Boys start being boys at a very young age

I work out several times a week at the YMCA just down the road from our house.  While I work out, Shepherd and Lydia stay in the nursery.  Typically, it is all relatively uneventful, but last week it was made quite clear that Shepherd is such a boy.

First was when I went to pick the kids up from the nursery Wednesday morning.  All of the toddler girls were huddled in the corner glaring at my son.  The nursery attendant (we'll call her J) was crouched down with Shepherd having a little talk.  Apparently, he had taken a T-Rex with a functioning jaw and chased the girls around biting them with it.  I talked to him about it when we got home, but overall he seemed pretty proud of himself for getting the girls with a T-Rex.  It is hard to decipher all of his toddler jibberish, but I'm quite confident that I caught him bragging about it off and on all day.

When I went to the nursery Friday morning to retrieve my kids, J informed me that Shepherd had been picking on the little girls again.  Apparently, he would grab their toys and them stand back a few steps and smile coyly at them.  This upset them greatly.  J said that she kept telling the girls that if they wouldn't get so mad at him, he'd probably stop doing it.  He mostly does it for the reaction.  Thankfully, J thought it was hilarious and wasn't too upset with my offspring.  She just laughed and said, "He is such a boy."

Here are a few more things that make Shepherd such a boy:

-He loves frogs and bugs and dinosaurs and cars.
-He makes up songs about bacon and poop.
-He loves to play in the dirt.
-He incessently picks on his little sister.
-He never stops running.
-He is obsessed with choo-choo trains.
-He smells bad most of the time.
-He gets excited every time he passes gas.
-He picks and then eats his own boogers.
-He's a glutton.
-And most importantly, he loves his mommy.

Anything but the chicken!!!

Nine months is the recommended age to add meat to a baby's diet, so this week I made some chicken baby food for Lydia.  Shepherd was never a picky eater, but Lydia almost never likes something the first time I introduce it to her.  So I wasn't all that surprised when I got the following responses to her first chicken meal caught on my cell phone (hence the poor picture quality).

With Lydia, it typically takes trying a food about 2 or 3 times before she decides I'm not in fact trying to torture her, so I was optimistic when I set down last night for her chicken dinner number 2.  Here's how that went:

After getting this look more times than I can count, I am now fairly certain that Lydia's first words are going to be, "Seriously, Mom?"

Happy Birthday, Papa: Our second attempt at a birthday video-card for a grandparent

Happy birthday to my wonderful father-in-law, Papa!

A Great and Productive Weekend

After months and months of participating in the soul crushing activity that is searching for a rental in Ardmore, BJ and I have decided to make the best of a not great house and just try to fix up the rental we have.  This past weekend, BJ's mother (aka Nana) flew down to help us with this undertaking.  As a result, we spent most of the weekend like this:

After two full days of doing nothing but painting, we managed to get the living/dining room, bedroom, and bathroom all painted.  Here are a few picture of the bedroom.

For the bathroom, I did three paintings last month of monsters doing bathroom type things (brushing teeth, washing hands, and flushing).  Dad built some frames for the paintings, and we painted the bathroom a light blue green.  I never thought I would say this, but I now sort of love my ugly, brown-tiled bathroom.  And Shepherd is enthralled with the monster paintings! 

And last but not least, the living room.  It is just a nice beige.  Painting the horrible white walls that have been the bane of my existence for the past year and a half was wonderfully therapeutic.   It feels so much more like a home now.

Thankfully, painting wasn't the only thing we did.  Here are some pictures from Nana's camera of the kiddos thoroughly enjoying her visit.

Happy Birthday, Pap!

I know it is a pretty unimpressive video, but it was the best we could get a half hour before bedtime.  At least Shepherd was into it.  We can hardly expect Lydia to be nice about things like birthday wishes.  I mean, it's Lydia.  But seriously, happy birthday to the sweetest dad on earth!

Easter 2013

I hope everyone had a happy Easter.  Ours was really wonderful.  BJ and Greg (our worship minister) constructed a truly inspired service that made for a beautiful celebration.  BJ still manages to blow me away with his sermons every once in a while, and today was certainly one of those days.

