Kid updates

ANNIE

A.K.A. Annie Banannie, Banana Babe, Banoonie, Banooner, Annie-kin, Princess Peach, Sweetie, Sweetie Pie, Annie Beth, Annabel, Annie Rose, Annie Marie, and Annie Sue. I sometimes have to stop and think for a minute; what is Annie’s middle name? It’s Elizabeth by the way.

Annie is a speedy crawler now. She can pull herself to standing. She started clapping her hands yesterday. She’s started to babel and talk more. I heard her say “da da da da” yesterday.

Her little personality is coming out more. She’s not as anxious or fearful as Jackson was—she’s not scared of the vacuum cleaner, hair dryer, shower or mommy when I have towels on my head or curlers in my hair, like Jackson was. She doesn’t need as much soothing as Jackson did, but she is, hands-down, more dramatic and makes a big crying show when toys or, more often, non-toys get taken from her.

She still isn’t sleeping as good as she did when she was 3-5 months old. I still don’t know why, but I’m not as panicked about her sleeping as I was Jackson. Jackson is 3 and still wakes us up at night sometimes so I have just accepted night-time waking as normal and acceptable. The more I worry about how much sleep I get, the worse the whole situation seems. 

Annie grinds her top front teeth on her bottom front teeth. She only does it when she is tired and about to fall asleep. I sure wish she would take a binky. We are aggressively trying to prevent Annie from getting the cavities that Jackson got from eating frequently at night. I am giving her fluoridated toothpaste which I’m not sure if you are “supposed” to before 12 months. I am doing it because in Utah our water is not fluoridated thanks to far right wingers. I think it could have helped Jackson’s teeth be much stronger if we had done it with him.

Annie’s hair is still fine, but it is coming in. I can’t wait until I can braid it and put it in little pigtails. I don’t know how much she weighs right now, but I was surprised to find that she needs 18 month clothes. (She’s 7.5 months old) 12 month sized clothes fit her, but not for long. Her largest sized clothes were 6-9 months. I feel bad for having crammed her in those. She is a big big big girl.

JACKSON

A.K.A. Wacko Jacko, Big Boy

Jackson loves games. He likes computer games. He LOVES aunt Mandy’s wii. More than those, he loves games he can play with people. He knows how to play candy land, high-ho cheerio, “shoots” and ladders, memory, crazy eights, go fish (he calls it “gold fish”), qwirkle, and Uno. I like playing Uno with him. The one thing he really needs to work on is holding his cards up so I can’t see. That’s okay, because he can still beat me even when I can see his hand.

He can count to twenty-something. Sometimes. His teens are a little funny “threeteen, fourteen, fiveteen…” I heard him counting to himself “twenty one, twenty two, twenty three” so I think he knows them.

Jackson really knows the letter “J”. Whenever he sees it anywhere he gets excited and says “that’s a J for me?” or “that’s my J!” He knows my names starts with a K and Colin starts with a C and Annies starts with an A. He says “Mama starts with K?”

My next project with him is working on his sound sensitivity. In primary, it is admittedly loud. He had a really hard time in singing time today when the chorister had the kids sing loud and quiet. He clung onto me and had me plug his ears. We had another incident yesterday at Colin’s basketball game and he was terrified of the buzzer. It’s a good chance it’s just a phase and he will outgrow it, but I just want to make sure he doesn’t have any physical ear problems causing it. I have some ear problems, but most of the people in my family don’t like loud, so it’s probably just that. I don’t want him to be scared of barking dogs, train horns, fire trucks because these are all things he loves.

I mentioned primary but I have never really talked about it yet. The first week we were in Idaho and he went to CTR something with my mom because she’s a teacher. He got a CTR ring that he adores. In our ward, there are three classes of sunbeams, each with eight kids in it. That’s a whole lot of little people. The past two weeks, Colin went with him and Jackson was pretty clingy. I went today and he was very clingy. It’s a strange thing because Jackson isn’t a very clingy kid in any other situation. All we can conclude is it is anxiety about the noise and probably because there are so many people. It is a GIANT primary. He loves singing time, when they aren’t scream singing. He loves to get up and do the motions to songs. He was shy to go up in front of every to help out with the lesson. He’s gone to his class okay every week. Last week he had tears after class because he got in trouble for tickling the boy next to him and had to be moved. This week there were no tears, so that’s great.

He is very excited to start sports in a few weeks. I can’t wait. I hope there aren’t any noise problems so he’s not clingy and can enjoy himself. Jackson talks back when you tell him not to do something or to be good and says “you need to not say words” or “you need to say nice words”