From day one with us, since they were little tiny baby bundles snuggled up together in a double jogger stroller, K & O have loved walks. From the time we first got them home all the way through ’till now, these guys have *LOVED* being in a stroller, and have consistently sat for 1+ hour stretches on long walks, happily and contentedly. They babble and sing and take in the scenery — and now that they’re getting older, they also chat chat chat along. We hate to mess with a good thing, so we were reluctant to switch from the double jogger to two single jogger strollers. However, the two of them just got waaaaaaay too big for one of us (especially me) to be pushing them at once. Once they hit the 35 pound mark (i.e., 70 pounds total!), we threw in the towel and bought two singles. It hasn’t cramped their style at all, and, as usual for these go-with-the-flow-guys, they’ve just rolled with it (no pun intended), and now seem to love long walks even more. One of our favorite things to do on a Sunday morning is a long walk. Today was an especially good one.

When they were babies, K & O would often hold hands when they were in the double jogger together. Even though they are in two separate strollers now they’ll still sometimes hold hands while the strollers are parked.

Today we walked along the river/canals of Sand Island in Bethlehem. After the walk K & O played at the playground there. Note the boots that they insisted on wearing today!!!

To nap or not to nap — that is the question. Today was a very fun Saturday. But there was no nap. So the evening was a little hairy… to say the least. K & O love action-packed Saturdays. And they LOVE to skip a nap. But by mid-afternoon of a napless day they are bleary eyed and frazzled and sucking their thumbs. And by 5:00 of a napless day — forget it. And 6:30 of a napless day inevitably involves at least one of us having a total complete meltdown (sometimes that person is Owen, sometimes that person is Kyle, oftentimes that person is HEATHER). Anyway– from time to time on a Saturday we skip a nap. The beautiful bedtimes on napless Saturdays are so glorious (they go down like a breeze and are asleep in a snap — tonight, for example, Kyle was literally asleep within 2 minutes of his head hitting the pillow). But man, the late afternoons of a napless Saturday are almost physically painful to witness… let alone experience. The boys are so naplessly miserable that your heart wants to just break for the poor napless little them. Lots of parents of other 2.5 year olds we know have started dropping the naps entirely. I don’t think we’re even close to that yet (and a napless day like today reminds me of that!), but it is really really fun to be able to have a whole nap-free Saturday without that huge chunk of time in the middle eaten up by the naps. Napless Saturdays for us mean the glorious bedtimes and the fussy afternoons and the meltdowns. But they also mean a whole full day of uninterupted family togetherness (and 3 cups of coffee each instead of 2 for Braydon and I!)…
Today we went for our weekly Saturday morning class at the Little Gym. Miss Jackie, our teacher, confessed to Braydon that she thinks K & O are “actually amazing” (her words, not ours). We then went to K & O’s favorite park where they got to throw rocks in the river (one of their absolute favorite passtimes). See photo above. We then went to our friends Tom & Lisa, and their son Jack’s, house for their big Lehigh v. Lafayette party. Guess what they had in their backyard for this extravaganza? A dream come true for K & O: they had rented one of those huge blow up jumping things that you see at fairs and festivals. The boys had a ball jumping with a whole bunch of wild and crazy 6-8 year old boys in there! Lehigh lost (click here), but we had a great time at the party. The end of the day was at home and included the boys new favorite video (A Dora the Explorer episode where a star falls from the sky and Dora and Boots sing “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star”), a box of Kraft macaroni and cheese, and the above-mentioned fussiness and meltdowns. The boys are now sound asleep (have been since before 7:00), and I’m waiting (with DVD set to hit “play”) for Braydon to return with Chinese take-out. A happy ending to a napless Saturday.

Braydon took this photo from the garage as he was leaving late this afternoon for an evening work event. Everytime that one of us has to leave for an evening event the boys insist on sitting on the garage doorway step and watching whichever of us is leaving drive the car out of the garage. They don’t seem to experience this as sad– rather they are fondly wishing farewell and cheerfully seeing us off. Tonight as Braydon was backing the car out, the boys were yelling “Bye Papi! Drive carefully!” and waving and blowing kisses.

