"are you" (sounds like "arroo")

Samuel says more everyday. Yesterday he said, "onion" and today he said "got you." He also started to say "are you" for where are you. He was walking around saying "are you...dada."

Baking

I have been trying to be better about baking things instead of buying them. I have made rolls a few times and also baked cookies the past few Mondays. The cookies have tasted good each time.


Here is the batch of rolls that Joseph helped me roll out tonight. It is Joe's mom's recipe. The first batch of rolls I made didn't rise well, but they tasted good. The second batch rose well but as Joseph put it, "These rolls taste yucks." Joe has been eating the dough which he says tastes better. In a couple of minutes, we should be able to taste the results.


I also made cinnamon rolls for the first time. They were surprisingly easy and tasted super yummy.

We just tasted our first roll. It tasted sooooo good. Yay!! Success(even if I learned that I hadn't rolled them as tight as I should have...better next time around).

Joseph

Joseph has been practicing writing his last name. He can now spell it without help. Here are a couple of pictures of his writing. Notice the illustrations on the letters. The "a" is an alien and the "r" is a policeman.

We have a friend whose name is Cecilia, but she goes by Celia (sounds kind of like seal-ee-a). Yesterday we were in the car going to help her and her husband with some plumbing issues they were having. Joseph was in his seat and then said the following:

Joseph: "I wonder why she chose Celia for a name. If you take off the "ah" it sounds like silly."

Can you tell we have been working on letter sounds. :)

Learning new things everyday

Joseph is in preschool again. This year we are teaching Spanish to the kids. On Tuesday we practiced the alphabet in Spanish. The teacher called each student up and would pronounce a vowel in Spanish and then have them point it out. Joseph got up there and without any help, he identified all of the vowels by their sounds. After class he told me that he "wasn't going to give up Spanish." Of course he still thinks that being brown means that people must speak Spanish. The other day he said that Samuel was getting more brown so he was probably going to speak Spanish.

On the subject of speaking, each day Samuel says new things. He says "owie", "apple", "cheese", "nana", "up", "bite", "rice", "wet", "juice", "no", "bath", "play", "moo", "bird" and much more. Still no complete sentences, but he is showing more interest in saying words. He often mimics what we say. He does let me know when he is hurting. He has a diaper rash and everytime he went poop today, he would sign hurt and then grab his diaper. Samuel didn't even argue too much when I went to change him.

Tonight we went to see Nitrocircus. I will post more on it later.

Etto

We go to the library often. Today we went for Mother Goose, a half hour with songs, a story from a book, and a puppet show. We park in the underground lot which echoes very well. Joseph loves to yell to hear himself. Samuel usually makes a noise but it is not typically loud enough to hear the echo. Today he said loudly, "etto." Immediately after hearing his "etto" he put his pointer finger to his mouth and started to say "shhhhh."

Trouble

Joseph has been testing the limits of what he can and can't get away with. I try to explain things to him prior to going some places, just to make sure he understands. For example, "we are going to Target and we can look at the toys, but that doesn't mean we are going to get one." I try to prep him so there aren't any tantrums. On Sunday he got into trouble a couple of different times because he had some meltdowns and started to yell at me. Joe talked to him and he ended up having to go to bed and it cost him games and toys for all of yesterday. He decided to sneak into his room and started to play with toys while I was making a phone call. I saw him and told him he needed to come out of the room and stop playing. He yelled at me again and earned himself a timeout. I sat him down and gave him a notebook so he could practice writing sorry. He wrote sorry one time and then the following conversation ensued:

Joseph: "Mommy, I wrote down no. How do you spell mommy?"
Mommy: "Why?"
Joseph: "Because I am going to write down "no mommy" on my paper."

Great...who knew an almost 5 year old could be so stubborn (I guess he gets it from both parents). I did have him write down "I am sorry mommy." He wrote it and then got bored.

Samuel is speaking more. Today he came to me and said, "nana (banana)." I asked him to say please and he did. He also said berry today. It was out of context because Joseph was saying "we are going to the liberry." I was trying to correct him and Samuel said, "berry." Joseph started to laugh. Samuel also loves to look for his "dada." This morning he stood outside the bathroom door as Joe was getting ready and kept saying "dada" and pointing with his sippy cup. In the past couple of weeks he has started to give kissies. He kisses us and his cars and sometimes walks around making kissing noises. I did have to stop him from only wanting to kiss me on the mouth. He loves to kiss daddy's nose. Samuel also loves to point to things and say, "dis (this)." He is a cute kid. Boy do I love my boys!!

Seeing green

Yesterday I washed all of our dishes. I put a load in the dishwasher and had a little helper in the form of Samuel. Joseph was coloring in the other room. Samuel often puts his toys and other things into the dishwasher. I found a couple of crayons and removed them. Samuel came over a few different times and took things out of the dishwasher. I found a stray crayon and took it out. I finished loading and put the dishes to wash. Fast forward a few hours later...I needed a clean bowl and opened my dishwasher. I noticed that my measuring cups were green. I looked at a frying pan, covered in green. Plates covered in green. Culprit: green crayon. Evidence: empty paper wrapper plus all of my green dishes. Now I need to motivate myself to rewash (by hand) all of the dishes in there. Definitely not happening tonight.