·:[ David and Claire’s Blog ]:·
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So here it is, Brynn on her first bicycle. It’s one of those defining moments in your life that most likely you don’t remember. I remember my first bike, but not learning to ride it. Brynn had a great time, but at this point is still struggling with the idea that one direction on the pedals makes you go, and the other makes you brake. Still I think that’s better than trying to teach her how to use cable breaks for the first time! We took her to the local school where she tried her best to get across the lot all by herself. Brynn has assured me that she intends to practice a whole lot, and so far shows a lot of enthusiasm.

Evan had his birthday yesterday and now he’s a little toddler complete with crazy tantrums. We bought him a toy car rescue center which we gave him in the morning. He was playing with it downstairs in a complete trance for a couple of hours until it was bath time. I had to carry him upstairs screaming and crying and then I got him undressed but he just ran to the gate and had a 15 minute naked tantrum, shrieking and jumping up and down trying to get back to his precious toy. Brynn and I could not stop laughing at how adorable he was – which didn’t help his mood much.

 We went up to Connecticut for lunch and cake. We had yummy lamb made by Carol, and Evan took a big piece and started chowing down without waiting for me to cut it – a true Valentine! The chocolate cake was a big hit with him as well. A lot ended up on his shirt but he still devoured it faster than anyone else.

I was trying to remember what Brynn was like when she turned two but I have no particular memories of that day. I guess having a two week old at the time was a bit distracting. Still, I wish I could remember how much she could talk and whether she had any idea what a birthday was. Evan was oblivious to the significance of the day but did seem to understand that we were singing happy birthday to him. Or maybe it was just that everyone was staring at him! He acted shy and hung his head a little which I haven’t seen him do before.

As for his personality, well he is generally fearless and we can let him roam the house and yard without worrying that he will fall over or otherwise hurt himself. He is very physically capable but he doesn’t have much common sense so he’s likely to bolt out onto the street if he gets half a chance. I’ve had to put gates up all over the yard to fence him in. He is terrified of our Roomba (robot vacuum) and hides on a couch behind a cushion whenever it’s running. He has no fear of older children and will try to join groups of them at the playground. The other week there was a group of four boys who were probably 7-9 years old and Evan was hanging out with them while they just looked at him in confusion. He has a lot of words now but his pronunciation is still horrible and he’s not really combining them yet. He’s getting very funny about pointing out things and having us validate the word for him. If we disagree then he becomes furious. He was pointing at the sun in a book and saying “moon” and I kept correcting him but he just got madder and madder to the point where he was crying and flinging himself around on the floor. I finally had to agree that it was, in fact, the “moon” just to get him to calm down.

Probably the funniest thing is that he refuses to acknowledge his own existence and will never say his own name. He also stays mute if we point at him in a picture and ask ‘who is that?’. But he obviously knows his name because he responds to it, and he happily points out Mommy or Daddy in a photo. Very odd little guy! Happy Birthday Evie!!

Brynn oftens acts like a mini-Mom for Evan, keeping an eye on him or telling him off if he does the wrong thing, so for a while there Evan was just calling her Mommy, like he calls me (and, until recently, David), but lately he’s been using the word “Naany” a lot and we finally figured out that he is referring to Brynn. I suppose it’s a little like “Brynny” which we often call her, but it mostly sounds a lot like “Mommy”. I heard them upstairs today and Brynn was screaming at him “I’m not your Mommy!! I’m BRYNN! NOT MOMMY! BRYNN!!!”

Evan has been in mega-mischievious mode lately. He goes out of his way to cause trouble or break things. He is already turning into a very rough and tumble kind of boy. Brynn went to a friend’s birthday party yesterday and we took Evan along. The boys were all 4-5 and were, of course, only interested in running around and crashing into one another. As expected, Evan was right there in the thick of it! The other parents looked a bit worried about ‘the baby’ but they don’t understand that the most fun thing that can happen to Evan is that someone charges him and slams him to the floor. He is still as sweet as pie though. His latest thing is to ask for a banana and then break it in half and offer one piece to Brynn, completely unprompted.

Brynn is also a major pain lately because she is a terrible three year old demon-child; super bossy, demanding, impatient and moody. She can now unlock and open the back door so there is the constant danger that she can just walk out the door and leave if she gets mad enough. Today she threw a major tantrum and tried to escape out into the rain, in her pyjamas and bare feet. I immediately grabbed the tool box and added a latch to the very top of the door (so it is even out of her reach when she inevitably tries to use a chair to reach it). This is of course going to lead to situations whereby David tries to open the door when he gets home and finds that he’s locked out and I’m upstairs giving the kids a bath and don’t hear him banging on the door for 20 minutes. Thanks evil-Brynn!

