Just an Update

What's life been like here lately?

We've been sick. A lot. And we are finally feeling better and hoping it stays that way...but today Handsome decided to start feeling sick. He has skipped out on a lot of our illnesses, so hopefully he will get well quickly and not spread germs to the rest of the family.

We've been getting ready for spring. And we are EXCITED! Handsome and I built a raised vegetable bed and are waiting to get the soil to fill it. I had wanted to build it myself, but it turns out I had some issues with lack of strength due to pregnancy...and my husband put limitations on me that stated he was not cool with his growing wife using a sledge hammer with our incredibly rocky ground. I will not go into detail about the fun partner I was in making said raised bed. He may have wanted to shoot me at one point. (But it's okay, he didn't do it.) I'll have to share once we plant our little garden in all the areas of our yard...after things warm up a little bit.

Curly and I have been working on her school work again. She loves to learn and we hadn't been doing much since we got home with Gumby. We were just too busy with all kinds of things and getting a routine down. She is learning to count to 100 (with a chart), finally learning to write her name (which apparently the other kids at church know and she wished that she knew how too), and then just normal stuff like rhyming, same and different, shapes, and matching similar objects. She would do "schoolwork" all day at this point if I let her. BUT, we just do the morning so that we both don't get too worn out.

Gumby is learning to say all her letter sounds. She can repeat all of the sounds other than Q and X with ease, those are her two problem sounds. We are not at the point of knowing the letter sounds in association with the image, which I totally DON'T expect her to know yet. That's just our goal with the letters at this point. She enjoys watching Leap Frog's Letter Factory, so I let her watch it daily. That's how Curly learned all of her letter sounds in association with the letter by 18 months old. It's a great video that we have thanks to Vicky =).

Gumby and Smiles are great buddies. While Curly and Gumby like to play sometimes and are the two to share a room, Smiles and Gumby love to hang out together. Their language is at a very similar stage and they get along great...most of the time. I will say, however, that Gumby's favorite "sentence" is "Smiles, NO!", which she must have learned from my consistent saying of the phrase. She even points the finger at him when she says it...then she laughs.

Which brings us to the fact that those two really keep me on my toes with parenting. Smiles has really got me working in my mind right now to be creative. He's at that age where he is just a bit too young to really grasp some of the things that I would normally use. And he learns different than Curly ever did...so different parenting techniques are required for him to learn best. I can't tell you for sure what those techniques are yet, but I'll get back to you after the "experimentation phase" is complete. =D We are in a sort of trial and error phase to see what works for him. Right now he is learning to deal with his emotions, and he isn't doing so well. He thinks that a good way to respond when angry is to find the nearest person and hit them, even if they had nothing to do with the frustration. Also, fit throwing is in full swing. Curly learned quickly that her audience was not going to be anyone but herself if she threw a fit. That was enough for her. Being in her room while she threw it was plenty. Smiles....not so much. He will stop when he gets put in his room to throw the fit, but he is still just as likely to throw another one later. Perhaps he is just a little slower to learn this concept, we will see. He has also been short on sleep, which doesn't help.

Gumby...well, she is just going through her phases so quickly that as soon as I have something figured out, she moves on to the next thing. It's normal for her to go through all the stages that were either stunted or missed living in an institution, so this is to be expected. I just wasn't prepared for how quickly we would move from one "problem" to the next. Usually things last a week or two and each new thing surfaces within a week or so of the previous. She is a quick learner for some things, but others are not even conscious. Like things going in her mouth...this is something that happens all the time, but it's not even something she thinks about that much. And sometimes the things are gross...like a shopping cart. Can you say EWWWW!!! She just puts things in her mouth without thinking about it and I have to remind her constantly NOT to do it. This is more like a new thing that goes into our mouth every week. Like thumbs one week. We got that mostly down after two weeks or so (not doing it) and then we are doing hair. She is still doing the hair and loves to reach over with her tongue and grab a piece of hair to chew on. And when I say chew- I mean CHEW the heck out of it. (I was worried she was going to injure her thumbs.) There are other things too, but the mouth is the hardest thing we are working on with her.

Smiles is also learning good emotions. He has been dealing with anger, but also has been very loving and cuddly. I love that part. He wants snuggle time and shares kisses with me often. He is loving his baby sister too. He likes to lift my shirt and snuggle with her. I'm not sure he really understands, but he enjoys whatever he is thinking and understanding. For some reason he likes to put his feet on her, but he is VERY gentle about it, which is not like his normal little boy self. It's a little weird to be honest. But hey, we are a strange family!

I've been keeping the house mostly clean and organized. This takes most of my energy, so I haven't been spending much time with adults other than Handsome, but it works. The stress produced from a dirty house wears on me in a huge way right now, and as those who have known me through a pregnancy are aware, I get kind of hermity when I am in the later stages anyway. The focus on the little family is sharp, and everything else gets passed up for awhile. I think this has been good for Gumby too. We have all been able to bond and get a good routine that isn't messed with too much, and she seems to do really well with that. Perhaps that's another reason that I haven't been blogging as much. I just don't spend much time being social right now. (That doesn't mean I don't like you anymore. And I'm sure that I'll enjoy blogging more regularly again at some point.)

That's a good update for now. We'll have to do this again sometime soon *wink*.

Oh...and did I forget to mention my little tragedy that nobody else cares about at all? We lost Photoshop in the great computer fiasco of last month. Handsome couldn't get it to install again because of issues with the disk...so I will no longer be a Photoshop owner =(. So sad for me. I'm sure you are all weeping profusely on my behalf...or something like that...

I'm going to pout about that one for a little while longer. It's hard to overcome an addiction.