The Banana Theif

Heather sat next to Hudson playing with him while she finished up her breakfast. Suddenly, Hudson grabbed the banana out of her hands and began to munch on it himself. Heather didn't have the heart to take it away from him. The phrase "like stealing candy from a baby" has new meaning with him around.

He also has gotten much better at scotching around on the floor, and will regularly get himself off the soft blanket that we place over the more rough carpet. Sara Beth, being the helpful big sister that she is, picked him up and carried him back to the middle of the blanked and "gently" placed him back down.

Sara Beth had her last school performance of the year last week and Sara Beth's teachers let her and Ashlyn stand next to each other. They giggled together through the songs, though Sara Beth did not miss a beat.

Hudson continues to charm all the ladies. Random women will regularly stop Heather and ask to rub his hair. Hudson's world famous woman charming skills even work on girl babies. 

Sara Beth worked hard to make this Mother's day special. On Saturday, she and I worked on filling out a book about Heather. It had several pages full of questions like what is Heather's favorite movie and hobby, and Sara Beth drew the answers. ("VeggieTales" and "curling her hair" were the answers given for movie and hobby).

Heather decided to celebrate the end of the school year with Sara Beth by taking her to Build-a-Bear where she picked out a horse and named her "Sparkle".  Sparkle the horse is now very well cared for, with Sara Beth grooming her and making sure she has pajamas on at bed time. This morning at the breakfast table, she asked for a bowel of oats for Sparkle to eat. Sara Beth then proceeded to talk to Sparkle about how she would pick Sparkle up from the last day of horse school after she got out of her school.

Teaching and Learning

Hudson and Sara Beth get along very well. Sara Beth loves trying to teach Hudson how to sit up or how to play with a toy. Hudson just stares at his older sister and tries to figure out what in the world is going on.

Sara Beth has started watching a show on PBS called "Word girl." In the show, the mild mannered girl turns into Word Girl, a superhero from the planet Lexicon using the phrase "Word up." Sara Beth now calls herself Word Girl. Hudson is now Word Baby. Heather is Word Horse; Sara Beth rode on Word Horse's back all around the house until Word Horse wore the skin off her knee and got a blister. Word Girl carefully led her to the stable to rest.

At meals, we make Sara Beth finish her plate before she can get desert. Sometimes, she will need to leave the table and stretch out on the couch to, supposedly, make some more room before she comes back and finishes.

Sunday morning, we actually had a little bit of time before we had to leave for church, and I was able to snap a picture of Heather with the two kids. Hudson received a lot of compliments for his hat that day.

Our church had a big party for the kids on Sunday. They cooked some hot dogs for lunch and had a petting zoo. As I mentioned earlier, Sara Beth has been talking a lot about horses recently, and so, when she saw that there were pony rides too, she was ready to skip lunch and go right to the pony rides. 

After lunch and a ride on the pony, it was time to move on to the petting zoo.

But, Sara Beth had so much fun on the pony that she went back for another ride after she was done chasing all the small critters around the petting zoo.

Hudson loves to eat, but he does get a little excited sometimes. And when he gets excited, he starts to bounce around and it makes it hard to get the spoon into his mouth. Sometimes we miss. I will hold Hudson's head with one hand and feed him with the other. Heather just tries to aim carefully, which results in a lot of food colored polka dots around his mouth.

Hudson prefers to eat something with his own hands. He loves to hold a Mum-Mum in his own hands, and can mostly get it into his mouth without supervision.

Sara Beth is already talking about her birthday party. She has decided that she wants to have a "Tinkerbell party." I'm not entirely sure what that means, but I do know that Sara Beth wants to collect clover and snail shells as decoration for the event. Heather and/or I will go outside with her and scour for the various collectibles that she will then place in her bucket.  

Sara Beth and Heather will bake various treats on a regular basis. Sara Beth has progressed to the point that Heather will let her pour the ingredients as well as turn the mixer on to the appropriate speed, and, of course, she gets to lick the utensils when done.

Thumb Sucker

Whew. Sorry for the delay. This past week, I was sick, Hudson was sick, and my computer crashed, so I am a little behind. Below is the blog post for last week that I just finished writing. I'm a little behind.

Hudson has found his thumb and has begun to suck it, just like his big sister. It is cute now, but we would prefer neither of them did it.

His muscles have developed to the point that he is nearly mobile. When we put him down in his crib at night, it is not unusual for him to scoot all the way to the end, turn around and be scoot half the way back to the original side by the time we get him in the morning.

My parents have been really helpful. My mom really enjoys the opportunity to feed Hudson. He really likes his food and but he does get frustrated since he can eat faster than we are able to shovel the food into his mouth. He will start to cry if the next spoon full of food does not get to him quickly enough.

Sara Beth has been amazingly helpful this past week. We have been on perpetual water restrictions here in Wylie, and have been unable to wash our cars in the drive way. Sara Beth decided that my car really needed to be washed, so she got some wet paper towels and climbed up on my car and began scrubbing it down, and did an impressively good job with it.

Part of the fun of having a baby is seeing their reaction when you give them new foods with exotic flavors that they have never experienced before. For example, when I gave Hudson his first pickle, I asked Heather to get the camera and capture the moment.

