Seth is 17 month old! (a week ago…)

Amanda’s trying to finish a stocking that she is cross-stitching for Seth, so I am writing this post instead. I think her cross-stitching gets more intense and complex every time. She’s been cross-stitching since I met her, and for the last 3 or 4 of these it’s been way beyond a “normal” cross-stitch hobby. I tried one of them like 5 years ago. I spent like 2 hours to get like two inch square or something, and that was for a single color (that cross-stitch is probably buried in basement unfinished somewhere). Hers has like 128 colors and I don’t know, like 200000 stitches or something? You know, like this one hanging in our living room has Jesus tending sheep and stuff. There are trees in the background, and I think the leaves from a tree growing next to where Jesus is sitting has like 7 different colors, and then like the leaves in the trees that are further away in a background has additional 7 different colors and stuff. I am not exaggerating.

Anyway, this is supposed to be about Seth, which is appropriate because this stocking has it being prepared for a long time, I mean like two years. And she doesn’t like work on it few days and leaves it and then comes back several weeks later. She has been most consistent and works on it frequently, like probably few hours every few days. Except for last two months because Andrew told her that the “stocking will not be ready for Christmas, mommy”, so it’s like a competition now and she works on it basically every day. She works on her dissertation every day except Sunday, but every minute she isn’t working on it (codes running, watching our tv show, me giving kids a bath, etc.) she is working on her cross-stitch. Sunday is her marathon day because that’s the only time she can legitimately take a break from her research. So in last two months she spent like 5% of her existence on this stocking. It might be ready, we have three weeks left. I won’t be surprised if she cross-stitches on the way down driving to Texas.

I have to like think hard on how much Seth has grown since a month ago, because a month ago was like Halloween, and I don’t live everyday thinking, “okay it has been a month since the last month of XXday, now what in our lives has changed?” I do have a webpage for when Seth was 16 months old, but I am just too lazy to check what has changed about him since, so I am just going to tell you what he’s been up to, and what he has accomplished IMO. In traditional bullet points,

- Seth won’t stop asking us to read books. The first thing he does when I walk in the front door is to smile, then he grabs the nearest book and goes “baaaa!!” He wants me to put him on my lap and then read on and on and on. Today, I came home at 5:45p and then we read 7 books between then and the dinner at 6:05p. He wants books read within the first few minutes after he wakes up. He loves the library and knows when we drive by and yells if we don’t stop by. And bigger the book, the better it is. We have several books that are like 200 pages long and has like 10 different stories in it. He loves them. It’s also amazing that he can carry them, because he is like 22lbs and these books are at least 5lbs. He is pretty strong. Yesterday he got the blue encyclopedia out and wanted us to read it to him.

- Speaking of being able to carry, the dude is tough. The other day Amanda was working out with weights, and Seth was copying her with the same weight Amanda was working out with. It was 3lbs, but he was like taking steps with Amanda, going along with her workout video. He already does summersaults and constantly climbs and jumps off the couch (on the front AND back side!) I don’t think Amanda has posted on this, but Friday morning I take kids, and often I take them to the park. About four months ago I found out that Seth can climb ladders. He climbs the normal ladder, but he also climbs one of those hanging rope ladders that swings as you try to pull yourself up. And the thing was like 7 feet tall and he did it without being helped. He has no fear because he basically thinks he can do everything Andrew can. Andrew didn’t know how to climb a ladder until he was like 2 and half year old. He is often found carrying (not just pushing but actually lifting it up) wagons for his blocks and cans of soup in both of his hands. He also pushes adult chairs.

- Trucks. Fire trucks. Dump trucks. Tractors. Cars. Taxis. Bus. Bikes. Planes. Mail trucks. He would say “Woooooo~~!!” as he runs and points at any of them and says “FIRE TRUUCK!!” and then we have to correct him that it’s (often) not a fire truck, and it’s one of the things mentioned above. He loves them all.

- We mentioned that he dressed as a red dragon for the Halloween in other posts, but he loves making sounds to pretend that he is scared at things since. Everytime we walk to the area we did trick or treating, he goes “AAAAHHH!!!” and pretend like he is scared. Every time he looks at anything that remotely resembles ghosts or spiders or Halloween decorations (including Christmas decorations at the stores), he goes “AAAHH!!!”.

