16 Months and Nearly 3

I haven't done an update on the kids lately on here, so here goes.

Spencer:

If you ask Spencer how old he is, he'll tell you he's almost 3. He's been almost 3 for months. It just seems like it's taken forever to get to this birthday. I'm not sure why. We'll be celebrating his 3rd birthday in a couple weeks and he'll be so happy to say he is actually 3 at that point. :)

I asked him today how old he thought I was. 80! was his answer. Bill and I just busted up laughing when he said it. I don't think he realized how funny it was. :)

He's always been super into letters and numbers and has been able to read both dating back to when Genevieve was born and he was 19 months old. Lately Bill has been teaching him how to spell a few words. Bill resurrected an old school keyboard that is at least as old as he is from the wind tunnel and bought no less than two adapters to get it to connect to our computer. It's super loud when you press each key and the kids love it. Spencer wants to come and type words on the computer now. The three words he knows? "Cat", "dog", and "BYU." Good boy!

He is still into bartering for everything. It goes back to the numbers thing, and that he still struggles with eating quite a bit. We're always talking about how many bites of whatever he needs to eat before he can go play. He'd much rather be playing than eating, so we try to work with him on that. It's hard to find what motivates him, but we're working on it and things get better slowly, ever so slowly.

We've been working lately on his first reaction to things he doesn't like. As is fairly typical at his age, when someone tells him now, he immediately starts screaming. We've been trying to teach him to talk through things first and it's really having good results. He's always been super reasonable to talk to, and he's only getting better the more his language skills improve. We've been teaching him more polite ways to ask for things and it's the cutest thing when he says "May I please have another graham cracker," or some such thing.

He's still my shadow. He loves to be wherever I am and doing whatever I'm doing. I'm okay with that. He's a great little side kick.

He'll smile for a picture now if I ask him to. It's a total cheesy grin, which makes me laugh every time.

He still loves the Lorax, but has added Finding Nemo to his favorite movies list as well as Monsters Inc. and Monsters University. He'd watch movies all day if he could actually. Heck, sometimes I feel like doing that too. :)

He also loves to play the piano. Before we went to church today he asked when he was going to get to play the piano. He means the one in the primary room. I take him to play it after church and he just loves it. He gets down the primary songbook and sits and picks out his own little tunes for a few minutes. He's never been a piano pounder. When he's older I'm definitely going to get him into lessons. I'm already amazed to hear little pleasing sounding tunes come from his playing. It blows me away to hear him go.

He's a great little helper. He likes things to be in order, so emptying the dishwasher or putting away clothes is right up his alley.

I just love this oldest son of mine. He seems to be coming out of his terrible twos a bit at a time, and I couldn't be happier. The ability to reason with a child opens so many amazing doors. Here's to more of that!

Genevieve:

Genevieve is a little firecracker. She knows what she wants and nothing much stops her from getting it. She's a crazy climber. We have folding chairs at our kitchen table that we've had since we moved here and never replaced the ones we left behind. It's really helpful because now we can fold them up after every meal. Otherwise the instant she sees one she is up on the table, then onto the countertop. That girl is fast!

She's mischievous. She has the cutest little sense of humor. She knows how to get people to laugh and seemingly relishes doing it. She's still pretty standoffish with other people, but she likes to talk to them from a distance.

She's not really a center of attention type of kid. She is still kind of iffy on adults. She adores Bill and if he's around she tolerates me. I exaggerate slightly there, but really, if she wakes up crying at night she'd rather have him than me. If she's sad and he's holding her and I try to take her, she screams and tries to get back to him. It generally works out alright since Spencer is my little shadow, but she's still in the wanting to be held when she's unhappy stage and so Bill spends way more time than he'd really like with our 25-pound "baby" in his arms.  She's been going through a rough stretch with an ear infection, all four eye teeth coming in at the slowest, most painful rate possible, and what seems to be the early onset of her terrible twos. She just gets way more easily distressed than she ever used to and I hope some of these things clear up so she can be a bit more sunshiney. When she's happy it's wonderful. It's just not as often as it used to be.

She has never liked a pacifier, but ever since her eye teeth have been coming, she discovered our stash of binkies and has been chewing on them incessantly. She doesn't suck on them, just chews them slightly off center in her mouth. It's pretty amusing to watch, and I'm glad she's found something to help her teeth because I can only imagine how sore her mouth is.

