Stylin'

Cairo and Jonah have had a stylin' week.  I bought Cairo a really cute black "twirling" skirt made of lots of layers of material.  I love it and so does she.  She chose navy blue and white striped leggings to wear with it, a black shirt, and, of course, her zebra print sunglasses.

Jonah has been having a fun time wearing a pink fair hat Erik got from Grandma Dedini's house.  The pink hat is complimented with some very fine turquoise feather.

Jonah has been having a lot of fun getting into Cairo's toys, too.  What can I say, this little man is in touch with his nurturing side...

More words...

Over the last few days Jonah has added a few more words to his vocabulary- please (it's more like pleeeeease), bagel, and read.  Now Jonah can follow after us with books and not only say book, but read, too.

Oh, and this is a joke Erik told/asked me the other day: 
Erik: Why did Cairo cross the road?
Me: Why?
Erik: To get to the other slide.

Ha, ha.

Moonstone Beach

Yesterday morning, after the kids and I yanked Erik out of bed, we went out to Moonstone Beach to walk around.  My plan for the summer was to get out to the beach several times a week for a nice walk.  It didn't happen.  The morning we went was a little cool, but it was extremely clear.  There tends to be a little misty haze that hangs over the shoreline, but we were able to see miles down the coast.  Cairo and I were explorers and checked out the little cave and looked for sand dollars.  Jonah plopped himself down on the damp sand and got dirty.  There is a little river that meanders down the beach and into the ocean.  Jonah made a beeline for it, but it was a little too cool to go in.  Cairo tried her best to hold him back.

The Fair

On Saturday we went out to the fair for a few hours.  Our first stop was the animals.  We checked out the cows, rabbits, sheep, goats, and chickens.  As usual, Jonah was overjoyed to see all of the doggies.  There was a six day old calf that Cairo and Jonah got to pet.  He was so cute!

After the animals, we enjoyed a lunch while listening to a brass band and a local kids performance group.  Cairo's highlight was getting to pick a treat.  She chose cotton candy (though she had no idea what it actually was) and enjoyed eating it on our walk back to Grandma and Grandpa Tipple's.

My Little Girl

Each day Cairo is turning into more and more of a little girl.  When I look at her now I no longer see that baby of mine.  She is also starting to act like a little girl... and sometimes even like a teenager.

Cairo really wants to be a big help around the house.  She is actually starting to be one, too.  She likes to help me fold the laundry and I think that she's starting to get the hang of it.  I had her fold all the kitchen towels the other day and she did it perfectly.  The one thing we need to work on is keeping her from throwing the laundry all over the room when we got to fold it.  She loves to grab one handful and clothes after another and launch them all over the room.  Grrrrr....

My teenage daughter, I mean my three year old, also likes to close herself into her room and play.  As soon as she wakes up she makes sure to close her door.  If we go in and open it up while she is in there she tells us firmly that she wants to play by herself and to close the door again.  What Cairo is really protecting herself from is Jonah.  He loves to play in Cairo's room with her, but Cairo isn't so keen on having him in there.  He doesn't do any real damage, but Cairo has a hard time sharing her things.  When the door is open, Cairo will camp out in the doorway and do everything in her power to push Jonah out.  At the moment, she is successful at that, but Jonah is getting stronger... so that isn't going to last much longer.  I am fine with allowing Cairo to have some alone time in her room to play with her toys, but I also believe that she needs to spend time playing with her brother.  I will not allow my kids to close themselves off in the rooms all the time.  We are a family and I expect for them to spend quality time with the family... even play with pushy little brothers.

Cairo has a great imagination.  She is always weaving one story after another- whether it is with her gnomes; her baby dolls or stuffed animals; sticks, flowers, or leaves from the garden; stickers; the dogs, she is always, and I mean always, chattering away.  Our house is constantly bombarded with monsters, princesses, kings, mommies, babies, and daddies.  I like to join in on her fun and help her weave her stories.  I remember having SO much fun doing this when I was little... and I remember that my sister never wanted to play with me.  I don't understand why? ;o)  Along with her made up stories, she makes up LOTS of songs.  She surprised me yesterday with the complexity of her tune.  Typically, she is pretty flat, but yesterday the melody of her song was weaving up and down and her lyrics kept going on and on.  Maybe there is hope for her yet in the music department.

My children inherited my strong will.  I love this... except when they use it against me.  Thank goodness I am a lot more stubborn.  I know I have to pick my battles, but it is hard because I want to win them all.  Cairo has been having a harder time lately with the word "no."  She yells back at us or just goes and does what she wants anyway.  We have entered the realm of talking back and, for lack of a better word, revenge.  Revenge normally means that she is going to cause as much havoc in as short of time as possible for the clear purpose of making us mad.  This is one way she shows us her displeasure.  She has a very good understanding of what she should and shouldn't do, so I don't buy it being unintentional... and there is also that familiar gleam in her eye that I understand so well.  My natural response is typically to yell at her, but I haven't found that effective.  It is more effective to take her onto my lap and talk to her about it, then send her to a time out to think about it.

Ah, yes, Cairo is also a good tattletale.  She LOVES, LOVES, LOVES to tell on Jonah.  Most of the time it's helpful, but sometimes she takes it too far.  She also likes to remind me of things like: "Mommy, make sure you look both ways before crossing the street.  Cars drive fast and are dangerous" or "This has small pieces, make sure Jonah doesn't get it because he is a baby."  Cairo is very observant and can tell you pretty much anything you need to know about how things work around the Dedini household and like me, she likes everything done just so.

