Milestone Minutiae

Henry seems to have discovered his tongue, because he's started sticking out a little pointy tongue all the time. I guess he's figured out that he can change its shape. Luke and Emmett both did this too, probably at the same age but I haven't looked it up.

I went to a Salt Lake Home Educator's meeting this evening. Luke still doesn't like it when I leave him behind and yelled a bit when I told him I was going out. He calmed down pretty easily, though. Shortly after I left, Luke asked David when I would be home. David told him it would be after he was in bed, so Luke said he wanted to go to bed. The boys were in bed almost an hour early!

As we are all well aware, Henry likes to play with his toes. All of my babies have done it, at least for a while. Compared to his brothers, though, Henry has taken it a step further. He is flexible, so he pulls them right up to his mouth and chews on them. On purpose, and all by himself. When he's wearing Robeez, he'll chew on those, too.

Emmett is taking swimming lessons again, and today he actually swam! After jumping off the diving board, he came to the surface, got a breath, put his face in the water and swam a few strokes, took another breath, and repeated that until he was back to the step in the corner. The teacher was right near him the whole time, but she didn't touch him. After class I congratulated Emmett on swimming without help and he told me that the teacher helped a little. I asked him if she touched him and he said, "No, she just was nearby telling me what to do." Like reminding him to breathe. Still, I'm thrilled with how far he's come in such a short time.

Luke brought me a quarter and a dollar coin, and told me the two were similar. I didn't realize that he knew that word, so I asked him if they were the same or just similar. He said, "They're just similar. This one is orange." Later that day he saw a picture of me and David on our wedding day. I told him that was me and daddy, and he told me that she was "similar" to me!

Emmett and Luke really enjoyed spending time at the beach while in California. At first Luke was timid, so I just got him into his water clothes and assured him that the choice to get wet or not was his. It did take him a little time to warm up to the idea, but after about an hour of playing in the sand he was ready to get his feet into some waves. He and Emmett both had a great time playing at the edge of the water and getting splashed. When we went to watch the end of the pier-to-pier swim they played in the water again. I thought that since it was early and we wouldn't be at the beach very long they would just play in the sand so we didn't have swim clothes. They just got wet anyway. Emmett later grabbed on to my words and told me that I should have known better and brought the water clothes, of course they wouldn't stay dry!

Henry has completely mastered the art of grabbing things. When you dangle a toy in front of him, first he looks at it very seriously. Next, he opens his hands and starts to bring them forward. When one makes contact with the toy, he'll close it to grab on and bring in the other hand. Then he takes his prize and drags it in to his mouth for chewing. He's still playing with his toes of course, even chewing on those once in a while. Today I brought out the saucer, thinking that he may like to play with the toys on that now. When Luke first started in the saucer, his feet didn't reach the bottom, but Henry can already bounce around in there! He likes to grab at the toys, or just watch while Luke plays with them. It's great to have another place to stash the baby.