Randomness...

Today we had our little friends come over to play for a few hours. Koen had a complete blast. It ended up being just him...and the girls. They chased each other, giggled endlessly, ate macaroni & cheese for lunch, and played in Koen's closet.

This was so funny. We've recently set the closet up as a fun reading/hiding place for Koen. He has blankets and pillows to snuggle, books to read, etc. He loves it. And whenever I can't find him, or the house has fallen mysteriously silent, this is where I usually check first.

Well, he brought the girls in there at one point during the play date. He shut the door with all of them in there. There is no handle on the inside, so the girls thought they were stuck (all you have to do is push on the door to get out, but Koen didn't show them that). Anyway, the moms were chatting it up in the other room and we started hearing faint little voices calling for mommies. We went in and peeked down through one of the upper sliding doors and saw this. Notice Izzy up in the corner, in the clothes. We laughed and so did they. Once we showed them that they can go in and out as they please, they chose to stay in there and play for the rest of the morning.



We like having our little friends come over. We don't get to see them much these days because all the kids have started preschool and life is so much busier now! Here is a shot of them eating lunch. They were laughing so hard...at who knows what?

Another day, another story...

I was sitting in the other room for a minute while Koen finished his lunch. I noticed he was being really quite all of the sudden and I called out for him.

No answer.

Called again.

No answer.

I peeked in the kitchen and this is what I saw.



My heart jumped as I ran in to him thinking he had choked on food! And then I heard snoring. Whew! Poor little guy was so exhausted, he fell asleep in his high chair. This is a first for us. I've never understood how kids can do this...so uncomfortable!

BabyLegs & Handstands

Can I just say how much I love these leggins! I've adored them since Koen was a baby, but always thought they only came in pink for girls...that's all I ever saw. But mine eyes have been opened to the plethora of patterns available! And now Finn has his very own pair of BabyLegs. Thank you 80's for this fashion statement...I love the way my baby's chubby thighs bulge out on top!



We had a family headstand contest the other night. Clay started it and helped Koen do his very first headstand. This was also Clay's first headstand in a very long time....and mine. Luckily, there is no picture to prove that I did it. I think Clay was surprised that I could. Koen thinks he has very tricky parents.






A short story...
We had the PEPS group over to play at our house this morning. Koen and Hannah spent the majority of the morning playing alone in Koen's room. They were playing make believe...driving around in the plastic inflatable car and talking on their 'cell phones'. They even had 'pretend' lunch in Alfdrina.

I went in to check on them and saw Hannah holding the tiny leather camel that Grandpa brought to Koen from Morocco. It had been placed high up on the bookshelf, intentionally out of reach. Hmmmm. Knowing that Hannah is a very determined little girl, I directed most of my 'It's not safe to climb bookshelves' lecture at her. She listened carefully, but her face remained blank and she had no response...neither did Koen.

Later, as Koen and I sat and ate lunch together, he told me a story about how he wanted to show Hannah his little camel. Something about a chair...then something about 'way up high'. Pretty soon I realized that the very culprit of the climbing crime was my own son. I looked at him in amazement. He's never even attempted this sort of thing (at least not that I've seen)! He also took care to remove the evidence by putting his tiny desk chair back in its place.

As I revisited my lecture about climbing safety, telling him that it's not O.K. to stand on chairs, I suddenly realized how often I grab a dining chair to reach something in our high cupboards. He's learned from me. Oops.




Another short story...
This afternoon, I took Finn over to visit our 96 year old neighbor, Maxine. She had brought me a bag of apples from her tree, so with them I made my very first apple pie! It actually turned out, to my surprise...so I took her a piece. Anyway, Finn, the baby who always has a gummy smile for anyone who looks his way, would not smile at her. He cautiously studied her face, with a concerned look on his. She really wanted to hold him, so we sat in her living room and she snuggled him on her lap. And for the very first time, he looked scared. It was sweet and sad. He sat on her lap, his eyes fixated on mine as if to say, "Mommy, take me back!" And the whole time she had him, he focused on me without blinking...almost as if he thought any blink of his eyes would make me disappear. When I noticed his bottom lip poke out, forming his signature 'pouty face', I reached out and rescued him. Sweet boy. He's starting to figure who his 'peeps' are.


