Swimming and a Funny Story

We have a real swimming pool, but it is such a pain for me to manage both boys by myself in any real amount of water, so I bought a little kiddie pool to keep on our porch for the boys to splash in and stay cool this summer. Of course they both love the water and especially love splashing as much water out of the pool as possible. We've only had it for a day, but I anticipate that this will be a good source of entertainment and cooling all summer.

Now for my funny story which is completely unrelated to the pool. This afternoon toward the end of naptime I heard Asher screaming in his room. This wasn't normal "I just want to get out of here" or "I had a bad dream" crying, but it was more like panicked screaming. I went down to get him out of his room and saw his down comforter with the cover on the floor with him inside of the cover and obviously trying to get out. I talked to him to try to calm him down while I was searching for the opening. I finally found it, but every last book he has in his room was also inside the cover. So I had to remove all those to get to him, only to find that his stuffed animals were also inside. I finally got to Asher to find that he was completely naked. His diaper was lying on his bed (a fact I missed when I ran into the room) and his clothes were lost in the abyss of the cover and down comforter along with a few monster trucks he had drug in with him. I have no idea what he was doing in there, why all of his possessions needed to be with him, or how long he had been in there. For all I know, he didn't nap at all and just spent the whole time bonding with his toys and books in the cozy confines of his down comforter and its cover.

A Year and a Half

Leif is quite the little personality. I have always said that he is "sensitive" because he can get set off on crying and whining so easily, but he can also giggle and enjoy the most simple things.
Leif LOVES to read! He would sit on my lap for hours if I would just keep reading to him. Lately we have had a little stack of books that we keep near us to read for nap or bedtime. As soon as we get near the end of one book, he grabs the next book to hand to me. He is always a little distressed when there are no more books to grab and leans over the edge of the chair to see if he can get one of the ones I put on the ground after we read it. He likes to snuggle with his blankie and his stuffed goat (which Austin has succeeded in making him absolutely love.)
Leif has always been a bit of a mama's boy. He has always chosen me above anyone else and been really upset if I was gone for too long. Lately, he has been really attached to Austin. If Austin is gone at work, or especially when he was gone for 3 days at his uncle's funeral, Leif says "dad, daddy, dad" over and over. When Austin is home, he loves to run up to him and say "dad" just to get his attention.
Leif has a new favorite thing to do. He loves to put his head on the ground with his feet still planted on the ground (so he makes a little upside down V) and look between his legs and giggle. Once I even caught him doing this when he was really upset and crying because I wouldn't pick him up while I was making dinner. He was walking around the room howling about how upset he was then he suddenly got quiet and I looked back to find him in his upside down position quietly laughing to himself. He most especially loves to assume this position in the middle of diaper changes. While I am down in the drawer trying to get out a new cloth diaper for him, he gets up and sticks his little naked bum up in the air, and of course I can't resist pinching those cute little naked cheeks.
Leif continues to be an amazing sleeper! I swear that kids needs like 16 hours of sleep some days. He sleeps at least 12, sometimes 13 hours each night and at naps he sleeps at least 2 hours, but sometimes 3 hours. Occasionally Leif doesn't take a very good nap, but that is rare and it has been so long since I've been up with him at night, that I don't even remember it. (Asher is much more likely to have me up in the middle of the night due to his diaper leaking; his diaper not leaking, but him insisting that it did; or a nightmare)
Leif is getting pretty good at naming body parts. He likes to tell me over and over again where his nose, foot, hand, hair, and head are. The one that we are having the most trouble with is "eye". He will continually point to his ear (or mine) and say eye, even though we correct him every time. If you ask where is ear is, he will sometimes point to his ear, but he will never say it. He also point to his bellybutton if you ask where it is, but he can't say that one yet.
Here are some photos of Leif I got this afternoon. He and Asher LOVE playing outside, so I spend a lot of time sitting on the porch reading a book or talking to them. 

