Odds and Ends

Porter:
Dear evanly fahder
dank you day
peas bess daddy work (variation: daddy school)
peas bess mommy home
nomi home (variation: nomi nap)
porter home
amen

it usually takes a reminder to get him to bless the food or say 'Jesus Christ, Amen.' But we're still pretty proud of him. His night time prayer also usually includes 'sweet dreams'

These prayers are a perfect example of Porter's vocabulary up to now, where he seems to stick to very constructed two to five word sentences made up of words that he knows, like 'more food mama?' 'Nomi napping', 'Beautiful Night' or his favorite sentence after watching a curious george clip "Just OOONE More.' but more recently, porter's decided his sentences aren't long enough, or don't sound enough like mama and daddy's, so now he replicates our tones and dipthongs quite accurately, while throwing a bunch of jibberish into very full, and fast run on sentences. So while we were driving home past the park one evening this is what I hear from the backseat. "GOODNIGHT PARK! gogish deef SLEEP TIGHT DON"T LET BED BUGS BITE< IF DO, SPIT SHOE, BLACK AND BOO! jabsihsd, SWEET DREAMS, deba LOVE YOU MISS YOU BYE!" etc etc. I think he even sang that park some of "Barges" and "Twinkle Twinkle' before concluding with "WE"RE HOME NOMI!"
hmm- so you think i'm using my caps lock a lot? Well, i mean it. Porter's excited voice reminds me of Will Ferrel's snl sketch, "I HAVE A VOICE INNOCULATION PROBLEM..."


Also Porter's really into restating the most current events that he finds particularly exciting. And he likes to add sound effect amongst the jibberish and words he knows. Especially rides from disneyland. After clinging to us in fear on the Madderhorn, he not only wanted to ride it again and again, but he also spent the rest of the day, retelling us all about it; "jibberish jibberish ROAR MONSTER jibberish CLOSE EYES jibberish AHHHH SPLASH!"

daddy: We can only have one book and one song tonight porter, because it's late.
porter: 'Daddy, one book, one song, one nap' very seriously in his 'parent voice' while wagging his finger at daddy. He usually uses his parent voice when responding to our serious voices. For example, after Daddy said quite seriously, 'You may eat more food, or take your nap.', Porter (not liking those choices) responded in that same voice with options he liked better: "(jibberish) Play Nomi, watch Movie, okay?' so matter of fact. he also likes to use that tone while commanding baby sister in what she may or may not do. Whether he's yelling lovingly, or bossing her around, she seems to love both.

nomi used to live her life in fear- usually while breastfeeding, simply because she knew Porter could attack her with a spontanious hug or hit or excited scream or a monster roar at any time. she seems now to be taking it in stride and giggling at all his abuse. apparently she not only craves porter's positive or negative attention, but she also thinks it's ALL quite hilarious. mark and I vigorously do all sorts of energetic games to try and get just small gurgle laughs out of that girl, yet one punishing "BE HAPPY NOMI" yell from Porter, and the giggles just spill out of her.

Naomi's also sitting up now. SO BIG! and the way she holds up her head while on her tummy, i know rolling can't be too far away:( She's still not a big talker, but always a big smiler. Someday Mark and I will get around to feeding her food, but for now, we keep wanting her to stay our sweet, small baby.

The Poop Scoop

TADA. Porter is officially an 'undies' man. It's been a pretty easy road with him so far. In fact, his independence is a little unnerving at times. "Potty. Bye mommy daddy. I go potty." after which he'd run to the bathroom and lock the door. At first this seemed like a great idea. He'd go potty, dump his potty in the toilet, wash the bowl out and his hands in the sink, then come back out yelling "I DID IT!" but it wasn't long before we noticed extra long visits in the bathroom, and find him (after unlocking the door) washing his clothes and overflowing the sink, getting poopy just about everywhere, or trying to stand and pee just a little too early. So now that we've roped him in a bit, we're back to potty trained angel, and we can look back on some of the funnier stories from the past few weeks.

porter singing 'poo poo hinu hinu'(mom's new favorite maori song) while trying to poo on the potty.

