Mikey Likes It

I've always thought the old Life cereal commercial with Mikey was weird. If Mikey will eat anything, why are they so amazed that he likes Life? He'll eat anything.

[Update: An anonymous commenter helpfully pointed out that Mikey actually hates everything. I completely mis-remembered that comercial. I found the actual commercial on youtube and it is pretty much exaclty how I rember it, except they say "He won't eat it. He hates everything" instead of "He'll eat it. He'll eat anything". Now I'm wondering why they thought he would try it in the first place.]

Johann will eat anything too. He'll eat fruit or vegetables, meat or dairy. He can put away a bowl of cut-up grapes with surprising speed. We never have to pressure him into eating. He will often eat more than Frances. He must need it for growing because he isn't getting really chubby.

What he really likes is meat.

He is very much a carnivore. It took us a little bit to figure out because Frances is the opposite. She doesn't like much meat at all. But we started noticing that the meat portions of meals would disappear first.

Then we noticed that he wasn't really very happy when we would have pasta meals. At the end of one, we thought to give him a cut up hot dog. He ate a whole one (minus the skin, yes, I peeled his hot dog). This was after he had stopped eating the pasta.

He's our little eater.

mwz

I not dirty, I Clean.

In our kitchen we keep several containers for the kids to play with; egg cartons, empty syrup bottles and whip cream containers. Both kids can (and do) get them out of the lazy susan to play with.

Today, when we got home from church, the containers were strewn about on the floor. One of the two (probably Johann) had got them out earlier and we hadn't picked them up. After removing her coat, Frances said "It's messy" and proceeded to put the containers away. It was incredible. We are trying to figure out who she takes after since obviously, neither of us bothered to pick them up.

But Frances is a clean little girl (as clean as a little kid can be). For a very long time now, she has kept her toes clean of lint. I never really even thought of trying to remove the lint. Maybe that's why she does it herself but she just started doing it on her own. At first, she would only pick the lint out occationally, when she had an opportunity. Now, it is part of her nap/bedtime ritual. One day, I tried to tuck her in and she said "No, I have to clean my toes". Before her feet get covered, she must declare "all clean" and then I know that she is ready to have her feet covered.

Recently, she has started washing her hands by herself in the bathroom too. It started as her playing with the water in the bathroom sink but now after pretty much every meal, she goes in there and washes her hands. We don't ask her to, she just does it. She has even learned to use the soap dispencer. Surprisingly she doesn't play with the soap, she pumps out just enough and that is all she uses.

As a final note, if you ask her if she's poopy (meaning a poopy diaper), she'll say "I not dirty, I clean".

Frances is an interesting little girl.

mwz

Johann is Walking

I am a bit behind in my posts. I was going to post about how Johann was standing up without holding onto anything (which he started doing a week or two ago).

But today Johann took his first steps.

Earlier in the day, he was standing in front of Ariel and he moved one foot forward and then sat down. We then had a discussion about if that constituted his first step. I didn't think that it counted because he didn't move all of his weight to that foot but Ariel thought it was enough of his weight to count.

Later though, our disagreement became moot when Frances pulled away the push toy that Johann was holding onto. He stood for a little bit. I held my arm in front of him to catch him if he fell and he took four steps. He later repeated the performance.

We're all very proud.

He can also go up and down stairs (with adult supervision of course) and he eats cat food (without adult supervision). We had to move the cat food up on a shelf because he kept getting into it. He really seemed to like it.

mwz