Gross Motor | Goddess in Progress

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Out of sorts

By Goddess in Progress · Comments (11)· September 4th, 2008

I’m just not feeling 100% right now. The last few days have felt kind of out of control. My house is cluttered and messy. The kids are clingy and screamy. M is home sick. Naps are being skipped. Things are buzzing around in my head, but nothing quite wants to become a real blog post.

I think de-cluttering my house will be a major improvement… as soon as I can find the energy to do it. My twin club’s sale is coming up, so that’s a major incentive to go through all of the old baby clothes and gear. I also need to do a major clothing purge of my own, to get rid of the piles of things that I haven’t worn since well before I got pregnant, not to mention all the maternity clothes. I can’t keep them around on the outside chance that I might have more kids at some point down the line. If I do, I can just get a new pair of jeans. Seriously.

But all is not lost. In between screaming and tantrums, the kids are pretty funny these days. Today I slid Rebecca down the slide on our swingset, and she thought it was hilarious. Then, she realized she could climb back up. It took her a few tries, but she kept going right back to it, until she climbed all the way to the top. And Daniel just never stops talking. He’s so expressive and has so much to say… I just wish I knew what it was.

Going up?

Almost to the top...

Daniel goes for a ride on his car.

(Thanks again to Snick for letting us have M&R’s old toys… they love them!)

Comments (11)

Categories : Child Development, Home, Toddlers

Tags : Gross motor

They’re definitely his kids

By Goddess in Progress · Comments (4)· August 18th, 2008

Sometimes it takes outside eyes to notice things about your kids. When you’re so close all the time, it can be hard to see the proverbial forest for the trees. That, and I think I just don’t see them the way other people do. I can’t, I’m their mother.

Prime example, the way every single person who sees Daniel says “wow, he looks exactly like M!” And while exactly may be an exaggeration (Daniel has my nose, while Rebecca has M’s), it must be a fairly strong resemblance since almost everyone says the same thing. Me? I don’t see it. Like, at all. Well, OK, once I saw a picture of M as a toddler, and then I definitely saw the resemblance. But the M that I know now? Nope. He just looks like M to me. And Daniel just looks like Daniel.

With Rebecca in the looks department, there’s less consensus. M says she looks a little like me, my mom thinks she looks like M’s sister. And I think she’s just funny as hell, and her eye and hair color change depending on the day’s light.

Last night, though, I was talking to a friend of ours on the phone and describing Rebecca’s current mobility status. She loves to walk while holding on to both of your hands. If you take one of your hands away (wrench it out of her fingers), she’s perfectly capable of walking and holding onto only one of your hands, but she hates it. She would much, much rather have both. I don’t think she wants to walk until she’s totally comfortable with the idea, and she was the same way with crawling. She took her sweet time mastering each little component, and though everyone was certain she was mere moments away from crawling, she worked on it for a solid six weeks before finally doing it on her own.

My friend just laughed. “Oh my god,” she said, “she’s just like her dad!” And it’s so true. M fears change. Change involves newness and risk. What if it’s worse than what I already have or already know how to do? Better to stick with the devil you know. It took him over a year to buy a new car, several years to change jobs, and we won’t even talk about how long it took him to get around to proposing to yours truly.

So, M, there you go. No more joking about the milkman. They’re definitely yours.

Comments (4)

Categories : Child Development, Family, My beloved, Toddlers

Tags : Gross motor

Cute as can be

By Goddess in Progress · Comments (5)· August 15th, 2008

I haven’t been successful in capturing it on video, but I had to make note of some of my very favorite super-adorable things the kids do right now.

Daniel is a chatterbox, and I love his sweet little voice. He’s got quite a range, going from gravelly to shrieking and practically yodeling, and sometimes just talking softly. The yodeling is clearly for his own entertainment, he loves to make his voice do funny things. When he’s climbing the stairs or otherwise moving and concentrating, he often does this funny, growling “word” that would probably be “Gof” if I tried to spell it. But it almost sounds like he’s chewing something. It makes me laugh almost every time. Another “word” of his is “dob”. As in “dob a-dob a-dob.” No idea what it means, if anything, but it’s friggin adorable. I also think that, at least 50% of the time that it seems like he’s waving, he’s actually making the sign for “light!” One last thing: he apparently is part-dog. He just loves carrying things around in his mouth when he crawls or climbs.