Extra tidbits...
Finn is the slobberiest baby I've ever met! The kid can soak through a drool bib in about 10 minutes flat! Lately, anything he can get his hands on goes in his mouth...it's non-stop! And you should see my shoulders when I hold him upright. He has a thing for sucking on my shirt...it starts the second his mouth makes contact with my shoulder. He makes sweet sucking sounds and you know he's completely content. After a few minutes, my whole shoulder is wet! I give up...glamour is over rated anyway! Check out the bubbles on his chin. This is how he looks 70% of the time. I don't remember Koen ever drooling this much!

Beat the heat, again...

We went to the Children's Museum two days in a row this week! The reason? They have air conditioning. I packed a lunch, swimsuit and towel, and paid for a whole day of parking in the pay lot. We had no business going back home unless we HAD to! It was just way too hot in our house!

The first day we went by ourselves. We weren't the only ones with this brilliant idea, either. The place was a mad house of sweaty people looking for any sort of relief. Luckily, you have to have a child with you in order to enter. Otherwise every Tom, Dick and Harry would've been in there!

After a while, we braved the scorching heat (103 deg....Seattle all time record high!) for a run through the International Fountain (see my entry entitled 'Visit with Grandpa' for a picture of the fountain). As you can imagine, tons of people were there playing in the water. I've always wanted to do it, but never have until that day! How refreshing it was!! Yes, I played in the fountain with Finn strapped to me in the moby wrap. He was asleep, but I know he enjoyed it. I soaked his little hat and put it on him so we could all cool off together.

The next day, we met our friends at the museum. Here are some pictures of the kids playing. Koen really got into it this time, since it was all fresh in his memory. He drove the bus AND the fire engine, and even donned a firefighter hat...usually he refuses to put on any props.




He made a 'pretend' sandwich at the 'pretend' deli...and took a 'pretend' bite!



He took a spin through the mini-mart and filled his mini-cart with meats, milk, ice cream and avocados.



And here he is on his very first date at the Taqueria with Nina. They were so cute sitting at this little booth eating their plastic tacos and black beans! Neither of them could hide their smile.




On the way home, Koen fell asleep in the car. So I parked in some shade next to the only green grass left in our neighborhood (at a church). Finn and I played on the lawn while Koen snoozed. Here is a small difference between the two boys. Koen would never had allowed this. As a baby, he hated the feel of the grass on his legs, neck, any bare skin really! We would lay him down, and he'd immediately pull a sour face with his eyes squeezed shut, shrugging his shoulders and arching his back until we picked him up. If we didn't rescue him quickly, he'd cry. Too prickly?

But Finn, he just laid there with a curious look on his face at first, and soon began to smile.





A few tidbits:

Koen has recently been overcoming his fear of insects, flies, what have you. To help him better understand and describe his feelings, we have been asking him, "Are you 'scared of' it?" So as he began to feel more confident about each confrontation with a bug...he eventually started telling me, "Mommy, I'm bave (brave) of it"...naturally, if you're not scared of something anymore, you're brave of it!

He says 'fink' instead of 'think'.

When something 'sounds like a good idea'....it's a 'soundea'. (It took us a little while to figure that one out)

Koen has also made up an imaginary place that he likes to go when he's pretending (driving, riding, walking, mailing letters, etc.) This place is called 'Alfdrina' and he says his friends live there.

He's also been terribly sweet lately, almost sickly sweet. But it's nice for a change. He and I are getting along much better since I've decided to concede in the control war and focus more of my energy on just having fun (what a difference it has made!). Anyway, he's constantly giving me little unexpected hugs and saying, "You a good mommy, Mommy!" or "That was a good dinner, Mommy!" Such a crack up! But the other day he gave me a compliment I wasn't so sure about. As I crawled around on the floor after breakfast, wiping up his spilled cheerios and eggs, he patted me on the head and said, "You a good cleaner for me, Mommy!" Huh? O.k. Thanks, I guess?