Hiking

We did our first official hike of 2014 today. We started the same hike on Saturday, but it was kind of a spur of the moment last minute thing and we didn't bring the carrier for Leif, who obviously can't hike very far. So we only made it a little ways on Saturday and said we would come back later. This morning at about 9 Austin asked me what we were going to do for Memorial Day. I suggested we go hiking even though it was a little late in the morning, but we decided to get the boys ready as fast as we could and go. We brought the carrier for Leif so he could ride and Asher was a champ and hiked the whole way. It was a pretty easy loop and was only about 2 miles, but there were a lot of rocky places and a few steep inclines and Asher did great. Austin carried Leif for the first half and I did the second half. He was a little upset about having to sit still for so long, but he got a break for a little while half way through and entertained himself while I was carrying him by pulling my hair, pushing my head around, and pointing to my ear and insisting that it was my eye.
Asher has lots of fun seeing new bugs and plants. He was particularly interested in the beetles and grasshoppers, but informed us quite clearly that he does not like bees, even though we lots of fat bumblebees. At the very beginning of the trail head there is a pond where we could hear lots of frogs and crickets. Asher told us many times that he liked the sound of the frogs and was excited to get back to them on the way back to the car. Asher fell a couple of times and scraped his leg up once, but made it through just fine.
 Even though we left much later than we would have liked, the hike ended up being really fun and not too hot. We plan on doing this hike a few more times this summer, but will have to go earlier in the day as the summer gets hotter.
After the hike the boys got to eat at McDonalds for a fun treat. (I just got a sandwich from Subway and brought it over to McDonalds to eat with them). Afterwards, naps were very needed to help recoup their energy from all that walking and sun!

34 Months

Asher is getting to a stage that I love! He is starting to be interested in letters, numbers, and reading. We talk about the letters of the alphabet quite a bit and he is able to recognize some of the capital letters. He is best about "A for Asher" of course, but he can also recognize, B, D, G, J, L, M, N, P, R,  and T most of the time. Its really fun when we are out or looking at something and he will suddenly say "its A for Asher". That's typically the only one that he recognizes spontaneously without me asking, but when I ask what the others one are he can usually name them. I don't think it will be too long before he can recognize the whole alphabet.
We haven't worked on number recognition too much, but we do count all the time and Asher can rote count to 10 if he wants to. Of course he skips numbers or repeats quite a bit, but he is on his way. As far as reading goes, Asher likes to "read" the books that we read him most often, which is of course just memorization, but I have been pretty impressed with what he can do. Austin reads "Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See" to Asher whenever he puts him to bed, so he can read the whole thing to Austin, but he gets shy and silly if I try to listen in. He has started reading some of the simple books that I read to him, but after the first page, he acts shy and tells me to read to him. Its so much fun to watch him learn and put new things together.
I love listening to Asher's stories. His language skills are pretty good so he can say almost anything he wants to, and he observes and remembers more than we give him credit for sometimes. Its really fun when its just Asher and I (when Leif is asleep and Dad is working or something) and he starts telling me about something that happened either that day or possibly months ago. His concept of time is a little mixed up, so usually he says "it was last week" or "a few weeks ago" even it was something that just happened. Usually the whole of the story is just him repeating back to me everything that happened, but its interesting to hear it from his perspective.
The idea of "because" is a really trick one for Asher.He usually states things backward when using this word. For example "Jellycat is crying because I'm hugging him" or "My back hurts because I need to sit in Daddy's chair" when really he means the other way around.
I mentioned earlier that Austin read the same books to Asher whenever he puts him to bed. This is probably the reason that Asher pitches a fit whenever its Austin's turn to put him to bed and cries for Mommy to put him to bed. I think Asher has caught on that Mom is a much better reader and reads a wider variety of books (as well as being a push-over that finds it really hard to refuse "one last story" even if the last 3 or 4 were supposed to be the last). However, Mom isn't as good or as willing as Dad is to read books while singing or with a horrible British accent.
Something funny that Asher likes to do while we are reading is to pretend to eat any pictures of food that happen to be in the story. Of course Jellycat (and any other of the many toys that keep him company at night) always has to have a sample too and sometimes it takes forever to turn the pages because everyone has to have some.
Asher's favorite color is most decidedly BLUE! All of his cups, bowls, and plates must be blue or they are unusable. He told me this morning that he likes his blue sweatpants and not his black sweatpants, "but
some people like black sweatpants." Outside of eating ware, Asher isn't as picky about colors, but he often says he does not like green because Dad likes green and he gets a little offended when I say that I like blue too. We have two colored sporks (a little fetish of Austin's that he is trying to pass down to his children)-one is blue and one is green. Asher always wants the blue one so Leif gets the green one (because if his brother is eating off a spork he has to do the same). This afternoon, Asher saw a plate with the green spork on it and got all upset and told me that green was not his favorite color. He calmed down when he realized that it was Leif's plate and there was another plate with the blue spork on it, but its funny to see him care so much about it.
Asher is a bossy little fellow who thinks he runs the world sometimes. He loves to tell everyone what to do. I'm sure he gets this from his mom :), but we are working on him asking questions like "mom, can you get me some milk?" instead of "mom, get me milk" He needs a lot of reminders to ask instead of tell, but he is getting there.
Here are today's pictures of our little Asher, who is getting too big too fast.