Kids

When you suddenly remember, at 9:42 pm, that you were supposed to bake hamburger buns tonight... it's time to find something quicker-but-still-productive to do instead. Or go to sleep, I suppose, if I were being sensible. 

How about a kid-update? I thought about doing one on Kit's birthday, and halfway between her birthday and Little Bear's birthday, and on his birthday, but somehow it seems like I'm always too busy. How busy am I? I tried to start using Facebook again, and I could never find time to check it and gave up again. Summer. Kids. Something. There's always something else to be doing.

Kids! So Little Bear recently turned 5, and a few weeks before that Kit turned 2. They keep us on our toes! Kit copies everything Little Bear does, and wants to play with him constantly. He's generally very happy to play with her, too: they are always building forts, dishing up pretend meals, running around outside together... Now that he's reading, Kit is hearing many more stories per day than when I was the only reader! Today, they played and he read to her for a solid hour and a half while I ran on the elliptical, showered, and made supper. Each time I stuck my head in to check on them, they were having a blast and didn't need anything from me. (Days don't usually work like that! But it sure was helpful today.)

Both kids are signed up for our library's summer reading program, and more often than not, Little Bear's weekly tally of books read is over 100! He discovered the nonfiction section at the beginning of the summer, and now, in addition to 8-10 fiction books, we come home from the library with two or three nonfiction kids' books on some random subject each week. 

Little Bear at 5:

Favorite book/series - Frog and Toad

Favorite show - The Pioneer Woman (Food Network)

Favorite song - For All The Saints

Favorite game - Hi Ho Cherry-O

Favorite color - "I can change my favorite color whenever I want to!"

Favorite food - salad

Favorite outdoor activity - riding his bike

Never stops... moving. Even when he's reading, his toes are usually tapping.

Little Bear is a great help. He takes care of loading/unloading the washer and dryer, helps with the dishwasher, sets the table and fills water glasses, and so many other things. Sometimes he can get stubborn, especially if he already has an idea in his head of how something is going to happen or what he's going to do and we tell him it needs to happen differently, but we're working with him on that. He loves to help in the kitchen, and knows where most of the commonly-used ingredients are and how to measure, whisk, etc, so he's actually able to be substantially helpful with a lot of recipes. He takes such good care of Kit, and definitely sees her as his best friend and playmate. And he's constantly surprising me: this afternoon, he grabbed a broom to help me sweep out the garage, and made a comment about how he "wish[es] we had a chore chart for me and Kit." Um, okay! I can do that. :-) He has just discovered Legos, and very much enjoys sitting down with a pile of bricks and either following the instruction booklet or else coming up with his own design.

Kit at 2:

Favorite book/series - Maisy

Favorite show - n/a

Favorite song - How Far I'll Go (Moana)

Favorite game - Chutes and Ladders

Favorite color - yellow and purple

Favorite food - watermelon

Favorite outdoor activity - sidewalk chalk

Never stops... talking! Seriously, her vocabulary is comparable to Little Bear's, and she uses it constantly.

At least once a week, Kit will come up to me with shiny-eyed excitement and say, "I have a great idea! Let's make a fox den!" She loves building blanket-chair-pillow forts with Little Bear, typically "fox dens." With refrigerators that basically double the size of the "den," because where else would she put the teapot and cupcakes and other toy food? She tries to do everything Little Bear does, occasionally frustrating him when she neeeeds to be up on that step stool that he's already standing on so that she can help with the job he's already doing. She likes to help me dry and put away silverware from the dishwasher, and if I don't catch her in time, she'll start unloading plates and trying to pass those up to me as well. She likes the Disney princesses, though she hasn't actually seen any of the movies; we like the versions of Disney princess songs that Evynne and Peter Hollens have done on YouTube, so that's how she learned about them. 

The kids and I spend a lot of days at home, and I'm grateful for that as I see how close they are, how they go out of their way to do things together. I feel so blessed to have these two; they each bring so much joy to our family!