It's a Strawberry!

I get a lot of questions about the red spot on Natasha's forehead. Mainly from kids younger than 7, but occasionally from adults without the compunction to audit their behavior. So if you are wondering, that red bump on Natasha's head is a "strawberry hemangioma", combined with a slight "cavernous hemangioma".

It doesn't hurt. It might get larger, it will not interfere with her development, and it will go away on its own. As our pediatrician said, it's there so we can "pick her out of a crowd".

Please visit this site for more information:
http://www.drgreene.com/21_1107.html

Edited to implore you read this site instead:
http://www.mayoclinic.com/invoke.cfm?objectid=A71EAE4D-E0FE-4BE9-AC8C585B0146E35C

Little Nani

She is 5 months old already!

It's incredible, but I couldn't tell you what Adam was doing at this age. I think we were feeding him rice cereal, but I'm not sure. I know he was sitting up on his own. He wasn't rolling over because he was a chunky monkey. I think he was in 12 month clothing, but again, don't quote me.

Natasha is rolling both ways, eating her feet, laughing with little effort from you, the entertainer. She eats like a horse from morning until well, the next morning. Hence, I have decided that it's high time she learn to eat something other than mommy's milk. The last two days she has devoured cereal so I am hopeful.

I predict my little lady will challenge me in all the ways Adam did not. Although Adam was high maintenance, I could always reliably lay him in the middle of the bed without him rolling away. He wasn't very fearless so I never had to worry about him jumping off the bed or standing on the dining room table or swinging from the ceiling fan. I promise you Natasha will do these things. Check my blog 5 months from now and you'll see a picture of such a thing or hear a story about it.

For now, she is confined to the contraptions I place her in. When Adam was this age I couldn't wait for him to crawl, stand, walk, and run. I know better this time around!

Birthday #2

He's officially out of toddlerhood and into the preschooler stage. Let the terrible two's begin!

Mr. Adam Pants had his second birthday. The celebration happened on the 19th, a Sunday, but his real birthday was on the 21st. His grandparents from Seattle came to visit him, Papa for one week and Grandma "Toody" for two weeks. So it's basically been his birthday celebration for two whole weeks.

It has been confirmed by sources other than myself that Adam is indeed quite bossy. When Papa was playing with Adam he was assigned specific toys and was given detailed instructions on how to play with those toys. He has also thoroughly entered the stage of expressing his independence. When we are crossing the street he knows he is supposed to hold my hand. At the intersection I say "hold mommy's hand, Adam". To which he responds "No, I hold my own hand" and then he proceeds to hold his own hand and start crossing the street.

It's a mother's myth that you get back as a parent tenfold what you dished out as a child. I fear it may be true. I took everything literally and no piece of information was taken for granted. I never accepted euphemisms or generalizations or half-facts and always wanted to know more. I exhausted my poor mother. And now I fear, my child may just do the same thing to me.

Adam is, at two years old, talking at a 4-yr old level. I thought this was fabulous until I realized that he still has the temper of the average 2-yr old. So, he can quite eloquently demand what he wants and then proceed into a massive temper tantrum when you don't give it to him (for instance, M&M's at 6:30 am). Here is where I must grow as a parent and learn to not cave in the face of those forceful demands. Everyone just keep your eyes out for us on Supernanny one of these days. My little tyrant explicitly detailing what I need to do for him every second of the day...He's hyper intelligent, very sensitive, and quite loving toward his younger sister. But he will most definitely require DH and myself to constantly educate ourselves as parents. Thank goodness he's so tough!

Here's our preschooler on his birthday:


Here was the little Booger at 10 pm refusing to go to sleep. He went and put the party hat on as if to say "hey, this party a'int over, you party poopers!"

New Material Please!

There is a tool for bloggers that allows you to see referring URL's that people have used to access your page. Most of my referrals come from my girls over at blue moon (you know who you are!), but some get here by means of search engines. Seeing how people arrive here through various search terms and phrases has been somewhat enlightening.

Most used to get to my site:

monkeys throwing poop
calling in sick
monkeys breastfeeding (????)
cleaning crayon marks off walls

There is no telling if people searching for these things find my site in any way useful. I haven't exactly written anything about monkeys throwing poop yet, but I fear it may one day be in my future.

I Make a Mess!

"I Make a Mess" is an phrase Adam delightedly screams at least 3 times a day. He thinks it's a good thing. So he makes his little mess and then tells me all about it. Some other more-than-obvious statements he likes to share these days: "I cryin'" after he stops to take a breath after 5 minutes of waling, screaming, & sobbing. And then the obvious answer to my dumb question "what are you watching, Adam?", he says, "TV!". Guess I should be more specific...

Here's a little retrospective of some of our favorite messes caught on film within the past two years:


Making a cake for mommy


Stealing the dog's water


First birthday cake


Eating a smoothie at Grandma Gilmer's house


Playing with green bubbles


Painting


The other sentence he likes to scream a lot is "Mommy clean it up!".

I Two Old!

When turning two years old, it's important that you learn how to tell the world both your name and how old you are, for these are questions you will often be asked. We've had the "My name Adam" bit down for awhile so we started working on "I'm two" while holding up two fingers.

Our first challenge was getting over Adam's denial that the number two exists. The kid counts to 11 easily, but always forgets the number 2 for some reason. One, three, four...and so on. So I got the expected result the first few times I asked him old he was. "I thwee!" as he held up 6 fingers. "No, no, sweetheart. You are TWO years old". After a couple of days he started saying "I two". Then he decided to try to add "years old" except he keeps forgetting the "years". So he's always saying "I too old!". Yeah kid, me too.

I can't believe he's gonna be two already.

Here's him this time last year:


And now:

Old Monkey

I just had my birthday (8/30). My warranty expires at the end of this year. As if to hammer home how old I'm getting I learned last Monday that I am officially the oldest person in my Honor's English class. For our first exercise we had to partner up with another person, interview them, and then write five different pieces about them. The first thing I learned about my partner was that I am almost twice as old as she is. She's 16! It was a fun exercise. I had to write a police report about her (I made her an arsonist), a personal ad (felt kind of sick doing this for a 16-year old), a fake e-mail about her, a letter of reference, and a piece identifying her for someone to pick her up at the airport. I know I'm nerdy for finding these activities fun. It's time I let my inner nerd out, though. Let her run free (until she trips and gets her hair tangled in her braces and breaks her glasses, because, you know, nerds are clumsy)...

Anyway, classes are going great. Except for the really boring speech teacher. But I have learned I can use his lecture time to catch up on other important homework. The kids are doing a relatively good job of behaving well for DH when I'm gone. Natasha just decides to wait until I get back home to eat. I'm hanging in there, DH is hanging in there. We're not doing too badly for such old geezers.