Four and Eight Months

That's Taisei's age and Mirei's age at the moment, respectively.

I hope one day Mirei doesn't read all the blogs are realize that there lots of posts missing about her every sneeze and poopie.  I have lots of excuses - school, work, 2 kids, etc.  Really, blogging has just been much harder to do, especially with Taisei now sleeping in the computer room and Mirei sleeping upstairs in Taisei's old room.  Tonight, we're attempting to let them both sleep in the same room.  When we go on vacations, it seems to work, so I don't see why it wouldn't at home.  We'll see how it goes.

Mirei is now in her eighth month already.  She's highly mobile now.  Her crawling doesn't seem to be quite as fast as Taisei's was, but at the same time, she would rather be standing then crawling around.  I'm trying to keep her on the ground because I've heard it's good for hand-eye coordination and it seemed to work for Taisei.  Alas, kids do what they want.  Anything that's higher than about 1 foot, she'll try to use it to stand up.  Her legs are pretty strong that way.  NO problem standing up and almost balancing.  At this rate, she may be a pretty early walker, even though I'm trying to prevent her from being one.

Mirei LOVES food.  When there's food around, she wants it.  She doesn't care what it is.  She wants it in her mouth.  Especially noodles.  She gets mad if we don't give her noodles.  As a result, she's stayed over the 50% mark and has super chunky legs, face, etc.  It's amusing to us, since Taisei is the complete opposite.  He doesn't care about food unless he tries it and it's just amazingly delicious or he's amazingly hungry (and that's rare).  Otherwise, he has better things to do than eat.

We thought Mirei would be a pretty demanding baby because of her quick-to-squeal attitude.  That hasn't gone away, but as long as she gets her two naps and early bedtime, she's happy.  She still lets us know immediately if she doesn't like something (see picture on right), but it's not quite life and death anymore.  Phew!  :)  This girl knows what she wants, but she's definitely more tough than what we've seen with some of Taisei's girlfriends -- in large part thanks to not being the first-born.  Taisei does crazy things with her and she actually laughs more than cries.  She doesn't like Taisei to grab her from behind and roll onto his back.  But it seems like almost anything else goes.  He sits on her, pokes her face, pulls her appendages, etc, and most of the time she just laughs.  What a mystery.

Mirei lights up when Taisei walks into the room.  She loves to see him and laughs at everything he does.  I can be trying my best to entertain her, and she'll just be trying to get away to do something else.  Then, Taisei walks in and she just beams.  It's nice to see.  Hopefully we can nurture the sibling bond and prevent it from turning into rivalry when they have to start sharing (fighting over) things.

Taisei wouldn't go on to level 2 swimming class.  :(  He said he enjoyed level 1, but wasn't keen on meeting new friends and a new teacher.  He said to us "Mary-sensei is good."  In other words, he's familiar with his pre-school at the U of U and prefers to stick with that.  I'm sometimes afraid that he has talents that won't be fostered if we don't get him out of his shell.  I know, I know.  He's 4.  :)  All parents have high hopes and want their kids to achieve their potential, no?

Taisei's really not a toddler anymore.  It's weird to make that realization.  We can reason with him, and when he really wants something that we disagree with, he has the self-discipline to say "OK, kondo" which means "OK, next time."  This happens often when we go out and he sees those 25c capsule toy vending machines.  Another time he says this is when we want him to do something but he's either scared or shy.  Like when I tried to get him to go talk to someone or something.  He'll say "Kondo, OK?"

For a month or two with Taisei, I think we started to lose control (and our minds) a little bit.  It maybe had something to do with trying to get mom and dad's attention, or something else.  He was getting rebellious and pushing the limits constantly.  It was driving us nuts.  I even started reading discipline books (such as 1-2-3 Magic!) to try to figure out what we're doing wrong.  I got some good ideas, and learned some new things.  For example, that there are Stop behaviors and Start behaviors.  That's obvious, but they both frustrate you the same way and you have to approach them very differently.  Overall, I think we were on the right track.  We just needed to back up and calm down a little.  Obviously, the fight is not over, but everyone is back in a good state of mind now and we can all talk things out again.  Probably the main thing we did was conscientiously back away from "1-2-3 you're busted!" back to the positive reinforcement.  We started the happy-face routine again, using the Doug and Melissa Responsibility Chart.  For Taisei, the key is to have a tangible goal and reward.  We've tried different things with the chart.  Last week, it was "If you get x number smiley faces, then we can go see a movie Saturday."  The one going right now is "if you can get more this week then last week, you can have this toy."  (It happens to be McDonald's Happy Meal toy from the movie we saw last week, How to Train Your Dragon - nice to have a theme going on to keep it connected.)  It seems to be working.  He's been happy, Mom's been happy, and there's a lot less stress and unhappiness all around.  And one of the biggest outcomes - he pays attention to his behavior!  If you have more than one kid... then I guess you'll have to be extra creative.  I can't imagine that situation yet.  We'll have it in a few years... YIKES!  Bottom line - the key for Taisei has been to keep it fresh, positive, and rewarding.

Hopefully the kids will keep going to bed on time, and I'll be able to put more updates on here.