Our Kids

Yowza! I put Landis in her crib for a diaper change and then went about cleaning up, I knew she was tired and I had planned to put her in the wrap and let her go to sleep. Then I remembered I had to order Otto’s dog food (I am ordering from www.gooberpetdirect.com and I get free delivery, helps me out a lot) so I went to order it. I heard a squeak from in there and once I finished ordered I went to get her and she was ASLEEP IN HER CRIB SUCKING HER THUMB! OMG! I can’t believe it, I don’t know how long she will sleep but this is a true FIRST! How exciting. Now that she can manage to get that lovely digit in her mouth we are making some serious progress! The girls are playing doctor with their doctor kit (best present ever) and I am going to fold some laundry. Oh happy day:)

Okay so the “nap” only lasted 20 mins or so but still it is progress and it was pretty painless which is a big bonus:)

It turns out that Piper says the funny stuff and Lela is funny all in the delivery. Lela has comedic genius written all over her and Piper has that, “Hey meet you in back of the school for a smoke,” mischievously funny side. This morning I was talking to Landis as we are all getting dressed, if you just speak to her she is all smiles, coos, grins and giggles, anyway I was talking to her and calling her “Sunshine” (what my folks call me) and Lela looked up at me and said, “Her name is not Sunshine it is Landis Olivia.” The delivery was quite cute and the fact that we don’t say Landis Olivia were what amazed me. I don’t know how she remembered her middle name was Olivia.

Now Piper is equally amusing in a “I am going to throw myself under the truck” kind of way. All day today she has been a pistelero, she unrolled all the paper towels, threw two forks on the floor, drank her milk and then let it all dribble down her chin to the floor, spilled her oatmeal on her jacket and pants, emptied the tupperware cabinet, unstuck all the post it notes and stuck them all around the floor, threw her pots and pans behind the TV, got peanuts out of a packing box and broke them up, crumbled a cornbread muffin (from the neighbor) into bits on her computer table and a number of other things. She does all these things in the span of like two minutes since they are never really ever left alone for longer than that, I mean I have to pee sometime:) I think she is feeling her wheaties and seeing what I will tolerate, I think she is looking for attention. Now in my universe I just ignore all the aforementioned infractions and spend extra time reading, cuddling and paying positive attention to her. In my parenting manual (the made up one in my head) children will take any kind of attention good or bad so I choose to not give bad attention and give more good attention (see me when they are teens, I am sure this nonsense will have had NO effect;-P).

As for the funny things she says here are a few:

Upside Up – when things are the right way up she says they are upside up
Anything – when you ask her what is in the tent (or box or any item) she says “anything” so either she is saying anything I want because I have a wonderful imagination or she is using the word anything for the word nothing
Fire, Fire – now I have an annoying habit (annoying to my DH only) of putting paper, plastic or other flammables on top of the stove (not when it is on, when it is not in use) and Jason used to just remove them, then he mentioned it to me and finally he has started saying “Fire, Fire” to get me to notice and remove them. Yesterday as we were baking cookies I put the cookie tray on the stove top and Piper yelled, “Fire, Fire” which cracked me up. Now she yells it throughout the day which is sometimes funny and sometimes not, LOL!

Baby Landis being happy!

Happy Landis from The Haslup Girls on Vimeo.

I’ll be posting some videos created from the flip… here’s one of Piper trying to train Otto to sit before putting him outside with a commanding “GO!”

Piper and Otto from The Haslup Girls on Vimeo.

Okay so Landis is a little lovebug. Really a very, very delightful little baby. After a couple months we figured out that her late afternoon rants were due to gas. So now we work during the day to avoid that gassy buildup that was giving her such pain. We can push up her little legs and get toots out of her and she thinks that is just so wonderful. She is desperately trying to suck on her thumb, she really loves to suck (I know I mentioned it before) but she prefers something fleshy to the artificial binky kind of thing. Last night she sounded like a starving man sucking meat off a bone, it was so loud and kind of disturbing. Thank goodness she does not breastfeed that loud. HA!

Her sleep pattern is still trying to emerge but it does seem to be taking its time. She likes to get up in the morning between 7-8 and stay up for an hour or more. That first nap she is happy to take on her own in her bouncy chair. The only downside is that the sleep is a quick one and many mornings I am getting out and about with the girls so it disrupts her pattern. As I type she is fast asleep in the Moby and has been for about the last hour or more. She likes to sleep there the most but she is getting heavier and it is harder for me to do things, it is like being 9 months prego. Once she falls asleep at night she is good for the night, no late night rocking or any of that business so I really can’t complain. I think Jason is anxious for her to sleep on her own since once I get her down I am pretty much stuck (this is all for my benefit, he is concerned about me and I know that and appreciate it) but I am enjoying this baby so much. I get to hold and cuddle her a lot more than I did with the girls and I love it.