Evan may look nothing like me, but I have recently decided that he’s actually a whole lot like me. I have started to call him “Leisure Baby” due to his love of all things leisurely. For instance, he can often be found lying along the back of a couch doing nothing, just like a cat. He will often vanish from my sight, only for me to find him lying in my bed with his head on the pillow and the quilt pulled up to his neck. Sometimes I wander around calling his name, and even going into my room several times, before I notice his little head poking out from under the blanket. He is just lying there quietly and having a nice time chilling out. In the mornings Brynn usually wakes up first now. This is convenient because she can entertain herself until she gets hungry and I get to sleep some more. Sometimes she makes a bit of noise and wakes up Evan before he is ready, so I bring him into bed with me. He will often lie there snuggling for half an hour or so. Every couple of minutes he makes the effort to sit up as if he is going to get out of bed but he generally changes his mind and slumps back into bed. Total leisure baby. He also has a huge love of softness so if he finds a fuzzy rug or silky smooth quilt then he will immediately lie down and purr while rubbing his face against it. I’m pretty sure that’s why he loves my bed so much. I assume he’ll be demanding 1000 thread count sheets as soon as he can talk.

He’s finally getting a reasonable number of words although his pronounciation is horrible. He is big on the double syllable technique of talking. “Wawa” is water, “caca” is cracker, “nana” for banana. He can say “thank you” (san soo), shoes (shou), car (caa), apple (bappo) and a bunch of other things. He pronounces “treat” perfectly, go figure. So that’s pretty cool. He’s a fun little leisure baby.

Brynn is really into scary things lately. She likes monster/ghost movies and books but the downside is she is too scared to go to sleep without the light on. As long as we go back and turn it off after she’s asleep then it’s not a big deal. She wakes up in the night and comes into our room about once a week but it’s usually to tell me some boring story about a dream she had. If there’s anything worse than listening to someone describe a dream, it’s listening to a three year old describe a dream. It makes absolutely no sense and she’s so confused while she’s telling it that she generally spits out the same sentence about ten times while her brain is trying to reassemble the pieces logically. “And then the bunnies fell into the pond. Uh, the bunnies fell into the pond. The the the the the bunnies. The bunnies fell into… into the the the the. The bunnies fell into the the the pond. The the the the.

ARGGGHHHH!

Yesterday she said to me “mommy, what was that song about a ‘fark-ing’ boyfriend?” and I was somewhat stunned and screeched “WHAT!!!?!” and she said “that’s a bad word so why was that girl singing it?” and I remembered that, literally, six months ago or more, we heard a song on the radio with the chorus “will you be my f***ing boyfriend” or something along those lines and apparently it was stuck in Brynn’s head yesterday. I swear we heard it one time and I even changed the channel! So that’s great. I just hope she wasn’t singing it at school. That’s what we get for having uncensored satellite radio…. She’s very good at listening to a pop song once on the radio and later singing it well enough that I can recognize it. She has pretty decent pitch for a three year old. Her other trick is to actually pay attention to the lyrics of pop songs. She’s always bugging me to explain the words. “Mommy what’s a womanizer?” Me: Uhhhhh….

My grandmother Ruth passed away this week. She was 97 years old, and will be missed. Here’s some pictures of her with Evan and Brynn…

May is the Valentine birthday month.

Evan – 5/3 – 1 years old
Brynn – 5/18 – 3 years old
David – 5/8 – 35 years old (ug)

And of course there is Mother’s day for Claire.

We had a big party at Unbelievabills for Brynn this year. She got to play in the jungle gym, go on stage at a “theatre show”, and sit in a big throne eating pizza. It was a lot of fun, and the nicest part is they take care of everything for you.

We cooked an interesting meal tonight – salt roasted pork. You basically take 6 cups of rosemary infused salt and cover a pork tenderloin, then roast in the oven for 20 mins at a high temperature. It turned out really well – the meat was at a temperature that would usually make a tenderloin very dry but it was incredibly moist – tender to the point of being able to pull apart with a fork. Salty, yes! But you brush off most of it and the real flavor was the rosemary. Anyway, it was definitely the best pork meal we have ever made so if you’ve ever been treated to one of Dave’s tenderloins, expect this version next time!