Rebecca, when she isn’t insisting that you help her walk, has become quite a little bookworm. It has happened a number of times, but I’d say yesterday she sat for a solid 25 minutes, carefully turning the pages of one book or another. This morning it was Pat the Bunny, and she took that little pointer finger, turned the page, and patted that darn bunny. So small and perfect. She also now makes funny faces just for the sake of being silly. She kind of juts out her chin and puckers her lips, making kind of a funny “oooh” sound. Silly girl. And god help you if she decides she wants you to help her walk and you don’t get up fast enough. Ooh, 12-month-old temper tantrum!

Comments (5)

Categories : Child Development, Photos, Toddlers

Tags : Cognitive, Fine motor, Gross motor, Language, Social/emotional

Mischief

By Goddess in Progress · Comments (7)· July 18th, 2008

Both kids figured out a fun new skill today. Better go shopping for more gates.

Comments (7)

Categories : Child Development, Infants

Tags : Gross motor

Visual confirmation

By Goddess in Progress · Comments (6)· June 26th, 2008

That I do, indeed, have two mobile babies in the house. As with anything baby-related, this video is pretty much outdated already, even though it was less than a week ago. Daniel is much faster now, though in the video you can almost catch his “gangsta-crawl,” where he’s on one foot and one knee, all lopsided. It’s pretty funny stuff.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LmylPLirG5k]

Comments (6)

Categories : Child Development, Infants

Tags : Gross motor

New space, new skills

By Goddess in Progress · Comments (7)· June 24th, 2008

We finally rearranged our den to create a nice little play space for the kids. We still needed it as an office, so we got an L-shaped desk from Ikea (nearly two months ago – oops). M and I now share a desk and get nice and cozy. But half to 2/3 of the room is now child-proofed, colorful, full of toys, and enclosed. Hooray! Hard to get a good picture of it, but I did my best. Much of it is from Target, including the cube shelves and fabric cube box/drawers, and the area rugs (it’s two 4′x6′ rugs). The chair is the very one M stole from his dorm room when he left college, and it makes for a great place for babies to pull up to stand. It still wants for some details and decoration, but it’s nice to have a space where the kids can safely play and I can hang on my computer.

Oh and… um… did I neglect to mention that Daniel is finally crawling? Wohoo! Only two months after his sister! As with anything, it seems to have been largely a question of motivation. Rebecca’s motivation was chasing the dog. Daniel’s, as it turns out, was so that he could get to more places in order to stand up. Mobility is nice and all, but standing is where it’s at. Within five days of his first real crawling, he’s already pulling up on me and letting go, standing unassisted for a few seconds before plopping down and trying again. My suspicion is that he would really love to just walk, while Rebecca may be content to speed-crawl for quite a while longer. We’ll see.

Two babies crawling, as it turns out, more than twice as challenging as one. But it does mean that Daniel can hold his own in fighting for the coveted toys… like the pack of wipes?

Comments (7)

Categories : Child Development, Home, Infants

Tags : Gross motor

It was only a matter of time

By Goddess in Progress · Comments (4)· May 30th, 2008

Rebecca loves our dog. Getting closer to the dog was clearly her motivation when she finally started crawling. Now she goes faster and faster, chasing the dog around the room. She laughs when I’m throwing a kong and the dog comes running back with it in her mouth. I won’t say the love is exactly mutual, but there you have it. Rebecca’s other love is standing up, as I have mentioned before. An excellent tool for that, as it turns out, is the dog’s crate. Easy to grab and climb. Well, I knew eventually she’d figure out something else you can do with the crate…

And if someone could please explain the universal appeal to crawling children of the dog’s water and food bowls…

Comments (4)

Categories : Child Development, Infants, Photos

Tags : Gross motor

Stand and deliver

By Goddess in Progress · Comments (7)· May 21st, 2008

Both of my kids are really into standing right now. All. The. Time. Not unsupported (yet), but standing nonetheless. While Daniel certainly loves to reach for my hands or my shirt to pull himself up (and looks oh-so-proud when he does), he’s still restricted to whatever is in reach of where he’s sitting. The frighteningly-mobile Rebecca, however, has no such limits. She’s started standing on everything. She figured out how to stand using the ottoman, the TV cabinet, the exersaucer, and even the Pack & Play, which is a more advanced maneuver as there’s nothing to grab hold of on the way up. And last night we reached everyone’s favorite milestone: standing up in the crib, and screaming at the top of her lungs in the middle of the night because she can’t get back down. Guess it’s time to lower that mattress…

Kilroy was here, in the pack & play

Rebecca can’t believe the fools in Cash Cab have only $75 and two strikes already!

