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

Happy Halloween!

Greetings from The Mad Scientist, Spiderman, Ariel, and her dad King Triton

Wow - seems like years since the last update. The big stuff the last couple months has been the end of summer, Rosie starting Kindergarten, and now Fall fun and Halloween and Joey’s birthday

We’ll start off with Halloween - we had fun with our costumes this year. We dressed up to go to the Greenfield Village Halloween celebration a few weeks ago, Rosie was a witch (bought on sale after halloween last year), Sammy was Underdog (using a dog mask we have in the play/dressup bin and I sewed a big white “U” on his red sweatshirt), I was a witch (recycled hat from years ago) and Joe was a ghost (I made for him to go to Rosie’s field trip last year). Then we were all going to be Little Mermaid characters on halloween this year, but Sammy wanted to be Underdog again, so I decided to be a Mad scientist to go with his outfit (I was going to be Ursula the sea witch and Sammy was going to be Sebastian, the crab). Then, at the last minute on Halloween morning, Sammy saw a spiderman costume and decided that he didn’t want to be Underdog anymore.

For Rosie’s school party on Friday, all the Kindergarten classes were required to dress up as nursery rhyme characters, so Rosie decided to be the mouse from Hickory Dickory Dock.

We had a fun last month of summer, finished swim lessons, played outside a lot with the neighbors, enjoyed some beautiful and mild summer weather, the only real trip we went on was to Cincinnati with Rosie’s best friend M and her family and we went to King’s Island and had fun riding roller coasters and playing at the water park.

Rosie’s first day of Kindergarten

Rosie LOVES Kindergarten, she LOVES her teacher Mrs. Winters and she LOVES riding the bus every day. Any other information we pretty much have to drag out of her, she is very reluctant to give us information about what she does at school, she was like this in preschool too, always telling us “I’ll tell you later” complaining that she “had a rough day” and she is too tired to tell us what she did. We compromised and now she tells me 5 things after school, and then at the dinner table, everyone goes over their whole day, so she gives out more info then…
Here’s some more photos from the first and second day of school…







Waiting to get on the bus on the second day of school

Rosie is always singing and dancing and making up songs - one recent one was about reading a stop sign and the song was
“S-T-O, S-T-O, S-T-O-P stop!”
She wrote the lyrics on a piece of paper and also wrote “by original rose” - I told her the song was original, so she incorporated that into her songwriting name.
She still has a few unique ways she says things - she always says “blandmark” (instead of landmark)

She uses the word “recognize” a lot, and not always in the correct way —
She will say “I recognize that you cleaned the table” and “I recognized that it was your turn”
(instead of I realized, I remembered?)

She is still reading everything, writing letters and notes to everyone, spelling things in her own way, and she is right more often than not. It makes me so happy that she loves learning and loves school.
She is making a lot of new friends, some in class and some from her soccer team (and some are both in class and on the team) and she had some friends over for a teaparty and they all played dress up with Rosie’s playsilks.

I have been working to teach her life skills at home, teaching her to cook, and to sew and just recently teaching her how to use sharp knives and cut vegetables (with very careful supervision of course).
Making healthy, fun, easy lunches for her every day has been a challenge for me - they usually look like this:

And I have been trying to be resourceful with our cooking too, making a roasted free-range chicken about every 2 weeks, and using the bones to make homemade chicken stock.

I am also making homemade elderberry syrup, homemade kombucha, I fermented some jalapenos for Joey, and made pickles and pickled tomatoes and onions (a la Grandma Billie).

Another recent development is that Rosie is very obsessed with time, always asking how long until we get somewhere or do something - if I tell her 5 minutes, she will count to 60 five times, just to keep track. She also has been using “eena meena mina moe” to make decisions lately.

We just got her school photos back last week and I can’t believe what a big girl she is.

And, I am still a soccer mom….



She finished another season of soccer (with Uncle Lime as the coach and cousin Ari on her team), and decided she does NOT want to play soccer anymore, so we will be starting a gymnastics class instead, and Sammy will be taking over the soccer duties, he LOVES soccer.

One weekend, after a soccer game we took Ari with us to the local apple orchard to pick apples.

One weekend we went to Yates Cider mill, to go hiking and feed the animals at the petting zoo, our usual Fall tradition.

We also went to the local pumpkin patch to pick out pumpkins to carve.

We went to a University of Michigan football game, and had fun even though they lost. Rosie made a homemade sign that she spelled herself that said “Go Missagin”.

Sammy is such a sweet and emotional 3 year old. He is a master of extremes, being funny and silly and energetic one second, and having a complete melt-down the next. I have been reading a lot of parenting books, trying to get ideas on how to deal with him. Currently on my nightstand “Happiest Toddler on the Block” “How to Behave so your Preschooler will Too” and “How to Brat Proof your Child”
One thing that seems to be working is the “Fast Food Rule” from HTOTB. Basically it is just repeating whatever it is your child is wanting or complaining about. “You really wanted that toy” “you don’t want to leave the library” “wow, I hear you are really upset”
It really takes the steam out of his yelling and whining when I just empathize and understand his wants and needs.

Sammy asked me out of the blue one morning “‘member when I was the dad and you were the baby?” I told him that I didn’t remember and I asked him to tell me more, and he told me a whole story about he was the dad and we didn’t have a mom and I was the baby and I had 2 sisters and we were sad because he had to go to Mexico to work….

He also was talking about something and said “that’s when I was a ghost” I asked him “when were you a ghost?” and he said “ummm - 40 months ago” (he had been born 38 months ago when he said that)

He also has his own cute things he says - like bah-tato chips (instead of potato chips).
If I surprise him he says “Mommy, you freaked me out!”
and just recently he started telling me “you are ruining my life” learned from his sister I am sure.

He is also big into talking about poop, and interjecting the word into almost every sentence and song. We have been doing a lot of mad-libs in the car lately, and “poop” or “pee” is always a favorite when asking for a noun.
His new insult - “you creaky!” (instead of saying crazy or silly)

We started Sammy at English Oaks Montessori in September four mornings a week, where Rosie went and Sammy went a few days last year. Unfortunately, he was not loving school this year, and it was a battle every morning with him crying and not wanting to go. We toughed it out for a bit, as the school assured me that he was fine once I left and he was having fun while he was there (he was always happy when I picked him up, but still said he didn’t want to go), but we just recently decided to take a break from school for the next few months and let him be home with mommy for a little longer and we will try again in the new year. I don’t want him to have a negative association with school, I want him to be excited and ask to go to school, so we will wait until he tells me he is ready to go back.

He was mostly done potty learning at the end of summer, but then regressed again once school started, so we have been gently working on it again and have been still letting him have some naked time to help him learn to use the potty. One day, after playing hard and jumping on the couch, he tired himself out and I looked over and saw this:

He has a great imagination, he loves playing house, with him being the dad and me being the baby. He loves pretending to be a kitty.
He loves doing puzzles, and he is really loving having power over people and over situations, he wants to be in charge, wants to tell me what to do - “I will show you how”.
He loves being active and playing chase, he also likes to throw the pillows from the couch all over and make a giant obstacle course, playing “wipeout” as he calls it.

So long for now, next update will see us in winter clothes and snow I am sure - brrrr….
We are already expecting our first snow flurries this weekend…

Happy 3rd Birthday to Sammy and Happy 5th Birthday to Rosie!

We’ve had a busy few months (yeah, I know every single update starts that same way). We had a wedding in North Carolina over memorial weekend and a fun road trip. I turned 36! Rosie graduated from pre-school. Sammy lost a tooth. Sammy turned 3. Gigi came to visit and we had a big birthday party for the kids. Rosie turned 5. Rosie learned to swim! Lots more stuff, but those are the highlights….

