Happy New Year from the JenkinSunts! We had a lovely time together with family at Christmas and friends on NYE. Both children were very excited by all their Christmas presents!
A1 was ecstatic when he finally got his hands on an Octonauts Octopod, meanwhile A2 was happy with every single thing but especially the Teletubby hand held foil balloon and the light spinner thingie which were both stocking fillers. We also had a bit of snow so we made a snowman (Mr.Js effort was no rounder than my previous effort; how do you make them round?!) and I towed the kids around the block in a plastic washing basket using an old apron as a tow rope as we don’t have a sledge! They both loved it and it was a good work out for me. No pics though as I needed gloves and hands to pull 😦
As for A2, here’s the usual updates.
Movement: Her dance moves are pretty sweet now. She’s got a good bop and sway going on. She also does a funny ‘hop’ and she has got a lot faster when she runs about (though she did run into a doorframe the other day!). She is very adept and picking her nose now sadly and she sometimes does this as she’s falling to sleep – ewwww. She has mastered sliding out of our bed at last too – she can easily get out to go and play with A1 in the morning now.
She’s also been copying A1 and trying to jump off the sofa arms. She stops at the end and asks for “(h)elp” and waits until she’s holding hands before leaping off but she has fallen off once when she just didn’t balance well and said “A1, jump!” Pointing to A1 as if it was his fault!
Eating: I’ve made a big effort recently to offer more snacks instead of breastfeeding in the day and she has mostly weaned in the day now and does seem to eat more. She has a lot of raisins, breadsticks, bananas and oranges as snacks! We had a random buffet for NYE and she was very keen to try everything. She didn’t really like the tempura prawns or the delicious chicken pastry thingies or the salad leaves but she was happy to try them. She still won’t sit nicely at meals consistently and often wants to sit on my knee. She likes drinking out of an open cup now and if the cup is quite full she does OK but there are still quite a lot of spills. She also likes minesweeping empty tea cups but she wasn’t impressed when I stopped her from eating (the packet of) Party Rings. Breakfast cereal is a big hit at the moment and she will often have 3 helpings!
Teeth: All four canines look really bulgy and she’s chewing on everything but still stuck on 12 teeth.
Sleep: We have made a *small* step in the right direction recently as she now has milk in a comfy chair after her bath and goes to bed without feeding to sleep. This seems to have helped her sleep for slightly* longer in the evenings, as we had noticed that she always seemed in pain and windy when she woke up when she had fed to sleep. I presume that by feeding to sleep she just had a rubbish latch and was getting windy as if she didn’t get more milk on waking up she would scream and howl and then eventually trump and calm down for 10 seconds before the cycle continued or I fed her again.
She has a funny routine of choosing which Twirlywoo she’s going to go to sleep with. It’s always Great Big Hoo and Toodle Hoo but she passes one back to you and chooses another and cycles around and makes you kiss them.
Play: A1 is quite sweet at the moment and he asks her (in a high, questioning voice) “A2, do you want to play in my bedroom?” In the morning and they go up and play with the trains/Octonauts/Lego/all the other stuff together quite happily. She still loves any form of mark making and has been painting with paints and water on her aquadoodle. She also got a travel cot and bedding and a pram for Christmas which she loves (and A1 is often happy to join in too) so Baby Barbara is getting a lot of love at the moment. Oddly, she does try to give the dolls milk up their backs/bums in the gap of their clothes though :s She loves a mobile phone too (which child doesn’t?!) and has been working on her selfies. Still a bit of work to go I think!
Communication: It feels like there been another big leap here as she’s saying more and more words/sounds and joining them up. Most often “Mummy/Daddy/A1 back/gone” but at bedtime we have as “Mummy tiiiiire(d), me tiiiiire(d), A1 tiiiiiir e(d)” recently and before bath when we were heading upstairs she said “A1 come!” Daddy come!” and when she was ready for bed “me go chair!” in anticipation of having milk. She says “My x/y/z” quite a bit too – things like bowl, shoes ,coat, etc and just from the last 2 or 3 days “me get it”, “Mummy bee (read) it” and “Morning!”. She often just says names over and over cycling through all our friends and family.
New (?) words this month include: (s)mall (How she describes A1’s Lego!), kiss, cuddle, tickle and lots of ‘pink’ and ‘blue’ (used incorrectly), two, chin, girl, boy, tricky, stinky, smells, ow, uh-oh, …. And a wealth of TV programme based words – “Go go!” from the “Go Jetters” theme, Bing, Twirlywoos are now a three syllable sound (Tw-wuh-woo) , Bubby (for Teletubby)… We probably watch more TV than I’d like but not *that* much!
Oh and she also has a bit of a posh “Yah” for yes at the moment. I’m sure she’ll pick up A1’s extremely Northern accent soon.
As for A1, he was fantastic at the nursery nativity. He remembered all his 6 lines and delivered them loudly and clearly and he sang his heart out during the songs. He was quite out of tune and very audible and his voice really stood out at times and I was giggling away at his enthusiasm but it was abundantly clear that he absolutely loved it all. He’s really been working on his rat face of late which is a bit less fortunate though. I think he’s had a growth spurt too as suddenly loads of his clothes are too small and the few bits of age 4-5 clothes I’ve bought fit him fine and aren’t too big.
All things JenkinSunts! 