Kids' Update

Eli:

Oh my Eli! He is talking now! His favorite word is "No!" He drags it out all whiny like ny-owe. (I am not so good at phonetic spelling!) He likes to point to things and tell us whose they are, especially at the dinner table. He will point to each of our plates and tell us, "mommy," "daddy," "Daydee," "E-I." When he wakes up in the morning he calls, "mommy, mommy, mommy, ..." until Gary goes in there. Gary is always the one to get Eli up, so I think it is funny that he calls me. It is cute. He will repeat anything that we ask him too. He tells his teachers and friends at school bye bye. In fact he tells everything bye bye. He knows his friends' and teachers' names. I love to hear him talk. He has the sweetest little voice.

Eli is just B-A-D sometimes. He loves to torment Caedyn. He will push and hit her for no reason. Needless to say, he is in time out often. He knows when he is being bad too. He will just look at you as he is doing something that he shouldn't. I blame this on Gary. He always told me that his son was going to be bad like him and we needed to watch out. I think part of his badness is that he is frustrated that he can't communicate what he wants. I have not been as good with the sign language with Eli as I was with Caedyn. Another part of it is that he is exhausted when we get home in the evenings and so he has zero patience.

Eli got his first haircut several weeks ago. He looks like a big boy now. I will post pics eventually. He also got new shoes recently. He and Caedyn wear the same size - 8! He is such a big boy: 33.5 inches and 29 pounds!

Eli has developed a bit of an attachment to a monkey that I bought him when he was just a few months old. He calls animals by their sounds, so his monkey's name is Ha Ha or Ah Ah. After his bath, he asks for Ha Ha when he is ready for bed. It is cute. While I am putting him to sleep he takes his paci out and kisses Ha Ha and then I have to kiss Ha Ha. Sometimes he puts the tail in his mouth. Then he tells me to "bite" (the tail.) I tell him no!

Eli has an awareness of the potty and going potty. But he freaks when I sit him on the potty. I noticed in August that he would grab his diaper occasionally and say "pee poo!" I figured out that this meant pee pee when he said this after his bath as he was air drying one night. He stopped, said "pee poo" and peed right on the carpet. About this time he also started standing up in the bath and peeing in the water. So I started putting him on the potty when he acted like he was going to pee in the bath. I can grab him mid-stream and put him on the potty and he freezes up. He has no clue what to do on the potty. He still likes to sit on the little potty with his diaper on. I am in no hurry to potty train. I know it will be easy once he is ready. I just reinforce that he can use the potty if he wants to.

Eli has started singing, dancing, and doing motions to songs. He goes to children's choir with Caedyn at church and soaks it in until he gets with us. Then he lets loose. He LOVES doing "Praise Ye the Lord! Alleluia!" His hands go straight up in the air. He starts marching when he hears music for "The Lord's Army." Others that he sings or motions to are If You are Happy and You Know It, Twinkle Twinkle, The Itsy Bitsy Spider, Jesus Loves Me, This Little Light of Mine, Be Careful Little Eyes What You See, and more I am sure.

Just this week, Eli got to experience the FUN BUS! I am so excited that the bus is finally coming back to daycare. however Caedyn is ten times more excited I think. The teachers told me today that they came to get Caedyn out of her class and she started squealing and clapping all the way down the hall to get Eli. Then Eli got so excited he was just waving his arms and shaking as he chased her down the hall to the bus. The FUN BUS instructor told the teachers that Eli is the first child his age that doesn't cry on the bus. I give the credit to Caedyn. I had a talk with her last week about taking care of Eli on the bus so that he wouldn't cry. She has taken this job very seriously!

Caedyn:

I have said before that Caedyn is such a good big sister, but she gets better and better. She definetly eggs Eli on when he is being bad sometimes and she torments him and tattles on him just so he can go to time out, but she is also so sweet. She is great at sharing with him. She will share her coveted Smart Pills (Skittles) with him and even gave him her last one earlier this week. She tells him he can come and play in her room. She kisses him goodnight every night. She "reads" to him and sings with him. As I have said before, I am so happy to have two! I never could have imagined that two was this much better than one!

Caedyn is still in gymnastics. She loves it and her teacher adores her. I love it when the teachers are taken with my kids. Then I know that they are loved and taken care of. She loves gymnastics and especially loves going to IHOP afterwards.

I like to teach Caedyn little bits of information here and there. Then I quiz her on it, so here is her current quiz:
1. What is your name?
2. How do you spell your name?
3. Who is your brother?
4. What is your mommy's name?
5. What is your daddy's name?
6. Who is your teacher at school?
7. What school do you go to?
8. Where do you live? (She tells me the road and city but not the house # yet)
9. When is your birthday?
10. How old are you?
11. How old will you be on your next birthday?

She knows all of these now, so I think next is church name and then maybe phone number. Over the summer we worked on left and right. So today when I picked her up from school. I asked her "Where are we going?", and she said gymnastics. I said "How do we get there?" (I was playing off of Dora.) She said, "Turn left!" I cracked up!

Last night as we were saying our prayers Caedyn prayed for Grandma Lynn *Last Name.* I said, "Who?!" She laughed and said, "What's Grandma's name?" I told her and then she prayed for Tina *Last Name.* She also prayed for G-Pop instead of P-Pop. We started out when Caedyn was born, calling Gary's dad G-Pop, but Caedyn said it as P-Pop, so we all started calling him P-Pop. No one has even mentioned "G"-Pop in forever. I have no idea what made her think of that.

Caedyn has a book, Bus Comes to Town, that she can "read" from beginning to end. I LOVE it. This is a basic little first reader story with words and pictures on the back pages, so I have started asking her what the words at the end say. She can look at the picture and tell me. So I am now asking her to spell the words. I am so proud that she knows all of her lowercase letters. Of course she has known her uppercase letters since last summer, but I have been surprised that she has learned all of the lowercase ones too! The only ones she gets confused are b and d, which is understandable. I also get her to call out the letters on STOP signs as we come to them. So she can spout off S-T-O-P! Too funny!

I must announce that Caedyn has finally learned to sit down and watch TV. I know this isn't a great habit, but she LOVES "Dora the Esplora!" She asks several times a day to watch Dora. She watches it from our bed as we get ready in the mornings and she watches it as we put Eli to bed at night. Sometimes she will get to watch a little bit of Diego too, but nothing beats Dora!

Caedyn continues to sing. She has always loved singing, and can sing most all preschool/kid songs. I have always made up songs to sing as we go through our day, so she has started doing the same! I love it! Tonight on the way to IHOP, she was singing to the tune of "Where is Thumbkin," "Where is Lynn? Where is Lynn? I don't know. I don't know!" It was so funny! (Lynn is a girl I work with whose daughter goes to gymnastics with Caedyn, so we were going to eat together tonight.)

Caedyn is wearing size 8 shoe just like Eli. She is 36 inches (8 inches to go to climb the lighthouse!) and 34 pounds.

Well, that is a brief update on the kiddies! We are having lots of fun these days. I love our weekends. We have a lot of family activities planned for the fall weekends. I LOVE fall and can't wait to have more fun with the kids! They are at such a great stage! Things are definetly easier this year than they were last year this time!

Until next time...TTFN!