Of course, in the background of the religious holiday was the fun of dressing up my kids and doing an Easter egg hunt.  Here are two pictures of Shepherd in the vest and tie Aunt Marcy sent.  I really need to start dressing this kid up more often because he did not know what to do with himself this morning.  He kept yanking at the vest and tie while moaning, "I stuck, I stuck."  And not surprisingly, he bolted out of the church once, got his hands muddy, and immediately rubbed them all over his pale yellow vest.  That's my boy.

Overall, Lydia was pretty impressed with her get-up this morning.  She looked so adorable I giggled for about the first two hours of the day.  Unfortunately, the awesome dress didn't make her any nicer.  While she did smile at me, BJ, Shepherd, and occasionally Mamm and Pap, everyone else got the icy cold glares to which they've all become accustomed.

Lydia isn't much for bows, so the only way we kept it on for half of the morning was by giving her plenty of entertainment.  Her she is with an absolutely fascinating plastic spoon and two Easter eggs.

BJ is significantly harder to entertain.

And last but not least, here are some pictures of little man's Easter egg hunt.  I had ten eggs (2 year olds don't have the longest attention spans), and each egg had 4 m&m's in them.  Each time he would find an egg he would open it up, say "mmm, more m-m's," and eat each m&m slowly while telling us what color they were. It took a really, really long time.

Like I said, it was a fantastic holiday.  I wish I had more good pictures, but my camera batteries died (boo).  Anyways, thanks to Mamm and Pap for making it so special by spending it all with us.

Favorite Moment from the Past Week in Mommy Land

Yesterday, my two-year-old gave my 8-month-old a time-out.  When Lydia is really happy, she screams so loud you can't hear anything else and you can hardly think.  Yesterday afternoon, she got really happy.  Apparently, Shepherd had enough of the screeching, so he went over to her, pointed his little finger right at her, and said, "No, no, no! Time-out!"  She didn't take him too seriously.  In fact, she found it entertaining enough to scream about for several more minutes.  You've got to give Shep kudos for trying, though.  

What Me, Shep, and Lydi Do When BJ is at Board Meetings

 When I was Shepherd's age, Randy Travis recorded "Forever and Ever, Amen." It was my very, very, very most favoritest song of all time ever.  Tonight, while having a youtube dance party with my children, I stumbled across a video of my favorite band, the Avett Brothers, doing a cover of my favorite song from my toddler years.  Of course, I immediately played it for Shepherd, and turns out, the kid inherited his taste in music from me, so we listened to it about five more times.  Here is the video for anyone who has ever really loved a song or a band or a toddler.  Enjoy.

The One Glaring at You

Anybody who has ever known me at all knows that I am no social butterfly.  I'm shy upon meeting people, and I keep a fairly small circle of very close friends.  Basically, I am a dictionary definition for introvert.  Lydia apparently got this particular gene of mine, and seeing a baby introvert is both fascinating and hilarious.

Lydia's introversion primarily makes itself noticable at Walmart and on Sunday mornings at church.  In fact, for the past few Sundays at church, Lydia has managed to go the entire 2 to 3 hours we're there without smiling at a single person.  What is sad is that people are trying to get smiles out of her.  That are trying hard, but this kid doesn't know the meaning of a cheap laugh.  I don't know how many times at Walmart or church or the Y or the library someone has come up doing baby talk and a little tickle only to get a cold, assessing stare out of my daughter.  Of course, as soon as we enter our house and it is just Mom, Dad, and Shep, she is all smiles and giggles.    For a visual, here is a picture of Lydia in her Sunday best giving her now famous Sunday look.

I know a lot of people worry if they see that their kid is going to be an introvert, but I'm completely okay with it.  I figure that introversion has served me pretty well in life, and I'm sure Lydia will navigate it's waters just fine.  And in ode to the adorable little personality I see developing in my petite munchkin, here are a few of the things I imagine Lydia is thinking while she is making so many baby lovers feel an inch tall after there failed attempts at getting a smile or a giggle:


-Who exactly are you?