She is talking up a storm. We didn't do this until way later with Spencer, but we taught her please/thank you/you're welcome early on and she'll use them. The other I asked her to say thank you and instead she said you're welcome. She's got this teeny tiny voice and it's just so cute to hear her talk. She says dog, puppy, shoes, boots, hat, cat, please, thank you, you're welcome, Spencer, mommy, daddy, jacket, milk, frog, horse, lion, camel, monkey, and loads of other things that I just can't think of at the moment. She seems to pick stuff up so fast as a second child. I'm always amazed the concepts that come so much more easily with a big brother to mimic.

Genevieve loves to help out too. She will go get things, put stuff away, and loves to help with anything I'm doing. I have to have two chairs in the kitchen whenever I cook so both kids can be standing up there helping me. It's crazy, but fun.

She already loves nursery at church. She's still a few weeks away from being in there officially, but we just go in with her and she could care less that we're there. She loves to play with all the toys and being around all the other kids doesn't faze her at all.

One thing she and Spencer both get way better now that they are both bigger is the concept of not taking a toy another kid is playing with. We work on that a lot at home and they don't really do it well there, but at nursery they are really well mannered about stuff like that, which is so nice. Sometimes they'll still take a toy from another kid, but they'll give it back on prompting, which is definite progress over six months ago.

Genevieve loves to read books. She likes to be read to and read them herself. She assumes that mine and Bill's laps are always available for her to plop down in with a book and be read to. Turns out they generally are so her assumption isn't far off. :)

Spencer is a super affectionate kid, and it's not that Genevieve isn't, but if you compare them she's way  more standoffish. It's part of her sense of humor though. If you ask her for a hug she may come running or she may turn around and run the other way, waiting to get chased.

We're just discovering she loves to throw balls and such. We pulled out a frisbee the other night and she caught the hang of it almost immediately. I'm not one to pin my kids into boxes, and we'll give them all plenty of opportunities, but I'm already betting she's going to love to play sports. I'm undecided on that point with Spencer. Maybe yes, maybe no. Time will tell.

Genevieve knows how to make things fun. She spent at least half an hour the other day wandering around the house with the clothes hamper on her head. It came down to her shins. She would squat down to pick things up and get bothered when they were outside the circle, but when it fell off she immediately brought it back to Bill to put it back on.

I don't know if I'll have another girl baby. I think this next one is a boy, though we won't know until February or March. So in the meantime, I love this little girl of mine. I love watching her grow and develop into her own person.

DIY

I don't think I've mentioned anything about it here, but I've spent the last few months trying out a bunch of DIY home care items, both cleaners and other things. It feels a little like being in a middle school science class again, mixing bunches of ingredients and making cool things.

A number of factors influenced my desire to start doing this stuff. I rediscovered the Skin Deep Database. It allows you to enter in just about any makeup, shampoo, conditioner, deodorant, skin care product, etc., and breaks it down into what harmful chemicals are in them and rates the product on a scale of 0-10. It's enlightening and frightening at the same time to see what seemingly innocuous products have some pretty nasty things in them. Besides that, I am always looking for ways to simplify, save a bit of money, and be healthier. Toting two kids to the store, soon to be three, gets tiresome. Some would disagree, but I find making my own things is way less stressful to me because I don't have to leave the house to buy yet another product.

I already make a lot of stuff we eat from scratch, so it wasn't that much of a stretch to move to other things. I've tried my hand at my own windex, all purpose cleaner, and dishwasher detergent. The first two have been great, but we decided after load after load of not quite clean dishes came out of our dishwasher that we preferred the dishwasher detergent from the store. But besides that, Dawn, vinegar, hot water, washing, soda, and borax are pretty amazing things. I've been making my own laundry detergent for several years and still do that. It saves me so much money.

Lately I've moved on to all the bathroom personal care products we use. I made my own deodorant and am pretty happy with that. I just started using a homemade shampoo and conditioner, which is basically just baking soda and water for one and apple cider vinegar and water for the other. I'm seriously impressed. So far I can't tell the difference. If it continues, I'm happy to never buy shampoo and conditioner again. Bill and I just started picking up some ingredients to make our own soap. That's going to be a bigger project, and I can't wait. Oh, I made my own loose powder and blush as well, which works great.  Hello, each of those cost like $20 a pop. There's something so satisfying discovering a few simple ingredients that do the same thing as the stuff I've bought for years. We do fine financially, but we're still a PhD family. That does not equate to wealth, and the money isn't going to get any better the longer we're here, so I feel like little things like not buying some of these products every month makes a big difference over the long run. Plus, I'm a closet nerd, and the idea of seeing saponification in action when we make soap in the next few weeks sounds really fascinating. :)

I've pinned all the sites I got recipes from or want to try sometime soon on my DIY board on Pinterest if you want to see where I got my info.

