Geography With the Bear

Stan B is learning his United States and who lives where. He's pretty good most of the time but then ends up saying that Nana and Tuka live everywhere and that Auntie C lives in Idaho and we live in NC and Papa is Carter's papa and Grandma sometimes lives with Tuka and he refers to Grandma and Grandpa as Grandpa and Grandpa. At least he knows where Texas is, even if he initially puts it there upside down. Enjoy and happy Friday!


USA from erin kawamata on Vimeo.

PS Sorry no post yesterday. I have been sick as a dog.

Juggling

This cracks me up. Whatever Papa does, he wants to do.
juggling from erin kawamata on Vimeo.

Excited

Stan B is very expressive. He loves mimicking the facial expressions of characters in books that we read. Here is his expression for being excited:


excited from erin kawamata on Vimeo.

Tap Dancer

Energy abounds:


thank you and good night from erin kawamata on Vimeo.

Rock Star

Here's another video from last fall. He is singing and rocking out. His words are gibberish(to me) but every now and then I could pull out an actual word. When you hear him say something that sounds like "sh*t" or "shoot" he is saying the word "foot". When you hear him say "batsh*t" or "birdsh*t" he is saying "barefoot". He also counts to three and says "home" and something like, "Dickie look." when Dickie the Cat is watching him sing.


rockstar from erin kawamata on Vimeo.

Just a reminder, these are just snippets of his performance. He did this for a while. He's got so much energy; it's amazing.

Is It the Cat?

Stan B has been into playing peek-a-boo for a while now. He even started playing this funny game where he wanted us to pretend that he was a dog, cat or squirrel. It's pretty hilarious. Especially this night when he's hiding behind the door frame and when we say, "Is that a dog?" He answers us back and says something like, "No, Stanley." Have a look-see:


is it the cat from erin kawamata on Vimeo.

Drummer Boy

When we walk downtown we walk by the music store that has guitars, horns, ukuleles, and drums in the window. One day we walked inside because I thought Stan B would really love looking at the instruments up close.

When he saw the drum sets he really wanted to hit them. One of the employees sensed this and gave him two drumsticks. So, I sat down on the stool and Stan B sat on my lap and went to town. He did good and had fun!


drumset from erin kawamata on Vimeo.

My Shish

This video is also from last fall. Mike got this long toy train from the thrift store and one of the cars looks like it's filled with water from the side. I told Stan B that I would make him some fish to put in that car. I made one big fish and a bunch of little fish. He had trouble with pronouncing his Fs. He would say "shish" instead of fish. So cute. Since I've been editing all of these old videos it's amazing to see the leaps and bounds he has made in his language since last fall. Enjoy listening to his sweet voice!

little fish big fish from erin kawamata on Vimeo.

Rocking Chipmunk

This is an old video from last fall (I'm so behind!) We discovered this new park right before it began to get really cold. It's a fairly new playground and they have these rocking horse animals that really go back and forth with gusto. Stan B loves them. Here he is on the chipmunk and talking about a cute dog in the first part of the video.


rocking chipmunk from erin kawamata on Vimeo.

Horizontal

On our last night at Grandma and Grandpa's house I had the Bear sleep in the bed with me. When I put him down he was parallel with the sides of the bed. Three hours later, when I came to bed, he turn 90 degrees. It was adorable. When I moved him back  he stayed asleep and then he tossed and turned for 4 to 5 hours, accidentally kicking and hitting me in the face for hours. Around 4:30 or 5 am he slept like a rock and then I had to get up at 6. Anyhow. It was fun. I actually really enjoy co-sleeping but man, it was a rough night.

Scissors

This kid loves scissors. He goes around and cuts the loose tape off of the many boxes we have yet to unpack.

He cuts yarn that he finds lying around. One day he cut yarn into little pieces, ran to his room and came back with his frying pan and wooden apple with magenta yarn sprinkled on top as a garnish. YUM!

 Our neighbor has given us a lot of old magazines and I let him cut those up. He makes collages or just likes cutting the pages.

 They end up looking like this:

 The artist at work:

Fine Motor : Beans & Pasta

We have a lot of dried beans in our house because we like slow cooking them often! Yum! I also have had this bag of partially opened rice pasta for years (maybe since we lived in New Mexico?!) So one day I pulled all of these dried goods out, plus some small bowls, muffin pans and spoons and let the Bear go at it.

 He loved scooping and dumping and sorting the beans and pasta. A lot spilled on the ground too but most of it stayed on the table. When he was done playing I just put all of the beans and pasta in an old yogurt container and put it in his craft cupboard. We'll pull these out every now and then to play. Not only does he like scooping and dumping but he loves sinking his hand into a bowlful of them. The texture is quite nice.

Horsing Around With Pops

Have I written on here that Stan B calls Mike "Pops" sometimes? He does.

Here they are playing with a blanket tunnel in the living room:
tunnel love from erin kawamata on Vimeo.

Rebellion

The above picture  was from a day when we did a lot of painting and tracing of hands. The video below shows how his face got to be the way it is and it also shows you how he has started to listen but go against everything that I say. You can see the little smile before the doing of the thing I didn't want him to do.


paint eater from erin kawamata on Vimeo.

