Pantless

Jackson keeps taking his pants off. When I ask him why, they answer is always: "Because Me Anakin." I ask, "Doesn't Anakin wears pants?" "No," he tells me. "Anakin wear a cape."

There's no rationalizing with a two-year-old. I guess Jedi's are commando under their capes.

Bedtime at the Doells

So last night, Rob is putting both boys to bed. They are currently sharing a room since I've turned the nursery into my "pretty pink room," as Marty calls it, or the yarn room, as I call it. Really, it's a pretty pink yarn room. If I'm not going to have a girl baby, I'm still going to have a pink room in this testosterone-riddled house. So Jack is in his toddler bed, the red fire engine bed with high sides so he doesn't fall off. And Rob is playing a Bradford Marsalis CD that Marty has been listening to since he was born, although we haven't played it for him for awhile.

Rob asks Marty if he remembers the music. "Yeah, Dad," he replies. "The next song is the butterfly song."

Rob remembers that Marty called it the butterfly song when he was little(r) because Rob would wave his fingers to the music. So he asks Jackson if he likes the music. He can only hear the pacifier sucking as a response. He asks again. More sucking. He asks again, and again sucking is the only response. He must be asleep, I think, as Rob is relaying this story to me. Jeez, don't wake the kid up! So Rob leans up over the wall of the fire engine bed, and asks him again, "Jack, do you like the music?" Jack nods his head vigorously. Rob says, "Oh, I couldn't see your head nodding." Jack removes his paci and says, "Yeah Dad, you can't hear my head." The kid's 2 1/2 years old!

Jackson's vocabulary

Add to the list of the things this 15-month old can say:
Hot
Hat
Head
Sock

Mad Skillz

These boys... oh the stuff they can do. Here are Jackson's latest accomplishments:

The other day, he was playing at my mom's house (who, not incidentally, he calls "Ga", as in Gagi) and she has this neat play kitchen there, which Marty loves and now Jackson does too. There are a bunch of wooden toys and spoons and metal bowls and whatnot, and he's thrilled to be playing with all these things. He finds a basket of wooden foods, including an apple which comes apart (by gnawing on it, in his case, or fingers works too, to loosen the velcro holding them together). My mom hands him the wooden banana. He takes it from her, looks at it, hands it back and then gives her the SIGN FOR BANANA. Hehehe. I am quite sure he meant to say: Either peel this for me or go get me a real one, Ga!

Last night I am saying goodnight to Marty, while holding Jackson (Rob bathes the boys and gets them ready, then I step in and take the baby, although lately Rob's been managing bedtime just fine without me, not that I am ready to step out of this scene). Marty and I have this thing, which he got from Gagi, where he blows me kisses and I catch them then blow mine to him and he, quite dramatically, catches them. This goes on for as long as Rob can stand it. Last night, as Marty and I were doing our thing, Jackson started blowing us kisses! I almost fell over, which would not have been good since I was holding him at the time, but honestly I could not believe this 14-month-old baby was blowing us kisses.

Tonight I went to an even with my mom. While I was gone, Rob and the boys played in the yard (because it's Al Gore weather) and Jackson climbed up the playset 5 times without falling (yes Mom, Rob was right behind him the entire time). He then slid down the slide and loved every minute of it. Then, he started saying the word: book. Let's tally his word list:

-Mama (thanks)
-Dada
-Ga
-D (for Marty)
-Dog
-Bye bye (oh yeah, he started bringing me his shoes and saying bye bye to let me know he wants to go outside, and when that doesn't work he goes to the door and cries)
-Ball
-Book
-Hi (his favorite)
-Up
(that's 10. There may be more)

And Marty is starting to recognize words, like lemon, yellow, start, open, truck, etc. He's so close to reading. We have our good days and our bad, but overall he seems to be getting a bit less impulsive and a bit more gentle. He is such a bright boy. Everything around him is a silver pool of light.

Pilgrims

This morning's conversation with a 3.5 year old:

"What's that, Marty?"

"It's a pilgrim."

"And what do you know about pilgrims, Marty?"

"They live in a corn field. Like scarecrows!"

Googling

"Hey Mom, do you want to google with me? Do you like to google?" Well we are big fans of the search engine company, especially after Vint Cerf started answering Rob's e-mails, and they gave us the gmail accounts with all the storage space before yahoo! did. But what does Marty mean when he talks about googling? It's so fun to figure out the 3.5 year old's interpretations of language - like the way he conjugates every verb as it should be conjugated, without all the exceptions (look Mom, I felled off). So what is googling Marty? "It's when you go around and around." "It's when you sit in the playroom." "It's with paper." So many clues, yet so perplexing.

Rob and I both work the riddle for several days. Could he bo talking about the search engine? Rob did recently get a t-shirt, and Marty can recognize the colorful name/logo. "It's when you make mazes." "It's googling Mom, it's fun." "Do you want to google with me?" Show me googling Marty. Oh you mean doodling! "Yeah Mom, doodling. Do you want to doodle with me?"

Welcome, baby brother

At 2:25PM on January 10, baby Jackson Vincent Doell entered the world. He weighed 8lbs 10oz and was 20.5" long. He is perfect and beautiful.