Raising Watsons

Santa brought RC cars and these two love them!

2.5 yr old visit
30lbs
37″ long
50% in weight
75% in height

Ben Watson makes tall kids.

Tucker Update – 4 years, 10 months old.

Tucker can count to 100.

He is an early riser.

He has been very concerned with the fact that there is a faster Passast than our car, which is last years model.

Favorite food is pesto pasta and shrimp.  Eats most anything and a lot of it.

Tucker’s part in the school Christmas play was King #3 as one of the only kids who could pronounce “Frankincense”.  He nailed it.

While explaining the health benefits of spinach to Aunt Lindsay, Tucker relayed “but spinach is only good for adults, not kids, so I don’t really see the value in it”.

Two months ago Tucker started taking piano lessons.  At practice tonight I noticed he’s memorized the keys and isn’t reading the notes on the paper but instead looking at his fingers.  In an attempt to get him to look at the paper, I ask him to sing the notes as he plays.  There was no change, he correctly sang the notes while looking at his fingers.  I quizzed him to be sure, Tucker has learned the white keys on the piano.

Both kids favorite movie is Frozen.

Emilia Update – 2 years, 6 months old.

Emilia can count to 10.

She likes to sleep in.

Emilia likes pink anything and rainbow socks.  Most days she wears boots.

She is capable of verbalizing her feelings, especially –  “I’m so mad!” and “no, I don’t want to use the potty.”

Emilia is good at figuring out how things operate.  Until last month when Tucker unlocked how to change activities, she had much better control of the remote.  And she enjoyed every minute of the panic that set in as she paused his shows.

Emilia can work the salt grinder and often does whether there is food below or not.

Favorite food is rice and meat, last week she ate curry.  Emilia is vocal about food appreciation “MMMmmm!”

Her teachers describe her as “very independent and a teeeensy bit stubborn.”

We are aware this is an understatement.

And this beauty from last years Christmas show:

We hope to make Historic Photo Day a new family tradition.  For the first one we went with two or our heros: Nikola Tesla and Amelia Earhart.  Emilia was very nearly spelled Amelia as she has always been an inspiration, but we went with the Spanish spelling which (if you didn’t know) turned out to be a family name.  My grandmother’s sister’s name is Emilia.

Anyway, on with it.  We’ll start with the color photos and below are the sepia.  Enjoy, we sure did!

Emilia can be a little picky when it comes to breakfast. I think it’s the distinct lack of meat in the meal. She eats eggs, but gets a little tired of eating them every day.   All the sweet breakfast foods that Tucker loves (yogurt, waffles, oatmeal..)  she wants no part of.

When it comes to any type of meat she is all in.  In this video she eats chicharones for the first time (a Cuban pork skin snack) followed by pictures of her eating raw onion at the dinner table.  She may only be a quarter Cuban, but it’s a strong quarter.

Two big things happened at swim lessons today.

1. Emilia, who has been less than thrilled since starting her solo private lessons, squirmed out of my arms in an effort to get into the pool with her swim instructor.  This guy really is great.  She went from crying the entire 15 minutes to jumping in the pool to him in less than a month.  While he is a great instructor, it doesn’t hurt that Emilia has no fear of the water.

2. Tucker made up his mind that he would swim across the pool today.  It’s only a very recent development that he’s been able to flip to his back without assistance, but today he felt confident and went for it.

In the car the other day, Tucker explains that he had a pretty rough day at school. One of the other boys wanted to be line leader and so did Tucker. He explains that the other boy punched him in the stomach.

“but I did NOT punch him back, Mom. I used my words and walked away. ”

Tucker, I have a conference with Ms Michelle next week. Is she going to tell me how used your words and walked away?

“Mom… I punched him in the stomach. ”

Labor Day weekend 2014, the kids have Friday off so we went to Pretend City in Irvine.

The best part was Tucker driving a police car while I pulled Emilia in a wagon. We went to every “work place” and filled out a time card, which we then turned in for “money”.

Emilia loves the stage. They both took turns with the guitar. I found Tucker to be reminiscent of Frampton Comes Alive while Emilia was more Hendrix @ Monterey.

Saturday we went to a movie followed by Korean BBQ. If nothing else, our children will be well versed in different types of foods.

Sometimes I feel pretty guilty for not updating this site more.  But then I remember that I have two, very young children and well, #life. But I wanted to take a second and document a little bit about Emilia at age 2.

First and foremost, she’s a cuddler.  She can often be seen walking around with two or three blankets crushed against her face.  One of her favorite things to do is walk around the house with the blanket over her head. In this cuddle huddle, she might also have a dolly, a pony or anything else remotely fuzzy.  Sometimes she will look you in the eye and repeatedly wrap her little arms around your neck and just hug, hug, hug.  She’s also started saying “i love you” at what feels like an early age (to us, anyway).

But on the other side of that, boy does this child have a temper.  She is aggressive.  It’s hard for me to tell if Tucker wasn’t as aggressive because he stopped when we asked him or if it’s because he didn’t have someone to beat on.  Emilia abuses her big brother.  Granted, it doesn’t often hurt him so he doesn’t stop her.  Which makes it all the harder to curb the behavior.  Also, she’s kinda sneaky about it.

If there’s anything else I want to mention about my daughter, it’s that she is fearless.  They say the first child is pretty cautious, and that may be true, because we never saw this type of behavior with Tucker.  At 18 months Emilia would happily flip off couches, jump off anything and climb questionable structures.  I believe she’s happiest when inverted.  But perhaps that’s my speculation.  Either way, this kid is going in gymnastics pretty soon.

Other quick facts: LOVES SALT, Toy Story, cranky when waking, fan of: bacon, cars, sleep and anything to do with the animals. Especially petting, feeding and cuddling.

Tucker Watson is 4 1/2 and lately, he’s been dropping some big words. “Actually” has been a favorite for a while now but recently he told me that an episode of Wild Kratts was “really interesting”. Also, last week when he met the Math teacher at my school, Dean Schonfeld, he told him that “he’s been in the shark room for a while, technically”. Getting that “technically” out of his mouth was no small feat, so I high fived him on the spot.

That’s my boy!