February 2012 update

Its been so long since the last post its embarrassing. This will be a general post about the new things Kira and Renee are doing, and if I can find it in me, maybe there will be some follow up posts with more specifics.

Kira

School - Kira continues to go to her montessori preschool 5 days a week from 8:30 until 11:30am. She dropped her afternoon naps sometime late last year and so we've started letting her stay for extended days which run until 2:30pm. Sometimes she will bring a lunch, except for Wednesdays when they will order pizzas for all the kids. Kira loves going to school, and she loves staying for lunch. Vickie does a great job packing a variety of things for Kira like carrots, apples, juice boxes, jelly sandwiches, and boiled eggs. Kira had never had one before and she saw a classmate eating one for lunch, so she came home one day and asked to bring one for lunch the next time she stays for an extended day.

At home - Kira has become less confrontational at home and in a lot of situations willing to reason. Some specific examples of this might seem irrelevant, but altogether make for a physically and emotionally easier day. When asked, she picks up her toys and cleans up after herself, goes up for her bath, and willingly goes to sleep at 7:30pm each night. On some occasions she might not want to, but if we ask her nicely, give her a few more minutes, or read her a book, she happily decides to go with the flow.

One thing that has become difficult is the sharing of toys. Renee loves to eye the toys that Kira is currently playing with. I can sometimes protect Kira's toy, but usually Renee gets it only because Renee just does not have the mental capacity to understand that she cannot always have what Kira has. Sometimes I can get Kira to trade her toy for what Renee has, and other times Renee just wins. I do hate when this happens, but the hope is that Kira will soon learn that that is just what it means to be a big sister. On the bright side, Kira gets to experience everything first!

Renee

Talking - Renee's vocabulary has been growing rapidly recently. She has always understood a lot but had not had the ability to say a lot of sounds a syllables until the last few months. Most recently she has been stringing 2, 3, and sometimes 4 words together. She likes to indicate possessions by saying "Dede's mum mum (Kira's food)", "Daddy's zipper", or "Mommy's sum sum (Mom's clothes)". She says other things like "I don't know", "Daddy's silly", and the most funny of them all is "[Insert noun here] go away!". The first time she said this was when Vickie was feeding her and Renee just didn't want to eat so she swatted Vickie's hand away and said "Go away". I think she picked this up from Kira saying it to Logan because Renee will on occassion chase after Logan and shout "wow wow go away!".

Tantrums - Renee is approaching 22 months old and has entered her terrible twos. Its funny how quickly we forget how difficult this stage is because I remember it was a trying time with Kira yet I can think of only a few specific situations. I do remember having to turn Kira around from the dinner table, or putting her in the bathroom for a minute so she can calm down. Renee has been starting with her tantrums - and it happens in the simplest of situations. One time Kira mentioned the word "Ice cream" before dinner. Renee then had a 45 minute episode until she got her ice cream. No matter what we did, we could not calm her down, we tried to explain that she had to eat her dinner first but nothing made a difference. During the tantrum we feed her some food, I took her in to the bathroom and shut the lights off to change things up but that also did not make any difference. She only calmed down after dinne was done and she had the ice cream in front of her. To this day, Kira knows not to say "Ice cream" and also avoids the word "Juice" at the dinner table.

Other stuff - I've flipped Renee's car seat around so she's now front facing. Renee goes to a lot of classes during the week thanks to Vickie and Po Po (Vickie's mom). On Wednesdays she goes to a music class, Thursdays its messy play in Wayland and on Fridays its some jump and tumble or something like that. That reminds me, in her first messy play class in mid January, she tripped on a tarp in the class and hit her lip on the edge of a plastic container filled with sand. Her tooth opened up a gash on her lower lip and it started bleeding down her chin. That day Vickie forgot her phone but called me at work to tell me to meet her at the doctor's office. When I got there I watched Kira while the doctor took a look at Renee's lip. They said that if it were on any other part of Renee they would stitch it up right there, but since it was on her face they felt the hospital ER would be able to make a more informed decision. So - Vickie took Renee to the Newton Wellesley hospital while I took Kira to Roche down the road to pick up some lunch that we all ate at the hospital ER. Kira watched TV while I ate my food and fed her. Vickie's arms were full carrying a passed out asleep Renee. I stayed in the outside area w/ Kira while she ate and watched TV. Inside, Vickie held a topical anasthetic to Renee's bottom lip for 20 minutes and I headed in w/ Kira. The nurses gave Kira some toys and Kira watched TV while the nurse one by one stitched up Renee's bottom lip. It healed within a few days, but started bleeding again probably because Renee would scratch it with her fingers. By the end of the week it had sealed up for good and if you look you can see a nice little scar.

I'll post some pictures soon...