Happy Kids, Tea Parties, and Monkey's Mommy

A few fun photos from today.

Abigail received this beautiful sweater from one of my mother's friends. I think she'll wear it for the next 2 months straight in celebration of Valentine's Day!

Abigail is all smiles these days. I love how she wakes up in the morning, coo'ing and laughing while she waits for me, then breaking out into huge smiles when I peek over the top of her crib. It's so much more fun to be greeted with smiles and laughter than with tears! She's become quite ticklish and absolutely loves to have someone talk to her and smile with her. She's also become quite comfortable sitting in her bumbo chair and playing with toys. She loves pulling on, wrapping her fingers around, and gumming the little pink elephant and moose toys she got for Christmas.

Jonathan's been feeling pretty yucky the past few days, complaining of "Mommy, I feel tired" a few times an hour. Poor little guy has a double ear infection, but 24 hours into his antibiotic course he's feeling much better.

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Tonight Abigail joined us at the dinner table. It's one of the 4 month old rights of passage (see last photo on blog Jan 2008). We let the little guys sit up at the dinner table with us and play with toys once they're big enough to sit, before they start cereal in a few months... at which point things get pretty messy.

(I have to confess to some pretty low tactics to get this photo. Jonathan refused to look at the camera until I declared, "Whoah, Mommy's got a boogie in her nose!" at which point he turned around to see the amazing boogie, and despite the cup in the face, I snapped the shot before he lost interest again).

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This last pic, from last week, cracks me up. It's going to be SO hard not to put this in his high school graduation slide show. Jonathan has highjacked the tea set Abigail received for Christmas. He's enjoying pouring "water" in the cups and having "cake" with a variety of company, from his animals to his friend, Nathaniel. This is the little party he set-up with his animals last week. He did a very good job of saying please and thank you and enjoyed the new word "pass," enthusiastically passing the cake around his buddies. "Mommy, I'm going to pass the chocolate cake to Monkey! He's going to take a little bite, not a big bite, a little bite."

Jonathan also continues to be very conscious of the family unit. In this party, Monkey was joined by his sister, Baby Seahorse (pictured with the pink head, between Monkey and "Monkey's Mommy"). Puppy Dog (small green dog) was also invited to the party. I was informed, however, that "Puppy Doggie is a baby. He's too little to eat cake. He can sit with Monkey's Mommy."

You might recall that these two were once known as Max and Mimi. [Correction, two blue monkeys in our house were once known as Max and Mimi.] Around the time Baby Abby arrived in our lives and the "family" became a topic of considerable importance, Max morphed into Monkey, and the other monkey became Monkey's Mommy. Just as the case with Max and Mimi, it wasn't clear which monkey was which, as they were both identically ragged and loved. I was sure Jonathan randomly assigned each monkey whatever role came to mind.

But Christmas travel brought a tragedy in the Hong House. On December 23, 2010 in the Houston International Airport, Monkey (or Monkey's Mommy? -- well, some monkey or another) accompanying Jonathan on his trip to Minnesota became a casualty of holiday travel. He made it through security, got a paw stuck in the stroller, was extracted without sacrificing the limb, and accompanied Jonathan to the terminal. Starving family, crying hungry baby, little time... Jonathan, Monkey, and David made a run to the pizza place. Only Jonathan and David made it back. Mommy ran, literally ran, up and down the terminals looking for Monkey, frantically asking fellow passengers and airport workers, "Have you seen a little blue monkey around here!?!?" The weird expressions I received reminded me to specify, "sorry, a stuffed monkey. I'm looking for a child's blue monkey stuffed animal." Alas, no blue monkeys, stuffed or otherwise, were to be found in terminal E. I ran back to the gate to find the plane well into boarding process, and numerous nearby mommies eyed us with sympathy as they over"heard" me mouth to David over Jonathan's head "NO MONKEY"

I didn't say anything at first, as Jonathan didn't recognize Monkey's absence. Thank Goodness he handled it amazingly well when he did.

As we disembarked, "Mommy! We need to get Monkey!"

"I'm sorry Jonathan, Monkey went back home. Minnesota is too cold. He's waiting for us at home." It was relatively well received, and we agreed to tell Monkey all about the trip when we got home.

Thankfully, I did in fact have both the original second monkey (now as much a staple as the first,thanks to Jonathan's grandparents) as well as a third monkey stuffed in the closet, recently ordered from Amazon for just such an emergency.

So on arrival home, I brought out new monkey, stuck him in the wash to smell like our home, and brought him out to Jonathan. "Look! Monkey's here!"

"Mommy, Monkey took a bath! Mommy washed him, and Daddy washed him, and Ms. Joy washed him!" I guess he figured it would take at least 3 baths to make Monkey so amazingly clean. And he was, in fact, much brighter and fluffier than the monkey that'd been left behind.

The funny part was how immediately the new, bright, fresh monkey became Monkey.

And the worn, less fluffy, slightly more tired and dirty appearing monkey became... Monkey's Mommy. Now, they're easy to tell apart. And he's quite consistent. The worn one... she's the Mommy. She's also the one lovingly holding Puppy Doggie, who is too small to drink tea and have cake, but joined the party in Monkey's Mommy's lap, just the same.