Much Ado About Zilch

Well, this is probably going to be one of those posts that is mostly pictures.

And I'm sure no one is sick of looking at pictures of my kids, right?

Right.

I guess we'll start with Ellie.

This girl is hilarious. She was kind of a stinker while we were living with my parents, but ever since we moved into our house, it's seriously been night and day. She goes to bed without complaining. She actually eats her food (it still takes her 45 minutes to eat a bowl of cereal though). She even eats vegetables and that has been a battle that I didn't think I'd ever stop fighting. She goes to nursery without crying. I can send her upstairs to go to the bathroom all by herself. She's even said that "soon" she will stop sucking on her fingers and that when she gets "bigger" she will poop in the potty. Still working on those.

She now officially weighs 30 pounds exactly (with clothes and shoes on). And she's started to become interested in letters and the sounds they make. She's known all of that for a long time, but now she'll randomly say, "People starts with a puh-puh-puh. That's a P!" In fact, the other day she informed me that the word bum had a B and an M in it. Hopefully we will be able to start preschool in the next couple of weeks. I think she'll love it.

She's a character and she doesn't sit still for very long. These make it hard to get good pictures of her. Mostly I get ones like these:

I told her to do a beautiful smile.

This one might be my favorite. We were at the park and she wouldn't play.

This is "exercising".

And lately she's been taking to playing dress-up during her naps.

And by dress-up, I mean raiding her drawers and putting on as many articles of clothing as she can.

4 shirts, 8 pairs of underwear, pajamas, all over her diaper.

4 shirts, 12 pairs of underwear, 4 shorts all over a diaper. And of course the shoes and socks.

Sweatshirt, 10 pairs of underwear, 3 shorts, over a diaper. And shoes and socks.

I don't know about her obsession with underwear.

But every once in a while I get a good picture.

She put flowers on my flip-flops so they would be beautiful like hers.

I wish this one was in better focus.

So that's the latest with Ellie. She definitely keeps us entertained and on our toes at all times.

And Malcolm.

Little Malcolm.

Little Malcolm with be 4 months old on Friday. He weighs in at not quite 19 pounds and wears mostly 9 month clothing (although a couple are starting to get small...) He has to stand all the time, he eats like a horse and almost always wakes up happy. Unfortunately, since moving into the house he has stopped sleeping through the night. But he's starting to do better now.

There's a weird thing about Malcolm that really only family members know...

he has sticky feet.

Like, seriously, they can pick things up just by touching them. But they are only sticky when he is awake. Once he falls asleep, the suddenly turn normal. It's really weird. But because of his sticky feet, he has learned to scoot.

He started mostly under the blanket and only stopped because there was a wall in the way. He can also spin on his back. In the mornings I usually find him almost at a 90 degree angle from how I put him down. And he has started doing it on his stomach too, although his arms aren't ready for that yet and they usually get stuck underneath him. He doesn't like that.

His hair always looks wet because... well, because it is wet. Because he sucks on his hands and then rubs his hair. He has eczema or something up in his hair and he scratches it all the time. He usually wears mittens, but his hands are now too big for them, so I have to use socks. And the back of his head is noticeably flat. I pointed that out to his doctor (along with his itchy skin) at his 2 month check up and she told me that both of them were nothing to worry about. I'm taking him back on Friday and giving her one more chance to redeem herself before I tell her she's stupid and switch pediatricians.

His favorite person in the world is Ellie. Followed by whichever parent is not holding him. Followed by pretty much every person in the world. Ellie tries to take good care of him.

She even shares with him most of the time.

That's her blankie and her baby. (The baby, funnily enough, is also named Malcolm.)

And just in the last couple of days we've started giving him some rice cereal mixed with formula. He's not quite 4 months yet, but he's a big boy and he begs for food.

He wasn't quite sure what to think of it, but Will got him to actually swallow some instead of just spitting it out. And just fyi, this is the same booster seat we used for Ellie when she was this age. (Actually she was a month older and didn't sit in it or fill it out as well has he does.)

Aw. December 2010.

Malcolm

Ellie

Anyway, the point is that he's a big guy. And getting bigger. He has to be held all the time. Sometimes he has to be standing when you hold him, which is just ridiculous. But I do it. He stands on my hand or my hip or whatever while I'm walking around. Also, he likes to talk. He babbles almost constantly and even tries to sing with us sometimes. He really likes it when I sing to him. Sometimes I just have to start singing and he will immediately calm down. Until I stop.

Little stinker.

(Ignore the fact that there is a plastic bag right next to my grabby, slobbery baby. I moved it.)

And on to other random things...

Super Daddy, playing with both kids at once.

Reading stories.

Um... oh, so I will end on a final note about our house-owning-ness. We were supposed to close on our other house next week, but they moved the date on us (again) because we needed to fix a leak in the roof over the back deck. We fixed it, but they need to have it re-appraised and I guess that can't be done this week. It's annoying.

But in the 2 weeks of living in this house, Will has replaced a toilet and a garbage disposal, both of which are new experiences. And that's pretty cool. I took pictures, but they're not all that exciting.