What's up Playa Playa?

I took both kids to the gym for the first time this morning. I drop them off in the babysitting room with the high school girl and I am a stress case. Josie is NOT the type of baby who will just sit in her carseat for an hour. She's a bit more high maintenance than that and will definitely need to be held. So I watch vigilantly on the TV monitor that shows the babysitting room, basing my workout around which machines will allow me to watch my children. There was a little crying by J by on the whole, everything went well.



When I go to pick up the kids, I walk in to find an tween-age girl kneeling on the floor with her arms around Marsh. She tells me he got a little scared by a part in Scooby Doo (the show the other children were watching) and wanted her to hold him. And then he wouldn't let her let go. To demonstrate, she attempts to drop her arms and he reaches down and puts them back around himself. Sigh.....Marshall likes the ladies.



And just because this picture is adorable, here are Josie and Will discussing current events. (Notice how distraught Josie looks.)

Marshall to the rescue!

Marshall had a blast this Sunday. First we went out to breakfast. ("Mommy what is this?!" "It's sausages wrapped in pancakes. I know, heaven huh?") Then we visited the fire station. My friend Sandy's husband, Rudy, is a firefighter in Seatac and he invited us for a tour. Marshall had a blast! We all know he isn't shy and he was into everything. And Rudy showed him everything, the tools, the aid car, where the firefighters sleep and eat, etc. Probably ranks up there as one of the best days ever for Marshall.

He got all buckled in and got to wear the mask.

Rudy hooked it up to the oxygen and tried to show Marsh how to breath in the mask, but that freaked him out a bit. When asked if he wanted to put the mask on again, he promptly said no.

Then Rudy pulled out the fire engine and Marsh rode shotgun. He had the lights and sirens going and everything. Marshall pulled down the headphones and put them on by himself, so Rudy put his on too and they talked "fire fighter talk". ("There's a fire in the tree! We need to get the hoses!")

Even though he couldn't hold his head up straight because it was so heavy, Marshall would not take this helmet off.

And Josie slept through the whole thing, sirens and all.

New Rule

I was reading my cousin Autumn's blog (she has three girls, ages 3, 2, and 1...and another on the way. And she still has hair....I know, Superwoman.) Anyway, she was writing about how she has a great rule in her house that only one child can cry at a time. I love that rule! So I decided to implement it today. We came home from a playgroup a little late and Marshall was cranky so he was in tears about not being able to watch a TV program. (And he says it just like that too. "I want to watch a television program!" Hilarious.) So I finally get him calmed down and washed up for lunch and Josie wakes up in her carseat and starts wailing. Marshall starts fake crying to make sure he gets just as much attention as his sister, but I told him,"I'm sorry Marshall, but the rule is that only one child in this house can cry at a time, and you already had your turn when we got home." Clearly I did not think this would work. BUT IT DID. He was like "Oh, okay, I'll just wait for my next turn." This is a fabulous rule. Now if only Josie would abide by it.... :)


So Josie LOVES tummy time. She laughs and smiles (and then inevitably burps and spits up...I think that's why she likes it so much. It gets the bubbles out of her belly.) She lifts her head way up now too. More than the 45 degree milestone (my children are so advanced :)). And she is absolutely adorable when she does it. Unfortunately, the camera didn't pick that up and here she looks like a very clueless/surprised old man. And I wouldn't be presenting an accurate picture if I didn't show you what happened immediately after happy, smiley time. :)

Oregon Trail...

Sorry for the lack of posts. We just spent about 3 weeks at my parents' house in Oregon and the computer was in Marshall's room. So I couldn't blog as usual when the children were asleep. That and I was on vacation and kind of didn't do much of anything. It was delightful. :) Marshall had a great time playing outside with Grandpa and the dogs. And Grandma taught him how to squirt the hose, which he promptly put into use by squirting her. Priceless. Josie is smiling a ton now and she loves to talk (hmmm...where'd she get that from?). She is in general a very good natured baby but when she wants something BOY does she let you know it. She is LOUD (again...I can't possibly imagine where she gets that from)

Here's a funny little story....so I was singing "Yankee Doodle" to Marshall for the 4th of July and he loved it, but unfortunately I couldn't remember all the words. So later I hear Marshall singing to himself, "Yankee Doodle went to town riding on a pony, Stuck a feather in his hat and called it macaroni. Yankee Doodle keep it up, Yankee Doodle Dandy! Something, something, something, something, and with the girls be handy!" I have scarred him for life. (I've also taught him the incorrect words to "Everybody was Kung Fu Fighting!")