Waiting....ever so patiently

Patience is a virtue we are all working on right now. I think I'm winning...so far. Our littlest one will come soon enough. He or she cannot stay in there forever, so for now, I'm content. And meanwhile, Koen and I are having a belly contest...the resemblance is amazing, don't you think?




Clay and I took Koen to the zoo with B, Joon and Sophie. It was a nice overcast, yet warm Sunday morning....lovely. The lions roared and the orangutans reached out, begging for food...pretty comical. And I think the elephants came closer than they've ever been to us gawking humans.




Recently, we've been lucky enough to have Nana here to play with us. And we're doing our best to fill the days with something other than sitting around, staring at the calendar. Koen is totally enamored with her, asking for her each time he awakes in the morning or from a nap. He's surely testing her endurance. I think in the one week that she's been here, she's read countless books, drawn pictures, kicked the soccer ball about one hundred times, and played mini-baseball probably 30 times (in which, she is either the pitcher or the batter.....over and over and over). Koen never tires.

Anyway, we're loving it. We had a little play time and picnic at a park today, and I finally remembered to get the camera out for once this week!

First Sleep Over

My friend went into labor the day before Easter, and as planned, we took her daughter for her while she went to the hospital. Hannah officially became Koen's very first 'sleep over'. We had so much fun with her. I picked her up around noon on Saturday, and then dropped her off at 1pm the next day. They colored pictures, danced, had ice cream cones and basically had a blast together. She was very easy to have around, so polite...lots of 'please & thank you's', and went right to bed the minute we laid her down. She's a very fun friend, and when we got the call from her dad that her baby brother had arrived and I could bring her back, Koen threw a tantrum at the thought of having to say goodbye.

It's good to see him enjoy other kids so much. And it was the first time Clay really got to see him interact with a little person his own age. He's a different kid in so many ways, around friends.

Catch up...

This weekend, while attending a baby shower/party for some friends, Koen experienced his very first live band. He had the funniest look on his face at the beginning of their set. It was obvious that, until that very moment, he thought that music only came from radios, CD's and iPods....certainly not real people! After the initial shock and awe subsided, he began to dance, albeit gingerly. He was the only one dancing, taking small side steps around and around in a circle out on the dance floor. He brought smiles to many faces, and some people even joined him for a little while in his circular routine. It was funny and cute. After the fact, I started feeling like a bad parent though, having later noticed that all the other parents had promptly taken their small children with tender ear drums outside to play. I guess Koen got started on his lifelong hearing loss a tad early....darn, I hate that!

On Friday night, we drove over to the Kid's Quest Children's Museum which happens to be right near Clay's office building. So Clay came over to meet us after work, and Koen got to play with daddy at the museum. It was a fun, rather chaotic place. We were taking advantage of their Free Friday Nights event, along with the rest of the city! We stayed for a little while and then went out for some dinner. Here are some shots of the outing:




Then today, we had Isabel (Izzy) over to play. Koen absolutely loves his friend Izzy. From the minute I told him she was coming over until the moment she arrived, he talked about all the things he wanted to show her (Bucket the fish, his new dance moves, his newest library books, and Scruffy). We did many fun things with her. We danced, sang some songs, read some books, the kids colored a picture together, and played the 'roll game' (something Clay and Koen made up). Koen had such a blast that we made plans to see her again tomorrow!








A few funny things that Koen says/does lately:

He's very quick to request help these days for a runny nose...he'll call us into his room at night to say "Need a nosey wipe". I don't know why Clay and I think it's so cute...I guess it's the way his sweet voice sounds when he says it. He's also started going in to the bathroom to get tissues on his own. Sometimes he wipes his own nose and sometimes it's Scruffy that needs a 'nosey wipe'.