Porter 'showing' g-ma and g-pa his big boy undies by sticking the telephone down his pants thinking they'd be able to see them.

Porter trying to impress the missionaries by going poopy by himself and bringing his little potty bucket out to show them his good work.

Porter running out to a park tree at a play date, and feeling confident that he'd like to pee on that tree, pulls down his pants and does so. (Where do boys get that desire?? Is it just in their genes??)

The only real snag we've hit is the fact that no matter how gross it is, Porter loves public restrooms, and will cry 'potty' over and over again just to spend time in them. I just may die early from some unearthly disease for how many times he tricks me into those josie grossie potties. Well, I guess with that being our only snag so far, I'm ready to say what I hear Porter yell at me about 6 times a day: YAY!!! I DID IT!!! One down, one to go.And now, we leave you with the I'M AN UNDIES MAN DANCE!

'Wish it were Sunday'...

Usually it feels like Sundays are such marathons. Mark and I teach the 15-16 year old Sunday School class, which means we're doing jumping jacks and cartwheels just to keep our five boys' attention through about 3 verses of scripture. But for some reason last Sunday was just completely chill. It started with a sweet morning with the babies. Nomi gets up first. She just whimpers, but I get her right away so that the crying doesn't wake up Porter. So I've just gotten Nomi and am feeding her on my side of the bed, when in comes Porter sleepily over to Mark's side of the bed. He climbs in and starts to snuggle sleep. Porter's snuggling is the cutest. He reaches over his tiny arm until it completely wraps around your neck, which automatically, since his arm is so short, pulls your head right next to his, your noses touching. Then he falls in and out of sleep. So that is what he was doing with daddy for like two minutes before he saw me. He then let his eyes shoot open, take a huge dramatic inhalation before excitingly telling daddy, "Nomi's aWAKE!" (shocker. and yet he says it with new found surprise every morning.) but then he followed it up with "GOOD MORNING NOMI! So CUTE!"
haha. I LOVE him!! Mark and I start giggling, "You're right Porter, She IS so cute!" Still laying down, he pats Mark sweetly, and slightly condescendingly echos with, "Daddy. So Cute." and then with even more sap in his voice, "Porter. So Cute."
Unfortunately I didn't get in on the cute action. luckily I have quite the self esteem.
I'm not sure why, but the whole day seemed to have that kind of slow paced ease to it all. At church, our disruptive Porter is usually narrating events in his whisper/yell voice; "BREAD" "WATER" "PRAYER" "SONG" "NURSURY." Well, this time he quietly sat, until we let him whisper in Naomi's face, which got Naomi giggling for about a minute straight before we begrudgingly separated them. it was adorable, (and totally distracting). Our class felt effective for the first time in weeks, and the
rest of the day we just hung out. Naomi went into the bouncer for the first time, Porter and Mark wrestled, and Porter did the boogie with each bite and gave us "air hugs" throughout dinner. With Mark taking on nap time, and letting me ignore him and read all evening, the day on a whole pretty much rocked.
So Sunday they were my sweethearts, and today they're my minions. I guess that's reason enough to write about the good days.

phases i hope will end soon: "no nap!" at the end of every request i make starting at 7 in the morning to 8 at night. especially with how often it turns into a hyperventilating chant. and rolling his eyes and looking in every direction other than my face when i ask him to look at me. eating toothpaste while i'm feeding nomi, making me call poison control. being able to find all the locked down stools and get into EVERYTHING. i love him. i swear i do.
phases i hope will never end: spontaneous kisses to baby nomi. saying "agoo" to nomi every time she coos, and 'be happy nomi, sh sh sh' every time she cries. he's a very sweet brother. being great at crafts, especially drawing right now. he hunches over his paper, and slowly and maticulously draws a little line or circle, and then tells me who or what it is. his understanding of complicated storylines, and his patience with me when trying to be understood. tonight it was 'boy milk cow' for the storyline of Christmas day in the Morning (the book). it took me several tries, but i finally got it. and such a sweetheart to people. hugs, thanks yous and pleases. also he's not running away as much. he stands in line like a pro (disneyland taught him that) being sweet with everyone he meets. and the last habit i hope isn't a phase? holding my cheeks and staring into my eyes while talking to me a centimeter away from my face. it's creepy sometimes, but i love it. it's even creepier when he makes his lips touching mine, but starts talking to me instead of giving me a kiss. haha. creeepy...and yet super sweet.
love him. (maybe i should write about him more...it seems to make me love him more.