When she is awake she prefers human interaction to all the toys in the world. Her face lights up with glee when one of her sisters pops into view. She will goo and laugh at Piper and is very interested in staring and smiling at Lela. The girls are wonderful with her and very gentle. They love it when she touches them, they squeal with glee to me, “Landis touched my face, she touched my footy jamas…..”, it just could not be cuter.

Well Piper and Lela are growing up fast but at least I will have the blog to remind me about it later;) Lately they have been chatting up a storm, they are right in that place where they have verbal skills and cognitive skills but neither one of them works as fast as they would like, this leads to……..frustration:) Yes that is right, the tantrum is coming, the tantrum is coming lock up your dogs and batten down the hatches. Lately the trantums have come from Lela, she seems to feel things much more intensely than Piper which leads to more frustration. Piper is more the one that holds her finger right over Lela’s arm and says, “I am not touching her” until Lela is in tears. From what I have heard this is a lot like JJ and Jason as tots so it is kind of like cosmic karma. Jason swears it was always JJ tormenting him but I suspect it was the other way around since Piper is so much like her dad, LOL!

The other day Piper was on the potty and she called out to Jason that she was finished. We knew she was finished because she declared, “I saw a little poo sticking out.” Apparently she had been watching herself poop through her legs and saw it sticking out. When she bounded off the potty there was indeed a little poo in there and she was quite excited that she had actually seen it exit. Maybe she is British since they are so fond of toilet humor:)

On the Lela front our parenting coach encouraged us to have the girls (all small kids) do more for themselves. I let them do a lot but I still do most things for them because it is easier on me, waiting for them to put on their shoes is like Chinese water torture. So I have been making a major effort to see what they can, can’t, will and won’t do for themselves. One thing she pointed out is that right now they want to help and if we don’t cultivate that want to help it will be gone and they won’t help. Makes sense. They have been going potty by themselves and pulling up and down their pants, cleaning off their own dishes, setting the table and a few other things. They have been picking out their clothes and shoes, helping with the dishes and laundry, cleaning up their toys and other things for quite some time. Now because of all the extra doing Lela has come up with her favorite phrase, “I can’t.” Now she says that all the time for any activity that she does not want to do, crikies that can get old really quick. I end up in a 10 minute long conversation with her about why she “can’t” and more often than not we decide to do the task together.

Piper’s latest trick is to purposely dump things on the ground for no apparent reason (other than to torment me of course). She took all the moss out of my budding paperwhites and dropped it to the floor, just a minute ago she turned her sippy cup upside down and let it all drip out (while I was writing this post), the took things off the counter today and just dropped them one by one onto the floor. I know that she is testing me, maybe she likes to hear me sigh really heavily (that is fodder for another post) I just pray I have the strength to get through the twin 3’s with some sense of accomplishment and happy well rounded tots (is that too much to ask:-P).

Wanted to post something about one of our latest purchases… the Flip Video (warning: that’s an amazon referral link). Mystique saw this in a magazine or something and so far it’s been a lot of fun. It’s a video camera that’s about the size of an ipod or mini-voice recorder. It’s very basic and simply records the video to internal memory. The one we got holds up to 30 minutes of video clips.

When you want to view it, you can either hook it up to a TV or plug it in to your computer with USB and upload your videos anywhere. It’s a lot handier than grabbing the video camera and the quality is the same (although no real zooming).

Anyhow, expect to see more videos once I figure out how to embed them into our blog

Well I have been a bit lax lately in my posting, mia culpa:) So this should get you all up to speed:

Landis can sit in her exersaucer and hold her head up pretty well
Lela actually ran to school from the car the other day AND was teachers helper during music
Jason is taking the day off on Friday and taking 2 of 3 to the zoo while I shop and dine with a friend (lucky me)
I am running again (love it and hate it, love it cuz I love running, hate it cuz I have to do it before everyone gets up and that is EARLY)
Piper is being a true champ with her finger, she has no nail, we go back to the doctor on Thursday (the hand surgeon, not the dermatologist)

Well it sure seems like there is more going on than that, I definitely feel busier than that. But I guess the net of it is that life has returned to our version of “normal” and everyone is thriving. We are due to go to a potluck playgroup today at a park and I am waffling a bit because of all the sick kids. We will probably go anyway but not stay long. All is well, the world is still spinning but a little to fast as usual.