The first sentence...kind of

So tonight, the family was over at Nana's to send Grandpa Wayne off in style (he has accepted a job in Coppermine, NWT but will be back in Ottawa for visits every 8 weeks or so) and shortly after dinner, Leo may have dropped his first sentence. Well, it was only three words and there were no conjunctions or prepositions, but it was certainly subject-verb-object. "Mama open baby". Leo was carrying a set of Russian nested dolls with him and sure enough, he wanted Holly to break them up and play with them. Wow. It's been pretty wild this past month, seeing Leo pick up all of his new words. I have no idea how many he has now, but he's willing to try chaining 3-4 syllables together at this point. Which means he's willing to take stabs at longer words or more short words in a row. I'm not sure what holds a child back from doing this right from the get-go...is it being able to remember the sounds in order to repeat them back? Is it gaining the ability to wrap your tongue around that many different consecutive sounds? Both? In any case, we're clearly at a point where Leo understands most of the nouns and verbs we use and we're starting to get a lot of information from him. We're much more capable of figuring out what he wants throughout the day, which obviously helps everybody out.

In other news, Max is now entering his last two weeks of preschool!! I have no doubt that of all of the decisions we made over the past year, getting him that year in preschool was one of the best. It's been a great way to expand Max's socialization skills (and, frankly, provide me with some social opportunities :), give him more of a chance to trust authority figures other than Holly and me and structure his days and weeks nicely. We've just managed to secure a spot for Max in a daycare program for the coming year and its philosophy and class areas look like they will dovetail nicely with what Max has done this past year. Max was really excited when we went for our visit and didn't want to leave. It's nice that this time, unlike with the pre-preschool visit, Max didn't completely lose his nut and understood that we had to go. Max technically starts in July so we'll have plenty of time to ease him in and get him settled before school starts in September. I'll just have to keep an eye on when wading pools in the neighbourhood are open so that we can schedule lots of pool days!

Here are a couple of pictures:


Leo loves to run around and kick things. Sometimes, those things are even supposed to be kicked. Like soccer balls.

Holly fashioned this awesome helmet for Max out of foil. He had a great time with it until it started slicing his neck.