Finally! We were able to take some of the gates down in our house this month! While David still gets into things, he’s lost the urge to destroy everything in his path and pull everything off of shelves and out of cabinets. We love being able to walk around the house without running into gates and David & Jack love to run around from living room, through the kitchen and dining room, back to the living room.

David is quite a handful- full of mischief and just crazy sometimes and he’s screaming A LOT these days. I know it will pass and I admire his energy. It’s exactly what you want to see in a boy. It is not, however, exactly what you want when you go out to dinner. We regularly wonder why we try to eat anywhere other than at home.

He’s into playing with Legos and balls lately and loves to be naked. I take off his clothes to get ready for bed and he runs into the living room to Daddy yelling “Nekee! Nekee!!!”

Mom, Laura, Emily and Benjamin visited with us last week. This is a picture of the only quiet moment that occurred during the visit:

No one is arguing. No one is screaming. Everyone is playing quietly….

We had a great visit with them. Two older kids argued about everything that could be argued about, but that is only to be expected from bossy firstborn children and they had a good time playing together in spite of it. It was great to get to know happy little Ben now that he’s old enough to be  interactive, and David enjoyed bringing him toys to play with and patting his head.

The big event this month for Jack was the death of his kitty, Astro. Jack is almost always the first one up in the house. We allow him to be out of bed if it’s after 6am, to play computer games, or whatever, as long as he doesn’t disturb anyone. He sometimes forgets the bit about not disturbing anyone and will come into our bedroom to tell me something, and I’ll remind him that he’s not supposed to be waking me up. So, when he came in one morning and said something which I did not completely hear about Astro (because of the earplugs I use), I sent him away and told him I’d be up when David woke up. He obediently went away, and when I got up, he repeated what he had said. “There’s something wrong with Astro- he’s in the kitchen.”  It was a good death. It looked like he’d just been walking along, had some sort of sudden heart issue or who knows what, and fell over. Jack was a little upset, but he took his cue from us on taking a pragmatic approach to the death of a pet and by that afternoon he was saying, “Look Mommy! I’m pretending to be a dead cat!” and laying down on his side with arms and legs stretched out stiffly in front of him.

Jack started reading this month. It’s like all the pieces suddenly clicked into place in his brain and he began to see words as words, rather than a series of letters. He’s getting along pretty well, and enjoys reading his “Bob Books”

This month, right on time, David has hit some of the wonderful stages that come with being a year and a half. He throws some really lovely fits with lots of flopping around like a fish just yanked out of a pond. He has gone from a child who would eat anything at any given meal to one who you can’t count on to eat anything, except pickles. When you give him a dill pickle, he runs around showing everyone, exclaiming, “Kickle! Kickle!” like you’ve given him a cookie.

He has to be the easiest child in the world with regards to sleep. He goes to sleep without a peep and if he wakes in the morning, or from his nap, before I’m ready for him to be awake, I can go in and shush him a little, give him back his pacifier and he’ll lay back down and sleep a while longer with no argument whatsoever.

He combines this easy-going nature with a major violent streak. Often, when he and Jack are wrestling, and things get a little rough, it’s Jack who ends up crying in the end. You never know when he’s going to head butt you or throw a car at you. We have been “encouraging” him strongly to stop this behavior with increasing use of the spankin’ spoon, but it’s proving to be a difficult lesson to learn.

So, can you tell that Jack has begun choosing what he will wear each day? I’ve been enjoying the combinations he comes up with, and had to really choke back a laugh when he came out of his room last week wearing a pair of David’s pants. I asked him if they felt too small and he said no, they were fine, thank you very much.

We got Jack a loft bed just after Christmas, and it has really opened up some space in the boys’ room and he loves sleeping up there. It’s nice for him to have a spot where he can get away from his little brother’s grabby hands and play in peace.

Jack doesn’t take a nap most days, but we have about an hour and a half of “rest time” each day in which he has to stay in the bedroom playing quietly or looking at books on the bed (thanks to Cris for that and many other excellent parenting tips). Sometimes, though, he still needs a nap. I can tell this when the mere mention of rest time causes him to collapse into a puddle of tears. At these times, I have him lay down with his mp3 player and he can’t fight it- it puts him right to sleep.

