Kid updates

I feel like I have been complaining about Ammon a lot lately. That is sad, because even though he is a handful, he is such a cute, sweet boy. He has my whole heart. Here are some cute things he does that make me melt even after he’s thrown avocados everywhere, ripped up his favorite book, thrown hundreds of wipes on the ground or smeared butter over the floor.

Whenever we say, “I love you!” to Ammon, he always grins and says, “Too!!!” (which means, “I love you, too!”).

He LOVES to sing and read, and the combination of the two makes him slightly crazy with joy. I make up little songs to go with some of the pictures in his books. If I even sing the song just one time, he always remembers that there’s a song associated with that picture, and he will fall apart until I remember and sing it again whenever we read the book.

He loves to dance and does the sweetest, happiest dances when he hears music.

He loves dogs, planes, and trucks. He can hear the garbage truck from far away and always runs to the window to watch it with excited anticipation. Tonight in the middle of crying in the bath, he heard a dog bark (I couldn’t even hear the dog over his crying, so I have no idea how he heard it), and immediately stopped crying, smiled, and said, “Dog!”. I listened and indeed there was a dog barking.

He adores being with Abe on his runs. As soon as we tell Ammon he gets to ride in the buddy bubble, he lights up and yells, “ducks!” because he hopes Abe will run to the duck pond.

He calls his basketball hoop a “shoop.” We think he got confused because you shoot hoops, therefore: “Shoop!”

That doesn’t begin to cover why we love Ammon, but we sure love him. His guileless, sweet, well-intentioned little heart makes mine beat faster.

As for the other kids, Clarissa is the most alert baby I can ever remember having. Abe says I said that Ammon had very wise eyes, which I don’t doubt even if I can’t remember that at all. But Clarissa is SO alert and aware of her surroundings…when she is awake (which, let’s be honest, is still not often). She has the biggest eyes and stares intently at people and patterns trying very obviously to understand.

Here is a picture of Clarissa trying to understand what just happened to her after Abe sang “The Grand Old Duke of York” to her and made her do the motions. A video is also below.

Lydia is also in love with Clarissa. She is just as sweet with her as she was with Ammon and always is asking to hold her. She beams whenever she looks at her and pronounces her “the cutest baby.” She is such a good big sister. Any disappointment she initially experienced at Clarissa’s gender has since completely vanished. She loves her baby sister.

Mary is also very sweet with Clarissa, although she seems to only ask to hold her when Lydia asks first. But she is very sweet and proud of Clarissa, and we are so happy that all of the children have taken so well to their littlest sibling.