sibling laughter

One of my hopes for my children is that they will learn to love each other well.  That through their interactions they will learn compassion and selflessness and how to love another person.  I don't really know how to foster that kind of relationship, but I am hoping that I can model and guide them so as to plant the seeds of friendship between them.  As always I am learning as I go, but here is what I'm trying and thinking about lately.  (Plus a SUPER cute video of the most adorable kids ever laughing at the rain).

I know they will fight.  I know there will be biting and hitting and screaming.  Zoë has already started biting at Jonathan when he puts his matchbox cars out of her reach.  I've tried to help him be understanding that she is frustrated and doesn't have any other way to express it.  I've tried to explain that she doesn't know why she can't have the cars.  I've tried reminding him that he used to bite when he was a baby too.  And I've emphasized that we are always always always gentle with babies- even when they bite and push and cry.  And so far, he's gotten it- most of the time.  He is a good, protective big brother- but everyone has their limits.  I've had him help me think out loud about how to avoid conflict about his cars and his train-tracks (she currently sees a completed train track as an invitation to destruction).

But I don't want patience and conflict avoidance to define Jonathan's relationship with her.  So I've also tried really hard to include him in noticing the funny things she does and her accomplishments so that he feels pride in her being his baby.  And I've tried to point out the ways she interacts with him- when she giggles or babbles at him, when she mimics his noises or silly faces.  He loves being a ham and making her laugh, and I LOVE it when I see them laughing together.  Aren't they just about the cutest thing ever?!?

5 things (again)

I have been feeling a bit down as of late.  There are days when I feel great and can't wait to explore another day with my two kiddos. We have plans and adventures and we all smile and laugh.  But more often I want to cry and pull the blanket back over my head when it is time to get up.  I feel a little adrift and like I am just going through the motions, trying to survive the day without knowing where we are going or caring if we get there.  I feel just a wee bit exhausted emotionally for a lot of reasons I don't want to get into atm.

BUT I have been trying, trying to put some order and structure around that helps me actually settle in and enjoy the little moments through my stress and exhaustion.  And one of the ways that is most helpful is to try to capture the little things that make me smile on camera.  It makes me stop and think and enjoy and look for ways to find joy instead of ways to sulk.  SO here are my fab five from last week.

1) Pluck.  This girl has it.  She has been working at figuring out that gate ever since we put it up- and she has gotten it open more than once.  Oy.  She is going to keep me running.  But it does make me smile to see her mischievous little grin and watch her work so hard.  

2) Second Breakfast with my little boy.  Almost nothing makes me happier than cooking something fabulous and sharing it with someone who also loves it.  We have been settling down for our snack during Zoë's morning nap and this week we've been having toast with homemade fig jam.  YUMMY.

3) Morning Giggles on the Baby Monitor.  Ok, so the red flashing lights and being woken up in the morning at 6:30 is not always a source of joy or smiles.  BUT to hear the two of them laughing together and crashing around in their cribs like little maniacs and then both dissolving into hysterical laughter does make me smile.  Even at 6:30.  Even though I want to pull the sheet back over my head.

4) The Power Crawl.  Zoë has just started adding a little sprint burst to her crawl when she needs to get somewhere fast. It is hilarious.  And fast- I seriously need to run to catch up now.  Her little legs go so fast and then she usually dives head first into whatever she was after- her monkey-blankie, the dog's bowl, whatever.

5) Potty Talk.  Maybe I shouldn't talk about poop in public. But this made me laugh harder than anything else this week, so I have to share.  I was getting the bath ready and Jonathan was on the potty and before every poop he would sing-song about "What is going to come a-a-out?!?!" and then peal into laughter after each poop-nugget plunked into the pot.  Before becoming a Mommy, no one could have explained the joy of this kind of moment to me- but these are the memories I will cherish when he is a teenager and too cool to be seen with Mom.

Alphabet Zookeeper

In my attempt to organize/purge  our out of control toy situation, I began noticing just how many toy animals we have.  Stuffed, wooden, rubbery, bath-toys, finger-puppets, noise-making.  For example we have 5 zebras, 4 lions, 6 elephants, etc.  And while this is ridiculous, it also gave us a great opportunity for sorting.

So I made "cages" for each of our types of animals labeled with the letter they start with and their names:

I laid the cages and all of the animals out on the table.  I explained that Jonathan was the zookeeper and had to put all of the animals back in their proper cages.  It gave us a chance to talk about the letters and what sounds they make and to practice thinking about words and the way they correspond to those sounds.

It was not exactly a game he could play all by himself yet, since he seems to have a set himself against knowing his letters.  BUT we did this yesterday and he wanted to play it again today and was upset when some of the cages got chewed on.

Lazy Maze Day

The summer is getting away from me.  We had a crazy few weeks at the end of June beginning of July, and it seems like everything has been a bit helter-skelter ever since.  Zoe has taken up speed-crawling in honor of the Olympics, and between chasing her, making meals, and facilitating outings to the pool, beach, zoo, etc. I haven't been having a lot of lazy summer days.   BUT (and I really shouldn't even type this), the nap schedule has become a bit more coordinated and her I am sitting down at the blog again.  

A few weeks ago as I sat staring blearily over my mug of coffee at the kids dumping and refilling and dumping and refilling the legos again and again and again, I found myself bored to the point of screaming.  There HAD to be something more engaging (for me at least) to do with the leggos than refill and dump the box for the 100th time.  I have been trying to think of activities to foster visual and spatial reasoning with Jonathan more lately and had been thinking he would enjoy the puzzle of solving a maze.  So as an introductory activity, I built a maze out of the red leggos on the green base pieces and explained to him that the goal was for the guy to follow the red roads to get to the donuts* at the end of the road.

I had to explain that there was no jumping allowed and I demonstrated to how to hop the leggo man along the road.  I demonstrated by hopping the leggo man along the road and making the wrong choice when I got to an intersection and having to re-trace my steps until I found the donuts.  It didn't take him long to pick up the idea.

He had fun and kept wanting new mazes. But with our modest leggo supply, there were really a quite limited number of mazes I could make and they were all pretty simple.  So I started drawing some on construction paper and they worked great.  It was MUCH easier to draw mazes where the guy follows along the line than the type where he goes in between the lines.  So we stuck with that method.

And in the afternoon I made a stack of them that kept him busy while I made dinner- success!!

*I was secretly hoping he would demand actual donuts when he solved the maze so we would have an excuse to go get some.  Sadly he did not demand donuts, so I was left craving them all day.