- He does this low pitch “GRRRRR!! sound” when he seems dragons/lions/tigers/alligators/hippos, etc. The pitch is low, you would think it wasn’t coming from him. It’s identical to MY low pitch sound, and I have no idea how he makes them because his voice is pretty high pitch. He seems to enjoy making this sound and does it often when reading books. Like Andrew, Seth excels in finding these animals and cars in anything that comes to our eyesight. You open a page, and half a second later he growls and then another two seconds later you find a small gorilla drawn on a t-shirt a boy (out of like 40) that’s on the page.

- He eats a lot now. He is still somewhat picky, but he eats x4~5 to what he used to before.

I am tired of typing incoherent sentences so I am going to stop here. I am too tired to revise.

Andrew is 3 and a half!

Boy, has Andrew been a handful this month!  I really feel like this week we have just been butting heads.  Hopefully, this is just a stage (or maybe I’ll become a better mom and this is just a stage for me?).  I don’t know what the issue is – maybe he needs to get out more or have more friends???  I guess we’ve all been sick a lot which puts a lot of damper on the fun.  Well, on to Andrew.

Andrew loves preschool and he is in love (his words not mine) with a little girl, Peyton, in his class.  He says that he is only friends with one person, a little girl without boobs (goodness, that must be how he distinguishes girls from women, I guess … heaven knows what he will be like as a teenager).  She has a little hair bow he likes to talk about.  He tells me that “I love her and she loves me and she should love me”.  Ha ha ha.  According to his preschool teachers, he waits for her when he gets to preschool, to the point where he has “forgotten” how to find his name tag or cubby.  I can’t believe his academic performance is already effected by girls!  They also hold hands and he wants Peyton to do everything with him.

At least, according to his teachers, he is pretty easily redirected.  And otherwise, he is doing great in preschool.  He even draws there!  People, even!  When I tried to get him to draw at home, it’s still mostly a failure – he did practice his scissors, though.  He is a master negotiator, even at preschool.  His teachers said he says things like “Why would we want to go inside when it’s so beautiful outside?”.  Oh, the things you can learn at a parent teacher conference.

As I said, Andrew and I are really butting heads.  Mostly because of his favorite play things.

• Taking electric cords and tying them around things to make gates.
• Using the futons, blankets, chairs, etc. to make:
• “playgrounds” to slide down
• gates, that I am not allowed to cross and that block one side of the room of from the other
• houses, where he sits underneath and pretends to be a dog or other animal
• stages, where he loves to perform and do dances and circuses – he loves to say “Ladies and gentleman – watch me.”
• pile everything he can find – DVD cases, books, toys – in a huge pile on the floor that is supposed to be some sort of a house or a gate or something.
• Using tools to fix me – mostly which means injure me in some way, though I think it is mostly accidental.
• Put on his music or the piano music very loud and at the highest tempo.
• Throwing things – seriously, are we regressing???

Andrew is quite the conversationalist lately.  He loves to talk about all sorts of things.  “Mom, why did you get married?” – we hear that very often.  He also likes to talk about how we need a new baby.  After all, he told me, I still have eggs in my tummy … ha ha ha.  Good thing Andrew isn’t planning our family, he wants 10 kids!  His talks a lot lately about how he wants to be a mommy or a daddy.  When I told him, he had to be a daddy, he said he wanted to be a Daddy-Queen, which dances with a sister-Princess or something.  Ha ha ha.  He also wants to be a ballerina and a princess. 

Andrew is a sweetie and very sensitive.  He loves us all so much and tells us all the time.  He loves all the extended family and talks about them often and how hard it is to wait for Christmas to see them.  He wants to call on the phone or Skype to everyone every day!  We have been reading books and talking about being thankful this month – he contributes lots of things he’s grateful for.  He also is starting to be concerned about the homeless, which we have been reading about and talking about this month.  I really am trying to find somewhere where we can volunteer together, but it’s hard to find places that allow little kids.  We’ll see.

Andrew dreams about cookies most nights.  Isn’t that cute?

Fun things we did this month:

• Trick or treating!  At home, at the zoo, and in St Charles.
• Trunk or treating.
• Truck day.
• Preschool.
• Circus.
• Pumpkinland.
• Apple picking.