We are still alive!

Apologies for the 3 month long lapse there. Life, and all.....

We have been VERY busy growing and learning and managing chaos, so no worries--all is well.

I have been asked to update the blog a lot lately, so here goes.

Caitlin is a busy bee this summer--soccer clinic and tap class on Tuesdays, swimming on Saturdays, pre-K three days per week (and don't you dare call it preschool! she already graduated from preschool). I swear I will not be an overscheduler! It's just so easy to try some things out in the summer when daddy's not at work all the time. My ever-patient husband has been working with her on sight words and she loves it--John's so awesome and has made up a game to help her learn and she is really taking it all in. She continues to make us laugh every day.

Yesterday I was scratching a mosquito bite and she said "you will make that bite worse if you scratch it," I said "really? I don't think so. who told you that?" She replied "mom? I know a lot about life."

Ryan is also super busy. His main focus is language right now. He signs "all done," and "milk," (even though he doesn't drink milk). waves hello/goodbye. He is saying new words each day and pointing at everything. On June 21 I wrote down all the words he had at that point: baby, diaper, dada, bye-bye, puppy, uh-OH, cracker, go, ball, peekaboo, all done, book, up. Since then he's added: deck, click, cup, bottle, hi, kitty. (you will notice this list does not contain the word mama). We are left with only a few minor feeding issues--like he still drinks a bottle--we have given up the battle realizing that he will likely not go to college on a bottle, so hopefully that will work itself out. We've tried a few bootcamp style cold-turkey no-bottle-only-sippy-cup challenges and he will just not drink anything for days, so we waved the white flag and gave up. bottles it is. I'm still not convinced he knows how to recognize hunger/thirst yet--I think he eats now because he finally likes it and drinks because we force the issue to a point. happily though, we have transitioned to a regular kids formula instead of the fancy, schmancy prescription formula and he is drinking a regular toddler formula that I can just get at the regular people store like a regular mom--amazing! The tough part is that he still needs MAJOR distractions in order to drink--like Go, Diego, Go!--nothing else will quite do the trick. You will notice that "go" and "click" are in his language repertoire--that is no accident, thanks to Diego. So, we plug in Diego 4 times a day for 5 minutes each while Ryan chugs a 6 ounce bottle each time. Small price to pay for not using the g-tube (since April!!! can you believe it???!!!)--and any parent that's battled feeding/oral issues with a kid can probably understand why we are letting this go on like this. In my self-righteous first-time-mom days of parenting, I would've never imagined. But here we sit. happily. watching Diego and his dumb camera. oh well. CLICK!

Nora is busy on language as well, but also really working on motor skills. She easily stacks the stacking rings and is working on the shape sorter--having an awesome attention span, she works on these things for like 10-20 minutes at a time. She is walking now too--not independently, but definitely taking 10+ steps and walking across the room on occasion. She is nodding as of a few days ago and nods "yes" to every question almost. She says: uh-oh, dada, cracker, ball, kitty, cheese. she signs: more, all done, milk.

The babies play really well together when they are physically separated--like they babble back and forth and mimic each other when they are in their cribs or highchairs. But put them on the floor together and it is one brawl after another. Ryan grabs whatever he wants, regardless of who is playing with it at the time--he only wants what someone else has. Nora only plays with things that no one else is touching, but completely falls apart if anyone takes her stuff from her. She gets really attached to random tiny things and crawls around with them and then her heart is broken if something (ryan) happens to it--or if she pulls the vent cover off and throws her precious item down the vent. can we please learn our lesson on that trick yet? anyway. Ryan hits with books, hand, toys, whatever--mostly onto Nora's head. She's pretty tough though--she doesn't cry as much as I would. But mostly they are at a very precious stage right now of learning to communicate and being sweet. It's really fun to watch this phase as there are new things each day.

(ignore the screaming Ryan--he wants the camera. always.)