Friday, September 13, 2013

Getting into the swing of things

Well, with school now in session, Hudson has to adjust to life without his big sister around for five days in a row. But that doesn't mean he has to like it. He will cry when Sara Beth is dropped off at school and will then walk around the house asking for "Sissey" for a large portion of every morning.  When she comes home from school, he has been known to give Sara Beth a back rub while she lays on the floor watching some TV.
He will drown his sorrows with a nice cool glass of whatever Heather has. Whenever he sees Heather with iced tea or water or juice, he will go up and request that Heather give it all to him.
One day, while I was making breakfast, Sara Beth decided that she was going to prepare a meal for her brother, her doll and her. So she set out plates with popcorn, tomatoes, and an orange on each.
Sara Beth is beginning to make friends at school She initially came home with stories of how recess was not fun because there were too many kids and not enough room on the playground equipment. Now she talks about the complex social interactions of kindergartners. She told a story of some girl that always wants to play with one of Sara Beth's new friends every day, but her friend did not want to play with that other girl every single day, so Sara Beth said that she grabbed her friend to play with her before the other girl could. Sara Beth also has gotten into writing books. This week she made three for Heather and presented them to her while Heather was doing the laundry.
On Saturday, as we were eating breakfast, I look out the window to see a hot air balloon floating along really close to the ground. Sara Beth and I go out side and watch it try to land in a field right across the street from us. It called off its landing approach at the last minute and floated back up into the air to find a more suitable landing location, but Sara Beth was really excited to see one up close at her house.
Hudson's climbing antics are getting more pronounced so we decided we needed to move out his nursery furniture and move in some "Big Boy" furniture. We found a set of shelves and dresser at a garage sale but they needed to be refinished. Heather spent several days putting some coats of paint on the furniture in the garage in the summer heat when Hudson went down for a nap around noon. Last Saturday, we moved the new furniture in. Hudson likes to play in his bed, but he does not want to sleep in the thing. We tried to put him to sleep in his big bed, but as soon as we leave, he pops up, begins crying, and puts his stuffed tiger into the crib, which we kept in his room. He then cries while standing next to his crib. When we come back into the room and put him into the crib, he quiets down and goes straight to sleep.
Hudson is quickly picking up how tablets and computers work. Since he likes tractors so much, I downloaded a tractor app for the iPad. He loves it so much that he now will call the iPad a tractor and will ask to play whenever he sees someone using the device.

Here is a picture of me holding Sara Beth, who is holding Catta. I don't really have a good story to go with it.

Wednesday, September 4, 2013

First week of school

Well, last Monday was the first day of Kindergarten for Sara Beth. Her school starts at 7:30 and so we needed to get her up around 6:15 so she would be up, dressed, and ready to go by 7:05. Well, Heather got a debilitating case of some flu like disease over the weekend, so I took off Monday to take Sara Beth to her first day of school. I was not emotionally prepared to send her off. I had to choke back tears of pride and sadness when I dropped her off in her classroom. I had kind of prepared myself for her going to Kindergarten, but I didn't think I would have to be the one that would actually be taking her. I wore my sunglasses into the classroom so she didn't notice I was tearing up.
That first Monday, when I went into her room to wake her up, she popped right up and got herself dressed. On Tuesday morning, she took quite a bit longer to wake up, I had to help her get dressed, and when I brought her down for breakfast, she fell back asleep on the carpet by the back door.
Hudson has been gaining all sorts of new skills to allow himself to get into new kinds of trouble. He has realized that he can push chairs around the kitchen and then use them to climb on top of the counters and tables. He can also climb on top of his changing table; we are looking to get that out of his room and replace it with some less climbable "big boy" furniture. Also, Hudson found out how the toilet paper roll works. 

Not all his new tricks are destructive or dangerous though. Whenever he steps out into the backyard, he will immediately walk over to the bubble juice while repeatedly saying "Bubble." A big grin will spread across his face when he successfully blows a bubble all by himself. 
When inside, he is obsessed with oral hygiene. If you ever mention the word "brush" as in "I need to brush my hair," he will start repeating the "brush" word and run to the bathroom to pick up a toothbrush or two for his teeth. Sometimes you don't even need to say the word. Some days, a bathroom run to grab his brush(s) is the first place goes when I get him out of his crib in the morning, and it is also the last thing he does at night after you get his pajamas on for bed.
Sara Beth rediscovered her Christmas Carol piano book this past week. The book comes with a color coded piano keyboard along with a color coded musical score for several carols. She was practicing some of them and was good enough to produce a recognizable tune. She even played some tunes for her stuffed horse, which was in the hospital with a cast on its leg.