Let’s start with Sammy. He is turning into such a little boy, he definitely doesn’t look like a baby anymore. His face and body have really been thinning out and he has a skinny, muscular boy belly with an outie belly button that I think is so cute!
When I say “I love you” he sighs and says “yeah, me too”
The only babyish thing about him is he is still whining and needing cuddles a lot, I have a feeling he will always be my sensitive mama’s boy, and I’m fine with that.
He is very expressive when talking and he is always adamant about everything - “yeah - he really, really did!” Almost every statement he makes, he ends with saying “really” as if someone is challenging or doubting him…
“We went to the store, really, we did!”
He always uses “he” as pronoun “Rosie hit me, he really did!”
He still copies everything Rosie does and says, and of course this really bothers Rosie. His new complaint when fighting with Rosie is that “Rosie is making the rules” and he does not like that at all…
A new development that I think is really cute is that he makes a noise - kind of like “tsk tsk” kind of clicking his tongue when thinking.

He complains every day that whatever we are doing is too long, especially when we are driving someplace in the car, he says “but it will be a long time” and whines. I am trying to explain time to him and get him to wait and be patient for things…

We are still working on potty learning, it’s frustrating and slow progress. I REALLY want to be done with diapers, and I know it needs to be his decision, so I will try to encourage him for a few days, we’ll wear underwear and try to remind him and see how it goes, and then he and I both get frustrated, so we’ll go back to diapers and forget about it for a week or 2 and then I’ll be fed up with buying diapers and we’ll start again - 2 steps forward, one step back….

We had a fun family trip to Cousin Robert’s wedding over memorial weekend in North Carolina.

We split up the drive, stopping halfway in Cincinnati on the way down and staying at Great Wolf Lodge and enjoying some waterslides, so it wasn’t too much time in the car (5 hours in the car each day instead of about a 10 hour drive each way). Here’s where the missing tooth comes into play (I know you were all reading and waiting for the story). At the rehearsal dinner the night before the wedding, Sammy jumped off a tall bench on the patio at the restaurant and fell forward into a picnic bench and hit his upper lip, just under his nose. He was screaming and his nose was bleeding and we were worried that he broke his nose at first, but he seemed to be fine. I tried to wiggle his teeth and they were solid, and he said they didn’t hurt. I pressed on his nose and he said that didn’t hurt either, and he seemed OK except for a scratch beneath his nose….

Fast forward 2 weeks later (after some extreme crankiness) when he woke up one morning with his right front tooth sticking out at an odd angle and his gums totally swollen and infected. Cue mommy guilt as we realized that he damaged the tooth when he fell and after several visits to some pediatric dental specialists and a round of antibiotics, we ended up deciding to have it pulled. He was immediately better and now he looks like such a tough guy - he is my ruthless, toothless Sammy. The tooth fairy came and left him a whole dollar and a new toothbrush.

For his 3rd birthday, we started the celebration the day before, and went to the Detroit Tigers baseball game for the afternoon. Of course it was like the hottest day of the year and we were roasting sitting in the direct sun for almost an inning before we scouted out some shady seats to move to. We didn’t stay for the whole game, but we had our fill of peanuts, popcorn and we rode the tiger carousel and the baseball ferris wheel before heading home.


Sammy decided he wanted to go to the zoo on his birthday, so we went early, as it was going to be another scorcher. We got there early enough to get tickets to feed the giraffes, which was cool.

We cooled off with some frozen lemonade, and hung out in the (nice and cool) arctic circle exhibit with the seals and polar bears.

Then we got his favorite sweet and sour shrimp at Pei Wei on the way home for lunch, and then I made him dinner that night and we went to the pool after dinner and met up with Aunt P and Uncle Lime and cousins Marisa, Noah, Cory and Ari and had homemade cupcakes and sang Happy Birthday.

Sammy’s big birthday gift this year was a Toy Story bike with training wheels, so he can ride bikes like his big sister. He also got a Buzz Lightyear doll that says about a billion things, and tons of other little Toy Story stuff, as he and Rosie both LOVED the movie and are obsessed with everything about it.

Rosie - my beautiful big girl. I am amazed every day by the things she says and does. She seems so big and smart and worldly, and not my little baby anymore.

She has been writing post cards to kids in my mommy group, and decided she wants to be pen pals with her cousin Ella. She is writing and drawing all the time, she drew a picture of a butterfly and tried to write the caption

She writes me love notes all the time

We have been getting lots of early reader books from the library and it amazes me that she can pick up a book she has never seen before and just read it! Whenever we drive somewhere, she is constantly reading signs and business names. She loves to play school and lately has been making her own math worksheets to practice her addition and subtraction.
Joe and I both cried at her preschool graduation and I can’t believe she will be in Kindergarten in a few short weeks!

She is very active and she is always asking for permission to go outside and ride her bike and now her new scooter. Just a few days ago she started swimming on her own without swimmies

She has also been making excuses to get out of bed at night, and is crawling into our bed and sleeping with us in middle of night. She loves making rules, saying “I know a good rule…” and making plans, making sure we remember the plans she makes saying “you got it in your head?” She is headstrong and loves to be in charge and have things go her way. She has been making me “pinkie promise” on things a lot lately when making plans. I have gotten a glimpse of her as a teenager as she has yelled at me a few times (when I am saying “no” to some request) and said “you’re ruining my life!”. I am not sure where she heard that from, but it actually makes me laugh when she says it with such conviction over not being able to have a popsicle for breakfast.

She still loves to dress up and be a girly girl, and chooses dresses most often to wear. She also has been putting on lipgloss (that cousin Ella got her) almost every day. She loves playing with her large collection of Barbies and other dolls (littlest pet shop, polly pocket, my little pony, etc).

She is still a great and adventurous eater, her most requested meal is going to get sushi. And, believe it or not, she LOVES anchovies on pizza (like her dad), and will pick them off the pizza and eat them plain. She tried oysters for the first time and loved them. She still loves corn on the cob and calls the cob the “rack” - asks us to take away the “corn rack” when she is done. She has a ton of cute little ways she says things, like when she says she wants to go play games at the “arcave” (arcade).

On her 5th birthday, we had an amazing fun-filled day. It started with her breakfast of choice, chocolate chip pancakes with chocolate syrup and 5 candles on the “you are special today” plate.

Then she had “safety town” in the morning to prepare for kindergarten (learning bus safety, fire safety, how to call 911 etc.)
Then there was a county fair going on, so we went to the fair and rode all the rides we could and bought fresh squeezed lemonade and went to the petting zoo and saw all the animals and watched a pig race.

Then we went to Chuck E Cheese’s with her BFF Maddie and played all the games and ran around and had fun. THEN we went to pizza at her favorite restaurant Buddy’s Pizza and had yummy gluten free pizza and there was a clown there to make balloon animals too.

WHEW! Next year I think we are going to stick to just one activity for the birthday celebration, it was way too chaotic and tiring and the kids were melting down by the end of the day with sheer exhaustion and over-stimulation…
Rosie’s big present she wanted was a new Hello Kitty razor scooter (big kid style with only 2 wheels, instead of the 3 wheeled princess hand-me-down scooter she had been riding) and a My Little Pony Gumball House (that Gigi got her), she also got some cool stomp rockets and lots of barbie, my little pony, and polly pocket presents that she loved.

Rosie and Sammy have both been playing really well together, of course they fight occasionally like any siblings, but they really enjoy each other’s company, playing school, cinderella, dress up, dance party, etc. I actually caught them with their arms around each other, slow dancing just yesterday, and Rosie told me they were playing “cinderella”, but as soon as I wanted to video tape them, Sammy was done playing. They are constantly hugging each other, posing for pictures with their arms around each other (without me asking).

Rosie encourages her brother and praises him when they are doing an activity together. She will go get his clothes in the morning and help him get dressed and undressed.

So long for now from the Greenwalds, more to come in Sept.

We have a busy August planned…
Rosie and I will be gone on a yoga retreat with Gigi, Auntie Em, Cousin Ella, and Aunt Jackie this weekend, then Ella will be coming home with us and staying for a week, and then we’ll be in Florida for a week, then when we get back, Rosie has a personal growth camp called “stop, think and go” and then dance camp for a week, and then we are planning a trip to King’s Island (or some other roller coaster place) and then it will be time for school to start! Kindergarten - yikes!

