Friday, March 8, 2019

Kid Catch Up

I've noticed this year that Matt's constant travel has been much harder on Olivia.  I think now that Eric requires more attention, she probably craves the 1 on 1 parent time she gets when both of us are around.  She really misses Matt when he's gone, so he made a point to take her to a play on Sunday while he was in town.  I just love her huge smile in this pic!

And, while they enjoyed the play, Eric asked me "Rheric mama pitchure?" so we got these sweet little shots!

  

And, these 2 kiddos continue their love affair as well.  With Matt traveling so much, our morning routine usually includes dropping Olivia off at Kinkaid before Eric and I head downtown for school/work.  And, Eric usually cries when we drop her off at school and asks for her the whole way downtown.  As soon as they see each other he usually want to do whatever she is doing, and she usually takes the opportunity to capitalize on my weakness to his cuteness and get away with being rotten - extra screentime ("but Eric wants to cuddle with me on the couch") or sneaking candy ("but Eric asked for 'nandy' -- look at his face!")

The other day they put on a "show" for us.  My sisters and I would CONSTANTLY put on shows for our parents, so it was a pretty cute throwback.





Eric thinks Olivia is pretty much the funniest.


And the feeling of love are pretty mutual.  A few weeks ago Matt was gone and Eric fell and hit his head.  It was a pretty bad fall and probably his first real one.  He got a pretty big knot on his head.  Olivia was just as upset as Eric was.  She was super worried and really wanted me to take him to the emergency room.  We called Dr. Aunt Yazzie who confirmed mamma's diagnosis of ice/cuddles but mentioned something about not putting him to bed for a while.  Olivia doted on him all afternoon, yelled at me when I tried to put him to bed for the night worried about what Yasmin warned against (it took a long time to convince her that Yazzie would be okay with us putting him to bed 4 hours after the fall!), insisted on putting him to bed herself, and then made me check on him throughout the night to make sure he would be okay.



It was really sad because as soon as he fell and then again that night she mentioned wishing she could turn back time to be in the room when he fell to try and stop it.  Recently, she again brought up that if she could turn back time she would try to stop Eric from falling that day.  We have repeatedly told her that she (1) can't protect him from always getting hurt and (2) its not her job and (3) it was 100% not her fault.  But I know first-hand that big sister protective nature is strong!  Love these 2 babes!

Olivia also foils all my efforts to get Eric off the bottle and drinking milk out of a cup.  The other day all the bottles were honestly dirty and in the dishwasher so I thought it would be a good opportunity to try out the cup.  When Eric tried to call my bluff and look in the cabinet, he saw with his own eyes no more bottles.  So I heated up his milk and showed him how I poured it into a cup.  HE LOST IT!!  The tears.  The crying.  But before I could try to calm him down and try the cup, Big Sister got one out of the dishwasher herself

And, we have been trying to do more independent reading with Olivia.  She LOVES to be read to and she will read to us for homework every night but reading alone hasn't really been her thing.  We tried out a few different books but recently discovered the Junie B. Jones series about a silly little 1st grader who is sort of rotten (just like another little 1st grader I know!).  She really seems to enjoy these books so we instituted "Family Book Club" every Saturday and Sunday and mandated independent reading time for 30 minutes.  It was Matt's idea and I've got to say I LOVE it.  It forces me to read when I think I would otherwise work or do chores around the house.  And Eric is fairly good at reading on his own so he usually hangs in for a bit and when he gets bored, Matt or I will take him into another room to read with him.

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