Family Photos

We had a photographer friend do some family photos for us as a last minute Christmas gift. The kids were so squirrely! I really wondered what kind of pictures would come out of it, but my friend performed a miracle and managed to get some fantastic pictures of the kids and even a few decent ones of all of us together. I've seen a lot of funny family photos over the years, but now I truly understand that monumental effort to get the kids even to look at the camera, let alone smile. hahaha! We got so many good pictures of Genevieve, which is so crazy to me because I swear she had a stone face the entire time we were there. Like I said, my friend performs miracles when it comes to photography.

"Hey Spencer, give Genevieve a hug." Yeah, she thought she was getting pushed off the chair and just started screaming. :)

Hey look, we all look generally pleasant! 

Yup, this about sums up our efforts at a good family photo. :)

Blue Steel.

This photo kills me every time I look at it. All her sweetness shows here.

I'd say this was the best group photo of the bunch. Spencer's even smiling. Who cares where he's looking. :)

I can just see it in Genevieve's eyes. "What's so funny guys?"

Plastic bins and forts

Have I mentioned lately that Bill is a saint when it comes to playing with our kids? Well he is. He will do awesome things with them for so much longer than my short attention span can stand. And in return the kids utterly adore him, especially Genevieve. She literally cries when I try to hold her sometimes. Spencer is my shadow, so I have absolutely no problem with that little situation. She is welcome to every second she wants with her dad. Sometime this vacation he pulled out every kid's dream toy, a plastic bin. He tied a rope to it, filled it with pillows and blankets, and alternated pulling the kids around the house in it. They both loved it. Like they pretty much melted into it. They couldn't get enough of being towed around.

That's the look of utter relaxation.

Spencer wanted to get in on the fun.

And his look of total relaxation. :)

Then I think that same day he built the coolest blanket fort they've ever seen. We spent hours reading books and playing games under it. They were in heaven yet again. Good times folks.

Holiday Rundown

This was the first year Bill and I have been away from family for Christmas, and also the first year we had kids old enough to appreciate the whole experience. Last year Spencer liked opening presents, but he didn't get much else about it. This year he was way more into it, and it was so fun. It's been a really long time since I've enjoyed the Christmas season with kids around, and it made it so magical, just like when I was a kid.

Christmas PJs from the grandparents!

This is the smile I got when I asked him to smile for the picture. Cheeseball!

As is only right, this is the best photo I got of them together. Hand in  mouth, Spencer looking somewhere else. Awesome.

Since we were on our own, we sat down one night a few days before Christmas to decide what we wanted to do. We both have family traditions we like that we wanted to pull in. We wanted to try some new things too. We'd been doing an advent calendar of mine that I've done since I was a kid. It's a poem attached to a length of cloth with ties on it that have a piece of candy tied in each one, culminating at a bell for Christmas Eve. The poem is probably ten lines long. I've always been impressed with Spencer's memory. It's uncanny how fast he learns things. After just a few days he already had pieces of the poem memorized, and by the end he could essentially say the whole thing by himself with just a word prompting here and there. It was amazing. He loved it. He always wanted to know when we could do December the 1st, which is what the poem is called. It was fun. Genevieve knew it as the giver of Andes mints, and that was good enough for her. :)

We decided to try an idea online we found for Christmas Eve, called a Jerusalem dinner. Basically the concept was to have a simple meal that might have been like one in Jerusalem, and read the Christmas story from Luke to get in the spirit. Our interpretation of it was we purchased a bunch of fancy cheeses, sausage, hummus, grapes, crackers, made some simple fish (salmon with olive oil, salt, and pepper), and some sparkling juice with apple juice for the kiddos. We laid it all out on some ethnic looking blankets we have in our living room, plus a bunch of pillows, and lounged there while we ate. We did it mid afternoon when the kids are in their best mood and it was wildly successful, way better than I expected! The kids loved it. They loved the novelty. They ate a bit of food here and there while they ran around and I'm pretty sure to them it was heaven. Lol. Bill read Luke 2 and we had a grand old time. Later that evening we drove out to find some Christmas lights to look at. We live in a pretty rural area with no real neighborhoods to go to, but we discovered that the downtown section of a nearby city was beautifully decorated, and we had a lovely time checking it out. The kids like to take car rides, so it was perfect all around. After that we headed home and put them to bed.

