I’ve heard the saying that “the days are long but the years are short” with little children.  We are definitely feeling the long days right now. 

As usual, E loves playing with his trains and buses for hours.  His favourite is designating each with the announcement he hears while riding them.  So when he pushes the “E” train he says, “Stand clear the platform edge.” the “Q” train is, “Stand clear the closing doors.” and the bus is, “Please exist using the rear doors.”

What we’ve been keep the LMs busy with:  flying a kite in Prospect Park, the Fire Museum in SoHo, and generally trying to keep cool.  E loves his little spray bottle and enjoys spraying the water into a fountain. R seems to be extending his sleep at night (sort of) to about 3 hours.  From my sleep book, infants are supposed to start sleeping more at night starting from 6 weeks gestational age. Hopefully this rings true for R…10 days to go until then.  

R: “I’m flying!”

Gardener E.

So what, all the cool kids are sporting bunny ears.

Stoned by the heat!

E’s vocabulary and reasoning skills are becoming more sophisticated.  The other day we were listening to the thunder and I said, “Wow, that was a loud one.” and E said, “Actually, it was a medium one.” 

A little over two and a half years ago we started this blog to share photos of our new addition.  Now we begin to chronicle both our little monsters!

It’s been a whirlwind of a month, starting with the early and dramatic arrival of Ronan! This little one could not wait to meet the world. 

Here’s R at 1 month old:

How is this little-r monster different than his big brother? He has a darker skin tone, dimples,  a pointy chin, he’s more hairy, has smaller cheeks, nurses faster, and is much louder when he cries. This last characteristic does not bode well for peace and quiet in this household for many years to come.

R’s hair gets super greasy very quickly.  G says it’s the Chim genes and I can’t argue with him.  Po Po says he just has shiny healthy hair. Uh huh. 

R is doing well and has caught up to his big brother’s 1 month weight. 

E is adjusting to the new boss in town.  He can be super sweet, asking to hold R and kissing him.  Then other times he breaks the “one finger rule” (ie he can only touch R’s head with one finger but can tickle his toes with all of them) by elbowing him.  All things considered, E is trying really hard and doing really well with such a big change in his life!

My birthday…cupcakes! And Bo Ssam!

Touch-A-Truck fundraiser for a local elementary school.  Kiddos get the chance to climb on all kinds of large vehicles.  We arrived a little too late to conquer the line-ups at the crowd favourites like the fire truck and dump truck, but we managed to get LM onto this big mac truck.  He loved it!

Mother’s day breakfast. E is obsessed with everything “big” and “fast”. His French toast satisfied the big requirement.

Po Po thinks that Elliot got his looks from Daddy and his tantrum-y personality from Mommy.  Karma for Mommy. 

Thanks to Po Po for all her help this past month!  It made everything so much easier having an extra set of hands around.  We don’t know how we will feed ourselves now :).  We miss you already! 

Ronan has been lucky enough to meet Grandma and Grandpa Lowe, Gung Gung and Auntie Denise and Great Aunt Claire.  We can’t wait to introduce him to everyone else soon!

E is loving his balance bike nowadays.  He zooooooms! “Daddy, I’m going so fast!”

As LM is having a tantrum, I say, “E, relax!”  

His response, “NOOOO. Mommy relax, I’m Cookie Monster.”

Um, okay.

Here are some shots from Easter weekend:

It is almost April and we are in desperate need of warm weather!  Another two weeks of colds but hopefully the weather turns soon and we are done with stuffy noses for the season.

The days are zooming by as we count down to the new baby’s arrival.  We had a nice brunch with Uncle Jeff, Auntie Grace and baby Brooklyn, and we keep busy trying to get things done while having our usual weekend outings.

LM started his swimming classes a few weeks ago and he’s not a fan.  This is how the 1/2 hour is spent:

The teacher agreed last week that we should take E to the earlier class which is for younger kids and less busy…and the coordinator said that she would enroll us free of charge for the next session, since she thought maybe E needed some more time to get adjusted.  He is TERRIFIED of the pool, and it is painful to see how much he dreads it.   Hopefully we can try out some outdoor pools in the summertime where it might be less noisy and overwhelming for him.

We’ve recently started a checkmark chart for E to motivate him to do things that can take forever, such as cleaning up his toys, or brushing his teeth.  Five checks=a sticker or a stamp and it seems to work pretty well so far!

Our LM is strong-willed and bossy, probably like all 2 year olds, so recent E-isms include:

-“Nooo, E don’t want to/E don’t like!”

-“E want RIGHT NOW!”

-“Mommy say tank you for food for Daddy”, or “Mommy say yummy [food] Daddy.”

And like all 2 year olds, he has sweet rituals:

-“Eat [vegetable/pasta/anything] get muscles [flexes his biceps]”

-“E gonna get you,” and bear hugs you, giggling uncontrollably.

-singing familiar tunes and making up new words and worlds to go along with them.

-“Do dat Mommy/Daddy [puts his palms together], say grace, tank you for the food. Amen.”

We had a blast with the dumping of snow.  E loved throwing snow (at me!) and looking at all the snowmen.

We had a good Chinese New Year, with a visit from Grandma and Grandpa Lowe. LM practiced his “Gung Hei Fat Choy” a lot and thought it was a funny thing to say.

I have been TA’ing at preschool since I’m trying to get all my sessions in prior to the arrival of the baby.  It’s a lot of work, but also great to see Elliot interacting with his classmates and teacher.  He loves order and routine (and his teacher) so he’s kind of a little pet since he follows instructions so rigidly.  He definitely acts up a lot while I’m there (but his teacher reassures me that he’s not usually like that when I’m not there…hmmm.) He’s also taken to “hugging” his friends but it looks to me like he’s tackling them, since he knocks them to the ground and then rolls on top of them.   

