14 month // 44 month update

If I do the math, apparently I’m sixteen days late on this update – my mistake! On the actual day Dakota turned 14 months we were just returning from our family vacation in Cuba, and ever since my brain has been in space cadet mode. That being said, here is my kiddo-update. (All photos from Cuba haha)

Clothes

The kids and I did a massive haul of clothes we don’t wear. We filled a Rubbermaid tote, like the big ‘put your Christmas decorations in it’ kind. I have a system with the kids… If Oliver’s clothes are too small, I throw them in a small bin in Dakota’s closet for her to try when she’s the right size. If it’s way masculine, or I just don’t see Dakota ever wearing it, I put it in a box to give away. When Dakota’s clothes get too small, I put them in the give away box too. Recently I posted on Facebook that I had clothes, toys, etc. to give away and I had tons of people interested. I was able to give away seven giant bags of things. But, sometimes I have no patience for making plans to get things to a friend who wants them and in that case we hop in the car and go straight to Value Village. Lucky enough the guy offered to lift the tote for me, and even returned it to my car after emptying it. While we were shopping inside we found some shorts, t-shirts and flip flops for Ollie, a shirt, some high-waisted jean shorts and a pair of green skinny jeans (just like her brother’s) for Kota, and a number of shirts for me. It was really fun. Then Oliver begged me to bring this Transformer toy home. He had no batteries and seemed innocent enough so I agreed. Later we took a trip to Home Depot and bought Ollie the right batteries. We pushed them in and WHOA this guy came to life. Apparently (according to what the toy screamed at us) he is a transformer robot named Stinky who turns into a garbage can. He loves eating other cars so he’ll scream FEED ME and open his mouth and Ollie can put cars inside, then they roll out the back of him like a garbage truck door. He’s so funny. Ollie says he is Stinky’s dad and he actually takes really good care of him. If we’re out and about and I want to get going back home, I’ll be like, Ollie we need to get home to feed Stinky, and he’ll say Okay no problem. Oliver is currently in some 3T and some 4T clothes, and size 10 shoes are very tight on him. Dakota is anywhere from 12 – 24 months and size 4 shoes I think. They both got new fedoras and sunglasses for Cuba – so cute!

Food

Dakota had a short stretch of being kind of a picky or distracted eater, but she’s back to being a super-eater in full force. She has no problem finishing an adult portion, in record time. Girl, loves, food. Oliver on the other hand, has huge trouble staying focused. I don’t know if I’ve seen him eat more than three consecutive bites ever. They both love bacon and doughnuts, of course. Oliver hates beans (Dakota loves them). They both drink a ton of water. Kota still nurses quite a bit.

Sleep

Another area that they are really different in. I forget if I’ve mentioned on the blog before that Dakota did a 180 in sleeping recently. Cal and I came home from seeing a movie at the theatre, our babysitter had Dakota in her crib asleep (she never used to go in there, ever), so Cal and I went to bed. We awoke the next morning at 8am stunned. She has slept 12 hours in her crib, without a fuss, every night since! (Okay there may have been 2 times in there were she cried a little during the night but nothing major.) 

Oliver…. Couldn’t be further from this. He is content to stay awake hanging with the adults until near midnight every night. If we put him to bed he leaves. Short of a physical brawl, we cannot keep him in bed. Then, if he finally falls asleep, be-it in his own bed or somewhere else and we transfer him, guaranteed by morning he will be back in our room. We typically don’t even hear or realize when he slips into our room during the night. For a while he was trying to sleep in our bed but we cut that out, so now he’ll walk to our room in the middle of the night with his own blanket and pillow and he’ll camp out on our floor. It’s so weird. Can’t understand it. But hey, at least we have the bed to ourselves and everyone’s happy. He sleeps until about 6:15am every morning. Then he helps me get ready for work and we watch cartoons together while we eat breakfast. It’s pretty hard to say goodbye to him that early because he’ll usually put up a fuss about it, asking me to stay home with him.

Child Care

We’ve been really blessed to be able to basically both work full time (I work around 60-70 hours every 2 weeks) and never need day care. Both our moms have been awesome for watching the kids at least once a week. We also had a dedicated babysitter until recently. (If you know anyone who needs some cash we have a few Tuesday morning/ Wednesday morning slots that we could use a sitter for!) It’s great that our schedules just seem to work out, save for once every  4 – 8 weeks when we both work the same weekend, then we have to do some fancy work to figure it out.

Activities

Lately we’ve been loving:

-          Playing trucks in the kinetic sand

-          Painting (including Easter eggs)

-          Bath party with ALL the toys

-          Walks around the neighbourhood / to the park / to the nature trail / to the river

-          Riding our bicycles/tricycles

-          Shopping

-          Eating pickles

-          Watching Big Hero 6 and Toy Story 1, 2, 3

-          Makeup party

-          Taking care of dolls

-          Petting dogs

-          Checking the mail, like it’s the greatest adventure we’ve ever been on

The kids have been super fun over the past while (and always). I love our little family of four and he stuff we get up to. As they get older it just gets more fun!