Elliott: Year 4, Week 14 (November 20 - November 26, 2005)
Lorelei: Week 31

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Mike watching Elliott outside

What's that look?

silly babe looking at Jess

Mama, I can't see through you! Lorelei watches the mower go by..

another mysterious expression

Elliott catches a ride with Grandpa George, as he graciously mows our long-neglected lawn before storing the mower in the shop for the winter.

after fighting sleep for literally hours, Lorelei sacks out on Dad for a nap

Elliott arranges Jess' birthday cake

Ready to blow out the candles? Happy 32nd birthday Jess!

Lorelei has her first Cheerios experience - swish swish!

ooh, got one! See that pincer grasp?

Lorelei reaches for a stray O

Poor sick boogie baby, trying to be cheerful

Elliott working on his take-apart truck

Lorelei "helping"

"you turn it this way to loosen, and this way to tighten!"

Elliott demonstrating how to use a melon baller

Babe tries seriously to eat the camera

Some of Elliott's first EVER artwork that looks like what he says it is! This is real breakthrough. Here is a cat (he didn't want to draw ears, but you can see the two eyes, nose and whiskers)

this is a snail, and grass for it to eat, and a sun because snails like the sun (well not really, but this one does)

an elephant - you see the trunk, one eye, the lines to the left are ears, and the lines to the right are legs

My attempts to get a smile for the camera

Can you look over here?

goof ball!

Welcome, winter wonderland!

If things are going to be cold and dead, they may as well be covered with lots of fluffy snow!

Mike and Elliott enjoy one of his days off and read piles of books

Mike and Elliott make snow angels

throwing snow at Mama and Lorelei (inside)

heehee!

Elliott takes time out from his painting to play peek-a-boo with Lorelei - something she truly loves

Elliott seems to have a real thing for the colors red and orange - he's absolutely a warm color kid

Lorelei critiques his work

more artwork! He carefully painted this and declared it a dragonfly (before smearing the entire page with red and blue paint, gleefully)

the artist at work

Elliott demonstrates how to eat a banana to Lorelei

No thanks, I'll do it my way! (she doesn't actually "eat" or injest any food just yet.. she rolls it around in her mouth for a while, then spits it out in a frantic fit).

hmm, the boppy doesn't help Shadow sit up.. and hey, sleeping in it is against the rules! Just keeping Babe's spot warm...

and the award for most prolific snot producer goes to.. Lorelei! (you've gotta click on this one)

Elliott munching a cracker and keeping Babe company

See, now she can't fall down!

pretending to be a baby.. Elliott loves the Bumbo. Lorelei's thighs are so fat that she barely fits - I can't believe he fits so well!

MM, pineapple for breakfast! We have discovered that fresh pineapple is light years more delicious than canned.

Two kids happily playing together.

Getting ready for thanksgiving feast. Note that this is the first time Mike sat down all day!

Lorelei tries an arrowroot cookie for the first time, as a thanksgiving treat. She enthusiastically devours it (though she spits out lots of drool and all the offensive little pieces of actual cookie)

Grandma cuts her pumpkin pie, and rasberry cheesecake pie.. note that this averages out to about half a pie per person. Mmm, I love thanksgiving!

Elliott going wild on his "super bike". Man, that thing has gotten a lot of use over the years. Anyone know who had it first?

Shadow is not impressed with all the rambunction

Elliott on the swing.. this is as close to a smile as I could get. He smiles plenty spontaneously, but if I ask him to, I get scrunchy noses, sealed lips and all kinds of other goofy expressions.

Lorelei however, is much more generous with her grins

Lorelei trying not to laugh...

but Dada's tickling is just too much!

Elliott enjoys a wild ride on the swing (his favorite game is swinging until he bumps into his hanging basil plants)

We've been building a lot of towers. Lorelei likes to knock them down, but she's surprised and a little worried at the noise. Too cute!

Um, that's not quite a smile..

Nice hat, kid!

There we go, that's a good smile!

Lorelei's stable enough sitting that she can reach for things.. and uses her hand to steady herself sometimes if she tips. Here she is showing great interest in the texture of the rug. We usually put her on a quilt, so she hasn't been introduced to rug often.

Elliott in his cozy spot on the sofa

A quick update.. the kids had boogie noses all week. Elliott has developed an annoying and persistent habit of putting his fingers in his mouth, which means that he'll probably have a boogie nose for the entire winter, given that he goes to preschool twice a week now. At least a few kids in the class have runny noses every time we go. After spending days wiping his nose every 4 minutes (I am not exaggerating here), we finally got him to wipe his own nose. We're going through a lot of tissues, but it's SO nice. He can now go pee and wipe his nose all by himself. What a big boy!

Lorelei throws a sobbing fit whenever we wipe hers, and between the boogies and the drooling, her whole face is chapped. She's been a really good sport about it in general, still amazingly breathing fine and sleeping well at night. Naps are another story. She fights sleep like its her last day on earth. We've gotten her into a more predictable routine, since Mike amazingly took the whole week off except for Tuesday.. but she still wakes up 2-3 times in her nap and needs to be nursed back down, which makes attending to Elliott tough. It's ok when Mike is home, but it'll be hard when he goes back to work. I just don't know how other parents do it.

Lorelei's been experimenting with "actual food".. she so far pretty much hates all of it. She'll roll it around in her mouth, but not open it enthusiastically at all.. She actually sort of liked green peas, weirdly enough - her first "real" jarred babyfood. She was ok with banana, breastmilk and rice cereal, but only once. ditto with applesauce cereal milk. She loves playing with Cheerios, but gets mad if one makes it to her mouth. She does like gnawing on breadcrusts and LOVED chewing the arrow root cookie. She's starting to grab at her hair and pull at it, which is not so endearing with a fist full of disintegrating cookie goo and drool.

Elliott and Lorelei really have thier own thing going. They play peek-a-boo all the time, and Elliott can stop her from crying and get her cracking up laughing just by dancing around and singing nonsense songs. He's great aobut giving her toys, trading if he wants what she has, and loves to munch on her legs and toes. He's not perfect - he also loves to climb all over me and tickle her when she's nursing, and it's really hard for him to be quiet when I'm putting her down for a nap, but he's trying.

Lorelei is really listening and picking up on our language. She seems to stare right at us when we talk, and can tell sometimes whether we're talking to her or not. She gets upset if Elliott cries (if he's hurt she'll often wail as well, in solidarity - makes it oh so much more fun for us to comfort two kids instead of one!). She also really takes Elliott seriously. If he says, "NO Babe!" in his whiny tone, she'll stop and stare at him. He usually says that when she is messing with something he's using, or if she's speaking loudly while he's trying to watch a show.

Speaking of shows, we're working on watching less TV. This is a constant struggle. He was never into TV before about 2 1/2, but betweeen the sicknesses last spring (we both had a bad cold, and then a big throw up thing), and then the baby, we got in the habit of being a little more free with the TV than usual. A week at Nana's last month was the final straw.. we've been working our way down to 1-2 shows a day, but he's pretty grumpy about it. Oh well. I think it's the age.. Rachel was a total TV addict at 3 as well. After he finishes his 1 minute tantrum, he's totally content to wander off and play instead of watching TV, in general. I just have to keep the activities coming, and beat the doldrums.

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