Boogie Down

Happy Friday!

New dancing footage:


dancing 1 from erin kawamata on Vimeo.

And I think I posted 30 seconds of this one on Instagram. But here's the entire thing:

dancing, extended version from erin kawamata on Vimeo.

Balance

When my Dad was staying with us during our move he made this little backyard bench out of cinderblocks and a piece of wood. Stanley loves tossing the piece of wood aside and walking across the blocks.

He's really good at it.

Here he is "ice skating" in the house using two pieces of cardboard as skates. (I have some good video of him sliding/scooting on the frozen lake over the holidays. I'll post that eventually.)


indoor skates from erin kawamata on Vimeo.

Snake River II

Before it got to be too cold I took the Bear to the Snake River again.  

The Clearwater River is the one running from left to right and the easiest to see in this picture. The Snake River is the one shooting off from the Clearwater (on the right hand side of this frame) and moving off into the distance. This is the vista when at the top of the plateau coming from Moscow to Lewiston (it's Lewiston that you see down below.) Lewis and Clark country.

 There's Stan B sitting and taking in the view and bossing me around.

It was a cool day but not cool enough to stay out of the cold water!

 And without pants at that!

 We also made a mini river flowing into the big river. It was a good day.

Lego Tower

The epic lego tower started when Grandma and Grandpa came to stay. Ever since Grandma started the lego tower that is all he wants to build (well, he builds trucks and cars too). Here is one of his creations:

He's really good at snapping the pieces together. Usually once he builds one up he then knocks it over - legos everywhere. And so it goes.

Fear

The walkway to and from the Grandparents' front door.

Fear has appeared in the mind of my sweet little boy. It started at home. He would wake in the middle of the night...around 1 or 2 am and I would go in his room and mostly he would just say, through tears, "Mama, hug!" and I would give him a hug and then he was able to go right back to sleep. Some nights he would need more comforting. I would say, did you have a bad dream? and he would respond with a yes. I then would simply say something like, "Mama's here. It was just a dream. Would you like a hug?" He always will take a hug. The last several nights he has said right as I am tucking him in to bed, "Monsters in here?" or sometimes, "Bugs in here?" I always say no and that monsters are just pretend. For the bugs we move all of his lovies out of the way and look for bugs. We never find any. Then we put the lovies back - that puts his mind at ease.

 One day we were in my bedroom and he said about our closet, "Monsters in there?" and I explained again that monsters are make believe, pretend, not real. I also said that he may imagine them or dream about them...and if he dreams about them and they are scary to say, "Boo!" and they will run away. That made him smile.

Sliding down the steps at Gramps and Grammy's house. (Stan B sometimes calls Grandpa and Grandma, Gramps and Grammy (or maybe it is Granny.))

Downstairs is where we sleep when we are at Gramps and Grammy's house. There is a door down there with a sculpture/relief of Bacchus's face on it. His mouth is open and he's got grapes in his hair. I wouldn't say he is scary looking, just unusual. Stanley would go down there and play and then would come upstairs and say, "Man down there?" It took me a couple of times before I understood what he was talking about (or what I assume he was talking about.) His inquiry after this man started after Mike was holding Stan B and looking at Bacchus and said something innocent like, "Aaaah scary man!" and that sunk into Stan B's head. Sponge, I tell ya. Our last night at their house he finished dinner early and went downstairs to throw the ball in the hall and after a couple of minutes he came upstairs and just clung to me asking about the man downstairs (I got a little creeped out but kept my cool.) I asked him if he was talking about Bacchus, the man on the door. He said yes...and he said, "I'm afraid." I told him that Bacchus was a good guy and liked to drink wine. :) I told him that it is OK to feel afraid but that when I was done eating dinner that I would go downstairs with him to look at Bacchus more closely and even touch his face in order to conquer his fear.

His "Heeeere's Johnny!" impersonation.

 After dinner we went downstairs and we went right up to Bacchus. I pointed out his smiling eyes, his big nose and nostrils and his open and laughing mouth. I pointed out the yummy grapes entwined in his hair. I even tried taking it off the door to show him that it was a simple hanging but couldn't manage doing so. Stan B smiled and touched the grapes. I think we conquered it. We'll see how things go on our next visit!

My two sleeping bears.

Stan B will wake up around 5 in the morning still. I will then bring him to our bed and if we are lucky he'll sleep 3 hours more. If we had a king size bed I'd be tempted to co-sleep with him all the time. But a queen has either Mike or I practically falling off of the bed when Stan B joins us.

Anyways, I hope that we can always talk openly about his fears and always figure out how to conquer them.

Tub Hair

Happy New Year! Sorry for no posts yesterday!

I don't play with Stan B's wet hair enough. It's so fun. Above is a fun hairstyle we did after we washed his hair one night.

When he takes bubble baths he often puts bubbles on his face and says something like, "I Papa!" as if he has a bubble beard. Here is a post bubble bath head dunk with bubbly results:

 Another one: