Lex made a huge mess at dinner tonight
(dumped yogurt all over himself) so we had to strip him down.
He had a blast being nearly naked for a few minutes. He’s
saying “babalooo” when he’s patting his belly and
running.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rWPOh4U00lc]
PS. I think I like YouTube! Hopefully it’s
working for all (or at least most) of you
:)
I’ve had requests for more belly pictures,
so I gave it a shot tonight. Alan isn’t home at the moment, so
these are self-portraits. Hope you like. As usual, the belly
feels much bigger than it looks in pictures!
Lex likes to sit on a little train bookshelf
that Aunt Betty made for him and read stories. Here is a
picture and a short movie from tonight. I have to figure out
how to adjust my camera settings though, because the movies are
all in the highest quality and usually too big to upload. I
have a better one of him reading a whole book (just a minute
long), but it’s too big to post :/ Time to learn something new
about my camera. :)
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZGUqQw5vvg]
Lex got his first real haircut today. I cut
Alan’s, and then we put Lex on his lap and cut his hair too. I
wasn’t sure how he would react, but he was great. He seemed
mildly annoyed that I kept poking him in the head with
scissors, but otherwise he was content reading his books and
pretty oblivious to me. Do you like? Can you even tell from the
photo? He wore his 2T clothes today and looked like such a big
kid. He seems to have hit another speech burst too, so all day
I kept getting struck by how much of a kid he was. Weird, but
cool.
Tonight we had friends over for dinner and they
brought their two boys. We have been home all week and Lex was
thrilled to see other kids, particularly big kids (his
favorite). They played so well together. Lex has started giving
great hugs and he was hugging the boys all night. They were
cute and hugging him back. Tallis, the four year old, even gave
him a big hug on their way out. Then Lex stood by the door
waving and saying “Bye bye Tallis and Luca” over and over. Sooo
cute.
Another “then and now” for you. It’s interesting
how kids develop interest in characters. Lex has only seen Elmo
on TV once or twice, but he loves his Elmo dolls and even
sleeps with the big one. One morning I was trying to go down
stairs and he came out of his room holding both Elmos. I
carried them all downstairs and at the bottom Lex put the toys
down and said “Big Elmo. Little Elmo. How many Elmos? One. Two.
Two Elmos. That’s a lot of Elmos.” He cracks me up.
Lex is 3 months old in the top picture (Aug 05)
and 20 months in the bottom (Feb 07)
Another sweater for baby. I’m no Martha Stewart,
but it’s not too shabby. I actually started it for Lex but only
got about half way done before he was born. Then I stopped
knitting for quite some time :) So I figured I’d finish it for
the next little one.
Since I have the
sewing machine out for its quad-annual (what’s the word for
every 4 years??) usage, I’m going all out and cleaning up my
sewing pile. It’s more of a mental pile really, since there is
stuff all over the house that I keep meaning to fix “next time
I have the sewing machine out.” Soo… I guess it’s now or
2011!
On a Lex note, I went shopping with the family
this past weekend and bought (well, Mema bought…thanks!!)
some 2T (24mo) jeans for Lex and some Play-Doh. Turns out he’s
not really ready for either! His blue jeans are starting to get
too short on him so I thought it was time for 2T, but the new
ones are huge! I checked the tag on his too-short pants and
they are 12mo. No wonder he’s outgrowing them! So he’s now
wearing the 2T and I’ve become one of those “he’ll grow into
them” moms :) I got out the Play-Doh yesterday and he had more
fun stacking the cups than actually playing with the Play-Doh.
I was showing him how to roll it and squish it and he kept
trying to put it in his mouth. He does it very subtly :) After
a few times telling him not to I said “Ok, go ahead and try it,
but it tastes yucky.” He tried it, thought for a minute, tried
some more, then broke off an even bigger piece and stuck it in
his mouth. Hehehe… guess he likes it. I had to stop him at
that point. I also got a laugh that the container says
“Notice to Parents: Contains
Wheat.” I guess enough kids eat it
that they felt the need to post allergen alerts :) I got the
Play-Doh out again today and he got some mild enjoyment out of
squashing it in his hand, but still preferred to stack the
cups.
Lastly, here is a little video for
you of Lex saying the alphabet. He’s pretty silly and drooly,
but you can hear most of the letters.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8dyJb2x5L5U]
Boy,
does anyone actually read these long rambling posts of mine??
If so, wow! ;)
It’s gorgeous today… sunny and high
30’s. Lex and I went outside to get the mail and stayed out for
about 15 minutes while he “shoveled” our driveway. It was nice.
We are all sick in our house though :( Lex seems to be on the
recovering end, Alan in the middle, and I’m just getting sick.
Fun, fun.