We’re enjoying a long weekend here and looking for things to do over the next two days. We are going to try to make it into the city if it warms up a little. Maybe go to a museum or check out Toys R Us with the kids. I’m not sure Evan has ever been to the city, so this would be his first time.

The children are well. Evan is crawling all over the place, at a rapidly increasing pace. His little knees are all red from the new activity. Apparently he got so quick at daycare that he escaped the room before they realized what happened. The next day he got moved up to the mobile baby room. He’s the smallest one there but it’s a bigger, and more contained space so he can crawl after the big kids to his heart’s content.

Brynn is funny. Every time I use a word to describe her (even a nice one), she shrieks “don’t call people that!”. Dave was buckling her into her car seat today and she kept saying “Daddy, you are freaking me out of here”, which was so nonsensical that it was cracking us up. I told her she was adorable and she got mad and of course said “don’t call people that!”. She also hates it if we laugh when she says something cute – “don’t laugh at me!!”. She’s a 13 year old, trapped in a 2 year old body. Her favorite show is Futurama which is cool because it’s at least fun for us to watch, (the other alternative being a princess movie) but the downside is that she uses words like “crap” every now and then. Well, you win some and you lose some.

Already February, where is the year going?

Kids are doing well. As mentioned last time, Evan crawls and has teeth. He’s a champion eater also and we can pretty much just take our own meals and break them into small pieces and he eats whatever we give him. He definitely prefers real food to baby food although it’s such a time consuming process that he’d probably have to be in his high chair all day to get enough calories that way. He’s a very sweet little guy and really quite cute too – he has the same big blue eyes and long dark eyelashes that Brynn does. His hair is growing and it’s still very fair but it’s not the baby fuzz that it was before. He likes to grab whatever Brynn is playing with and he drives her crazy. She also drives him crazy by being overly affectionate and wanting to hug and kiss him constantly and he hates it and pushes her away. I wish I could say he was sleeping better, and actually he kind of is. He goes to sleep relatively easily – a few minutes of crying but then he drifts off. He usually wakes around 2 or 3am and ends up in our bed, which is cool with me because he’s a sweetie, but then he likes to wake up at 5am and play for two hours and that’s very annoying because, oddly enough, we would prefer to continue sleeping.

Brynn is pretty awesome again. She’s in her new room (below) and has her big-girl bed that she loves. She’s completely potty trained (even overnight) and she’s a lot of fun to talk to. She has a pretty impressive vocabulary and springs new, unexpected words on me all the time, like “wonderful”, or “amazing”. Of course, her ability to pick up new words has it’s down side as well. I need to start watching what I say in the car because apparently I call a lot of other drivers “idiots”. Also, today she was playing and I’m not sure what happened but she exclaimed “what the hell!?”, which cracked me up but, you know, not good if she starts saying that at school. She no longer naps on weekends which is a sad state of affairs, particularly as she gets pretty tired by mid-afternoon.

Not much is going on. It’s been a mild winter which is nice. We went to see Nemo on Iceskates or something the other week which Brynn was only mildly interested in. She asked to leave at intermission. We’ve been visiting great-Grandma Ruth which she enjoys a lot although on a recent visit she told David, as we were leaving, “thank you so much for visiting. I just wish I knew who the hell you all are.” And that’s about all we’ve been doing. We have to make Valentine’s Day cards tomorrow for Brynn’s class. Or, as she calls it, “Brynn Valentine’s Day”.

When you are a kid it seems like Christmas is never, ever going to get here. Now that I’m a parent, it’s like Christmas is an unstoppable freight train hurtling towards me. I just need a couple more weeks! I have so much to do in the next four days that I was thinking about taking a day off just to do some shopping, painting, cleaning, gift wrapping etc., but work is far too busy. Who on earth decided that jamming the week before Christmas with training and regulatory deadlines would be a good idea? In fact just sitting here at 10.30pm made me feel guilty that I had checked email in 5 hours so I logged on to work and spent 30 mins dealing with all the Tokyo emails. That’s the problem with working for an international company – there’s always someone, somewhere in the world who is at work and thinking of problems to email me about.

The kids have been very sick lately. Evan especially, and it really hit me this evening because he was just a little bundle of joy and he hasn’t been that way in weeks. Clearly he has felt pretty miserable and he hasn’t been himself. So that’s good and bad, because at least he’s back to his old self, but I feel bad that I was getting so frustrated with him when he was crying and cranky all the time but it wasn’t as if he was doing it to be annoying. Poor little guy. And I actually put him to bed in his bassinet and he cried for a while and then fell asleep and that was over 2 hours ago. It’s a Christmas miracle!

Here are some videos that we made recently. The first is Brynn and Evan screeching their heads off. Evan makes this high pitched squealing noise that ends in a growl and it’s cute but then Brynn learned to mimic it, and she is absolutely spot on. When they are in the car together they just do it over and over and I have no idea which is which. It’s very cute but it sounds like a zoo sometimes. They are loud. So this video is Brynn making the noise and Evan cracking up. Oh, and this morning Dave tried to join in on the way to daycare and Brynn told him “No Daddy. That’s Brynn and Evan’s noise”. And that was that.

The second video is Brynn and David dancing. I’ve included this one just to embarrass David.

The last post was right before I went back to work so you can probably figure out that it’s been an exhausting six weeks. Evan is coming to work with me and going to the Children’s Center but that is only for one more week and then he goes to Brynn’s daycare. That will be very sad for me as I love going to see the little guy every three hours. It’s so nice to have a baby visit to look forward to when the day is going badly. Or even when the day is just… going. He’s been very mellow about the new arrangements. He’s not peturbed to be left with strangers, and he’s never overly thrilled to see me. He’s generally very happy and only cries when he’s over-tired and other babies are keeping him awake.

We just started him on solid food recently and he’s already gained over a pound. His appetite is enormous and he’s getting noticeably chubbier. It’s funny to compare him to Brynn because she was always so physically active. Brynn started rolling in both directions right around 4 months but Ev can still only do front to back. By 6 months Brynn was using the rolling to get herself around the place but Evan has no method for moving around. He’s barely able to keep himself upright while leaning against something and sitting down. Brynn was sitting unassisted around 6 months. Not that Evan is slow compared to other babies, by any means, but he is just fairly passive in general which is a big part of it. I’m convinced Brynn learned to roll and crawl out of anger more than anything. She was just never satisfied with wherever she was and was always kicking and arching and wriggling around unhappily.

There are a couple of other 5 month old babies at the center and they are so much bigger than Evan. Ev is long and skinny but he also has a really small head compared to these other babies. There heads are enormous and they have legs like tree trunks. I actually cupped my hand over Evan’s head and then used that measurement to compare to one of the mega-head kids. The hand shape I was making was about half the diameter of his skull. The infant room teacher and I are always laughing over the size differences.

The one thing that is good about having the kids close together is that they are absolutely enarmoured with one another. Brynn will just go up to Evan and lie there kissing and hugging him and saying “I love you! I love you!” They also do this thing where Brynn mimics Evan’s baby noises and it sets him off and they both sing the same tone together. Ridiculously cute. I have to get it on video. When they are in the car they sit there grinning at one another the whole time. When we drop Brynn off at daycare she always climbs out of her seat and over to Evan and then gives him a kiss goodbye.

Brynn is actually being really good lately. The whole tantrum phase has passed for the most part. She’s not done with them, but the frequency is much, much lower. It’s probably primarily a language thing. All of a sudden it’s all come together with her and she’s now speaking in 7 or 8 word sentences that are grammatically correct for the most part. She has a big vocabulary and says some surprisingly mature things sometimes. Her new one is “I need a binky to calm down!” when she’s upset. Probably time to ditch the pacifier if she can express her need for it like that! She’s a mini-teenager a lot of the time too. Running to her room and slamming the door. Saying “get away from me”, “leave me alone” and “you hurt my feelings!” She’s also really into princesses and pink things while happened so suddenly that it almost seems like it was built into her genetic code and that gene activated when she got to 2 years and 3 months. I had no particular thoughts on princesses before this and I don’t think I ever really talked about them (why would I??) but all of a sudden I’m buying princess everything because life is so much easier when your toddler has an obsession and you can buy those things to bribe them with. She has a princess pillowcase, shoes, dolls, books, tent, sleeping bag, tiara, costumes (x3), slippers, underpants, pullups and probably more. Almost all of those were purchased to shut her up or get her to do something she didn’t want to do.

