Thursday, June 20, 2013

Just Dropping By

...to post the last few pictures of our Washington spring.  Gotta clear the blogging decks for the three weeks of Alabama summer we're enjoying now.

Last Day of Little Guy's first year of preschool.  Next year, Buddy Boy will join him there.

This was his first day of preschool.  He's, like, six inches taller now, and can recite Scripture and count in Spanish and sound out words and even sometimes work up the nerve to say hello to his friends.  He loves music class and adores the art projects, but still doesn't like show-and-tell.

Annual day trip to Annapolis.


Ordered Little Guy the adult-size crab cake platter and he wolfed it all down.  Atta boy!

Baby Girl snoozed.

Buddy Boy ate chips.

My friend is always getting her daughter to take couple shots for her, so I gave Buddy Boy a try, and I think he did pretty well, save the loss of the Mister's appendage.

Now, here's a framer!

We went on a pirate boat adventure, where we shot water cannons at an enemy pirate, hauled in sunken treasure and found abandoned bottles of grog.  It was both a bit overwhelming and completely spellbinding for the boys.

In hopes of convincing the boys to participate in the pirate painting, I got a mermaid tattoo.  Did it work?  No.  Did I enjoy my sparkly arm art?  Yes!

Heave ho!

Best I could tell, this Pirate Pete sits out in his little boat all day long, waiting for the pirate adventurers to come attack him with water cannons.  That's a job I could handle.

Treasure!

Long sleeve shirts and popsicle picnics...spring, on the cusp of summer!


The Memorial Day parade.



After a very busy year, we enjoyed a couple weeks' lull in the Mister's work schedule.  How awesome it was to have him home in the evenings for some valuable roughhousing with the children, to have his help with supper and bedtime, and to collapse on the sofa with him each night for some quality TV-viewing!



Baby Girl has fallen for baby dolls.  And hard.  I love it.  It's everything I imagined mothering a girl would be like.  She hugs them, awwwws over them, pats their backs, feeds them, clothes them, swaddles them, pushes them around in a stroller, and--best of all--packs a diaper bag, swings it over her shoulder and says bye-bye to everyone, as she heads for the door.

She adopted this little naked playground orphan, and just loved her so.  The most fun.  The very most fun.

But when she's not making my heart pitter-patter with her tiny mothering skills, she is SCREAMING any time she wants something or someone.  Y'all, it is so loud and so shrill.  If her mouth is anywhere near your ear, it is literally painful.  I can feel the vibrations in my eardrum when she screams, in a most unpleasant way.  Everywhere we go, she startles people and earns us--at best--remarks about her super-capacity lungs, but just as often, evil eye stares and pointed questions about her wellbeing.  People ask to be moved away from our table in restaurants.  Whole train cars have been cleared by her shrieks.  Her Mass attendance tops out at about six minutes, before having to be removed from the building entirely.  Children plug their ears.  Other babies cry.  It's kinda awful.
We encourage her to use words and signs instead of screaming, and remind her each time not to scream, and these efforts have helped somewhat, but WOW!  If anyone has any suggestions, I'm all ears.  {har har}  Please.  Help me.

2 comments:

Allison said...

Our almost 2 year old is a screamer and OMG you are so right. It's horrendous, especially in the car. She has plenty of words to use but instead opts for the one action that gets immediate reactions. I tried ignoring it, then telling her it hurt my ears -- nothing worked. So now I squeeze her cheeks together with my index finger and thumb when she does it -- not enough to hurt her, but she doesn't like it one bit so it's helping a little. Please share other ideas you get!

And -- that Anapolis trip looks so fun!! We haven't been there with kids but need to add it to our future day trips.

ElissaMLF said...

Y'know, Louisa is much screechier than Amelia or Ramona ever were. Not to a point where it causes us problems in public, but enough so that I try not to give her what she wants until she has stopped making such a racket. I wonder if it's a third child thing? They need to make more noise to compete for attention? Good luck!