Of Toddler Beds and Pacifiers.........

I'm Ready for my Close-up Auntie Ren!


The Clothes make the Boy or the Boy makes the clothes?


Happy Birthday Dear Empress - Happy Birthday to you!

YUMMY!!

Vroom Vroom!

Ah - The Pacies - The Pacies! (Oh When Oh When Will these Pacies Leave - Oh When Oh When Will they GO!!!!???)

A view to a room!

Lots to tell these days. We are still settling into being a family of four! Let me tell you - going from no kids to one baby was tough. Going from one toddler to TWO - is like herding CATS!! (Grumpy for no reason cats!) But we are managing. Today we decided that it was time to get the futon out of there - so we took it apart and put it in the basement (which soon will be the finished playroom - hopefully). We set up the adorable Toddler Bed (Thanks Mr T!!) that my sissy brought during her recent drive by and then took the Emperor to choose bedding... Voila!

We also celebrated EFPs birthday at school this past week - cupcakes and ice cream cones as requested. A good and messy time was had by all! Especially EBB - who is still a little confused about the whole singing and eating - but he is nothing if not accommodating! He ate the cupcake and cone and smiled a lot! In fact he is starting at EFP's school tomorrow. We have decided to place him in pre-school for the remainder of this school year and the summer. It is a long story - but he is not ready for school at this point. With his surgery scheduled for Wednesday (4/16) and the recovery which will take a couple of weeks - there seemed little point in placing him in a school which has crazy ideas about which grade he should be in (there is that pesky birth certificate problem again). We think this is best - he has neither the language nor social skills to make a good start - we will see where we are after some ST and the summer.

Now on tap - me going back to work part time next week. DH and I have decided to split our time so each of us will work part time... and that should cover the next few weeks while EBB recovers. EFP is taking it all in, I know she is glad SHE is not the one spending so much time at the MD office. She has been pretty good about the whole business - but it is hard. She does get jealous and so far is acting out in minor ways - irritating more than anything else. Suddenly she has discovered the joys of Chinese Opera (singing in a high pitch at the top of her lungs about some dying cat - near as I can figure). She has been singing AND talking night and day for a few months now. I mean CONSTANT!! She is certainly following in the footsteps (wearing the latest shoes) of her beloved cousin Miss T. most of the time she is singing her own compositions - but occasionally she will sing something from another era - standards mostly - ABCs, Twinkle Twinkle, Old MacDonald, etc. which she has decided are HER songs - that is not to be sung by either Mommy or "brudder" - and since I have been trying to teach him the ABC song... which I am now forbidden (in her presence) from doing..YIKES!

We are working on teaching "Brudder" how to recognize names of stuff... it is weird - but if I tell him to put on his shoes - he will put on his shoes. If I show him a picture of shoes - and say "shoes" two second later he will point to some other object... don't know yet if this is cognition or language issues. Oh Well... we have bigger fish to fry. The child is scared of animals - ALL animals. If a cat is in the room he is afraid. He saw a little dog and I thought he would have a heart attack... so we are resolved to keep him away from the family dogs for a bit - and try walking around our neighborhood nightly - so he can see the dogs - but not interact with them as yet. It is so sad - that he had so little contact with the world that perfectly normal things are scary and unusual. So that is pretty much it for now... I am still organizing the pics from our trip and will try to back-post when I get a few moments.. (HA!).