The most wonderful time of the year!

Here are a few pics of getting ready for Christmas, as well as a plain old cute picture of Stirling! Happy Holidays everyone!

Baby Talk

I love, love, love listening to Stirling's attempts to communicate! He impresses me everyday with just how many words he knows. All I have to do is tell him something once, and he remembers. He says two and three word sentences quite oftne, and can even say four word sentences occasionally, such as, "dis is a button." He can now count to two, can identify and name many body parts, and is learning his colors. Right now, everything is yellow or green though, so he has a ways to go! We are trying to encourage manners too. Stirling says please appropriately, but when we tell him to "say thank you Stirling," he says "weccom," (you're welcome) instead! It just makes me smile to hear his cute little voice ask for the things he wants, and then get so pleased when it happens! He is learning the power of words! Here are some of my favorites"
"mo duce" (more juice)
"pese" (please)
"appasauce" (applesauce)
"ah-sigh" (outside)
"sues" (shoes)
The amount of temper tantrums and hitting is decreasing now that his vocabulary is growing. Yay! I am such a proud mama!

Family visits

We have enjoyed seeing both families this fall. The Smeads came down in mid-October and the Woodses came down in mid-November. We were so glad that everyone was able to come and spend time with us in Yuma.

When my folks and Erin were here we went to play at the river and had a nice time playing outside in still warm weather.






When RJ's family was here the guys went four-wheeling and the ladies went shopping. We also had our Thanksgiving dinner a little early since we haven't had family around for Thanksgiving in years.

Finally, some photos!

Broken camera + broken computer= very little blogging

Just before Stirling's birthday he dropped our camera on the ground. Since then, the flash works occasionally at best, and we can only get semi-decent pictures outside where there is plenty of light. Most of my photos for the past 5 months are fuzzy blurs of Stirling as he runs past! I would have posted some of them anyway, but in the last month or so, the computer has started crashing every other day or so. And it almost always crashes when I try to upload photos from the camera. So it has been a challenge to get any photos onto the blog. Right now, I am using my work computer, but of course my camera is not with me to add photos. Hmmm... a new camera and a new computer are both looking really good right now! Luckily I can use RJ's laptop and so am not completely without hope! I uploaded photos last night, and I'll be posting them as soon as I get a few minutes... :)

Time Outs and Vaccuums

There is not much to report right now. Stirling was sick earlier this week, so I ended up having a four day weekend staying home with him on Tuesday. My week at school was then even more hectic with a substitute, guest speaker, field trip, etc. Even though I only taught three days, it was a really long week. Even more tiring is Stirling's new "stomp feet, scream, and hit" routine. It is difficult to stay calm when he yells and hits me in the face. We do time outs by restraining him on our laps. He doesn't like be restrained, but it seems kind of like a hug and might be sending mixed messages. I think I am going to buy a little stool to be his "naughty spot."
On a more positive note, Stirling loves helping with everything. He has completely changed his previous attitude about the vaccuum and now LOVES to help push it around. He also takes his placemat to the table, helps sweep, and likes to put things in the garbage. Having Stirling help with everything helps prevent meltdowns, but everthing is twice as difficult and time-consuming!

I tried to load a video of Stirling playing with his new basketball toy, but it was sideways so I decided not to.

The desert can be beautiful

Summer Fun

Well, school has started and that means back to work, and back to daycare. But boy, Stirling and I had fun this summer. We stayed at home and did simple little activities that we could enjoy together. Here are just a few pictures of our summer fun!

Funny face.










Taking a walk.











Sweeping!











Picking flowers.








Fingerpainting (or should I say face painting?!?)!











Waterplay.









Blocks

I give up...

On trying to control the clutter that is. In this 900 and some square foot apartment with all of our possessions and Stirling getting bigger by the minute, there is no way for "a place for everything and everything in its place." I need to learn to live with the fact that my dining room table will go for months without being cleared, laundry will stay in baskets for weeks, and that the place for my ironing is the stair railing. I don't really mind Stirling's toys being spread across the living room, but I do hate that my scrapbook stuff and RJ's school work is laying around. For someone like me who organizes my closet by sleeve length and color, this is a difficult realization. There will be some days when the mess still stresses me out, but hopefully I will be able to accept a little more clutter without becoming a crazy lady.

Just like Daddy

Storm

Yesterday we had a huge storm in the late afternoon. It seemed to come out of nowhere. One minute Stirling was sitting and coloring in his chair; the next minute a huge gust of wind blew in the double doors behind him. There were so many strong gusts that the doors kept blowing in, and I had to stand there and hold them shut. Leaves were being whipped across the yard, and large branches came crashing down. And when you get wind like that in Yuma, you get sandstorms. There was so much dirt and dust in the air I could barely see the cars on the road out front. It was awful. I went outside for 30 seconds to take a picture, and came back in coated with a fine layer of grit. Luckily the dust storm only lasted about 15 minutes before the rain came- our first monsoon of the season! Stirling and I went outside to play in the rain and it was brown from all the dirt in the air. Gross! We also heard a few peals of thunder. It was kind of fun to watch and I was very thankful the power didn't go out because it was still about 110 degrees outside and we couldn't have done without the air conditioning. A