Announcement! — Braydon has found a new hobby: making videos in the middle of the night (he works on them from 10pm-2am)! And we (blog readers and me!) get the joy of viewing them! So now he’s getting even less sleep than he did before (eeeeks!), but he swears he thinks it is worth it! I love the two he’s done so far, so I can’t really argue with him! Thank you Braydono! 😉
hbj

Children’s play is very revealing. I knew all about this before I became a mother. In fact, I am a sociologist with an area of expertise in “The Sociology of Children and Childhood.” As strange as this is, there are people in this country who actually consider me an expert on that. I’ve done studies on how to elicit children’s perceptions through social research. I’ve written on methodologies for understanding the inner lives of children. Anyone who has read any of this work, or heard me speak on these subjects at conferences, will tell you that I am a huge proponent of using children’s play and children’s artwork in social research. My argument has always been simple: children’s play and artwork reveals their life-world, so use it as a child-friendly approach to studying children’s lives. Yup. Sounds good. Makes sense. I’m also a feminist sociologist. People who know my work and teaching know this about me. So, of course it just logical that I would be the first to say that we as a society should do more to encourage young boys to play with dolls and foster boys’ nurturing/care-taking play. Yup. Sounds good. Makes sense.

Everything intellectual takes on new on-the-ground meaning when you become a parent. Recently K & O’s play has leaped into a whole new imaginatory dimension. They suddenly are not playing like babies anymore and are doing what kids do with toys: they are using them to “play” out real life, using them to “process” their experiences, using them to “work through” their observations. It is revealing. That’s for sure. It is cute too, definately. And… sometimes it is really, really embarassing, as the parent.

The latest is that the boys play for long stretches of time with their dolls. They first start by taking them for walks in their toy stroller. This is very brief. They then move on to “diapers change!”/”change diapers!” — and they lay the dolls down on the floor to “clean up the BIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIG poop! whoa dude! Biiiiiiiiiiig poopie in there! Biiiiiiiiiiiiiiig load!!!” (this, again, is very brief: they use a piece of a baby-wipe to quickly “clean” the babies’ bums). What’s next takes up the large bulk of the doll play. It is not brief, and is repeated over and over and over, sometimes for very long stretches of time: The dolls get “TIME OUT!” Big proclaimations are made, the play becomes very rambunctious, the boys get extremely animated. They announce what it is that the babies did to warrant the time outs: “That baby HIT me!!!!” “That baby BITE me!!!” “No baby! No baby! No hitting baby! No biting baby! TIME OUT BABY! Sit!!!!!” The babies have to sit on the stairs for time out — just like K & O do — and sometimes the poor babies sit there for a loooooooooong time before getting rescued with hugs and kisses and pats on the back and “it’s o.k. baby”‘s from K & O. [Just to be clear, in point of fact: K & O get 2 minute time outs –timed down to the second– when they get them in real life.] The other day, amidst all this doll play, they must have forgotten that their babies were in time out (surely K & O just found something else to do that was way more interesting at the moment — like rolling trucks across the floor making very loud noises and talking about motors, or detroying something that is supposed to be “off limits,” or pulling the cat’s tail — and then lost track of their babies’ discipline). I was quickly going to run upstairs to grab something and found this (see photo).

This was the scene in our bed when I stepped out of the shower this morning at 6:45 am…

It is only Day Two with Big Elmo, yet we’re feeling like we suddenly have a new member of our family.

