Winter

Photos from the last several months are finally up! 

November through March pictures: https://photos.app.goo.gl/FnlkPHfRQFMApkRJ2

From looking back, it seems that: Ronan turned 8 and we had a party with lots of animals at our house (python, hedgehog, and bunny)!  Reminder to self: hide the Nerf guns in advance next year...  Ronan started riding a big bike and rocked it.  We enjoyed a visit from several relatives: first Grandma and Grossvater, then a big family Christmas at our house.  We built a greenhouse for the chickens (and picked up two more), and they all started laying eggs.  The boys got a bunkbed which makes joint bedtimes much smoother, and Orion started going to bed even with our babysitter (Kate).  Date night was thus reborn, including several nice dinners out and a movie. 

Over January I spent my longest time yet away from the boys (8 days!) in Panama with a bunch of Smith students.  All of us got the flu, but we still look like we're having fun in the trip pictures: https://photos.app.goo.gl/GfdmX1RtZO6bSSCC2

I also got to visit Joel and give a talk in Riverside, then we headed out to California for a rainy but still gorgeous Spring Break with family up on the coast.  Back home we managed some easter festivities and now I am in Wisconsin to welcome baby Jules to a very exciting new chapter in all of our lives!  https://photos.app.goo.gl/DbwPPmwaiy0SCRXp2

When I return home I hope winter will finally be over.

Collected random observations:
Now BOTH kids dip their pizza crusts in milk.  Weirdos.

At age 8, Ronan still believes that his mom is not ticklish.  No further comment.

Sometimes the kids surprise me by being less picky than expected.  There are now some types of Indian food, Thai food, Chinese food, and sushi the kids will eat.  Orion loves broccoli, and Ro loves red bell peppers.

Orion is at an age where bandaids heal all ills.  No break in the skin?  It doesn't matter...bandaids are still magic.

Ronan is starting to read more books, and recently liked the HiLo series and Garfield books (and some Calvin and Hobbes). I miss the nighttime reading routine (Ro and I finished Gaiman's Norse Mythology not long ago), but now joint bedtimes for the kids are more practical most of the time.

At daycare, watching "digger Dave" is a favorite event.  At some point O pointed in a book at digger Dave, and I finally learned that digger Dave is a front loader (and that he thinks all front loaders are digger Dave).

A while ago, Orion was using "yesterday" for all past time.  Like we had Christmas yesterday, as in he remembers it!

Quotes:
A: I’ll be in the kitchen, call me if you need anything.  
O: mom mo-om.  
A: what is it?  
O: anything

O: (singing to himself in the car) Old Macdonald had a chicken. Eeieeio. And on that farm he had an egg.  Eeieeio.  And on that farm he had a redlight.... and on that farm he had a green light...and on that farm he had a brown light.  Did he have a burned pancake?

Cute O pronunciations:  Pinano (=piano), popiscle (=popsicle), porkeepine (porcupine)

O: turn on the switch.  
A:I don't think there's a switch in the "O" [fabric covered letter decoration].  Is there a switch in there? What would happen if turned on switch in the o? 
O: It would sing.

I probably recorded this one in a prior month, but:
O: Orion do it by my own self

Photos and Quotes

Soaking cares away

At long last, photos are downloaded and sorted. I'd blame the chickens and children for the delay, but then what else was I taking pictures of anyway?

Early Summer photos (May, June, July)

Late Summer/Fall photos (August, Sept, October)


Summer quotes: (Mostly O, since R talks like a normal adult in between fart jokes)

O: Can I pet your arm? [many times a day]

O: Can I want that?

O: Can I want some any more?

O: I want too much oap-meal!

O: Do it by my own self

O: I need a milk bottle
D: No, let's wait and have it with dinner
O: No, I have a milk bottle, and you have your beer!
D: Okay!

[trying to get me to hold him after I set him down to stir something]
O: I'm scared. I'm sad.

O has been very interested in the car names lately (like "we are in the CR-V named Juno"), and then he came out with this:
O: Are we going to our house named "home"?

A: I filled the chicken's food
O: Sounds good (funny sounding from a two year old)

O: Where Grossvater go? And where'd his face go?