I am excited for Cairo to start preschool in a few weeks.  She is ready to share her energy with kids her age.  She talks about preschool a lot and I am trying to prepare her for the fact that she will be there without mommy and daddy.  Her biggest concern at this point is who is going to push her on the swings.  I told her that she is going to have to make friends with someone so that they can push each other.  The things she is most excited about is the possibility that there will be little potties.  We found one at the mall for her to use and she was SO excited about it.

More than anything else, I am glad that Cairo still loves to gives kisses, hugs, and cuddles.  She tells me a million times a day that she loves me.  She loves to give us compliments, especially her daddy, "Wow, Daddy, this is the best food ever."  If we get an ouchy she makes sure to give it a kiss.  I hope she remembers how much she loves us (and how much we love her) when she turns into a teenager.  I love working with teenagers, but I am honestly not super excited to have my own.

No, No!

Imagine my surprise when I walked into a too quiet family room and discovered this...

He didn't even set his blankey down.  I folded the chair up and put it in the closet.

Of course, I can't get rid of all the furniture...

No, no, Jonah! (He doesn't like that)

He likes to climb and has already conquered several other pieces of furniture.  We can't seem to keep him off of and out of anything.  Boys! Cairo wasn't THIS much trouble.

Jonah Bear the Toddler

Yup, it is official, Jonah is a toddler.  While we were in Mattole toward the end of July Jonah really started to try out his walking skills.  He was successful a few days later... pretty much at his 14 month anniversary.  Unfortunately for us, Jonah seems to want to completely skip walking and go straight to running.  He doesn't quite have the agility for running, yet, but he doesn't seem to care... and he doesn't seem to mind the bruises.

I've really enjoyed the time I've had with Jonah this summer.  He is a completely different kid now from the one I had before the summer holiday.  It always amazes me how so much can change in a two months.  I guess before it was Jonah the Baby and now I have Jonah the Toddler.

Jonah the Toddler loves to wear his jacket.  If he finds it laying around he will drag it over to you and insist that you put it on him.  Then he goes on his merry way.  Even when the jackets are hung up he will tug on them until he can get them down or point, grunt, and scream at you until you get it down for him.  He always has like to be cuddled up.  I just don't think that he will find his jacket at comfortable when we get back down to the Southern California heat.

Jonah the Toddler always says cheese to the camera.  Always.  The funny thing about this is that it doesn't matter if you are holding the camera or not.  If he sees the camera on the table he looks at it, smiles, and says, "cheeeeeeeeese."  He will even smile and cheese at items that just resemble camera.  It cracks me up every time.

Jonah the Toddle LOVES and I mean LOVES his blankey.  I am not sure where this obsession came from, but one day he was pulling his blanket out of his crib and dragging it everywhere.  If it was up to him he would have it with him outside, in his highchair, in the bath, when we are out.... However, we make sure that blankey spends most of the time staying clean in his crib.  He does put it in Cairo's grocery cart and push it around the house once in a while and we do let him cuddle up with it when he's reading or tired, but we don't want him to become too dependent on it for soothing.

Jonah the Toddler loves to read.  Twitch, twitch.  In fact, Jonah chases Erik and I all over the house, waving a book in one hand, blanket in the other, screaming "BOOK, BOOK!"  You may ask, "why are you running from him?"  Well, after you've read the same book to him 50 times in one hour, you may run away, too.  He is very persistent.  There are three books that he is currently in love with.  Two of these books are four pages long with little dialogue and the third book is a first garden word book with things like the word snail and a picture of a snail.  I memorized these books by the second time through, and began to come up with new dialogue by the tenth time.  Yet, he brings them back time and time again.  Did I mention that he is persistent?  I will read the book and throw it to the other side of the room just to try and get a break from reading it again.  He calmly goes over gets the book and brings it back, once again waving it in the air while screaming, "BOOK!"  I've tried to get him into other books, but he just pushed them away and pushes his favorites back at us.  Sometimes we run into the problem of him wanting us to read him all three books at the same time.  I think he kind of misses the concept of reading.  At times he is so persistent that I have to sit there with all three books open and move continuously from one book to the other.  Right now I think one book is hidden under the rug, the other is under the chair cushion, and the third is on the table.  Maybe out-of-sight, out-of-mind will work.

Jonah the Toddler loves to talk!  Over the past week it seems that each day he is getting more words.  For a while now he has done a pretty good job at repeating sounds that we make, but now it really starting to use words.  Some of his words, like banana, are ones that only we would recognize, but others are very clear, like his new word monkey.  His vocabulary includes Daddy, Mama, Doggy, banky (blankey), ba (ball), book, rock, bye, walk-walk, cheese, duck, rafffsss (giraffe), monkey, banana, milk, water, ze-ba (not super clear, but it's zebra), this, yeah-yeah, that, and thank you (by pitch change). My favorite thing is the way he says Daddy.  It isn't just said calmly, but he always squeals it in a high-pitched, very excited voice.  My seconds favorite is the way he says giraffe.  It reminds me of the word brass but pronounced with an almost (but not completely) silent b and the s at the end is a mix between an s and an f.