13 Months Old!

13 months old

Weight: Jack weighs 24 ish pounds

Length: 32.25ish inches long

Wearing: size 4 Huggies diapers, 18 month clothes

Feedings: Jack drinks 25 ounces of milk a day. For someone who clearly likes to eat, I am still working on transitioning him to table food. Things I'd expect him to like, he won't even touch. Bring out a ham sandwich, though, and he's all over it. He still is not a fan like "wet" finger foods. There may be a slight improvement in that category.

Favorites: Jack loves to play chase. He laughs hysterically and tries his hardest to get away as fast as possible. lol. He loves to go into the big boys' room and play on their beds. He also is climbing all over everything. (Hence the falling on his head and no picture. Ahem)

Least Favorites: Not getting his way. Hate to tell you, Bud, but we all dislike that. Get used to it.

Issues: Other than the eternally teething, he seems to be doing just fine.

Personality: Jack has become quite the chatterbox. Of course, we have no idea what the heck he is saying. It is funny to hear him, too, because he says everything with such emotion. I am sure he's telling us all of the answers to the questions of the universe. I'm just not smart enough to understand what he's saying. ;)

Areas to work on: Jack is still mastering the fine art of walking. He hasn't yet taken the plunge and gone on his own. I am MORE than okay with him not walking. Jeez, I cringe at the thought of him being busier than he already is!

New Things: It's amazing to see how much he understands about what is going on around him. He starting to follow simple directions (come here, etc.) and is really interacting with his brothers in a fun way.

Randomness: Jack now has all of his teeth except his upper canines. Those teeth will likely be in within the next week. I cannot wait until this poor guy is done with teething. It has been a brutal month for him as far as teeth are concerned.

---

Some things Jack is expected to do: (milestones for thirteen months)

Mastered Skills (most kids can do)

• Uses two words skillfully - Hm. I guess I'd go with no because I think it wants something other than mama and dada.
• Bends over and picks up an object - yes.

Emerging Skills (half of kids can do)

• Enjoys gazing at his reflection - yes. He points at himself and makes his scrunched up nose face at his image. (I have no idea what that means!)
• Holds out arm or leg to help you dress him - yes. He is "helping" to some degree. He is also quite capable of not "helping" when so inclined.

Advanced Skills (a few kids can do)

• Combines words and gestures to make needs known - Yes and no. He is very good at getting his needs across. He will say mama and move in for a hug when he wants love. He does shake his head no, bat food away, and make a sound that is his version of no.
• Rolls a ball back and forth - Emerging. We've just started to do this. He'll do it a few times before he'll turn to throw the ball the other way. lol.

 
---

Jack's two month stats are here.
Jack's three month stats are here.
Jack's four month stats are here.
Jack's five month stats are here.
Jack's six month stats are here.
Jack's seventh month stats are here.
Jack's eighth month stats are here.
Jack's nine month stats are here.
Jack's ten month stats are here.
Jack's eleven month stats are here.
Jack's birthday celebration is here.
Jack's twelve month stats are here.

  

Dirt. It's for Lunch!

The thing with mud pies

is that you have to have the proper materials.

A cup and a plate are fine to start out,

but nothing works as good as the hand.

Here you go, mommy! Lunch!

Now Shawn has a different strategy

for making his pies.

He places the dirt on the plate little by little.

Sadly, his dirt won't stay. :-(

Forget the plate

He's making the drink instead.

You've got to have both, you know

to make a great meal.

Did you like it, mommy and daddy?
Um, we have nothing to eat them with, boys.

Here! You can eat 'em with these!

Cute Big Boy Saturday - Laughing Shawn

There's a back story to this, one that I'll likely share tomorrow, but for tonight I want to focus on this moment with Shawn...




I'm so glad I got to capture this moment, so I can remember it always! :-)

Flashback Friday - April 2009

Today, is Shawn's and Jason's half birthday. They are so big now and can do so much!Every now and then, I like to take a trip down memory lane and see just how far they've changed. Here they are in April 2009:

Same stroller as we use now. The legs are a lot longer, though!
Double pacis here - we've been paci free for months!

