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Tiernan's newest trick is raspberries. It's especially funny since he will repeat them to you if you do some for him!

Kenton randomly counted to five the other day! It just surprised Jon and I since we knew he knows his numbers (well, to 10, let's be reasonable here), just not really how to count. Does that make sense? But, he just up and counted off the fingers on one hand one day when we were sitting on the couch. Just goes to show you once again how much they learn even when you aren't teaching!

Another new game we've invented is Body Parts. Apparently this is great to do while waiting for some family members to finish a meal. Kenton loves to point out body parts ("CHIM!" - chin, "Eboos" - Elbows, etc) to show off what he knows! Of course this only works with what he can show above the table, but he's getting really good at things like the difference between lips and mouth.

And I took Kenton to his first movie today! We went and saw Planet 51. I hope he appreciates in later years how much time I spent choosing his first movie at the theater! Probably not, but one can dream. The choices were: Alvin and the Chipmunks (Uh, no), Princess and the Frog (which I enjoyed, but figured Kenton might not appreciate that factoid in a few years, like at cootie age when girl stuff isn't cool), or Planet 51. It was pretty funny, for older kids and adults, but I don't think he really enjoyed himself as much as I'd hoped. Oh well. It was worth it just to watch him get folded in half trying to sit in the theater seats! And we ate popcorn, drank pop and juice and I even snuck in a small container of mini M&M's in my "purse".

Finally, some more reading we've been doing. We borrowed Dog's Colorful Day from the library, as well as Dogabet. Then there's Canada 123 and a couple others we haven't gotten to yet. I really would like to do something fun with Dog's colorful day, but I need to tape it back together first! Kenton got a hold of it when I wasn't looking and ripped a page into three pieces! I'm sure it's not the first library book to have such a fate, especially in the kids section, and it won't be the last!

Storytime!

Lately we've been reading a lot. K will often request each story (and we read 2-3 stories at a time) at least twice. One of his new favourites is Hooray for Fish. He got it as a gift exchange gift and is now really getting into "reading" it. He knows it so well now that he "reads" some parts. He loves the upside down, round and round fish "A-sie down! Roun-roun!", "Spish, Spash, Spoosh!" and my favourite part at the end when he finds his mommy fish and goes "Yay! Mum! Kiss kiss!". It's so cute to watch!

T is enjoying his solid foods and is now eating chicken at dinner. He has been loving watching K and especially any other kids. Yesterday we had K's friend over for a play date and T did not want to eat or sleep because he was too busy watching them play! He was so excited to see them running around and playing with toys, and sometimes playing with him. K is now asking when he can go see his friend again, he won't stop talking about her!

Still here!

Well, the last week and a bit here have been busy! The weekends are always nuts as we try to fit as much cleaning (and also fun) as we can into two days. Kenton is still sick, he wakes up every morning sounding like he's going to cough up a lung, but then it settles down and he's his usual self, if a tad more grumpy than before.

Let's see, we had T's six month shots on Tuesday as well as a teeth check up for K. Then we went to the dollar store and K got to pick one thing for being so good (well mostly good, for whatever reason, he's terrified of people looking in his mouth). He can be very sweet sometimes and was putting his purchase on the counter to pay and then saying "Aik-yu!".

Wednesday we had a playdate at his friend's place. He had a blast. I was wondering what he would do going to a girl's house if all she had were barbies and ponies to play with. Not that I'm one of those "My son can't play Barbies" people, just more that I was thinking he'd be like "Where's the trains!? (she had trains) Where's the cars? (she had cars) Where's the neato toys I don't have? (she had lots of those too)". They did great together and I can't wait to have them over here this Wednesday.

Thursday was T's checkup at the pediatrician's. He now weighs 18lbs, 4 1/2 oz and is right around the middle for height, weight and head circumference. Both boys did pretty good all day, I had had an appointment in the morning that T slept through and K did good considering I tried to be smart and bring the DVD player, but forgot to charge it so it wasn't working. So I pulled it out and he got all excited, but then couldn't watch anything since it had no juice. We also got our Valentine's all sent out Thursday too. Everyone should be getting them soon!

