Status Update

You know the not-so-great thing about Facebook? I post quick snippets of our lives on FB and then just send them out in a little binary data packet -- never to be revisited. And because I put something out there, because I had my Doogie Howser reflective moment with my computer screen, I don't necessarily pop over here to the blog to update. But it occurred to me today that this blog IS my baby book, our story of life-as-we-know-it when our kids are so little and changing every time I blink. This is the record I check when someone asks me when Sophie first had teeth. And when Jameson finally utters a sentence, I will capture it here.

So, sorry I've been neglecting you, Blog. Here's a status update on the kiddos:

SOPHIE IS more challenging than ever, and funnier than ever. She can be a total turkey lip (whining, stomping, manipulating her way around the house), but she still loves to cuddle and she says stuff every day that makes me laugh. If you ask her how old she is, she'll say "four and one quarter," her favorite food right now is edamame, she prefers "twirl up" dresses to pants, we have started reading chapter books at night and she really listens (even with no pictures!) and can repeat the detailed story to someone else, and her favorite play, movie, book, and CD are all Annie. She wants nothing more than to be an orphan. For record-keeping purposes, I will note that she still wets the bed at night, unless I wake her up at midnight. When she does make it through the night, she demands two jellybeans: one pink one and one green one.

JAMESON IS a man of few words. The typical word count for an 18 month old is 10-20 words. He says:
Momma
Dada
JJ (when he looks in the mirror)
Bah (ball)
Bah-bah (bottle)
Mi (milk)
Ruff ruff (dog)

He's got about ten days to learn at least 3-13 more words before his 18 month milestone. He said "light" a long, long time ago (his first intelligible and totally parroted word), but he doesn't say it now. He has said Uh-oh a few times, but not consistently. He understands EVERYTHING, though. If I tell him, "Carry your plate to the kitchen, put this wrapper in the trash, and then go into the bathroom for your bath," he can follow ALL of those instructions. When we look at books and I say, "Point to the dog, point to the giraffe, point to whatever...he knows all of them. He waves bye-bye, he makes smacking kissy noises when he's saying night-night to Sophie, he says "Awwww" after we kiss. He has 12 teeth, a head full of wispy Linus-like hair, and a cowlick that makes everyone laugh. He loves the bath and banging anything hard against anything loud. He is a bit of a bruiser, smacking his sister to hear her squeal, then immediately leaning against her for hugs and kisses when we tell him "Say sorry!" His favorite food is fruit, especially berries. Strawberries, blueberries, raspberries. He can open the fridge, pull open the crisper, find the berries, hand them to you, then run to his high chair.

He is a BOY. He grabs our pole light and shakes it. He bangs the strings on Frank's guitars like a little punk rocker. He likes to play in toilets, and on three different occasions I have interrupted a game we call, "Chunk the glass jars of spices onto the hard tile floor." It took me 45 minutes to write this post because 1) It got too quiet so I went to find him...he was unloading knives from the dishwasher, and 2) He stole two potatoes from our tater bin and was running with them through the living room, then he crashed and bonked his head on the corner of a hutch. That said, anyone who spends any amount of time with Jameson says, "He's really laid back, isn't he?" Yeah, actually. He really is laid back. In a lumbering, crashing, cackling bruiser-boy kind of way.

And the rest of us? Oh, Frank, Callie and I are just fine. Trying to take it all in, and write a little bit down every now and then so we can pour over these sweet memories when the kids turn into teenagers and we're ready to sell them to the circus.