Happy Happy 6 months Nate

Happy 6 months Nate! Nate will be 6 months old tomorrow and what a 6 months they have been. Whew! He is such a joy to us. Nate has this sparkling smile and twinkling eyes that just catch hold of your heart and wont let go. He is such a love. He is sitting up now, with a few topples here and there, but he is definitely mastering it. Nate loves to chat and is pretty much a happy squealer throughout the day.

To celebrate his 6 month birthday, Nate got solids (rice cereal) for the first time today. This pictures show how much he loved it...look at the smile. We anticipated that he would take a couple of bites and spit most of it out. Not a chance. Our little fatty chowed down and loved every minute of it (he is such a King/Munger male...big eaters one and all). The last picture shows proud mommy (me) with her little man after his first meal.

Life is pretty sweet in the King household these days!

Happy 22 months Eli

Eli is 22 months old today!!!!! Which means that he is almost 2. WOW! How in the world did that happen. We just wanted to update everyone on super toddler's genius as all supper proud/obnoxious parents must do (we just cant help ourselves...he is that cute). Eli has been working hard on knowing his shapes and he has circle, square, star and triangle down pat. In fact often times we will be out in the world and he will point out something like a drain cover and say circle. We think he is pretty special stuff. He also counts in a unique and special Eli way 4, 2, 8, 1 and so on. We like it. This shows that he is not afraid to break with conformity and think outside the box.
Eli is also starting to sing songs with us. Our favorites are A, B, C (which is more like E, H, S) and the "itsy bitsy spider song". He even helps out with special effects on our favorite choo choo train song which we have on tape and will post as soon (no really, we promise).
He continues to be super gigantic toddler. He looks like a tall slim guy these days but we think he is close to 34 pounds and hovering around 39 inches or so. You know, your average 3.5 year old.
We cant wait to see what every day with Eli brings. You never know from one minute to the next what you are going to get with this tornado of a boy.

Nate-Dog

Yep! Thats our boy! Chunky thighs, big cheeks, and a tough guy pose! He looks like he is saying "you want a piece of me? ". Nate is growing by leaps and bounds. He is almost sitting up, chewing on everything in sight and rolling around a ton. He seems in no hurry to crawl for which we can only shout "THANK YOU". I dont think there has ever been a more content, sweet, mellow baby than Nate (except maybe his dad, who was apparently an equally fat and happy guy). He will be 6 months next week and to celebrate he gets to eat his first real food (rice cereal...yummy)!

Friends

We are fortunate to belong to a fabulous playgroup of 5 moms, 4 toddlers and 3 babies. Eli and his little friends Matthew, Harrison and Marrisa are 2 months apart in age and Nate, Zadie and Liam are all 2 months apart in age (Eli is the baby of the toddler group...though the biggest of course and Nate is the middle child of the baby goup, and again our littlest thug is quite a bit bigger). Last saturday we forced the husbands to have a bbq with us and we all had a fabulous time. Of course the husbands are mostly nerdy scientist types too so it makes since that they would get along (just like I get along with my fellow nerdy do-gooder friends). The bottom picture shows Nate flirting with his pal Zadie and top shows Eli, Matthew and HArrison eating at the big boy table. Unfortunately, Eli's best pal Marrisa (he calls her Rissy...it is toddler love) was under the weather and couldnt join in.

Tales of Toddler Disobedience, and other tidbits from our week

It has been quite an interesting couple of weeks in toddler-ville (the place in which all parents of a special type of toddler reside). Eli has discovered that he is in fact a true-toddler and that means that we (smug parents that we are) are not going to avoid pushing/smacking from Eli like we thought we were. As a result, Eli has been spending some time in timeout at home and at school. At home, he has a naughty step and when he feels like Nate is infringing on his space (usually when I try to read to both of them at the same time) and he pushes/or tries to push him he stays on the naughty step for 1 minute. Now, when Eli is feeling especially "naughty" when his time is up he will actually choose to stay on the naughty step instead of reading with Nate and I. HE actually says "No Read, naughty step"... Seriously, he is so my child.

