3 years old

Stanley turned 3 this past week. It is so amazing for me to realize that it was already 3 years ago since he was born! How does time go by so quickly.

We ended up having a long drawn out celebration for him. Today he was surprised that there was no cupcakes and candles. Last Sunday we had some of his friends over with their respective families. Stanley just loved the party and enjoyed all of his friends with him.

Singing Happy Birthday to himself.

They got to do a lightening Mcqueen pinata. We found it at a little Mexican store and filled it with pretzels and non-candy treasures. However, it was more sturdy than expected and took the parents hitting it, cutting it with a knife and then Steve tearing it apart by hand and shaking out the treasures. The kids still enjoyed it though! 

Stanley is such a fun little kid. He has developed so much in the past few months and has also grown quite a bit. At his 3 year old appointment they said he will be about his father's height.

This is going to be impossible, but I will try to list what he enjoys below.

Stanley enjoys:
- His family all together including grandparents.
- Face time with grandparents
- Geoff and Deli
- His friends (David, Wheeler, Ronan, Peter, Casey...)
- Trucks
- The movie Cars and family movie nights with popcorn!!!! At his request, we always watch the same movie, Cars, which he refers to as "talking cars"
- Pasta, fruit, rice, PB&J, meat (always called by the actual animal name...pig, cow, chicken etc)
- Animals
- Books. He remembers almost all of his books. Sometimes he will ask for a book that we haven't read in a month. We will start reading it and he can recite almost the whole thing verbatium. Some highlights right now are "Mikey the Milkman", "The Lion and the Mouse", "Cars activity book", "Good night construction site"... and really the list will go on for a very long time.
- Numbers and letters. He enjoys knowing that words in a book mean something. IN Mikey the Milkman, there is a section with "Be quiet down there". He enjoys pointing to each word as he says it, though we cannot really say that he is reading it.
- Cranes, trains
- Running very quickly!! He was pretty scared of an older kid at the playground and to avoid him, just ran away from him. The other boy got pretty frustrated since Stanley was much smaller than he was. I just chuckled under my breadth
- Singing and listening to opera (really anything classical)
- Playing basketball and baseball  

Some milestones.
- He can hop 3-4 times on one of his feet
- Run really quickly!
- Not worry his mom at all when running on the sidewalks. He knows to stop before the streets.
- Catch a ball and throw baseballs and basketballs
- Hit a baseball being thrown to him
- Open or break almost any childlock item except the ones that are adult proof too.
- Use the potty

Luckiest Mom

I definitely consider myself the luckiest mom! I have such sweet, wonderful, healthy kids. Stanley spends lots of the day telling me what Amelia might like. For example, he will say, "He (meaning Amelia) needs to eat" or "he needs me to burp her" (again the he meaning amelia).

Stanley's language is phenomenal according to his teachers. At school they says he speaks as though he is 4+, which is good and bad. He talks with lots of the 4 & 5 year olds, but it is hard for him to do some of their activities, so he gets left out sometimes. But, the 3 year old kids don't speak to him as much. As do all kids, he gets a few things confused for example pronouns are usually all masculin. And a few other phrases that trip him up are "construction site," bananas which he still refers to as "ba-bananas" (though he definitely knows the correct term). and he calls steak, "cow-snake".

Here are the photos I took in the last 2 days of my two wonderful kids.

Slides

Stanley really enjoys slides lately. He is a bit more daring than he use to be. I took this when Stanley  suggested that Uncle Flounder follow directly down the slide head first. 

Daddy jungle gym

Spending Friday night watching the "talking cars movie" i.e. "Cars" 

The restaurant

Stanley, Amelia, David, Jenny and I went on a wonderful hike today. Stanley as we were leaving said "thank you mommy for a wonderful hike and thank you for a wonderful playground". It was so cute. 

He and David made restaurants out of different tree stumps. 

Amelia slept the entire time. 

Amelia at 4 weeks

 Amelia has been a joy to have around. She really only cries when she is hungry or something is not quite right. The only trouble we have is that she cannot be flat or she projectile vomits all over the place.  We keep her propped up at an angle most of the time, and that seems to be helping things.  She is getting a lot better at keeping her food down.  The projectile vomiting happens less and less these days.  Sometimes, though, it sneaks its way back and surprises you.  This makes for fun times if we are not prepared with enough rags.