I tell ya, this boy has a serious funk factor awareness already. Today, as he was going down for his nap, he started wailing in his crib (I mean serious crying). I hurried in there to find him buried in his blankets, holding out his finger high in the air so I could see the booger stuck to it. He was trying to tell me (in between sobs) that this intruder had somehow come from his nose. He was completely horrified and after I had wiped his finger clean, he looked long and hard at it to make sure nothing remained. Wow! I'm not sure if I should laugh at this behavior, or be concerned.

He also has a coined phrase that he says often, when describing how he threw an object in the air, or jumped up high. He says, "way too high in the ky" (the last word being 'sky' without an 's'). It's so funny, because he says it very casually, as if the entire phrase is synonymous with the word 'high'. And one of my recent favorites is how he pronounces 'vitamin'. To him, it's a 'bite-a-vin'. Very close, as you can see.

And one more funny thing, he's inherited my old, broken, hot pink cell phone. Over the past few days, he's been making many imaginary phone calls, most of them to my mom. He'll come in with the phone to his ear and I say "Koen, who are you talking to?" He says, "Grammy Pat". And then he'll carry on an entire conversation with her, complete with pauses in the appropriate places. He'll ask her what she's doing, and tell her what he had for lunch, or about his favorite book, etc. Then he wraps it up with "Bye!" and snaps the phone shut.

The funniest part is when I sit next to him during one of these pretend phone calls. He'll hold the phone up to my face and say, "say 'hi' to Grammy Pat". But even, funnier is how he gives me the same direction that Clay and I always give him when talking to someone on the phone. He tells me what I should say, and then tells me to "say it loud" (just like we do when he starts to whisper into the receiver). I guess he's onto us, huh? Funny guy.

Pools & Play Dough

With Clay out of town all week, I've decided to do something 'fun' each day...in hopes that Koen will not get completely bored of me, and begin to protest. This will only make the week longer! :)

So this morning Koen got another shot (not so fun event). It was a big one, and a little worse than the previous two...PCV7. He was perfectly brave all the way through, but afterward he curled up into me and cried a little. He was so sweet with his Smarties roll clenched tightly in his hand (now a regular reward for such big events). He did great. And immediately after that, we took off for the Mountlake Terrace Pavilion pool (a hot spot with plumbed water sprayers, bubbling jets, floaty toys, inner tubes, lazy river...you know, the works!). Our PEPS friends met us there. All five moms taking a little vacation from gravity pulling on our expanding bellies, we couldn't help but make Shamu jokes about ourselves.

Koen had a total blast and felt pretty cool showing off to his friends how he could 'swim like a fish' by spinning around under water with my help. His little friends were in awe, and Koen couldn't hide his smile when he realized he was doing something no one else dared do. I didn't get any photos...I don't know something about being 8 months pregnant, chasing a fearless toddler around a large pool and managing a camera all at the same time....not a good idea. But I did capture Koen's silly moment this morning after he discovered the swim bag and the swim diapers within. What a better place for swim diapers than one's own head?




Later, after nap time, I finally got around to doing something I've been meaning to do for six months or more. I made my very own batch of play dough. It worked beautifully, and was beyond easy. Too bad I put it off for so long. Anyway, I'm sure we'll have plenty of this stuff around from now on. It lasts up to 3 months! And I have just as much fun playing with it as Koen does! Today we made a pizza, a whale, little replicas of Boba Fett and Tomba (the fishies), and last but not least, we molded Papa's head out of play dough (upon Koen's request). The likeness was amazing! I wish I would've snapped a photo of him, bald head and all! It was funny.












We finished up the day, playing 'Red Light, Green Light' with Koen's rawhide drum. He's learning about fast, slow, stop and go, etc. He got pretty good running around the living room. I'm hoping that this game comes in handy next time he decides to run away from me in public. It's only happened twice, but both times were scary as there were parking lots involved! Yikes!