Tierd

Someone, and I cannot recall who, posted this link on their blog a while back and today Lainey and I checked it out … the top image when the birds are a couple of weeks old and the bottom image is a video of a baby Guinea Keet hatching from its egg. We’ve already watched it about 13 times so I thought some of your kids may be interested in seeing it, too!

Click here to see the baby birds.

And just because, click here for the live Africa camera we sometimes visit.

Do you have any cool nature links you can share with us?

A few minutes after we got home from our weekend in Austin, Lainey and Graham were playing in the living room and she looked at me and said “I think Graham missed her toys!”

Graham is now standing for longer times - even drinking from his sippy cup while standing (I don’t think he even realizes he’s doing it). He can ride on the little car at Gigi and Doc’s house by pushing his feet and uses one of Lainey’s little red chairs as a walker at home. He waves at characters on TV as well as people and does the hand motions for Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star.

Graham’s favorite book right now is Hooray for Fish by Lucy Cousins. At the end, there is a line that includes “kiss, kiss, kiss.” When we get to that part, he always turns to look at me and reaches up for my cheek with an open mouth to give me a kiss. Of course, it’s my favorite book now, too.

Lainey was playing princess and I heard her say “Oh Prince Graham! You saved me!” I don’t know where she got that concept from, but all I could think was … the princess phase has officially begun. And I thought that we need to think of a few stories where the princess saves the prince.

Along the same lines, she said “Bye castle” to our house as we were leaving on a walk one night.

I asked Lainey if she was ready for her bath and she said “Not yet, sweetie.”

The big game this week is Lainey asking me if she can disappear, me saying yes, her running away saying “want you to ask where is Lainey!!!!”

She was reading through her library books quietly on the couch and out of the blue said “Mommy, I know I love you.”

When I picked Lainey up from school, her teacher told me that there was a child in the class whose baby brother was born last week. They asked him if the baby cried and Lainey interjected and said “My little baby brother Graham cries a lot, lot, LOT!” She really does not like him. Yet.

Lainey and I are having standoffs that rival the Branch Davidian/ATF standoff in Waco (which, by the way, I not only was just a few miles away from as a freshman at Baylor, but also, the day it all started, was walking to the library one quiet Sunday morning - forgetting I was at Baylor and the library is closed Sunday mornings - and saw a huge fleet of helicopters fly by so low that I went back to my dorm to find out what was going on … the news hadn’t even broken yet). Anyway, so these standoffs have been about the most ridiculous things ever, as evidenced by her behavior at the library last week.

Today after school, she decided to stop washing her hands after she uses the bathroom. The first time she did it, I thought it wasn’t worth fighting and let her use hand sanitizer instead. I knew it was wrong when I did it, but Graham was asleep in the next room and I could tell she was winding up for a battle.

The next time she refused to wash her hands, Graham was awake so I picked him up, stepped into the bathroom closing the door behind me, and stood in front of it waiting for her to wash her hands. For the next 18 minutes, she cried and screamed and lay down on the rug pretending to sleep. She told me that she didn’t need to wash her hands because there were no germs on them. She told me that she would wash her hands tomorrow. She said the sink was too high, the lights were too bright, and water would be too cold. She told me princesses and zebras don’t wash their hands. Any excuse to keep up the fight. I reminded her how sad it was that she missed craft time at the library and that she can’t do her job as a kid (have fun) if she doesn’t follow the rules.

I continued to stand by the door. She finally smiled through her tears and said “OK! I’ll change my mind and wash my hands!” She washed them and ran happily down the hall, already bouncing around to the Laurie Berkner CD playing in her room.

I’m sure the people who were searching these terms on Google and found my site were sorely disappointed. The first one made me laugh … that second one - eesh.

• how to freak-out at home with no doctor
• he made me take off my clothes
• my kitten shakes his head back and forth
• willie nelson picnic 2008 july 4 pictures
• spanish children teeth
• how to say tooth fairy in spanish
• newborn freak
• my daddy is great
• turkey manwiches
• who is small sweet whiny
• gallery twins pictures
• “closing time” semisonic
• book exchange chain letter

After Lainey was officially potty trained back in May, my next project was to teach her to dress herself.

She now does everything but getting her shirt over her head. Her undressing is good too, except that her method of taking her shirts off is ruining her clothes. No matter how many times I show her how to do it, she instead puts her arms through the neck hole and shimmies the shirt down her body and off via her legs.

I don’t know whether I am being a control freak mom who needs to leave her alone because it is just how she does things or if I should keep trying to teach her how to take her shirts off over her head. I find myself trying to walk the leave it alone/try to correct it line a lot lately.

As our little family was standing in line at the library last night to check out our books, Graham had very loud gas (any other word for it is something I just can’t bring myself to say or even write … click here and you will understand why). Mark and I glanced at each other but didn’t think much of it.

Until Lainey matter of factly blurted out “SCUSE YOU, Daddy!”

Mark turned bright red and we laughed so hard we had tears in our eyes.

Before the library we went to Chik-fil-A kids night again. We are addicts. There was a new artist tonight and her work looked like tattoos - it was really cool:

Our conversation tonight while standing in the hallway tonight after bathtime …

Me: Graham seems suddenly fussy. I wonder if that piece of grass he ate in the yard tonight could make him throw up like the dogs?

Mark: Nah, it wouldn’t. (in his ‘you worry too much’ tone)

Graham: BLEEEEEEEEECH (throwing up on cue, soaking his pajamas and my clothes and shoes)

So apparently grass can make a baby throw up, even though I couldn’t find it on Google no matter how many search term combinations I tried.  

And sometimes my mother’s intuition is spot-on.

Their date today started with dance class and ended with ice cream.

We spent the weekend in Austin with Mark’s brother and his wife and got to see some good friends while we were there, too.

Lainey had a blast in their pool, but despite our repeated warnings, kept taking her shoes off and ended up with splinters on her the bottoms of her feet from their wood deck. My friend suggested using bacon fat to get the splinters out, because there was no way we could keep Lainey still enough to pull them out.

We tried it last night - she wore bacon fat under band aids on her feet overnight. Crazy, I know. I think it would have worked if we hadn’t waited so long (she got them Saturday and we tried it Sunday night). The skin had grown over the splinters already, so it didn’t work and they are still on both feet.

Not sure what that will mean for dance class later today.