Like you, Daddy

I had the coolest feeling as a father ever yesterday.

We have a Battleship game that had a ship with two broken pegs so you could not place it in a locked position on the board, so I took Sam with me to the basement to fix it.

We found two screws the right size, cut off the heads with some wire cutters and used another tool to insert them where the pegs had previously been - fixing the aircraft carrier.

Sam looked up at me and said "it's great we have all these work tools here at home"

I replied, "yes, because we can fix anything!"

He smiled and said "Guess what I want to be when I grow up"

I looked at him and said "An engineer like me?"

He got a big grin on his face and nodded.

Sigh - hard to get anything to compare to that. :)

     -Dave

Andrew loves to swing fast and high

Kindergarten here we come!

Boxes

Thomas hasn't met a box he hasn't wanted to climb into.  His latest favorite is the Duplo box. Seems uncomfortable to me, but maybe it is therapeutic for him.

Words

Thomas can very clearly say "Buh-Bye" but is developing a host of other words that while not as discernible, are consistent enough for me to know he's saying a word and not babbling. Here are the next words he's said (in order of appearance): Daddy (or Diddy), All Done (Ah dunh), This (Dis), That (Dat). This morning as he played around in the wee hours (he gets up at 5:30am regularly these days), I could swear I heard him say "Those" and "Yes". We'll see what develops next! It's also become clear to me that he calls me Diddy along with Dave. There seems to be one word for parent rather than developing a "Mama." Ah well, all in due time...

Buh-Bye!

Thomas' first word is definitely "Bye." He is now practicing it all the time in all sorts of situations. When Daddy leaves for work, when someone leaves the room, anytime a door closes, when the live stream of the Olympics freezes for a moment,

First steps

Thomas started officially walking this month, with what I think are his first official steps in this video, walking to Daddy on August 11, the day before turning 11 months. Now, four days later, he's choosing to walk 80% of the time, though still looks wobbly like in this video. He loves especially to walk triumphantly with a spatula (or other long item) held out in front like a baton. He walks in style!

Roaming, roaming, roaming

Thomas is practicing walking nearly non stop now, and is curious about everything around him.