Jackisms

Now that Jack has been talking almost like a real person he comes up with some cute things. Today, I overheard a conversation between Todd and Jack regarding scissors.

Jack: I needa knife.
Todd: Why do you need a knife?
Jack: I gotta cut Einsteins.
Todd: I'm sorry, what? You need to cut who?
Jack: I needa cut da Einsteins.

*Todd settles into a confused silence*

Me: He said he needs to cut out his Little Einsteins.
Todd: Oh? You need scissors?
Jack: Yeah. I needa knife.
Todd: Well, I will do it for you, because these scissors are for grown ups.
Jack: NO! I do it! I gow-up! I do knife!
Todd: No, you're not grown up quite yet.

Me: *dying of laughter*

Jack has been asking me to draw the Little Einsteins lately. We've had pink Quincys and crayoned Rockets. Each time my art work has been getting a little better. I have absolutely no artistic talent, but I can draw a distinguishable June, apparently. Earlier this evening Jack had a handful of Einstein characters that he crumpled and carried around with him around the house. They went in a box, out of a box, in a "buh-et", and hid under Een on the Boppy. He asked repeatedly "Where Eye-tines go?" while looking for them. They hid from us, we found them. They played peek-a-boo with Nina.

His imagination is getting so big. He has Transformers battles in the back seat of the car. He plays with his Mickey babies. They're always dancing, eating, drinking, or sleeping.

After over a decade of storage, I allowed Jack to have my entire Beanie Baby collection. Years of conditioning to keep the tags pristine and to keep the animals in mint condition are making me twitch watching him carelessly play with them. I always knew I'd hand them down to my own kids (unless they were worth big bucks, but meh...) and the day has finally come. Also, we needed the underbed storage space.

NINA UPDATE:
For some reason, the receptionist at my doctors office was convinced that Nina needed a 3 month appointment. Turns out, they don't see babies at month 3 unless there's a problem. However, Nina was weighed and measured and she is 14lbs 6.5oz and is 23.5 inches long. She's a big girl. She's officially OUT of 3 month clothes, including pajamas.

We do cloth diapers during the day unless we're out and about. I've done cloth at night but right now we're still knee high in size 2 disposables so I'm trying to get through them. We found a system that works with her delicious thighs. However, I don't like how fluffy the cloth is in the car seat. She's still so small that the fluff in the diaper makes the car seat straps a bit looser than I'd like and if I tighten them, I find we get leaks. No big deal, we just put her in a disposable. Like Jack, she seems to only poop in the car if we're out all day. Otherwise, she waits til we're home.

She's still sleeping through the night and is one of the sweetest babies I've ever encountered. I may be biased, since she is my own kid, but she really is a pleasant baby. I want to say she's happier than Jack ever was, but that comparison also comes with experience. We know what we're doing this time around and it's resulting in happier parents and a happier baby.

Cloth 2.0

Nina is 5 days shy of turning 3 months old. Her well baby appointment is on the 25th, so I will have stats then, but I'm guessing she's close to or over 13 pounds. She's also grown in length. She's been in 6 month clothes for a couple weeks now, except she is too little for 6 month pajamas.

We've been having a bit of a blowout problem lately. We just moved her up to size 2 diapers. Just implies that I've been blogging and we're up to date. We moved her to size 2 diapers a while ago. She is on the low end of the weight range (12-18lbs, I believe) and already her chunky thighs don't really allow for a good seal so she's been shooting poop up the back of the diaper. I'm eternally grateful that we have awesome stain remover (White Wizard--It's available on Amazon, but it's nearly half as much when purchased from their own website) and we've saved several outfits. These are stains that Shout just hasn't touched. Bad. It's not even that much poop half the time. I'm sorry. In reality, my days revolve around feeding, changing, and playing with babies. Because Nina is exclusively breast fed, we have to keep track of her poop cycle so that we can avoid massive blowouts. It's fun.

