Both of our kids eat, but they don't both share the same interest in eating, unfortunately. Marty will enthusiastically eat anything he sees, food or otherwise. Here he is happily chewing on some of his toys.
I understand most children grow out of the oral fixation stage, but with Marty, I have to wonder a little when that will be. He loves grabbing things, but he still loves cramming everything he can into his mouth.
Edie, on the other hand, is hardly interested in eating at all anymore. Mealtimes are a full-on battle every day, which has been frustrating, to say the least. Tamsen got the great idea to get her a dinner plate that encourages her to eat, though. Take a look and you'll see why.
It's a treasure map! She starts at the beginning, eats each square along the trail, and at the end, there's a little treasure chest that she can open up and get her dessert. She really likes it! She asks us every night if she can eat from her treasure plate, and even if she sneaks her dessert out a little early, she usually finishes up every square.
I found out this week that she's reasonably good at writing, which I had no idea. She told me she wanted to write out everyone's name in the family, and after we sounded them out together, she wrote everything down without any help. Pretty impressive!
A quick final story about Marty: Tamsen took him in for a checkup this week and was told that because he weighs so much for his age (the same weight as Edie!), he could probably stand for a little more exercise. That made my eyebrows go up a little, because in my experience, this picture is an accurate depiction of what he looks like from day to day around the house.
We got another snow storm this week: two and a half inches!
I can practically hear your scoffs through the internet, so let me head you off by saying that by Nashville standards, two and a half inches is really quite a lot of snow. Not only that, but the temperatures were in the single digits until Friday afternoon, so Edie's school was cancelled for the entire week. (Again, Northerners, this really is a big deal here.) At first, it was fun playing in the snow, but it didn't take long for cabin fever to set in.
Marty, for example, entirely forgot how to get food in his mouth.
The poor boy was frantically smearing food all over himself, only to find that he couldn't get it into his mouth. However, he ended the day with a bold new look, carefully having styled his hair with chowder.
Edie forgot that her eyes work just fine and insisted on wearing my glasses in order to see properly.
(Aside: little kids always want to grab glasses off of your face. You may be tempted to let them play with your glasses because they'll look funny. DO NOT GIVE IN TO THIS TEMPTATION. YOU WILL NEVER BE ABLE TO SEE OUT OF YOUR FINGER-SMUDGED GLASSES EVER AGAIN.)
She was also so confused that she put on a shirt Marty got for Christmas, thinking it was hers.
It actually fits her pretty well, but part of that is just that Marty is so large that the two of them have torsos that are roughly the same size.
They've been having a lot of fun around the house, but we're very excited that the weather has warmed up so they can go outside again.
We got a couple of inches of snow this weekend, which, for this part of the country, is a pretty big deal. Edie's seen snow before, so she was excited when she heard it was coming down. I left work early because the roads had all iced over, so the two of us suited up and headed outside as it started to come down Friday afternoon.
The thing is, we could only find one of her mittens, so she put on one of hers and one of my old gloves. They... didn't quite match.
She still really liked tromping around the driveway and looking at her footprints. She wanted to make a snowman, but at that point, there was less than an eighth of an inch, so I suggested we go back in and see if more snow fell. Thankfully, it did overnight, so the next morning we got dressed again and headed to the backyard.
Edie had a great time walking around and looking at everything. So much white!
However, she hadn't counted on the fact that snow is cold, so after about three minutes, she asked to go back inside. We headed back in, only to find that Marty was all dressed and ready to head out. I gave Edie to Tamsen and headed back outside with Marty.
It was his first time in the snow, so he had no idea what was going on. True to form, he dove right in to find out what it was.
It was cold and powdery. If he left it on his hands for too long, it got wet.
THIS IS AWESOME, he seemed to say.
Without gloves, it was only a matter of time before his hands were going to get really cold (it was about twenty degrees yesterday morning), so I picked him up and brought him back inside. He was really upset about that, but I think it was for the best. I got to spend the rest of the morning shoveling the driveway. Edie was devastated to hear that the snow was all gone until we quickly pointed out that there was still lots of snow on the grass. She wasn't convinced until we opened the curtains and physically pointed at the snow.
There's more snow in the forecast for Monday night, so maybe we can do this all over again next week.
We have some friends at church whose children are a little older than ours, and who are kind enough to pass us along all of their old clothes once their kids outgrow them. Last week, Edie and Tamsen came back from church with three full garbage bags full of clothes for us.
We got to sorting and trying them on. Edie was excited about it, but Marty was, well, see for yourself.
He's giving the side-eye, as if to say, "can you guys believe I have to waste my time with all of these clothes," but the cocky jaunt and subtle swagger show us that he's really enjoying himself. He stayed on the couch while Edie looked through everything, but he was still interested in everything that was coming out of the bag.
Edie really enjoyed her new clothes. You may be able to tell here, in this picture where I asked her to show me her new clothes.
New sweater, new blouse, new skirt, and new leggings? Yes please! We also went to get her hair cut yesterday, and she sat in the chair all by herself and even made polite chit chat with the stylist. ("Do you like the trolls?" "Um, I watch minions.")
It's been really cold here lately, like it has been pretty much everywhere. Both of the kids got colds before Christmas, but Marty's hasn't really gotten better, so we took him in to the doctor this week. He was able to lick the walls twice before the doctor came in, who told us that he had an ear infection. Hopefully it didn't come from wall-licking. Lucky for us, he seems to genuinely enjoy taking his medicine, so at least we don't have to fight him on that. Here's hoping he doesn't get a taste for it and start searching the house for more.
School starts back up on Monday for Edie, and she's really excited about that, too. It's been close to three weeks since she's been, since school was closed this last week due to the weather. She's ready to go back, and I'm pretty sure we're ready, too.
Rather than the week in review, today I've decided to write about the year in review. These kids have changed so much over the last 12 months, but since we see them every day, sometimes it's hard to notice.
But take a look at them last January, and you'll see what I mean. Here's Marty, age two months:
He's so big and fat and round and okay he's not all that different. But still, he barfs on himself considerably less than he used to. He couldn't walk, could barely sit up, and woke up every few hours at night.
Here he was yesterday, staying home from church with a cold.
"I AM KING OF ALL BABIES," he seems to be saying. He was pretty miserable yesterday, but wearing his gold medal for Best Baby seemed to cheer him up. I think it also helped him that Edie wasn't around all day. They like each other, but it was nice for him to get to play with his toys without Edie running up and snatching them out of his hands.
He looks more or less the same as he did when he was a baby, but I see him walking around and grabbing stuff now, and he looks like a little boy more than a baby. He's still just a year old, so it's not like he's all grown up or anything, but it's clear how much he's grown in a year. If there's one thing he's learned more than anything else this year, it's that he has an enormous butt, and that he doesn't need to be afraid to use it as a weapon. He has a special talent for backing it up.
Edie's come a long way in the last year, too. Here she is last January.
She couldn't say very much in January, so she did a lot of screaming and throwing tantrums. It's only a year ago now, but it's striking to me how much she still looked like a baby. There's still some baby fat in that face.
Here she is just this morning, showing me how she brushes her teeth:
Still wearing pajamas, but this is a whole new girl. She can say pretty much anything she wants, which makes her a lot more confident. She's still shy around people she doesn't know, but there are so many more people she's gotten to know this year. She goes to school and plays with her friends, she's talkative and active at church, and she's no longer terrified of our families, which is such a change from last year.
They've come a long way, baby.
Just imagine what we'll be saying about them this time next year.
