing hysterically the whole time. And yesterday, we set up the big pop-up Dora tent and Addison proceeded to take almost every toy she owned inside. Ryan loved rolling around the pile of stuffed animals and then they both sat and read books for awhile.

Ryan loves his "dum ditty" book

Having a tea party - Addie was calling Ryan the Monster Baby and warning all her animals to hide from him. Then I gave her a little bit of real water to practice pouring. You can see it all over the floor, but at least it kept her from shoving the baby for a few minutes.

A few of her comments lately about her beloved little brother:

- Mama, I don't want to have a baby brother. He takes toys away from me and I am very sad.

- I don't want Baby to talk, ever.

- I sometimes wish we don't have a baby.

- She's very into exaggeration: "I want to stay here forever and forever."; "No, I won't share ever, ever, ever!"; "He's not a nice baby ever!"; and we've already started, "I don't get to color EVER." and "You don't ever let me watch a show, EVER!"

- She has started asking what day it is, every day, and remembers what I tell her is going to happen each day. She is still confused sometimes though - almost anything that happened in the past is "Last night", as in, "I watched Nemo last night", or "Cammie slept on the bottom bed last night". Lots of events happen on Saturday, so she is still trying to figure out how she went to a party on Saturday, and then she will go to the zoo on Saturday. She asks about her cousin Cammie a lot now, and says things like, '"Maybe Cammie can come to the park with us, " and, "Maybe we can go to New Jersey later. Maybe we can go after my nap."

She's been having weird dreams, because when I go in to get her sometimes, she'll say stuff like, "Mama, I was talking to the fireflies. Did you see them? There were all over there," or, "Do we have apples? There are lots and lots of apples on the floor, aren't there? So many apples on the floor."