Singing and talking

I know it's been forever since I posted, but I have to get down some of the things Oscar's been doing the last few weeks as he gets to 22 months old. So much talking, signing, and singing - so much personality. First, he definitely likes having my attention. Even his brothers get exasperated because he will say loudly, "MAAAAA-ma," over and over (talking over them) until I reply (and sometimes even if I already have been replying). His main question lately is "Where _____?" with his hands open. Asking where Dada, where Michael, where Joe, where Papi, where Grandma, where Malcolm. He loves playing outside, in the backyard or at playgrounds, and has gotten into the routine of going outside with Michael for his snack after we get home in the afternoons. He really likes playing with his big brothers, and seems to really like sharing his room with Joseph. I can hear them talking most nights after the lights are out.  If Joseph sneaks out to talk to us again, Oscar will start yelling, "JOOOOOE-Joe" until he comes back.

Oscar pulled up a stool and grabbed some note paper at the library to help me search for a few books

Oscar really likes the picture of the pony in his animals book so he was excited to sit on this at the children's museum

I know Oscar has always liked music, but the past month he's really started trying to sing himself. He just started singing "Baa Baa, Black Sheep" and the ABC song this week. He's been singing our "Good Day" song a lot, and when we sing other children's or Signing Time songs, he listens along and chimes in on certain words he knows.  He requests "Sigh Time Mudic" for the Treeschooler CDs a lot when he's not allowed to actually watch a movie.  One of his favorite songs from our Making Music CD is the regular chant version of Agnus Dei.  Unfortunately the whole song only lasts 30 seconds, so you have to sing it a lot of times when he demands, "Ag-uh De-ih!"  He starts singing quietly to himself when we go for walks in the stroller or drive in the car, so you can tell the music is on his mind :)  In the car he, along with Joseph, have liked the Holy Heroes Stations of the Cross CD we have, so he frequently requests "Stay-shuh Craw!" This does not translate into great behavior at Mass or anything - we have been spending a fair amount of time in the vestibule when he starts acting up, usually right around Communion time.


Oscar knows which shoe basket is his, knows how to turn on his sleep sounds, knows several letters (A, B, D, H, K, J, L, M, O, P, U), knows to get (and use) a "poon" for his food, and knows exactly how to get into trouble by getting into things he's not supposed to :) (Yesterday he snuck into my closet, found a leftover Halloween bucket, and located a lollipop, which he proudly displayed and announced about sixteen times.) He can cry or whine on a dime but shut it off just as fast. He is just a delightful and exhausting and cheerful little guy, and we are all so happy he's a part of our family :)

Meeting the chimpanzee at the zoo

Lounging in bed

Oscar signs "play" every time we go by a playground - he LOVES being outside

Hello there

Oscar is not content to stay in one place.  Within the space of a few weeks he's mastered crawling and pulling up.  Because he likes to scale obstacles, I've had to rearrange some furniture to keep him confined to his play area in the media room.  Maybe that'll hold him a few more weeks...

Puzzle time

Joseph surprised me this month by starting to do small puzzles on his own.  He likes to talk to himself while working on them (well, he talks pretty much constantly anyway!) and he was very pleased with himself.

Songs from Joseph

A few songs from Joseph today (but not too many, because he apparently already did the other ones we requested):


Malcolm and Joseph and I were really enjoying the nice weather this evening after so much rain the past few weeks - good for the drought, not so good for playground and outdoor time!

More chatting with Joseph

Here is Joseph thinking of some people in his family.  The first time he said his own name, he said "Jophess" just like Malcolm used to do :)  But then he figured it out.  His new silly thing to say, when I say, "You're crazy, Joseph," is, "Not crazy.  Mama crazy.  Michael crazy." 

Toddler songs

I finally got Joseph to sing a little bit of the ABC song for me (with a little prompting). He really likes to sing it for his brothers. He actually came up to me the other day holding the "J" from his alphabet puzzle and said "Joseph!" That was pretty cool. He also recognizes D for Dada, F for fish, M for Mama, A for Apple, B for Ball, and O. I think Michael was starting to recognize his letters around now (23 months) and it's really neat to see.

Joseph surprised me in this video, too. He's been saying his numbers to us recently (he can pronounce "eleven" very precisely), so I was trying to get him to say the numbers up to ten. I'm a little slow on the uptake sometimes, though, because I didn't even realize at first that he was saying the nursery rhyme (one, two, buckle my shoe) instead. He must be saying that one at preschool, because it isn't one of the ones we've been practicing at home. (Like "Ring around the rosy" as well.) His teacher says he is very attentive when they sing their little nursery rhymes :)

New conversations

Joseph is figuring out how to say people's names this month. Michael is "Ky-cull," Canon is "Nannon," his little friends at preschool are Grace and Connor, and he got "Papi" down completely this past week. He is combining them with new words every day and even carrying on little conversations. Yesterday I told him it was time for a bath. He said, "No, Mama. Movie." He started kicking his feet and wailing while I relocated him to change his diaper and take a bath, and stubbornly sat still in the bath, rejecting every toy, for several minutes. Eventually he gave in and started playing with the rubber Percy and Gordon trains (as an aside, I'm amazed he can say those names and recognize the silly trains already). But after a few minutes of being distracted, the thought visibly popped back into his mind and he looked up and said, "All done bath. Movie," and stood right up in the tub. He doesn't stay distracted very long! He also remembers if we promise to go to the playground and bring bikes. If I don't remember the bikes he gets upset. Can't pull anything over on this guy.

