The Baranko Family: Low Key Weekend

After all the craziness of the past couple weeks, it was nice to have a little down time. With less activities to report on, I can get back to the important stuff, like quotables from Luke and other miscellaneous updates.

"You can do it, Mommy, use your muscles!" Luke to me while I was attempting to lift a huge snowball onto the base of our snowman to make the middle part,

"I have to protect her." Luke explaining his job when it comes to Claire.

"Let's go somewhere." Stir crazy Luke when faced with another day of too-cold-to-be-outside and kind of bored at home.

"Sure thing!" His response when we ask him to do something that he doesn't mind doing, like throwing something away in the garbage.

"I'll meet you there!" This is his new thing where he wants to go places within the house separately. Like we'll all be upstairs and he'll decide we need to go to the basement and play, and he wants the three of us to go down first and then he comes a nanosecond later.

Luke has very specific rules when doing puzzles. You have to do the border first, in order from top left corner and around the whole rectangle. Then you have to do the middle in rows, from top to bottom, in order. This makes for a standstill when we inevitably are missing one of the early pieces and are unable to continue any progress without Luke getting upset over being out of order. Feels OCD-like, although he is showing no other tendencies in this direction, so may be an outlier.

Luke has also been really interested in laundry lately. Although truth be told Matt does most of our laundry, I was actually doing laundry the other day and Luke was SO into helping me. He helps me sort the clothes, then put the soap in, put the clothes in, press the button. Then he helps with the dryer part, too. He actually wanted to do a pair of his pants all by himself from start to finish. "Are my blue pants done?"

Claire is doing great, she is developing quite a personality. After a year of being such an angel baby, she is showing a little more of what will be her true personality - which we are learning is a remarkable lack of patience. She just gets so frustrated so easily. She wants what she wants and she wants it NOW, and when NOW doesn't occur that second she gets suuuuper mad. It is hilarious to watch, actually, because it is so unexpected. She bangs her little fists on the table, sinks to the floor in protest if standing, makes wailing noises and has little mini tantrums for the littlest things that she experiences. For example, she'll be pushing her baby stroller and encounter something in her path that prevents her from moving forward, and she'll start carrying on so loudly as if injured. No sooner has she started these loud protests then she's gone around the thing that was in her way and is happy as a clam. She can turn it on and off like nobody's business. We think it may be part of how she is able to communicate with us at this point, but we get the idea fast what she wants.

We took her to the doctor for her one year appointment and she is doing wonderfully developmentally, she is either ahead of schedule or right on with everything they look for. We did learn, unfortunately, that she had double ear infections! We knew she had a little cold, but there have been zero indications that she would have ear infections. No fever, no pulling on her ears, no unexplained fussiness…she has been her cheerful self. Even during he appointment she was so happy the doctor was floored that she had such bad ear infections and was not showing any signs of it. It makes Matt and I worried that she has such a high pain threshold that we won't know when she is hurt or sick. We will know if there is a fire truck in the way of her baby stroller path, but will not know if she has double ear infections it seems. So she is on antibiotics for the first time in her little life - and the first time we have had either kid on antibiotics ever.

I misplaced the piece of paper that had her growth stats, but as soon as I find it I will post the numbers. Headline is she's tallish, has dropped down to an average weight, and has a big head. You need a big head to carry around all that hair!

putting in the nose

Notice the placements of the buttons and lopsided eye. I find it difficult not to "help" him put them where I think they should be, but resist I did, and he put them where he wanted to:)

Loves zooming around with her ball popper

Lift me up Mommy! Leg leech.

The kids are starting to play together a lot more. Luke makes Claire laugh a ton, and they are starting to fight over toys. Usually Claire has a toy, Luke takes it from her, then she shrieks until he gives it back.