It’s amazing how fast kids this age learn words. David is picking up 1-2 a day and is beginning to string a few together. He regularly pops out with some word that we didn’t know he knew. He learned to say “Mommaw” and “Poppaw” not long after we came home from Ohio, and when Granna and Granddad came for their Christmas visit, he called Granna “Mommaw”. We thought it was interesting that he realized they were the same category of person in his life.

He understands so much of what we say to him, and surprises us at how well he follows directions. I can say “pick up that ball and take it to your room” and off he goes with it.

He was a HUGE fan of the train that went around the Christmas tree. He could not get enough of it and escaped through the gate running into the dining room, saying “choo-choo, choo-choo!” every chance he got.

We have a little potty seat with handles to hold on to, that goes on the big potty and I’ve started sitting David on it at least once a day. He loves to sit there and read Daddy’s car repair manuals, and when I tell him to go poo-poo, he pushes with great effort. It is so stinkin’ cute. He has actually gone in the potty once, which is really encouraging. I just need to be persistent with putting him there every day and trying to time it right.

These days, we’re never quite sure which boy is going to climb out of bed each morning.  Sometimes we get well-behaved, obedient Dr. Jackyll, and other days it’s argumentative, defiant Mr. Hide. Much of the time, Jack is great to have around. He’s curious about everything so it’s fun to explain things to him and teach him things. When I use a big word in conversation, I define it for him, and I’ll think he’s probably not retaining it until we’re driving along in the car and he says “Mom, look! The clouds are dissipating!”

Some days I really don’t know what to do with him.  I know I shouldn’t let him engage me in arguments, but I’m still learning how to manage this stage so that we can get through the hard days keeping the level of frustration and anger at a minimum. I’ve just read an outstanding book called, Have a New Kid by Friday so we’ll see if implementing the author’s suggestions make a difference.

We’ve entered the “potty humor” stage, so he’ll run around the house, chanting things like “Buckets of toots! Buckets of toots!” and collapse laughing at his hilarious joke.

We have abandoned the sticker chart for something more effective that we call “Happy Bucks”. Jack earns happy bucks for doing things like rinsing his plate and putting it in the dishwasher, doing handwriting worksheets, helping Mommy, etc. and can spend them for TV and computer time. This has been a GREAT way to limit TV, and reward good behavior.

Jack misses his cousin Emily. They had a great time playing together during our visit to Ohio- we barely saw them. We did hear them though, when the mutual bossing escalated to screaming!

This month has just flown by with our trip to Ohio taking up much of it. David did about as expected in the car, but it wasn’t too bad and we had a great time visiting with family and friends. He was interested in his new cousin Benjamin, and patted on him a lot. I’m sure they’ll be good friends!

David is having a language growth spurt right now, so he has all kinds of new words including please, choo-choo, baby, ball, peep-eye, no, and he’s finally just started saying Mommy!

We’re grateful to have plenty of space for the Christmas tree this year in a place where David can’t get to it because we’re pretty sure he’d have it pulled over in a matter of minutes. He enjoys watching Jack playing with the train and doesn’t complain too much about being stuck behind a gate.

Besides playing with cars, David’s favorite thing to do is look at books. He will listen to a brief story but he’s much more interested in looking through books with lots of pictures. He will sit for a long time just poring over a book, turning the pages back and forth.

Such a beautiful family…

We’ve been able to visit lots of playgrounds recently, now that the weather has cooled off a bit, and David has a great time climbing  and playing on the slides. It’s so nice to get to the point where he can play a bit at McDonald’s and not have to be stuck in the high chair while Jack plays.

David is a rough and tumble boy, and rarely is his forehead clear of bruises. He loves to attack Jack and unfortunately, he’s started biting and sometimes gets big handfuls of Jack’s hair and has even made Jack cry several times. I kinda view this as payback for all the times Jack has randomly pushed David down, sat on his head or taken toys away, but I suppose we must train him to be a little less violent. He’s still doing quite a bit of screaming in the car, and we’re mentally preparing ourselves for the 20 hour drive to Ohio in a couple of weeks. Oh dear…

He’s become a bit of a pickier eater. We never really know what he’s going to want from day to day, whereas before, he would just eat whatever we put in front of him. He loves vegetables and will even eat things like salad, olives, salsa, broccoli, etc.   Recently, as we were eating out one evening, Mark uttered a sentence he never thought he’d be saying to a child of ours: “I’m sorry David, we don’t have anymore broccoli- you’ll just have to eat this hot dog if you’re still hungry.”