At school when he gets in an altercation he has to pick out a book and go sit alone. On Thursday after pushed a little girl (who started the fight by shoving him off the slide...nice), he went and picked out his own book and sat down before his teacher even had a chance to tell him to do so. Perfect! He clearly knows the rules and consequences and chooses to break the rules anyways. We fear for our sanity with this one.

Along the same lines, Eli has a new catch phrase (not to replace "uh no, what happened", but just to enhance the wonder of it all). He says " I no like it". Now this could actually mean that he doesnt like something or it could mean (and it mostly does) that he is feeling a tad bit toddleresque and wants to exert some independance. For Eli a simple "no" is to mudane a word to possibly explain what he really means.

Now on to some word play. When Eli first started saying the word "truck" it sounded like "F**K". It was terrible to see that sweet cherub face bust out with such a raunchy word...though a bit funny if we are going to be honest about it. For the past 2 months he has said truck correctly, until yesterday when he tried to say "dump truck" for the first time and forgot about pronunciatingt the "TR" part of truck. Thats right it came out "dumb F**K". The family was on a drive-through starbucks run (seriously we have two children under 22 months, we live on caffeine) and Eli pointed out the window and shouted "dumb f**K). I think we need to start recording every moment of every day so we dont miss these gems.

P.S. The two pictures show our most recent attempt at finger painting at home. I decided to spice things up by giving Eli some small sponges to paint with. Note to parents out there: 1) too much paint=sponges=watery paint bubbles, 2) watery paint bubbles can travel 8-10 feet when slapped by little toddler hands at a high speed, 3) finally, washable paint, like washable markers does not in fact mean that it comes totally out of fabric, furniture, walls, windows, blinds, dogs, moms hair, ceiling fans, doors, baby brothers or your own mouth.

Nate the Great!

Check out the rolls!

Happy Happy Boy!

Nate the great is getting his two front teeth and is pretty mad about it. Now for Nate that means that he would like my company and undivided attention at night and that he only wants to nap in my arms (which really I do not mind all that much...the nap part not the night part). Nate continually amazes us with his sweet and sunny disposition. He is just a giant teddy bear. He looks very rolly-polly these days which we love. It makes our hearts happy to see Nate so robust and healthy. Thats our boy

Finger Painting and the Word of the Week!

Tee Hee Hee...While momma wasn't looking I licked the paint and got my face!

These are the hands of pure artistic genius!

This is what I look like after the sink bath I had to have following finger painting!

Eli and I are taking a toddler art class on Monday afternoons and it is SOOOOO much fun. He loves finger painting most of all though, so while Nate took his morning nap Eli and I had a finger painting party...and what a party it was! He loves the feel of the paint and calls it sticky, wet, and gooey. He also tells me what colors he wants and is totally fascinated by the colors he makes by swirling them together.

In other Eli news, the word of the week is NO! When the mood strikes him (which can be once a day or every 10 minutes) the word NO spews from his mouth at an alarming rate. However, he is not indiscriminate about how he uses it. When he is in a No mood and you ask him " Eli do you love mommy? " he will say no. " Eli do you love Daddy?", and he will say no. Now if you ask him, "Eli are you a good boy?" He will say " Eli good boy". Yep, thats my boy, with a smart mouth at the ripe old age of 21 months! (My mom says this is pay back as we all know he got this from me).

"Oh No, What Happened?"

Eli has the face of a sweet cherub...with a hint of the devil in his sparkling eyes! There is no doubt about it, our big boy is a mischief maker of the first order. His new favorite phrase is "Oh No, What Happened?". This could innocently mean, "oh no, I knocked over my blocks", or even "oh no, where did all of my crackers go". But not so innocently it also means, " oh no, I just dumped over an entire glass of milk on the dog, on purpose. How did that happen?" He even puts his hands up in the air and says it so seriously. Yep, he is joker all right.

The Boss

In the first picture Nate is wearing a hard hat that says "Boss" on the front. He and Eli both need one of these hats as they are both clearly in charge around here. Eli actually gave the hat to Nate to wear in a wonderful moment of brotherly sharing and then promptly wanted it back. Oh well, at 21 months even sharing for 3 minutes is sharing. They are so cute together. Eli is a maniac and based on these new pictures of Nate, I do not think our little guy is far behind!