Milestone Minutiae

Henry has taken to standing with his head on the floor, looking backwards through his straight legs. I really have no explanation. It started when he was playing instead of going to sleep. It seems like he knows he's tired but doesn't want to sleep, so he finds something silly to do instead. He'll stop nursing and roll onto his belly. Then he pulls his legs under him and straightens them while leaving his head on the mattress. While reading books before bedtime tonight, Henry did it some more.

I realized a few days ago that he is happy to give you a high-five if you ask for one and put out your hand. I don't think I taught him this, so he must have picked it up by observation. He got the jack-in-the-box back in the box today, all by himself! We celebrated with a high-five.

As always, I missed some of Luke's reading milestones. He's gone past the "doesn't want to sound things out" stage and raced right on to the "I want to do it myself" stage. Today he left the couch where we were sitting together and sat on the rocking chair so he could sound things out without help. He is, however, still in the stage where he has to sound a word out every time he encounters it, even if it's on the same page. When reading, "Mag can dig and dig," he sounded out dig both times! It's a strange stage if you ask me, but that's where he is. Some of the words (like can) seem to be becoming "sight words" for him, but I'm not sure if that's because he remembers the words or is remembering the story.

Henry likes to throw things down the stairs. CDs, spoons, trains, balls, whatever he can get his hands on. He also really (really!) likes playing in the dogs' water. And he knows that what you do with a towel is soak up the rest of the water in the dish so he can't splash it anymore. Henry love taking baths, and he signs "bath" all the time. I think he's a little confused about what the sign means, though, because he also signs it while we're walking out towards the swings. I think he thinks it's a sign for "really really fun stuff." He'll get it eventually, I'm sure.

Emmett was playing a song on the piano and I was singing along. In the middle of a line, he stopped abruptly and started playing another song!

Luke is getting excited about learning to read. He enjoys sounding out words, so today I got him a set of learn-to-read books at Costco. He read the first two all by himself - they mostly feature a bunch of "-at" words. When it was time for us to stop reading so I could put Henry to sleep, Emmett wanted to keep going with book 3, so he went through that book with Luke.

Yesterday Luke got too close to Jake, prompting scary snarling and barking. David and I didn't see what happened (and want to know if Jake is starting to over react in his old age), so after calming Luke down we asked if he'd stepped on Jake, or just gotten too close. Luke said, "Well I just didn't know where to step so I stepped on his nose!" I think it's safe to say that Jake didn't over react.

Henry has been saying " da da da da " and "ma ma ma ma" for a while (dad first, of course). But tonight he started saying a new word - definitely a first! After reading "Who says quack," a book full of animals and the sounds they make, Henry started saying, "Woo!" It's pretty airy - for the "w" sound he holds his lips very close together and pushes air through, almost like he's blowing out a candle. Anyway, Luke and Emmett both started saying "Duh!" for "duck" at the end of that book, so I asked him if he was saying duck. When he repeated "Woo woo!" I realized that he was saying "Woof!" When you say, "Henry, can you say 'woof,'" first he laughs a bunch, then he'll press his lips together and say, "Woo!"

Just at the time of night when you'd think the boys would be getting tired, they tend to run around the house yelling. Now that Henry is a confident walker, he follows them around. Unfortunately, they're not always careful enough, so tonight Henry got knocked over. I grabbed him and started rocking him, but he wanted back into the game so badly he settled down almost immediately and climbed right off my lap.

The one year visit with the doctor went very well. Finally, Henry didn't scream the entire time that the doctor was examining him. Henry did look uneasy, but he never fussed. He even calmed down really quickly after the shots. Here are the stats from the visit: height: 30.25 inches (67 percentile) weight: 20 pounds 9 ounces (33 percentile) head circumference: 48.25 cm (93 percentile) For those of you keeping track of the brotherly horse race at home, Emmett wins the height and weight categories by a mile - 31.5 inches tall and 23 pounds 3 ounces. For some reason Luke's numbers are from 11 months old, but he was at 28.25 inches tall and 20 pounds 8 ounces. Their head circumferences are all so close that measurement error could be the difference - Emmett was at 48.5 cm, and Luke (at 11 months) was at 48 cm.