Tips, tricks and adventures in parenting two kids.
A few weeks ago, Ryan (and our neighbors) took Hayden on his first camping trip.
Although he wasn’t interested in eating marshmallows that were all “mewty,” and, thus, s’mores, though he whined about coming home pretty much all night, and despite one smashed finger, Hayden pretty much loved it.
He’s asked to go camping almost every weekend since then.
Any fun firsts for you lately?
Rebecca has been hard at work on perfecting her walking. She’s gotten up to a record of about 8-9 steps, but most of her journeys begin (and end) with a single step.
Here are some of her first assisted steps, from about a month ago:
Hayden, not to be outdone, is working on some of his own firsts. Can you tell what this one is?
That’s right—it’s his first commercial jingle! He composed this all on his own (after hearing his parents quoting the Psych episode for about a week). Guess what he got for lunch that day?
What big accomplishments/career moves have your kids made lately?
When you have a child, you want him or her to be able to succeed. To take on the world and win.
When you have two, you want them to do that together.
And some other fun pictures from the park today:
Hayden dancing on the stage and singing his ABCs
What have you done to help prepare your kids to take on the world—including giving them a sibling to work side-by-side with?
Let me start with an announcement: Rebecca took her first steps this week!
Recently, Jennifer at Conversion Diary invited her readers to share an emblematic, defining blog post—a post that embodies the style and topic(s) of our blog.
As awesome and fantastic as that was, it’s getting better. Elizabeth Esther is taking this to a new level with the Saturday Evening Blog Post—a monthly feature where we share the most emblematic post from the previous month on our blog.
Go through your archives and participate today!
This afternoon, I was struggling with Rebecca, who has recently decided that she would prefer not to have her diaper changed ever again. Hayden watched the writhing and screaming (from both of us) and offered some pointers (he’s already learning how to be a dad! 😉 ).
“Becca do not want to be wiped.”
I agreed with his astute assessment.
“You not wipe her?”
“I have to wipe her,” I explained. “She’ll get hurt if I don’t.” Apparently we’ve had the diaper rash discussion enough times before that he accepted this without argument. But after a moment, he offered one more piece of advice to help us avoid future encounters of the #2 kind:
“Becca, stop pooping.”
What incredibly logical arguments did/do your toddlers or preschoolers make?
With Hayden, we had two people giving examples—me and Ryan. (And, let’s face it, most of the time it was me. That whole earning-money thing. Whatever.)
With Rebecca, she has two people with her pretty much all the time to model behaviors. She’s picking up signing probably about the same as Hayden did, and of course some things she hasn’t learned yet that he knew at this age—but some things she’s practically a prodigy at already.
Like this one:
She also does this whenever she sees me with my arms folded, and randomly throughout the day. I love finding her sitting on the floor, her arms folded and her head deeply bowed. She’s also done this while we were eating lunch or even out to eat, as if to remind us that we forgot to say our prayers.
I know there will be an equal number of disadvantages for her, of course—I just won’t have the same amount time I devoted to Hayden to give my singular attention to her—but I’m pretty proud of this one!
How were your later children easier than your first? What things did you notice them picking up on faster?
