Relaxing at home

Isabella's favorite new hobby is coloring. She found a couple coloring books left behind by Mira, including one with Tinkerbell, and has been busy actually coloring them in. Although she seems to have as much fun directing *us* to color things in for her. Apparently this is Sierra's influence - Sierra is very good at coloring and does a lot of it. We've also been doing a lot of letters - she can recognize almost all of them, and make a pretty good stab at writing a fair number of them. Taping things and cutting them with scissors is also becoming a favorite.

Mira's brother also left a bicycle which is a little closer to Isabella's size then the one we found at the apartment. She can ride this one all by herself. Here we are at Grandma's, on our way out to Shoreline to do the paddle boats with Pam. She insisted I bring her bicycle along. She really wanted to ride it down, not ride in the trailer, so that took some convincing. But she liked the paddle boats, and we played in the park for awhile.

Isabella has also gotten good at drawing using the tablet and a simple drawing program. Mostly, she draws pictures for Molly and has me send them to her. She can't quite handle the small slider, but she can pick out colors and brushes.

We broke out the bouncy zebra again. Isabella "helps" Ian bounce on it (he can now get on it by himself, but she turns the sound on and, uh, spins him around). The spring's starting to make some funny noises...

Isabella's other favorite car entertainment is to count - she can get to 20, and pretty much has a handle on doing 21-30. We've gone as high as 60. She doesn't quite have minutes and seconds down, though - when we say 20 minutes, she counts to 20 and asks why we aren't there yet!

Some funny Isabella words: Kabloon (balloon), putano (piano), Buzz lighter (Buzz Lightyear).

Ian is getting better about eating with a spoon - he insists on it, now. Well, at least some of the food goes in!

Both Isabella and Ian are transitioning to new rooms. Unfortunately, Isabella's transition happened while we were at the beach house. So she came back from a long week vacation into another room. We had a week of tears and wailing when we dropped her off, and lots of "I don't want to go to daycare". And meltdowns because her underwear wasn't right in the car seat... I did get out of her that "the teachers don't pay attention to me", but I think mostly it was let-down from vacation, when she had all these people paying attention to her...

Ian made his transition with aplomb. We'll very much miss Theresa, though. He does seem very happy about being outside all day - popping bubbles, pushing carts around, climbing the slide... he also seems to be doing ok with the one nap thing - he sleeps for 2-3 hours every day (at day care, at least). And he's getting into the routine of things. He can clear his own place, knows when to wash his hands... one day I went to pick him up and he immediately grabbed his hat and headed towards the door, ready to go!

We're definitely getting "requests" for things - he points and opens and closes his hand. We've also started getting "no" - he shakes his head! Very handy, and much more user-friendly than his usual just throwing what he doesn't want on the floor!

Ian ended up with three birthday parties. He got presents from our visitors (including a onesie which he carried around on his head for quite a while), from my mom (a fun wooden ball bangie toy - the hammer is living out of his reach) a firetruck from Isabella, and, of course, a bunch of things for his sister. We had a (very late) birthday play date with his friend Madeleine from day care. We went to the pool and splashed around for a bit, then came back to the house. Where he did something I've only heard about - he actually *fell asleep* while eating his peanut butter and jelly sandwich!

Isabella, Pam, Mike and I went to the climbing gym once as well, and I got to climb a bit. Isabella spent most of the time swinging from her harness. Nobody seemed to mind, fortunately, and it wasn't all that crowded.

See? Asleep at the table. Now if only we could teach him to sleep in... he's still waking up at 5 or 6 in the morning, no matter when we tuck him in bed.

Isabella's been fractious at bed time again, and having a hard time falling asleep (and staying asleep). She's also gotten addicted to Dora - we've seen those four episodes I don't know how many times! Oh, and with popcorn. However, she has learned to snap her fingers and say "Oh, man!" just like Swiper, and says "Swiper, no swiping!" to Ian, which is pretty adorable.