a small note about my angel baby nomi. she not only smiles and is so so content all day long (even during all of porter's loving harrassment) but she's now experimenting in her coos. she starts to change the shape of her mouth giving her interesting different vowel sounds, but also keeps surprising herself with the loudness of her own voice. she'll be smiling with soft coos, but then will belt out a sound, and jolt her body in surprise at her loud sound, and then bust into a little hiccup of a laugh. daddy really got her going tonight, but alas, she always stops cold when the camera comes out. porter did that too. drove me crazy. she loves looking at herself in the mirror above her bouncer, but other than making herself laugh there, she'll usually stay quiet all day until someone starts talking to her.
love love her too.

all things porter

porter speaks in almost sentences. "Porter night night" you want to go night night porter "no. no mommy. porter no no night night." oh, you don't want to go night night? "yah. yesss mommy"

it blows my mind to think of what a boy he's become, and that he's no longer my baby. when he pretend cries i ask him what he's doing. "nomi" oh- you're trying to cry like nomi? "yah".

and he's so sweet with naomi. he'll give her hugs, cover her with the blanket and give lots of kisses. he's also worried if she's upset. "die mama" what porter? "nomi die die...WHAWHAWHAWHA" oh, cry. naomi's crying? "yah." (porter does that all the time. when he knows he's not being understood, he'll play charades or 'sounds like' just to help you figure it out. he's incredibly patient, and will just keep trying. in fact, he's so persistent, that when i'm just not getting it, i have to find a pretty good distraction to help him drop it.)

i was mostly excited about our trip to visit Christy, since i was looking forward to porter getting some interactions during the day with his cousins. mostly, porter was the monster that the other kids like to run and hide from, calling his name to keep him interested in finding them. or austin and ethan's favorite game of 'you wanna piece of me??' they all read him books and got him to really take time on drawing a detailed picture, and i was just so impressed with all of them in the way that they communicated so well with porter, in a way he could understand. porter loved the companionship, and i think he started to wish he was a younger brother, since he also seemed to enjoy being told what to do. that trip reintroduced him to chey and shydan and also gave him a grasp on what snow is, and snowmen too, which he now takes every opportunity to point out "noman, mommy!"

we also got to visit uncle ben and aunt raena, which was so great! porter always wanted to know where uncle ben was, if he wasn't in the room. "Wur bun? Bun, whare ar u?"...and having two thanksgiving dinners was fabulous as well.

he's starting to play favorites. "book book." yes porter i'll be right in to read you a book "no no, Daddy. Daddy book" ...at the end of a long day, that's fine by me!

he's figured out the computer screen dimming button, as well as the volume up and down, and the shut off button. no i don't LET him play with the computer...but while i'm pushing him away, these are his favorite buttons to take a stab at. unfortunately when i'm not looking, i've also seemed to find his handywork with our camera as well, as he's taken several pictures of his toys and books. he's also becoming a big boy on the playground as well, conquering the harder climbing structures that have always threatened his life before. sad- how fast he's growing.

as for Christmas, just like with his birthday, he's getting excited for the holiday. also, he hasn't really been able to let go of that birthday spirit since the fact that birthdays only last for one day eludes him. rightfully so, since he had his birthday one weekend (and we sang to him) then we celebrated his birthday with a party the next weekend. soon after it was mommy's birthday...so now everytime we talk about Christmas, it's "BIRDAY BIRDAY MOMMY!!!" it's Christmas honey "CHRISTMAS BIRDAY!!!!" ...so if you can't beat em, join em. at least now he's transitioned to saying "JESES BIRDAY"

and on that good note. merry Christmas.