[At a recent bedtime:]
A: Tonight we get to finish [Norse Mythology] and read about Ragnarok. And then get no sleep.
R: Why no sleep? Oh right, because we'll all be dead.

Summer: Ronan!

Feeding the chickens

End of 1st Grade Self-Portrait 

In comparison to pace of change in a toddler, Ronan seems to always be just Ronan, until I look back at pictures from a year ago and then it becomes clear this little boy is growing up fast.

Some highlights of Ronan at 7.5:

Humor:
A few months ago (but never written about here), Ronan started loving excerpts of Monty Python films (esp. the quest for the holy grail) watched on YouTube as right up his alley.  And then there was the night we cracked up over all the most ridiculous place names we could find.  The favorites: Itchy bottom, Middelfart, Butt of Lewis, Suckerville Maine, and Nowhere (where are you from?  Nowhere.  No where?)  Ronan's laugh may be my favorite in the whole universe, it is so delighted, whole bodied, and pure.  One day Ronan came to my office after camp and watched Tom and Jerry cartoons and I just took a video of him laughing so I will always have that sound.

Mad Scientist:
Now that he has a desk in his room (with an all important booby-trapped desk lamp) Ro has been enjoying doing experiments in his room.  So far he has melted tar with his lamp, mixed glue, green dye, flour, wax, and other ingredients to "make plastic", and somehow actually made something resembling plastic.   He heats the mix with a magnifying glass and his lamp, dries it with the air conditioner, and I ignore the green stains on all the surfaces of the room. 

Spy:
Ronan is loving learning about codes of all kinds, mostly thanks to extended family members.  He's been swapping book codes, writing alphabet codes, and sharing ideas with his friends.  He's even enjoying learning about the history of code use.

Math:
Ro continues to amaze me with his desire to learn new math ideas and the speed with which he picks them up.  One night he wanted to know what the total of all the beads on his abacus was, and I showed him how to write down the large numbers representing each row complete with commas in the right spots, and how to add large numbers on paper to figure it out, neither of which he had ever done before.  AND THEN HE FIGURED IT OUT!  The next night he thought was so cool David taught him to do problems with carrying of digits, and now he does them for fun at bedtime.

Projectiles:
Oh my goodness is our house ever full of nerf guns, foam crossbow launchers, felt ball sling shots, and darts galore.  Enough said.  We've come a long long way from "no gun toys in the house."

Quotes (old!)
R: Mom, can you search google for "largest coprolite"?

R: Stop playing with my fart putty, mom.

In this age of ever improving (but fallible) voice recognition technology, Siri gets a quote this time too.  Here's an item on my to do list that I can't figure out for the life of me.  "Credit fish load dinner bake."  Um, yeah, that.

Summer: Orion!

The kids are changing fast.  Here are bits and pieces I've scribbled down on the backs of shopping lists, on my phone, or in my brain.  Part I: Orion!

O can't make a kissy face, so blowing out candles is entertaining

Orion is two!  He's been singing Happy Birthday for months for friends so when it came time for it to be his birthday he thought it lasted for days and days.  We totally supported that vision of his birthday by providing three different muffins/cupcakes, and by having celebrations at daycare (they did that one), at the daycare potluck on his actual birthday (made a rhubarb cake), at home that morning (rhubarb muffin), with an actual cupcake a day later, and with Tata and Boo a week later.  

About a month after his birthday, Orion gave up his last (almost token) nursing session in the mornings, shortly after we moved his crib to his own room.  He's now used to that and we hope we are now on the gradual road toward better sleep.  At bedtime* we all do tooth brushing together, and D and I alternate doing O and R's bedtimes.  Orion gets a sticker for going to bed from awake in his crib the night before (this is only a few weeks old and man those stickers make him proud of it), we read books, rock in the chair with a song or two, then he lies in his crib for a long time asking for everything under the sun (mama arm, Rion pet mama, no hold hand, no blanket, big bed, Rion own room).  He likes to stroke our arms when he's tired in a way that's really sweet.

