Just a quick note to let you all know that I uploaded more pictures to the dotphoto sites for the kids.

Lately, the kids have been a little photo shy. Maybe too many flashes. But the other day Julie caught David during a time when he must have been feeling very glamorous, or flirty, photogenic, or whatever. He's such a ham.

One of the things I love about raising these two kids is watching the development happen. Or wondering how the development happens. I was thinking about this just the other day when Isabelle was making a connection between two unrelated things. I don't remember exactly, but it was along the lines of,
"Look, Daddy, that looks just like Lion King!" Just as you have no idea what she is talking about, neither did I. But I was able to quickly peer the surrounding area, and saw a yard which had a lot of tropical style plants in it, as many of the scenes of the Lion King do. And I congratulated her on her keen eye site, and powers of recognition, only with slightly different words. But she does continue to learn so many new words. And this is what prompted me to start this post.
In retrospect, it seems very difficult to learn the distinction between first and second person. When her picture comes up on the screensaver, sometimes we say, "There's a picture of you." Or at other times we say, "Do you want us to hold you?" And mix in the occasional, "Please give that to me." So Isabelle is having trouble with the correct meanings of 'me' and 'you'. They are crossed, as I'm sure you can see from the above examples. When we are talking about her, we are using the word 'you'. And conversely, we use the word 'me' for whichever of us is not her at the moment.

I know she will learn this one day, I'm not worried about that. but I wonder how long it took me, or you, to grasp that distinction.

Since you love to see pictures of these two, here we are last weekend at the local farmer's market with some friends. David didn't want to have any pictures, I guess.

A few weeks ago, actually, we decided to pretty up our entryway. The kids got so excited when I arrived at the front door with a bunch of flowers and a couple bags of dirt. Oh boy, dirt! So I made a big pile of dirt on the sidewalk, and asked if they could help by putting some dirt into the flower pots I lined up. David didn't really fill any of the pots up. But he took his little gardening shovel and scooped up a lot of dirt. And threw it in the air. I think he's going to be a astrophysicist, I mean, the way he's already studying gravity and aerodynamics. And maybe chaos theory. But he did carry his trusty broom around with him, and did a good job of clearing the edges of our little gardening adventure.

Isabelle was a big help though, as long as the help meant putting dirt into pots. She would have been happy to do that all afternoon. She even started to dump out the pots, telling me that she needed to do that one over again to get the right level of dirt in it. Every now and then, I pulled a pot about half full of dirt from the filling/dumping station, and planted a flower. Eventually, I got them all planted. "But Dad," her little voice would say, "we need more dirt in this pile over here on the sidewalk for me to put into the pots today."

But I had lots more fun in store, for it was then time to water! "Dad! Can I hold the pitcher?"

"Of course, dear." And she did. She was a very good waterer. She poured it out very slowly and cautiously, so as not to send the newly planted flower on its side or out of the pot. When reminded, she concentrated on not pouring water right onto the flower, but instead onto the dirt at the base of the flowers. When we were all done, she naturally want to water all of the plants again! However, we were able to conserve water, and only use just enough. After looking at the lovely flowers all in pots around the front of our house, she looked up with a big smile and wanted to know when we could do that again.

Probably pretty soon, as we have a few snails that also liked our arrangement.

Couple more sprinkler shots:

We've had a couple of weeks of warm weather, so that means the sprinkler games have begun.

These kids just get so fun to watch. This morning the kids were playing a new game, which I will call 'Hide', in which someone hides under or behind something. I'm pretty sure you already know how to play this....and then the other will look for them. So this morning Julie and Isabelle got on the couch, and put a blanket over them. Out of sight, but not too hard to find. David didn't see where they went, as he was on my lap begging for a bite of my cereal. Then I said, "Where's Mommy? Where's Isabelle?"

David gets a big huge smile on his face and then immediately wants to investigate the large blue lump on the couch. As he gets closer, Julie and Isabelle know he is approaching, and with a bit of anticipation and a bit of silliness, try not to make any sudden movements or giggles, which of course, produces both. David gets really excited that he is about to discover them, and he does this little dance that I think only children can do. He gets on his tip toes and does a miniature running in place, combined with erratic hand movements in a circular pattern. I think he even lets out a squeak, before barreling into the blue couch lump.

Then one of them will run to another part of the home, and wait. With big, albeit quiet, smiles on their face for round two.

