Mama, I Want to HELP You!!

We have such a helpful daughter. Insistent, yet helpful.

Today as she was watching a new favorite video all about clocks and learning to tell time (she insists it is about clocks; Kwamai insists on the proper title, Time, and yes they will argue it back and forth with great passion), Felicity heard me emerge from the basement with a basket of laundry. She was in a fit of tears. I quickly surmised the problem was that I had dared to do something without her help. Getting things from the dryer has become her job, thank you very much, and how dare I usurp it from her. So, back to the basement we went, and she emptied the entire basket, one item at a time, back into the dryer, and then took them back out again, one item at a time. She allowed me to capture the process in a picture.

While she was busy at work, my thoughts went to the deep freezer behind me and how I could get some hamburger up for lunch tomorrow. I popped over, grabbed the beef, and re-emerged to another flood of tears. She wanted to help! Ok, ok. The beef went back in, she retrieved it for me, and was pleased. She then announced it was far too cold to linger downstairs, so why were we down there so long? Hmmm, why hadn't I thought of that?

Felicity also loves to help me cook, either by holding her hand over mine as I chop, stir, whisk or what not, or by the ever-popular taste-testing.

And yes, you bet that is a summer sun dress in the picture. She occasionally admits to being cold, and she will humor me by agreeing to tights when we go out, but she is almost always down to her barest essentials at home.

Kwamai Prepares Dinner

Somehow today Kwamai got settled in with the idea that he would make dinner tonight. He began his planning as we were discussing what to have for lunch. (See, first he was going to make lunch, but then he got chatting too long and Felicity and I had our lunches all out, so dinner it became.)

At 5:10 he dutifully set out to accomplish his task. The menu included turkey sausages with pepperoni, macaroni, raw carrots and broccoli (mom's request), and salads for the grown ups. He got everything ready and even did a fair job with some mild multi-tasking. Erol was nearly a half hour late getting home, so it helped that nothing was rushed.

A nice meal was had by all. I, unfortunately I suppose, didn't pass up the childish chance to find something to complain about so he knew what it felt like. But he did tell me, with all seriousness, "Mama, don't you know you shouldn't complain about the dinner? Remember when you put peanuts on my birthday pizza and Papa ate it without complaining?"

Felicity as a Tiny Baby

Whoops!

When trying to upload pictures of bubbles I accidentally uploaded this tiny little movie of Felicity as a not-quite-3 month old trying to sit up in her bouncy seat. Can you believe this is the only video I took of her as a tiny baby? What was I possibly thinking? I was so amazed that she was trying to sit up that I grabbed the camera. I also noticed at the time that she repeated the same vocalization pattern that this little snippet gathered.

To think this was only 2.5 years ago!

Fascination

On one of those warm days recently we watched this little group of bubbles forming in a tiny stream of water. Kwamai tried engineering the stream in different ways and watching the effects. Fascination was had by all.

Here is a movie version. I keep saying "Shhh!" because we were right outside the adoration chapel at the University.

Kwam the Reader

This is kind of a "more of the same" post, but I am amazed at how Kwamai's reading has taken off. This week at the library he pulled a book off the shelf and started reading it out loud. His ability and his interest have met, and a lot of times I can't get him to stop even when I think his eyes have had enough! The computer game Dragon Fable is largely responsible for igniting his interest. His natural tendency is to figure things out from pictures or graphics instead of words, but he is learning to respect how important words, and being able to read them, are. For example, today he accidentally uninstalled a game program that he meant to open instead, because he clicked the box that said "uninstall" instead of "open". They both had similar icons. Felicity on the other hand is always asking what words say. She's drawn to the text.

There's probably some developmental reason for this, but Kwamai's overall behavior has gotten much milder and happier in the last few weeks as well. That gives me a happy sigh!

Casper Gets Duded Out

Casper poses with his wardrobe technicians.

What We're Up To

We went to the Natural History museum yesterday to see the new dinosaur exhibit. For once, I realized I actually have children in two different age groups. Felicity's basic reaction was fear. She burrowed her head in my neck, wanted out, and pretty much wanted nothing to do with them. Kwamai on the other hand probably could have stayed in the exhibit twice as long as we did, wanting to have me read him all the exhibit display signs and interact with the models, etc.