-I'm not ticklish there.

-This is probably wasting both of our time.

-My brother can make that sound, also, and he's two.

-That wasn't bad, but I've seen funnier.

-I've had gas bubbles that made me laugh more.

-Personal space, people.

-Technically, yes, you could hold me, but with mom and dad here to hold me, I can hardly see the point.

-I'm sorry, was that meant to impress.

Learning Niceties

I've never thought much about how I acquired manners.  I am a reasonably nice person. I say "please" and "thank you," "excuse me" and "yes/no, sir/ma'am." But I never really considered the process that educated me into civilized society.

Watching Shepherd be shaped from a little caveman into a somewhat mannered little boy is a fascinating process.  Suffice it to say, manners don't come naturally to him, but he is making a concerted effort.  Here is an exchange we had yesterday afternoon after he picked up Lydia's blankets for me:

Me: Thank you, Shepherd.
Shep: Your welcome. (thinks for a moment and then comes over and shakes me hand) Nice to meetchya.

I guess he figure that while we were exchanging niceties, he'd better cover all of his bases.  I honestly don't know where he picked up "nice to meetchya," but I'm assuming he's been paying attention to social graces at church.

Right now Shepherd and our neighbor's little boy are playing outside.  They aren't being well mannered at all.  In fact, they are behaving more like their dogs with whom they are also playing than like anyone or thing you are ever likely to encounter at a tea party.  But that is okay.  He is two years old, so being civilized is a perfectly acceptable part-time gig.  As Shepherd so elegantly put it when I was wrestling him onto his changing table the other morning to get him dressed for the day, "I can't coperate right now." 

Itty Bitty Lydi

In the past month, Lydia has hit that stage where babies decide that the world is too exciting of a place to sleep.  As a result, BJ and I are deeply and profoundly sleepy.

With that in mind, here is a conversation BJ and I had earlier this afternoon during Lydia's "nap-time" while watching our daughter not nap:

Me: Just try to think about how her hair sticks up and her ears stick out and those things make her pretty cute.
BJ: That's kind of hard since, as I mentioned earlier, she has broken my brain.

Speaking of hair that sticks up and ears that stick out, here is a picture of Lydia with my mother from last week in Menard:

What I've Been Reading

Well, I've been busy working on my sort-of resolution.  I have found that my list of genres has forced me to diversify my reading habits.  Here is the list with the addition of the four books I've read and a short synopsis on each book.

1. Theology - The Mystic Way of Evangelism: A Contemplative Vision for Christian Outreach by  Elaine Heath; A few weeks ago, BJ was accepted into the Doctorate of Ministry program at Lipscomb University (YAY!).  This particular doctorate is focused in spiritual formation. The books for some of BJ's courses are starting to trickle in, and I picked this one up on a whim.  I'm so very glad that I did.  For one thing, it made me really excited about what BJ is going into.  But also, it gave me new ways to hope for the future of American churches.  On a purely entertaining level, I loved reading the brief bios of mystics throughout history.  I would definitely recommend this to anyone in the mood for a little theology.
2. Pulitzer Prize Winner
3. Mystery
4. Thriller
5. Trashy Romance - Years by Lavyrle Spencer; Best Trashy Romance Ever!  Seriously though, this book was really well done.  It wasn't in fact trashy.  It was just a beautiful story about romantic love.  It was predictable, but sometimes predictability is reassuring and lends a book an atmosphere of warmth and welcome to the reader.  There were multiple layers of stories within the overall book, and all of them prooved to be important and valuable to the broader narrative's development.  In other words, this book may never be read in an English college course, but I think it was extremely well done, and I suspect that I will be reading it again in the future just for the heck of it.
6. A Vampire Book
7. Children's Lit
8. A book that has or is being made into a movie
9. A Collection of Poetry
10. A Shakespeare Play
11. A book of historical non-fiction written by Doris Kearns Goodwin
12. Biography
13. Memoir
14. Comedy
15. British classic and/or a Booker Prize winner
16. An Agatha Christi - Peril at End House; This was a classic English mystery set in an eery English mansion.  It was a Poirot mystery, one set later in Poirot's life.  I enjoyed it immensely, and it is very possible that I will be picking up many more Agatha Christi's to come.
17. Young Adult Lit
18. The Bible - Read through Chapter 18 of Numbers so far...
19. SciFi or Fantasy - The Once and Future King by T. H. White; F-A-N-T-A-S-T-I-C.  Did I make that clear enough.  Of course, this is a novel about King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table.  It was whimsical and tragic in the same breath.  Instead of droning on about it, I'm just going to give a quick excert that I think brilliantly demonstrates the quality of the writing and the poignancy of this particular rendition of King Arthur, Lancelot, Guenever, and Merlin's story.  This passage is about Arthur's reaction to Lancelot and Guenever's affair, and how that reaction was shaped by his childhood education under Merlyn:

