Climbing and poetry

The kids are consummate climbers.  Ziggy spends many happy times mounting small chairs, kneeling in them and trying to climb over the back, or just trying to stand on top of a box of butt-wipes.  Luckily, he is also a fairly graceful faller.  Ella is very good at the technical aspect of climbing.  She's a good listener about where a good hand or foot-hold might be and is pretty brave even when high up.  She can really own the big (probably 15 feet high) rope structure at the mall, though she doesn't really go to the top, just up to where I can still reach her feet.

At the park this morning, Ella met a climbing friend, 3 1/2 and a very good climber.  After realizing that she couldn't climb all of the things he could climb, she was moved to compose a poem on the subject.  Literally, she said, "I just thought of a poem," and then, thinking very hard, said the following,

Different climbs

for different minds--

we all climb together

but at different times.

And they're cute too.

Blog Hiatus Over!!!

Wow!  Well, that turned out to be a whirlwind of a year!  Sorry for the no blogs.  But actually the hiatus serves as a pretty good historical record of how busy the year was: I was teaching a lot at Tufts, Lauren was teaching at Bentley, and we were all just trying to survive for the most part.  Lucky for us, Ziggy is a pretty good sleeper and Ella is the best big sister ever!

In our last posting, Ella was just off on her first day of school, and Ziggy was a tiny little laugher.  Well, now Ella is almost done with school, she's 3 and 5/6th years old, and she's gotten quite tall and kid-looking.  And Ziggy will be 1 in a matter of days, and he's now not only a BIG little laugher but a big little walker too!

Our trips to the park or the Science Museum are different now too.  I'll usually hang out with Ziggy and he'll walk around holding my hand or climb some stairs and go down a slide face-first, while Ella just takes off and climbs up everything in sight.  She can do pretty much everything at the park by herself now, except maybe the monkey bars, which really are very hard.

Here's Ella doing some bed gymnastics:

And here's Ziggy walking and playing with his balls (this one deserves a series.)

Notice that he's turned from a brunette into a reddish-blondie!

  ... and did he just say "ball" or was it my imagination?

In case you haven't heard, we'll be moving to Hamilton, NY, at the end of July where both Lauren and I will be teaching at Colgate.  It's going to be hard to leave friends and family, but it's just a one-year gig for now, so we might be right back in Boston next year.

Over the summer, we're going to try to do some retro-posting to fill in the gap from this past year.  So look out for more back-dated posts to come BEFORE this one (scroll down!).

First days, first laughs

This was a big week for big sister Ella! She had her first day of Nursery School on Tuesday. She's going to a parent co-op nursery school twice a week for a few hours. Here she is giving Zig a hug goodbye:

 And posing all decked out in her first day outfit (which she picked herself):

When we got there, she headed straight to the sand table. I pointed out that there were jewels hidden in the sand and she was off. I kissed her goodbye and left. She loved it. There are baby dolls. She already seems like a bigger kid to us.

Meanwhile, at home, Ziggy has been working hard to perfect his laugh. His first laughs were in response to his grandparents' faces. He has a very good sense of humor:

 

He's doing great--just had his first cold (we all got it, very mild). Working hard on sitting up supported. Not there yet, but by the time we get around to posting again... Rolls from his back to his side and is very close to rolling over. 

And, thematically unrelated, but here's an awesome exchange between Ella and Daddy:

One day Ella was holding her nose and sniffing.  Hold and sniff.  hold and sniff HARD.  Then she looked around, looked at me, and asked concerned, “Daddy!  Why can’t I hear?”  That was a long time ago, but she did it again just this morning and we turned it into a regular Abbott and Costello routine:

Ella: Daddy, why can’t I hear!?

Me: You can’t hear?

Ella: No!

Me: What can’t you hear?

Ella: Anything!

Me: Can you hear what I’m saying right now?

Ella: No!

Me: What does it sound to you like I’m saying?

Ella: MAILBOX!

Me: Oh!  You really Can’t hear!

Unthematic Blog Post

It seems like we used to be able to come up with some theme that unified the pictures and things that we posted, but recently I guess we've lost our imagination.  So, again I just want to give you a random sampling of some of the things that go on around here that are worth seeing or hearing about.

Ziggy!

Ziggy is a little smiler these days (just turned 12 weeks), and is even starting to give some pretty good laughs too.  He loves sitting up (with help) and just looking at you with googly eyes and wobbly head.  Here are some things that make Ziggy smile: Daddy's face, Mommy's face, Ella's face ... Grandpa's face ... but not as much as Ziggy's face makes grandpa smile:

And Ella's face seems to have a similar effect (though maybe for a different reason).

