Tuesday, February 28, 2012

Family Party

This past week Sadie, Heather's cousin, Eric and family came up from Florida to visit. It was a lot of fun to watch them run through the house chasing each other around.

I took Friday afternoon off and we all went down to the Aquarium in Fair Park. Of all the fish and aquatic animals to look at and touch, the encounter that Sara Beth liked the most was when she found a plain empty shell in their aquatic equivalent of the petting zoo. We tried to convince her to pet a sting ray, but She was not nearly interested. As an aside, since Eric deals with aquariums as his day job, walking around the aquarium with him was like having our own personal tour guide as long as all the kids stayed in the same place. As soon as they scattered, we all had to go in different directions to catch all them. Hudson was the easiest to keep a hold of.
Saturday night, we had the Millers back over, along with Cliff, Kathy, and Peggy for dinner. It was good to see everyone, and Heather's ice cream cake was a hit with everyone including the kids.
Wesley brought out a lot of the toys that Sara Beth has not played with in a while. I think that when he did that, Sara Beth remembered how cool they all were. The day after they left, she brought out her doctor kit and gave her pony a checkup. I think she said it had apple juice on the brain.
Hudson was not quite as interested in pretending to be a doctor. In fact, he got rather sad when Heather gave him the stethoscope.
However, he was very interested in Sara Beth when she began to operate on him.
I brought out my guitar to play and Sara Beth immediately wanted to play it. I began too show her how to hold the instrument but she didn't want any instruction as she could do it "all by herself." When she found that my years of practice meant I was much better at it than her, she was no longer interested in playing and wanted to go to her room instead. We had a talk about how it was ok to not be good at something right away, and that it takes time and practice to get really good at things. I don't think she was fully convinced.

Tuesday, February 14, 2012

The pros of independence

It feels like Sara Beth has grown vastly more independent this past week.She has definitely been coming up on her own with new and unique things to do with her time. She decided that Heather needed a present, so she came to me and asked for some wrapping paper. I gave her the remainder of a roll leftover from Christmas. She came back asking for scissors. Then tape (lots of tape). Ribbon and a bow followed. Then, her gift was all wrapped so she brought it out for Heather to unwrap. It was a tupperware container filed with odds and ends from her playroom, but she was really excited that she has wrapped it all by herself.
Speaking of tupperware, Sara Beth pretended to have a picnic in the kitchen. She pulled out all the picnic plates and cups that she needed out of the tupperware cabinet and set them up all over the floor in the kitchen. The best part (for me at least) is that she will no clean up the entire thing and place it all back in the cabinet when she is done without having to be asked twice.
She is still going strong with her chore to feed the cats. One morning, she noticed that the cat's food dish was getting low. Instead of asking Heather to get the food off the shelf over the dryer for her, instead she moved a kitchen chair into the laundry room to use to climb on top of the dryer. She had to use the kitty pooper scooper as a door stop to keep the entry open enough to let her chair through. She was quite proud of her creative solution to get the food without any help, but, in order to avoid accidents in the future, Heather moved the food down to a spot where Sara Beth can reach without the need to climb on any of our appliances.
Then, there was the time this weekend where I noticed that the lens on the camera was having some issues. After questioning Sara Beth, she admitted that she had been using the camera to take pictures. She had taken about 10 pictures including the below one. I'm glad she admitted to using the camera, as the below photo would have incriminated her beyond a shadow of a doubt.
Not to be outdone, Hudson has been working hard to catch up with his sister. Heather swears that he has grown by a foot overnight. Sunday night, while working on his growth spurt, he slept from 8pm to 7am without interruption! Unfortunately, he is a noisy sleeper, and often it is hard to tell if he is just making noises while sleeping or he is awake and crying for attention.
Sara Beth definitely is taking after her mom when it comes to cleaning. While feeding the cats Saturday morning, she noticed that the place mat that the food dish sits on was dirty. So she carefully takes it into the kitchen to clean. As soon as she begins that, she goes back to the laundry room and notices that the spot on the tile where the place mat sat is also dirty. So she begins to clean that too. Then she wants to sweep the laundry room floor. And then she asked to mop it. I felt like I was living in the "If you give a mouse a cookie" book, but since Sara Beth was doing such a good job of cleaning, I'm not going to complain too much.

Monday, February 6, 2012

Chores

Sara Beth has significantly matured these past two weeks. She said she wanted to take the money in her piggy bank to buy a stuffed animal. We counted it up and told her that $5.43 was not going to be enough, but that she could trade some of the stuffed animals she does have with some extra stuffed animals we have in the attic. She did trade some out but then asked how she could get some more money. I told her if she dusted the house, I would give her 10 cents. I think we both came out ahead on that exchange. I then told her that she could start earning an allowance. Her first responsibility is feeding the cats. Every morning since then, she has gotten up to check the cat's food and water bowels. Also, she likes talking to Heather on my cell phone whenever she can.
My Aunt and Uncle came into town to visit my parents this past week. Sara Beth really took to Aunt Carol and wanted to show her all of her toys and asked if she wanted to watch cartoons with her.
Hudson has been very smiley recently. He will grin from ear to ear quite easily, and really turns up the charm for women. There has already been one instance where a mother, who had decided she was done having kids, has now decided to grow her family after seeing Hudson a couple times.
Sara Beth said that she wanted a doll house. Heather suggested that they build and decorate one themselves. So they sat down and began to overhaul a cardboard box. Sara Beth put up a gigantic TV with hearts on it along one wall, and Heather built and upholstered a cardboard couch in wrapping paper. Sara Beth decorated the walls with wallpaper and the occasional bat sticker. She was very proud of how it turned out once they were done.
Hudson has returned to a steady and relatively consistent sleeping schedule. Most of the time he will sleep through the night with one feeding around 4am and then he takes a long nap in the afternoon. Today, however, his long afternoon nap continued into the evening. Around 8pm, Heather and I look at each other  and decide that we should go wake him up so he can have his medicine and one last feeding for the night. Hopefully, he hasn't thrown himself off of schedule; I don't want to stay up too much past midnight tonight.  Here is an unrelated picture of Hudson smiling.