"Arthur's feeling completed the misery of the court.  He, unfortunately for himself, had been beautifully brought up.  His teacher had educated him as the child is educated in the womb, where it lives the history of man from fish to mammal--and, like the child in the womb, he had been protected with love meanwhile.  The effect of such an education was that he had grown up without any of the useful accomplishments for living--without malice, vanity, suspicion, cruelty, and the commoner forms of selfishness.  Jealousy seemed to him the most ignoble of vices.  He was sadly unfitted for hating his best friend or for torturing his wife.  He had been given too much love and trust to be good at these things. Aurthur was not one of those interesting characters whose subtle motives can be dissected.  He was onle a simple and affectionate man, because Merlyn had believed that love and simplicity were worth having."

20. Graphic Novel

An Entirely Inappropiate Story of Male Bonding

Let me preface this post by saying that I will be using a word of which I don't entirely approve. Here's why: BJ and I disagree on what words we should teach Shepherd to express the bodily function of passing gas.  I believe in saying "passed gas" or "tooted."  BJ says "fart." I hate that word.  But anyways, BJ is winning the argument.  Shepherd has taken to what I like to call the other f word.

So here is the story.  BJ and Shepherd had just finished with Shep's bath, and Shep had asked to pee-pee on the potty.  Shep was sitting on the potty, and BJ was sitting directly across from him on the edge of the bath tub.  All of the sudden, BJ did a very BJ sort of thing to do: he passed gas.  Shep excitedly said, "Dada farted."  Then Shepherd strained, and strained again, and strained one more time really, really intensely, and finally, a tiny, itsy-bitsy toot escaped. Shepherd, utterly pleased with himself and extremely happy, proclaimed, "Shep-ud farted!!!"

That's the whole story.  Hope you enjoyed.

"I like bouncing."

I should be cleaning my house right now in anticipation of our Monday night Bible study group that meets here.  Instead, I just spent the past 20 minutes documenting Lydia's love of bouncing.

That was a good way to spend my time, right?

Shepherd's Newest Musical Composition

Sung while running around the kitchen as I cooked him breakfast:

"I like bacon. B-b-b-b-b-bacon. Bacon, bacon, bacon, bacon. I like bacon."

That's my boy.

Just Random

A few things you should know about my family this past week:

Lydia: For the past week, Lydia has been waking up around 4 to 5 in the morning and making happy noises for about an hour.  Happy noises include the squeals heard in the video I posted last week and continuously blowing air through pursed lips to make bubbles.  Although we start out in our room, BJ and I have been finishing each night in the guest bedroom.   

BJ: When asked what he would like to have for lunch this week, BJ requested that tofu stuff I make.  I am doing something very right.

Shepherd: While playing outside this weekend, Shepherd made up a song about Gus's poop.  It went like this: "A dog, a poop.  A dog poops poops.  A dog, a poop."  After repeating this many, many times, he would then look up at me and say, "Eat it?"  No son.  We don't eat it.

Gus: For information on Gus, see Shepherd's song.

Yep, that's about everything for this week.

This will probably only be of interest to the grandparents, but...