Here’s a few more photos from the last few months…


Cousins on 4th of July at the beach at Kensington Metropark

Driving through the smokey mountains

Outside Tigers Stadium (Comerica Park)

Happy Spring!

Well, spring in Michigan has been up and down. We had a few days of really warm and nice weather in March, even a few 80 degree days, and then the day after one 80 degree day, it was down to 50 again! We actually had some tiny snow flurries in mid-April and then the month ended with another 80 degree day! And now, as I finish writing this, a week into May - I am listening to the rain and thunder outside and it is chilly again.

We have been really busy as usual. We had a great Easter and Passover with family. The kids had a great time dying eggs with friends, then hunting eggs with the neighborhood kids, and then again with their cousins.




They loved hunting for and finding their Easter baskets from the Easter bunny on Easter morning.

We joined Joe on a work trip to Columbus, Ohio and got in a lot of great family time and went to the Columbus Zoo. The kids had a great time seeing animals we don’t normally see at the Detroit Zoo, like the giant bats, the baby elephant, and the leopard.

They also had a great time riding the carousel.

Another big change in our family these past couple months has been taking the whole family gluten free. After Joe’s diagnosis with Celiac Disease a year ago, Rosie and I recently got tested and found out we are gluten intolerant, so now there is no wheat in the house. I think this is really more common now because the grains we eat are genetically modified and engineered and the wheat today has extremely high levels of gluten. It is not the same as the wheat our grandparents ate, and we eat such huge amounts of processed foods, our bodies just can’t digest it. I think it is a good change for our family, it means we are eating healthier and eating less processed foods, eating out less often, and reading more labels. We are also limiting sugar and dairy, as I don’t think our bodies were designed to digest cow’s milk in mass quantities either. The kids have been eating lots of frozen fruit, frozen little cups of yobaby yogurt, we have been making fresh smoothies and popsicles, making GF (gluten free) bread and cookies. Rosie and Sammy start almost every morning asking for their vitamins. I am also making homemade kombucha. I love the taste and it is really high in B vitamins and probiotics and I convinced Joe to drink a little with me every morning.

I can’t believe Sammy is almost 3! He is so cute and funny and also sensitive and whiny and still really big into throwing tantrums. He still copies his sister, repeating things she says verbatim, and wanting to do everything she does. He loves to do puzzles and play catch and kick balls. He has been really into pretend lately and acting out stories with cars and dolls. I caught him up in Rosie’s room while she was in school, he was just sitting quietly with her barbies, talking and acting out a story about “sarah” and trying to take off the doll’s clothes.

Sammy’s favorite sayings these last couple months:
WHAT THE??!!!??! (pretending to be shocked at everything)
“I like your shirt” (says to everyone, so cute)
I think….maybe…..(when deciding something)

He has also been loving playing outside and riding his tricycle or scooter. He started asking to go to school with Rosie when we would drop her off in the morning, so we started sending him to school 2 mornings a week with her. He seems to really love it and is starting to count more, and started practicing holding his pen/pencil and writing letters. He can count to 5 easily and really understands the value as he counts each finger. He has been really whiny and sensitive lately, needing lots of cuddles, melting down at the mere mention of the word “no”. I am wondering if the school environment and being away from me for even a couple hours just 2 days a week is making him feel a little less secure and that is causing the whiny tantrums and the need for more connection with me…

We have been slowly making process with potty learning. His diaper is dry almost every morning, and he is going on the potty a lot if I remind him, but still not really taking initiative to go on his own and having a lot of accidents.
He is now getting dressed almost all by himself, and he finally managed putting on socks without help.
I am trying to find new ways to deal with his whiny times and tantrums. I try to give him words to use like “frustrated” and “disappointed” to describe his feelings, and I have been trying to get him to draw a picture to show me when he is angry, frustrated, sad, etc. He doesn’t really draw much, sometimes just a line or circle or scribble, but it seems to work and calm him down a little bit.

The BIG NEWS for Rosie is that she is now riding her 2 wheel bike with no training wheels!

She was encouraged by her friend M, who took the big step about 2 weeks before Rosie did. M had a balance bike (no training wheels and no pedals) that Rosie borrowed for about a week and practiced her balancing. Then we took one training wheel off for about a day, and she asked to remove the other one, and has been a bike riding fool ever since. Joe and I bought bikes off craigslist so we can all go for family bike rides together (with Sammy on the back of my bike).

Here’s Rosie and her friend M riding bikes the other day…

She is so excited about her new skill, and will yell to neighbors we pass “I’m riding a two-wheeler!”
She has been so gregarious, and excited to talk to people in general. She is starting up conversations with random people all the time, the cashier at the grocery store, the librarian, etc.
Another new thing is that Rosie started on a soccer team with her cousin Ari and with Uncle Lime (Emil) coaching. We have had about a month of practices and games on Saturdays, and she is so cute running around on the field. She doesn’t seem to care much for the actual game of soccer. She is always distracted, hugging friends, picking flowers, running and waving to us the whole time. I guess the important thing is she loves having fun and being part of a team.

She is really loving school and still learning a lot - she is reading, writing and spelling everything. She can read little beginner books all herself now.

We have had a couple Kindergarten orientation events, and she is really excited to go to school next year, and super excited to ride the bus with all the neighborhood kids!
She is obsessed with rainbows, and really into creating art and drawing and painting lately. She told me she wanted to learn more about art, so we looked up Gustav Klimt on my computer because she has the same birthday, then we looked up Diego Rivera and learned about both their paintings and talked about the different colors they used and etc.

We did a pen pal exchange with a lot of families in my natural parenting group, and we created postcards or art to send in letters to about 4-5 kids each week. That was a lot of fun for Rosie to get mail every week, and she loved putting stamps on letters and putting them in the mailbox all by herself.

She loves playing kitty or doggie with her brother, and singing “beat on the brat” courtesy of their dad.
She is always dancing and leaping around and will request that we give her all our attention while she does a ballet dance for us.

We plan on starting her on dance or ballet lessons as soon as soccer is over. She is a little independent creature, and insists on picking out her own outfits and dressing herself every day, some are quite creative and colorful.
Another new thing she has been doing is making up new house rules for all of us to follow, she definitely loves being in charge, especially telling her brother what to do.

Well, that’s it for now. Hope everyone is doing well, thanks for reading and catching up on our little family!
xo

TWENTY TEN! Wow - I feel like we are living in the future…

Yeah, it’s been a busy year already, hence the combined update for both January and February.

Well, let’s see, we have been having a TON of snow, pretty much non-stop and it is lightly snowing again as I write this. The kids have been a little crazy because we have been spending a lot of time indoors. I try to find new, creative things to do, but the kids favorite activity seems to be to just to dump out all their toys and spread them all over the house.

We had a lot of fun visiting Florida at the beginning of February. It was a very generous treat from PaPa and GiGi to fly me and the kids down for a week. PaPa hadn’t seen the kids in well over a year, and it is always great to see GiGi. (Happy Birthday GiGi!)


It was a nice break from the cold and snow and it was great to visit all the rest of the family and to see some color outside again! The kids had fun visiting with cousins Stephen and Bailey and going to cousin Ella’s basketball and cheerleading practices and games.

Sammy has now been obsessed with basketball, and Rosie has been practicing cheering and I promised I would find a cheer program for her next year when she is 5. We enjoyed some sunshine at the beach and had some gorgeous weather (though the FL residents were freaking about the cold weather - high 60’s low 70’s).

