Overdue update

My expectations for keeping this blog up to date keep getting lower and lower. I'm striving to at least post a monthly update of what the kids are up to, and I'd decided to try to do it on the 3rd of every month, because Jack's birthday is on the 2nd day of his birth month and Violet's is on the 4th. I realize, however, that I'm a couple of months overdue, since I haven't really done a big update since Violet's birthday in early April.

Violet will be 15 months old tomorrow. One of her current favorite things is to crawl all the way up the stairs. We have to be really good about closing the gate, which is a hassle. But she will boogie up the stairs when the gate is open, which is a little nerve-wracking to say the least. It's really funny watching her crawl. She normally does it up on her toes, instead of her knees. I think it might be because she is so often in dresses, and they get caught when she crawls on her knees. She can go amazingly fast when she wants to, and she reminds me a lot of a little spider skittering across the floor when she is chasing after her brother.

She started pulling herself up to standing a couple of months ago. Now she can stand unassisted and can cruise while holding on to furniture or to someone's hands. However, she doesn't seem very interested in trying to walk on her own. If I stand her up and then move away from her, she will sit herself down and then crawl over to me. Jack started walking - and by that, I mean it was his primary mode of getting around - when he was 14 months and had been taking steps unassisted for a full month before that. So I think it's still going to be a while yet before Violet is walking. My mom tells me I didn't walk until I was 18 months old, so I think Violet is just a cautious baby like I was.

Meanwhile, though, she is really starting to talk up a storm. She says, "Mama," "more," "hello," "baby," "thank you," "bye-bye," "night-night," "Jack-Jack," "dada" (those two often sound pretty similar), "blueberries," "ball," "crackers," "yeah," and "no." These, of course, are all said with varying degrees of intelligibility and often she makes the sign while she's saying them (especially when she says "more," "baby," "blueberries," and "crackers"). She signs "eat" and "milk" a lot. And she has her own words for some of her other favorite things. When she wants to nurse, she says, "Noomi-noomi-noo." She says "tee" when she wants cheese or grapes and "ba ba" when she wants a bagel, bread, or her big brother. She normally only says/signs "baby" when she wants to watch her favorite "Baby Signing Time" video.

She is also getting really good with her fine motor skills. She knows how to drink out of pretty much every sippy cup we give her. She is great with straws and can even drink out of a regular cup herself as long it's not too full. She is already feeding herself with a fork and spoon, although of course she does make a bit of a mess. She likes to scribble on paper, but she's not always great about not getting marker on herself. She loves looking at books, much more so than Jack ever did, and she really loves music. She'll dance along to almost anything, even the most sophisticated stuff.

Violet is eating a ton now. Her list of words should give you an idea of her favorite foods. She typically eats a pretty big breakfast of oatmeal or yogurt and fruit. She loves quesadilla and pasta with tomato sauce. When she eats something she finds particularly delicious, she'll go, "Mmm! Mmm! Mmm!" sort of like the old-time Campbell Soup commercials. And she nurses All. Day. Long. I won't go into it here, because it's bordering on frustrating to me, but I have another boobaholic on my hands.

As for Master Jack, he is 56 months old, and he knows it. And he will know the exact day when he turns 56 and a half months old. His first year of preschool came to an end at the beginning of last month, and I was very gratified when his teacher raved about his progress and how far he'd come. I can see it myself and am so glad that he is going to that preschool for one more year. This age has been so fun. While he does have his moments, of course, he has turned into a very fun and funny little guy.

He is very interested in computer games right now. Though it's not my favorite, it's not to the point where I think it's a massive problem - he's much too hyper to sit still in front of a screen for what I would consider worrisome lengths of time. We are, however, keeping an eye on it. While we do try to find educational computer games, it is harder than you would expect. He was introduced to "Angry Birds" by our friends in Germany. He was instantly hooked. So much so that, when we went to the San Diego County Fair last week, the one treat that he wanted was a plush Angry Bird that he saw in one of the kiosks. I was a little heartbroken when he told me the following day that the Angry Bird was - gasp! - replacing Pooh as his lovey. But only for the day, he reassured me, and then they would both be his loveys.

