Today our little guy started to use his pointer finger more, singing "buenos Dias". And then, he finally touched his own nose!
On Christmas night he let go while standing in his crib and balanced for a moment on his own! Good things are waiting for us in 2013.

Tis the season

Play with my babies

Searching for inspiration for more sensory play with Liam and fun for Lupe, especially with 4 or more days of rain! Now Liam, he puts everything in his mouth. So I could play with oatmeal, flax, dried beans, but if I watch him carefully. Play dough? Homemade wouldn't harm him if ingested, so that is what we made tonight, spur of the moment, with kool aid for color and smell. Papa came out of the shower and found us making mess all over the kitchen floor!
What shall we try tomorrow? Edible finger paint?
Lupe loves when Liam goes to bed BEFORE her and if she cleans up while I nurse him to sleep, then she gets to choose an activity to do together, just the two of us. So tonight we drew a picture together, of a princess of course.

Snip snip

We did it! We took Liam for his first hair cut. I wanted to do it myself, as I am the only one who has trimmed Lupe's hair. That first hair cut is a BIG deal, like snipping the umbilical cord. Don't laugh, even if you think I'm being melodramatic. Some of you understand I'm sure. But I didn't think I could do a boys cut very well, especially a 16 month old boy.
Some friends recommended Tigerlily salon so we went there. The four of us went in to this hipster hair salon to get our little guy's ten minute cut! Applause to Josh who managed to do it with Liam squirming in Papa's lap. Notice the blurry motion of scissors snipping and baby squirming and the furrowed brow of concentration of the stylist? I think the pictures capture it pretty well. And yes, he looks older now. My sweet baby is growing up! Sigh.

Mi familia

Standing

He stands up in his crib now. And keeps asking for the keys to drive the car.

Sshhhh.....

Shhh.... don't tell anyone. The other day after dropping Lupe off at school I went to SLO donuts and ate a donut all by myself. I didn't tell anyone and I didn't share.

The artist

I am so excited that my girl is blossoming as an artist before my eyes! Watching her first drawings of people and all of a sudden she can draw a house and a flower. Piñatas too!
And I can dictate the words to her and most of the time she can write it down. Wow!
Lupe's preschool has a program called raising a reader. Every week they bring a book back home with four books and they have a special notebook in which to do something related to one of the stories. They can draw a picture or practice writing or dictate something that we write for them. Well my girl is already a reader. Every week so far, of the four books we own at least one and have probably read one or two others. So the first thing Lupe did in her note book is not about one of the books in her bag. We had just finished our longest chapter book ever with 20 chapters and 149 pages. How's that for reading?

Bubbles and blue shirts

Liam was sitting on top of a plastic mirror on the floor and I blew bubbles at him. I thought it was pretty cool to see the way he looked at and played with the bubbles while also seeing his own reflection.
And for the first time he was playing with one of Pedro's T-shirts covering up his head and every time he did he laughed hysterically. Usually one of us is making him laugh but this time he was making himself laugh and that was a first. Each exclamation of a laugh almost sounded like a sneeze. Or perhaps I could call it a guffaw.

Time to celebrate

I have been looking forward to writing this post for a long long time. Something big I mean huge happened in our house last Saturday, October 27. Some of you may or may not know the importance of crawling for brain development. It has been our primary goal for several months now. Liam has been scooting on his belly for quite some time. But he tends to pull himself with his arms and let his legs just kind of drag behind. So we have been doing assisted crawling and cross patterning with him every day. Sometimes this means just having him on his belly and with two people moving his arms and legs in a cross pattern. Sometimes we do that and have him moving forward on the floor to get to a goal. We also have him on hands and knees with two people helping him crawl that way. Or doing sit and stand exercises to help strengthen his legs as well as tactile stimulation and deep pressure massage on his limbs. Pedro and I could not have done all this without the enormous help of Liam's grandpa next door.
So last Saturday, at almost 16 months right before bed, LIAM STARTED TO CRAWL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Excuse my excessive use of apostrophe marks but this is such good news and we just can't explain how excited we are!!!!
Cause for major celebrating. I've included a picture of Lupe playing the kazoo and the guitar for her brother.
Oh yeah, he also got two new teeth the same day and in addition to crawling figured that he may as well learn how to pull himself up to standing.
And did I mention that he can scroll through flashcards on the iPad?
I mean this week has just been a developmental explosion!

Cause and effect

Look at this guy! We are rocking the cause-and-effect activities this morning. Liam is sometimes almost pulling himself up to stand with a little support. And then he knows just what to do with the flash card program on the iPad- he can touch the screen to go to the next image and he always waits for the word to be spoken aloud before moving on. How clever is he?
We went to the park and for the first time Liam pretty much went down the slide by himself. Very brave.

When the cat is away....

When I was about nine years old I won a local art contest with a drawing of the phrase "when the cat is away the mouse will play".
Fast foreword 18 years...
Lupe is at school and Liam can play with all of her special stuff including her jewelry box. I do believe he's having the time of his life!