I'm going to post it anyways.  Here is Lydia happy.

The Struggles of the Second Born Child

 
For the first year of a baby's life, parents are preoccupied with making sure their baby sleeps enough and isn't bothered when they are catching those zzz's.  With Shepherd, this was fairly easy.  I would rock him to sleep in the peace and quiet of our room and then tip-toe softly out the door.  Lydia, however, doesn't get the hours of rocking or the quiet nap times or really any peace whatsoever.  Turns out, when you are the second child, the first child is like a little tornado wreaking havoc all over your bedtime.  Here are just a few of the ways Shepherd has interrupted Lydia's sleep:

-Ever since Lydia was born, Shepherd has enjoyed identifying all of her body parts, especially her facial features.  Imagine being woken because I toddler is picking your nose while proudly yelling, "Nose," or poking you in the eyes and ears for his own personal anatomy lesson.  From Lydia's reaction, I deduce it is unpleasant.  And very hard to sleep through.

-While putting Lydia down for a nap this past weekend, Shepherd stormed into the bedroom with my pie crust shield around his neck screaming, "Pie hat! Pie hat!"

-Shepherd is like every other human being on earth: he wants what he can't have.  This means that if I close a door, and he and I are on opposite sides of that door, he officially wants me more that anything ever ever ever.  Every night, I close my bedroom door so that I can get Lydia to bed, and on those unfortunate nights when Shepherd sees me do this, a scene soon follows not unlike Marlon Brando in A Streetcar Named Desire.  However, instead of wailing "Stella," Shepherd is screaming in utter agony, "Mama, Mama!"

-Most of the time, Shepherd does realize that when mommy is putting baby to bed, he is supposed to be quiet.  However, when he thinks "quiet," he doesn't think "no talking." Instead, he thinks "whisper," and if you've ever heard a toddler whisper, you probably know just how loud a whisper can be.  I can't count the number of times I've had Lydia asleep only to have Shepherd tiptoe in with his little pointer finger over his mouth, look at me very seriously in the eyes, and then whisper in the loudest whisper I've ever heard, "Baby sleeping."  Baby doesn't sleep long after what might as well be the cacophony of her big brother's well-intentioned whispers.

So if the next time you see Lydia, she seems a bit sleep-deprived and grumpy, cut the girl a break.  She has a tough time catching a nap around this place.

The Very Bad Cold and My Very Strange Son

Over the past week, I've battled what I'm convinced was one of the worst colds ever in the history of mankind.  I did not like it.  I didn't like the flaming red, scale-y rash spreading from my nose due to excessive wiping. I didn't like the sinus headache and ear ache that came with a stuffy nose.  I didn't like having bloodshot, burning eyes. And most of all, I didn't like being unable to taste food. I made a delectable cauliflower cream soup full of complex flavors, and I couldn't taste a single one of those flavors until it was a two-day-old leftover (incidentally, it was quite good even as a leftover.)

As a result of this cold and the fact that I've spent the past week hiding from the world, I have very little to write about, so instead I'm going to quickly relay a story that happened about a month ago.  BJ and I are in our church's bell choir, so through out December, we were going to practices for our Christmas performances.  During these practices, I would wear Lydia in her Baby K'tan wrap, and Shepherd would play with some toys I would bring him.  Near the end of one of these practices, Shepherd started getting bored with the toys I'd packed him.  He came to me and begged for me to hold him.  With out missing a beat on the song we were currently playing, I told him I couldn't hold him because I was wearing the baby, and then I said what all exasperated parents say when they don't know how to meet their toddler's needs: "Go tell your father."  Now BJ was on the opposite end of the next row, so Shepherd passed about six people on his journey to his father.  He arrived at BJ's side just as we were finishing, and I turned around to see the whole back row laughing.  Apparently, on his way to BJ, Shepherd pinched the butts of every bell choir member he passed.  Let me repeat: All six people's butts had been pinched by my son.  What possessed him to do such thing, I do not know.  But he did. 