She has also managed to figure out that David and I have names that are not just Mommy and Daddy and she takes great delight is using our real names randomly just to shock us. The other day in a store we had lost David, so I said “let’s find Daddy” and she takes off, shrieking “DAVID! WHERE ARE YOU? DAVID!” This morning she was sitting in her room and trying to get my attention as I wandered past. She was saying “Mommy, mommy!” but when that didn’t work she switched to “CLAIRE! CLAIRE!” and of course, that made me stop!

I put two new albums up in the gallery, including one with our recent visit to Kip’s Castle for a Harvest Festival. Brynn had great fun decorating a pumpkin and watching a puppet show. Lots of new Evan pictures, although he still looks exactly the same as he has done for months and he still has the exact same expression in all photos.

A couple weeks ago Brynn and I attended Elizabeth and Azeem’s wedding in Oxford. Claire and Evan were unable to make it as we think Evan is still too young to fly on airplanes, and once we got him there he would certainly be a handful.
So Brynn and I ventured out alone, but with the help of many willing grandparents including: Grandma Carol, Grandma Joan, Granpa Don, Grandpa Andy, and 4 uncles and aunts: Uncle Ben, Uncle Mike, Auntie Liz, and the new Uncle Azeem. There was a Mehndi party where Brynn boogied the night away, and Elizabeth got her hands tatooed. The mosque trip Brynn and I skipped as it was a solemn affair that little 2 years olds are not welcome at. Then the ceremony itself was really beautiful. It was short and sweet, and Brynn only made one scene during it. There were readings that were not nearly as cheesy as I thought they were going to be, and some really good vows that Elizabeth and Azeem made to each other. The reception was in a barn and very nice with good food including a lamb Biriyani. There were also a couple late night parties that were only the younger family and friends that were a lot of fun.

The next day after the wedding, with the help of some babysitting grandparents, I ventured out to London for the first time. Being around the world a bit myself I was a little disappointed at how little culture shock I experienced in London. Despite the vastly different architecture it reminded me a whole lot of New York City.

David & Brynn went to the UK recently. I think David is planning to post about it so I’ll leave the details of that to him. We have a couple of new albums up in the gallery so make sure to take a look. We have new pictures of the UK trip, the kids over the summer, and the Farm ‘n Fun Party in Ohio.

Also, here is the “big pig” that fascinated Brynn.

I have been trying to find some comparable pictures of Brynn and Evan at the same age to see if they look the same. The pictures below are of pretty similar poses, so you can be the judge of the resemblance. It’s hard to see beyond the hair, and Evan’s chubbiness but I think the main facial features are very close.

I’ve been trying to take a lot more pictures of Evan, similar to how I did the fashion show for Brynn, but he’s a very boring subject. It’s the same picture over and over. Brynn was much more expressive and wriggly so I was able to get more interesting pictures out of her. I’ve added a new album of Evan photos, but be warned that it is basically the same shot 30 times.

This video is a little old but it pretty much sums up my day.

Not much in the way of updates lately. Evan is still growing and Brynn is still crazy. Actually, she’s been a lot better lately – far fewer tantrums. Our neighbor’s two year old grand-daughter is visiting, so Brynn has been spending a lot of time playing outside with her. Amazingly, the other girl is just as tantrum-prone as Brynn so it’s nice to see someone else on the toddler roller-coaster. The girls have a lot of issues with sharing toys. The pink chalk has caused problems as they are both very fond of that particular color. Also, the Dora ball is a favorite, plus a ride on bike that makes fancy noises. They both understand the concept of taking turns, but they don’t understand that a turn should last longer than two seconds. Brynn will reluctantly get off the bike to give her friend a turn but she’s instantly shrieking “my turn! my turn!”

It’s been very hot the last couple of days, and it will be tomorrow as well (upper 90s). Thankfully no power outages yet. We spent a lazy weekend at home, hanging out in the yard and doing some grilling. Unfortunately I’m now covered in bug bites.

(*Warning* This paragraph is for my Mum’s benefit. Everyone else can skip it.)

Evan is getting on a bit of a schedule. He wakes to eat around 5.30am (although sometimes earlier) and then goes back to sleep for another two hours or so. After that we get up for the day but he barely lasts an hour before he needs a cat nap. He takes another short nap mid-morning, then he goes down for a big nap in the early afternoon that is usually around 4 hours. This coincides with Brynn’s 2-3 hour nap so we get a nice break in the middle of the day. He wakes around 4 or 5pm and sometimes fits in yet another nap in the early evening, then it’s bath and final feeding time and he falls asleep around 9pm.