Aw...look at that face!

Such a sweetie pie!

Loving flying through the air.
He still likes it! Our little daredevil.

Checking out the world while safely in daddy's arms.
So glad that he still wants to be snuggled in close!

Then they were just a year and a half; now they are four and a half. They're the same as they were then in a lot of ways, but oh, so different in many, many more!

Always Doing Something

Oh, Jack. He's such a busy guy...

What are you doing, Jack?
You must be working hard...you're even on tiptoes!

Hm. I still can't tell.
Seriously, what are you doing?

Ah. I get it.
You're trying to eat the knob!

Didn't see that one coming, did you?

and always into something!

Conversations With 4 Year Olds

Our nightly ritual is to sing the boys a song and tell them a story before they go to bed. At the end of the story, I give them ideas of what to dream about that night. Tonight I guess I went a little overboard when I told them to dream about cars, buses, dump trucks, and car transporters.

Jason stopped me to complain, "But mommy, all of those things won't fit on my cloud."

I asked him what he meant.

"My cloud. For my dreams. I always put the things you tell us to dream about on my cloud, so it will be there when I sleep."

"All of the cars won't fit on your cloud? What if you make the cloud bigger?"

"Good idea! That will work!"

With that, he rolled over to go to sleep. :-)

Multiples and More

I'm on Multiples and More as a featured blogger! Go here to check it out!

---

Also, please consider donating to our March for Babies team if you haven't yet. :-)

Or better yet, join our team!

March for Babies - Only 25 Days Until the Walk!

Thank you to all who have contributed to Team Lopez! While we are getting closer, we still have a long way to go before we reach our goal of raising $1000 to support the March of Dimes.

So once again, I ask you to please consider donating to this very worthy cause. Anything will help. A thoughtful contribution would be:

• $59.00 - to represent the number of days I spent on complete bed rest before the boys were born, or
• $17.00 - to represent the number of days I stayed pregnant after my water broke at 26 weeks, or
• $15.25 - to represent how long the boys were at birth, or
• $21.50 - to represent how much they weighed at birth, or
• $2.00 - because we were lucky enough to have twins, or
• $90.00 - to represent the length of Shawn's NICU stay, or
• $100.00 - to represent the length of Jason's NICU stay, or
• $12.00 - to represent the number of weeks early they were born, or
• $234.00 - to represent the number of weeks they've been a part of our lives!

• But really, anything you can contribute is welcome and GREATLY appreciated! :-)

Looky here! We even got ourselves a team t-shirt for the March for Babies walk! Sticking with our sports team theme...

We've got our Team Lopez shirt front.
The 28 represents the boys' gestation.

The back of the shirt says:

Player Stats

Drafted Oct. 27, 2007 @ 28.3 weeks gestation

Shawn Riley 2 lbs 15 oz; 15.25 inches long

Signed to play after 90 days in the NICU

Jason Kelly 2 lbs, 15 oz; 15 inches long

Signed to play after 100 days in the NICU

"It is not how big you are, it's how big you play." ~Author Unknown

March for Babies--May 19, 2012

Doesn't this shirt make you want to join our team and walk with us?* If you're local, we'd love for you to consider joining our team, 3 for Team Lopez! You can do so on our team page. So far, we have a small, but mighty team of 3, but of course, the more the merrier!

Thank you to all who have contributed thus far, but we are still far away from our goal of raising $1000 to support the March of Dimes!

Once again, I ask you to please consider donating to this very worthy cause. Anything will help. A thoughtful contribution would be:

• $59.00 - to represent the number of days I spent on complete bed rest before the boys were born, or
• $17.00 - to represent the number of days I stayed pregnant after my water broke at 26 weeks, or
• $15.25 - to represent how long the boys were at birth, or
• $21.50 - to represent how much they weighed at birth, or
• $2.00 - because we were lucky enough to have twins, or
• $90.00 - to represent the length of Shawn's NICU stay, or  
• $100.00 - to represent the length of Jason's NICU stay, or
• $12.00 - to represent the number of weeks early they were born, or
• $234.00 - to represent the number of weeks they've been a part of our lives!

