Kid Update

Hazel has a fascination with words. Her ears are magnets for new vocabulary and fun phrases. She's already a major chatterbox, and then how she throws in all sorts of unexpected words is just too funny.

One night at dinner, Hazel saw that I was almost finished eating and said, "Dude, you are goin' to town!"

Earlier that day, she had asked me to put a bunch of clips in her hair, and after the fourth or fifth one, she started calling out, "We are really goin' to town here!" "Why are we goin' to town on my hair?" "Woah, we are totally goin' to town with these clips!"

Every morning before Todd leaves for work, we all say, "Cheerio!" I tried to change it to "adios" or something else one day, and Hazel insisted that Todd not leave until I had said "cheerio."

One day we were at the park and she was pretending a section of trees were some dark woods. She said, "It's a little scary. Come with me and comfort me."

The other day she wanted some privacy in the bathroom, and as I took my leave, she insisted that I "leave the door open just a smidge."

She loves words like terrible, mischief, nibble, and fascinating. I notice her speaking in terms she heard in Berenstein Bears books, like "Dear me, no!' and starting sentences with "Say." I just think it's the most adorable thing ever.

In other Hazel news, she has been taking a gymnastics class and is a super star at spider walks (precurser to handstands), bear walking, and forward rolls. Her favorite part of class is jumping on the trampoline. The class is a good outlet for her energy and channels her impressive strength and balance. She talks non-stop through the whole thing, and the teachers are constantly calling her name to get her to remember to keep moving (as the line of kids waiting behind her backs up!) She's a bit of a daydreamer, turns out. We went to Happy Hollow a week ago (a local amusement park/zoo for little kids) and we saw that Hazel's just barely tall enough to ride the roller coaster all by herself. She wanted to give it a go, and I was thrilled, since that would mean she could ride it when we don't go with a friend who can watch Jack while I ride with her. I was so proud of her. She felt so big and excited and she totally held her arms in the air as it climbed its first hill. Maybe we desensitized her at Disneyland??? Whatever the reason, she was totally brave and LOVED going on her own. Make the picture bigger so you can see the fantastic look on her face!Jack got his first haircut today. Crazy that he and Hazel got their first haircuts within months of each other. He was hitting the point where his hair looked more feminine and/or rockstar mullet than I would like. So I got out the buzzers and popped a no. 8 on. That's all there was to it. Super easy.

Before:After:

Jack's turning into a bit of a menace. He doesn't really choke anymore, but he still sticks non-food items in his mouth all the time. Then he'll walk towards me, already shaking his head and saying, "uh, uh," as he spits said item out. He waits until I'm watching before dropping food onto the floor when he's in his highchair. Again with the "uh, uh."

If the bathroom door is open, he makes a beeline for the toilet every time. And today's unfortunate accomplishment is that he figured out how to lift both bathroom's toilet lids. Yes, he likes to go fishing. It's going to be harder to manage this bad habit now that he can lift the lid. I hate hearing the lid open, followed by his happy swish, swish. He loves it so much. It's so disgusting.

Jack's started to love having books read to him. He'll grab one out of the book basket, carry it over to me, and climb right onto my lap. He rarely makes it through til the end of the book (even board books) but I'm happy that he's beginning to love books and reading. His current absolute favorite toy is a quart-size ziplock bag of Littlest Pet Shop pieces. He brings it to me several times a day so I can open the bag and he can get all the pieces out. Yesterday I had to put all the smallest pieces inside a snack-size bag inside the big bag because I got tired of taking them out of his mouth. He loves the little animals. When I hold up the cat, he leans in for three or four kisses.