Christmas Eve

I'm going to try to post random tidbits over the next 24 hours. Since we can't be with our whole family this year, it will hopefully help us feel connected.

Keira is 14 weeks now. She is a happy little girl. She is so cute. She gives us lots of open-mouthed smiles and "talks" (latest words are 'goo' and a gurgling sound). A stranger looked at her in the store the other day and said, "she is smiling at me with her eyes!" It's true. They sparkle. :) We're in love.

Of course, being that she's a baby, she has her challenges. She has a sensitive tummy. I've cut out milk, chocolate and caffeine to try to calm her tummy. But every now and then (like tonight), she has a hard time falling asleep, cries, and pulls her knees to her tummy (gas pain) and I have to try to figure out what I ate the day before. Was it the half box of 'Nilla Wafers or the red vines? I dunno. I could drive myself crazy, so I'm trying to be careful while not analzying every little thing to the point of hysteria.

Evan adores Keira. Every time I lay her down somewhere, he is on his tummy near her within about a minute. He talks so sweet to her. I don't know how a 5 year-old knows what to say to a baby. He'll say things like, "Oh, are you stuffing your little baby fist into your little baby mouth?" Or, "you are such a pretty little baby girl, yes you are!" Or, "Oooohhh, was that a little baby gas? Did you have a little baby gas? Ooooh, poor girl!" And he is totally serious. He just loves her.

It comes in handy a lot. Sometimes I need to get something done and I hate to just set her down with nothing to play with... so he'll come over and talk to her or make faces at her. She looks at him with full attention. He is fascinating. In the car, his seat is next to hers, and he always reaches out and holds her hand.

Isaac loves her too... he just isn't sure what to say to her. The other day, Keira was smiling and happy, and Isaac said, "It's okaaaay. It's all riiiight." That's what we say to her when she's upset!

Today was a full day. Jerry took the boys to see Santa at the mall while I stayed behind to let Keira nap. Evan asked for "a Star Wars the Clone Wars helmet with the buttons on it that makes it talk." Isaac, of course, asked for exactly the same thing. So Jerry went out and got another one for Isaac. We couldn't have just one boy get it. Hopefully we can minimize the tears on Christmas.

We went to the candle light service at our church, but had to leave half-way through due to Isaac's high-pitched bird noises during moments of silence and then Keira's eventual cries. It's just really hard to go out with a 3 month-old. She can only stay awake for a little over an hour before getting crabby. It'll pass soon, but for now, we're kinda stuck at home.

Tonight I read them a Christmas story and then we talked about Santa coming down the chimney. They both accepted this as absolute truth. Then we checked out NORAD Santa and saw that Santa was currently flying over Iceland. Evan liked that.

Then we let them open one gift. They each got a little Wall-E robot. They were so appreciative of such a simple toy. Tomorrow is going to blow their minds, and I always feel kinda guilty about that. Anyway, Isaac's Wall-E has a little compartment in his tummy to hold a square chunk of garbage, and you close the back and the garbage pops out. Pretty simple, but he was thrilled. Evan's completely comes apart, so he was trying to figure out how to put it back together. They both took their Wall-Es with them to bed.

As Isaac would say, "I so sited!"

He's a talker.
Isaac, 13 mos, Evan 3.75 years.
Isaac has been saying all sorts of things. For example:
Hi "hiiiiiii"
Hello ("lllo.")
Bye bye ("baba")
night night ("nana")
Mommy ("An-ee-a")*
Evan ("yaya")
Daddy ("dada")
Woof ("bbbb")
Wow ("wow")
Milk (does the sign for milk, which looks like milking a cow)
Eat (does the sign for eat, which should look like hand to mouth, but he makes it look like he is raising the roof with one hand)
Bath ("ba")

* For about a month now, whenever he wants me, he says, "Aaaan-eee-aaa!" Each time, I thought, "no, couldn't be." But it has happened about 20 times now. He hears the daycare kids call me Andrea, so I guess he thinks that is my name. Each time, I correct him and say, "MOMMY." And he says, "An-ee-aa."

He overheard Jerry saying "Wow" while they were playing one day, so he started whispering (very distinctly), "wow wow wow wow."

We had an Easter egg hunt yesterday (inside, because there was a dusting of snow outside). He quickly learned the game - grab an egg, open it, quickly stuff items into mouth. Jerry had hid some down low for both of the kids to find (and Evan and I were at church at the time), and Isaac kept grabbing them and eating the contents. So Jerry had to hide them up high.

Isaac is walking pretty well. He still walks from side to side, and often falls back on his butt, or falls forward and catches himself w/ his hands. Although he falls a lot, he doesn't actually hurt himself very often.

The daycare is going great. I have a great mix of kids. All of them are gentle with Isaac. They roughhouse with each other, but know to be gentle w/ the babies. Isaac gets so excited when they arrive. If he is eating lunch or cuddling with me and he hears a knock at the door, he will suddenly sit upright and say, "hiiiii."

He adores each of the kids' mommies, and often walks up to them for hugs.

He likes to feed the baby (a 4 month-old). He shoves the bottle into her mouth and then removes it as soon as she starts sucking. If I take it away from him, he cries. He wants to be the only one holding the bottle and then chose when to take it away. So I usually feed her when he is occupied with something else.

Evan.
Evan is doing great. He loved to color Easter eggs this year. He keeps asking if it is Spring yet, since that's when nana and papa are coming. He said, "there are no flowers yet, just snow. But the sun will come out and melt all the snow, and then the flowers will come."

The other day Isaac was napping and Evan was talking right outside his door. I said, "Evan, let's whisper outside your brother's door because he is napping." He said something under his breath. I asked him to repeat it. Again, in his darth vader voice, he whispered something. What? Then he said, "I don't want it." I asked what "it" was, and he said, "baby brother." I asked him to talk more about it, and he said, "mommy, I already told you."

I have been taking him to Sunday School. He always says, "I don't want to go to church," but then he seems to like it. After one of the classes, they gave him a booklet that had the Bible story they had read for the day. I was reading it with him later that day. When I was done, he said, "mommy, why is God wearing flip flops?"

One day, he went across the street to play with Samantha (age 6, the current love of his life), and her brother Jack (a charming 2 year-old who he barely notices because Samantha is always in the room). After playing over there for an hour, he came home and said, "mommy, Samantha's cat got hit by a car, and she died, and now she is in... Evan?" I realized he meant heaven. I had no idea how to respond to this, so I said heaven was where animals and people go after they die, and it is in the sky. That's all I could think of.

Later I said he needed to wear special clothes to dye his Easter eggs, because dye would stain his clothes. He said, "And then they go to heaven?"

So I explained dye vs. die.

I gave Jerry a telescope for his Birthday. Jerry was explaining to Evan that it will allow us to see the stars and the moon and make them look very big. Evan said, "I want to look in and see Samantha's room."

Oh my.