• But really, anything you can contribute is welcome and GREATLY appreciated! :-)

For more about why the March of Dimes March for Babies fundraiser is important to me, please read this post.

--

I just love that quote. "It is not how big you are, it's how big you play." For being such little guys at birth, my boys play big, that is for sure.

Even if you are not able to walk with us next month, you can still purchase a shirt of your very own! If interested, please let me know!

Oh Crap

We are in trouble.

He looks all innocent here on Jason's bed.
In that mind of his, though, he's making his plan...

Hm. A corner to chew on. How nice.
Maybe they'll believe that is all I want to do!

I'll pretend I'm going to chew on another area of the shelf.
They'll never guess my plan. Bwahahaha...

Quick! I don't think they're looking!
I must hurry to the top of this mountain!

Ack! I've been spotted! Maybe if I smile, they'll
believe it was all just an accident.
"I don't know how I got up here, daddy!"

The boy's a climber.

Oh crap!

Fire Alarms and the Boy in the Car

Alternatively titled: "Another Example of My Parenting Prowess"

The boys' Wednesday school (therapy) session started out pleasantly. Shawn was putting a puzzle together with his teacher inside the classroom, while Jason was outside doing some exercises with his teacher. All in all, I was pleased that things were going well. It was going to be a good day at school. Yea!

Ten minutes in, the fire alarm started blaring. The strobe lights flashed and the intense wail of the alarm itself startled us all.

When it started, I was outside with Jason. He was not happy about the noise, but he was at first more confused as to what it was than anything else. I left Jason with his teacher, Mayra, and went in to grab Shawn.

Shawn, however, was a mess. Unfortunately, he was sitting right below the alarm when it sounded. He immediately freaked and started screaming and crying. His teacher was trying to get him out of his chair and had just lifted him into her arms, but Shawn was having none of that. He was fighting her to let him go when I got there. I grabbed him and my purse and we evacuated outside to be with Jason and his teacher.

Now, in case you didn't know it, the boys have an aversion to loud noises, which we believe is another remnant from their days in the NICU. (All those beeps, alarms, and machine noises are bound to leave their mark on anyone.) The vacuum cleaner can cause hysterics. Shoot, the sound of the electric mixer is sometimes enough to work them up to a frenzy. You can imagine what the sound of a fire alarm did to my boys.

By the time we made it to Jason, he was also a scared, crying mess. We made our way to a picnic bench at the far end of the playground. A few others from the building had made their way outside, too. We stood around and waited.

And waited.

The alarm continued to blast and the strobe lights flashed for ten full minutes.

Did I mention that my boys don't care for loud noises?

Listening to that alarm was brutal for them and me. Poor guys.

Finally, they were able to shut the alarm off. They tried everything to stop the lights but could not get them to turn off. We continued to wait.

At this point, I had decided it was time for us to go home. The boys were upset (and my head was killing me). I didn't think they'd do much at school after this fiasco anyway. The teachers decided they didn't want to risk taking students back into the room with the lights still flashing because of the seizure risks, so it was a done deal.

I carried Shawn out the back gate and made my way around to the car. Mayra carried Jason out behind me. At the car, I put the car keys into the door cup holder while I put Shawn into his seat on the passenger side. I shut the door and turned around to get Jason.

I almost died when I heard the car horn beep. I whipped around to see Shawn, inside the car, holding the keys in his hand while he happily pushed the "lock" button over and over again so he could hear the horn.

Crap. Crap. Crap. Crap!

I tried to coax Shawn into pushing the "open" button on the car keys. He would, but he wasn't pushing it hard/long enough to get it to open the doors. He'd push, I'd run over to the driver's door (takes only one push to open the driver's door, two pushes to open all the doors), and try to open it. Nothing.

My head started to think about how long he could sit in that hot car before he passed out while we waited for Isaac to drive home from work in Camarillo during rush hour.

I contemplated which window would be the cheapest to replace if I had to break one.