 We got to play with wild animals this past week. Sara Beth found a worm and decided it would be her pet. She named it Licorice and built a house for it in the front yard. She gave me explicit instructions to not run over his house with the lawn mower. A couple days later, she found a green inch worm, named it soccer ball, and decided that it would be a friend for Licorice. We mentioned that not all wild animals are friendly and that sometimes wild animals might bite, like a squirrel or raccoon. She thought about this for a second and then responded "A Tyrannosaurus Rex is a wild wild animal because it really bites."

Hudson is amazingly easy going. There are days that he does not fuss or cry at all, aside from his eating escapades. 

Easter Shoes

So for those of you who don't know about my discriminating taste in shoes, I love to wear toe shoes. It is just like walking around barefoot, but I am not in violation of stores' "No shirt no shoes, no service" policies. Sara Beth had been asking for some as well, and since being mean is part of a parent's job description, I hadn't gotten any for her.  Well, fortunately, being mean is not part of the grandparent's job description, and so Heather's mom sent a pair for her.

Look out world, Hudson can now roll over. One day he went from his being on his back to his stomach, and then, later that very same day, he successfully rolled back to his stomach as well. And now, any time you lay him down on his back, he will very quickly flip to his stomach and struggle to move his arms and legs in an attempt to begin crawling. I have been helping him practice standing up by placing his arms on the couch and then letting go. He can hold himself upright for several seconds before his hips pop out from under him.

Sara Beth and Hudson got all dressed up for Easter Sunday, and I thought they looked adorable, and I know everyone else thought so too. I have proof. Sara Beth wore her pink dress. Every time she wears it to church, she gets 2-5 compliments about what she is wearing. And Hudson, well, he is literally the  best chick magnet I have ever seen. Any time Heather or I go out in public with him, we will be swarmed by women. Just today, Heather said that three separate people came up to rub his head at the store.

For Sara Beth's Easter basket, Heather purchased assorted goodies including a Tinker Bell doll, a butterfly net, and some coloring books. If you look in the below picture however, you will notice a distinct lack of Tinker Bell in the basket. That is because, about a week ago, Sara Beth found her in a closet. She came to us with a giant smile on her face and said "Mommy, look what I found!" We let her keep it.

We filled about 12 plastic eggs with candy and I placed them around the back yard. Sara Beth went through the yard and enthusiastically collected all of them. I let her know once she had gotten all of them in her basket, but she wanted to keep looking, just in case. Then she came inside and continued to look around the house in case there were any more eggs in the house. I did actually surreptitiously took some of the eggs out of her basket and re-hid them in the front room of the house so that she would actually have more to find when she looked in there. She obviously had a lot of fun, and I have decided that there is no reason not to have an egg hunt at other times through out the year too.  

Sara Beth and her best friend Ashlyn rode their bikes around the block together. Halfway around the block is Ashlyn's house and when they got in front of it, she stopped and asked "Can Sara Beth come in and play for a while?" It seemed she had it all planed out even before she began the bike ride. 

Hudson adores Sara Beth. He definitely looks up to his big sister, and not just because she is taller than him. Sara Beth played some hide and seek with Hudson and I in the couch cushions. Every time that Sara Beth was out of eye sight, Hudson looked intently around searching for her, and then, when she popped out from behind one of the cushions he broke out in the biggest smile and started cooing and laughing at her.

The big race

So last Saturday (the 31st) was the 6th annual "Muddy Creek Run", a 5k race and 1 mile walk in our neighborhood. I always try to do the 5k, and this year, we thought that Sara Beth would be interested in doing the 1 mile run.

Hudson decided to sleep through the whole thing. My mom held him till I finished the race, 23 minutes later.

It was a fast enough time that I placed second in my age group, so I received a metal and got to shake the mayor's hand. The mayor noticed that I was holding some little pink sunglasses and asked if they were mine. I said "yes" and put them on. From the back of the crowd I heard Sara Beth say "No! Those are my sunglasses". 

Sara Beth practiced her tree climbing skills. She easily hopped up to the first branch without issue, but it got a little more tricky after that.

After the race we went to a park to eat a picnic in celebration of my Mom's birthday. Sara Beth was playing hide and seek with my dad after lunch. Grandpa had the camera and Sara Beth tried to keep away from it, so there were a lot of pictures taken of empty space, but there were some good ones of Sara Beth interspersed among them. Good thing digital cameras cannot waste film.

Although she cannot successfully swing from ring to ring, Sara Beth is really close. After swinging on one ring with both hands, she then asked me to help her. I agreed, and lightly held her to take some of the weight off her hands. She then let go completely and just wanted me to walk by each of the rings while she lightly gripped them one by one.

Hudson has really gotten into the baby food and constantly shows interest in eating more and more food off of our plate. I haven't given him anything like tacos, yet. Heather did let him suck on a strawberry top, which he seemed to enjoy.

It is pretty easy to make Hudson smile. Typically, he will be grinning and cooing unless he has a diaper or if I try to give him a bottle. Heather went to Bible study one night, and I tried to convince Hudson to drink from a bottle before going to sleep. There were some disagreement between Hudson and me about the suitability of a bottle. I clearly heard him say "that's not how my mommy does it." But he did finally wear himself out, fell fast asleep, and slept straight through the night, so I considered it a success.

One morning, I sat down to eat breakfast when Sara Beth burst into song. The words were "I love you, but I don't love scorpions, because they hate me." I think she has a bright future in showbiz. With the nice weather, Sara Beth has been outside collecting things to build a "fairy house". And she has become a discriminating expert on building materials. She sorted all her sea shells then sat down with Heather to describe what makes one shell better than the other.