When we got back from Florida, we had a hair cutting mishap. Rosie and Sammy both decided to take their little safety scissors and give themselves haircuts. It wasn’t really that bad, considering I cut my bangs at my scalp when I was 5. Rosie just delicately trimmed about 2-3 inches off the ends of her hair in the front and around the left side a bit. I think she was trying to give herself bangs. Her hair was all one length to her shoulders, and now I had to trim it up and it is shorter all around and a bit shorter in the front. We had to invest in some new headbands and hair clips to keep it out of her eyes now. Sammy just cut a tiny bit on the right side of his head, at the temple, so he just got a bit of a trim to even things out too… Hopefully they will remember that scissors are for paper cutting ONLY and we won’t have a repeat of this (knock on wood)!

BEFORE above - and AFTER below

We took the kids to see Elmo Live on Valentine’s day again this year. It has become kind of a family tradition. The show was cute and the kids loved it, but the rampant commercialism and the push to buy Elmo products is kind of hard to bear. Rosie was such a cutie though, and when they came out into the audience at intermission, selling cotton candy in the aisles, and big Elmo balloons, Sammy wanted a balloon and Rosie told him “No, Sammy, we don’t buy things like that”.

The above photo courtesy of my fabulous photographer friend S.
Rosie has been very creative lately, always wanting to do a “project”. She has been making a ton of books, writing words and spelling everything phonetically herself. She made me a book and wrote “WENS EPON E TIME”.



She recently started writing her “s” the correct way instead of backwards after I told her S was like a snake - and the top of the S was like the snake’s head, and the snake was looking to the right. She loves to add captions to her drawings, she will draw a cat and label it “CAT” etc. She still loves performing and dancing. She will put on a show and she makes sure all attention is on her - telling us “quiet, quiet, eyes on me, eyes on me” before she will begin her dance performance.
She and Sammy also both still love telling knock knock jokes and any other jokes, making up their own silly jokes that make no sense.
One of our latest projects was making objects out of clay - I was really impressed with Rosies’ skill, she looked in a book of ideas that came with the clay, and copied out a lot of intricate designs on her own that were pretty advanced.

Another new obsession is bowling. Rosie decided out of the blue one day that she wanted to go bowling, so we took the kids one night and they loved it! They were so enthusiastic about it that I turned it into a fun learning/counting/addition game for at home. I remembered we had a few little wooden bowling pins, and I set them up on the floor and let them roll a ball or a toy car into the pins, and then they have to count how many pins they knock down, and then add that to how many they knock down with the next ball. Sammy is getting really good at counting and actually knows the value of the numbers up to 10 (instead of just reciting the numbers with no real understanding).

Rosie has been talking a lot about future plans, always mentioning things she will do when she’s 5 - and things she can do when she’s a mommy.
She has already decided that she wants a real kitty for her 5th birthday. She got a toy kitty from GiGi for christmas that meows an moves and purrs and she loves it. She named her “snowy” because she is white and looks like snow. I told her we would think about getting her a kitty but she had to prove that she could be responsible and take care of her kitty and feed her and make sure to clean out her litter box. We’ll see….

Rosie wearing one of her dollies in a sling

A few days ago she told me her name was going to be Melody when she was a mommy. I told her that her name wouldn’t change just because she was a mommy, that her name was Rosemary, but if she wanted to she could change her name when she gets older - so she told me she wanted to change her name to Melody Rose when she grew up.

She has had a big imagination lately, pretending to be animals, people, inventing stories and scenarios. She is most often a dancer, but has also been having parades around the house lately, the other day she was having a picnic with her brother and her friend M in “California”.

Her expressions and things she says crack me up sometimes. She now says “You’re kidding me - right?” and “Totally Awesome!” I love how she uses the word “voila” when telling a story too. She has been practicing telling time and can tell the time in hours on a regular dial clock. She is almost completely independent when getting dressed and undressed. She still has a bit of trouble with buttons or snaps sometimes, but she usually dresses herself every day and does a pretty good job when it comes to matching and picking out a cute outfit. I am going to start to work with her more on tying shoelaces so she can wear this cute pair of tennis shoes I bought for her this summer.

Sammy seems to be talking non stop lately. And it is common to hear him trying to interrupt me by saying “mommy, stop talking, I trying to tell you something”. His favorite thing still is imitating his sister, or repeating things and jokes she tells. Every time Rosie tells me how to spell a word, Sammy copies her and tells me that _______ is spelled “S-O-P”. That’s how he thinks his name is spelled, and longer words are spelled “S-O-P-Q-R-S”
He is so enthusiastic about everything - always shouting “Hooray” about the littlest things. I love it though, it always makes me smile.
“What do you want for breakfast”
“Ummm - oatmeal”
“Ok, I’ll make you oatmeal”
“Hooray!”

He also has been saying “Ta Da” and “Presto” (mostly copying his sister). One of his and Rosie’s favorite new games is to take blankets and their playsilks and wrap up their toys and pretend it is somebody’s birthday or christmas, and unwrap gifts with the big “Ta Da” presentation. His effort at telling knock knock jokes is getting better, he gets the actual joke and delivery right about 50% of the time.
He still mumbles a lot, but he is always perfectly slow and articulate when he says “I don’t know”.
He loves feeding Daisy, and he and Rosie fight over who gets to feed her in the morning and evening. Sometimes I can get them to share the duty (one holds the bowl, and the other scoops the food) but more often than not, it turns into a big screaming match.

He has been making big strides in potty learning. He has been dry in the morning, and will go on the potty first thing if I take him there. He will usually continue to go throughout the day if I remind him. Sometimes he refuses and throws a tantrum if I try to take him to the potty, so I haven’t been pushing it too much. He also has been going on his own, and taking his diaper off and trying to sit on the potty, but it is usually AFTER he has gone in his diaper, meaning I have been cleaning up some BIG messes. If I keep him diaper-free, he goes in his pants, and when I put a diaper on him, he tries to take it off and go on his own. I need to get some cloth pull-up diapers - but I am loathe to spend money on something that I will hopefully only have to use for a couple months…

He has been such a sensitive boy, screaming and tantruming at the slightest offense. I will usually let him scream and lie on the floor for a few minutes, and get it out, and then he will almost always come up to me afterwards and say “I sorry mommy, pease cuddle me”. And I will give him a big hug and then he is all better. Sometimes he will be crying and whining for apparently no reason, and he will come up to me and say “mommy, I crying” and I’ll say “why are you crying?” and his answer will be “cuz I crying”. Thankfully, a cuddle almost always fixes everything.

I have been extra busy because I started in Real Estate again, and I have been dragging the kids around showing houses, hoping to make a little (or preferably, a LOT) of extra money. We have lots of ideas in the works, and I really think that this will be our year to become financially independent, working for ourselves, allowing us more time together as a family, so we can be happier, less stressed, and hopefully do a lot of traveling and fun stuff too!

Another one of our new favorite things is weekly movie nights. We will rent a movie, or find one on TV and DVR it and watch it on Friday or Saturday night. We make popcorn, and all cuddle up on the couch in front of the fire, or in our big bed, and enjoy a movie. Some of the kids recent favorites: The Land Before Time, The Aristocats, Coraline in 3D, The Fox and the Hound, Lassie (cheesy 1994 version), Horton Hears a Who and Peter Pan.

I’ll leave you this month with a picture of a movie night, when Rosie needed her little brother to give her a hug/cuddle to protect her from the scary part.

After celebrating some great holidays, Hannukah, Solstice, and Christmas - and now ringing in the new year with some friends at a kids party at 8pm, I am ready to welcome 2010. I can’t believe how fast this year has gone by - I was taking down my 2009 calendar, and looking at some dates and events written in from the beginning of the year, and they seem like they happened only a few weeks or months ago. We have been in this house almost a full year now, and we still don’t feel quite settled….
I am hoping 2010 brings us (and our families) much more financial stability and abundance, and we all continue to enjoy good health, love and happiness…

We decorated our Christmas tree on the weekend after Thanksgiving as is our new tradition. Aunt P and the kids came over and joined us for the fun and celebration and a family dinner afterwards. We also started a new tradition of having the kids take turns as Joe lifts them up and putting star on top after the tree is all decorated. This year was Rosie’s year, next year (even years) will be Sammy’s turn.