Marshall's first popsicle. He didn't quite know what to do with himself.


Josie in mid laugh

Marshall thought this was the funniest thing he had ever done....until he got the basket stuck on his head.

The three amigos. Marshall really wanted to Grandpa to read his book out loud.

You say potato, I say brown root vegetable

So Will took Marshall out for breakfast this morning while I went to a doctor's appointment. They got muffins and went down to the water in Edmonds. Marshall loves to look through the binoculars and he tells Will," I see the river and the ferry boat." Will tells Marshall that it's actually called the sound, not a river. (To which Marshall, as usual, replies, "No Dad, it's a river.") Five minutes later Marshall is looking through the binoculars again and says, "I see the ferry boat and the noise." How cute is that?

Here are Josie's 2 month stats.

12 lbs 13.5 oz. (90%)

23.25 inches (75%)

head circumference 15 in. (50%)

Big baby, little head. :)

Here's a picture of Marshall and Megan (the girl he was babysat with) on her birthday at the zoo. If only this had audio since they were both telling each other what to do. At this moment, Marshall is instructing Megan on the proper way to walk in the street and Megan is telling Marshall that he needs to walk and not run when you hold hands. Priceless.

He's sooooo two.

So Marshall has decided that when he is not getting the attention he believes he deserves that negative attention is better than nothing......sigh... He normally never lets me get to 3. I have gotten to 2 so many times in the past week and begged, "Please don't make me get to 3. I really don't want to have to give you a time out." To no avail. Lots of time outs in the past week. But there are some hilarious stories to go along with it. I think he knows when I am close to reaching the end of my rope and does something really cute right then.

The other day Marshall was playing in our backyard which consists of a flat area near the house, a fairly steep hill with steps, and then another flat area that Will just woodchipped. So Marshall is on top of the hill and I am talking with my mom on the phone. Marshall decides he needs more attention and starts to go down the steep hill (something he KNOWS is off limits...not only is it steep, but it is pretty grown over and that's normally where we toss the dog poop). So I say, "Marshall, get back on those woodchips please. You know you are not supposed to go down the hill." To which he replies, "NO!!!!" I promptly get off the phone and bring him down the hill to time out, explaining "You don't talk to your mother like that. When Mommy asks you to do something, you need to listen."

Cut to the evening. I have just given Josie a bath and Marshall was "helping" by standing on a chair by the sink. When bath time is over he begs to play in the water. I tell him he can't do that because it's not safe for him to be in the kitchen by himself and I need to go get Josie dressed before she starts to reach decibels only dogs can hear. Marshall stays in the kitchen. I am in Josie's room and I say "Marshall Peyton, what did Mommy say? You need to get out of the kitchen." I don't hear anything and I think he is ignoring me and am getting a little peeved. Right at the moment when stern but level headed mommy voice is about to go to not happy mommy voice, I hear, "No thank you dear!" Clearly he was thinking to himself, "When I said NO! on the hill I went to time out. How do I tell her I am going to stay in the kitchen while still following the rule 'You don't talk like that to your Mommy'?" Hilarious, but still a time out, this time focusing on the "When Mommy asks you to do something you need to do it."

Here's a picture of Marshall playing "minature golf". (He was protesting that I was taking a picture instead of playing with the other lacrosse stick.)

Letting go...

So I figured out the real reason that I procrastinated so long on the bumper. Because it was a given that once I finished the bumper and we got another monitor, Josie would go sleep in her crib. Yeah, I definitely had a hard time doing that last night. It's so funny because with Marshall it didn't even phase me. I think he was in his crib by 3 weeks. But even though everyone tells you how fast babies grow up, I didn't really get it. But now with Josie, I know how fast it going to go and I definitely had a hard time letting her go from brand-newborn to little baby. I swear she was saying "Mommy, mommy? Where are you?" (Actually she slept like a log, only waking up once at 2 and then at 5 when Will got up for work and then I had her sleep with me.....what? I needed it okay?)

In other news, Marshall grew out of his carseat and got a new big boy carseat that will eventually turn into his booster. It has a cup holder. M loves the cup holder and thinks he is something special in his new seat. He wanted me to bring it into the house this morning after our outing to the park. I had to explain that there is a reason it's called a carseat.