THE GREEN(wald) HOUSE … (growing rosemary & raising a little wolf)

Wow - Another month has flown by and once again I am surprised when it is (past) time for another monthly update…

First off - Happy Birthday to me! I turned 34 on the first and had the best birthday! I got to sleep in - and had chocolate pancakes made for me for breakfast, and then later I went and got a massage and a pedicure, and came home to a dozen roses and some awesome J.Crew dresses and a new Mac laptop! How awesome is my family!!!

Ok - off to the update…
The big news this month - Sammy is walking! He is not doing it consistently - probably only 50% of the time, but he goes through spurts where he will walk 10-15 feet or so and he will be on his feet - walking and standing- for up to 15 minutes. I have a feeling by next month he will be walking all the time. He is so proud of himself when he walks around - he usually starts clapping and squealing and smiling!

He is eating pretty much everything now - including the stuff you are supposed to wait on - like eggs, fish, honey and nuts. He has had scrambled eggs, tuna fish, salmon, honey bunnies cereal, peanut butter bumpers cereal and some pad thai noodles with traces of peanuts on them - so I think we are pretty sure he has no food allergies. He basically just eats off our plates, sometimes he eats one meal a day, sometimes he eats all 3 meals with us - some days he eats only dry cereal - it all depends. Some days his meals are chosen because they are the least messy things to eat - (i.e. dry cereal, cucumbers, apple slices) Mostly it depends on how much cleaning I want to do

Also, we have finally seemed to come upon a peaceful sleep solution for Sammy. I spent about a week lying in his room every night at bedtime- just being present while he went to sleep to get him used to sleeping in his crib and going to sleep on his own without needing me or needing to be nursed or rocked to sleep. I would nurse and rock him until he was almost asleep, then put him in his crib and tell him “good night, go to sleep” and I would lie down on the futon in his room and just watch while he fussed and squirmed and played and settled himself down to sleep. Sometimes he would stand up and cry and I would get up and gently lie him back down and say “lie down, go to sleep”.

At the beginning of the week, he would scream bloody murder if I left the room - and I spent about an hour and a half in the room with him until he finally fell asleep. The time progressively got shorter and shorter -and now I can leave the room when he is still awake and he (usually) goes right to sleep on his own! Yippie!!! He has been sleeping in 4 hour chunks (though I got 7 hours straight out of him one night!!!) and I have been bringing him in to our bed to nurse when he wakes up the first time and co-sleeping after that. But I think our co-sleeping relationship may be just about over as the last few nights he has not settled down in our bed - he has been sitting up and babbling and crawling all over Joe and I. So, I have been putting him back into his room after nursing - and he has been going back to sleep fine in his bed without fussing or whining.

If is interesting because it seems that Rosie and Sam had opposite sleeping struggles. Rosie was sleeping from 8pm-6am in her crib starting at around 10 months - but naps were such a struggle! I could not get her to nap without me and spent hours every day lying in bed with her to get her to nap. Sammy, on the other hand, goes right to sleep in his crib for naps with (pretty much) no problem - but he has still been waking a ton at night. I am hoping (fingers crossed) that the new trend is Sammy sleeping 7-8 hours straight now that he is walking and has gone through that developmental phase that was keeping him from sleeping soundly.

Rosie is still napping - and we have settled into a good naptime routine with both kids. Sammy takes a morning nap around 2-3 hours after waking up , and during this time, Rosie and I get to have some quality mommy-daughter time. We play candyland, or paint, or cut paper with scissors, or paint her nails - the things that we can’t really do with Sam around because he gets into everything. Then, both kids usually nap around the same time sometime between 2-5 in the afternoon. This is HEAVEN for me and the only way I really get anything done.

We have been playing a lot outside with the beautiful weather we have been having. We got a kite recently and Rosie thinks it is so cool to fly a kite in the backyard.

Both kids love to climb the slide and swing on the new swingset, they love playing in the sandbox,

blowing bubbles,

digging in the garden and picking strawberries, and splashing in the little kiddie pool I set up on the deck! Sam loves to get water in his mouth and then spit it out - he thinks it is hilarious!

Rosie has been very into pretending lately - and her new activity is pretending to write stories. She will take a pen and a notebook and scribble all over it and tell me she is writing me a “good morning story” or “good night story” or some other story. I will ask her what the story says and it is usually something like

“It is about us, and you and me and daddy are singing me a good night song and it was really pretty and I love it and it maked me feel better and then I went to sleep like a big girl and you and daddy were sooooooooo happy and then I waked up in the morning and said good morning mommy and daddy and my baby brother and his name is Sammy the Wolf and he is getting bigger and bigger like me and soon he will be a big sister too!”

She doesn’t quite get the whole “sister-brother” relationship. When talking about how she is Sammy’s sister and he his her brother - she told her Bubby “and mommy and daddy are sister and brother too!” - um - no.

She also likes to come up with solutions to problems on her own and pretend to fix things. She had a toy that wasn’t working the other day and she had a very serious look on her face and was telling me “I am just trying to figure out what’s wrong - I think it is out of batteries - but that’s ok because we can fix it! Because I am a good fixer and you are a good fixer too mommy”.

She still is just a chatterbox and talks almost non-stop, coming up with things out of the blue like we were just talking about them. Here are some things she has said out of the blue recently.
“And Gigi likes scrambled eggs too!”
“And Dora was at the beach like we go to the beach”
“And when I was a baby I would say “mama” like that”

She still loves rhyming things too - and it amazes me the words she knows - just this morning she told me:
“Coat and moat rhyme! Tool and stool and pool rhyme! And dog and log, and heart and part and frog and log, and hat and mat and couch and pouch and cat and pat, and ball and wall!” Can you tell we have been reading a lot of Dr. Seuss lately?

She has been practicing writing her name, and is getting pretty good at the “R” and she can do the “O” and the “I” no problem, but she always needs help with the “S” and “E”. She is still really wanting to read too. She can read some familiar words, and likes practicing sounding out the individual letters - but still struggles when trying to put all the sounds together. Sometimes she surprises me with “reading” and I think she is good at guessing words that are somewhat familiar. We bought some books at a garage sale the other day, and one was called “Fish out of Water” and had a big picture of a fish on the front - and I know we haven’t read it or seen it before. Rosie pulled it out of the bag and said “and this one is called Fish out of Water!

We went to a local carnival/fair at the end of May and Rosie loved riding all the rides. She is so brave she rode the kiddie roller coaster all by herself and was laughing the whole time!

Last week I took the kids to a portrait studio to get some photos taken for Father’s Day for Joe. They turned out really great.

We also made some cool hand and foot print paintings for Joe for Father’s day. Sam’s hands and feet are just barely smaller than Rosie’s!

I still can’t believe that next month I will have a 3 year old and a 1 year old!