A Little Trim

Anna gave herself a haircut this morning while I was on the treadmill.  I had been feeling very pleased with how well behaved the kids have been while I work out...til today.  I asked her why she did it and she told me she didn't want bangs anymore.

Here she is examining some of the hair she cut off.  She said she wanted to keep the cut off locks.  I had her report the incident to Scott on skype this morning and this is what she said:  Dad, mom says I look like you now (with the shorter/boy hair in front)...and I'm not allowed to use the scissors anymore!

The Rock Incident

 Over the weekend we had nice weather and the kids were playing in the yard.   Matthew comes running toward the house screaming with a bloodied forehead yelling, "Anna threw a rock at me!"  Anna immediately gets placed in time out.  As I'm cleaning up Matthew's head wound, which has turned into a pretty big goose egg by this time, I slowly get more of the story.   Matthew threw a rock at her first but it only glanced off her arm.  Then Matthew asked Anna to throw a rock at him so he could "practice dodging rocks."  I talked to Anna about it who corroborated this story.  She was crying by then and saying Matthew threw a rock at her too and hurt her "so much" on her arm.  I think she felt the injustice more than the actual injury.  Anyway, she was exonerated but we all had to have a talk about not throwing rocks.  Luckily Matthew's head cut looked a lot better after a few hours.  Here it is 12 hours later.  Looking pretty good.

 

 Anna and I went out later and found the rock in question.  It was kind of a big one!

The moral of the story is when practicing your rock dodging skills use something soft, like a small inflatable beach ball.

A Giant Problem

After Anna ran away from me in the parking lot today I had to have a talk with her and Matthew about not running in the street.  The end of the conversation went something like this.

Me:  ...so you need to look out for cars and NOT run in the street.

Matthew (completely serious): And we also need to be careful that giants don't step on us!

He left me speechless.

This picture doesn't have anything to do with this story...or does it?

Obstacles

We have a big wooden sliding door in our living room that separates the entry way and stairs from the living room. Anna thinks she should go out there all the time and play with shoes or go up the stairs. I don't want her to go out there for many reasons, the main one being her own safety. We have a daily battle of wills about it and she does not give up. We've tried some different ways to "lock" the door with varying levels of success.

Our door.
It's big, like a sliding wall.

Our first attempt, back when Matthew was small. We bought a lock that adheres to the wall. It worked until Matthew got too strong and ripped the lock off the wall with the wallpaper. Fail.

A recent idea of mine: using this bouncy ball as a wedge. It was very effective at preventing Anna from opening the door for about two days. Then she realized the ball was the obstruction and that, with a little elbow grease, she could pull it out. Fail.

I also tried putting the chair in front of the door. That didn't work 'cause Anna can shove the big chair around too easily. So strong. Fail. Here she is a few days ago - she fell asleep while trying to shove the chair out of the way. She also threw all the clean laundry on the floor in an act of defiance.

This was Scott's idea: the lid of a big plastic container wedged between the door and the wall. Anna has figured out what the obstruction is, but she can't reach it. So far its working.

Anna does not give up easily, so we'll see how it goes.
She's probably hatching some kind of new escape plan right now.

Baking Cookies (sort of)

Matthew helped me bake cookies tonight (the pre-made dough kind...nice and easy for living in a hotel!) He was very excited about helping.

Once the cookies were ready to go in the oven I moved them away from Matthew, much to his dismay. To see another picture go HERE.

But he found a way to get at them. He slithered up on the table on his belly to get the cookies back. Matthew is acting very casual about the whole thing. You can see Scott laughing in the background.

RIP Five Little Pumpkins

It must be time for Christmas when you find the Halloween crafts deconstructed. I found the paper jack-o-lanterns we made lying sadly on the table without faces, their eyes, noses and mouths in a pitiful little pile next to them. Who could have done such a thing? To see the pumpkins in their prime (and as we would like them to be remembered) click HERE.

I put the faceless pumpkins on the table to take a picture of them and Matthew came over and noticed one still had a face, so he went ahead and finished the job. Oh, Matthew, I'm afraid you gave yourself away. I think the turkey craft is next! Ironically, he was wearing a Halloween shirt that said "monster." Hmmm

APB: Anna is possible flight risk

This is an All Points Bulletin: Anna Guptill, often seen innocently sitting quietly in her swing or bouncy chair, is now considered a possible flight risk. Sources say she was spotted earlier today rolling from a sitting position on the couch down to her stomach and then wiggling towards the edge of the couch. Eyewitness Emily Guptill says she saw these events unfold.
"I couldn't believe my eyes," Guptill says, "I watched her wiggling away and I thought to myself, this baby is going to make a run for it...if she even IS a baby."
This so-called "baby" was later spotted making a phone call, possibly to the driver of a getaway car. Suspected accomplice, Matthew Guptill was seen putting the phone to Ms. Guptill's ear and asking her to "Say Bye Bye." The person on the other end of that phone call is, as of yet, unidentified.
Citizens are urged to report any suspicious activity or behavior by Anna Guptill or her accomplice, Matthew.

