give the monkey a kiss

my mom sent out a little package for pace.  one of the items inside was an adorable stuffed monkey--and she packed it so its face was looking straight up at you when you opened the box.  pace thought this was the coolest thing on earth!  he pulled it out and immediately gave it a hug and cuddle, as with all things small, soft, and stuffed.  one morning i thought i'd try and get pace giving his monkey a kiss to send photos to my mom.  the first time he kissed it, i was a millisecond too slow catching it on the camera, and when i asked pace to do it again, he simply replied, "no."  

yes, pace has mastered replying "no":  "pace, have one last bite of dinner."  "no."  "pace, come upstairs to brush teeth and get ready for bed."  "no."  "pace, are you thirsty?  would you like a drink?"  "no."  and he does it in such a simple, sweet voice--he isn't being naughty, or demanding, or overtly disobedient--he's honestly communicating.  so what can you do?!  we try to rephrase it, or turn it into a game, which has worked so far...

so when i tried to get him to kiss the monkey a second time, i had to turn it into a hide-and-seek game with the monkey hiding behind the corner of the wall, and coax pace into coming over and playing with the monkey.  he ran away the first few times the monkey popped out from behind the corner, then he became interested in pointing out the monkey's eyes, nose, and mouth, and then--finally--winner!

time for another haircut?

are you kidding me?...3 more months?!

at the end of february, my only thought was, "are you kidding me?!  three more months to go before meeting baby #2?!"  i'm not counting the month of june at all since baby's due date is june 2, so at that point in time, i still had all of march, april, and may to look at.  has anyone else felt like they've been pregnant forever with their second pregnancy?  then i thought--ok, i have got to finish  art project #1, start and finish art project #2 (because we all know projects will be put on hold for another 4-6 months once baby comes), and finish pace's baby book (because shouldn't baby #1's baby book be finished before baby #2 comes?!).  Three projects for three months.  i can do that.  and voila--here we are with only 8 weeks to go!  

art project #1:  16x20 mixed medium (acrylic and oil):  my brother's sister-in-law asked for a tree with a bird cage and bird flying out.  i used a photo of a tree i'd taken years and years ago, made b+w copies and turned them into acrylic lifts.  i cobbled the lifts together to make a single tree.  cage and bird are also lifts.  i put shredded pieces of dictionary pages under the tree because i thought it'd make it look "barky". 

art project #2: 30x40 oils, van gogh rip-off.  my brother requested a reproduction of van gogh's irises.  when he asked, my first thought was, "is that legal?!'  but i guess i will be signing my name, not his...so, here are a few shots of the work in progress.  my deadline is to get in done by april so it'll have enough time to dry and mail out to them, and i can use may to finish pace's baby book.  i'm happy with it so far--i like the brilliance of colors.  it seems like a happy canvas to me.  pace has been great walking around the new addition in our library/computer room.  he knows mama is painting "bowers" (his word for flowers), and knows not to touch it, and happily walks around the easel to get to the window or his toys and books.  

so...cheers to 8 more weeks! 

david's vacation week

vacation weeks at ups are a hassle to go through, to say the least.  it's all seniority based, with the vacation calendar starting at the top and working its way down.  by the time it gets to the bottom of the pack, all the good vacation weeks are already taken (ie, the entire summer), and we're left with random weeks in february or march, sometimes may.  and then there's no guarantee you'll get the week off you signed up for because someone with more seniority within your group may have signed up for the same week, so it'll be theirs, not yours.  so anyway, david found out the thursday before the last week of february that he had that week off for vacation.  talk about good timing, actually!  the only week this whole year we've actually had some snow, and david got it off!  he used all three of his free ski passes he got (courtesy purchasing a water pack at costco) and hit the hills with a friend, and took his teachers quorum from church on a campout in moab.  in between all that fun, we played with pace every day and had some movie nights.  david said he felt like he actually had a vacation! 

at the campsite in arches national park.  they got down to moab, set up camp, and then went on a night hike on a quick trail right off the campsite.  he said it was amazing to see the arches lit up with their flashlights while having the sky full of stars overhead.  it was also very, very cold--got down to a mere 8 degrees that night.  everyone stayed as warm as one can be during 8 degrees of nighttime desert warmth, but a couple of the boys were sure they'd woken up with frostbitten fingers.  the next day they had breakfast and did the devil's garden hike with 8-10 arches along the way, and then topped off the day hiking to the delicate arch.  they were all exhausted!

visit to the library

we went to the library the other day for david to find some books on photography.  pace loved running around the children's section--

he found a place to sit,

found circles on the floor,

found "bowers" in the beautiful stain glass windows (and some fake ones hanging out, too)

and little chairs and tables just his size.  he probably spent a good 20-30 minutes just pushing the chairs around to his liking.  then a little girl came over with two books on halloween.  she had fun showing them to pace, and he thought the pictures were pretty cool.

