Godzilla and the Sprout

* It took me a while to get CJ's bookshelf and books over here from the old place, and I think he really missed the books. Ever since I brought them earlier in the week, he's been refusing to go to sleep at naptime and at night. Instead, he gets out of bed and goes to the shelf to leaf through his books. (He can see them since the nightlight is right by the shelf.) I want him to sleep and not spend hours trashing the room, so I've been poking my head in the door periodically and telling him to get back in bed. Last night, Mr. Slick decided to pretend that everything was fine: As I opened the door, he raced back to his bed, jumped in and told me indignantly, "CJ's SLEEPING!"

* Speaking of Mr. Slick, I can tell which toys and books he's not overly fond of. When I ask him to get a toy or book to share with the baby, he invariably offers her certain items (e.g., a little green car shaped like a dragon or this book, which I think is hilarious since it's about a little boy who has mixed feelings about the arrival of a younger sibling) and insists that she should play with those.

* Ora is not exactly trying to talk yet, though sometimes it sounds like she's saying "hi". But she keeps saying something that sounds like "fffftha!" It seems to mean something to her, but I'm not sure what. She says it when she's pointing at objects.

The good: My son pays attention to everything.

The bad: He was certainly paying attention the other day when he overheard someone saying, "Oh my G-d!" With great glee, he immediately began repeating the phrase over and over again. I ignored him, and he stopped after a while.

The ugly: He remembered the phrase and began repeating it again later in the day, but apparently his consonant-scrambling thing had kicked in. This time he was running around saying, "Oh my dog!"

Ora took a few more steps today. The most impressive moment came when Walt put her down on the floor right before bathtime -- he expected her to drop down and crawl, but instead she took about 6 steps. I was too far away to see it, but shortly thereafter I saw her take 3-4 steps on her own. So she's getting very close!

* One of CJ's favorite new words is "breakfast" -- except he pronounces it "beferkst." I get a giggle out of the way he includes all of the proper consonants but scrambles them up.

* Ora's interest in nursing seems to have revived somewhat, perhaps because one of her top front teeth has finally broken through. Still, it takes longer to feed her than it used to. She tends to stop and look around rather than barreling through the feeding as she used to.

* It's getting hard to change her diapers because she keeps trying to escape. She often succeeds.

* She's also obsessed with the book Goodnight Moon. Her baby-sitter bought the book and started reading it to her, and she likes to hear it over and over and over again. This sometimes leads to clashes with CJ since his preference is to hear lots of books, one after another.

One of the things I like about this new apartment is that it opens onto a park in the back. There's a little gate that leads to a big nature preserve with walking trails, and the trails lead to the dog park/basketball court/baseball field/playground area. So today we walked to the playground. It took quite a bit longer to get there than I had expected because of all the hills, so we weren't able to spend much time at the playground. CJ threw a tantrum when I told him we had to go and then wailed all the way home. Poor thing -- he was so tired when we got back that he actually volunteered to take a nap.

So the moral of the story is: We need to go to the park earlier in the day, when we have enough time to manage the walk and the playground.

* Ora took two steps on her own today. She seemed pretty freaked out by it and has not wanted to try again today, at least not at my behest.

* She's also been a huge cranky clingy grump today. Seriously, I could not manage more than 3 steps without her in my arms because she kept chasing me, pulling up on my skirt and then shrieking in a way that was both pitiful and full of rage until I picked her up. Sigh.

* We had fish for dinner tonight, and when CJ saw tartar sauce squeezed onto it, he declared, "Baby's cream!" He thought it was diaper ointment.

* Ora has started pretending to talk on the phone. She picks up the receiver of the toy phone, holds it up to her ear and starts jabbering. Her conversations usually begin with "haaaaa!"

* She's getting closer to walking. She took another unassisted step yesterday, and more importantly, I can see that she wants to walk. She stands, looks at the place where she wants to go, thinks about it really hard, moves her feet ... and then chickens out at the last second. But she really wants to walk!

* CJ had a playdate yesterday with a boy who's a little older, the Shleifers' grandson Shia. He thinks Shia is the coolest person ever and has been talking about him ever since our trip to CT in April. He was so excited when I told him he was going to play with Shia. They had a great time and made a pretty big mess with all the toys.

* Also, CJ seems to have caught on to the fact that the new apartment is "home" now. It clicked for him sometime on Friday, when he realized why I was moving his stuff from the old place.

* Ora figured out how to play peekaboo by holding a book over her face today.

* When I took the kids to the baby-sitter today, I spotted a friend out in the yard with her kids. (She lives 2 doors down from Mrs Z.) So I went over to say hello. CJ was thrilled to see her son, who came to play at our place a few weeks ago. He was also happy to see the kiddie pool and jumped in, shoes and all.

* Today when we went to pick up the keys to the new apartment, CJ saw a fancy sports car drive through the parking lot. He looked at it and said firmly, "CJ's car!" The kid's got expensive taste.

* We also met the mail carrier who's assigned to the new place. She let CJ sit in her mail truck. She encouraged him to honk the horn, but he was too busy trying to turn the wheel and work the gear shift to take much interest in the horn.

* I guess it was inevitable that sooner or later he was going to start recognizing Elmo. He calls him "Ammo".

* This evening while he was in the bathtub, he started making all these goofy growling noises and saying, "Baby monster! Monster baby!" I laughed and said, "Baby monster, CJ?" He grinned and told me, "Monster's eating cookies!"

