David’s First Birthday

Well, yesterday was a big milestone for our little man: he’s zero no more! After an entire year of figuring out where he fits in this world, he’s now a little crawling machine, slowly vanquishing both his natural separation anxiety and the constant machinations of his own private Goleahth.

The day was actually a pretty normal one: Daddy went to work during the day while Mommy took care of the kids. However, the incredible shrinking Mommy did have her first aquaerobics class at 7:00 p.m., so the birthday boy and his big sister got to spend some special time with Daddy during her workout.

The party’s on Saturday, and Grandma and Pop (and maybe Aunt Jaci!) will be driving out from New Jersey to participate. Stay tuned!

Big Talkers

Man, it’s been ages since I posted anything to the blog! I was really backed up at work for a while—several clients (and even project managers!) vying for my time, thus giving me a lot of much-needed overtime—and then of course we had the holidays. It’s been crazy, but I’m trying to get back on the horse, so to speak.

The title of this entry actually applies to both of my beautiful children, who have each been improving their conversation skills in leaps and bounds! Leah, for example, has begun speaking in complete sentences—e.g. “Is Mommy coming?” instead of “Mommy come?”—and has mastered the concept of maybe, e.g. Daddy responds to her request for an apple with, “We don’t have any apples, Sweetie,” and Leah responds, “Maybe an orange?” She’s also begun saying stuff like “Great idea, Daddy!” She’s such a sweetie!

David, for his part, is mostly working with single words, but he’s quite the little repeater, too. He knows Mama, Dada, Amen, baba (bottle), wawa (water, which he first said immediately after taking the Sacrament, yesterday), mo! (more), and this morning I swear he said “Dowstay!” as we were about to go downstairs. (Granted, we’d been talking about going downstairs, so it could have just been repetition, but still…!)

Anyway, the kids are just getting cuter and cuter, these days, so I’ll hopefully be making the time to blog, more often. I really want to have a record of this for us, if nothing else. (Not that you, dear reader, are chopped liver.) ☺

Happy Hallowe’en!

Last night, of course, was David’s first Hallowe’en. Mawmaw found him this cute little Spider-Man costume at Goodwill and fell in love with it, while Leah’s Little Red Riding Hood is a hand-me down from her cousin Norah. Both of them looked great, though.

We started off by taking them up and down the block, visiting maybe six or seven houses in one direction and two or three in the other. Of course, since many of the other parents were doing the same thing, quite a few houses were empty. (One kid even told us to come back later, that his parents weren’t giving out candy yet!) The reason for this brevity was simple, though: our Church had a tri-ward “trunk-or-treat” for the kids and scheduled it right on Hallowe’en night (unlike most ward we’ve been in, which schedule it on, say, the Friday before Hallowe’en so that kids can still trick-or-treat on Hallowe’en itself—a practice we greatly prefer, since it gives us a chance to meet more of our neighbors).

Great-Mawmaw and Great-Pawpaw

Mommy’s Mawmaw doesn’t get to leave home, very much. For the last forty–some-odd years, she’s been taking care of her home and Mommy’s mentally disabled uncle, Anthony. Because he can’t really go anywhere, she doesn’t get to leave the property more than about once or twice a year. Sure, she’s got 26 descendants and their spouses in Indiana, but Anthony’s needs understandably trump all, so it’s a rare event for her and the kids’ Great-Pawpaw to come for a visit. To give you an idea, the last time they came, Mommy and Daddy had no kids and were living in a two-bedroom basement apartment, so that’s why it’s such a big deal that they came for a visit, this past weekend. (Until then, they’d never even met six of their great-grandkids, and they still haven’t met the kids’ uncle Ashante, who had a conflict and was out of town for the weekend.)

Since Leah and David’s house is the biggest in the area, it served as home base for the festivities. This, of course, helped Mommy and Daddy to get their butts in gear and get things a lot more in shape. We had a wonderful family dinner on Saturday night, then everybody came back for breakfast, Sunday morning. Great-Mawmaw and Great-Pawpaw had to leave, after breakfast—Mommy’s Great Aunt Fannie was watching Anthony, and they’re not comfortable leaving him for much longer than 24 hours—but the chance to have them visit was an opportunity that was too good to miss. ☺

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Shape Recognition

This entry is a really big deal, to Daddy. You may remember, a year or so ago, that Leah’s favorite computer game was a little piece of freeware called “Baby Banger”: the child hits any key and it pops up a shape and, optionally, announces the shape’s name and color. Well, now that we’re pretty much settled into the new house (that big box in front of her notwithstanding), Dory’s been hooked back up and Leah’s having a blast with her favorite game, again… only this time, it’s different.

First of all, Leah’s gotten really good at pressing only one key at a time, an action which keeps the computer from saying, as I previously blogged, “ ‘blu-gree-or-or-pur-yellow squa–-cy-re-magen-brown rectangle,’ as each shape interrupts the previous.”

Secondly, when Dory announces the color and shape, Leah almost always repeats it in that beautiful little voice of hers.

Finally, though—and this is most important part—she remembers! I can’t tell you how many times Daddy’s been working at the computer when Leah turns around in her seat, pointing frantically at the screen, saying, “Daddy! Daddy! Tringle, Daddy! Tringle!” (So she doesn’t quite pronounce it right. She knows what it is!)

It’s amazing how incredibly proud of her I am. ☺

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First Tooth!

Well, it looks like David managed to one-up Leah on something: at only six months, four weeks, his first tooth has poked through! (Leah, for the record, took one day shy of eight months to accomplish the same feat.) I’m guessing it’ll be a little while before his little chomper will be visible in photos, but rest assured, the fitful nights have finally produced some fruit. Congratulations, Double-D!

Potty Girl

For several weeks now, Leah has been informing us that she needs to go to the potty. Of course, when we’d finally get to the potty, she wouldn’t do anything but sit there, but at least she was trying.

Well, today was the big day. Right after lunch, Leah informed Daddy that she needed to pee. We went into the bathroom, removed her surprisingly still-clean diaper, and allowed her to sit down. Within a few minutes, she had not only peed but even pooped in the potty, just like the big girl she is! She was soooo proud of herself, and needless to say, we are, too!

(Now we just need to get some AAA batteries so the potty can play a recorded message when she “flushes” it!)

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