Later, after I got his pajamas on and he watched a little bit of his movie with his brothers (they had been watching after dinner - I pulled him away for the bath), he wandered back to find me in the bedroom, looked up, and earnestly signed and said, "Cookie, Mama." I got down on his level and said, "No more cookie, Joseph. All done." He looked me right back in the eye and insisted, "Cookie, Mama," and grabbed my hand to confidently lead me back toward the kitchen and straight to the pantry. The focus and determination made me laugh out loud. I admit I gave him two animal crackers. He was quite satisfied with the results.

Here's a video of Joseph zooming on the tricycle at the playground. He's getting pretty good and he wants to go the same distance around the park as his brothers do - but at 20 months!  I am keeping him reined in to more reasonable limits...

Independence Day 2014

The Lawler Family celebrated Independence Day this year in fine fashion. We started off with mass as St. Thomas Aquinas in the morning, followed by a neighborhood BBQ. Michael and Malcolm's fashion was provided by Wal-mart this year. After a lazy afternoon, Kim entertained the boys with songs from her patriotic songbook (the boys especially loved "You're a Grand Old Flag). Joseph did his customary crash around 7pm, so it was up to me to take Michael and Malcolm on their first fireworks extravaganza. They toughed out the heat and the long walk to the park, and enjoyed a great view of the fireworks put on by the City of Richardson. We also got a great surprise this weekend when we discovered a blue jay family had nested in our backyard. This is the first time that has happened since we lived here. Below are photos and video.

Table manners

Here is Joseph using his fork (and also playing with his food).  He wasn't as talkative as he was before I started the video, although I did get him to do his approximations of the signs for "girl" and "boy."  :)

Houston, we have a climber

Joseph started walking the week of his birthday. Go, Joe! He is a very determined little guy and keeps improving step by step. When he is walking towards you he'll lurch the last few steps and throw himself into your arms with a big grin. It is ridiculously cute. He always gets big hugs and snuggles from us.

Relatedly, we have discovered he already also likes to climb on things. We've caught him on the fireplace and the green couch. He has a particular grunt he uses when he's lifting his legs and trying to climb up something, whether it be cabinets, couches, or chairs. And in the last few weeks since we've started to let him walk around at the playground (instead of strollers or Ergo or just holding him, or swings) he has decided he wants to try everything. In the video below, he had tried to get up on that first stair from two other sides, and when it didn't work he successfully tried the far side. He let me know which slide he wanted each time (there were three and he did them all) by crawling to it and banging his hand on it to signal. I am in serious trouble!!


For the record, the three times immediately before this next video, Joseph did get down by backing his way down instead of going face-first. But he was completely pleased with himself either way.

Joseph discovers push toys

In the last ten days, Joseph has discovered push toys. He's pushed the walker all over the house, including tugging it to steer different directions when he runs into things. He also likes pushing the toy train, chairs, the toy tool bench, and anything else he can scoot around. He is very pleased with himself and seems delighted with the new skills. But it's not the ultimate goal: you can tell what he really wants to do is join in with his big brothers.

Someday soon, little guy.

More bananas

It's really neat to see how the signing has finally clicked for Joseph.  He is definitely using his signs to communicate with us.  Go, Joe!

Joseph's first sign

Update: In just a couple of days, Joseph has signed more, ball, flower, eat, mom, and dad. Once a day he will crawl over to me at the computer and slap me until I play a Signing Time. He is really an insistent little man.

After two weeks of watching Signing Time and months of working on signs, Joseph is starting to get the hang of it.

More helping

And here is Malcolm helping his brother eat :)

Big brother helping

Michael and Malcolm both love to help feed Joseph his cereal.  Sometimes they spill a little more than the baby, but it's so sweet that I don't mind.  I didn't get this on the video tonight, but they're also teaching him the "more" sign by tapping his hands together (complete, in Malcolm's case, with a super-high-pitched, "You want MORE, Joey Joey??").  I'm happy they are such nice little helpers. :)

Malcolm playing a game

Malcolm has been doing very well lately - our big breakthrough is that he finally potty-trained last month!  And there was much rejoicing.  It took awhile but once he figured out he didn't have to be scared and he recognized when he needed to go, it really clicked.  He's very proud of himself and we are extremely happy to have him mostly out of diapers.  He's only had two or three accidents in the last four weeks.  His prize was getting ice cream at Chick-fil-A with Dad.  Yay Malcolm!

Michael got a few new board games for his birthday and Malcolm is mostly interested in playing them too.  Here is a video of him playing Sequence for Kids with me the other night.  Sometimes he plays by the rules (only playing one card out of three per turn), and we encourage this especially when playing with Michael, since he cares a lot about the rules.  Other times, he just takes a lot of cards and plays them all.  It's fun :)

Communicating

Apparently blowing raspberries is a developmental milestone (maybe our speech language pathologist sibling can confirm :).  It is highly amusing to see Joseph talking to people this way.  I still wish he wouldn't spend half of Mass doing this, complete with loud screeches in the middle, so maybe we could stay sitting in the pews instead of hanging out in the vestibule, but oh well.

Picking it up fast

This baby is motivated now.

On the move

Joseph was a busy baby yesterday. In our living room, over the course of a half-hour, he rolled from one side of his playmat to the other, scooted off backwards until his feet ran into the couch three feet away, and then did a combination roll/wiggle until he came all the way back to the toys next to his mat. He can't crawl or scoot forward yet, but the roll/wiggle somehow serves the same purpose. Funny baby. Now we are going to have to start childproofing again and watching out for all those "not for children under 3" toys scattered around the house.

Bouncy seat

Not much going on in this video, just a cute baby playing in his bouncy seat :)