Busy Bubeaners

The kiddos are doing great now that we are settling back into a routine after the craziness of December.  We added up the days we were out of town; we were at our home a total of 9 days that month!  It's no wonder the kiddos had some issues readjusting.

We were quick to start them back on their daytime routine including naps.  Bubita takes two short naps in the morning and evening.  But she is now taking her long afternoon nap with Bubeaner.  That has appeared to have helped with their nighttime routine.  Bubita has slept for 12-13 hours every night the last two days.  Twelve to thirteen hours!!!  A the wonder of a good night's sleep. 

Bubeaner loves his new warm jacket.  

Of course, there has been another change.  We have a nightly visitor to our bedroom.  Every night this week we have heard the shuffling of little feet followed by the "Momma night-night" or "Dadda night-night".  It's not ideal; however, he falls right back to sleep and is now not moving as much when he sleeps.  We have debated using the baby gate to keep him in the nursery.  The concern is that he will cry or raise his voice to get our attention thereby waking up Bubita.  We can deal with sharing our bed so long as we can sleep. A startled-awake Bubita does not allow us to sleep.  Dilemma.  Dilemma.

Poor little bundled Bubita.  At least, she is warm.

We have also resumed our daily routine of a daily walk.  It has been moved up to earlier in the day taking into consideration how COLD it has been lately.  And it has helped a lot with attitude issues.  The kiddos, especially Bubeaner, are in a much better mood if we go for a walk.  Not surprisingly, the only other people we run into on our walks, specially the coldest days, are other parents with young children.

Our two little helpers.  Notice Sandy keeps an eye on them from a safe distance.

 
And Bubeaner has become a little harder to deal with now that he is in his Terrible-Twos stage.  He's still a good kid and pretty easy going.  But there have been changes.  For one, he has suddenly become a really picky eater.  It is a hard transition from Bita's awesome home-cooked meals to Momma's, well, just meals.  But today Momma got the idea of letting him help her make his meal.  He has helped out before while we make dessert and he loved it.  The plan was that if he helped make it he would be more interested in eating it.  It worked!  We are planning on letting him help more often.  Hey, he may even grow up loving to cook, something Momma does not enjoy doing usually.  Although working with the Bubeaner made cooking fun.

Bubeaner is pretty good about putting his things in their place.

We have also been facing a new problem.  Bubeaner does not like to share with Bubita.  That would not be a great problem if he just refused to share his toys.  The problem is he refuses to let Bubita play with her own toys!  Sigh.  We've been working on it a little every day.  Thankfully, he has not taken to hitting Bubita... yet.  Let's hope that continues.  He has, however, taken to "spanking" Momma and Daddy saying "no, no, no".  We are a little baffled as to where he got this since we don't spank.  Interesting.

A happy, silly, Bubeaner.  He's developed quite a sense of humor.

As to Bubita, the girl is determined to be a big girl.  Anything and everything her brother does she has to do too.  The other day she managed to grab a crayon while Bubeaner was coloring.  And she actually looked at the coloring book and then back at the crayon before attempting to eat it.  With Bubita, most things appear to be good snack material. 

Bubita loves her brother, but gets pretty miffed with him at times.

Bubita's favorite past time involves doing laps around the house in her walker.  Now that she has finally mastered walking one foot at a time (before she did the two foot jump), she's getting pretty fast.  Thankfully, she still cannot move on carpet.  That pretty much limits her access to the family room-kitchen area and the hallways.  A lot less for her to get into trouble this way... at least for now.

Chillin' with the homeys.

She is not crawling yet.  But Bubita is now a pro at sitting on her own.  And she wants to be sitting all the time.  It does give her greater access to the things around her.  She's even started enjoying playing with some of her toys while sitting as opposed to just trying to eat them.  At times, Bubeaner even plays with her.  Well, they play together for a little while before Bubeaner decides to take the toys away from Bubita.  But we are working on that.  And he does enjoy entertaining her.  This week Bubeaner discovered Bubita thought it was funny when he accidentally hit himself.  Well, he spent a good 15 minutes pretending to hurt himself (a la the Three Stooges) making her laugh hysterically. 

Ah, the rare occasions of harmony.