All seems to be well in the Motekaitis home these days. After we buckled down and began our "tough love" campaign, we seem to have a ship that is running much smoother (and most importantly, the parents are at the helm instead of the kids!)
Here are what our sweet little guys have been up to lately. Dominic loves to paint. I imagine if we focused on sports a whole lot, that he'd focus on those too. He loves being our ball boy when we play tennis, and he enjoyed playing soccer with hot shots. But he definitely gravitates naturally towards hands-on projects and music - play doh art, lego building, science experiments (which mostly involve a great deal of my tupperware, sink water, plastic spoons, mini hotel shampoo bottles, and a closed bathroom door) and lately he has an affinity for stuffed animals and train track building. This is completely new. He never cared two sneezes for trains, and suddenly they are all he thinks about. He wants to play pet store ALL the time. He sets up elaborate forts with pillows and builds his animals homes. He is reading to himself in one of these famous pillow nooks as I type. The age of four has not been without its tumult, but everything else has been pure joy!
Milo has been climbing things (sighhhhhh). This is good, I know, as he is a boy, and aside from being a boy, he's a kid! And kids need to climb within reason. I can't stop wanting to shelter him though. He is fearless on the playground, and I can't get lost in conversation for a second, because I once did, and he went down the big swirly slide - feet first - but backwards on his tummy- all by himself! How he got up there so quickly is beyond me. I will leave a room and find him somehow sitting on the coffee table, or lately, the couch! After hearing distressed sounds from the other room, I turned the corner to find THIS. He's trying to slide down this toy car ramp in his room!
Milo eats about 4 bananas a day. It's just his ritual. We are working with him on sitting in a chair when he eats instead of roaming like a nomadic cave baby. He now runs over to his chair and slaps it when I grab him a banana. He is signing up a storm! We weren't very consistent with signs this time because it seemed he understood what we were saying. But lately we picked them up again, and he is responding with enthusiasm with "please," "more," "come out," "all done," "help," "yes," and a few others I am forgetting. He is still the loudest baby on the block :) We're hoping that signs will help reduce some of that angstyness though. Did I mention that he dropped his morning nap? Well, I encouraged him to, at least. He was taking them on and off, and then falling asleep at 11 am when we'd be running errands (which he still does if I don't watch the clock carefully), but now he takes one afternoon nap of 2.5 - 3 hrs and it's such good quiet time for Mama and big brother. After about 1.5 hr, Dominic comes to find me and we do a quiet project together and I treasure that one-one-time.
The bedtime routine calls to me now, but thank you Jesus for our Beata Vita.