We had a fun trip to IKEA for some supplies to try to organize the apartment and E loved his dinner of meatballs, chicken fingers and french fries.  We generally try to avoid giving him these “kid-friendly” foods, but boy, did he enjoy the french fry dipping.

It’s been a particularly tantrum filled few days, maybe in part because we haven’t gotten out as much as usual because of the cold weather.  He spent twenty minutes lying in the hallway outside the apartment post-tantrum today before he was ready to come inside.  I always wonder what he’s thinking.  Time-outs don’t seem to have the same effect recently.  He said to me yesterday, “Mommy, want to go time-out.”.  Huh? 

There are always sweet moments to be savoured though.  Today, while I was tidying the kitchen after breakfast, LM says, ”Thank you Mommy.” I asked, “For what, Elliot?”. And he says, “For cleaning up.” 

Finger (and as it turned out, face) painting:

One of E’s favourite songs currently is “The Lion Sleeps Tonight”.  He’s a happy guy (well, except when he’s tantrum-ing) who sometimes sings when he’s in an especially good mood. “Hush my darling…A-wimoweh, A-wimoweh…”

As for many, it has been a bad cold season here in the Lowe apartment.  Either getting over one, or starting another and the cycle continues… 

Wow, no updates since Christmas!  We had a great (but chilly) holiday.

 LM enjoyed the snow…after a wary few minutes of standing completely still amongst the white wonderland. He even “helped” shovel a bit.

E had fun decorating cookies, playing with new toys, loving Rockin’ Elmo and the dancing moose, riding the elevator, making tea in the tatami room, drawing and painting at “school” and going for a sled ride.

With the unseasonably low temperatures outside and being under-the-weather so often, we’ve spent a great deal of time indoors. But we’ve made the most of it and luckily LM is still pretty easily entertained. He is into pretend play (especially driving a car and cooking).

Playing with my wallet and money:

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He liked to look at all the faces on the bills, and kept saying everyone was “Washington’.  Guess I had a lot of singles! 

Dressing up in my hats.  His “I’m a thug” look:

Now I’m a lady:

Boycotting all visible vegetables except for squash and sweet potatoes, we’ve been feeding him a lot of pureed soups.  (He won’t eat stuff in the soup if it’s not pureed, and prefers to pick it out and have the broth.) Current faves are peeling his own clementines. Ribs are pretty fun too.

E’s face whenever we say “smile” for the camera.  He just opens his mouth.

A great mimic still…even when you don’t notice that he’s listening. G was showing me an old photo where he was pretty overweight and I said, Daddy is fat.  A few minutes later, E looked at the same photo and exclaimed “Daddy fat.” LM couldn’t understand why I was laughing so much.

His language continues to develop and he is using complete sentences more.  We often still misunderstand what he says though.  His “tricky” sounds like “turkey” and “alligator” is actually “elevator”. A certain part of his anatomy are referred to as “meatballs”. Ahem. We didn’t teach him that.

He wants to assert his independence a lot and is still super bossy, “NOOOOO, Elliot do by self” and “Mommy/Daddy, go over there.”

Hope everyone is keeping warm and healthy.  Happy 2013!

Click for captions.

LM enjoyed his visit with Grandma and Grandpa Lowe.  Thanks for coming and spending some quality time with us!

E loves his cardboard “house” which has cut out windows Daddy measured at eye level.  He enjoys peeking out at the Christmas tree and opening and closing the “doors”. He always wants us to join him in there, but it feels a bit a like solitary confinement to me! We like to talk about how dark it is in there and whether we can see the moon. He also had a lot of fun with his early Christmas present from Aunt Mila and Uncle Paul:  a Thomas play tent! Thanks again!

I wonder if living with a 2 year old personality is kind of like living with a person who suffers from bipolar disorder.  Very high frantically happy or sweet moments and extremely low times of fatigue and naughty behaviour or tantrums.

Super lovely moments include E as the Tickle Machine.  He loves to tickle everyone, I even found him cracking himself up by tickling his eyes at playground.  He also is the Hug Machine.  Anytime he sees G and I hugging, he wants in on the action!

Counting bad behaviour and time-outs have become a regular occurrence!  For example, last week he bites a little boy who was taking a turn on the balance beam at the playground. When I say, “No biting Elliot.” and start to count him he says very earnestly, “Elliot want eat boy.”  Aiyah.  The mom of the little boy yelped in laughter as I apologized.  Usually, LM is fairly reasonable and usually only bites when someone takes his turn or grabs his stuff.

We had a Parent-Teacher interview!  It was kind of funny to me that we had this meeting with his teacher, but it was great to see some of the “projects” from school and hear about how she felt he was doing. She had some wonderful things to say about LM and also mentioned a few things for him to work on. She says that he is intelligent, has great focus, loves to read stories and have snack time and water play. Apparently he’s getting better at not throwing toys while cackling his punky laugh!  She would like to see him express himself more rather than simply crying when he’s upset about something. He loves his teacher and we are happy he is having so much fun while learning and socializing.

LM is enjoying some new holiday routines, such as waking up and turning on the Christmas tree lights and checking the if the tree wants to “drink more water”.  His favourite is definitely our morning advent calendar count down when we talk about which pocket on the calendar has what number and picture and then he digs in and finds a small treat. He is fixated on Dec 9th because somehow he remembers getting two jelly beans in there.  Several times a day he asks, “Number 9 mommy, where’s number nine?’

E is still not a fan of Santa:

“What’s with the bearded guy in the corner?”

He wouldn’t get closer than this:

We had a nice visit from Aunt Claire and Uncle Butch this weekend.  Thanks for all the gifts and hanging out!  

We are looking forward to seeing everyone in Toronto soon!