Baby Name Ideas

A couple of days ago, Kai yelled in to me from the other room where he was playing with Carter, "If we have a boy, we should name him Santa Claus. Carter wants to."
Then Carter piped in,"Yeah, liddoe baby anta cuash" (translation: "little baby Santa Claus"--with Carter lately everything that is at all small is described as "liddoe baby . . .")
Then Kai said, "And if it’s a girl we’ll just name her Mrs. Claus."
I guess that makes our job easier. :)

Kai likes to rock

We were eating lunch and Kai was singing, “Santa Clause is coming to town . . .” then he says, “Mom, let’s rock this house with that song.”
That may have come from the fact that he really loves the Bruce Springsteen version of that song and always asks me to play it again when we hear it on the radio.

Nice Try

Max's latest excuse for doing things he's not supposed to do is, “Well, Ella's teaching me how.”, or “Ella taught me how to.”

Don't You Wish...

We were at a park in St. George today and there was a label on the playground that said “Max systems.” Max said, “It says M-A-X! That must mean it's my park, Mom and Dad!”

(not so) Sneaky Max

A few weeks ago, Max found some scissors in our drawer in the kitchen. Ella was asleep and I was sitting on the couch. Max looked at me and said, “Mom, do you want to take a nap? Mom, go take a nap in your room!”. So I said, “Why Max?” and he said, “I want to play with these scissors.”

Later on, I helped him with the scissors because I wanted to see what he wanted to do. He went straight to the garage (as if he had been planning it for a while) and he got out Cory's electrical tape. Then he cut three long pieces and put them on the railings of the stairs down into the garage. (On the vertical parts, so there were three vertical black stripes in a row.) Then he did the same thing on the other side of the staircase. He told me they were “sounds.” It took me a while, but I finally figured out that it was from Blues Clues. Steve drew a symbol representing a sound in the Handy Dandy Notebook that looked just like that. I thought that was pretty clever.

Ella and Max

This first one happened way back in June, but no one else is posting, so here goes:
A few weeks ago, Ella was in our bed in the morning and Max came in right after he woke up. She looked over at him and then she took her binky out of her mouth and handed it straight to Max. He usually steals it out of her mouth, so I guess she just thought she would save him the trouble.

Yesterday, Max and Ella got in their first "real" fight. It was so cute; I was trying so hard not to laugh so I could try to break it up. It started when Ella knocked over some blocks that Max had spent a long time building. Max got really mad and started crying. I could tell he wanted to hit her, but he knows that's not okay, so he grabbed a plastic spoon and was poking her arm with it. Then he tried to head butt her, but didn't really have much success. At the same time, Ella was hitting him over and over with all the force a 15-month-old has. They were both crying and very mad. It was one of the funniest things I've ever seen.

A Couple of Max Stories

A few days ago we got some shoes in the mail for Ella. They had some strings on them holding them together. Max got the scissors and while he was helping me cut the strings he said, “It won't be long now, Ella.”


I often talk to Max about things he did when he was a baby so that he doesn't feel left out when I praise Ella for learning something new. A couple of days ago, Max started a conversation by saying, “When I was a baby and Ella was a big boy . . .”
I think it's cute that Max can't imagine our family without Ella!
(I think he sometimes thinks all babies are girls, so it makes sense that he thinks Ella must have been a big boy. It also makes sense why he doesn't quite understand why he won't be a girl when he grows up.)