Here's David telling me, "No photos please. I'm busy sweeping!"



And Isabelle being, well, darn cute!

This last weekend was, of course, Mother's day. We got together with everyone for lunch, which was fun. As always happens though, one end of the table doesn't know what's happening at the other end. And the kids don't really know what it means to wait for food, but we planned ahead and brought some snacks to hold them over until the restaurant food gets to the table. Unfortunately, when we do that, they are invariable done by the time we get our food. Oh well. They were great though, and everyone enjoys seeing them. They also liked to play out in front of the restaurant where there was a big fountain.

Speaking of mothers day, we also went to a local festival of artists and musicians on Saturday which the kids really liked. Lots of stuff to look at, and potentially break or run around with! There was also a lot of really good food available throughout the festival. It turns out David really likes Thai Jasmine rice, and Isabelle really likes Asian spring rolls. Oh, and the huge strawberries again!




They both did a little bit of dancing to the music. But David really just wanted to run around like a little dog off leash, making sure we had to work to catch him. Isabelle also tried a little hula hooping, but the ones available were a tad too big. David also really enjoyed a solar energy exhibit which was powering a little fountain. He was just having fun with it, but other kids were trying to figure out how such a thing could happen, and how I could make the fountain stop just by leaning to the right.

Isabelle loves to ride her tricycle. But her tricycle has become a little small, er, Isabelle has become a bit too big for the little tricycle. So a couple of weeks ago I picked up a second hand bicycle for Isabelle. It's all girly and everything, with pink paint and glitter highlights. But it had been neglected for a little while. So I finally got it all cleaned up, fixed the tires, and added a little more fun kids stuff - handlebar streamers, in pink, purple, and white. I also picked up a helmet for her, and put on some training wheels.




And off we went!



Isabelle didn't like the training wheels too much. Actually, she didn't like the way the bike rocked from side to side. I told her it was so she wouldn't fall over, but she still gets that feeling that she is going to fall when the bike first starts to trip one way or the other. We had a good few minutes out on the sidewalk getting the feel of it. Of course, the pedals are not on the wheel, as she is used to from the tricycle, and when pedaling backwards, the wheels don't stop right away, as the brake has to engage and slow the bike down, which is also unlike the tricycle. So she's going to have to practice a little bit more, as we all did, before she starts enjoy riding on her own.

A few weeks ago Grandma Jeanne came for a visit. She was here for a weekend, and Isabelle was having a great time with Grandma Jeanne. We went to the local farmer's market in the morning, which was a little too windy, but I think the kids still had fun. They got to eat some fresh bread and hummus, and they always enjoy the big fat fresh strawberries.




Later, after nap time, Isabelle and Grandma Jeanne had a wonderful tea party. Isabelle is quite attentive to detail, and mad sure every pour was just right. I think they had another tea party on Sunday too. The kids also received a few new books from grandma which they all read over the weekend.

Isabelle is also getting much better at being potty trained. She hardly ever wears a diaper during the day, only at nap time, and again at hight time. And she's been dry after naps too, so we might start to keep the diaper off at nap time too!

So the other day I had one of the biggest laughs in a long time. I was just sitting down on the couch after doing something I can't remember, and Julie was also sitting there. I looked at the floor, what little I could see of it, and remarked with a little elevation in my voice so it would travel to the bedroom clearly, "What happened in here?" And I think Julie said something like, "I don't know. It looks like there was a toy explosion!"

So from the bedroom we hear, in a cute little girls voice, "Oh what happened? What happened?" And she comes running out of the bedroom to see what happened, since as we all know, she was being all innocent and had nothing to do with the distribution of toys in the living room. And she comes out with her snow hat on, and matching mittens, still in her pajamas, and a look on her face like she was going to see the biggest birthday cake ever made placed on a platter covered in chocolate and berries. I wish I had a camera at that moment to capture the expression, but instead both Julie and I could only laugh.

Isabelle is learning her place in the world. I am proud to say that she really does listen to us, even when we think she isn't. And for now she does know that we know best, even if in the moment, we think she doesn't.

Isabelle had her first lesson in negative behavior reporting.... John went to pick her up from daycare and was told that she had been very mean to one of the other kids that day. For seemingly no reason she had repeated and rudely told her "no," and at naptime walked over to the little girl, who was lying down ready for nap, and hit her over the head with a toy flower. When I got home that evening, Isabelle and I had a talk. During our talk she looked like she was listening for part of it, but then really did not want to listen and was avoiding eye contact, wriggling around etc... I had no idea what kind of difference our talk would really make.

