Life with JM

This kid is our most active kid. period. And I have a Sonia to compare him to who is in perpetual motion and highly distractable.

JM is not distractable. HE is a kid on a mission. Unfortunately the mission is never what he's supposed to be doing.

For example- last night- I was playing a game with the bigger kids on the dining room table and he was bored and mad that I wasn't letting him chew on the playing cards so he wandered off. I hear thumping and rumbling in the kitchen. I walk in and find he's helped himself to a yogurt, opened it and gotten himself a spoon.

He climbs and helps himself to the fruit in the fruit basket, has poured an entire pot of coffee onto the counter top (miraculously not burning himself), filled the sink with water and left it running and his current favorite activity- bouncing avocados, preferably into my coffee cup. I bought 12 avocados (we are in CA and they're cheap) and he managed to smash every one of them in about 10 minutes that I was there but not really noticing what he was doing. We now have lots of guacamole. He's also made Orange Juice with the oranges in the fruit basket.

He also has figured out how to put the side rail of his crib down and climb out, open the front door and walk out and climb over the gate I used to use to keep him and the puppy downstairs. He climbs over a baby gate. The very thing meant to contain him. I now have a taller gate he seems to take longer to scale. The normal height one slows him down less than a speed bump. At least it still slows puppy down.

And puppy.. an update on her. She is so very good with the kids. When we researched dogs, we read that all beagles were good with kids. And so far, that is certainly the case. Other breeds read "most labs/etc. are good with kids" but beagles- it said ALL. We probably should have read on because our beagle is not bright. And beagles have a distinct howl. The same one you hear in the background of "the fox and hound" THAT howl. THAT is her means of communication. Oi vey. Sorta wish we lived somewhere where the land around our house was measured in acres instead of feet. Her howl is a 20 acre howl. I think 20 acres away it's less annoying. I think I have 900 neighbors in 20 acres. (ok, I'm probably exaggerating.. maybe 80 neighbors.. but still...)

Snoopy is a beagle. And I suspect Charles Schultz had a beagle. We watched Charlie Brown with new intersest this week and noticed Snoopy howled, licked Lucy alot, carried his empty dish around and seemed, well.. odd for a dog. That's been our experience 2 weeks into this. Thus far she hasn't tried to hunt down the Red Barron, but I can see her doing something similarly odd.

She love to play, particularly with JM. He lights up when he sees her and in a small way, she seems to be speech therapy for him. He has added 'puppy, no, and bite' to his vocabulary- not in sequence, but he's said them a few times-- and he tries to talk to her. (she likes to bite his blanket and he gets upset, so the kids yell 'puppy no bite' I wish he added 'mommy I love you' to his vocab, but I guess I'll have to wait for that.

I know.. I'll probably be waiting a long time for that..