Of parrots and stairs...

The parrot? That would be Jack. We all know the boy's a verbal little creature. As his articulation and vocabulary have grown over the last few months, its fascinating to hear one's own words parroted back in his little 3 year old voice. Sometimes its very sweet, and we feel all warm and fuzzy about our amazing parenting skills:

"Daddy, its OK to make a mistake. It'll be all right!"

"Mommy, you can do it!"

"Good job, Daddy! You fixed it!"

"Oh, I have an idea..."

Other times, not so much:

"Mommy, would you just LISTEN to me!!"

"I'll be right back, I'll just be a minute, I just have to go get something." (how often he must hear us say this one...)

"You have a CHOICE..."

And, there are the times when it's just funny:

"Speak of the devil!" - parroting Uncle Mike while playing Magic the other day.



Its not all parroting, of course. I wish I could capture for you a day's worth of Jack-isms, with their unique syntax and exploration of vocabulary and concepts...Here's one I overheard today as Jack and 6-year old he met at the library enjoyed looking at a dinosaur book together:

"That one is a meat eater, see his sharp teeth? but he's not a T-rex because he has 1,2,3 fingers and a T-rex has 2 fingers, so he's a meat eater"

He is very into comparisons these days, words like larger, biggest, longest, smaller becoming prevalent in his vocabulary. He also makes connections between words and sentences he hears in different books, or in his videos and his books. I feel like I can almost see those new neural pathways forming as he thinks through and organizes his world...

Not only does he have plenty of original and delightful turns of phrase, his burgeoning independence and expanding thinking skills means it is harder and harder to do enforceable choices and other discipline techniques that have been so successful with him in the past. If we give him two undesirable options he simply replies, "Neither of those." Independence is great when it means we can send him off to use the bathroom, brush his teeth, and wash his hands on his own at bedtime, but it has also added a whole new world of argument, battles of will, and opportunities for creative problem solving for us!

Stairs? That would be Ivy, who realized today that if she can crawl up one step, then she can do them all. And have a blast doing it, too. And then turn around and try to go back down headfirst. Girl has no fear. I am thinking we are in for a challenging toddlerhood with this one...

With no further ado, here are Ivy's 42 week pictures (42 weeks??? So its really only 10 weeks til her first birthday??? Really!??) as well as a few other shots from today. (tune in for video soon once it finishes uploading..."


She continues to be obsessed with the notecards we use to record her age. It is her mission to get a hold of this card as many times as possible during each photo shoot...Thus the reason why my had is in every picture, sneaking that card into place (or wrestling it out of ehr very strong grip...)


Sick and ornery and wearing a too-small undershirt and all-- he's still the cutest boy..


Pulled herself right up to stand today, then proceeded to push the chair forward and take a few steps. Egad.



Her other new thing recently is to hold up found objects over her head, jubilantly, kind of like this:



It's really cute. Her favorite "found objects" these days? String, straps, and shoes.

She can also self-feed. As long as it's cheese, that is. An opinionated young lady, this one.