Clean house

Our house has never been so clean as it is now...
I feel that I have been permanently attached to the vaccuum cleaner, the carpet steam cleaner, and the steam mop.
I should have bought stock in "Method" brand cleaners.
The boys have entirely too many cars to pick up every evening.

I really hope our house sells soon.

Moving and selling the house at the same time is horrendous.

My youngest is now Two!

Little Jude isn't so little anymore...he's two year's old now!
Due to all the confusion with the move and selling of the house, we are planning to celebrate next week when Brian's parents come for a visit.

His vocabulary is growing every day.  I think he is really happy to be able to communicate with us more.  He's added:  Bootiful (beautiful), Pretty, Fly (usually referring to airplanes), Sky, Flower, Out (for outside), No, Pizza, Bubbles.

He has been very intent on stacking things lately and building towers with any blocks he can get his hands on.

Books are a hit, especially if they have planes or trains or trucks in them.  He often will pull out a book, walk over to one of us, turn around, and plant himself in our laps...demanding to be read to. He recognizes that letters are important.  He'll point to the letters and say "O","M","E"...though he might not be pointing to those letters in particular.

Now that it is nice, he always wants to go outside.  He loves playing with the big digger/dump truck outside or throwing a ball around.

He is just starting to begin pretend play.  He'll get out all the little plastic dinosaurs and very carefully set them up-right.  He'll prance them around while "roaring" at them.  It is so cute.

He is certainly his own person and has his own mind.  He has no problem leaving us all in the family room to wander upstairs to get a truck or a book if he thinks of it.  And he'll let us all know if he wants something and is told no...oh, such tears!

He has hit the picky-eater phase.  He'll like something one evening but shake his head against it the next.  However, cookies and crackers are always favorites.  He'll eat sausage and chicken most times, but not much other meat.  Pizza is preferred most times and poptarts are a must in the mornings.  He handles a spoon and fork fairly well and knows that they are important, but often uses his fingers instead.  He does like to eat and always wants to know what everyone else is eating too.

He is still a snuggler and loves crawling into and out of laps.  He still loves being held to sleep when he can convince one of us to lay down with him at night.  He loves to give big hugs and cling to you deeply.  I still love these sticky warm hugs of love :-)

New words and favorite phrases

Tamlin is attempting to converse about time.  Often things have happened last year or will happen tomorrow.
For instance:
Tam: "Mom, can I play on the ipad like I did last year?" or "Is Ciearra coming over to visit tomorrow like she did last year?"

Tam's current favorite phrase is "That's my favorite!" and "I know" (Sometimes heavy with sarcasm).
He has also been working on numbers and prices, so he'll say "look, mom, it's on sale!" or "It's only 1 dollar."

Jude is expanding his spoken vocabulary to include:

Ball (any circular object)
Up
Down
Hat
Huck = Truck
Vroom or Beep = Car
Banana or Nana = banana
Cracker
Binky = pacifier
Ducky = blanket
Quack, quack = duck
Moo = cow
Woof, woof = dog
Meow = cat
Yee-haw = for yee-haw or for horse

Ease = please, but more often he just signs it
Thank you = said whenever he gets something or he give you something

And just lately....Butterfly, which he says softly like a whisper.

I can't wait until Jude figures out more words so he can tell us more of what is going on in the noggin of his.

As Jude nears two year

We are now firmly in the terrible two's, on top of everything else that is going on with life.  Brian, Tamlin, and myself are learning how to deal with Jude's rush of emotions and lack of communication skills, which equals frequent melt-downs for seemingly no reasons.

Jude's mind seems to be going something like this...

I'm awake
I'm awake, why is no one else awake
I'll push the talking dog button repeatedly until brother wakes up
Wake UP!
WAKE UP! WAKE UP! WAKE UP!
I'm wet
I'm hungry
I want my diaper changed NOW
I don't want my diaper changed
I HATE being on my back for diaper changing
MOM!
MOMMA! MOMMA!
Up?
UP!
UP! UP! UP!
Oh, now I see the candy. 
I want candy.
CANDY, CANDY, CANDY!
No Candy?
Down.
I'm still hungry.
HUNGRY!
I want a poptart!
No, I want brother's poptart!
I only wanted part of my poptart and now I'm done
DONE!
I want out of my chair
I want up into daddy's lap in his chair
I'm still hungry and I want whatever daddy's eating, even if it was the same thing I was eating a second ago
PLAY!
Truck.
TRUCK! TRUCK! TRUCK!
I want whatever truck Tam's playing with.
SHARE!
Oh, momma's trying to write something.
I want a pencil
PEN!  PAPER!
Scribbling is awesome
Can I eat pencils?  Let's try!
Wait, pencils aren't food?
I'm freakin' starving!
Can I eat pencils?  Let me try this again...
I want daddy!
DADDY! DADDY DADDY!
UP!
Down.
Nobody loves me!
I'm all alone and nobody understands how horrible my life is!
WAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHH!
HUG me!

And this seems to be all within the first hour of the day...

Who you going to call?

Brian and I are excited that Tam is getting older, with a longer attention span, and is now interested in cooler movies.  Yeah!  Bring on the Starwars movies and Men in Black!  I am very ready not to watch another horrible episode of Thomas the Tank Engine and his whimpering whining friends. 

Last week I brought out...

GHOSTBUSTERS

I readily admit this is one of my all-time favorite movies.  I love it!  I vaguely remember being about six and staying over at a family friend's house (VanSlyke's) and watching this movie in jammies and sleeping bags (1984?).  I rediscovered it again when I was in highschool.  I knew that it was pushing the limits of maybe too scary for Tamlin, but I played it up as being an awesome movie.  We watched it over a few evenings after Jude was put into bed.



And the verdict from Tam?

It was a mixed review.



Tam liked the ghostbuster dudes.  He liked the ray guns.  He liked the green ghost that slimed people (Slimer).  He liked their awesome car.  He liked that staypuff marshmallow man and that the ghostbusters got him in the end.


Tam didn't like the scary ghosts or when people were running around afraid.  We also had to have a discussion about how there aren't any ghosts in our house.  I also reassured him that the ghostbusters travel around outside and protect everyone from ghosts during the nighttime. 

He is still talking about the ghostbusting dudes and how he hopes they stay outside to get the ghosts

 

 
:-)

Playing games

Playing games at our house

 

Tamlin: I love this game, Cariboo!  There are colored balls and treasure to find

 

Jude:  Watcha doing, Bro?  I want to play too!  How does it work?

 

Tamlin: You match the card with these little doors.  Use the key to open the doors and find the balls.  Get all the balls and you get the... TREASURE!

I love it!

 



Jude: What?  This is where the balls go?  How does it work?

Do they disappear?

 

 

Jude:  I don't know...I think it is too complicated for me.  I'm going to go play...

 

The wiggly caterpillar game!

Yeah!

Wiggle caterpillar, wiggle!

 

 And I'll try to put the marbles in the hands or take them off...



Jude:  And then you DANCE, DANCE, DANCE!

Yeah!