Wicked Smaht

One day last week as I sang the "ABC song" Jason joined in at the end singing "now I know my ABCs". I was surprised. I knew he was familiar with the song but didn't know that he knew the lyrics well enough to jump in. Yay Jason!

I'm redecorating the boys room. Or more accurately, I'm decorating the boys' room. When the boys were born, we did not decorate the nursery other than hanging a clock, a photo of the boys' baptism and a few other objects. I thought it made more sense to decorate when we knew what they liked. We had John Singer Sargeant (The Orchestra at the Winter Circus) and Van Gogh (Starry Night) posters hanging in their room. When Van Gogh fell down, I removed it. Over the weekend, Sargeant fell down. Both boys have done much pointing and grunting and reminding/nagging me about the poster being down so....I'm taking this opportunity to decorate properly.


Because both boys seem to like nearly everything....trucks, cars, animals, books, planes, rocketships and planets we're lucky in that we're not limited to one theme but then I don't want to do multiple themes either. I've opted to go with a typography theme...letters and numbers in different sizes and colors.

The decorating is something that I do while they are in the room as Jason doesn't like change and if he notices something different or missing, he gets upset and insists on having things returned to their earlier state. I know this sounds a bit unbelieveable, but trust me, it's true. Last weekend I took down Halloween. You'd think I was torturing him. He whined and grimaced and did a bit of fake crying. He didn't want to see the decorations go. I gave him a tombstone to carry around and that assuaged him for a bit.
While the boys napped I finished decorating the mantle, moving things around and hanging new items. When I brought Jason downstairs after his nap, the first words out of his mouth were, "STAR!" and he pointed to where I hung a star on the wall. Then he pointed to the mantle and said "Mama". I hung our wedding portrait over the fireplace. So he quickly pointed out the different things and gave me the grimace face. I opted for the time-tested solution of "How about some milk?!"

So, I decorate with them in the room so that they are part of the process and so that nothing is sprung on them catching them offguard. So far, so good. The number cards I hung yesterday well received. Today I put up some alphabet letters - again...big hit.

Jason enjoys the alphabet border. Joe or I will say "Can you find the O?" and he'll point and say "OHHHHHHHHHHHHH". Joe got Jason to say most of the end of the alphabet from L to V.

We paid a visit to Joe's sister and her family over the weekend. The boys had a great time and are completely enamored of their cousins. Kicky and Jumpy had a great time running around and playing with Molly and Joey.

Jason likes the phone. Real phones, play phones, doesn't matter. I'll catch him sitting and talking on his play phone and I'll ask him "Who are you talking to?" Sometimes he'll answer sometimes he gives me a look that says "Hey, I'm talking here...."

A few times at dinner or when we're playing he has said "phone phone phone". I'll ask "Who do you want to phone?" One evening at dinner he said "Oma" so we called Oma and he chatted away. One afternoon he said "Meem" - his way of saying Mimi. So we called Mimi and he chatted away. He's definitely not phone shy. He talks away and answers questions - sometimes by only nodding but still he listens and answers.

Kevin likes to jump into the conversation too but he doesn't seem to be as good a conversationalist. He'll talk and then walk away so the other party isn't heard or answered. Oh well.

More new words. Home, green bean, ham, sit, sofa, stuck, Oswald, Oso (as in Special Agent Oso), choo choo, oink, honk, Bob the bus driver which sounds like "Bob bus drive", "No more monkey" as in "no more monkeys jumping on the bed", phone, please and thank you sound more like please and thank you and less like peas and tanku.

The guys are perfecting their stair climbing and descending. Today when I showed Kevin his cup of milk, he turned and put his lego block on the bookshelf and then came over to get his milk. As opposed to chucking the block onto the floor. Nice cleaning up Kevin! Both boys love to sweep and have boy-size brooms. After meals, they sweep the kitchen floor and the hallway. Sometimes they have a light saber duel but they mostly keep the bristles on the floor.

The pix in this post are from KetchupFest 2009.

Have a good one.