It's so cool to see how excited he gets and how interesting he finds everything. When I asked him what sort of activities he wanted to do this summer, he asked me what the choices were. I said there was soccer, baseball, tumbling, piano, dancing, karate, pretty much anything he could think of. He said he wanted to do it all. In the end, he is taking swimming lessons - because he had no choice - and a pee wee sports class that is going to introduce him to the rudiments of soccer and baseball. He had taken a tumbling class in the spring, which he really seemed to like. While he never quite mastered the cartwheel, his sweet attempts stole the show at their end-of-session recital.

Because he is so interested and inquisitive, though, it can be a little daunting to try to explain the world around us. One of the hardest things for me, as a parent, to explain to him is the concept of evil. That there are people in the world who would want to hurt others for their own personal gain or for no good reason at all. He talks about "bad guys" a lot, because he hears about it from his friends, but I don't really encourage it and it's not clear to me that he really knows what it means.

Back in April, we went to a friend's pirate birthday party, and they gave out eye patches as one of the favors. Jack asked me, "Why do pirates wear eye patches?"

I like to be honest but age-appropriate when I answer such questions, but what is an age-appropriate way to say, "Because their eyes sometimes get poked out when they fight with the people whose stuff their trying to steal?" So I answered kind of vaguely that sometimes they can't see out of their eyes, which of course led to "Why?" and on and on. I am not sure how I was able to extricate myself out of that conversation.

More problematic was what he learned in Sunday school this past Easter. I was all ready to explain to him that we celebrate Easter, because Jesus died and came back to life and went to heaven. Jack (sort of) understands the concept of death, so I figured that was going to be relatively easy. We've told him that everyone who dies goes to heaven, because I personally don't believe in hell. I hadn't thought to mention that people actually killed Jesus, but apparently Jack's Sunday school teacher had no such qualms. Afterward, Jack had all sorts of questions about why Jesus was put on the cross, and why did people do that to him? And then he said, "When I go to heaven and see those bad guys who did that to Jesus, I'm going to shoot them!" Which is funny and poignant on so many levels.

It feels to me that he is at such a threshold right now, between wanting to grow up so fast and wanting to stay really young. While he is definitely precocious in a lot of ways, he doesn't have the affinity or even tolerance for darkness and violence that I see in a lot of his peers. He doesn't like movies that have scary parts in them at all. He seems more sensitive to the more sophisticated messages in the shows he does see.

Jack watched a bunch of movies in our friends' car when we were on our trip to Germany. There is a part in "Toy Story 2" that is an obvious parody of "Star Wars," where Buzz Lightyear's nemesis reveals to him that he is actually his father. Jack asked me, "If Zerg is Buzz Lightyear's dad, why isn't he nice to him?"

I really couldn't answer him, mainly because I'd only seen that movie once and hadn't been paying very close attention to the plot. I asked some other mom friends who, I assumed, had seen it more often than I had how they would have responded. And no one could answer me, because their children never thought to ask.

However, he has fully absorbed and embraced the traditional boy love of toy guns and shooting play, which I have to say I do not really enjoy. His favorite ride at Disney was the Toy Story Midway Mania, which comprised a series of arcade shooting games. He was thrilled to discover that his friends have a Wii game that is pretty much the same thing. At least they are shooting at targets, like balloons and plates, in that game. When he goes to friends' houses, they are frequently running around with the nerf guns or pretending to shoot things with their fingers. The appeal of this specific type of play is one area where, as a mother of a boy, I feel completely lost. I grew up with only one sister. While I considered myself a tomboy, we never had toy guns or did any of that sort of thing. I am sure this is just the first of many times I will feel a bit like a stranger in a strange land with my son.

Both kids are currently undergoing an extreme Mommy phase. Violet's is, of course, tied to the whole nursing thing. I'm not sure what is going on with Jack. Some of it might be to get under his sister's skin. In the morning, he will run onto my lap before Violet can crawl to me. When Violet does reach me, she climbs on to my lap and tries to push Jack away. It's kind of funny to see such a little baby trying to assert herself. I imagine that in a few months, it will get less funny to see them squabbling. But Jack tells me all the time how much he loves me. He tries to quantify it by saying he loves me x number of hearts or stars. He gives me lots of kisses and says to me all the time, "I just love you, Mommy." Sometimes, when he wants something (like to play a computer game, for example), he'll say, "Let's have one big cuddle, and then we can play 'Angry Birds.' Do we have a deal? Let's shake!"

How can I resist?