Summer Crafts

I have been trying to think of things to do with Stirling this summer. We have fun playing, but after a while both of us get pretty tired of stacking blocks, reading the same seven books, and emptying the same pots and pans out of the cupboard. However, I have to make sure any craft project we do isn't toxic if Stirling eats it. So far I have come up with a few fun projects for us that are edible and safe.
We tried jello painting by sprinkling powdered jello on paper and then using ice cubes to paint with. Stirling liked touching the ice cubes to the jello and then licking them. Of course we did this outside and the ice cubes fell in the dirt right before they went in Stirling's mouth!
We also made slime with cornstarch and water and red food coloring. Stirling wasn't as into that one. He mostly wanted to carry the bowl of slime around the house. I wasn't excited about trying to clean it out of the carpet, so that was a short lived project.
I also bought Stirling some large toddler-sized crayons- not edible, but fun to use. He usually manages to draw a line or two and some dots before the crayons ends up with a piece bitten out of it. It is fun watching him "draw" and create!

My next plan is to make edible play-dough- either using a peanut butter recipe or one with kool-aid. That should be a big hit. Perhaps we will do some bubble painting too. I just need to get some tempera paints to mix with bubble solution.

Barf

This morning I gave Stirling his milk just like usual, skipped my own breakfast so I could get to work more quickly, (I am teaching a science/math summer camp this week and next) and got Stirling loaded up in the car. We had driven about 8 blocks and Stirling threw up a little onto his shoulder. I thought, "well, that isn't that much, I'll just clean him up when we get to daycare." Then he threw up a little more, and a little more, then a lot more! I pulled over to assess the situation, still trying to convince myself that I would just wipe him off and we'd continue to daycare. Yeah right!! It was white, curdley, yuck, and it was all over the place. Barf covered Stirling and his car seat. His milk must have been bad. I had to turn around and go home. RJ was just getting in the shower and instead he helped me get the carseat out of the car, went to the store for water since we were out, got Gatorade for Stirling, and rinsed off the carseat. He ended up being pretty late for work. I am so glad to have such a helpful husband. He was my knight in shining armor (well, knight in shining undershirt!) Eventually I got Stirling cleaned up and got him back in the car in his swim suit since the car seat was sopping wet! I was able to get him out to daycare and continue out to the summer camp only 45 minutes late. I just can't believe the milk went bad already. The whole milk seems to spoil a lot faster than the 1% that RJ and I drink. I don't have a picture of the whole barfy situation (thank goodness!), so I'll just put another one of Stirling in the blog.
This is Stirling and his bear and lion. Usually bear stays upstairs, but this morning Stirling brought him down since he wasn't feeling well.

Stirling Updates

Stirling is growing up so fast. He seems more like a little boy than a baby a lot of days. He can say some words now including:
-ball (ba)
-book (buh)
-bear (beh)
-mama
-dada
-computer (ba-puh)
-bubbles (bu-buh)

Ok, so computer is stretching it a bit! He also knows some of the parts of his body including nose, toes, belly button, and tummy, and possibly mouth. He usually likes to identify our noses, toes, etc, rather than find his own though. Stirling likes to stack objects and put things in containers and take them out again.
Stirling loves to play peek-a-boo by going into another room and then coming back to grin while we act surprised. He has learned to run (kind of!) and has so many bruises from falling while doing so, that I fear someone will think the wrong idea. In fact he ran so fast away from me that I couldn't catch him before he fell down the stairs. He bounced, I screamed, he cried, then I cried... it was very traumatic for, well, me! He recovered very quickly. I went out and bought a second safety gate for the top of the stairs that afternoon!
I am really liking being able to stay home with Stirling this summer. I only wish RJ could have more days off to be with us. Stirling is very happy and hyperactive when both of us are around. He sure likes his daddy! He even follows RJ to the bottom of the stairs and looks up waiting for RJ to come back down.

4th of July Pics

Little Genius?

Stirling has two favorite pastimes- reading and playing on the computer. And when I say reading, I mean that he likes for me to read the same book to him over and over and over and over. I think I have at least 4 or 5 books memorized. "Mouse put one star on the Christmas tree. He added two angels, three snowflakes...." Stirling's main goal while we are reading is to turn the pages as fast as possible so that I have to read at light speed. For some books I have just started naming nouns- " a duck, ball, bear," so I can get something out before we flip again!

Stirling has also started enjoying the computer. Or as he calls it, "ba-puh." He stands at the computer chair and gazes at the screen. If we leave the keyboard too close to the edge of the desk, he'll grab and pull. I found a couple of websites that have games for babies. All the baby is required to do is whack the keyboard. Any key runs the game. Except however, all of the wonderful function keys, control keys, and windows keys. Today, Stirling somehow managed to open 41 search windows in the space of about 2 seconds. Took me a lot longer than that to close them all! He has fun watching the games and pounding on our keyboard though, so I live with the wackiness that he is causing on the computer.