Our growing boys

One of the neat things about being at home with the boys is that I get to see most of the "firsts" that I would have otherwise missed. I was there for Leo's first steps, his first signing of the word "more" and his first successful identification of a giraffe. Hopefully, I'll be on hand for his first use of the word "dad". Taking a cue from an earlier post on Max's milestone hits and misses around the one year mark, here are some of the things that Leo is doing now that he was not doing while we were in BC:

*pointing
*understanding words (ball, giraffe, kisses, goodbye, hello, dance, throw, Max, downstairs, telephone, share?)
*enjoying books
*crawling down stairs
*making noises accompanying the right activities (vrooms when playing with cars, devouring sounds when eating something)
*biting, then stopping biting
*walking (now can carry things and throw things while walking)
*kicking objects
*climbing out of seats (highchair, stroller)
*using a fork well
*stacking things
*helps getting himself dressed; especially tops
*crawling on top of Max to play with him (yeah, Max likes this just about as much as splash pads).

I put a question mark on understanding "share" because I can't quite confirm or deny at this point in time. The other night, at Costco, I handed Leo his favourite juice container and he was about to sip from it when I said "here you go, but it's not all for you, you'll have to share with your brother". At which point he handed it over to Max before sipping. So it's possible that brother is the word he understood. Either way, we have no experience with learning those words as Max didn't learn them until after Leo came along.









Max's development has been more verbal than physical. I've started working on letter sounds with Max so he's starting to figure out the starting letters for words by hearing them. I feel like he'd be starting in on reading, but that the focus of alphabet books seems mostly to be on capital letters...which doesn't help so much when the average sentence book has such a small number of upper-case letters. So we'll have to relearn the alphabet a bit through lower-case letters. Max is starting to use bigger words and expressions, which blows my mind. We have started jotting down some of the awesome things he comes out with in a journal. A couple of our faves to date are:

(ME): Do you want to eat at the dining room table or the coffee table?
(MAX): The coffee table. There's all sorts of tables in this house!

(MAX): What's that dripping down your eyes?
(MOM): What do you think it is?
(MAX): Spit.

(ME): That's the War Museum.
(MAX): Where's the cold one?

(ME): Can you tell me why you were so upset this morning?
(MAX): It was hard.
(ME): What was hard? I need you to be specific in order to me to help make you happier next time.
(MAX): Some things in my life.

I've also noticed that Max is starting to pay attention to the words spoken in conversations and songs (that's a big "Uh-oh!" for my music library). So out of nowhere, Max will say something like "Why did he say surgeon?" or "He said neck and shoulders!". Just a total reminder that you NEVER KNOW when Max is really, really paying attention.

We've also been recently getting into a colouring activity book to get Max into drawing and colouring a bit more. He can now draw circles (well, closed loops) around objects and can kind of put an X on things. He's getting better at filling things in, but still holds his crayons at the top, which doesn't provide much stability. We're working on it.










p.s. Feel free to add a caption to your favourite photo in the comments!

Max Stardom, Dietician in Training

A few weeks ago, Max and I went on a grocery shopping trip. As we were walking the aisles, we had this conversation:

Me: (walking by a massive display of sale-price Oreos) Oh MAN.
Max: Mama, why you say “Oh MAN”?
Me: Because I really want to buy those Oreos.
Max: That’s sugary junk.

I kid you not. He didn’t even blink or pause before hitting me with that one. Awesome. We have Robert Munsch and this story to thank for that gem. The book is one of Max’s favourites and in it, the father chides his daughter for picking out “sugary junk” while grocery shopping. After reading that book umpteen times to Max, I guess it was my turn to get chided! I do love that he was able to make the connection with the treats in the book and the towering cookie display in real life.

I also like to think that we must be doing something right in teaching Max about healthy eating. This is the lunch that Max helped John make today:


He also enjoys sautéed kale on his pizza:


Now if we can just get him to sit and eat some dinner a few days in a row . . .

The rest of June

I'm tired from all of that typing and I am sure that you are probably more interested in recent happenings, so I'm going to cover the back end of June in a single photo- and video-heavy post. But before I get started, let me say how awesome it is to spend an extended period of time all together as a family. It means either one person has the complete freedom to go out and do whatever or it means the load is shared - both are pretty awesome. Now that I've been both the person going off to work and the one staying at home, I can truly say that the best days are those when we're all home at the same time. The last time I was at home with Max, we had 6 weeks to share; this time it was only 4. But I think we made the most of it.

Enjoy.

The end of June presented me with the opportunity to introduce myself to Max's various playgroups and see what was available out there. There was of course the classic Children's Village Playgroup, where Max spent many days during his time in daycare. Here is a picture of Max and Leo with a couple of Max's old daycare mates at the CV:


I also got to squeeze in a couple of visits to the Parent and Family Literacy Centre at Hilson Avenue Elementary School in our old neighbourhood, where I ran into our friend James and his twins both times. Max really liked the dressup clothes (Holly has since been scouring thrift stores around town to stock Max's very own dress-up bin):



One of the highlights of the month was our trip to the brand new Calypso water park with the Screids. We thought it would be smart to squeeze in a trip just before school let out, thinking that summertime would be much busier with kids on the loose. We never factored in that every school sends their kids on field trips in the last couple days of class...oops. It was a gorgeous day, despite the line-ups for the adult slides. Oh well, the kids had fun in the toddler area and the grown-ups took turns floating in the lazy river. An awesome day.







In case you're looking for a better angle on Leo's face after he passed out in the snack tray of his stroller, here it is.


Another big highlight for June was our first family outing to go strawberry picking. It was a hot one out there and I had to leave Leo on the periphery (given that he was strapped in his stroller), but Max got right in there. He was very good at identifying the ripe berries and in removing them from the bushes without smooshing them. In the barn where you pay for your berries, Max entered a colouring contest...although we never heard back from them so I guess he didn't win :(






After picking berries, we went out for lunch at a diner in Almonte. Max ordered spaghetti and sauce. He asked for a kid's portion, but what he got was certainly bigger than expected:


In the meantime, Leo launched into this silliness:


Seriously, we have no idea what brought this on. It cropped up a couple of times in the weeks after this but then he never did it again.

June was the month when Leo really started getting the most out of sippy cups. Plus: we could always be sure he was well hydrated, despite his general dislike of bottles. Minus: well, look at these pictures.



In the "miscellaneous" category, we have the following pictures:


Leo's first participatory visit to a sushi restaurant. I think that's an avocado roll.


Leo started to show a lot of interest in books. His favourite part is turning the pages VERY AGGRESSIVELY.


Before the blazing heat of July, there were a couple of crazy storms at the end of June. Here are Max and Mommy splashing around in the gutter.


So, June pretty much rocked.

I'm calling it

It's been a while since we've really kept you all in the loop regarding the kids' development since the trip. I promise our next post will cover some of that. However, for now I want to keep this one short and to-the-point.

Leo is walking.

It feels like it's been a couple of months of us saying "for sure in the next couple of weeks - he stands so well!" - that or some variation on the theme. Well, for a couple of weeks, we officially have a pair of toddlers on our hands (Max will be a preschooler in September). Holly and I have given each other a lot of sad looks this week - no babies in the household! Our Leo is growing up! Crazy. Anyway, I suppose the next big milestone for him will be speaking, but that's not far off either.

Anyway, here's a video to give you a look. Yes, I interrupted telling Max a story to take this.