Most of the time lately Kwamai and Felicity are like two peas in a pod. Today they spent the better part of the afternoon playing together. Felicity played "cooking show" and Kwamai was her opening dancing act. Kwamai played tent-dweller and Felicity was his visitor. They like to play games where they sing songs back and forth, one starting and the other finishing a line or a sound or whatever.

Felicity looks more and more like a giantess to me. When I tell her she is a big girl she always insists "No, I'm little." We've had a few warm days when she's worn lighter dresses that she wore last summer. One in particular that was nearly touching the floor in the summer now hits well above her ankle. Of course I especially notice her size when I hold her, all 30 pounds of her!

Kwamai's reading has taken off to soaring in the last two weeks. He isn't always willing to try to read something on his own, but more and more he can decode words, and more and more I have to figure out how to explain why English is such a weird language where we have know, now and mow, knight, night, enough and all those other nonsensical spellings and pronunciations.

Felicity can read letters nearly without fail. She is like a little preschool text book poster girl and is very into shapes, colors, numbers and letters these days. I'm getting the idea that actually teaching her may work much more simply than with Kwamai, who is adamant about figuring everything out himself. But, so far, so good.

Oh, then of course there is the election coming up. Kwamai is in lock-step with Papa in keeping up with the news on his favorite candidate. And since Mama has a different favorite candidate, we've had some talks about how to hold different opinions than others without feeling the need to resort to name-calling and sign stealing. At least it looks like neither of us will have our favorite candidate running in the general election, which might just break Kwamai's heart.

Quotable Kwam

He says to me tonight: "You know how at Mass sometimes Father says something that's funny to grownups, but the kids don't get it, and so they don't laugh? Well, not even I get it!"

The Skate Car

Kwamai watched Chitty-Chitty Bang Bang this afternoon. So currently he is busy creating vehicles. This is the Skate Car, complete with horn and laser.

Felicity Writes!

Kwamai was busy creating a game and I had just given Felicity her own used calendar and crayon to draw. Suddenly Kwamai yelled out, "Felicity just wrote her first numbers!" Lo and behold, on the calendar square for the 29th, she wrote a very neat and legible 26. She did say she was trying to write 29, but hey, a great accomplishment nonetheless!

She then embellished the remainder of the calendar with the typical scribbles and squiggles.

The scribe. You probably don't want to elarge the picture and be grossed out by how dirty her nose is.

By the way, she has been obsessed with learning alphabet in the last 24 hours and learned to spell "bus" this morning. Let's sign her up for University.

Felicity Has a New Bedroom!

Whoo-Hoo! Somehow the transition has happened to Felicity sleeping in her own bedroom. What helped, of course, was the fact that I finally sorted through all of the baby clothes, cleaned out the closet, took down (ahem) the co-sleeper, and other things I've been meaning to do but just haven't gotten to with such a ... young... baby around. Ok, so Felicity officially turned 2.75 on Sunday, but she was born just yesterday, or at least that's what my organization seems to reflect.

I would post pictures, but she's upstairs sleeping in it right now. Of course, I wake up in there more often than not, because she calls out for me and before I wake up I respond and go there so she can nuzzle up with her favorite comfort items. Some day I imagine she will stop that, but I do actually get more sleep than if she climbs on me or if I can hear her every peep right next to me all night, or if Kwamai nudges her awake. I still have hyper-reactive Mommy ears.

Each day the room looks more civilized. Today I put her toy box, her dresser and all of her clothes in the room, and tonight, at her request, I hung some pictures and a crucifix. She wanted a picture of Mary, one of Jesus, one of Mary and Baby Jesus, and one of Jesus in his manger (or he's manger, as she says). I managed to fulfill each request. She was concerned that there are sharks in her room, but I assured her that sharks sleep too, and are rather friendly anyway. So she decided she will also share her room with fishies, seahorses and whales.

And then there's Kwamai. He is more afraid of the dark and of being alone now than he ever has been. He is now the lone occupant of the extra bed wedged in the parental bedroom. Perhaps by the time it gets warm and light at night again he'll be ready to shift.