Friday was just Friday, spent cleaning and buying groceries. We've had a pretty lazy week for activities, K has been engrossed in his trains all week, it's hard to tear him away for food or sleep. Although he did get a puzzle this week, Thomas of course, it was his "being good" at Thursday appointments present. It was so funny to watch him so engrossed in the puzzle. He was doing really well with it too! Then Friday he also got a Thomas ABC card set. So we have lots of new activities we can do with those too!

T's been eating lots of new foods, we have green beans, pears and now chicken for him to try too!

I called it!

Yup, the sickies have arrived. K woke up today with a cough and general crankiness, but other than that is bouncing around and okay. He's eating so far, but more the munching type, a little here a little there. We'll see how the rest of the day goes. So far T seems okay, I think I hear some coughing and congestion in his chest, but that could be my mommy super hearing going glitchy and making me hear things...

Yesterday we had a friend of K's from playgroup come over for a playdate. It was nice for K to have someone over for a while, and they seem to have similar personalities, so they had a blast and didn't drive each other bonkers! There were no major fights and overall I think it went really well. She sure chatted up a storm and it seemed to me that last night K was trying to talk more in sentences than he has been in the past. K really needs to learn some social skills, like not taking others' toys, or getting in their faces and I think the best way is for him to just play with someone, so I'm glad these two got on so well. Next week we plan to go over to their place so it'll be something nice for him to look forward to.

The only major downer to the event was after they left, K gave me a heart attack. I had put T in his crib so I could use the bathroom, before I got there though, I heard glass breaking in the living room. So I go racing in there to see what happened and K had knocked over the water glass that little B's mom had been using. Lesson #897 - take all drinking glasses with you when you leave a room. So I grabbed him off the couch (where he was standing - again), and bent down for a sec to assess the damage and how best to clean it. Well, he reached over, quick as can be, grabbed a piece of glass and tried to shove it in his mouth! I screamed "NO!" at him (gut reaction) and grabbed it from him as gently as I could so I wouldn't cut him trying to get it away. Where the heck do they come up with this stuff? Gee, I think I'll try and eat a sharp shard of glass!? Won't that be fun? Oi. I managed to get it away and threw K in the boys' room and closed the door while I cleaned the mess. Fun. And no matter how thoroughly you think you've cleaned up, there's always a stray piece of glass. Yeah. A huge one. In the bottom of the excersaucer. Of course I found it when I was trying to put T in it later that day. I hope I've got it all now but there are no injuries to speak of. So far.

Cranky bums and bathtime

Right now I'm hoping no one is getting sick, because we had a serious case of the crankies in our house yesterday. K didn't want to do anything he didn't ask to do, like eat, or get changed or have a bath. I put him down for a nap screaming (again). He barely ate any dinner and only did that standing on me on my chair, refused to sit in his seat. This often means the sickies are on their way, but today he seems okay, just still cranky.

T adores K. Follows his movements everywhere and barely cries when he gets pushed over (never!). K also loves to make T laugh and will often do his best to get his attention (like push him over, cause we all know that always works!). So bathtime is working into a deal where we do both boys at once. It's a great way for them to play together and make each other laugh, and where there's lots of giggles, both parents are usually there. So I guess it's actually more of a family time these days (non-Yoga days of course). This can also mean lots of water. On the floor. But, hey, what's a few extra towels in exchange for some little kid laughter?

It was a Monday yesterday. The morning went pretty good, T slept till about 9 which gave K and I time to get some colouring in in the morning. So we did more colour work and played some trains. K helped me make lunch of macaroni and hot dogs (Coni-dog), by helping put the hot dogs in the pan, eat cucumber and stir the macaroni! He can be a big helper sometimes!

