Mother's day 2019

We had a nice quiet Mother's Day here. Lincoln was sick, sick, sick, so after church (Austin stayed home with Lincoln) we just lazed around and spent time together. I took some pictures with the kids, Levi gave me a card, Austin made the meals and also cleaned the kitchen, Cecil gave me a hug and said, "Happy Mother's Day!" and Lincoln gave me the best snuggles all day long (too bad it was because he's sick!).

We had some really nice family time on the couch. Levi has recently finished reading the first Harry Potter book (!!) and watched the movie, so he made a wand for himself and was casting spells on all of us. We took turns being petrified and levitated. Austin joined in and was pretty successful at sabotaging Levi's spells by either blocking them with his hands or saying words almost the same as the ones for the spell, but not quite. When Levi and Cecil working together were finally able to keep him from using his hands to block the spells at the same time Levi was able to say the petrification spell without being messed up, Austin fell down and the boys laughed with joy, and Lincoln even cracked a smile and let out a tiny laugh despite feeling so bad.

Cecil got out our baby doll and Austin had him hold it like a new baby. Cecil was very gentle and careful; it was so cute! Then he wrapped the baby in a blanket and carried it around for a while, placing it on the couch and re-wrapping it at intervals. At one point, he asked for a diaper, which I coached him on putting on the doll but he mostly did it himself. I told him that he was getting good practice in for one day when he's a daddy, and that seemed to make him feel extra special. 

I also mentioned that when the new baby is born, Cecil won't be big enough to change his diaper, but Levi probably could! Levi seemed pretty taken with that idea and wanted to get some practice in immediately, and changed Lincoln's diaper! He even thought to give Lincoln a toy to hold without me saying anything. I was pretty impressed! I don't think Lincoln will cooperate so well in the future, but this time he seemed so taken with the novelty of Levi changing his diaper that he just watched and listened in fascination.

Cecil was pretending the hat was Cappy from Mario Odyssey. That means you can control
whoever's wearing it, even if it's a bad guy!

Poor sick Lincoln showing the camera his nose (I'm not sure why...)

Levi wanted a silly picture! He did smile normally for later pictures, but for some reason my camera had stopped working, so you don't get to see those!

Lincoln's words

Lincoln has been a little bit late on learning words because of at least one ear infection that he had. Since that's cleared up, his repertoire of words has been growing quickly!

Most of his words are basics like "Mommy" "Daddy" "Levi" "Cecil" uh-oh, whoa, etc.

Two of my favorites are "please" (peas) and "excuse me" ("me-me" and it's adorable). It warms my mommy heart to think of him already learning polite habits. Even though sometimes it seems like they may be misused. One of his favorite things to do is to move the kitchen rugs to the hall (which is what I do when I sweep), but I like having them in the kitchen to stand on, of course! When I first heard him say "excuse me" it was because I was standing on one of the rugs, working in the kitchen. I felt a little tug at my feet and heard a tiny "me-me." I had to let him take it; it was just too cute! He also has said it at church, while walking along the pew to get from one end to the other.

He's also learned a lot of body parts, especially on the face. He's pretty good at volunteering "nose," "mouth" and "eye" and will repeat "ears" and "toes."

His food words include "choc-choc" (chocolate), banana, and cracker. He will also say "more," "please," or "another one" if he wants more food.

Lincoln's most used word is probably "light." He loves turning on and off the lights around the house. Recently, he said a sentence! "Turn on the light." He also says a lot of other things that I don't understand when talking about lights. If the sun is in his face while we're driving around, he'll whine, "liiight;" if he's excited about the furnace being on in the garage when we come home, he'll say with interest, "the light!" One time, our back door neighbor's outdoor light was on during the day, and he said, "light," pointing at their house. He talks about "the light" all the time, and sometimes I don't even know which one he's talking about!

It has been fun getting a small glimpse into what he thinks about and enjoys.

The rainbow is from a crack on my phone's screen...gotta get a new one!

Store

Levi and Cecil were playing store today. Daddy kept asking if he could buy a hug, but Cecil said the store didn't sell those. Cecil kept offering food instead. Eventually Daddy ordered a sandwich.

Later, after Daddy had time to be doing something else, Cecil asked him what he could get him from the store. Daddy said, "I would like some solitude, thanks." Cecil quite cheerfully and confidently says, "Oh! I can get you that!" and runs off to his store.

Baffled, I wait to see what he says when he comes back with the order. Cecil runs back to us with his hands cupped. "Here's your solid food, Daddy!"

Daddy took it graciously and then he and I broke down laughing. Oh, I love these kids!

Here's the store! The truck in the front is their cash register, and the magformers are the money.
I didn't even try to get C to make a normal face!

Two year old pretending

Today, Cecil has been doing a lot of new things, specifically pretending more than usual. He pretended to make dough in the bread maker (long story as to why it was in his reach and why I let him play with it...), pretended to give candy to a toy, and pretended to clean with a mop. 