Checking out the deliciousness.

Genevieve knows how to live it up.

Spencer is rightfully amazed by how awesome our meal is. :)

Then Bill and I got to help Santa for the first time ever. It was awesome, just like when I was growing up. Christmas morning dawned bright and early. The kids slept til 7AM, which was nice. They headed out to find awesomeness from Santa in the living room. The dollar store was a magical place of puzzles and dinosaurs and animal figures and balls and bubbles this year and Santa must have done all his shopping there. :) He brought personal boxes of cereal, peanuts, M&Ms, oranges, fruit snacks, granola bars, and gummy bears as well. The kids loved it. They ate more food Christmas morning than I've ever seen either one of them consume. Grandma and Grandpa sent a pair of personal recliners for the kids that are pretty much the coolest things they've ever had. They had plenty of fun gifts to open too. There were lots of books, a few games, some new clothes, you know, the typical Christmas haul. Bill and I got some great gifts too, which is always lovely.

I like this cereal...and this chair. :)

Guys, look at all the good food here!

See? Genevieve loves her daddy.

More cheesy grins for the camera.

Genevieve needed a little coaxing to discover all the awesomeness in her stocking.

Another attempt at a together photo. At least they're both looking at the same thing. :)

We spent most of the rest of Christmas just relaxing. We made the traditional Ashman family Christmas breakfast of crepes with butter and sugar, plus some bacon to round it out. The kids were so gut stuffed I don't think they even ate a bite. lol! We paid for that later in the day when they were crankier than anything, but heck, they had a great Christmas morning! We got to talk or webcam with a bunch of our family and it was just a lovely day. I really enjoyed not traveling anywhere. The older our kids get, the nicer it is just to be in the familiar surroundings of our own home with them on these holidays. Don't get me wrong, I love to have family around, but I'd just as soon invite them to our house these days. I've discovered I like entertaining. Any family want to come spend Christmas in South Carolina next year? I can promise lovely weather, a choice of at least three airports to fly into, great food, and three adorable kids to snuggle with. It might be a tad squishy in our apartment, but hey, the more the merrier.

They love their chairs. It makes me happy.

Discovering the wonders of the Hoberman sphere.

Genevieve loves it too.

There's something so tempting about putting it on your head. Bill is seemingly tempted by this too, though I didn't catch it on camera. :)

Movie time!

My kids love each other. They always sit as close together as possible. It makes me smile. And my new duvet cover makes me smile too. :)

Since Christmas we've had a fantastic week, with a few minor glitches. Bill has worked a bit throughout the break, but nothing too time consuming. He decided to read Lord of the Rings this break and I picked up a bunch of books from the library from my favorite authors. We've been voraciously devouring them and the kids have been surprisingly willing to let us read while they play. I call that a piece of heaven. :)
Spencer had an allergic reaction to something he ate on Christmas, and broke out with hives. Genevieve got an ear infection. I spent the day after Christmas from 10:30 to 5PM either at the doctor's office for one of them or shuttling back and forth. No sooner had I gotten home from taking Genevieve that Spencer had broken out in the hives, so back I went with him instead of her. Good thing I like my pediatrician and her office. They were slammed that day, which is why it took so long. I also unfortunately probably four days ago came down with a killer sinus cold. It's morphed each day, but the one constant is I've had some form of horrible headache the entire time. It's been awful, but Bill has been wonderful taking care of all the general running of things and I couldn't be more blessed to have him around to help when I feel so terrible. This is the first morning I woke up without a headache to speak of. I have a crazy cough, but yesterday every time I coughed it sent waves of pain through my head, so I'm not complaining about having the headache gone.

The best part about this break, though? We still have a whole week of it to go! Here's to getting over our sicknesses, Bill not getting sick, and hopefully getting out of our house a bit to enjoy the lovely weather and freedom to do a few things all together.