Sam is no longer our strong silent type.  He fills the house with toddler babble full of complex syllables, inflection, intonation.  He’s added some actual words to his vocabulary, but they’re pretty simple compared to the soliloquies that only he understands.

He’s also getting serious about his animal sounds.  He “woofs” at dogs, “eeeoows” at kitties, “ack, ack” when he sees the picture of a duck, and makes a little trumpet noise while throwing his arm over his head like a trunk when he sees an elephant.  I’ll let you imagine just how cute that is.

Last week Clare discovered a granola bar in Grandma’s purse.  She begged to have some of it and I told her that she could have half of the bar, since we were about to have dinner.  After she  ate her  half of the bar we wrapped it back up and put it on the counter.  A few minutes later she came running up to me and said “Mama!  A piece of Grandma’s bar fell down!  A piece of it fell onto my hand!” 

“Clare, what did you do with the piece of bar?” 

“Well, I ate it!”

“I had a cold, but a monster ate it.  Grandpa, do you have a cold?  Maybe we should call a monster.” – Clare, December 2012

One of Sam’s new favorite activities is to spin himself in circles until he falls on the floor.  For some reason he only does this over the tile floor of the kitchen, but hard thumps on the tile hasn’t stopped him.  He spins around, grinning, until he tumbles down and then rolls around on the ground giggling. 

Repeat several times a day.

 It was cold.  The wind was blowing, the frost was on the ground, and there was ice on the trail, but we had fun anyway.  The waterfall was beautiful and, perhaps as importantly, there was a restaurant there that served a hot lunch.  We were contented starting off the year with a fun family outing that brought us home in time for afternoon nap.

One day as we were driving to preschool she says, more or less out of the blue, “I’m Clare and I like purple and pink, elephants and Peter Pan.”  Yup, that pretty much sums up our girl these days.  She’ll turn 3.5 tomorrow and is developing quite the personality and sense of self.  She’s so verbal and chatty that she can pretty much tell us what she’s thinking about things.  That can be trying at times, since we don’t always agree with her, but for the most part it’s fun to hear her take on the world. 

Clare is a girl who knows what she wants, and what she doesn’t want.  We’ve always known she’s a strong-willed person, and growing up hasn’t tempered that.  It can be everything from “I want to be a fly for Halloween” to “I want to wear long sleeves all the time.”  Once she gets an idea in her head there is no stopping her.  She’s also really good about identifying and verbalizing her emotions.  She’s often nervous in new situations and with new people.  We talk about it a lot, letting her know when she’s going to meet someone new, who they are, etc.  We talk about how it’s OK to feel shy, but that it’s important to be brave and say hi or wave to people when we are introduced to them.  Last week she told me “I was sad when I was at school.  I missed you.  But I was brave and didn’t cry.”  My brave little girl is enough to split my heart wide open when she says things like that, but I’m proud of her to be able to get through it and then to tell me about it.

She’s also pretty funny these days.  The other day, when J told her it was to cold to go and do something, she looked at him and said “We just have to tough it out Daddy.”  Today she came back from a day of fun with Grandma and Grandpa and came running in the door proclaiming “we’re back from New Jersey!” 

Here’s a few more pictures left from Christmas.  I love this picture of Sammy and Grandma.  Sammy loves to be held and snuggled and he also holds onto your shirt when you hold him. 

Santa Claus brought this wagon for Clare and Sam, and the kids loved it.  Debbie won the “good sport” aware when she literally pulled the wagon, loaded with various combinations of children, toys and books, through the house for an hour.  Yes, one hour of circling the wagon through the living room, the dining room, the kitchen, cutting through the family room, and then through the double doors back into the living room. 

We take our art projects very seriously around here.

We’ve had lots of outings this month to the Children’s Museum and the Science Museum.  Sammy is just getting to be old enough to be able to participate in all of the “big kid” activities instead of just hanging in the baby area.  The kids love the activities, and I love getting out of the house and not being obligated to entertain the kids. 

 

 

At OMSI, Clare’s favorite place to visit is the faucet at the Grossology exhibit.  She is very interested obsessed with this faucet – bringing it up in conversation regularly.  She says that she isn’t scared by him, but she’s a little bit intrigued by the “faucet with the drippy nose.” 

It was a big day around here at the Mac house – Clarie had her first day at a new preschool.  Her last preschool closed back in the spring, which worked out well because I wanted to keep her home with Sammy and I on those two days.  She’s stayed in nannyshare with Adam, Sammy and G the three days a week while I work.  It’s been going well, but increasingly challenging to meet the social and academic needs of the “big kids” while keeping up with the very basic needs of Baby Sam.  Now that G’s little sister, sweet Baby M, will be joining nannyshare it’s come time to graduate Clare and G to preschool. 

So today was the day!  We found a very nice little Montessori school near our house, and we’ve decided to send the kiddos to school together.  We happened to arrive this morning at the same time and the kids were sooooo excited to see each other.  They are in different classrooms in the morning, but will be together in the afternoon. On one level I feel pangs of “sniff sniff, my baby’s growing up!” but on a much larger note it’s such a thrill to watch Clare have greater life adventures.

So how was the adventure?  Well, Clare LOVED her first day.  She was so excited to be there, had a great day and talked about it all evening long.  She loved being with the teacher, the other kids, having snack, reading new books, exploring new materials, having her own cubby, and just about everything you can imagine.  Tonight she told me that she “was sad that I had to leave school.”  Lucky for her, she’s going back tomorrow!

