Look Alikes?

Today we snapped a shot of Nathan that reminded me so strongly of a picture we have of Penelope from the hospital, that I am compelled to post them both and see what others think:

Here is Nate at less than 2 days old:

And here is Penelope at less than 4 days old:

Welcome Nathan David Champa

As our loyal blog followers no doubt already know, Baby Boy Champa has arrived. Late Saturday evening / early Sunday morning we welcomed Nathan David into the world. He weighed in at 7 lbs and 8 ozs and measured 20 inches. This means that his big sister has him beat in the newborn stats departments. Having tied him on height and head size (35 cm), weight was the tie breaker and she beat him out on that one by 6 ozs! Below is one of the first pictures we have of him:

time out!

So one of the "parenting" techniques we are trying to use is the classic "time out" routine. Today Penelope showed me just how much she understands about the technique by putting her Cookie Monster stuffed animal in "time out." Apparently he had knocked over her blocks, and that is "time out behavior" in her book. Perhaps the best part was that she used her play cell phone to set the timer, just like her mom does. She pushed some buttons on the phone and let Cookie Monster know that he is done with time out at the "beep beeps"! She is pretty amazing!

Penelope's Approach to Her Baby Brother

As Penelope's "baby brother" is likely to be joining us any day now, I figured I better get a few things on record now. I am not going to say that Penelope actually understands what it means to have a baby brother on the way, frankly I am not sure her mom & dad do yet really either. But she knows where her baby brother is (mama's belly). She also sometimes says good night to her baby brother, or sings him songs to go to sleep. She also knows where his room is, and sometimes points to where he is going to be sleeping. All in all this seems like a promising start, let's keep our fingers crossed.

Transitions

Penelope seems to be a pretty resilient and/or "go with the flow" kind of girl so far (hope I am not jinxing things by saying this out loud). In early January she dealt with a lot of change. In the same three-day window, we moved her to a new bedroom, with a new bed (still a crib), and she also started a new classroom at daycare. That's right, Penelope is officially a Panda (that's what they call the 2's room). She is taking everything in stride, while her mom & dad seem to be slightly amazed at the differences in this new class room. For example, the Pandas have "show & tell" every Friday (apparently it helps the kids develop their verbal skills, as they stand up to talk to their classmates about their object). The also have jobs. One day you may be the "napkin passer" and the next you could be the "bell ringer" (truth be told, I don't even know what the bell ringer job entails, but Penelope had that as her job her first day in the classroom, and apparently she handled it just fine). There are other differences too, most of which are slipping my mind right now; but in general I will say that it is exciting and kind of amazing to see how far she is coming how fast.

Penelope's Latest Tricks

I feel like it has been awhile since I have documented some of Penelope's newest tricks. I am sure I will forget some, but I will do my best. Let's see, she can sing a number of songs. The newest are "If You're Happy & You Know It," "Five Little Monkeys," and "Five Little Ducks"

She also likes to help put away groceries, play cook in her play kitchen, do puzzles, play with Mrs. Potato head, and use big sentences that involve about five words. She can also maneuver her way in to and out of her car seat, except of course for the whole buckling thing, which I think we can all acknowledge is for the best. But her most frequent request is for someone to build a wall of blocks "around the Penelope." Since she usually doesn't do the work herself, but instead suckers others into doing it for her, I guess I would categorize this as one of her burgeoning management skills.

A very new development is that she will sometimes read to others. For example, she knows some of the words to "Madeline" - she knows it starts "In an old house in Paris, that is covered in vines..." and she knows that in two straight lines the girls "brushed their teeth and went to bed;" and of course she knows what Madeline says to the tiger in the zoo (for those of you not in the know, the answer is "pooh, pooh").

Overall, she amazes us pretty much every day with some new trick. It is hard to remember what life was like before she could communicate with us so well. Lucky for us, her baby brother, who should be joining us very soon, will be a jolting reminder.

Car Show

Attending the DC Auto Show is basically a family tradition for us. We have probably been for the last 5 years in a row, maybe more. That means Penelope has been when she was less than two months old, when she was just over one, and this year when she was just over two. Each year she gets something different out of it, (I am pretty sure the only thing she got out of it the first year was the chance to get out of the house, where she had been otherwise confined with her mom & dad since birth). This year she got to sit in the cars with her dad and press some buttons (or as she calls them "butts"). She also got a free toy car from the kind folks at Scion who chased after us to give it to her. Below are some shots of her dad explaining to her the magic of this event: