Wednesday, August 31, 2011

One Two Three

Three months old, it's true. Thirteen or so pounds and twenty-six-ish inches long.

Here's what he looked like last month;

Here are the two photos side by side;


I think I'm going to figure a way to prop him in a sitting position for the next one. He's getting too tall to lounge in the truck bed.

He's also getting too tall for his (my) puj tub in so much that I introduced him to the big people bath tub this past week.

First I dipped his feet, as I always do, to let him know what's coming. He always gets happy when he feels the slippery wetness on his toes. But this time, this time when that brief introduction was over, rather than slipping into the semi reclined position of the puj with only his lower torso submerged, he found his whole self lying in the water. He stretched and wiggled tentatively in the beginning and then began to beat the water with (almost) chubby legs. Enjoyment and confidence growing with every stroke.

I've returned him to the big boy tub one time since, he enjoyed that second experience in a much more serene sort of a way. In between times, we've continued to use the good 'ol puj because babies easily bathed in the bathroom sink can't possibly be in danger of growing up.

Thursday, August 25, 2011

Hit it

We hit the library mother lode on our last trip. Checked out seventeen books, and all of them gold. In so much that we were through them in just over a week. Zizza read all of hers within a matter of days and I was forced to offer up the books I'd selected for the two of us to read together in order to keep her in reading material.

Here's what we've been reading

Eva-
Faerie Rebels-Spell Hunter- I spotted this on the self on the JUV section while browsing for Ziz. I mistook it for this book which I remembered my sister Becca reading way back when. I always wanted to read it too, don't know why I didn't. I seem to remember that she (Becca) was a little disturbed by the book (not having read it I remain unaware of the reason) You might think this makes a good explanation for why I never read it. At least you might if you weren't acquainted with the two of us as children/adolescents. Generally speaking Becca's discomfort with an item (such as a book) would fuel my desire to seek out that item and triumph over it.
Anyway, The book I wound up with, albeit accidentally, was a joy to read. Compelling, entertaining, well paced, and I didn't even guess the ending.

Star Girl- Long ago, my mama told me I ought to read Star Girl. I planned to read her copy when I came to visit but when I arrived I found out she'd read a library copy. Then I largely forgot about it. A few months ago I remembered and looked it up at my local library but all copies were checked out so I submitted my name to the waiting list and this week it was (finally) my turn.
Gosh, I really loved Star Girl.
I also realized that Jerry Spinelli, Star Girls author, wrote Maniac Magee one of my long time favorites. Funny how that works, isn't it?

39 clues- The Mr gave me the first book for Mothers day and I was a little perplexed as to why. The covers of these cooks are not at all attractive. In fact, they look like a marketing ploy aimed at the elementary school aged boy set, dressed up as literature so as to sell the parents on the scheme. But I was pleasantly surprised. The story is entertaining, the writing is good. The books make for a nice afternoon's diversion. I've read books two and three courtesy of the library and have four and five checked out and at the ready.

Zizza-
Clementie, friend of the week- We've got Clementine and The Talented Clementine in our own library and were happy to stumble upon this fresh story. We like her she fits well among the precocious and quirky little girls about whom series of books are written. I haven't read this particular adventure. Zizza read it to her self first thing, and I forgot to have my turn before we turned it in.
Maybe my favorite thing about Clementine is how I'm pretty sure she's got a crush on her best friend's brother but it's real subtle. Ziz won't notice the crush references for a while yet.

Magic Tree House - Girlfriend eats these up. Checks out four at a time. Enzo likes them too...when he can sit still long enough.

Eva and Zizza together-
Frindle- This was a lucky grab. I was plucking books off the shelf sort of willy nilly looking for things to read to Zizza at bed time. The title/cover art caught my attention and into the "check out" stack it went.
I think I liked this book better that Ziz did. It's about a fifth grader, so the social dynamic of the book was a little advanced for her.
I loved Mrs. Granger. I wish she was my fifth grade language arts teacher.

The Princess Tales- I heart Gail Carson Levine big time. She is a fairy tale superstar. We've read 3 of her princess tales in the past few weeks. Zizza likes figuring out how the characters are related to each other through out the history of Biddle.
I start out reading just a chapter or two per sitting, as is our routine, but a day or two into these I end up just finishing them off. For one thing, they're not long at all and for another, I can't make myself stop.

Enzo-
Down Girl and Sit - These are stories told from the perspective of a dog. They're funny stuff. The chapters are only three or so pages long which is perfect for Enz. He likes the idea of listening to chapter books but he lacks the attention span.
He got a magic tree house book in his Easter basket last spring. The three kids sneaked down stairs and snooped the baskets before the Mr and I got up. 
From my cocoon of blankets in my as-comfortable-as-is-possible-while-eight-months-pregnant state, I heard him exclaim when he spotted it "A chapter! a chapter! I got a chapter!" Then we told them they had to wait to touch anything until they were dressed.
He we still thrilled about his new "chapter" later on when, all spiffed up in his too small Easter finery he was granted access to it.
He wouldn't let me read it to him though. He finally heard it when my parent's came to visit and each took a turn reading it aloud to Zizza.