I wondered if I could get the teacher to give me her car so I could drive home and look for another key. I had to nix that thought because my house key was on the key chain in Shawn's hand AND the only other key was with Isaac.

I kicked myself a few times for being careless enough to leave the keys in the car in the first place.

Finally, I convinced Shawn to try to push another button. As soon as he pushed it, I heard the click. I ran to the back and exhaled when I saw that he did indeed open the back window of the car.

Hallelujah! Of course he only opened the top window and not the door hatch, but I was taking whatever I could get!

I crawled in through the window (a harder feat than I thought), pulled myself about halfway in, and reached for the keys. I unlocked the doors so Jason's teacher could put him into the car.

I, however, was still half in/half out of the car window. I couldn't get myself back out the window and there wasn't enough room to pull myself all the way into the car.

I was quite the sight, I'm sure, with my outstretched legs sticking out the window. It didn't help that I heard Mayra chuckling to herself after she saw me.

Sigh.

After hours a few seconds, I finally escaped.

I gathered up my bruised ego, finished putting my boys into the car, and headed for home.

Like I said, this is just another example of my parenting prowess. Ahem.

Good Job, Mommy

The boys love to read. It's not unusual to see Shawn reading his magazines while Jason focuses on Jack's board books (he's trying to teach himself to read--and doing quite well, I might add). That also means they want to "read" and ask questions about everything they see. 4 is a pretty neat age!

Anyway, several months back, the boys noticed a sign like this:

Ever since they learned that a circle with a red line means "No" about something, they want to find out what every warning is and then ask a million questions about those warnings. Seriously, it happens all. the. time!

Tonight, Jason noticed that there is a warning label with two pictures on Jack's tub. One picture is a triangle with a red line through it, while the other picture had a green square around it. He asked a lot of questions before he was satisfied that the main purpose of the warning label was to remind mommies to stay with their babies while they were in the water. He then went on his way and left me to finish bathing Jack.

Several minutes later he came back to the bathroom. Out of the blue he said, "Mommy, I am very proud of you. You are doing a good job."

I had no idea where he was going with this conversation, so I went with the obvious reply. "Why is that, Jason?"

"Because you didn't leave your baby behind in the water. Good job!"

With that, he went to the living room so he could enjoy Pocoyo. :-)

Oh No!

They are truly my kids. (I claim all of the cute and funny traits, thank you very much!)

It looks like the big boys have fallen in love with Siri, too.

Oh!

No!

This afternoon, both of them had a few moments with her. It didn't take long before Siri had enticed them with her musical voice.

They got to "text" daddy at work via Siri's automatic voice response. They loved that they get to talk and Siri just typed away for them! lol.

Jason has also developed a passion, in less than twenty-four hours even, for Siri's ability to search the Internet and find whatever his heart desires.

Pictures of red and white trucks? Check.

Pictures of  Pocoyo? Check.

Pictures of concrete mixers? Check.

Why does a fire alarm sound the way it does? Not check, which has led to countless questions as to why she couldn't figure out the answer, but I forgive you Siri.

The possibilities are endless, and he knows it!

I chose the iPhone instead of the iPad because I thought it wouldn't interest the little people. Looks like she had cemented her position in our family with her magical ways.

Sigh.

I guess I can forgive sweet Siri, for making me have to share. It's a small price to pay. She is pretty awesome. :-)

They Say It's Your Birthday...

Today is my birthday! Yea! I'd like to pretend that I have no idea what number this birthday is, so we'll just say that it's a biggie. :-)

Jason was so excited about my birthday, he couldn't
wait to blow out my candles!

He wanted to get into the partying. Well, he really
just wanted to get to the cake. :-)

Shawn and I are smiling for the camera.
Jason is too busy...

More smiles. More poking at the cake.

Cake kiss!

The boys decorated the cake themselves.
The white area is the damage Jason inflicted while I was
smiling with Shawn. lol

Jack was there, too!
Look at my cute little guy!

Satisfied after eating some cake.

What's this? Oh, Siri! I love you!

I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship!

I had a great day today! Well, I did up until the fire alarm, the boy locked in the car, and such, but that is a story for another day.