What We're Reading

I read Call of the Wild as a Freshman in high school, and I remember not liking it much. It made me feel cold whenever I read it. But Kwamai is enjoying it, I think because of all the fighting and wildness in it.

I think I might choose something a little tamer next time around, maybe Stuart Little.

Catching up

Here is it mid-January already and I've let two and a half weeks of cute kid things slide by unrecorded. For shame. Let's see if I can pull some interesting tidbits out of my memory.

Kwamai is super-duper keen on starting karate, and I plan to call the school to see when we can get him started. He spends so much time daily doing his version of martial arts, and I would like to see him learn to do it safely (especially for him to learn how not to karate chop little sisters). Truly I have never seen a 6 year old as muscular as he is. If he were my size I know he could pin me to the ground with one arm.

Felicity keeps coming up with cutisms. At the Pancake Breakfast on Sunday she pointed out "Look Mama, there's a snowdeer." You know, that's what Santa pulls his sleigh with.

Their latest comedy routine together is for Kwamai to say part of a phrase and Felicity to finish it. Their favorites are "What the....." "heck?" and "Our Lady of Guadalu..." "pe"

On cue this evening as we sat down to dinner, both of them started crying over how much they hated what was being served. (The culprit was a chicken and rice casserole.) The enticement I gave to win over Kwamai made Felicity more adamantly against it: portobello mushroom sauce! Kwamai decided he loved it and gobbled up two platefuls. Felicity has been feeling a little off anyway and made a dinner out of a few carrots instead. In truth, although it was mushroom sauce I don't think it the broth was from portobellos anyway, but at least it got some dinner into them. Sigh.

Pictures from Christmas Day

We had a really beautiful Christmas day together. I carried around a feeling all day long that this was the sort of days that sweet, warm memories are built from, the kind that will come to mind when my children grow up and someone asks them how their family celebrated Christmas. And that kind that Erol and I will think of when we are old and are remembering "Christmas when the kids were little."

We went for opening all the gifts on Christmas Day, despite my hopes of spreading it out over the 12 days. We went to morning Mass, but before that I convinced Felicity that she needed a trip over to Franciscan University to see Baby Jesus in the manger there (she'd been patiently awaiting His arrival). I also convinced Kwamai that he had to be the helper and go along with Erol and Felicity. In the meantime, I unhid all of the presents and put them under the tree. I do think the out-of-sight approach helped them not be so focused on presents and to think more about when Baby Jesus was going to appear.

So, upon arrival home from Mass we opened gifts, and I got dinner cooking bit by bit. There was a curious and natural pause as some really cool toys beckoned to be played with, so we went with that, I got dinner on the table and we ate. Felicity eventually decided we needed to open the rest of the gifts, so we did. Towards evening we went over to some friends' house for, dare I say, yet another Christmas dinner.

And all that was only the first day of Christmas!

Here are some pics:

Felicity opening a gift.

Kwamai contemplating his Avatar book with Erol.

"Could you put Baby Jesus' manger together, please?" (From her Playmobile Nativity set.)

Everyone busily working on their projects.

Felicity and I are ready for dinner.

Kwamai's play-dough creature.

Felicity models a new dress from Mama-Grandma.

It's a Wonderful Day

These still photos certainly don't capture the excited mood of the Hosdil kids right now!

This has been a wonderful day, truly. After Mass and a guest for dinner, we did some decorating with lights, put up the Christmas tree, and had our Sunday-of-Advent picnic with our family rosary. Then tonight we all bundled together upstairs (where our TV is residing) to watch "It's a Wonderful Life." Despite all of Kwamai's protestations about not wanting to watch it, he was glued to the whole story. What we will spend tomorrow afternoon doing, I'm not quite sure (since the initial plan was to do the tree then). It just seemed fitting to use the energy while we were all together today. Throughout the afternoon Kwamai occasionally called for a "family hug." A day of joyful togetherness, if you take out the times when I yelled about the glass ornaments, or the odd tussle between Kwamai and Felicity. I guess those things just prove that it is all real!