I finally finished my semester and it is such a relief that I NEVER have to take more than one class at a time again!! Unfortunately I have an 8-week summer course starting tomorrow so I thought I'd try and get caught up on the blog before then....oh and did I mention we are going on vacation tomorrow???
Anyway, as a quick update, Jared continues to amaze us in his motor skills (which we don't really know if it's because Mallory doesn't really have coordination, or if Jared has a lot of coordination, but he seems to be focused on tryint to master new motor skills every day). He is still obsessed with any type of ball and it's complete meltdown if we have to put it back at the store (I usually choose not to have the meltdown, which means we have a lot of balls in our house!). His latest favorite thing to do is jump, jump, and more jump. Not the jumping on the ground that he has been doing for a while, the jumping off the 3rd and 4th stairs, jumping off the slides, jumping off the bed - this kid is going to give me a heart attack!
Jared also thinks he needs to go up and down stairs without holding on to the walls. Did I mention my anxiety has increased since he has started moving around?? He also loves taking a tennis ball and throwing it into his little basketball hoop. He consistently makes it in from about 10 feet away- pretty sure Mallory still can't do that :) However, while this may pay off when he plays sports once he's older, I don't enjoy washing dishes and seeing a bouncy ball come flying full speed by me about 2 inches from my head! We have already had 3 decor breaking incidents....
My least favorite skill he has learned is opening the doors. The round ones, not the ones that have the handle you just pull down. This means he can now go outside on his own - time to put the alarm back on the doors so I can hear when he is trying to escape!
Mallory continues to be her stubborn self, complete with attitude and all. This leads to some very big meltdowns, which you cannot do anything in the middle of meltdown because rationalization no longer exists. A few weeks ago, she really wanted a Popsicle but didn't want to do her reading. As soon as I told her she couldn't have one, total meltdown - kicking my seat, screaming, acting like a lunatic. If you have ever heard a kid SCREAM for 30 minutes- you know it makes you go crazy -to the point you scream, cry, whatever because YOU CANT MAKE IT STOP. Finally, Eric showed up and was able to settle her - remind you - OVER A POPSICLE. I rolled the windows down because I thought it might provide some free birth controls to teens driving beside me.
Because of this we have started trying to give more options, let her pick out her clothes (even if they don't match, which is much harder for Eric than myself), and letting her learn from life herself instead of just telling her. For example, she has these jelly shoes that really hurt her feet (she actually limps when wearing them), but she insists on wearing them. I let her wear them to school and packed her an extra pair just in case her feet were tired of those shoes. I thought for sure when I picked her up she would have changed them, but she stuck it out all day. I can only hope her determination and persistence helps her go far in life! I think she may out smart us most of the time, which makes it really hard to argue with her about certain things.
We attempted to start Jared in his own bed on the floor in Mallory's room. He was really excited to sit on it, but not sleep there. Mallory was so excited about this, but after about 15 minutes of him showing no interest in going to bed, she said, "Mom, if Jared wakes up in the middle of the night and cries, I'm just going to bring him to you because I am not going to deal with that!" I just don't have the energy to force it now, so I will probably try again once I am finished with summer classes.
Funny quote of the month:
As I was loading up our car for a trip home from Dayton, Mallory told Ryan and Sandra that, "Mom's in the car getting loaded!"
Thanks Mallory :)
Our Chick-fil-A had cookie monster available for pictures the other day. Mallory kept calling him "cookie mo-mo" This is one of the few draw backs of your child not watching TV...they don't know any of the characters - apparently we need to get more princess and children's character books.
Mallory playing teacher and putting the kids down for a nap.
We have been taking walks daily. I find it really refreshing and the kids love being outside.
We finally made it for their checkups. Neither one of them wanted to put the little gowns on.
You would think they'd try and be as fast/efficient as possible knowing how much kids don't sit in a 5X5 rooms for an hour without many fits.
I think we would be so bored without these two kiddos to entertain us!
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