Rosie had her school holiday party, and was the epitome of cuteness as she sang the christmas songs she learned, and gave a curtsey after each song.

Then we had family dinner at Aunt P’s house for the first night of Hannukah - and Rosie lit the candles with cousin Marisa

and played dreidel with cousin Ari.

Rosie continued to be the designated candle lighter throughout Hannukah, and did a pretty great job (she liked to sing Rudolph or another Christmas song after lighting them)

until she almost lit her hair on fire on the 7th night (reaching for some ornaments she had painted that were just past the menorah). After that we were a lot more careful around the lit candles….

Gigi came and visited for 5 days- and helped us celebrate the end of Hannukah (her first time eating Latkes!) and we celebrated an early solstice and the kids were spoiled with lots of little gifts and lots of love from Gigi! And Gigi got to get her yearly dose of cold weather and snow to help her to really appreciate going home to sunny Florida…

The kids were really excited about the first few days of snow, we went outside and played, made snow angels, and pulled a sled around in the yard a bit…

but they seem to have lost the excitement for it now that we have had almost a month of snow on the ground…We haven’t really even built a proper snowman yet…

To celebrate solstice this year, I dried some orange slices that we tied ribbon to and hung in the windows, and the kids made some suns out of yellow and orange construction paper


then we ate dinner by candlelight that night and sang “mr. sun, sun, mr. golden sun, please shine down on me!”

On Christmas eve, we made lots of sugar cookies and decorated them for Santa,

then we sprinkled “reindeer food” that we got from our neighbors on the ground outside so Santa could find our house.

We went to a friend’s house after dinner for some visiting and dessert, then came home and opened our traditional christmas eve present - new jammies! Rosie added a skirt to her jammies and gave us all a beautiful ballet performance before bed.

Santa was generous this year, bringing the kids just what they asked for -

Rosie got her Barbie and The 3 Musketeers DVD and she also got the Barbie dolls to go along with it - and Sammy got a “BIG TRAIN” as requested, in the form of a Thomas pop up play tent. The presents were all opened by 9am, we had breakfast and just relaxed for a bit before Joe’s family came over for more presents and a big Christmas dinner.

Santa was nice enough to bring stockings full of goodies for Marisa, Noah, Cory and Ari and leave them at our house for them…

Sammy seemed a little grumpy that not ALL the presents under the tree were for him to open…

On to what the kids have been up to this past month….
Rosie has been on a big kick of renaming things. Pomegranates are now “christmas seeds - because they are red and look like christmas”
She also renames the games she plays on my iphone. She will ask me what a certain game is called, and then tell me “I am going to call it ‘this‘ instead” Speaking of iphone games, she has already beaten the high scores that Joe and I were once proud of on Doodle Jump. The girl has some serious gaming skills, but both her and Sammy have been too addicted the iphone games lately, wanting to play constantly. So Joe and I have been trying to limit it to when we are in the car, or in a restaurant or other place where they don’t have a lot of other means of entertainment.
One day this past month Rosie asked to go to the grocery store and buy bread and cheese and pickles to make a sandwich. I asked her “you want a pickle and cheese sandwich?” and she said “yeah, we can just try it and if we don’t like it we don’t have to eat it. You have to try things before you know if you like them or not”
She has been loving telling jokes, and has a staple of knock knocks she tells almost daily. Then she takes the jokes she knows and turns them into other jokes that make no sense. For example:
Q - what kind of apples grow on trees?
A - all apples silly!
turned into:
Q - how many apples grow on trees?
A - 100 apples, isnt that silly?

She also knows when Joe is trying to joke with her or tease her and says in a crazy voice “are you kiddin me?”
One of their favorite jokes ends with “I cant hear you - I have a banana in my ear!”

One other new Rosie thing is that she now kicks me out of the bathroom when she has to go, telling me “a girl needs her private-cy”…

Sammy has had a really hard time lately being 2 1/2. He is constantly whiny and grumpy, throwing tantrums, getting frustrated when he can’t do something (either he physically has trouble doing a task like putting his shoes on by himself, or because I tell him “no” to something). He still mumbles and whines mostly when he talks, and it drives me crazy. His big new thing he whines about is “That’s not fair!” and I know he doesn’t even really know the concept of “fair” - but he heard Rosie say it and now that is the big new complaint. Both he and Rosie also need to know the name of the episode of whatever TV program they are watching - yelling “what’s it called???” and complaining and whining until I rewind the show a few seconds and can read to them the name of the Peep or Curious George episode (or whatever they are watching).
I pulled out some hand me down underwear that cousin Ari had given to Sammy, to try to give him an incentive to go on the potty more. Telling him he could wear the big boy underwear with Diego and Elmo and Thomas on them when he went to the bathroom on the potty. He decided he wanted to wear the underwear OVER his diaper, and sometimes OVER his pants as well. It is a really ridiculous look, but I am not willing to fight his tantrum to have him take them off, so he frequently looks like this:

He is still crawling into bed with us 5-6 nights a week around midnight or so, but I don’t mind so much, he’s a pretty good cuddler…One night this past month I think I ended up dreaming same dream as Sammy. We were sharing my pillow, with his head right next to mine, and I heard a dog bark in my dream and it woke me up, as I thought for a second that it was our dog barking downstairs, I listened for a minute, and realized that our dog was not barking, and during the quiet, a few seconds later sammy called out in his sleep “no doggie no!” It was pretty cool knowing how closely we were connected…

Another thing that I noticed recently is that both Rosie and Sammy love surprises. Their favorite thing when being given something is closing their eyes and picking a hand. Even when I am giving them something that is not a surprise, they ask to close their eyes and make it a surprise. I hope they continue to keep this joy and excitement for life throughout the new year (though with less whining).
I wish everyone nothing but good in 2010.
Thanks for reading!
xo

Happy Thanksgiving!

Rosie’s new obsession this month is “last one down is a rotten egg” when going down the stairs. Then she changes her mind frequently and decides that “last is best”.
She has been singing the thanksgiving songs she learned at school, and she performed them with her class when we had a potluck thanksgiving dinner with her school. We made scalloped potatoes, that Rosie called “skeleton” potatoes.

She has been playing a lot with her brother - playing hide and seek, tag, duck duck goose, house, and doggie (with Sammy as the doggie of course). This morning they were pretending their bowls of oatmeal were birthday cakes and sticking the spoons straight up like candles and singing Happy Birthday to each other.
She is so excited to be learning to read and spell. She is always trying to read words and signs and asking what things say or how things are spelled. She is reading stop signs, no parking signs, the open signs on buildings, telling Sammy how to spell his name, how to spell MOM, telling Sammy he needs to take an N-A-P. She loves school, though sometimes she comes home on her full day exhausted and tells me “I had a hard day”….

We had our first parent-teacher conference at Rosie’s school at the beginning of the month and it was everything a parent could hope to hear. The teachers love her and say she is a joy to have in the classroom. The other kids look up to her, they said she is the leader of the other kids. They are impressed with her reading skills and can tell she loves to learn. Joe and I were both in tears during the conference hearing the glowing praises of our little girl. Now the big decision is whether to continue with the Montessori way of learning. Rosie really seems to be able to be self-directed and thrive in this learning environment where she gets to choose what she is interested in, and I would hate to squash her love of learning in a more controlled environment. There is a public Montessori school in the area (ie - FREE) - but it would be a 30-45 minute drive each way. It is definitely something we will be seriously researching in the next few months. I just took a few books out of the library on the Montessori philosophy and how it works in grade school to see if it is something we want to commit to for Rosie.