When your toddler does something this embarrassing, it is only natural to cringe at what you imagine other people must be imagining.  If I were one of the pinch-ees, I would be thinking, "Wow, in the Gensic household they must pinch each other's butts.  It must be a game.  How very odd they are."  Let me just say, I did not teach Shepherd to pinch butts, nor did BJ that I know of (all though that is not outside of the realm of possibilities.)  All I can say is that toddlers are wierd little people, and my son is no exeception to that rule.

My Sort-of Resolution

I typically do new year's resolutions, and in fact, I love them.  I love the feeling of a new beginning.  I love goals pushing me towards improvement.  However, this year I am making a very conscious decision to not have them.  Here is my thinking: resolutions are about rearranging priorities for the coming year, but when you have two kids under the age of 3, priorities are already set in stone.  Basically, I don't want to spend this next year feeling guilty over unmet resolutions when the reason they are unmet is because my kids require a lot of time and energy.  I figure if the house isn't consistently clean, it will be cleaned in 18 years when my kids go to college.  And if this last five pounds of baby weight doesn't come off, so be it.  I've had two children.  This little pooch of mine is not my shame.  It is a battle scare.  It was earned with dignity.  It was totally worth it.

So that being said, the only goal I'm setting this year has to do with my reading habits.  I typically read 30 to 40 books every year.  While this is a respectable number, I'm always left a little disappointed with myself at the end of each year because of the lack of variety in those 30 to 40 books.  I tend to get in ruts where I'll read mysteries by one author for six months, and then whittle away the rest of the year with fluff romances.  So this year, I've chosen twenty criteria I want at least one book to fit.  My brother is doing this (with a few revisions to the categories) with me, and I'd love it if anyone else who wishes to would join me.  I'll try to occasionally update on my progress.  For now this is the list and the whys of the list:

1. Theology - I started reading theology books two years ago so that I'd be better equipped to converse with BJ on the topic about which he is most passionate.  About 50 pages into my first N.T. Wright book, I discovered I love theology.
2. Pulitzer Prize Winner - Many of my favorite books have won this prize (Empire Falls, Angle of Repose, Gone with the Wind)
3. Mystery - I'll probably read far more than one of these.
4. Thriller - This one's broad.  It could be another mystery, a spy novel, or any number of other categories.  It just must be thrilling on some level.
5. Trashy Romance - I say this tongue in cheek.  I'm not talking about a book with Fabio on the cover.  Rather, I'm talking about fun, mainstream romances that lean towards a soap opera feel.  Why? Because I'm a housewife, and this is supposed to be our genre.
6. A Vampire Book - I find it fascinating that books with vampires have almost become a whole new genre in the past ten years.  I've read many of them and enjoyed them, so I'll definitely fit one in this year.
7. Children's Lit - Because kid's books rock.
8. A book that has or is being made into a movie - Because I love complaining about how movies ALWAYS fall short of the book.
9. A Collection of Poetry - Just because I love, love, love poetry. 
10. A Shakespeare Play - I haven't read a Shakespeare play since my senior year of high school, so I'm due for one.
11. A book of historical non-fiction written by Doris Kearns Goodwin - Goodwin is my favorite commentator on The Daily Show, Colbert Report, NPR, and PBS news programs.  I've meant to read one of her works for years.
12. Biography - This is just to try something new.  I've hardly ever read biographies.
13. Memoir - The best book I read in 2012 was a memoir, Hannah's Child by Stanley Hauerwas.  I'm hoping to find gold twice.
14. Comedy - Cause they're funny.
15. British classic and/or a Booker Prize winner - Another category I typically read every year.
16. An Agatha Christi - I grew up watching my dad read Agatha Christi books, and now my brother is a big fan.  I want to see what exactly it is everyone likes so much.
17. Young Adult Lit - This category also consist of many of my favorite books.
18. The Bible - I've committed to do this with BJ and several other people from church. 
19. SciFi or Fantasy - Because it is good to occasionally read something strange.
20. Graphic Novel - For a totally new experience.

And now, to make up for a boring blog post, pictures of Lydia "waving" and laughing.