* He named one of Ora's stuffed animals, a soft stuffed bunny with satin ears that plays music. He decided this morning that it should be called "Princess Bunny".

CJ's managed to pick up nearly the whole alef-beis by now. He recognizes almost all of the letters, and he's developed an interesting way of testing himself. He found my copy of this book on the shelf, and he started picking it up and scanning the pages, over and over again. As I watched him, I could hear him muttering the names of the letters to himself. He points to the letters and names them, one by one. Amazing.

Once again, it really strikes me how his personality comes through -- he has to figure things out himself.

CJ went to gymnastics again on Friday, and once again it was a frustrating experience -- slightly less so, probably because only one other kid was present, but still frustrating. He was willing to do some of the exercises at the beginning but then totally lost interest and focused on exploring the room on his own. So at the end of class, I talked to the teacher. I said, "This is hard for him. How can I help him?" Her reply was that she didn't think I should worry. She said that there were always some kids who were like this, usually because they didn't know her and weren't used to her, particularly among kids who were used to staying home with their mothers. She stressed that I shouldn't worry. So I'm going to do my best to do just that -- and let him explore at his own pace.

* CJ's started trying to blame his little sister for his misdeeds. Today he told me he wanted to nap, so I took him to his bed. He didn't sleep, though -- instead, he took most of the books off the shelf and threw them on the floor. So when I finally decided he wasn't going to sleep and went into his room, it was quite a sight. I had Ora with me, so I put her on the floor and started putting the books away. I said, "This is a big mess, CJ!" He looked at me and said, "Big mess, Baby!"

* Ora's been very hungry today. She ate 2 big helpings of cereal with fruit, a bit of yogurt, a few handfuls of cheerios and puffed wheat, a few bites of bread, some pasta and a few baby carrots from my pot of soup.

When I was putting Ora to bed last night, I gave her a kiss on the nose. She liked that -- and started making kissy noises. She looked at me with sparkly eyes and smacked her lips a few times. I melted.

* Ora's newest hobby? Blowing spit bubbles.

* CJ was sitting on my lap on Friday as I was looking through some photos of him and Walt from the Atlanta auto show in April. He was commenting on the photos: "CJ go for walk with Abba!" and "CJ Abba see cars!" And then he burst out with "CJ Abba go shopping!" So apparently our trip to the auto show was really a shopping expedition.

Took CJ to his first gymnastics class today at the Tucker rec center. It didn't go so well. He just does not cope well with a setting where he's expected to follow directions and do things in a sequence. He wanted to do things his way. He had no trouble navigating most of the exercises -- climbing up ladders, walking on balance beams, etc -- except when the teacher tried to show him where to put his feet or hands. When she did that, he froze and wouldn't move. He didn't show much interest in the teacher, or the other kids either, and he got upset when I tried to hold onto his hand and coax him into taking part in the games (parachute, rolling balls back and forth, etc). Basically, what he wanted to do was to be left alone to explore on his own.

There was another little boy there with a lot of energy, and he started off behaving in similar fashion -- running away, circling the room, etc -- but after a while he got into the groove of things and went along with the games and exercises. CJ didn't. Over time, it got harder and harder for him. It was very frustrating.

I'm not ready to give up on the class, not least because this is how he tends to act in an unfamiliar environment. He has to familiarize himself with the surroundings before he can pay attention to the people. (In fact, I think there were enough people he was meeting for the first time that it was overwhelming him.) Still, it was quite frustrating, and I found myself nearly crying towards the end. I don't know how to make this easier for him.

CJ tried to eat pretzels with a fork tonight.

* My daughter has started drinking her bath water. A couple of nights ago, I was watching her splash around in the tub and suddenly she stopped, leaned forward and stuck the lower half of her face in the water. She kept her mouth open to take in some water, and when she succeeded she did it again. So now I have two children who like to drink bathwater, the goofballs.

* CJ's learning the Hebrew alphabet. I've been showing him the letters lately, and after about 10 repetitions Smarty McSmart-Smart picked up about half of them.

My little girl really is growing up ... last night I tried to nurse her before bed as usual, and she wouldn't drink. I halfway expected it since she'd eaten cereal about an hour before, when she was really hungry. CJ was different in that respect -- he was always happy to nurse when I offered, whereas Ora gets mad at me if I try to nurse her when she's not hungry. (She will, however, accept cheerios at any time.) Anyway, since she wouldn't nurse last night, I just put her in her crib, and she slept all night without waking up. On one hand, that's fine since it means she probably won't get upset when I wean her as long as she has enough food during the day. (In fact, she seems to be working towards weaning herself -- her interest in nursing is waning, and I can see which feedings will be the next to go.) But on the other hand, I can't help but feel a pang that she's no longer a tiny baby.

Ora took a step this morning. I'm not sure she knew exactly what she was doing, but she did it. She was standing with her back to one of the chairs in CJ's room, and I was sitting on the floor a foot away, maybe a little more. She turned away from the chair, took a step and then threw herself forward into my lap. Wow!

Ora figured out what to do with her index finger -- she's started pointing at things. Mostly she points at lights. If I ask her where the light is, she looks for it and points. She also points at ceiling fans when I ask about them.

Meanwhile, CJ started saying something intensely goofy on Friday: "I'm so lonely, crying for help!" I have no idea where he picked up those phrases. For the record, he says them with a big smile and expression of glee on his face. I halfway think he's kept it up because I usually respond by saying, "You sure don't look lonely to me!"