Sammy still worships his big sister (most of the time) and tries to copy whatever she is doing. He can easily count to 10 when they are playing tag - and he knows the way to play games, saying “ready or not here I come” and chasing her around the house. He also loves playing chase with the doggie. He has a lot of cute sayings he took from Rosie:
“oh my gosh!” “it’s my favorite” “he’s so adorable!” (said when watching Aristocats) - and my new favorite, at dinnertime - telling me about the dinner I made “it’s delicious!”
He is still mumbling quite a bit, especially when he is tired, and sometimes even I can’t understand him. He is such an active boy, always jumping on the trampoline, running through the house, kicking a ball or throwing a ball, making mountains of pillows and jumping or climbing on them. This morning he was playing basketball and saying “oh man” when he missed and “all right!” or “high five” when he makes it.

We had a great thanksgiving at Uncle Jack and Aunt Arlene’s house today. We are all home in bed now with full bellies and are thankful for spending time with family. We plan on decorating the house for the holidays and getting a Christmas tree this weekend.

Good night from the Greenwalds

OK - so technically it is already October, but I was so busy in September, and then we spent a week in Florida near the end of the month - and I just realized I never finished last month’s update… so here it is….

AAH, the cool fall air is starting here in Michigan, I love these days…..clear blue skies, with bright sunshine, and colorful fall leaves starting to turn..

Rosie started Preschool again at English Oaks Montessori school, and she loves it! This year she is going 2 half days and one full day (to prepare for her full-day kindergarden next year). She was very excited to stay at school for the whole long day and eat lunch with her friends. We bought her a small rug for at home so she can play “school” and get out her mat and her work and have space to do her own thing, and then she is getting very good about cleaning up afterwards. I am going to try to clear out the clutter in the playroom and put toys and activities on the shelves so they are easier to get out and clean up. This past week, Rosie’s school had a field trip to a local farm, and Sammy and I went along and it was a great time! We went on a hayride, and the kids got to ride horses, feed pigs and sheep and goats, and bottle feed some baby pigs and goats, and then the coolest thing was that they got to milk a cow!

It brought back memories of my own childhood on a farm and I am so glad that my kids got to interact with the animals so much.

We have been having a few issues with Rosie’s neighborhood friends that started over the past month. Rosie, being the youngest of the group, unfortunately has been the target of some bullying, leaving out of playing, name-calling, and a lot of things that I didn’t expect to have to deal with until junior high. It has resulted in a lot of tears and hurt feelings and conversations with the neighbors. On the positive side, Rosie is learning the golden rule (how to treat people as you want to be treated) and how to stand up for herself, and we have had lots of conversations about jealousy, and knowing right from wrong and not doing something just because your friend tells you to. Since school started and everyone is busy with school and other activities, there is not so much interaction with the neighbors and it seems to have cooled off a bit….

Rosie has been reading a lot more, she is getting pretty good and can read some books on her own (mostly because she memorized them I think). She has been practicing writing her whole full name and numbers too. She still loves to color and draw and is getting a bit neater with her coloring, staying mostly within the lines now… Her vocabulary is amazing, she knows so many words and expressions and she is constantly amazing me with the things she says and knows. She has been very good about cleaning up after meals, and she clears her dishes and Sammy’s too and she helps me wipe off the table. We are going to start experimenting with an allowance for her, probably just getting a quarter for every time she helps me with something around the house.

Sammy - OH MY is 2 a challenging age. I must have forgotten how Rosie was at this age, because I just do not have the patience to deal with him like I want to. He is hot or cold, either screaming NO and being extremely whiny and difficult, or he is giggling and cuddling and being the cutest boy ever. He drives me crazy most days, but his cuteness more than makes up for it. We are still working on his transition to the “big bed” in his room. He has not been very agreeable about staying in bed or in his room at bedtime, so I put a baby gate up outside his door and he is now climbing over the gate as well… Bedtime has been taking forever to finally get him down, and then he has been waking up in the middle of the night and I have been going and sleeping in his room, or bringing him in bed with us, as he wants to cuddle or “cull” as it sounds when he says it. He also requests “Mommy seep me” or ” mommy seep my bed”.
I am not getting nearly enough sleep, but it is almost worth it when he keeps me up climbing over me and lying on top of me and saying “I love you mommy” every 20 min.

He is really trying to be a big boy, insisting on climbing into the car and into his car seat by himself, and buckle top buckle of car seat by himself - things that add an extra 10 min into our leaving the house routine. He started doing a front roll, learning all by himself by watching Rosie. He is constantly repeating every word and action and move his sister says/does, and driving her crazy.
Our conversation from the other day:
Rosie: Mommy, is it still fall?
Me: yep, it’s still fall
Sammy: mama, still fall?
Me: yes Sammy, it’s still fall
Rosie: When will it be winter?
Me: After fall, in December, around Christmastime is when it will turn to winter
Sammy: Mama, when winter?
Me: In December it will be winter, at Christmastime
Sammy: oh, in ‘cember, kimas time
Rosie: Then it is Spring? After Winter?
Me: Yep, spring is after winter
Sammy: Mama, sping after winter?
Me: (sigh) Yes Sammy, spring is after winter
Sammy - oh, sping after winter.

And that is pretty much how every conversation goes, all day long… You can see how that can wear on your patience pretty quickly…

He is starting to show more interest in the potty and actually pooped on the potty the other day for the first time. He will start to go poop and tell me we will go and he will go in and finish on the potty. He loves to flush and is good about washing hands, etc.

Along with repeating everything, he just generally talks non-stop and needs 100% of my attention all the time or he will incessantly repeat
Mommy? Mom? Mommy? Mom? MOMMY! MAMA! MOM! MOM!
and I finally give in and say (in an irritated voice) YES! WHAT? WHAT DO YOU WANT? - and he sighs and says “I love you too” and he knows those are magic words that take my anger and frustration away…

He also always says:
Why mom? but why?
Daddy - you’re a goofball!
Excuse me mommy, I need to tell you something
Whispering, telling secrets at dinner (copying his sister)
Whew (wiping the back of his hand on his forehead) that was a close one! (when almost spilling/dropping something)
No MY do it!
Mmmm - it’s delicious!

and he really loves to love things - he tells us he loves us several times a day. He is so enthusiastic about everything:
I love it! I love daddy car! I love your shoes!

We spent a lovely end of summer week in FL.

I got to spend some quality time with my mom and sisters and the kids had a great time getting spoiled by Gigi and playing with cousins Ella and Stephen and Bailey. We also had a memorial ceremony for Grandma on the beach.

We got balloons and wrote little messages to Grandma on them, and read some of her poetry (really quite amazing stuff from when she was 17 and a new mother). Some dolphins came and were frolicking in the water as we were remembering Grandma. Then as soon as we released the balloons, a storm rolled in and it was pouring down rain, as if the universe was crying with us, it was amazing.

Joe and I took our first kid-free vacation for our 5th anniversary present to ourselves, we left the kids with GiGi and took the Ferry down to Key West for 2 days. We slept in and took naps and drank a lot of alcohol in the day and watched some gorgeous sunsets.


It was such a nice break for me to not have to be worrying about naptimes, and meals, and generally managing every detail of our family life for a couple days. I definitely missed the kids, and they actually did great without me. I kind of expected them to miss me a little more, since it was the first time I was ever away from them for more than a couple hours at a time - but the fact that they weren’t whining and missing me made me enjoy my time away a little more too… I am looking forward to some more vacation time for me in the future, now that Sammy is finally weaned and I know they will be OK.

So, goodbye to the summer, and goodbye for now - I’ll have more next month…

Over halfway through August, and once again I feel the time slipping by so quickly, I can’t keep track of the days…

We had a great July and celebrated the kids’ birthdays all month long, with one big combined party where we had a bounce house and crafts and a pinata and all that fun birthday party stuff….

Rosie’s big present was a “big girl bike” - specifically a princess bike, one that won’t fall down (i.e. training wheels). Sammy got a small basketball hoop and stand, and they both got tons of other great new presents. Our house is overflowing with toys and games and other fun stuff.


Oh, another big present for both of them (and Joe) was our new puppy! She is a shepherd mix that we adopted from a rescue agency, Rosie named her Daisy.

