Things to Remember

I keep kicking myself for not posting. My kids are both at a very fun stage in life, and they both do so many things that I don't get on video or in pictures that I wish I could remember later. So, I'm going to start a list and come back to it and add things as I remember them. The blog has really become my only form of journal, so I want to have some of these fun memories to look back on. Most of the funny/cute things right now are going to be things Mikey does since he's talking and developing such a fun personality. So I guess I'll give an update on Ginny first, and then write about Mikey.

Ginny Kay
Almost 9 months old

She has become quite the proficient crawler. Around 8 months she learned to crawl on her hands and knees, and she has since become very adept, and FAST at crawling. She also pulls herself up to standing, and while standing she can stomp her feet, or plop down onto her bum. She finds this especially fun in the bathtub. She has a very big appetite, and feeds herself finger foods really well. I'm still nursing her, but in addition to that, I give her 1-2 bottles a day and an average of 1.5 jars of baby food as well as 2-3 servings of bread or cheerios or similar finger foods. She has started to do a funny kind of giggle. We compare it to the sound a zebra makes, and it's hard to describe in words, but really cute. It is always one syllable, with the inflection in her voice going up in the middle of the syllable. So when she's happy, you'll hear her doing a short, choppy laugh "hAh! ... hAh! ... hAh!" She is sleeping through the night about 10 1/2 to 11 hours straight now, so I'm getting plenty of sleep too. She still takes 2 naps most days, one in the late morning and one in the afternoon when Mikey's napping. I can get them both to nap together most days, which helps me get things done. Ginny is such a joy to have around. She's very even-tempered, happy and content most of the time, and continually learning more about her environment. She might be an earlier walker than Mikey was. She still doesn't have enough hair for a pony tail or to even hold a hair clip, so we still do headbands occasionally. She is very olive-skinned which is funny because next to Mikey in the bathtub, she looks like she's been tanning. We love her gorgeous smile and sweet personality!

Michael Gannett
2 years, 5 months old

His favorites right now are his toy shopping cart, playing at the park, his basketball hoop, building blocks, and books. He likes a lot of different cartoons and asks for them by name now, and has started to try to learn to use the remote to turn on Netflix on our TV.  He loves cereal for breakfast, quesadillas for lunch, and yogurt, fruit, crackers, or peanut butter for snacks. He is always asking for fruit snacks or juice for his snacks, and if I let him, he'd probably eat a whole box of fruit snacks in one sitting. Dinner time is still hard, getting him to try new things, but he's pretty good at taking the minimum required 3 bites of whatever we're eating before he leaves the table.

He's a pretty typical toddler in his development, except for the fact that he's ahead in his potty training. He can now get up on the toilet without a step-stool, which is nice so he can go in whatever toilet he wants by himself. He still will dribble in his underwear from time to time if we're not reminding him to go to the bathroom, but he's come a long way since we started putting him in underwear 6 months ago. He is also independent now with washing his hands. We just have to make sure he doesn't stay in there and play with the soap and water too long.

The greatest thing about having him this age is the verbal interaction. We love having a toddler that can understand us, talk to us, and let us know his ideas. We recently started reading from the illustrated Book of Mormon Stories book with him. A few of the stories have stuck with him, and he'll bring them up at random times, a day or two after we read the story with him. For example, the other day at breakfast, he just randomly blurted out, "Cut off arms! Ouch!" from the story of Ammon. Another time we were reading about the Nephites that made a vow to stop fighting and bury their weapons. When the Lamanite army came, they all dropped to the ground and refused to fight. A few days later, Mikey was supposed to get in the bathtub, and he stopped where he was, laid down on the ground on his stomach and said, "Not fight."

He sometimes talks to himself while he's playing and chooses a few phrases that he repeats a lot. Sometimes he'll just go around with his toys saying, "Jesus Christ Amen, Jesus Christ Amen!" Another phrase he repeats a lot is "one couple" used in a sentence, like "take one couple pieces, put right here" or "I get one couple blue toys." I don't know where he came up with that. Sometimes I talk about doing "a couple" things, but he always says "one couple". Another phrase is "Last week, Jesus God." Maybe he got this from nursery? I feel kind of bad that he's walking around using the Lord's name so much, but luckily it doesn't sound vulgar, and he doesn't do it in public... yet. :) Mikey's also learning a lot more names of people in the extended family. Whenever we say we're going to Uncle Steve's house, he gets excited and names off everyone in the family: "Uncle Steve, Aunt B, Ali, Sa-annah!" (He can't say the 'v' in Savannah.) He even knows the dogs' names now. He used to not be able to say the word "grandpa" but now he can say "grandpapa" and that's what he calls my dad. He gets very excited when we say we're going to Nana and Papa's house, and we told him he gets to go to Grandma and Grandpa's house in California soon, and he says, "I go Grandma Grandpapa's house?!?"

Mikey used to call Ginny "Boo boo" because when she was born he couldn't say "baby" yet. Her name slowly evolved from Booboo to Baby to Giddie (pronounced jiddie), and now finally he can say the 'n's and calls her Ginny or baby Ginny. A few times in the last few days, I've heard him playing with Ginny and he says "I yuv (love) you, baby Ginny boo boo." It is so precious! He just barely learned to jump with both feet together (as in doing a standing hop) which was something exciting for me because I had been trying to help him learn that for a long time. He would always jump one foot, then the other.

One of our other favorite things he came up with, which also happens to be church-related, is how he imitates the boy from the Children's Songbook image for Jesus Wants Me for a Sunbeam. The boy is kneeling on one knee, and has both arms outstretched toward the sky, as if reaching up toward Jesus. Mikey and I were playing the piano and singing some songs and when he saw that picture, he imitated the posture of the boy by putting both his arms up toward the sky. It became one of his favorite random things to repeat. He would out of nowhere say, "Boy, up, sky!" and then do his arms like the boy in the picture. He still does it. If any of you see Mikey anytime in the near future, you can test this. He has an automatic response to do that pose whenever someone says, "Boy, up, sky." Speaking of automatic responses, you can also ask him, "Who does Grandma love?" and he'll say, "Mikey!" or you can ask him "What does Uncle Shanon say?" and he'll respond by laughing in a funny way that Uncle Shanon did when we were visiting him... "HaaaHaaaHAAAAH!"

Instead of the word "other", he says "othern" but has trouble with the 'th' combo. It comes out like, "uddern" as in, "Where uddern blue car?" (Where's the other blue car?)

He has always been really good at puzzles, so he learned the concept of finding matches really well. Then he started to apply the skill of finding a match in the outside world. One day we were driving and he was looking around at cars and trucks as we drove past them. I was wearing a yellow shirt that day and Mikey said suddenly, "Yellow truck match Mama yellow shirt! Same yellows!" We were so shocked. It was awesome to us how much he was noticing around him. On a similar note, he had been learning about plurals, and how to add an 's' to something if you're talking about more than one. He sometimes pluralizes things that aren't supposed to plural and it is pretty funny. One morning we were getting ready to eat breakfast and we were talking about being hungry. Mikey said, "Mikey hungy, Mama hungy... Two hungies!" Or sometimes he will say "same" when two things are alike, as in when we both finish our food at the table, he'll say, "Same all-dones!"