Saturday, February 23, 2013

"Kid" talk

In the last week or so, Camille has learned to open bedroom doors!  Good & bad comes with that, of course.  We had hoped that since we transitioned her crib to a "big girl bed", combined with the new door-opening talent, we wouldn't be waking up anymore to a shrill "Mommy!!  Mommy!! Mommy!! Daddy!! Daddy!! Daddy!!".  We envisioned her helping herself out of bed, opening the door and coming down the hall to our room to peacefully wake us - that's how it went with her brother, at least.  Well, she still prefers the old method - so for now, we go in her room upon our alarming awakening, and tell her that she can get out of her own bed, which she does, once we arrive.
In addition to her new door-opening skill, she and Paul are both starting to talk pretty well.  Camille talks in 3-5 word sentences at times and Paul can pretty much hold a conversation, though we still don't quite understand all of their word pronunciations.  But, we're getting quite good at translating. For example, Camille's word for "milk" sounds like "noch" - not sure why, since she makes mostly all of her letter sounds pretty well, especially the beginning "M" sound as found in "Mommy! Mommy! Mommy!".
One of our favorite "Paul words" is his version of "goof ball" in which he says a perfectly enunciated "douche ball".  We laugh every time. I have a feeling that's going to get us in trouble one day if he decides to call an unsuspecting and unaware victim, "goof ball".  Also, he calls, Superman, his favorite of the super heroes, "Du-ka-doo".  That's the sound he started making when he heard the Superman theme song..as in "Du-ka-dooo-doo, du-ka-dooo-doo, du-ka-doo-doo-doo-doo".  He's finally starting to say "Soo-ah-man", but for the most part, the nearly-invincible super hero now has the ever-intimidating name of "Du-ka-doo".

Sunday, February 17, 2013

An almost-pleasant morning awakening

This morning, while we were in bed, we heard the kids get up on their own, and all was well for a few minutes.  "Wow, how nice this is", we thought.  The kids can get up and entertain each other now while we spend a few minutes more lounging and getting up the energy to roll on our of bed...well, we hardly had time to complete that thought before the yelling began.  So, that got us up and snapped us right on out of that daydream.  When we went to find them, they were sitting on the floor in Camille's room and had appeared to have previously been playing - it was really cute - other than the fact that they were arguing with each other, of course.  However, it was the first time Camille woke up without crying or whining for us to come in and get her, even though her bed is converted to a "big-girl bed" and her door is cracked so she can get out.  So, I think there is hope of that daydream of ours coming true one day; we just have to work on getting them to play nicely unsupervised for more than 3 minutes at a time.

Wednesday, February 6, 2013

Night #2 in Camille's Big-Girl Bed!

This is night number two for Camille in her big-girl bed, and she is sleeping WITHOUT her pacifier!  She hasn't used her pacifier since Monday night; today is Wednesday - so that makes 2 naps and 2 bedtimes without it!  She's only asked for it one time, at nap at school today, but the teachers just ignored the request, and she didn't press it, so they didn't give it to her.  This is huge!  Paul had his for pretty much exactly 2 1/2 years, so according to that schedule, she's almost a year ahead of time - so, going by that time table, maybe potty-training will be next month!  I guess I should start thinking of a new name for this blog, since "another day another DIAPER" will be out-dated once that happens - woo-hoo!

Paul is having his own milestones, too!  He is getting smarter by the minute.  I've been making them some Montessori printable "work" from online websites and today I printed some pictures of  different constellations.  They're basically a black sky with the tracing of the stars that form the different shapes.  Without being told anything about it, Paul said it was pictures of stars.  It doesn't look like OUR night sky - since we see a lot fewer stars for one thing.  Not to mention, Paul is never up late enough to see it that dark in the sky anyways.  He's also conquered most of the preschool level work I've made so far, including a coloring by number, where 5 batman logos all had a number in them, and at the bottom of the page, a color was spelled out in it's own color.  So, he had to look to see what color each number corresponded with, and color accordingly.  Pretty smart for a just-turned 3 year old if you ask me.

In addition to being incredibly advanced and smart (hey it's a blog about my kids - I can brag all I want), these days, when the kids are in a sweet mood, they really do love to take care of each other.  Camille will always go and get Paul's shoes if it's time to go somewhere, and Paul will go and get toys or other things for Camille, because he pretty much always remembers where everything is if we can't find something.

Oh, and a funny story from last night - I went to check on Camille a few hours after I put her down - since it was her first night in the big-girl bed.  And, I found her in the middle of her floor sound asleep!  I picked her up and put her back in the bed, and she just kept on sleeping.  Hopefully she'll stay in there tonight.

Tuesday, February 5, 2013

A big night!

Today I converted Camille's crib to a toddler bed, or "big-girl bed" as we proudly call it.  So, now she can crawl in and out of it on her own.  Tonight will, of course, be the first night she gets to try it out.  It's been about two hours since I put her in there, and so far so good - though, just in case, we have the pillows lined up at the opening, for the likely chance she finds the floor in the middle of the night.  She never was one to be patient about getting out of the crib upon waking, so hopefully now, instead of screaming or whining for us, she'll let herself out and come find us in our room in the morning - we'll have to get Paul to teach her this.  We'll see how it goes!
(This picture was right after I converted the bed; big brother is looking a little more excited than the owner of the bed...or maybe he's just more of a ham in front of the camera!)