I had my 35 week checkup
yesterday. Baby is doing fine and no longer measuring big
(yay!). We saw a new midwife (new to the hospital anyway) and
she was really nice. She let Lex climb up on a stool and hold
the doppler to listen to the baby’s heartbeat. He had huge eyes
and was pretty happy to be helping. Then we ran some errands
and had a play date — our first with a girl. She’s a pretty
tough girl though, and not a bit shy, and they had fun. Lex
even gave her a hug in the kitchen which ended up being a
take-down into the cabinets. She stood up, gave him a funny
look, and walked away. It was great. When I told Alan the story
later he reassured Lex that things will eventually get easier
with the ladies :)
I asked Lex this
morning if he wanted to go to a playgroup today or just stay
home and play. He said “play at home. go to playgroup another
day.” Can’t argue with that. I figured after the long,
family-filled weekend and a busy day yesterday, we’d both be
better off laying low today (and maybe tomorrow…)
That’s all for today. He’s napping (2nd day in
a row that he fell asleep within five minutes!) and I really
need to get a few things done.
Sometimes I see
neat “now and then” photos that I feel like sharing. Today, as
I’m learning to use Picasa, these two caught my eye so I
figured I’d test Picasa’s “BlogThis!” feature. Let’s see how it
looks…
Looked mostly ok, but I’m a bit meticulous at
times so I did some additional tweaking :) Also, PS, the first
photo is from the hospital when Lex was one day old and the
second is from a trip to Franklin when he was almost one year
old.
Ok, I remembered the other one. Can you
tell it’s a snow day and I have nowhere to go?
Letters
Along the lines of the alphabet, Lex has started pointing
out letters wherever we go. We pulled into the grocery store
parking lot yesterday, which is in a strip with a Borders
bookstore, and when I opened his door to get him out I hear him
saying “there’s an ‘o’, there’s a ‘r’, there’s a ‘d’, etc. I
presume he pointed out the “b” before I opened the door. He
also likes to sit at the table with me in the morning and
“read” the newspaper. He tends to prefer the advertising fliers
:) He’ll point out different letters (“s” in “sale” is common),
count the people, and point out different articles of clothing.
Today he got very excited about a baby in a blue hat. “There’s
a baby. Baby has blue hat. There’s hat.” Very excited. We were
in a waiting room the other day (for far too long, but that’s a
whole other story) and he kept bringing me magazines (Time,
Newsweek, Car & Driver, etc.) and he’d crawl up on my lap
and flip the pages. I’d say “can you find a ‘K’?” and he’d look
and look until he found it. Sometimes he’ll even find big
letters and little letters (caps and lowercase).
Anyway, Alan reminded me that all kids like to
point out objects that they know the names of (Lex used to love
flags and clocks), but I think it’s extra cool that the objects
he’s fixated on now are letters :)
Ok,
time to do something useful while he naps. Hmmm… does
knitting count as useful???
Since this is a baby book too, there are a
few milestones that I think I failed to mention lately.
Alphabet
Shortly after Christmas, at about 19 months, Lex started
singing the alphabet song. I think a lot of credit is due to
his LeapFrog Fridge Phonics toy. These
are great magnets (I got him the whole uppercase and lowercase
alphabet) with a reader. You place a letter in the reader and
it sings tells you the name of the letter, what sounds the
letter makes, and then sings a little song. He loves it. It
also has a button that plays the whole alphabet song. At about
19 month he was walking around the house singing the alphabet.
I also make his teething biscuits in the shape of letters, so
when he gets a biscuit he’ll tell me the letter, often the
sound, then find the letter on the fridge and put it in the
player. So smart!
Books
For awhile now we’ve had a rule that Lex has to put his
books back on the shelf after he reads them. He’s pretty good
about it and it really helps keep the mess under control. He
was never able to put them back vertically, but he always makes
a pile on an empty shelf. Lately though, our bookshelf seems to
be getting smaller and smaller as the book collection grows…
this has made it more difficult for him to find a horizontal
surface to put the books away. I just noticed this week that he
has started putting the books back vertically. He’ll look for a
slot at one end of the shelf or the other, or somewhere in
between, and slide his books in. I think this is a great new
skill.
Eating
Lex gave up his highchair a few weeks ago in favor of a
booster seat at the big table. This was very convenient because
it happened right around the time I was babysitting Kaelen, who
needed the high chair. It was an unrelated event, but
conveniently timed. The table is a little messier because he
isn’t so contained, but it also has it’s benefits. Lex has
taken to eating what he wants and then, when he’s done, he’ll
push his plate and cup away and then push his chair away from
the table and ask to get down. Much, much nicer then his
previous method of trying to get his plate off the highchair
tray then crying because he can’t get the tray off of the high
chair to get himself down. So now he joins us at the table
every night to eat dinner. He still won’t eat what we’re eating
(usually), but he’ll sit with us and eat the things on his
plate that he likes. He’s such a kid now. It’s amazing.
Teeth
I think we’re on the down cycle of a teething burst. He
recently got all four of his eye teeth and spent mucho time
chewing on his hand and drooling like crazy. All that’s left
now is the 2yr molars. Then a few years off before they all
start falling out :)
Hmmm…. I thought
of another one last night (Lex had a fever, we were up *a lot*
late night), but I can’t remember it now. Oh well. I’ll try to
write it down when it comes to me.