Two Months Old!

Anna is two months old today and she had her two month check up. All is well and she weighed in at 13 pounds 3 ounces. She's about 95th percentile for her weight, 75th for height. Nice and healthy. She had to get shots, so of course, the whole affair ended in screaming. Matthew came along and was greatly relieved to learn he was not the one getting shots that day.

Matthew and Anna having a non eye-poking moment. Matthew is very interested in Anna these days. He always asks to hold her ("hold...hold...hold") so I support her head while she sits on his lap. He'll pat her hair, tickle her toes, try to poke her in the eye (yikes!) and try to feed her goldfish crackers (also yikes!). But he's doing it out of kindness. For right now, he likes her. It's sweet.

Our mellow girl

This picture kind of reminds me of my brother Will when he was a baby. I also thought Matthew looked like Will as a baby. This must mean Will and I look alike. :) Here is a picture of Will again.

This was just a mess up picture at the end of our "photo shoot" (when the situation really deteriorated) but it seemed to capture the chaos of the moment pretty well. You can't see me 'cause I'm trying to crawl under the table and hide. Happy Two-Month Birthday Anna!

Weekend adventures...

Our lunch
Onigiri (above) and Sushi rolls (below) from the local grocery store

Over the weekend I finally got brave and tried onigiri for lunch. They are like the Japanese equivalent of a sandwich. People take them in their lunches and I've seen them sold on the street. They are just rice with some kind of filling (salmon, tuna, miso paste...stuff like that) and then sometimes wrapped in seaweed. Most of the ones I've seen are triangular like this and I've been afraid to try them 'cause I wasn't sure how to tell what the filling was. Finally I looked up the characters for all the different fillings and wrote them down on a cheat sheet. Scott went to the store (with the cheat sheet) so he could pick me out one of the kinds that I wasn't too afraid of...like salmon. Of course, he got to the store and found them, and those onigiri had English writing on them, so we didn't even need a cheat sheet. Oh well. He got me one with salmon and one with miso paste and they were really good and very filling. Scott, who is much braver than me and often buys his lunch from the local grocery store, got some sushi rolls...and also shared some of my sandwich...I mean onigiri.

And for dessert we got the biggest sno-cone I've ever seen. Yes, it IS bigger than Matthew's head!!

I think Anna and Matthew both had sore throats this weekend and were extra fussy/whiny. I was trying to calm Anna by gently bouncing with her on our exercise ball. One of our childbirth instructors in Monterey recommended this for calming crying or colicky babies, so we did it with Matthew all the time and it really worked. Matthew wanted to get in on the action here so he pulled up a ball of his own and bounced on it. Here you can see the hole that has been poked in our rice paper door by a certain toddler. I want to get it fixed but since I know it will probably just get poked again, I think I'll wait a while...maybe til we move. :(

And our weekend ended (as all weekends should) with Anna waking up every hour of the night to SCREAM like a banshee. She also required several wardrobe changes (here she is in the middle of one) and soiled our new clean sheets, which I was sad about. :( She was also very offended when I tried to feed her in the night and screamed even louder. Luckily Matthew didn't wake up and by the morning she seemed to be feeling much happier and ate a lot (and tried to look super cute by smiling at me a lot) to make up for her night time antics.

One of these things is not like the others...

Matthew has this toy called the "busy ball popper". It shoots little balls up and out of it and plays music. Today he was playing with it and started crying loudly. I looked and saw that he had put his arm all the way down inside the popper. At first I thought he was stuck, but then I saw the real problem.

I saw that he had dropped his cracker inside with the balls and was trying, unsuccessfully, to retrieve it.

We got the cracker out (after taking a few pictures) and Matthew happily went back to playing with the toy and eating his cracker. I did see him try to drop it in again, so I have a feeling it's not the only busy ball popper rescue we will have to perform.

Goodbye Sippy Cup!

The doctor says I'm supposed to be drinking a gallon of water a day. A GALLON!! That is a big task. Since I kept knocking over my glasses of ice water (it MUST have ice in it in my book) I got a new water bottle that is supposed to be spill proof. Well, it turns out that it IS spill proof and you can drink from it while you are lying down. It's a really good water bottle. Matthew found it on the floor today and decided to figure it out. You have to bite down on the nozzle a little and then suck (it's a camelbak) so it took him a little while to get the hang of it. But once he did, he loved it and decided it was way better than a sippy cup. I tried to give him his cup, but he wants no part of that anymore. Apparently he's moved on to bigger and better things. I wonder if I'll ever get my water bottle back.

The Progression of a Tantrum

It started with a glue stick. I left it sitting on the table and Matthew found it. As soon as he got the lid off, I had to take it away and he wasn't happy about it. That's when the crying started. He was making such a pathetic face that I wanted to take a picture of it, and within 60 seconds of snapping pictures, he forgot about the glue stick and wanted to investigate the camera!! These pictures show the progression from angry back to happy/curious again...and it all happened in under a minute!