He’s quite content to hang out on a playmat or in a bouncy chair which is nice, especially as he spits up all over me every time I pick him up. If he is left to sit quietly then he keeps much more of his food down and my clothes stay slightly cleaner. I have no success with using a blanket to protect myself from his attacks. If I’m adjusting the blanket momentarily then he uses that opportunity to get me. If the blanket leaves one area of my clothes exposed, he manages to find it. If he does a small spit-up and I stand up to get a tissue, then he immediately unleashes a torrent of milk all over my, now unprotected, clothing. It’s a constant battle that involves many changes of clothes for us both. The other thing I never knew is how hard it is to get spit-up stains out of clothes. I spend a lot of time doing laundry.

I guess I never blogged about the time his spit up landed him in the ER. I’ll refrain from sharing the gory details, but I completely underestimated the power of a baby and some regurgitated milk. I think maybe he does it to get lots of baths. They really are his favorite thing and if we don’t give him one a day then he tends to get a bit smelly. Brynn and Evan took a bath tonight which was really cute. He was in his baby tub which was in the bath tub and Brynn was pointing at various places on Evan and saying “I love Evan’s knees”, “I love Evan’s eyes” etc. She’s such a cutie and very affectionate with him now. Lots of kisses and telling us that she loves him. I can’t wait until he’s a bit older and they play together.

Bron left last week after a two week visit. The time went by much too quickly… She’s now jetting around Europe and no doubt thrilled to be child-free!

This means that we have come to the end of our string of visiting baby assistants so we’re now going it alone. Luckily Evan is an awesome baby so he’s doing his best to make this easy on us. Brynn, on the other hand, is doing her best to make us put her up for adoption. Yes, of course she’s still cute, sweet, smart, funny, charming etc., but she’s also the most tantrum-prone toddler I have ever seen. Just once I would like to leave the park without holding her sideways while she screams, flails, kicks, pulls my hair and all the other parents stare at us. We have not made a graceful exit from any kind of playground in months now. Hopefully she’ll get to a point soon where she understands cause and effect a little more and I can explain to her that when we know she’s going to act like a psycho whenever we leave the park then the result is we never want to take her anywhere fun because we can only tolerate so much embarrassment. How long until they learn to understand these kind of things?? I’m getting desperate here.

So, back to the good child. At 5 weeks, Evan was still sleeping in 2-3 hour stretches and I was losing my mind. By 6 weeks he’d gone up to 4 hours which was better. Then he started adding an extra hour every night until we got to the 8 hour mark. Yes, our delightful seven week old now sleeps 8 hours uninterrupted overnight. Praise the freaking gods, it doesn’t get much better than this. On Sunday the entire family slept in until 8.30am. How many parents with an infant and a toddler can say that!!

He also smiled at me the other day for the first time which was delightful. He has a very good disposition and barely fusses. He loves taking baths and is very keen to drink the bathwater. He has this tricky little move where he slides down so his mouth is at water level and then turns his head very slightly to the side and opens his mouth. He does this all very sneakily and then the next thing i know his tongue is out and he’s lapping up the water. He freaks out when I scoot him back up and away from his precious bathwater.

The poor kid has pretty bad baby acne at the moment so we’re getting a lot of those comments like “oh, let me see the baby!” *pause* “oh, he’s so…. small” or “look at….. his fingers – they’re so long!” Not helping the situation is his hair which, in the sunlight, appears to be undergoing all variations of male-pattern baldness simultaneously. The front hairline appears to be receding at his temples. It also seems to be thinning at the crown and now he looks like he’s getting hair loss on the back and sides that leave that lower ring of hair behind. Most of this is caused by the difference in hair color in various sections. Some areas are very fair so they aren’t really visible when contrasted with the darker hair. I think he’s also losing some where he lies on it. I want it all to fall out so he can just start over.

He’s putting on a ton of weight and is closing in on 12lbs which means he’s up almost 50% of his birth weight. Not bad I think. We call him the Hungry Man due to his voracious appetite. Now that he sleeps so long at night he needs to make up for it during the day so I have to feed him every 1.5 to 2 hours. A small price to pay for a good night’s sleep though!