Since every other July for the last few years we had a baby - this year we got a dog instead. It’s almost the same thing, getting used to a new routine of waking up early, cleaning up pee and poop, keeping things put away that you don’t want broken or chewed on - all that other fun stuff that comes with a new dog or baby.

This past month, Rosie decided she was changing my name and is now calling me “mother”. She says “yes mother” when I call her or ask for something - and she is also calling Joe “father” and decided her name is now “Rose Rose”.
She is still playing pretend all the time, inventing new games like flutterfly, but also sticking with the standard stuff like house, doctor, and the various princesses - little mermaid, snow white, sleeping beauty, etc.

In my old school shirt….

She loves playing and running and giggling with her brother, teaching him jokes and games and such.
She is still stalling at bedtime, frequently coming into our room at 10:30 with some complaint or excuse. She once said her room was too itchy and she couldn’t sleep because she was scratchy all over. She crawls into our room with her lady bug blanket over her and when we say “Rosie go back to your room” she says “how did you know it was me?”

After a week of “Princess Camp” with her neighbor friends this past week…

I think she will be a lawyer, since she is so good at arguing and rationalizing. Another bedtime stall is saying she is not tired. One night I told her she could lie in bed and read books or play quietly, but she could not get out of bed. She asked “how can I get a book if I can’t get out of bed?” (got me on that one)
So I said, -”OK you can get out of bed really quickly to get a book or toy, but you cannot leave your room”. After I left the room, she started whining about wanting her big elephant in bed with her. After about 15 minutes of listening to her whine, I went into her room to tell her that if she wants her elephant, to get out of bed and get it then! She said, “well, actually mother, since you are already in my room, you can get it for me”.

She is so funny - she is always talking about her friends and what she said or did with her friends. She wants to play with her friends in the neighborhood all the time, anxious to go play as soon as she wakes up in the morning. She says such amusing things like telling me her hair was “shining like a star” or telling a story and then saying “isn’t that crazy?”
She has started watching “big girl” movies like Bambi, Charlotte’s Web, Alice in Wonderland, Horton Hears a Who, and Babe and loving them. I thought she might be freaked out by Bambi, but she was fine, and all talk of the killing of animals in Charlotte’s Web and Babe was not an issue with her either. She sometimes likes to cover her eyes, but also tells me that she is brave.
Another new phrase of hers is “give it to me straightaway” or “let’s do it straightaway when we get home”
She has been learning the value of money and she has been using the money in her piggybank to buy treats for her and Sammy. She was very proud to place a handfull of coins on the counter at Starbucks to buy a “special milk drink” for her and her brother.

She had me cracking up a few weeks ago when I had to take her to use a public restroom. I was hurrying her along as she was going to the bathroom with me in the room:
“are you almost done?”
“not yet, there is one little poopie left that doesn’t want to come out. I think it’s scared.”
(talking to poo) “Come on out little poopie, don’t be shy, it’s just my mommy”

She has also been saying
“It’s the exciting day of my life!” (said several times about different things, always omitting the “most” part)

We have been working on her having more responsibilities around the house and got a “good habits chart” for her room, where she gets to mark off the various things she should be doing every day. She gets to turn a little wheel when she tidies her room, or puts dirty clothes in the laundry, if she used good manners all day, ate healthy food, spent time with a book, brushed her teeth, and most importantly - going to bed on time. I told her I would give her a quarter to put in her piggy bank each day she could accomplish everything on the chart - I think she has done that once in the month we have had it (usually the bedtime cancels out all the other good stuff).

Sammy - has been super cute and sweet - and alternately super whiny and screamy and tantrumy. He has started singing a lot and loves to sing the ABC’s blended with twinkle twinkle, so it sound like “abdbqwq how i wonder what you are”.
He has been asking “what are you doing?” or more acurately - “mama, whadoing?” He loves playing games with Rosie like duck duck goose and tag, and will frequently be running around the coffee table, tapping us and saying “dut” or “tag, your’e it!”

He also loves singing all the songs on a Dora CD we have, his favorites being the boots song “I love my Boots!” and also “Isa turn the wheel” (from Dora’s pirate adventure) - he loves them both as his songs at bedtime and requests that we sing them over and over…
“Itsa turn the weel ‘gain mommy”
We also have a new bedtime tickle routine - he loves to be tickled and when I put him in bed and get ready to leave the room he calls out - “wait mom - tickle ‘gain!”

He is such a lover - still wanting to cuddle (or “cull” as he says) and hugging and saying “I love you”

He is always asking for (or usually- demanding) things and when I say no he asks “why mom?”

He recently started climbing out of his crib - so we are experimenting with a”big boy bed” - just a futon mattress on the floor. We have been back and forth because he keeps getting up and leaving his room when he is in his big bed, so sometimes he has to go back in his crib and then he usually will stay put and finally go to sleep.

He is repeating everything - if I say “let’s go upstairs” he says, “ok - less go upstairs”. If I say “go play with Rosie” he runs out of the room and says “Ok- go play Rosie”
He is so enthusiastic about everything - usually saying “Yep mom!” in response when I ask him something…
He usually wakes up before his sister and spends an hour or so asking “where rosie go?” and then he gets so excited when Rosie wakes up and says “Rosie wakey up!” and runs to her and hugs her and says “I love you Rosie”.

“how ’bout……” with a long pause - when asked what he wants to eat, or choosing anything…”dat one!”
He really wants to be big and to do all the big things his sister does, like when we get ready to go someplace, he needs to open his car door, and then close it, and climb into his seat by himself, and then buckle the top buckle in his carseat, all the things that add another 5 minutes to the “get out the door” routine…

We had a little family getaway to Chicago a couple weekends ago - we went on a boat cruise around the river, we went to Navy Pier and rode the carousel,

we went to millennium park and visited “the bean” and played in the fountain (it was HOT outside),


and we stopped by Lollapalooza and hung out mostly at the kidsapalooza area and watched the kids get punk rock hairdos and do some coloring and painting and other fun stuff.

The kids traveled pretty great and love being in a new place, especially sleeping in a new big fluffy hotel bed.

Lots more trips coming up in the next few months, Canada at the end of this month, and Florida in September.

How can my little girl be 4 years old already? The baby who presented me with the gift of motherhood.

The quick and (dare I say) easy labor and delivery - 4.5 hours of “what the hell is happening oh my god I think I’m in labor” to “hi baby” (the first words I uttered as I looked into my little girl’s eyes).

The last few months her personality can be summed up as: me first, that’s mine, I get the bigger one, I get to pick, I get the first one.
She is head strong, independent, wanting to do things herself, and her own way - the quintessential first born attitude. She is demanding, frustrating, defiant - frequently crossing her arms and scowling “NO - I don’t want to!” when I ask her to do something. It has been a true test of patience for me and I am not proud to admit there has been a lot of yelling on my part lately. She fights bedtime every night - she just doesn’t want to go to sleep. We have found her kneeling under her open window, talking to her neighbor friends at 10 at night when she was supposed to be sleeping. The other night she told me that she was going to stay awake all night, she was never going to close her eyes. She said her room was boring. Then she took all her clothes out of her closet, and threw them in a pile in the middle of her room and said she was going to sleep on the pile of clothes. She has been REALLY difficult lately, but she does still have her cute and sweet moments too….

