Friday, January 18, 2008

Coveting & Sharing

Since I will never have an only child, I can only imagine how nice it must be to not have to constantly referee sibling fights. Maybe I'm giving myself too much credit, but my suspicion is that twin fights are the trickiest because you can't tell the older sibling to go easy on the younger since they are evenly matched- physically, emotionally, and mentally.

Lately Caleb has decided that he MUST have anything that is in Joshua's possession. For example, today each boy had the exact same blue blanket on their laps in the car (they have recently decided that they always want blankets on their laps while in their carseats). Well, they weren't sitting but for 30 seconds before Caleb flippantly cast his blanket on the floor and angrily demanded to have Joshua's blanket instead. Pointing out that both blankets were literally the same did no good. Today alone I had to referee similar skirmishes involving identical spoons, sippy cups, and the list goes on.

Fortunately Joshua has become very good at sharing. This evening he asked for juice so Mimi escorted him to the fridge to get a juice box. He first selected one, paused thoughtfully, then took a second box. When they came back to the living room, Mimi asked Joshua what he was going to do with 2 juice boxes. Joshua grinned and gave one of them to Caleb with an outstretched arm. He is also very good about finding things that he knows Caleb likes, such as his Thomas (or more recently, Sir Handel) train and giving it to Caleb. Sometimes Caleb is a gracious recipient, and other times he hastily chucks the gift and tries to grab whatever Joshua is holding in his other hand. *Sigh* I know that Caleb will come around evenutally!

In other news, the boys now like to say "sorry!" all the time, even when they haven't done anything wrong. They also say "yes, Mommy!" and "yes, Daddy!" so I'm hoping that we are making some inroads in cultivating polite young men. Oh, and they have continued to expand their fruit repretoire by developing a taste for clementines, which of course makes me very happy. For the longest time I would offer them a wedge and they would take a bite, suck the juice, and spit everything else out, but as of yesterday they have started eating the whole thing! "More orange?" they will ask. It goes to show that persistence is the key to breaking the habits of picky (and in our case, stubborn) eaters.

Thursday, January 10, 2008

2 years + 2 months old

The boys just love their daddy and miss him terribly when he's at work. The first thing they do when they wake up in the morning is ask for him. They will walk around the house calling out "Daddy, where are you?" and I will try to explain to them that he is at work. Yesterday Caleb must have been feeling particularly lonesome for his daddy because he started going through Joe's closet and pulled out various shirts and pants and said "Daddy! Daddy!" and then he did the same thing with Joe's shoes. Their favorite shirts from their own wardrobe are their striped button-down shirts which they call their "Daddy" shirts, because they look like the shirts that Joe wears and they want to be just like him.

When Joe and I get sodas when we go out to eat, the boys will usually insist on having a sip. When they do, they will pucker up and say "spicy!" and not want to drink any more of it. They also think that their Emergen-C multivitamin drink is "spicy".

Joshua has grown quite attached to Oliver, one of the Thomas trains that Uncle Chris gave the boys for Christmas. He takes Oliver everywhere with him, including the car, bathtub, and bed. The other night he lay in bed and screamed "Oliver!" over and over again and refused to quiet down and go to sleep until Joe finally found him.

"Uh oh, what'd you do?" is a phrase that we often hear the boys saying to each other these days. It's amazing the words and phrases they pick up just from hearing us talk to them. They can also often be heard requesting the following foods: "nugget! fry! pizza!" I promise we actually do feed them healthy food, too!

I got Joe the Old School Sesame Street DVDs for Christmas, and now the boys frequently ask to watch "Ernie". Even though we have been forewarned that these older episodes from the late 1970's "may not meet the needs of today's preschool child", we would rather have the boys watch these episodes than modern Sesame Street shows. The boys twitch with excitement as they scream out the alphabet, and they think that The Count muppet is their "Babo". So much for not letting them watch TV... it seems like we always let things slide when someone gets sick. Oh, and speaking of associating characters with their grandparents, they also think that the teacher in the Brown Bear, Brown Bear book is "Mimi".

Friday, January 4, 2008

Apples, Nutcrackers, and Noah


  • Apple? Is there more apple?


Joshua's sweet voice posing this simple question is music to my ears. Up until this past week he has been a frustratingly stubborn eater, refusing any sort of fresh fruit in favor of a strict diet of refined carbohydrates. In the wake of his recent illness, however, his body must be telling him that he needs more vitamins, because he has suddenly decided that he loves apples and wants to eat them all the time! Instead of asking for crackers, he will ask for apples. It really warms my heart.

  • All better! All clean!


The boys will say this after I kiss and/or pray for a boo-boo. It's interesting to me how they associate healing with being clean.

  • Two nutcracker... brothers!


The other day Caleb was admiring a pair of nutcracker oraments on Mimi and Papa's Christmas tree when he made this sweet observation. The boys (especially Caleb) love pointing out two of anything. They can now count up to 6 and they know their numbers 1 to 10.

  • Jesus! Noah!


As far as the boys are concerned, any man with a brown beard is Jesus. Any man with a white beard is Noah. The one exception is that they think that Santa Claus is Jesus, which I am quite content to let them believe!