there was a picture of a cat, and when we asked him what a cat says, he made this face.  no noises to accompany the face.  this is usually the face he pulls when we ask him what sound a dinosaur makes, and then he accompanies it with a few pretty good growls.  i think he just gets so excited sometimes about signs or sounds or words he knows, he just pulls one out of his back pocket, and realizes later it maybe wasn't the matching sign/sound/word.

dinosaur at the mall

there's a dinosaur play area at the mall, and if pace and i go see david at work, we'll stop by to look at the dino.  it's usually filled with running, screaming kids, which freaks pace out.  he's such a timid and sensitive boy--anything too loud or raucous is too much for him to handle  (we've tried weaning him into nursery at church--i don't see him willingly going into that room without david or me just because he's turned 18 months old.  one of us will go with him and play the second hour of church, and then bring him with us to the third hour.  he's getting better, but nursery kids that fight, scream, or cry freak him out, and he starts crying).  

we've tried playing on the dino with other kids there, and the best he's done is stood at my side for 45 minutes with his mouth gaping open and eyes blinking, watching the kids screaming around him, trying to figure out how to enter the arena.  he eventually did start playing, but he went up the stairs so slowly i was afraid the other kids would push him off like a fly on the wall, and then he held up the line at the slide, a vice grip on my fingers and his body frozen, realizing the only way down was down...  we went there early one saturday morning before the place filled up, and pace had a blast running around.

he's always very happy when he finds a chair just his size!

braving the slide.  i was on the other side watching him go up the stairs, and pace was showing me where he was headed.

approaching the slide feet first, just like the stairs at home.

not quite sure he wants to go down--vice grip on my fingers.

what?--i'm alive?!  that wasn't too bad!

stacking 101

pace has turned into the expert stacker.  stacking is not limited to blocks--this kid thinks "outside the block"--any thing he can put on top of another thing, he'll try.  chairs on a box?--why not!  binkies on the side of his crib?--brilliant!  pieces of his sandwich or banana?--even better!  pace gets frustrated very quickly if things don't stack as he'd like them to, or if they fall over prematurely to his completion of the job.  he'll start to whine and look at me for help.  i just look back and say, "uh-oh, it fell down.  try again!"  he's caught on and now says "uh-oh" when things fall, and claps with satisfaction when things go according to plan.

a few other fun pace-isms: 

consistently signs on his own: please, more, help, all done, prayer, blows a kiss, airplane.  often pace will sign "more" and then wait for me to say, "more what?"  and then he'll do his next sign, or point to what he wants more of.  the two cutest are when he asks for "more music", pointing at the cd player in his room, and "more prayer" over a meal, or when david is ready to leave for work in the morning--pace will run over to the carpet and sit down, folding his arms.  he gives a very satisfied nod and grin when you get the right answer.

verbal communication: says "bau" for ball, "buh" for bird, "bau-ooo" for balloon (hasn't gotten the "l" down yet), "mmmen" after prayer, "bowers" for flowers, "up" while pointing up, "nnn" while pointing down (he also uses the vocal intonations with up/down, which is really cute), mama, and david swears he said "airplane" one morning, but he hasn't said it since (i also think i've heard him say a version of spider a couple of times while singing itsy bitsy spider).  he also does a few animal noises: "nay-nay" for horse, "mmmm" for cow, sticks his tongue out and pants for dog, "aarrrrr" for dinosaur.  we got him a dinosaur bath towel the other day--it has a hood and little claw pockets for his hands.  the hood completely covers his face, going down to his chin, but he put it on and walked all around the house saying "aaarrr" over and over--cutest. thing. on. earth.  

he has a huge non-verbal vocabulary of 50-100 words at least, if not more, understands double commands (ex: go get the ball and bring it to mama), and has turned into quite the little mama's helper.  he loves, loves, loves to help me do laundry (he picks up the clothes from the floor and puts them into the washing machine, or helps me move the loads from the washing machine to the dryer), cook dinner (he sits on the counter while i'm prepping ingredients, and mostly plays with the fruit bowl, taking out all the fruit and then putting them all back in again), and put away clean dishes from the dishwasher--he comes running from another room if he hears me open the dishwasher (he loves to hand me the silverware, and pulls out all his forks and spoons for his drawer, then hands me whatever else is on the bottom rack to put away--this means i don't have to bend over anymore, which is sooo nice with my growing belly!  he loves to close the dishwasher door, too.  we're still trying to teach him the difference between clean and dirty dishes, as every time he sees the dishwasher open he wants to put away the silverware!).

"reading":  it's really more word recognition than reading, but pace has quite the reading vocabulary.  when we write the word down, he either points to the item, or does the sign.  pointing: hat, head, hair (points to head for all of these), ear, nose, mouth, teeth, tongue, eyes, arm, shoulder, elbow, toes, shoes, spoon, ball, yawn (he makes the noise).  signing: wave, arms up, arms down, clap.  he also enjoys drawing and knows a few shapes--you draw them and ask him to point them out, he'll point to the correct requested sign every time--triangle, square, circle.