Saturday, July 31, 2010

Standing for Something & Running from Mommy

Tuesday morning we came in to get Emmett out of bed and guess who was standing up with his hands on the crib rails? Since then, he has been pulling himself up on just about every surface or person he can get his hands on.
Liliana was being a trouble-maker the other day so I told her she could make a choice: listen to mommy or go to her room until she was ready to listen. She ran down the hall loudly saying, "I not listening to you!" and slammed her door loudly. Within a few minutes she said, "I'm ready to be sweet," and I let her out of her room. At least she accepted one of the decisions I had offered her. Oh, what will the future hold?

Sunday, July 18, 2010

Camping, Crawling, and other fun

We left for our 4th of July trip to Seaside, Oregon on July 1st. We had a fun-filled week of swimming, kite flying, carousel riding, ice cream eating, dutch oven cooking, parade watching, mini-train riding, biking, beach bumming, sandcastle building, firework gazing, and relaxing with family. As we drove out of the campground David asked Liliana if she had had fun camping. She responded with, "I want to go camping again!"

The day before we had left for our trip, Emmett officially started crawling. He is still improving and getting better at it, but he's able to get around without all the rolling and pivoting on his belly that he used to do. Emmett's third and fourth tooth have popped through now as well. The third one came in just a day or two after the second tooth and the fourth one just poked through a couple of days ago. He now his his two bottom center teeth and two by-cuspids, but no center top teeth. I think he's going for the kindergärtner-about-to-enter-first-grade look!

On Sundays I try to get the kids to take at least a short nap before church to avoid the head-spinning, blue-liquid spewing that often accompanies missed naps. However, since we have to leave for church right about the time naps normally start, this effort does not always prove successful. Today was one of those days. I put Liliana down and she was quiet for awhile, falsely leading me to believe that she had fallen asleep. After some time, I heard strange sounds coming from her room and ventured to see what bizarre acts could be causing the noises. At first I was surprised not to spot Liliana in her room. Then some movement from above caught my attention and I realized she was on the top bunk of her bunk bed - to which we had removed the ladder so she wouldn't be able to climb up without us present. "I'm on the bunk bed, Mommy!" She exclaimed proudly.
"How did you get up there?" I asked.
"I climb down that and that," she said, without actually giving me any useful indication as to how she had got up.
I took her down from the bed and looked at the assortment of things she had shoved off the bed (which was the source of the sounds that had brought me to the room to investigate). David had been using the bunk bed to store random toys and other items that he didn't want Liliana playing with for one reason or another and Liliana had started tossing them off the bed, while sitting under the little red table that was being stored on the bed as well. She had used the table to climb up and open the curtains in her room, which resulted in David putting the table out of her reach. I invited Liliana to climb the bed again so I could see how she did it, but she ran out of the room saying, "That's naughty?" She did demonstrate her monkey-like climbing skills for David after we got home from church and we recorded them, so I'll have to link them to this post sometime soon. Now we'll have to decide whether we want to go ahead and put the bunk bed ladder up; take the bunk bed down and find someplace to store it; or try and convince Liliana of the danger of climbing her bed and trust that she won't do it anymore (highly unlikely).