Moo-
Girlfriend loves anything with The Cat in the Hat on it. I just stroll over to the easy reader section, pluck any random publication with the "I can read it myself" seal on the top right corner and she's enchanted. Most recently we're been reading "Green Eggs and Ham"

Creature ABC- Enzo and Moo both ate this one up like cake. We talked about the creatures, we talked about the letters, it was a jolly good time. I'm thinking of buying a copy!

Now then, I thought this was going to be a really fast as lightening post. A few words, a few links, I'll have some time to start the new books I picked out at the library this evening. Oh well, I guess I got carried away. Now it's time for bed.




Sunday, August 21, 2011

Know what we're gonna do today?

Dude.
Du-ude.
I need to get my post on.
I have all these BIG THINGS I feel like I need to post about but BIG THINGS get to be kind of time consuming to write and that makes them sort of intimidating. Plus, champion night sleeper that he is, Duke is a less-than award winning napper so day time writing isn't really happening. (If you need to hear more excuses just lemmie know. I can come up with some more)

Anyway, I decided to ignore the big things for today.

We're big Phineas and Ferb fans up in here (I know, I know I just can't drop the street talk (street talk? I'm so lame) you're just going to have to bear with me) We watch an average of 1.5 episodes per day. Actually more than that. I've let my television viewing regulations slip quite considerably this summer what with it being too crazy hot to send folks outside to play for long and me being busy with a new born and all. I don't really want to think about an honest average number of episodes per day because that would mean facing the excessive TV dependency going on in the household and I'd rather continue sweeping it under the rug for now if it's all the same to you. Okay?

So, on Tuesday while Enz was at pre-school, Moo and I found ourselves one on one. First we talked about some shapes and colors because having the older two off at school influenced me to attend to her pre-pre-school education. Then she started up a game for the two of us. "I Phineas," she said pointing to herself, and then pointing to me, "you Ferb baby Duke-Perry a pla-pus." It may interest you to know, that Zizza was assigned the role of Isabella. No further assignments were made at the time.

That was Tuesday morning. It is now Sunday Evening. She has been calling me Ferb all week. "Ferb," she'll say and wait for my response "yeah Phineas?" then she proceeds with whatever she intended to say to me. For example; "be-bug a my arm." At some point thereafter she'll point to her baby brother, mention the word "platypus" and be on her way.

Wednesday afternoon I had to wake her from her nap. She sat up in bed, looked blearily at me and said "Hi, Ferb."

The other kids have followed her lead and made up their own family castings of the show. Neither of theirs are quite as consistent as Moo's however. They both name themselves Phineas and revolve through family members to fill other roles...mostly. The other constant is Enzo's refusal to assign Moo a role in his game.

Guess what else? Ziz made a play-doh penguin.


She brings books home from School and is expected to read them, choose from a list of activities to apply to them, carry out said activity, and then return them to school. She had a book about a penguin last week and thus was born the play-doh penguin.

She wants to make a puppet show based on a book she has now. If I had my way she'd chose "read the book to a sibling" every time as that option involves significantly less effort on my part. Unfortunately, I don't get to pick.

Is this post getting tedious for anybody else? Mmm-kay. I'll go ahead and stop then.

Tuesday, August 16, 2011

You wouldn't guess it from the photo but...

Enz spent over an hour this morning back packed up and ready for his first day of preschool.

Then I sat down to feed the baby and before I knew it we were late. The slightly baffled look he's sporting above comes from the shock he was working through at the sudden change in my disposition when I realized what time it was and began frantically shooing him toward the door. (with a detour while I snapped the quick photo)

Enzo will be heading to kindergarten next year with just one measly year of pre-school under his belt. I really wanted to organize a Joy School group for him last year but that was about the time that even the essentials became hard to manage and it didn't happen.

We're in a Pre-school co-op with friends in the neighborhood. I would have loved to do Joy School again but I was out-voted. I'm excited for what we are doing though, and I'll probably be using some of the songs and games and things I've learned in my four years (2 as a student-2 as a parent) of Joy School experience when it's my turn to teach so it's all good.

Tuesday, August 9, 2011

The weekend

We had an unprecedented number of visitors this weekend. 4 sisters, 1 brother, 2 mothers, 1 father, 1 aunt, 1 cousin 1 brother-in-law, 4 nephews. Not everyone stayed at our house, but it was still very full.

Do you know what happens when you take that many aunties (and uncle) away from their own children and only supply 2 nieces and 2 nephews as substitution? The results are really quite extensive but maybe the most notable as far as the mother of the substitutes is concerned was that none of the four really got much chance to whine for three whole days.

Of course other things happened too. Things besides a lack of whining among my off spring. I don't have any pictures of those things. My sisters have pictures. Hopefully they'll send them to me so I can include them in upcoming posts.

The best thing to make it onto my camera during the weekend was this.

Isn't it great that I talked all about the lack of whining and then post a picture of a sad baby to go along with it?

Yeah, I thought so too.

Since all the company left the whining has picked right back up. Intermittently for the past two days Enzo has been telling me how "azausted" he is. I believe him. I was azausted too. In so much that I took 2 naps yesterday.

Currently Duke is azausted and proving the point most emphatically by crying rather than sleeping. And so, I am off to see what can be done on that front.