Adam's 1 month stats

Adam is growing about an ounce a day and quite healthy and content. All went well at his check-up today! He's on the small side, but consistently so. :)

Height: 20.75 inches, 14%
Weight: 8lb 11.6 oz, 18%
Head circumference: 36 cm, 13%

Thomas at age 2

Thomas is an energetic, talkative, engaging and social little boy. He loves to tell stories (most involve "Falled. Crash. Boom."), playing with his brothers and putting on a show for any adult giving him attention. He is thrilled to be now sleeping in the room his older brothers had been in and so proud of his own space. He's starting to be more interested in puzzles and loves to use his pretend voices to make his cars and little figures talk. He's progressing amazingly with swimming and can swim, turn to float, then turn to swim again all by himself. At his two year check up we learned he was 41 percent for weight (27.9 lbs) and 38 percent for height (34.25 inches). So despite all those comments about what a tall boy he is, he's just about average. He is learning how to be gentle with his little brother who he is fascinated with. He likes to "hug" Adam (as Mommy helps) and just sits and stares as he hugs. He also reports when "Baby Adam" wakes up, telling Mommy what noises he makes "Mommy, Baby Adam awake, Baby Adam 'ah ah'". He loves to help Mommy cook as you can see below!

Welcome, Munchkin!

Summer time!

The boys have had a great time playing together this summer, particularly with PVC pipe on the deck and play structure. :)

Sentences!

Thomas loves to talk and sing and is learning new words by leaps and bounds. His favorites are airplane (which he points out frequently since we are so close to the airport) and lego man (lots of fodder here as his brothers play Legos for at least an hour a day so far this summer). However, I just heard him say his first sentence "Andrew blankie see." It might be Yoda-style, but it was exciting to have nouns and verbs in the same sentence. His favorite story to tell is about the time Grandpa rescued the helium balloons that had escaped out of our windows and gotten stuck in a tall Eucalyptus tree. "Bapa. Tree! Balloon. Falled." A story teller already...

Blocks

Yesterday Thomas practiced building towers with Grandma Brochard and today I find him carefully stacking blocks on top of a toy car in a game of reverse Jenga.

Andrew's quotes

Andrew has a knack for saying the darnedest things. I haven't written them all down right away, but one sticks in my mind that I tell over and over. The other night as I was putting him to bed I gave him a kiss on the cheek. He reached up after and wiped his cheek, as he often does. I understand a lot of kids don't like the sensation or are sensitive to touch, so it doesn't bother me, but I was curious his reasoning. I said, "Andrew, why do you always wipe off my kisses after I give them to you?" He replied, "Don't worry, Mommy, the love is already inside me." :)

Thomas used the potty!

Thomas was sitting with me at the computer today when he said "PeePee." We checked his diaper and it was dry but when I asked, he said he did want to sit on the potty. First he insisted on standing (like his brothers), but when that didn't work he grabbed his potty seat. After reading for a short bit, he actually peed on the potty at 20 1/2 months! He and I had a great laugh as he thought it hilarious that he could squirt out little bits of pee. I don't expect he'll do this from now on, but it was amazing to see him initiate it all by himself. Yay!

Classic Andrew smile

I was sifting through old pictures from this year of preschool and found this picture of Andrew right before he turned 4. It is such a classic Andrew smile!

Library

Nothing like snuggling up with a new library book!

Diction

The kids are still working on pronouncing some words correctly. A few words are constantly stumbled upon (pretzels turns to prinzels for Sam, rabbit turns to raffit for Andrew). We encountered a funny mistake the other day. They're talking about rainbows and weather at school, so Andrew asked if I remembered the type of storm called salami. Racking my brains, I realized part of our weather memory game included tsunami. I might prefer a storm of cured meats though...

Thomas's 18 month stats

Recurring ear infection aside, Thomas is growing and maturing quite well, with more and more words every day. His newest additions: hungry, grace and apple. Here are his latest measurements, proving he's still our skinny, lanky toddler:
Weight: 24 lb 1 oz, 68%
Height: 34 inches, 93%
Head circumference: 48 cm, 50%

Bushel and a Peck

Family photo, January 2013

Sam's 6th Birthday

We celebrated Sam's birthday at school with cupcakes
in the shape of a snowman - per his request.
In the end, I think all he ate was the carrot nose. :)

But others made sure to enjoy dessert!

Fun was had by all!

We also got to celebrate with Sunday Dinner Group.
Sam made sure to finish all his ice cream cake...

Sam even got to lose a tooth on his birthday - his first one lost the "natural way", without knocking it out! However, he lost it so thoroughly that we never found it...guess he swallowed it! Luckily the tooth fairy knows anyway, even if you swallow it.

Sam's first soccer game

He smiled the whole time. :)

Kindergarten School Picture

Sam, Kindergarten
Sept 2012

Imagination

Here was Andrew's solution when Sam said he wished we could live in Oakland so we could be near Grandma and Grandpa Brochard:
"The builders could break down our house into pieces and put it in a dump truck that was there. And then that person could rest. And then they drive it to a place off the street where there was no house and put it back together."

Not Claustrophobic

Thomas is proving not to be so claustrophobic...

I'll help!

I recently started biking to get Sam from school and having him bike home with me. Well, when I say me, I mean us since I'm pulling Thomas and Andrew in the bike trailer. Overall it works pretty smoothly, but the hardest part is getting up the steep hill at the beginning of Falcon Street with a bike trailer full of at least 50 lb of kid in it. The first time up, Andrew asked why I was walking and pushing the bike with such obvious effort. I explained it was hard to get them up the hill. Andrew said, "Mommy, I'm helping push you." I thought to myself, Oh really, kid? It was all I could do to keep pushing and say "How is that Andrew?" He replied, without missing a beat, "I'm pushing you with my mind, Mommy." Awesome. I'll take that any day, Andrew. :)

Little musician?

Thomas has long shown a love of clapping along to music. Okay, he's only 16 months old, so it couldn't have been that long. But when Andrew was learning songs for his Christmas concert at the retirement center, Thomas loved to clap along to Jingle Bell Rock as Andrew sang it. Just now I had Pandora playing kids' music and the song "7 8 9" by Bare Naked Ladies came on. Thomas squealed with delight and came running over, clapping to listen to the song. Wow!

Kids in the News!