At four weeks Amelia can:

- Hold her head up for maybe 10 seconds at a time

- Sleep for 5 1/2 hours at a stretch (sometimes)

- Almost stand on her legs.  She is pushing a lot more with her legs and scooting a bit.

- Sleep in the baby carriers quite well

- Lay flat on her back for a couple minutes and not spit up milk everywhere

- Soil 3 outfits before we have even gotten dressed in the morning

- Coo every once in a while, she is just starting to do this

Amelia and the museum

Amelia slept through a fun trip to the museum. Not sure she got much out of it, but Stanley sure did. 

Ever since we borrowed Pierce's bassinet Amelia has enjoyed going for stroller rides A LOT! 

Thanks Casey

Thanks for visiting Casey. Hopefull you feel better soon! 

Happy Labor Day

Partying and playing catch at Dolores Park. Stanley's dancing involves lots of jumping. Enjoy

Downtown

Our first adventure by myself downtown with my two kids was last week. So much fun especially when it involves trains!

Papa Doug's birthday

We celebrated Papa Doug's birthday when they were in town. We had lots of fun celebrating for a full week!After it was over, Stanley thought we should still have cake and candles every day.

 Lele and Papa Tom came out the same weekend to celebrate. It was fantastic to have all of the grandparents together at once.

Brother and Sister

They seem to be getting along really well so far. Stanley tells us what he thinks she is saying all the time. For instance, she was pooping the other evening and had stopped for a bit. I asked Stanley if he thought I should change her diaper now and he said, "not yet." Amelia proceeded to push another couple poop/farts out for a few minutes. Good call, buddy. 

Car Ramp

Papa Doug built an improved version of Stanley's car ramp while he was here.  It is much sturdier and the cars really zip down it.  Stanley loves it and will play for hours at a time lining his cars up along the top of the stairs and then sending them down the ramp one by one.  He really likes when a few of them pile up at the bottom and then the rest just crash into one big pile.

A few days ago we decided to move things a little further and build a jump at the bottom of the ramp so the cars could jump over some other cars lined up Evil-Kinevel-Style, before landing gracefully on another ramp down.  The results were more impressive than I had assumed they would be.  Most of the cars were able to clear 4-5 car widths and actually land on the down slope.  Pretty fun.  We have about 10 more videos like the one below.  Stanley loved making movies of the cars jumping the gap and then watching them on my phone.

The Zoo

Stanley, Amelia, Lolo, and Papa Doug, and I all went to the zoo a week ago. Stanley took us on a great tour of the zoo. Amelia slept through most of it, except to eat when the rest of us ate our lunch.

When we were eating our lunch, we saw a really weird scene. A mother gorilla did not want a male to get her child, so she took the child by the hand and dragged the baby bouncing over the rocks and was throwing the little baby around. Finally the male got the baby and quickly put the baby on his back and walked away. The baby seemed quite happy on his dad's back especially after the mother dragged the baby all over the place. Very strange scene and a bit difficult to explain to a 2.5 year old child.

Lonely at home

This has unfortunately been a weekend of saying good byes. On Saturday Papa Doug left for Rochester, on Sunday Lolo left, and today Flounder left to move to Salt Lake City. We are all sad, but Stanley is particularly sad and confused how this all happened to quickly. Papa Doug and Lolo have been around since the day Amelia was born and we all have loved it. Lolo spent a LOT of time playing baseball with Stanley. He has become quite a good baseball player and can now hit the ball when Lolo throws it to him and he can even catch a basketball sometimes.

Them at home has made my maternity leave wonderful and relaxing. I have gotten to spent a lot of time with Amelia while they did all of the laundry, played with Stanley tons and cooked, cleaned, and held Amelia and put her to sleep. Things are not going to be run as smoothly anymore.

Here are some photos of our adventures. And, since I'm trying to catch up on blog posts I'll post a few others as separate posts.

Dressed up!

Stanley and Lolo 'cracking and digging' on Papa Doug's shoes

After eating frozen blueberries.

Papa Doug and Amelia