Brynn definitely likes Evan although I don’t think she likes what his addition to the family means for her. Thankfully she doesn’t take it out on him. She likes to kiss him and tell us that she loves him so that’s sweet. However, she is much more clingy and whiny with me and gets upset with me holding or feeding the baby. We’re hoping she gets over this soon as we’re at the point now where we are enduring her, rather than enjoying her, which is a pity because she really is adorable when she is well behaved. Hopefully this will all calm down in a couple of weeks – she was a little better today.

We had a blackout last night for 10 hours which sucked because it was the hottest day of the year so far – well over 90 degrees and it hadn’t cooled much by the evening when the power went out around 7pm. The kids were a bit of a mess. Brynn was too hot in her room and kept crying so she ended up in our bed where she writhed and thrashed around and had weird dreams “OPEN THE DOOR! OPEN THE DOOR!!”. She was also very sweaty but still wanted to snuggle up to me. It was too hot to swaddle Evan so he was a free-range baby and he did not like it and couldn’t settle down. We ended up with David sleeping on the couch in the living room with Evan in his swing, while Brynn and I shared a bed. Finally the power came back on around 5am. The upside of all this is that everyone was exhausted and both Brynn and Evan took naps that lasted over 3 hours each and overlapped enough that I was also able to sneak in a nap. Very nice!

David is constantly bugging me to post and he just told me he gave me an account to use to write posts, which had been my excuse for not doing it up until now. I’ll have to start falling back on “exhaustion” which is my catch-all excuse for pretty much everything lately. As mentioned below, we’re expecting a new baby in a few weeks. Should be interesting. We don’t have a name yet, we haven’t even really discussed it, but rest assured that when we do decide, we won’t tell anyone. So everyone can stop asking.

Apart from that, Brynn is fairly horrible. Terrible two’s indeed. We can’t really leave the house anymore because it’s too embarrassing. She’s very nice and sweet when people visit but when we go anywhere she finds something awesome that she cannot be parted from and then it’s only a matter of time before I’m carrying her out to the car while she screams and kicks and hits etc.

Dave just read this over my shoulder and I asked him “Is it bad to describe our daughter as ‘horrible’?” and he said “No, it’s pretty much true.”

She’s got a lot of words but it’s still mostly single words and a few small sentences (e.g. “SIT DOWN, MOMMY!!“). She knows her numbers and can count, with the maddening exception of “7″. What exactly is the problem with seven?? She always skips it and pretty much refuses to acknowledge it’s existence – won’t even repeat it when we say it. So odd. She knows most letters and says the alphabet although she usually skips one big section but, you know, details.

She has stopped eating at home recently which I don’t care about too much. She also stopped napping, which I care deeply about. Dave and I live for her weekend naps. Oh the glorious days when she would nap for 2-3 hours. I shouldn’t really complain too much though because she will actually just hang out in her crib indefinitely, singing and playing with her toys. In the mornings she usually wakes up between 6.30-7am but on weekends we just ignore her and keep sleeping. One of us finally goes to get her around 8.30am. If she’s not complaining then it’s a win-win situation.

Yesterday she woke around 6.30am and was getting pretty cranky by mid-day but it was too bad for her because we had to go to a birthday party at a kid’s gym. She fell asleep in the car right before we got there but perked up when she saw all her friends and ran around non-stop for an hour or so. We got her home around 2.30pm and put her in the crib but around 4pm I gave up because she was still not sleeping. We decided to keep her up until bed time and at 7pm you would never have guessed she’d been up over 12 hours, including an hour at a gym. She was still running around and dancing all over the living room. Crazy girl.

She also likes to adopt other moms. We’ve been to two birthday parties recently and at each one, she decided to play with someone else’s mom rather than me. I don’t take it personally. They are probably more fun than me at the moment. 36 weeks pg does not equal lots of fun times for a toddler. I’m basically exhausted from morning to night, all week long. I’m still working and probably will do so through the end of this month. My job is incredibly stressful right now and that isn’t helping. This poor second baby doesn’t have a name because at night I’m lying awake thinking about work, not about him. I only remember he’s there when I bend over to pick something up and he gets in the way. Or when he kicks me really hard. But it’s almost surreal when I compare this pregnancy to how much time I spent thinking about Brynn before she was born, and how much time was spent in planning, shopping and reading about babies. I haven’t bought anything for this baby. He’s going to be wearing Brynn’s old clothes and he’s going to live in Brynn’s lavender bedroom with her lavender butterfly crib bedding. I don’t even have any baby size diapers so he might be wearing Brynn’s for a while. Poor new baby, already suffering from the neglected second child syndrome and he’s not even here yet.