Kya is at my favorite age right now. The way she runs and talks is adorable. She's fighting for her independence and is awe of the world most days. Her observations are often obvious, but also often amusing. They are sometimes funny just because they make no sense. She laughs her throaty little laugh, uncontrollably at the littlest things and you never know what she might do next. Ryker's reactions to things are pretty logical at his age, Kya's are still usually pretty entertaining. Her potty training has been delightful for the other members at the gym. I hear lots of giggles when we are in a stall. She's a very loud talker and talks A LOT. Ryker and I have been trying to teach her the quiet game because sometimes even he gets fed up. However, he talks just as much, but it just never bothers her. He even makes random, annoying noises when he isn't running his mouth. I know where he gets that too and I'd like to take this opportunity to apologize to my Mom. Back to Kya and her gym potties. She does a lot of narrating about what she's doing while she's on the toilet and likes to comment on anything going on in the stalls around us as well....the most embarrassing of which was soon after she was sick and learned the word diarrhea. Kya, for future reference, I have no idea what's going on in the stall next to us and we shouldn't worry about the person in there or whether or not they need to go to the doctor about their diarrhea. Just get your business done and get out of the bathroom.
At this age, Ryker was a very clean eater. Kya is a complete disaster. She can eat neatly, she just doesn't. She doesn't care if there is food in her hair, on her face, all over her body for that matter. She'll purposely rub a banana all over her arms and even rub stuff in her eye and then complain that it hurts. She'll sit at the dinner table for hours if we let her. We have to tell her that we'll put her left over food in the fridge just to get her down from the table because if she thinks there's no coming back, she won't get down. She's not even eating it, just playing and making herself messier! She used to bite her tongue at least 3 times every meal and at least a couple times a day when she wasn't even eating. That seems to have slowed down, which is good because I was about to ask the doctor if she had an unusually large tongue to match the rest of her body. For the record, Dr. Richard's measured my head at their last checkup to be sure that it was hereditary. Apparently the average head size is 55cm. Mine is 58. I don't know if 55 is the average for a woman or everyone, but either way, my head is over sized so I should quit calling them pumpkin heads.
Kya has also taken on a self proclaimed alias.....Mike Wasowski from Monsters, Inc.
She told me one day to call her Mike and it has stuck for about 2 weeks now. I think it started when I told them that Seth's nickname was Bodeen. I think she was just looking for a nickname, but can't be sure. All of a sudden she wanted to be called Mike Wasowski....kids and their celebrity idolization....haha. She usually doesn't miss a beat. If I call her Kya, she corrects me. It's weird how ingrained it is in her head. She fell asleep in the car today and when I woke her up, she exclaimed,"Mike Wasowski" which of course made me laugh hysterically. Maybe that's why she keeps it up because everyone laughs when she tells them to call her Mike, then laughs harder when she explains who Mike is. She wants us all to call Ryker Randall, but he hates it so we don't. She won't stop calling him that though much to his disgust. If you don't remember Randall, he is below. He told her one day that if she was going to call him Randall that he was going to go invisible like Randall does and she wouldn't be able to play with him along with numerous other threats. She stopped for the moment, but she's back at it. That reminds me, about a month ago she was back to her old nickname for him and calling him Guy Guy for the day. Where does this stuff come from?
Ryker is still tying up everything in sight. He needs a new piece of yarn every 5 minutes. He's usually making some kind of trap or invention or just towing something on his less innovative days. We were gone all day on Saturday at a birthday party, then a fire department training burn where they burned a house down, then to a friends house. We got home about 6:00 and he was pretty disappointed because he hadn't had any time that day to "work on his inventions."
In the wake of Kya being potty trained, he is retraining to put the seat down and flush. Wow, has is been a slow process. He barely stops long enough to pee most of the time (which is why have to use a Clorox wipe on the floor every day), let along put the seat down before he whirls around and is out of the bathroom before is pants are even up. Kya rolls in next, falls into the toilet, then you hear he screaming that her butt got wet and she needs help. I guess we should have emphasized those last 2 steps a little more when he was potty training, but we were just happy he was out of diapers and getting the seat up. We didn't care if it was back down then.
He's obsessed with computer games and coloring on the computer. He would do it all day if we didn't limit him. It's already time to put parental controls on our computers....wow! He types in the password, gets on himself, and can navigate most games. If he gets into one that is too hard and we won't help him read the directions, he just pushes the back button and picks a new one. I know he needs to learn to use a computer, but I'm really in uncharted waters here about how much time he should spend and what he should be doing on it.
Now that he has known all his letters and has been comfortable writing them for a few months, he's learning to sound out words at school and we practice at home. He enjoys "teaching" Kya letters and numbers. She knows the alphabet song and can count to 10. She has some jumbles every once in a while and she likes to throw an eleventeen in at the end, but she is ahead of where he was at this age and it is all from listening to him recite that stuff over and over. He's into writing his own cards to people, now that he's got is new gift of letters. He comes up with what he wants to say and I just tell him how to spell the words. He usually has a lot to say until he gets bored of writing and abandons his note mid sentence. If you get one of these, don't be confused. There are no pages missing. He just stopped, stuck it in an envelope, and stamped it. He writes really big so his letters are often in "book format", meaning he used about 6 pieces of construction paper then stapled them in order, or out of order when the mood strikes him. Again, if you get one of these, don't be confused, he did it on purpose against every grain of my orderly being. Sometimes he just wants to "trick" the recipient, as he puts it, then giggles to himself.
A few days ago, I got my "your the worst Mom ever" remark except he said I was "the worses mom ever." I told him I'm the worst Mom ever, not the worses Mom ever and asked him to repeat it a couple times. He did, then asked why I was making him say something naughty over and over. I said, "I don't care if you like me but I do care if you have proper grammar and if you knew it was naughty, why did you say it?" This lead to a short discussion on what grammar was. Then I asked him if I was really the worst Mom ever and he couldn't even remember why he was mad at me. I hope it is this easy when he is in high school and hates me.
Ryker received a joke kit in the mail recently from Kara and Brian. If you are looking for a gift for a 4 year old, look no further. Everyone knows that a whoopee cushion is funny to a 4 year old, but who know that trick gum, a nail through the finger, and some realistic looking flies would be such a hoot and provide hours of fun. And when I say hours, I mean hours spent on "joking" me. I had to pull the gum about 60 times the first day he got it and I had those flies on every piece of food I ate for the entire first day. He even dropped it in my water and sat giggling until I got to the bottom. Gross! Who knows what foreign factory those little plastic chemical laden pieces of crap were made in. Needless to say, they have now been washed with dish soap and are rewashed every few days. The whoopee cushion popped within the first couple days because he was jumping on it (as he did the last one he had), but the rest of the stuff is still going strong. His best joke, the gum, resides in his treasure chest with all his most important stuff. I'm thinking a practical joke party is in store for this kid next year. I can pull out all my best material!
One last thing....All you New Year's Resolutioner's clogging up the machines at the gym, I respect the effort, but please choose a different time of day for your workout. I'll be there year round and you're making my January annoying!