Orion has the strong autonomy streak I expected but didn't see in Ronan at this age.  He wants to climb up into the car by himself, climb up into the car seat by himself, do the buckle by himself, etc.  This makes transitions slow, but mastery fast.  O is a confident climber and a bit of a dare-devil.  It probably helps that he's tall for his age -- still in the 98th percentile for height.

Tantrums came on the scene within a week of turning two, and sometimes the world is so upsetting there is nothing to do but lie face down on the floor and cry.  This is pretty infrequent, and usually after just a few seconds of anger he wants comfort and then can move on.  Unless it's really inconvenient--in which case, of course, all bets are off.

O's articulation is getting much easier to understand -- sometimes painstakingly clear in a way that shows just how hard he's working at it (he says backhoe loader with such concentration and care).  Other words are still adorably obscure until you know them, like dando dige (which is sometimes Daniel Tiger and sometimes dandelion), pankpank (which is both pancake and blanket), or fuffuwhy (butterfly).  

Personal pronouns have come on the scene:
I can't  
We are home
You reach it

O in the O! (A few months ago)

Found her (on O's first phone call chat I kept hiding and telling him on the phone where to find me)

Some phrases I hear a lot:
is that?  (=what is that?)
Mama watch
Mama come here
Up on mama
Oatmeal and applesauce
Do self, Rion self

And sometimes they get strung together in more interesting ways:
Whip cream please.  Lil bit more.  Mama help last bite.  One more.

July 3:
A: Do you see moon up in the sky?  
O: Orion reach it!  
A: Oh, it's much too high.  
O: Orion ladder


-----
*Super mundane, but I wish I'd documented this the first time so I remembered what to expect.  In this case, maybe this will show us how far we've come?

Spring 17

[Written a couple weeks ago, but then life got a bit overwhelming again!]

Photos January-April

22 months and counting…

This is the age where language is exploding.  We don’t always understand it, but more and more words and phrases are making sense.  Today Ronan mentioned ice cream in the car and a perfectly and slowly articulated “ice cream” echoed from the rear toddler seat.  And O has other ways of making his desires known.  This weekend Ronan climbed up on my lab and Orion got jealous.  I pulled O up on my other knee but he apparently didn’t want to share, because he reached over to push Ronan off and said “away!”  I think the lesson that that’s not appropriate brotherly behavior got lost in all the laughter.

One of the words O is working very hard to articulate is OUTSIDE, because he wants to be there all the time.  He spent pretty much all of yesterday outside except for nap, and scored his first tick to prove it (thanks New England).  “Yucky bzzzzz” indeed.

Maymay has become baby, ammay has become airplane, and once I even heard him say truck instead of dadach (his own special version).  OK, it was WIRE DUCK, but who wouldn’t know what that means?  Maybe one day he’ll do the same with doblebay and we’ll finally learn which heavy yellow machine that one is.  I already miss “maymay” a little bit.  

Language “mistakes” are pretty cute, and one that’s informative of how we talk is that we must run certain words together.  Thus O believes that “hereyago” is one word.  “Right back” he’s sure is two words, and he repeats it as if to remind me every time I tell him mom will be right back.  Perhaps because articulation takes clear effort, O's intonation is masterful.  He can encode volumes in the way he says "uh oh...oh no!" or "ooooh".  The feeling/enthusiasm is tangible (and I can hear his voice so clearly in my mind).  

Ronan’s latest favorite game (besides chess and war) is once again coming up with homophones (triples even better than doubles).  Today he nominated May/may, hour/our, break/break/brake, and several more I forget.  Ronan has also discovered the power of saying his first “bad word” (crap) which he most certainly got from us.  I am making an effort to swear with “crag” or “flap” instead, but that just cracks us up more.  

We are reading My Side of the Mountain at night right now, and he seems to be really into it which makes me glad (especially after we’ve struck out with other classics like the Chronicles of Narnia).  I had strong memories of this book having a female protagonist (which it doesn’t), but now that I’m reading it I realize the first person narrative really lends itself to putting yourself in the kid’s shoes (or moccasins). Adult rereading often reveals faults/lack of modern sensitivity to issues, but it's nowhere close to as bad as Swiss Family Robinson was.  

According to Ronan’s teacher (and that night he read the whole Elephant and Piggy book with dramatic intonation), R now reads above grade level, despite his insistence that he can’t read.  He is starting to read a bit in a chess tutoring app so once he gets a little further with it he can smoke the pants off his friends and folks in chess.  He also read me some jokes from his joke book the other night.

For Orion’s part, any book with a truck will do, although he still likes books with owls, babies, and our pasted together paper copy of Uh Oh Broccoli.  While we managed to avoid TV with Ronan until he was two, that’s harder to do with two kids and so we have a few shows that can qualify for family TV time.  We just watched a great Attenborough/BBC One series on Africa, and Planet Earth 2 is as jaw dropping as we’d heard.  Orion climbs right up on the couch and tucks himself under the blanket if he hears the word “TV”, and starts to ask for “A’ca” which he now thinks means all nature shows.  (He will also ask for “fish” since we watched a bit of Finding Dory).

It’s close to the end of the semester and I am starting to feel a sense of well being.  The weather has turned to summer, I took a fantastic cooking class this weekend on sauces (my first long stint away from the kids on a weekend that wasn’t for work), I’m reading fiction again (slowly), I had a lot of fun drawing on the iPad, and we just had a lovely visit from David’s folks.  Today the house is quiet again (David is in Boston) but we had dinner outside and all fell asleep in one bed.  The nearness of classes ending is taunting, and yet I’m still enjoying teaching, and having a great energy in my lab with six seniors who are all wrapping up their fantastic projects.  All is not right in the world, but it’s nice to have a local respite from some of the overwhelm that tends to dominate.  Maybe it’s just that the kids are asleep, the internet is down (so there is no email to respond to), and I have 0 desire to fix it yet.  OK, I finally did.

KidQuotes:

D: it’s really dirty in here [living room]

O: oh, yucky house

O: bye-bye baby squirrel  (just a sample of the three word phrases we are now getting!)

R: Mom, your phone seems so SMALL after Dad’s!

A: Hard to imagine, but we were all babies once

R: Yeah.  But it's hard to imagine you being annoying.
A: Aw, thanks.
R: Except when you say I can't have any more screen-time.

The biting basket

Ronan saw an old photo of himself chewing on a basket.  He promptly climbed inside to see if he still fit.  It was quite a squeeze, but Orion caught the idea and decided to climb inside and bite the basket too.  It is a well bitten basket!  Below in basket: Ronan big, Ronan small, Orion, Orion.

Orion 
Orion is speaking in sentences now!  Uh oh ball, Hi dada, Bye-bye Mark, Ni-Ni yeow (night night cat).  One we hear a lot is "hot owl" but its meaning is elusive.  It's apparently not "hot, ow", or "hat owl."  

His vocabulary is growing by leaps and bounds, even if it's not always something we can understand.  Some we've figured out:  ish = fish, gagach = fire truck, eesh = quiche, aña = lasagna, dado = cracker, avo = avocado.  A surprising (unsurprising if you know O) number seem to deal with food.  

Ronan
Ronan has now learned my entire high school choir's repertoire of rounds from that one a cappella winter concert... if only my choir teacher knew the longevity of those sessions.  Ro can do some of them as rounds, and some nights when I do double bedtime we "sing Orion to sleep" (or keep him awake longer).  

Quotes:
R: I have located the projectile (spoken offhand, as if that were a totally normally way to come across a dart in the sink).

R: your mother was a hamster and your father smells of elderberries!  (The Monty Python clips have begun...)

Snow day

Ronan has a raucous cackle.  It's almost the same sound from when he was 1.5, and it's one of my favorite things.

Ronan hasn't come to work with me in a long time, but today his school was canceled and Orion's wasn't.  We explored all over campus and had fun (and he watched a live rodent surgery), and now he's watching Tom and Jerry cartoons in my office.

That cackling...

Orion has been practicing his kung fu moves following Ronan's lead.  Ronan does the poses shouting "Duh, Duh, Duh" as he punches, and so Orion kicks his leg up and says Duh Duh Duh!!