The children have been rather neglected on the blog of late. We are just trudging through the every day, working to make it to the next bedtime. It is easy to forget to pull out the camera in the bustle of the everyday. And it’s easy to forget to write about them, especially when I’m not writing a lot anyway.
Photo by Kathy Day
As you can see, Graham has started soccer. It is a neighborhood volunteer league and super low key and I love it. There are no games. There is barely practice. They do some running and some kicking and there is a cheer and snacks and drinks. What I really love about 3/4-year old soccer is that my kid doesn’t really stand out. Sometimes he just needs to be held tightly for a while. Sometimes he wants to do something else. And there are plenty of other kids who decide they are not super into playing soccer at the moment and would like to sit with their parents on the sidelines and cuddle.
Of course, Graham still finds ways to distinguish himself, like in the team photo session.
I’ve been impressed at his skills. He’s a surprisingly good kicker. He still hasn’t quite got the hang of stopping the ball but he’s much improved. He prefers to pick up his ball whenever the urge strikes him, but this is not too unusual in his age group. His favorite activity is called “Kick the Cones” where they bring in the little cones they use to mark off the practice field and aim their balls at them. Graham’s preference is to put the ball directly in front of the cone and then have his foot directly on the ball. I have to give it to him, with this approach he rarely misses.
He has spent several months obsessed with his birthday, it’s still over a month away. I can already see 4-year-old Graham moving past his 3-year-old ways. He still has plenty of frustrating habits but he is more playful, more curious and more communicative than ever before.
As for Miss Tesser Messer, she has taken her first steps and decided that steps are not really her thing, thank you very much.
She cruises like a champ and finds that generally she can do everything she would like to do by cruising or crawling. She is nearly 16 months and I’m hopeful that by the time she’s 2 she’ll finally decide that bipedal is the way to go. Teeth are slowly but surely making their way in. She has 4 now with a couple more almost here. Having all her front teeth seems to have revived the adventurous eater of her baby days and she’s finally venturing beyond bananas again.
My favorite new development is that she’s started to enjoy a bit of snuggling. It must be on her own terms at her own request, but she will sometimes want to sit in my lap and be held.
She talks and talks and talks even though she is not technically talking yet. She has said pretty much every syllable in existence and probably invented a few of her own. I don’t see words in our immediate future. She’s not a fan of signs. But we’re slowly making some progress with communication. I can at least figure out what she wants most of the time without excessive screaming.
And, as you can probably tell from these pictures, Tesser and Grammer are starting to enjoy each other’s company more. Here you can see them playing their favorite game: Dogpile. I am usually at the bottom but this time I got the camera instead.
I swear, none of those pics are posed. They were just rolling around and having a great time and I snapped and snapped. I’m still learning so some of them are underexposed and some are out of focus but I got a fantastic set of pictures and got some good experience working with bright outdoor light. (The direction you shoot from makes a huge difference.) For once I did a great job of following my own advice and just taking pictures of my kids on the fly.
They are getting along a lot better lately and I love seeing it. Sometimes Graham will actually let Tessa play with his trains. He is taking more of an interest in her and likes to bring her snacks.
I can’t say things with these two kiddos are easy, but they’re certainly easier and they’re definitely more fun.
She still doesn’t walk. She pulls up but can’t cruise. She has just the tips of two teeth sticking out of her lower gums. She has soft hair of nondescript brown and hazel eyes. Her eyes are the loveliest shape. I can’t wait to see how they look as she gets older. She still has 2 dimples, one on each side.
She is a good traveler. A good napper. A bad night sleeper. She has never made it through the night without getting up at least twice. Usually 3 or more. Lately it’s been worse since she has a cold and Graham is coughing at night and waking her up and then she wakes him up and it gets kind of crazy. I have no idea what it feels like to get more than a couple hours of sleep at a time.
