New skills

Malcolm weighed in at a hefty 21 pounds, 11 ounces at his six-month checkup this month.  In related news: he still does not roll over.  But we discovered he is, in a surprise move, suddenly great at sitting up all by himself, and that's now his favorite thing to do.  He reaches and grabs for anything within reach, which is sometimes precarious from the sitting position, but he still tries.  He also is pretty skilled now at grabbing his feet and rotating around while on his back as a result of almost-but-not-quite rolling over.  He's just not a fan of tummy time.  I think he is ridiculously cute, as always.

Look who's sitting!

In the Wild

I captured this animal during his mid-morning snack

Malcolm in a basket

Snow days

This is what it looked like outside today, a bit more than the half-inch of snow that had been forecast:

Four inches still wouldn't be that noteworthy, except it came on the heels of the three coldest days in a row the city has had in something like 15 years, and there was an ice storm on Monday night that had dumped about an inch on the roads.  Apparently in Dallas they don't believe in salt, so they use sand to "treat" the roads.  This is a joke, as sand doesn't do anything to ice except go on top of it.  The city's real strategy is to just let things melt -- only they didn't do that this week.  Hence, the city has been effectively shut down since Tuesday.  Mike still made it to work all four days, but dealt with rolling blackouts, server outages, and a mostly empty office.  My office was closed Tuesday and Wednesday but I worked from home (and was grateful Elizabeth managed to come over for a few hours around lunch each day) and then made it in yesterday, even though the main roads I drive on were still essentially covered in ice.  You drove in grooves, but there were multiple stretches of solid ice.  After the snow this morning, though, I threw in the towel and finally took a "real" snow day and was home with the boys without much work.

We had fun even though poor Michael's been going a bit stir crazy.  I brought some snow inside for him to play with this morning, and he liked playing with it and eating it, until his hands got too cold.  Then we moved on to the usual cars, dump trucks, blocks, music, and Curious George. 

Six months old

It is hard to believe Malcolm is six months old already!  Time is passing differently with him.  With Michael, I had only just gone back to work at this point, which was challenging, while now I've already been back for three months.  In many ways it's not as hard -- pumping is much easier (main challenge is getting time in since I'm busier now!) and I really enjoy the new job and am thankful for it -- but whenever I think about how little he is (despite being a huge baby, ha) I just want to spend more time with him.  Every day I look forward to getting back to this little guy, as he is SO happy and affectionate.  The last couple of weeks he has taken to throwing his arms around our necks and going in for big slobbery kisses (or tastings, at any rate).  He likes it when Mike makes him "get" Michael by touching his face -- he just laughs and laughs.  He is *just* about to roll over, but still hasn't managed it yet.  He likes to fall asleep on Mike and snuggle with me, and his little giraffe (like Canon's) is his favorite chewing toy.  Better the giraffe than me or Mike -- he is teething pretty good now.  Here's a few pictures from today.

Toddler, $14.99

Michael had fun at Target tonight -- first time out of the house in several days after we've been iced and snowed in.  He wanted to tell me all the numbers and letters he knew . . . and also to play on this shelf :)

Malcolm Growling

Malcolm has been growling for a little over a week now. And he's been able to stand in the exersaucer for a couple of weeks. It's really helped his step reflex.

Learning every day

Michael has been picking up letters and words like crazy over the last three weeks.  After learning all his letters (upper and lowercase) and most of their sounds, Mrs. Lawler showed him the next section after the alphabet on Starfall.com on New Year's Eve and said he liked it.  So I found that section and we've been doing it a lot ever since we got home from Chicago.  He is learning short vowel sounds and rhyming words (you pick the beginning letter to make a word to match the picture), and he gets the letters right and then will repeat all four words when they are listed at the end.  He can recognize them all out of context, too, if you make a word with magnet letters on the fridge.  So he has a bunch of -ot, -ut, -it, -an, -en, -ink, and -ug words.  He'll do the phonics when he sees some words too -- "puh, uh, tuh, put!"  I started wondering how to show him other letters where the short-vowel rules don't work (I'm not a teacher, I haven't thought about phonics since I learned them myself probably), so I wrote a few words down next to a picture of Snoopy and told him two o's are "oo."  (Except when they're not, right?  English is messed up.)  Every time he sees the paper now he runs down the list of words (starting with Snoopy, the picture): "Food, Snoopy, moon, broom, spoon!"  We are pretty amazed by how he seems to be picking this up.  Of course it's not comprehensive, just little steps by little steps, but he only just hit 26 months old and he is learning every day.

This morning, we did one of the little stories and Michael read a whole sentence out loud: "Zac has a big ball."  It's hard to credit that he actually read it -- right?!-- but I was still impressed because he has never said anything like a complete sentence like that before.  At all.  Later on the way to the park, he really started getting two words together: "Red car.  Green car.  Hi, Mama."  I am so happy about the last!  He never has said that before -- just hi or bye by themselves.  It was fun.  This week there's been other words put together too, particularly after "Mmm, yummy," which he learned from Grandma.  Friday was "Mmm, yummy couscous."  Today was "Mmm, yummy oatmeal."

Michael seems to be really advanced on literacy milestones, but it's so interesting to me because it doesn't correlate with other skills really -- there are a lot of little girls his age who could talk circles around him, or kids who have better fine motor skills, etc.  He's also 100% two in every other way, with lots of drama and limit-testing and major energy.  His unique spin on testing parents against each other came out Thursday when he asked me for an apple at breakfast (he was eating oatmeal), I said no, then Elizabeth came in and he said "Manzana?"  Haha.  He's gotten much better with using a spoon and fork to scoop up food, and he likes to run his Thomas train all over the house saying "Choo choo."  He likes to throw dirt and rocks when we go for walks.  Finally, this month's favorite songs are "Carribbean Amphibian" and Grover's "Monster in the Mirror" song.  Michael is a pretty fun little boy.  I'll post a video of him talking to Malcolm when Mike can get it uploaded :)

Whew

This is one of the most amusing (and most exhausting) videos I have seen. It doesn't even need the soundtrack. Maybe I shouldn't be encouraging Malcolm so much to roll over!

Five months old

Malcolm is doing great at five months.  He is working really hard at sitting up and grabbing things, and although he's not particularly motivated to roll over, he does seem to like his tummy time.  He drools like a champion and can go through four bibs in a day.  He is incredibly sweet and laid back as long as he knows he is not being ignored.  Seems pretty happy with his family too -- he loves laughing with me and Mike and watches Michael very attentively.  Amazingly, he's also really good at going to sleep.  I don't mind at all that he wakes up at night for nursing -- it is great not to have all the crying, fussing and soothing necessary for so many babies to wind down (like he needed for several weeks in the beginning)!  Just lay him down when he starts rubbing his eyes really hard, and he'll kick a lot, coo, and eventually relax himself to sleep.  I love my big little guy :)