February

OOPS: 6/6/11 I just saw this in my posts today.  Looks like I wrote it at the beginning of March, but never published it.  It's old news now, but for the sake of journaling, here it is!

I can't believe February flew by so fast (well, looking back on it.  It seems like during the winter each day drags on so long... is it just me?).

I want to remember some of the things Gabe has said recently (he has really made large developments in his verbalization skills since Christmas):

"Mommy, where's my helicopter?" and "Mommy, look! A yellow helicopter up in the sky!" -But "helicopter" could be pronounced "fly-a-copter", "blue-a-copter" (one of his helicopter toys is in fact blue), or "hey-a-copter"

"This is MY bike" (bike pronounced "bikel" like bicycle shortened.)
"You so hungry, fweet-haht?" (sweetheart)

"This is fun game, Mommy!"

Gabe has quite an imagination and he likes to make his animal toys play and talk to one another.  One day this week, he took apart his train tracks and brought the pieces to me as "popcorn", "ice cream", "cake", "peanut butter sandwich" and "phone".  I frequently hear Gabe singing to himself too, and he makes up new words sometimes; for example he loves to sing "The Wheels on the Bus" and he will add things like "the dogs on the bus go woof woof woof", and sometimes mix the words up a little, so now "the babies on the bus go woof woof woof".  He loves to sing "I'm bringing home a baby bumblebee" and a bunch more from his mp3 player that he doesn't really know all the words for but tries to sing along anyway.

For a while it seemed like Gabriel was done with his stuffed monkey, but now he loves it again I guess, maybe because we brought home a big Curious George book which he loves to hear stories out of.  During those stories he has to go find his monkey and hold it while he listens, or he will have a little breakdown.  Same for any story about trains, teddy bears, etc.  If it reminds him of a toy of his, he must go find it. Heh.

From time to time Gabe gets curious about me nursing Luke.  We talk about why I am nursing Luke, and he understands that Luke is drinking milk, and that nursing will help Luke when he is hungry.  He usually comes over and points to Luke and says "Mommy nursing Luke" while I am feeding him.  A couple times Gabe has climbed up on my lap and said "Gabe nurse now?"  I had to laugh and I just said, "No, nursing is for babies to eat; you're a big boy and you drink from a cup and eat with a fork!"  He seemed pretty satisfied with that, and went back to playing. 

Luke is cruising around the furniture as of last week.  For a while he was just standing and playing at the train table, but now he walks all around it, and goes back and forth between the couch and table, sits down, pulls himself back up, etc.  He still will not crawl.  We occasionally try to have crawling practice in the hallway and I have tried all sorts of things as enticement to get him to crawl, with no luck.  He whines and cries until I let him pull himself up to a stand, and he will then walk to get what he wants, while I help him.  Sometimes he will roll until he can get to what he wants.

The tables have turned a little bit at naptime.  Gabe is now my good napper (this was the baby who would never nap for more than 30 minutes or so at a time) sleeping from 1.5- 3 hours almost every afternoon.  Luke was a great napper until the past month or two... now he often wakes up prematurely and is very cranky for the rest of the day, but he refuses to go back to sleep, even if I rock and rock and rock him, which I don't have time to do! (If I try, Gabriel usually takes advantage of the unsupervised time and destroys something in another room or gets into some sort of mischief.)  I am thinking about taking away the morning nap and just having him take one nap per day, but it seems so early to do that!  He is only 10 months old.  I need to figure something out, because the afternoon is no fun for any of us if naps are prematurely ended.

Luke is a smiley, happy kid.  He turned 10 months old last week, and I can't believe how much he has changed.  He is still very small in size, though.  He is in the 19th percentile for height, the 18th percentile for weight, and the 96th percentile for head circumference.  I'm guessing that is why people always tell me Luke is so big.