The next day at daycare. I walked her over to the little girl and told her she needed to say she was sorry for the way she acted the day before. She started crying, and we sat for a little while. (We'd had a hard morning as it was, so she was already extra sensitive.) I didn't push it. I talked to the daycare provider about Isabelle's increasing sassiness and went on my way to work.

Later that day Isabelle took a toy away from another little girl. The day provider was on top of it, and told her that it wasn't nice to take things away and asked her to give it back and say she was sorry. Right away Isabelle said, " I'm sorry Anais." The she went over to the little girl from the day before and said "Luna, I'm sorry I was mean to you yesterday." (That's my girl) And for the rest of the day Isabelle taught all the other kids the golden rule. " No Austin, that's not nice." No Logan that's not how we treat each other." Now if we could only get her to practice that with her brother all the time!

Isabelle is potty trained!! We're so proud of her!! She still wears a pull-up for nap and a night-time diaper at bed, but during the day she only wears panties and has sucessfully peed and pooped on the potty for at least a week! More and more often she wakes up from nap dry, so that's a great sign! She's very excited about her new fancy panties, and likes to take them all out to look at them before deciding which pair she'll wear that day.

We hope that David will be easy to train as well. He can recognize when he has to poop, but hasn't done it on the potty. He does like to sit on the potty and clap for himself though!

OH HAPPY DAY!!! Isabelle pooped in the potty for the very first time at 8:37a.m. We are very very excited!!! (She flushed too fast to get a picture... ha ha)

Last night was a challenging night at the Kirby house. We've all been a bit worn out from my knee surgery recovery and David's bizarre fever that came out of no where. It's hard on Isabelle when the routine changes and seems to cause some adverse behavior. Either all of that or she's just 3 and challenging authority.

So we had a problem listening to Mommy and doing what she asked. It was after bath and everyone was tired and Isabelle decided to knock David's milk cup off the table with a wild sweep of her arm. I told her she neded to pick it back up from the floor and put it on the table. She didn't listen and started crying. Then I repeated my request and she continued to cry dramatically, so I gave her the consequence that she would not get to have her milk until she picked up the cup. The crying continued... finally we told her that she needed to stop so we could read a story or go brush teeth for bed. More dramatic, tired, whiny crying...

After much more crying and objection she did end up in bed. She wasn't being punished, we were just tired of hearing a tired Isabelle cry on and on, and it was time for bed. I went in to do our usual good night routine of singing and hugs and kisses. I asked her what song she wanted to sing..." you pick" she says. So I start "Twinkle Twinkle little..." "
"No Mommy, not that one"
"hush little baby don't..." "No Mommy not that one"
"Ok how about Mary had a little lamb,"
"no,"
"How about Sweet Child of Mine"
"No"
"How about, I lost my milk, 'cause I didn't listen to my Momma"
Sniff, Sniff, Pause..."Yeah, lost my milk..."
So that's what we sang...

Who can forget that old country hit single??

I think that David is going to be a world famous chef. He loves to be in the kitchen! He does the usual things like wanting to pull things out of drawers and cabinets, but when we are cooking he wants a wooden spoon to help stir whatever is on the stove. He also likes to play with the toy cookware and food we have. That seems to keep him occupied longer than most other toys. He stirs and transfers one thing to another and makes imaginary meals for us to try. He takes great delight in our slurping on imaginary beverages, yummy sounds and chomping of imaginary food.

He also really likes to play with the computer. Banging on the keyboard and turning the computer off and on are his favortie things to do. I try to buy cause and effect toys, but those are not quite as fun for some reason!

After a couple of days of neither of the kids feeling well from yet ANOTHER cold, Isabelle was back to her sweet self. She and David played well and shared nicely for the whole morning. David had brought out his sandals to put on for daycare, and Isabelle was happily giving him a lesson about them. "Shoes" David said, "Yes David, those are your shoes, " says Isabelle. "And what color are your shoes? Green! Good David!"

I was listening nearby and told Isabelle how nice it was that she was helping David and being such a good big sister. I asked her, "Are you going to be a teacher Isabelle?" "No" she said... then I said " What are you going to be when you grow up?" She paused thoughtfully and then said "ummmm... a rainbow."