So it’s now the end of an era with Clare leaving nannyshare and going to school.  I’m so proud of our girl for embracing her new school and can’t wait to hear about her adventures.  Sammy was a little lost without his favorite Big Sister, but I stayed home from work today to help with the transition.  He helped me vacuum, we had a dance party in the living room, and read a few of his favorite books.  He will get more focused attention in nannyshare and will have more activities catered to his development, which will be so good for him.  I can’t say enough how fortunate we’ve been with our care situation.  We’ve been very blessed to form such a loving community to help us raise our children, and we don’t take it for granted even as it evolves to fit the kids’ needs. 

Sammy-Sam will be 14 months old in a few days… which blows my mind.  While I haven’t been as good about cataloging his development, we’ve definitely been noticing new milestones daily.  Here are a few things that I want to remember about 14-month-old Sam.

• He’s absolutely fascinated with the toilet.  I don’t know what it is – whether it’s because we don’t let him near it, or because it has water, or if it’s the flushing, but he has an obsession with the toilets in the house.  He’s gone past the stage where he wants to play in the water (thank goodness!) but now he’s started throwing things in there.  A few days ago we couldn’t find his mittens (and we had JUST seen them) and eventually J found them in the toilet. 

• His favorite word is “Up,” as in “pick me up.”  He likes to be picked up and cuddled several times a day, often several times an hour, usually by me.  Over Christmas he walked past me and over to Grandma and insisted “Up!  Up!”  It’s the first time I could remember that I wasn’t his first snuggle choice.  I guess my boy is getting more independent.

• Besides Up, Sammy doesn’t have a very big vocabulary.  He occasionally says “dog,” “Dada,” “Momom,” and “Clare” but usually he stays pretty quiet.  Adam thinks that Sammy is going to suddenly start talking in paragraphs one day, and that he’s just saving up his thoughts and observations until he’s ready to share them all.

• Even though he’s quiet and laid back, our boy is SMART.  He knows the parts of the face – eyes, nose, mouth, ears, chin and hair.  He will surprise us by suddenly imitating something we do in daily life.  The other day he stood up on the stool next to the bathroom sink and mimed brushing his teeth and spitting into the sink.  I was a “Huh? You’ve been paying attention to that?” moment. 

• Sammy is obsessed with climbing everything.  He’s all over the couch, the chairs, the kids’ table, and the oven drawer/stove.  Over Christmas he probably climbed my parents staircase 40 or 50 times in a two day period, and he only fell down about 4 stairs once.  He can get up and down the stairs all by himself and is so very proud of himself. 

Apparently we like striped shirts around here…

We had a very Merry Christmas with the three little elves above – but, as you can imagine with those three, it was very busy.  They’re all at a fun age where they are active and interested in the world, but pretty much require constant supervision.  They’re also all going in three different directions at the same time.  Like the picture above, despite my many, many attempts it was the only time I got a picture with all three kiddos.  And that was only because Clare literally held onto Sam.  The next picture in the series has a blurry Sam escaping his sister’s grip.

JP and Debbie made Christmas brunch for us, complete with homemade cinnamon rolls, and Mom and Dad made prime rib for Christmas dinner.  It was delish.

One of under-the-tree gift highlights included Clare’s new dollhouse!  This is the dollhouse that my grandfather made for me as a girl, and that my grandmother decorated.  Mom and Dad fixed it up for Clare and we gave it to her… out in the garage so that the little kids didn’t bother it.  Then we let her play with it for a little while out there by herself.  She LOVED it and can’t wait until its set up in her bedroom.

Yep, the kids are in bed and it’s time to relax.



Well, Sam explored his toys for a while… and then found the Tupperware drawer and played in that for 20 minutes.

Phew… and Christmas is over!  It was wonderful, but the kids slept in until 9 am on December 26.  I think we all needed a little post-Christmas relaxation.  Until next year Mr. Claus! 

Starting a new tradition this year was Christmas crafts.  We made a gingerbread house from a kit, decorated construction paper Christmas trees, and made homemade ornaments from salt dough. 

The end results were awfully cute.  Check out the difference between Clare and Sam’s handprints.  They are shockingly similar in size! 

 

It’s time for another installment of Our Favorite Books.  I don’t think I can fully explain just how important books are in our house and in our kids’ lives.  We have books everywhere – in each kids’ room, in the play room, in the living room, in our bedroom, and, often, in the bathroom and kitchen.  They are truly Clare’s favorite activity and we read to her every single day, often multiple times a day.  When we’re not reading to her, she’s often “reading” to herself or to her babies.  We’ll be sitting in the car and she’ll start reciting passages out of her favorite books.  She’s is a total bookworm and J and I couldn’t be happier.  It’s become such a wonderful thing to introduce her to and to share with her.

Sammy didn’t have as much interest and attention in books that Clare did at such an early age.  When he was about eight or nine months old I realized that we really weren’t reading to him.  I immediately felt very guilty and started reading to him that very day.  At first it was a fairly short exercise.  We would read to him for as long as he would let us, though sometimes he would try to eat the book, sometimes he would crawl or scoot away, and sometimes he would take the book and throw it.  Eventually we started finding books that he liked, and he started sitting for longer and longer periods as we read.  Now he brings us books to read to him, looks at books on his own, and really seems to enjoy story time.  He’s now read to before nap, before bed, and often two or three times in between.  We have another bibliophile in the making.

So here are some of the books that are in popular circulation these days.