For a long time Ella has liked for us to do voices for her stuffed animals or whatever.  But these days she especially likes us to make Ziggy "talk."  "Make Ziggy think what I'm doing," is a very common refrain around here.  It means she would like me to make Ziggy guess (wrong) about something involving her so that she can tell him all about it:

Ella: Make Ziggy think what I'm doing.
Me (Ziggy): Ummm. Are you mushing that pancake into your nose?
Ella: No. I'm eating it!
Me (Ziggy): Oh! Eating it!  Great! ... What's eating?
Ella: Eating is when you put food in your mouth and chew it up with your teeth!
Me (Ziggy): Oh! Great! ... What's teeth?
Ella: Teeth are the hard things inside your mouth that you chew with.
Me (Ziggy): Oooh.  I don't have any of those.
Ella: Make Ziggy think what this is (holding up pancake).
Me (Ziggy): Ummm, is it a pancake?
Ella: No, no!  Make him think what this isn't!
Me (Ziggy): Ummm, is that a hairbrush?
Ella: No, no.  A hairbrush is something that you use to--
Me (Ziggy): Oh! I know what a hairbrush is!  It's that round thing that the milk comes out of, right!?
Ella: No, no!  That's a nu-nu!
...

Ella is also getting pretty good at letters.  She can recognize most of them by sight and tell you their names and (sometimes) what sound they make, and she can draw some of them.  Enough even to write her own name (with some coaching).

                       

Here's what Ella likes to do at the beach:

Get buried in the sand!

 

Or just lie face down in the sand not moving for like 20 minutes!

Here's what Ziggy likes to do at the beach:  Go back to the hotel room and take a three hour nap.

... and be awfully, awfully cute!

Sorry.  We just couldn't decide which one of these was the cutest.  Enjoy!

Just a cute story

Tonight Ella and I were looking at a “grown-up magazine” (one of Lauren’s old baby magazines) and naming all the babies that are on every page.  "What's this baby's name?" she asks.  "That baby's name is Shadrack."  "What's this baby's name?"  "That baby's name is Eskimo Jim."  Etc.

This is something we do regularly.  But we got to one picture of a baby that looked kind of like Ziggy and Ella decided that he was someone we knew: “You know, I think you’re the baby that lives at our house!” And she started talking to him as if he were Ziggy.  I did the Ziggy part, asking all kinds of questions about what it’s like to eat food and if, when he’s older, she would share hers with him.  “Yes, you can have some of my food.”   “Can I have all your ice cream?”  “Um, you can have some of it, but you have to save some for me, because I really like it!”

Ella talked and talked to him about all the things she was going to teach him how to do, like how to run, and how not to run into the street—“or else a car might come and mush you”—and how sometimes you have to do something even when you don’t want to do it—like when it’s time to go somewhere and you have to get into the car even though you want to play in the front seat—an issue that we had had earlier that day.  “When it’s time to go, you just get in your car seat, and then daddy gives you some toys to play with from the trunk,” she said.  “You know, when you do something you don’t want to do … sometimes, you get a treat!"

She kept talking to him all through bedtime, putting the magazine next to her for PJ-time, explaining that she still wears a diaper at night, but during the day she just uses the potty.  Then she explained what PJs are while we put those on her, and she placed the magazine next to us while we read books and then put it in Ziggy’s spot in the bed when it was time for her to go to sleep.  He’s still in there now, soon to be replaced by the real Ziggy, but I think we'll still hold onto that picture.

OK, and a video too.  But it's a little anachronistic, because this video is from almost a month ago now.  We'll try to get some newer videos up soon!

Moves

In life, some people can dance, and some people can't.  The Holm kids ... CAN!

Spotlight on Ziggy, shaking\ it to his favorite hits from the 1980s:

Spotlight on Ella, showing G-pa Choo-Choo how to bust a move to her favorite jam (until it's time to think about an interesting feather instead):

Bunch of Pictures

Well, we've been falling behind again on the blogging.  Its tough getting time free with an infant and an almost 3-year-old, ya know?  In Holm-family News, Ella will be turning 3 tomorrow! and Ziggy will be 7 weeks old the day after.  Incidentally, they are both huge!  Ziggy is over 13 pounds and, I don't know exactly how long, but long!

Alex looking handsomely pudgy!

And, it turns out that when you are a big kid who nurses when your mommy's baby milk comes, you will gain 5 pounds in 6 weeks too!  And in case you were wondering what it looks like when two kids nurse at the same time ...

Ella with her nursing pillow giving Bunny and Owl a nice snack

We celebrated my 34th (!?!) birthday.  The kids wore their Daddy shirts in my honor (Lauren's creation).

Ella helped make the cake.

And we took an impromptu trip to Walden pond with our friends Annie and Summer.  (Partly in honor of the time we took Ella to Walden when she was 6 weeks old!)  He enjoyed sleeping there just as much as she did.

Ella liked Thoreau's little house replica better than playing at the pond.  (She takes after her father.  Plus she got to talk to an old-timey dress-up Thoreau guy, which was awesome!  He let us bring in some firewood for his stove and cook rocks for him.  Yum!  Plus she also did enjoy the pond quite a bit.  Especially the getting launched into the air together with Summer part!

And then the snuggling with Summer part.

Ziggy mostly enjoyed the sleeping part.

More random snuggling:

And first bath together!

That's all for now.  Hopefully some videos soon!