About the Kids

When I was pregnant with G I envisioned a brown haired, brown eyed boy that would love baseball and legos and camping and fishing.  Too soon to say for certain, but pretty sure I got that right.

When I was pregnant with D I envisioned yet another brown haired, brown eyed boy.  Though I secretly harbored hopes of blue eyes.  What parent doesn't want a baby that mirrors their own looks?  So when he came out with the old man hair cut - but with baby fine blond hair! - it was a fun surprise.  And when his eyes stayed blue ... well that was fun.

When I was pregnant with J I envisioned another blond haired baby.  I mean both boys had had blond hair.  How far off could I be?






So when the doctor says "mom you're going to be shocked by this hair" in my labor haze I don't really remember thinking anything.  And at that point a full head of dark hair really wasn't so surprising.  Though I did put the cinderella doll I bought carefully to the side and replaced her with the much more fitting Snow White.




But I still thought with a lot of certainty that J would have her daddy's brown eyes.



That has not panned out.  Which goes to show that the word "certainty" and parenting just don't go together.  Like at all.  In any regard.  On any topic.  Ever.  I can say that with certainty.

And while J's hair is getting lighter (she has this ombre thing going on, the dark baby hair at the tips, the more dusty brown roots) I really wouldn't call her a toe head.  If anything she's dirty blond.  Which is what we called my sister for the whole of her life.

All this to say ... when we had G and were abstract thinking about babies and analyzing how my genes and his genes would combine ... I felt like we'd have brown eyed, brown haired children.

But what we really have is three folks with blue eyes (me, J and D) and two with brown (Lew and G).  And if you created the gene square like we all did in school, I don't think that would be surprising at all.  Because while we do have brown eye genes, which is dominate, there are more folks with the recessive genes hanging in the gene pool (both my parents, Lew's dad - and the two granddad's had blond hair).

The whole thing is fascinating.  It's early to say who everyone is going to look like, but I do feel G favors his dad and D is a work in progress.  I see lots of both granddads.

G is just growing into a boy.  We now shop in the boy section of the store.  No more toddler.  I look at his baby picture and it seems so removed from who he is now.  The kid who gets him and his brother up in the morning, plays downstairs quietly for a bit before waking up his mom and dad.  I have been working on this routine for a while.  They are finally cooperating.  They get themselves dressed - both in underwear as I can pretty much call D mostly potty trained - and downstairs and they can get drinks.  We haven't graduated to food yet.  But I'm going to start that soon.  They can pour themselves cereal.  I just have to put it on a lower shelf.  I may get the bags and put a scoop in there, like with dog food.  Haha.

So Legos.

The #1 played with toy in my house is the lego table.  The train and the cars are second.  But everyday.  For a good two hours a day, the boys build legos.  Police stations.  Jails.  Jail cars.  Jail boats.  Jail houses.  Jail towers.  G is obsessed with locking people up.  He builds things in the morning and then comes home from school and builds more on it.

Occasionally this causes issues.  Because for eight hours a day D is home and sometimes (lots of times) he breaks things.  And G comes home and has a hunger, fatigue induced meltdown that his creation was destroyed.

But the mantra round here is - legos are fragile.  You just rebuild.

But this christmas break I was tired of the infighting.  One too many times I heard - mom! He broke --- whatever he had built.  So I got out the duplo drawers (which are in the table too by the way, but the 3yo only has eyes for what his idol is doing) and I built a duplo jail.  A duplo train.  A duplo castle (sister got legos for christmas).  And soon the 5yo is trying to take the duplo stuff.

But the duplo blocks are just better for D at this age.  He does just kind of okay with the smaller ones.  They are great for his fine motor development and I encourage the small ones.  But he does drop them and break them.  And drives the 5yo crazy.

 So I built these - because the real lego lover in this house is me - and I return and G is laughing and talking about how he's going to burn all the princesses down.

She loves the legos.  It's interesting to see which toys she likes.  The dolls are okay and she smiles at them but what engages her are the blocks (wooden or lego) and the boys cars.  She takes the lego blocks out of this bucket and puts them back in.  She waves her arms around in the box and makes satisfying sounds.  She chews on them.

Legos are the best toy.  And the toys I encourage are the building / imaginative play toys.  Which I'm sure is what we all do.  I need lego stock.  Because I love them all.  In my head I'm going to get a book case in the playroom and set up the favored sets that we don't want to take apart and display them there.