November 2013 Round Up

Lenah turned one and we had a great little party for her. Unfortunately for me, I didn't start planning/preparing until the night before. I arrived home with the party supplies from Wal Mart about 11 p.m. on Friday to a completely dirty house. The party was at 11:30 the next morning. Needless to say it was a stressful Saturday morning, but we pulled it off. I had a color scheme of turquoise, purple, and fuschia. We had white table clothes and serving dishes with jelly bean decorations. I filled mason jars with jelly beans and had little signs up with jellybean images, saying things like "It's 'bean' a great year," and "Happy birthday day Lenah 'Beana.' " We also had some pretty Gerber daisies and other flower arrangements scattered around.

We pulled out the inflatable ball pit, and it was actually warm enough for the kids to play in the backyard. We wrapped up the party with a rather wild game of bobbing for apples. Farah got really into it and at one point just jumped into the tub of water. I forget how much she listens to what adults are saying. At one point, my friends were teasing that she looked like me in college. After the party, she said, "I got wild today, just like you did in college!" She is still referring to herself as a "party girl."

In other news, Blake is officially, completely potty trained (or house broken, as my dad would have said). After only 2 1/2-3 weeks of potty training, he started going into the bathroom on his own to go potty without needing to be told. We went to the National Zoo last weekend, and that's when I realized that we drove an hour and a half each way and spent five hours at the zoo without incident. Unfortunately, his temper hasn't been as under control.
He has really been throwing some temper tantrums lately. The other night I tried to use a tactic on Blake that always worked to get Farah to brush her teeth at that age. I used to tell Farah that the dentist (she had no idea what a dentist was) would be checking her teeth and he'd be very upset if they weren't clean. I tried to use that on Blake, and before I could even finish my thought, he shot back with, "I'll kill that dentist." That's a favorite phrase of his. If I anger him, he makes a spitting noise and threatens me. Sometimes it's a little cute, but more often than not it's a lot annoying.

It's been almost a month now since Lenah took her first steps, but she's still not really walking. She likes to crawl and cruise. She will take two steps between objects, but she likes to be able to reach out and touch what she's walking to. I guess she's just cautious. She's saying some more words. She has been saying, "go" for awhile now. She points and says, "go, go, go!" She's not a really clear talker, but she will imitate sounds/words, and has her own words for things. She is still so sweet and funny. She loves to pluck Blake's binki from his mouth, turn away from him, and laugh hysterically. It's kind of fun seeing someone dish it out to Blake a little. He is really good with her though, and doesn't retaliate (yet anyway).

Farah continues to like kindergarten. Each night we sit together after the others have gone to bed, she reads Hop on Pop, and then I read a chapter book to her. Right now we're reading The Trumpet of the Swan. She got her first report card. She got all satisfactories and pluses, except one minus in the paying attention category. I think she's a little too boy crazy for a kindergartener! She also got her PALs reading score back. She got an 89 out of 102. The benchmark score was a 28, so I guess she's well above the minimum. Farah continues to be very imaginative. She can play by herself for a long period of time. She's hit or miss if she'll allow Blake in on her play. When she does, he loves it though! They can play beautifully together, but if she's not in the mood for him, he turns into a terrorist wrecking all of her plans. They can have some major battles. Farah is patient and sweet with Lenah (at least for now). Lenah lights up when Farah talks to her. The other night I was working with Farah before bedtime and I tried to introduce counting by 10's. She had had enough and in a deep voice she said, "Ugh, lady. You're makin' me pull my  hairs out." She has also learned the sign for crazy (twisting her hand around by her head to signal someone's "loopy.") She loves to use that, usually on me or Blake.