Camping

I am behind schedule once again. So this is the details for not this weekend but last. We went camping in Daingerfield State Park with some of our neighbors who have two girls around Sara Beth's age. It was the first time we have gone camping as a family. And even though we brought a lot of modern conveniences with us (like electric griddles and portable AC unit for our tent), it was still fun and felt like camping.

We got to go on hikes in the park. We arrived Friday night and stayed through Sunday morning. Both Saturday and Sunday, Hudson woke up around 6 am, so I took him on walks through the forest for an hour or so until the others were awake. Sunday morning, Hudson asked me to go all the way around the lake. And, he then started to get hungry and began fussing once I got to the farthest point away from our camp site. 

Sara Beth and all the girls gave performances at an amphitheater that we walked past. Sara Beth's story, like all good camping stories, included ghosts in it.

  Sara Beth and the other girls loved digging in the leaves looking for critters. Especially worms. Lots of worms. Once word spread of my fear of the disgusting invertebrates, all three of them wanted to show me their worm collections. They brought them in cups to the breakfast table. They shouted out the current total count in their collections. It was rather traumatic for me.

  But that was not the only creature they found. One of the girls shouted out "Mommy, I found a lady bug! Come look at it." Unfortunately, it was a tick, so they didn't get to keep it.

By the time we got home, everyone was ready for some relaxation. Heather and the kids just sat on the floor and read some books. Sara Beth enjoyed listening. Hudson just tried to figure out what was going on, and if he could grab hold of something to shove in his mouth.

He definitely has figured out how food works. He might not be very good at getting the food from the table to his mouth, but he will definitely get upset when I start to eat and do not provide anything for him. He doesn't seem to mind that only 20% of the food gets in his mouth. The other 80% is spread between his face, his clothes, my clothes, and the floor.

Every now and again, there will be some sort of candy sitting around at my work. I don't often bring gifts home for Sara Beth, but when I do, it is something edible.

The Banana Theif

Heather sat next to Hudson playing with him while she finished up her breakfast. Suddenly, Hudson grabbed the banana out of her hands and began to munch on it himself. Heather didn't have the heart to take it away from him. The phrase "like stealing candy from a baby" has new meaning with him around.

He also has gotten much better at scotching around on the floor, and will regularly get himself off the soft blanket that we place over the more rough carpet. Sara Beth, being the helpful big sister that she is, picked him up and carried him back to the middle of the blanked and "gently" placed him back down.

Sara Beth had her last school performance of the year last week and Sara Beth's teachers let her and Ashlyn stand next to each other. They giggled together through the songs, though Sara Beth did not miss a beat.

Hudson continues to charm all the ladies. Random women will regularly stop Heather and ask to rub his hair. Hudson's world famous woman charming skills even work on girl babies. 

Sara Beth worked hard to make this Mother's day special. On Saturday, she and I worked on filling out a book about Heather. It had several pages full of questions like what is Heather's favorite movie and hobby, and Sara Beth drew the answers. ("VeggieTales" and "curling her hair" were the answers given for movie and hobby).

Heather decided to celebrate the end of the school year with Sara Beth by taking her to Build-a-Bear where she picked out a horse and named her "Sparkle".  Sparkle the horse is now very well cared for, with Sara Beth grooming her and making sure she has pajamas on at bed time. This morning at the breakfast table, she asked for a bowel of oats for Sparkle to eat. Sara Beth then proceeded to talk to Sparkle about how she would pick Sparkle up from the last day of horse school after she got out of her school.

Teaching and Learning

Hudson and Sara Beth get along very well. Sara Beth loves trying to teach Hudson how to sit up or how to play with a toy. Hudson just stares at his older sister and tries to figure out what in the world is going on.

Sara Beth has started watching a show on PBS called "Word girl." In the show, the mild mannered girl turns into Word Girl, a superhero from the planet Lexicon using the phrase "Word up." Sara Beth now calls herself Word Girl. Hudson is now Word Baby. Heather is Word Horse; Sara Beth rode on Word Horse's back all around the house until Word Horse wore the skin off her knee and got a blister. Word Girl carefully led her to the stable to rest.

At meals, we make Sara Beth finish her plate before she can get desert. Sometimes, she will need to leave the table and stretch out on the couch to, supposedly, make some more room before she comes back and finishes.

Sunday morning, we actually had a little bit of time before we had to leave for church, and I was able to snap a picture of Heather with the two kids. Hudson received a lot of compliments for his hat that day.

Our church had a big party for the kids on Sunday. They cooked some hot dogs for lunch and had a petting zoo. As I mentioned earlier, Sara Beth has been talking a lot about horses recently, and so, when she saw that there were pony rides too, she was ready to skip lunch and go right to the pony rides. 

After lunch and a ride on the pony, it was time to move on to the petting zoo.

But, Sara Beth had so much fun on the pony that she went back for another ride after she was done chasing all the small critters around the petting zoo.

Hudson loves to eat, but he does get a little excited sometimes. And when he gets excited, he starts to bounce around and it makes it hard to get the spoon into his mouth. Sometimes we miss. I will hold Hudson's head with one hand and feed him with the other. Heather just tries to aim carefully, which results in a lot of food colored polka dots around his mouth.

Hudson prefers to eat something with his own hands. He loves to hold a Mum-Mum in his own hands, and can mostly get it into his mouth without supervision.

Sara Beth is already talking about her birthday party. She has decided that she wants to have a "Tinkerbell party." I'm not entirely sure what that means, but I do know that Sara Beth wants to collect clover and snail shells as decoration for the event. Heather and/or I will go outside with her and scour for the various collectibles that she will then place in her bucket.  

Sara Beth and Heather will bake various treats on a regular basis. Sara Beth has progressed to the point that Heather will let her pour the ingredients as well as turn the mixer on to the appropriate speed, and, of course, she gets to lick the utensils when done.

Thumb Sucker

Whew. Sorry for the delay. This past week, I was sick, Hudson was sick, and my computer crashed, so I am a little behind. Below is the blog post for last week that I just finished writing. I'm a little behind.

Hudson has found his thumb and has begun to suck it, just like his big sister. It is cute now, but we would prefer neither of them did it.

His muscles have developed to the point that he is nearly mobile. When we put him down in his crib at night, it is not unusual for him to scoot all the way to the end, turn around and be scoot half the way back to the original side by the time we get him in the morning.

My parents have been really helpful. My mom really enjoys the opportunity to feed Hudson. He really likes his food and but he does get frustrated since he can eat faster than we are able to shovel the food into his mouth. He will start to cry if the next spoon full of food does not get to him quickly enough.

Sara Beth has been amazingly helpful this past week. We have been on perpetual water restrictions here in Wylie, and have been unable to wash our cars in the drive way. Sara Beth decided that my car really needed to be washed, so she got some wet paper towels and climbed up on my car and began scrubbing it down, and did an impressively good job with it.

Part of the fun of having a baby is seeing their reaction when you give them new foods with exotic flavors that they have never experienced before. For example, when I gave Hudson his first pickle, I asked Heather to get the camera and capture the moment.

 We got to play with wild animals this past week. Sara Beth found a worm and decided it would be her pet. She named it Licorice and built a house for it in the front yard. She gave me explicit instructions to not run over his house with the lawn mower. A couple days later, she found a green inch worm, named it soccer ball, and decided that it would be a friend for Licorice. We mentioned that not all wild animals are friendly and that sometimes wild animals might bite, like a squirrel or raccoon. She thought about this for a second and then responded "A Tyrannosaurus Rex is a wild wild animal because it really bites."

Hudson is amazingly easy going. There are days that he does not fuss or cry at all, aside from his eating escapades.