Oh so proud of herself.

Comments (7)

Categories : Child Development, Infants

Tags : Gross motor

Preview

By Goddess in Progress · Comments (3)· May 14th, 2008

Things have been a little hairy here the last few days. Daniel has been going through a few days of separation anxiety / touchpoints / general crabbiness, and it has really worn on me. My previously very happy boy who was all smiles, all the time, is regressing to his old Señor Fussy-Pants days. Though he’s still the same sweet boy with a great laugh, he’s been very clingy and screamy if I dare to put him down, or basically do anything other than help him stand up at all times. You’d think that, rather than putting him in the beloved exersaucer, I was actually stabbing him repeatedly with a dull spoon. (Why a spoon? Because it’ll hurt more, you twit.) I even got a little preview of temper tantrums to come, complete with the arched back maneuver. Good times. I can only hope this passes soon, and he figures out standing or crawling or whatever it is he’s working on.

Rebecca also seems to be giving me a hint of the toddler days to come. I couldn’t tell you exactly what it is, and I don’t have a photograph to illustrate it, but sometimes I look at her and there’s a particular expression on her face or angle of her head… and I see her as a 3-year-old. She’s funny, she makes silly faces and scrunches up her nose, and I can tell she’s going to be up to no good at all. She’s crawling faster and faster every day. She looks over her shoulder to see me, grins, and then keeps right on going, straight for the dog’s food. And while she hasn’t been quite as crabby as her brother, she definitely has been intent on making her opinions known.

For the moment, they are blessedly napping, but off I go to pack our bag for class this afternoon. Things feel a little crazy right now, maybe because we’re woefully behind on babyproofing, so there’s a lot more running around after Rebecca….

Comments (3)

Categories : Child Development, Infants

Tags : Gross motor, Social/emotional

Solo

By Goddess in Progress · Comments (4)· April 29th, 2008

M is away for work for half of this week, which is a rather unusual occurrence. He left very early yesterday morning. Of course, since I usually take care of the kids by myself all day, anyways, the only real difference as far as the kiddos were concerned was bathtime and bedtime. So that was obviously a bit trickier than usual, but we got through just fine. They seemed to have taken pity on me and slept reasonably well last night. Daniel started waking up around 5:15 or so, but he didn’t get particularly upset and I didn’t go in and get him until closer to 6. I’m starting to wonder if it’s M’s snoring that wakes Rebecca up in the wee hours.

I spent last night cleaning and doing laundry during commercial breaks of Dancing with the Stars (poor Cristiàn!), because my mom is arriving for a visit at noon today, is a much better housekeeper than I, and I don’t want her to show up and think I live in a total pig sty. I was quite a bit more productive than my usual weekday evening. Was it because M wasn’t there, or was it the pressure of a visitor? Probably both. Anyways, mom’s flight lands at noon, and the house is a bit less frightening than before.

On an unrelated note, I think I somehow neglected to mention the fact that Rebecca is crawling! She made her first substantial forward progress when her grandpa (my dad) arrived for a quick visit about 10 days ago. (Good lord, I forgot to mention that, too! So much for comprehensive blogging…) Anyways, my dad happened to be in town for something else, and extended the trip by a couple of days to come hang out with the kiddos. I even have photographic evidence, I’m not making this up! And just as soon as he arrived, Rebecca started heading for the dog. Ever since, it’s been a constant slow-motion chase around the living room. I can’t tell if the dog is freaked out by this, or thinks it’s a fun game. A little of both, perhaps.

As I may have mentioned before, my mom is a bit of a project-nut. Seldom content to just hold babies or help with the grocery shopping, she usually is restless unless there’s a home-improvement project to be done. Sometimes this makes me crazy, and it drives M nuts, because after she leaves, he can’t find anything. I’ve decided to be proactive and make a list of things I actually want to get done, and I think childproofing the living room is right up there. It’s a good one for my mom, plenty of reorganization. And it’s overdue… this one is on the go!