Nap time

After his two year birthday, Peter reached a number of milestones including but not limited to biting leaving a full impression and climbing out of the crib (successfully without landing on his head). The past few weeks have not been very fun trying to get him to stay in the crib for naps and at night time. He does understand that he's supposed to stay in his room, and at first, he would open the door shyly and look out. If he happened to see my stern eyes looking back at him, he would dash back in and close the door. Now, he's gotten a bit confident. In fact yesterday, taking advantage of the fact that I'm laid up in bed with strep throat and thought I'd take a little rest while the kids were in Quiet Time, he snuck all the way down to the kitchen, climbed on the counter and stole the rock candy I got as a guest gift at the Museum of Natural History Gala. Despite my old age and feeble state of being, my sense of hearing is quiet keen. I knew exactly what he was up to just by the sound of it. So I was waiting for him as he came back up the stairs. Sadly, the rock candy had to go in the toilet (which was rather confusing for Marcelo later when he got up to go pee).

Today, I had better luck. Only one attempt to come out of the room. I was able to squelch it merely with my voice from downstairs, "Go back in your room." When I went to check on the quietness a half an hour later. I found him like this. I guess, I'll take whatever I can get.

"cracker"

So currently you say no more than three or four words regularly: mom, dada, yay, and caca. Your first real word was something like, "nanana", for banana but you lost that word when you kept growing new neurons I guess. Now, we've been struggling to get you to say two sounds together, like "u" and "p". You'll say the sounds separately but not together to form the word "up". There's only a handful of consonant sounds that you are willing to make and vowels are even harder. Whenever we try to get you to repeat a new sound, you get kind of nervous and clench your mouth and neck muscles. It's a mystery to me and the therapist as to why you do this. It's especially perplexing to figure out what the difficulty is in getting the words to come out because it's clear that there is nothing wrong with your hearing or comprehension of words.

Well today you were making your usual closed mouth sounds indicating you wanted something from the kitchen which we decerned was a cracker. I asked you to say cracker, but of course you don't say cracker, so I meant for you to sign cracker with your hands which you do know. That's all I was expecting and then from nowhere --"cracker"!

What?! You can't even say "up" but out of no where you come out with "cracker"! Ok, it did sound kind of like a non-human parrot voice, but you said it!

Stunt driving

Sofia shows the broken front end of the car.  Marcelo seems quite delighted by the exciting event that just occured .... probably because he's a boy.  Peter doesn't understand why we need to take a picture of this.

Just when I thought you knew better than to drive your toy push car down the stairs, your boy brain decides you need to test out this scenario for yourself. God forbid you just take my word for it, that this is NOT a good idea. I am, after all, just a woman. So apparently you creeped up to the edge and of course eventually the car's front wheels succumbed to the edge. As the car starts to go down, you decide to bail off the side of the car which results in a tumbling cycle involving you and the car all the way down the stairs. I did try to save you but of course I was useless running behind you. As I saw you emerge from the wreckage, I cringed in expectation of the damage, broken bones, nose bleed, gashes to the head, bloody teeth hanging out. But there was nothing. You climbed up to my lap and cried with fear but that was it. It's a good thing kids really are made of plastic!

You didn't stop on this landing, you fell all the way to the bottom.

I fought the law, and ...

Maybe this new anarchy t-shirt was not such a good idea --Kiri.

Peter! I told you to stop messing with the lemon tree. Don't face-butt the ceramic pot anymore. OK!

Christmas '11

This year, I thought you might really get into the whole tearing of wrapping paper and mimic the frenzy that your siblings were sure to infect you with as they opened their presents.  Instead, you were pretty ho-hum about the whole thing.  Didn't care too much for the approved destruction of paper like most toddlers do. Didn't buy much into the hype of it all.  Sorry we failed to impress you this year with our Christmas gift display. But I know one thing was a winner, the bag of popcorn Santa left in your stocking to fill up that long darn un-fillable thing!

Ok, sooooo what am I supposed to be like all excited about here? 

Yes, I think this will do.  It seems to fit.  I would put it on for real, but I still haven't figured out this whole what arm goes in what hole thing. It's kind of complicated. Whatever. 

 

Yes, Ok. Very good.  It's a book.

Yeah, yeah. I like it.  Not bad.

Just a minute.  Let me reach over here and get some popcorn. Excuse me.

That's interesting, yeah.  But god this popcorn is good.

Ice skating

Yes, that's right.  Ice skating.

No, this was NOT my idea.

I could also entitle this --Righting all the wrongs of my parents when they didn't let me ski on a family skiing trip even though I was eight!  ... whether you like it or not.

But this wasn't my idea.

Not sure how Ray thought this would work out.  (He probably wasn't really thinking how it would work out). Even Sofia thinks there's something odd about this situation. But basically, you did NOT enjoy watching everyone else skate.  And, you did NOT enjoy being put into skates either.  It's a miracle Ray came out of this with his manhood still intact.  But don't you look so adorable in those little skates!

Camera shy

Not only do I neglect to take pictures of you, but when I do, you certainly do not cooperate. You don't look at the camera. You walk away. You stay but look down at the ground. You whine. Really anything to get out of having your picture taken as if you even know what that is.

Today, there was a brief five minute reprieve from the constant overcast and gray skies, so we ran out to see if we could just snap a few cuties in the still-freezing cold weather. You barely obliged, but only if you could mess with Daddy's face.