• We went to a Lehigh football game yesterday. This is one of the boys’ favorite things to do. Why do they love it so? Is it the crowd? Is it the chaos? Is it the fresh air and sunshine? Is it the tailgating? Is it the college co-eds drunk as skunks? They love the marching band, the cheering, the football-crowd-gone-crazy. They love the tailgating scene and the half-time show and everything in between. They are enthralled… why? Do they love it because Braydon and I love it? Is it nature or nurture? Or is it something else we can’t possibly know or understand? Braydon and I ask these questions of ourselves and each other constantly.
• At the football game they run on the grass and tackle each other. This time they had the extra-fun-added-benefit of having Jackson (their best friend from daycare) with them at the game to tackle and run with too. But Kyle and Owen diverged from Jackson (and apparently from all other toddlers too) when they started tackling the Lehigh students sitting in their little cliques of friendship groups. First they started running and jumping/hugging/tackling a group of sorority sisters sitting directly behind us. Then they started with a group of fraternity brothers watching the game in front of us. Before long these Lehigh students were all pulling out ther cell phones taking photos of each other with our boys on their laps and letting K & O wear their sunglasses and tickling them and doing ‘high fives’ and playing chase games and tossing our boys in the air like they were their long-lost nephews… telling us every 5 minutes that K & O were “the cutest things we’ve ever seen~!!!!!!!!!!!!” Well, I agree – they are the cutest things ever seen. But how did I get such cutie pies? How did we luck out so? What kind of deeds have we done to warrant such gifts from ahigh? Or, could we possibly be this lucky? And how did they end up to be so outgoing and sociable and friendly? Sometimes I feel like I’m dreaming. And a lot of times I think to myself: “How can I possibly ensure that these boys keep this kind of self-confidence for the long haul?”
• Re: the new rooms/new beds — this morning we heard some stirring in Owen’s room and could tell he had woken up. Then we saw that he turned his bedroom light on. Braydon went to peek in on him to see what was going on in there. He had his pacifier in his mouth, was holding his lovey lion, and was standing in front of his new shelf checking out his toys. He spent about ten minutes in there alone this morning before coming to find Braydon and I. So his day began with some nice quiet playtime/alone-time. This is precisely the kind of thing we were hoping for when we made the decision to separate the rooms.
• Owen woke up first this morning and Kyle was still sound asleep, so the three of us were downstairs having milk (O) and coffee (B & I) and reading books and playing. Owen was hungry so I laid out a plate of bagels w/ cream cheese and cereal bars (two of his favorite breakfast treats). He was so excited when he saw it that he started jumping up and down and doing what Auntie Jessie fondly refers to as “the human purr” (which is very normal behavior for Owen)… but then our boy didn’t eat any of it… wouldn’t even touch it… and started to get out of sorts and fussy. He kept asking to go get Kyle. Eventually we just decided to let Owen go upstairs to wake up his brother. Owen handed me his pacifier and lovey lion, cheerfully said, “Lovey Lion, stay here! I’ll be right back!” and took off upstairs to get his bro. Next thing we knew the two of them came happily cheerfully bouncing downstairs and immediately gobbled up the entire plate of breakfast food together.
• This afternoon Owen had a full blown terrible two’s type tantrum. It was because I didn’t let him have more juice when he wanted it (it is hard to explain to a two-year-old that too much juice gives him diarrhea… no matter how much we know this fact from direct Owen-juice-drinking-experience, our boy just does not want to accept it!!!) He first threw the cup on the floor, then threw himself on the floor in a raging fit, then broke down in an all-out-wail. But– that was it. Despite how mad he was, he did not hit mama. This was big for him. And we were all proud. When all was said and done I pointed it out to him: “Owen, you were soooo mad! But, you didn’t hit mama!” And he smiled ear-to-ear. To celebrate the big occasion Owen and Kyle got to both eat some mini-M&M’s from their long-lost Halloween loot. ;0
• Tomorrow another work/daycare week begins. It is hard to see the weekend end.

We went to the Lehigh football game yesterday with our friends Julie and Jonathan (their son is K&O’s best friend Jackson and their baby son, Joey, is K&O’s wishful thinking brother) and had a great time. It was a gorgeous day, everyone was relaxed and it couldn’t have gone better. We hung out at the end of the field on a large slope and the boys all played while we hung out and watched (kinda) the game. Hamburgers, chicken fingers ice cream and root beer floats were much enjoyed.

I have some strong feeling about music, but try very hard to not drill the boys hard on songs or look closely for tell-tale signs of musical inclination. However, I am not too good at trying; when we play Rhapsody in Blue in the car, the boys can now pick out the piano, the violins, the trumpet and their favorite – the clarinet. It might just be they have memorized where I call out – “trumpet”, but it’s hard not to read into a bit.

I do have the sense that both boys have a special relationship with music, each in their own way. Owen tends to really enjoy it and it it seems to quiet him (if the music is quiet); Kyle tends to obsess about it. Kyle was particularly into the marching band at the game; it was definitely the highlight for him. We went early and watched them parade around the tailgating parking lot. Owen followed them along (it seemed that he was pretending to be one of the marching band), several times I had to pull him out of the way of on-coming trombones, piccolos and clarinets (‘watch out, marching band coming!); he pulled away and kept marching. Kyle, on the other hand, held Mama’s hand – he couldn’t be bothered with watching where he was going, ‘just let me watch and listen!’

This morning while Heather was buying Kyle the Big Elmo, I was going to the Lowe’s to get cold-weather stuff for the house. Owen was with me in the white car and we were listening to music. It always strikes me how when they hear a new piece of music, it’s the first time for them to hear it. In this case we were listening to Gorecki’s Totus Tuus and I realized it was his first real choral piece – that is pretty amazing.

While listening, it would get loud and quiet. When it got quiet, Owen would say – “Papi, hear it? Loud Papi” – he wanted me to turn it up. After a few times of getting loud and quiet, he started to say “Music BIG loud and quiet Papi!’.

Then after one section, Owen said “Papi… feel it?”