90% of the time, she is really good at sharing and being a good helper and big sister to Sammy. In fact, he is the one who refuses her attempts at “help” more often than not, and that is what makes her upset and angry. She loves speed, and excitement and action. She loves to go for walks in the stroller and have me run down the hills so she can feel like she is on a roller coaster. She loves to be pushed on the swing, and always wants to go higher and faster. The other day she said she wanted to go “two zero two fast” She also loves when Joe or I give her an “underdog” push, though she has adopted Joe’s backwards/opposite way of talking and calls it an “over cat”. She still loves learning and doing new things and knows when she is doing something new or saying something smart and she will comment - “isn’t that clever of me?” She loves dressing up as a princess, and playing house, playing with dolls and barbies, and playing pretend. She was playing “doctor” with her cousin Ari the other day, using the stethoscope I bought when I was pregnant with Sammy. Joe walked in the playroom and Rosie told him he had to leave, because they were playing doctor and “having a moment” as she put it. Yikes! I don’t think I am ready to deal with that yet…

She is such a smartie and always amazes me with the things she says. Just today she said that something would “certainly be a whole lot of fun”. She is still practicing reading and loves to spell and sound out words. She is working on adding and subtracting and can do pretty much any number plus or minus one…

She has been eating a ton lately, I think she is going through a growth spurt. She has been snacking all day long, luckily they are usually healthy snacks, fruit, craisins, carrots and hommous, granola bars, dry cereal, and her favorite foods are still beans and rice and mac and cheese. I was so tickled to see her picking up the individual macaroni pieces and threading them onto the tines of the fork before eating them, just like I remember doing in my youth (and up until not too long ago, to be honest).

We have been talking about her birthday non-stop, counting down the days, and basically celebrating it all month long already. She got presents at the beginning of the month from Aunt Judy and Aunt Elaine, she got presents on Sammy’s birthday, she got a ton of presents at the party we had with friends and neighbors over the weekend, and her big present she asked for from mommy and daddy is “a princess bike, one that won’t fall down”. As luck would have it, one of our awesome neighbors was cleaning out their garage a few weeks ago, and gave us a princess bike with training wheels that their daughter had outgrown - score! I spruced it up, touched up the paint, ordered a basket for the front and some new streamers for the handlebars and I am sure Rosie will love it! This birthday isn’t even over yet, and she is already planning her “five birthday” and has told me the cake she wants and started to come up with presents she wants already for the next year…

Oh my sweet baby girl. I don’t even have the words for the love I feel for you, nor do I have the words for the frustrations and anger I feel some days. I know she is still testing her boundaries and exploring her independence, but MAN I wish she would just go back to the sweet girl who would actually listen to me on occasion.

Happy Birthday (Birth Month) to me! It has been a great month, the weather is beautiful, and summer is just around the corner!

The kids have been enjoying popsicles and playing with the neighbor kids on their playstructures.

Sammy has become a real talker in the last month. He repeats EVERYTHING, and though it is not always perfectly understandable, he definitely communicates and speaks in short sentences now. When we are driving in the car or reading books, he is constantly interrupting to point things out - “MAMA - Air-pane” “Mama - truck” - “MAMA - cloud” etc.
He asks for things politely “mama, mo buberry peese” (he still signs “more” with a kind of clapping motion) and when I give him something he says “taynk ooo”. He is also becoming bi-lingual thanks to Dora and Diego, he says “abre” when he wants me to open a door or something for him. He is always saying “I do it!” or “I did it!” When he jumps or climbs or does something. He has been liking doing puzzles lately, and I am working on getting him to help clean up. Whenever he spills something (which is several times a day), he immediately runs to grab a towel or the broom and dustpan, saying “keen, keen”. He is starting to sing the “clean up, clean up, everybody clean up” song with me and he is trying to sing along whenever Rosie sings lately too…

He is so friendly, he says Hi and Bye Bye to everyone. A few days ago, we were taking a walk through the neighborhood, and Sammy was sitting in the stroller like the grand marshall of a parade, constantly waving and saying “Hello” to everyone we passed. He loves to be silly, and make people laugh - his latest thing is putting his food or fork on his head when he is eating - he thinks it is hilarious!

He is obsessed with pushing in chairs at the table. He will climb up in his chair and say “mama, puuuuush” until I push him in - and if I sit next to him and don’t scoot my chair up to the table, he will make a pushing motion with his arm toward me and say “mama, puuuush” until I push my chair up to the table as well.

He is still throwing tantrums when he doesn’t get his way, but he is a little more gentle about it now, instead of throwing himself on the floor, he will gently lie down on his belly and put his head in his hands and whine for a few minutes, then he gets up and is usually fine. He will also do his pouty face, where he looks down, sticks his lips out, breathes heavily through his nose, and looks up at me with just his eyes. It is so cute, I want to capture it on video. He has been throwing things lately when he is upset too, food or toys or whatever, so I have been really trying to stop that behavior before it gets worse.

He idolizes his big sister and wants to do whatever she does (even wanting to put barrettes in his hair too). He still sits on the potty occasionally (with his pants and diaper on), usually whenever Rosie goes to the bathroom. Sometimes I will take his pants and diaper off and let him sit for a little bit. He hasn’t actually gone on the potty yet, but he likes to pretend to wipe, flush and then wash his hands after, so at least he is getting used to the routine. Just in the last few days, he has started a funny thing copying his sister. When Rosie goes poop, she usually needs help wiping, so she will yell out to me “MOM - I’m ready to wipe!”. I think Sammy just thinks this is what you say when you are sitting on the toilet, because he has gone and sat on the potty (in his clothes) and yelled out “MAMA - RAY WY!” a few times this week.
He tends to run all his words together - so “carry me please mommy” sounds like “cayemepesemommy”

He is still a great sleeper and I can pretty much count on 3 hour naps in the afternoon, and 12 hours at night. He is down to nursing only at naptime and bedtime and I am hoping to make the transition to weaning as smooth as possible.

Rosie is in full-on princess world now. I don’t know how it happened, but all of a sudden - she wants to read princess books, watch princess movies from the library, wear princess clothes - etc. She even knows the Disney logo - so if we see something in the store, she says “look mommy, its from DISNEY!”. I think we are going to have to give in and make our first trip to take her to Disney World next time we go down to visit Gigi in Florida. I got a “Birthday Express” catalog in the mail of kids “themed” birthday supplies (matching cups, plates, napkins, gift bags, favors, cake toppers, etc.) and she has been going through to pick out what she wanted for her party and she of course picked out the Princess theme and is set on getting a Princess cake for her birthday. She talks about her birthday every day and asks me how many more days until her birthday.

She is so smart and inquisitive, always asking questions and wanting to learn new things. She has been playing a lot of games on her dad’s iphone and choosing the missing letter in words, she has been sounding out everything, and just for fun, I wanted to see if she could read a couple nights ago. I took a notebook and wrote “MOM” on it and showed it to her and asked her if she could read what it said - she sounded out “mmmmah - aaaaah - mah” and then said ” MOM!” I told her - “you did it - you can read!” and she was so excited - she said “do another one” so I wrote a few more words, she read Dad, Cat, Bat, Hat, and a few others before she got bored of it…

She also loves to play games. Her latest is learning how to play games like Rock, Paper, Scissors. She thinks it is so fun - she learned it from the older kids at her school, along with something called “who didn’t come from the barnyard” which I guess is kind of like an “eeny meeny miny moe” kind of thing…

She is always making cute, smart, funny and really thought-provoking observations. Some recent ones:

Driving through 2 traffic circles back-to-back near our house “Hey, mommy - those traffic circles are like an 8!”

Driving past a convertible on the road “Hey mommy, that car doesn’t have a lid on it!”

Noticing her name “Rosemary” on her school bag - her teacher told me she started spelling it “R, O, S, E, M - hey - that doesn’t say Rosie?” and the teacher explained that it says “Rosemary” and Rosie said - “Yeah - that’s my name, and Rosie’s my half-name”.

She is a big nature lover, and we have been spending a lot of time outdoors, collecting ladybugs, caterpillars, and worms for the garden. She brought her little ladybug friend, named Lilac, to school the last week of school to show her teacher and classmates, as they were studying caterpillars and tadpoles and other little creatures. Then we had to let the ladybug go, I told her that 4 days was the rule, then the ladybug had to go home to her family.

Rosie has been really good about sharing with her brother, teaching him to share, helping, pushing his chair in, holding his hand when crossing the street, etc. It is so cute and I can see how they are going to protect each other as they get older. I can’t believe next month they will be 2 and 4!