He also has been putting words and concepts together. I love how he uses "no" to tell me something is the opposite of the other word he uses. For example, he and Levi like to squish balloons from Levi's birthday party so they are pear-shaped. He would squish one to look like a pear, say "Pear!" get a reaction from me, and then squish the pear-shaped part down to make it shaped like a normal balloon again and say, "Pear. No." It was soooooo cute!

Cecil knows so many words now, I don't even count them. He is constantly using new ones. This morning, he put some blocks together and said, "Build!" -- one more new word.

He and Levi are also playing together really well lately. Cecil knows the drill that if he accepts something that Levi offers him, it means that he needs to give up whatever toy he has in trade. He also has learned (mostly from observation!) that he doesn't want me to get to 3 if he's doing something that I've told him not to do.

My baby is turning into a little boy, and oh! it's exhilarating to watch these little people learn, grow, and discover.

Toddler Literacy: recent developments

Levi has started saying ending consonants regularly!

He used to say "ha" for ham, hat, and heart. He still says it for hat and heart, but now he says "ham" for ham! Yay :) Also, it's super cute to hear him say "ha...mm."

The first word he put an ending consonant on was "house." He says it pretty much perfectly. I'm impressed that he says the diphthong as well as the ending syllable.

Levi now also has two formula sentences: "I want" and "It's." It took a while to figure out what he meant by "it's" because it sounded like "es," but we did eventually.

He also *finally* will listen to a story in a book as it was written. He's a far cry from the 10-month-old that would rip up any book he got his hands on, or be fascinated with the mechanism of turning pages just to ignore the beautifully illustrated pictures. To encourage his now budding interest in books, Austin and I have decided to drop everything when he asks for us to read a book to him (unless of course, there's an emergency with something else).

The other day, Levi suddenly got very quiet. He usually talks to himself as he plays in addition to moving his toys around, so I was worried that he'd gotten into something he wasn't supposed to have gotten into. I peered around the couch to see that he was looking very intently at the pictures in one of his books. I smiled and resumed what I had been doing. A couple of minutes later, Levi said, "Ha(t)!" I said, "Do you see a hat?" and with his reply "Mmm-hmm," I looked over to see a picture of a party hat in his book.

I've caught him examining the pictures in his books on other occasions, too. It makes this bookworm of a momma happy!

Language explosion, week 3

Levi is still picking up words, and the pace is staying pretty constant. I'm so happy knowing that he's finally ready to experiment with words and that he has already gained so much. Also, it's good to reinforce the words he has already, and he has been using them consistently. Here are his new words for this week:

Ball
Bus
Bowl
Stick
Moo (like the cow)
Mama (used properly!)
Katie (Dayee instead of Aieee)

I love how you get an idea of what he's interested in by the words he learns. Some of them are determined by the consonants that he can pronounce, but some (like "stick" [said like "tih"] and "Katie") are learned because he just really likes those things.

Levi's favorite words of the ones he knows are "baby" and "bubble". One of the things he loves during his bath is to look at all the bubbles after I soap him up. He excitedly points at the bubbles and exclaims, "Buh-bu!" and it's adorable.

We have a new way of reading books now. Instead of him pointing to pictures and asking, "Issat?" (What's that?), I ask him, "Where is the ____?" and he points to the item I named. He seems a lot more excited about interacting with books when we "read" this way, although he really enjoyed the way we did it before. We have a good time.

Levi's language explosion

Levi is starting to have his language explosion (finally)!

Linguistic scientists say that most babies start learning new words more rapidly at around 18 months, but Levi decided to take his own time with that and learn other things first instead. However, he's finally started to talk more! At 22 months, this is what it's like:

One day before his 22 month mark, I commented on Facebook that Levi had been nodding his head to answer "yes" to a question. It's not verbal communication, but it IS communication. That's the first new word recently.

Two days before his 22 month mark, Levi said "baby" very clearly, and has been saying it several times a day since then. Second word.

Five days after his 22 month mark, Levi said "mouth" (ma-ma) and repeated "da-da" after us, though he still doesn't call my husband Daddy or Dada. On the same day, he also garbled out something that sounded like "eyebrow" (he thinks eyebrows are cool). Third and fourth words.

Somewhere in there--in the week around his 22 month mark--Levi said "mouse" (mau) as he pointed at a picture of a mouse in a book. He also started saying "oww" to refer to cuts and scrapes. Fifth and sixth words!

That's 6 new words in a week! That is more words than he's learned at any one time ever before. I'm excited! I'm looking forward to being able to hear his thoughts and learn what he cares about, even if it is just trains and trucks. I love that boy.

Daddy and Mommy being supportive of Levi protecting his owie.
Levi would point to my chin after I put on the band-aid and say, "oww."