Then K was being super grumpy so I decided it was time for his nap. I got him packed up and we went to read a story (or two). He calmed down slightly for this but started up again as soon as I left and wouldn't stay in his bed. I'd left him his Big Thomas book in hopes that he'd calm down, he did really well with it the other night, sitting and "reading" it before he fell asleep. Well, about an hour later and he was still freaking out, I went in there and there were some pages from the book, in bits everywhere! Took me half an hour to tape it back together! I read him another couple of stories and after more crying, he finally fell asleep and then slept for 3 hours!

One of the books we read was called Let's Count by Nana... something. Anyways, I can't find any info on it online, maybe cause it's kinda old, this poor book has been taped together many times and needs some more! But, it was good for showing numbers, their words and how many that represents. It counted up to 15, then 20,30,40,50 and 100. We were counting the items on each page, but stopped counting after 20. K is really getting interested in numbers, and can recognize a few. He was pointing them out at the grocery store the other day!

A lesson in listening.

On Thursday we also did some colouring. I wrote out our names for K, and we named colours. K was having fun but also had to think really hard! I had written out our names in different colours and was asking him what colour the letter was and he'd name the letter instead. So the poor guy was confused when I said "No, silly, what colour is this?". Eventually he got it, but you could almost see the wheels turning as he was trying to figure it out!

Friday we had playgroup in the morning, which went really well. K started to get out of hand, running through the one room where all the babies (all around T's age) were laying on the floor playing. So I took him out of the room and sat him down and explained he can't run through the room like that. I don't think he understood me, but whatever the reason, he did calm down after that. Well, long enough to get packed up and go home!

We had an exciting potty day on Friday too. Not in a good way. In a messy way. Let's leave it at that.

Friday we read Alphabet City. It's a collection of paintings of the city, but there's shapes in the pictures that look like letters. I picked this one up from the library, cause K often does this, points out letters in ordinary things! He loves this book, and found most of the letters right away. Some I'll let slide, like Q was hard for me to see too(I honestly still don't see it, but it's the picture where Q should be so...).

This weekend I picked up more supplies for crafts and projects. We're going to finish our Valentines and get those shipped out this week. I also bought some Bleeding Art Tissue (got the idea from Frugal Family Fun Blog). And HA! to the crazy lady at Michael's who said they don't carry it, I found it! It lives with the regular tissue paper. I want to try to use it and make our own version of pages from Color Dance, showing how colours mix to make other colours. Update - apparently we had to stop for some colouring time and I tried it out, not working the way I wanted, but I'm hoping some watercolour paper might work better to do it on. We'll see. I also need some kid free time to try it out first, so I can get the kinks out.

K and I went out yesterday and bought some Thomas undies. With his wanting to wear his Cars underwear so bad the other day I hope that maybe wearing his absolute favourite character right now would help. The only size they had left was 3X though, so right now they're rather huge, but they haven't been washed yet. Some of his other undies are almost too small now after they got washed so I'm hoping these will shrink enough. And if not, that a stitch or two in the sides will help them stay up. So far all he wants to do is wear them over his Pull-ups and carry an armload of Thomas undies around!

Also, K was getting restless here so I quickly made a "sewing" project for him. I've been wanting to do it for a while, so I had the stuff, but I just punched holes in a square of craft foam and gave him a shoelace to "sew" into the holes. I don't think he's ready for this yet, I showed him how to do it, then gave it to him and he just ripped the laces out, making big rips in the foam! Maybe when I have more time to sit with him and do it we'll try again. Or I may need to glue two sheet together to make it stronger, one thin sheet might not be sturdy enough.

Enough about K, time for a T update! He's loving sweet potatoes and is eating up a storm! He also seems to be sleeping lots the last few days, so maybe a growth spurt is happening here! He is really enjoying bath time at the moment, especially since we've started putting him in the tub with K. The two of them are having a blast together! The giggles at bath time make it hard to want it to end (though bedtime right after is nice...quiet...)! Speak of the devil, I think he's up!