So, we discussed it, and we are switching to cloth. We did this with Jack and as much as I loved it, it just didn't work for us at that time. I've always said if I started when he was younger things would have been different. Jack just doesn't care when he has a dirty diaper. Nina doesn't care so much about wet diapers, but DAMMIT WOMAN THERE'S POOP IN MY DIAPER! is about the only time she cries. (oh, fun story. Have you heard about the time I said "dammit" and my two year old repeated it for several minutes? No. I'll tell that in a bit as a break from the poop talk.) We are investing more money into cloth diapers this time. We are giving up disposables cold turkey. Well, once the diapers arrive, that is. We are intending this to be more successful than the last time.

Rocking a BumGenius Freetime AIO

Infinitely cuter than disposables

We are doing a combination of BumGenius AIO and gDiapers. I like the gDiapers during the day when we are changing her more often, but since she sleeps through the night, we wanted something more absorbent. BG Freetime was our answer, and I may invest in some GroVia AIO. She's had a bit of diaper rash for a few days and sure enough, after just a single day of cloth her rash is gone. We think she just has extremely sensitive skin; just like mama.

Just hanging out

Jack loves his Een. I heard him call her Eena a couple times and we had to nip that in the bud. Now we all call her Een. I want that to last as long as possible. He "shares" toys with her by taking them and then throwing them in her general vicinity. She took a nap in her crib for the FIRST. TIME. EVER! the other day and slept for about an hour. The entire time she was upstairs Jack would ask "where Een go? Go upstairs, get Een?"

MAMA! Een eat da toy!

She's got skills

Shake it, Een!

We have had an exciting week. Nina started laughing. We have yet to get it on camera. Mostly it's a few rough belly giggles. She also started grabbing toys, shirts, Daddy's beard, Mommy's hair, etc. She's so fascinated that she has fingers and hands. She LOVES her car seat toy, except that she cannot get it to her mouth and therefore makes her very angry. I imagine it's similar to the little bird on Jack's old Exersaucer. He tried for months to get it in his mouth. When he did, it was one of the only toys he has ever chewed on.

And, now that you've suffered through the crappy (pun intended) part of this post, read about how I taught my toddler to curse:

Jack just really started talking after Christmas. He has never repeated words when asked, or really repeated anything we say. All of his words came from Mickey Mouse, or Little Einsteins. However, shortly after we returned from NJ in December he started talking. And repeating. And oh crap, I'm pretty sure the baby just said "shit". BUT, he still never really repeated things NOT directed to him. He would occasionally repeat a sound we made (grunt from toe stubbing, OW!) until one day last week. I was frustrated from trying to get both kids up all the stairs and when we walked into the house, Jack bumped into the swing frame (what? you don't store your swing frame near the front door in your impossibly tiny hallway? weirdo...) and it fell over while I was trying to carry Nina into the house. I yelled out "DAMMIT!" and lo and behold, the kid repeated "dammit. dammit. dammit." for about 5 minutes. I was torn. Do I giggle like a maniac, because this is one word that absolutely is NOT affected by his toddler speech, or do I hold it together and ignore it so he'll stop? Decisions. Of course I cracked up and called everyone I know. Then I promptly quit and directed him to another activity. Haven't cursed in front of him since.

Now, I don't have a problem with cursing. I try not to make a big deal about it when he says it and honestly, I could care less. He's too little to understand what he says anyway. However, he is in daycare with other kids who are also in that repetitive stage of talking and I don't want their mamas mad at me. We also go to a weekly playgroup and I don't want him cursing in front of those kids either. It's one thing for me to be a bad influence on my own children, but quite another to indirectly teach another child bad manners. He doesn't repeat only bad things. He started blessing us when we sneeze, which is the cutest thing ever. He says please and thank you, often without prompting. 

Also, he repeats kindness. The other day, Nina was freaking out while I was out of the room (possibly may have locked myself in the bathroom to pee in silence) and I hear Jack say "coming Een! I coming!" Obviously, I take all the credit for his politeness as well. Because I can. (Imagine this as "come-ee Een! I come-ee!" because that last ng sound doesn't fully come out sometimes. I love it)

We have Nina's 3 month photos coming up, so hopefully I can carve out a few minutes to myself in the next couple weeks to blog and share those when I get them back. I've been steadily sharing photos on Instagram and Facebook lately, so it's not like there's much that I'm not telling.