12/17/07

NOAH
We’ve decided to get Noah’s speech assessed and potentially take advantage of the free speech therapy that’s available through EC Cares. As adorable as his mispronunciations are, he’s getting old enough that it needs to be addressed. Mostly the s-blends in the beginning of words, like “spider” or “spoon” which become “poon” and “pider” and some of the consonants inside words get dropped. He also does a funny substitution of the letter “g” for “d” in some words, so “design” becomes “gesign.” Some words are just unexplainable like “pliano” for piano. Apparently if we address the issues with speech therapy now, it’s really easy to solve and won’t take long. Aside from the pronunciation concerns, there are the funny kid phrases, which just show the complexity of the English language, like “Why you didn’t putted…?” Some of the phrases, we’ve been working to correct, like changing “what you said?” to “what did you say?”

Noah enjoyed Hanukkah and got closer to being able to spin a dreidel. He really liked the latkes this year, which was new, given his unusual lack of appreciation for potatoes. His greatest wishes for Hanukkah presents were a music box and snow globe. He got the former and the later will probably come for a birthday present. We don’t know for sure how he picked up an interest in those items. We think the snow globe came because there’s one in Mary Poppins. I have to say though that I wonder how many 3-almost 4-year-old boys (or kids in general) in America were asking for a snow globe and music box for the holidays. It was a refreshing innocence in the face of the consumer culture with all the tv and movie related toys. He’s not totally immune though. We were in TJMaxx and he saw some Spiderman toy and started whining like crazy that he wanted it. Mind you, he’s never seen Spiderman anything, but enough other kids have Spiderman related products that he knows it’s something cool!

His recent favorite song is “Miracles of Miracles” from Fiddler on the Roof. It has presented plenty of opportunity for discussion including what are miracles, what does “slew” mean (as in David slew Goliath), and giants. He’s big into both miracles and giants right now. The interest in giants has been piqued by several stories he’s read lately that have featured giants. And then to learn that Goliath was a giant, just added to his appreciation of the song. One day we were listening to the song and discussing miracles on the way to swim lessons. When we got there he didn’t hold my hand in the parking lot. Although I generally insist he do so, I didn’t make a big deal out of it because he was right by my side and being safe. When he got across and on to the sidewalk he said to me, “Mama, you know why I wasn’t holding your hand? I didn’t need your help because God will help me!” I didn’t know whether to be proud, amused, or appalled. I countered by saying, “Noah, do you know how God helps little boys? It’s by giving them mamas to look after them. Next time, you’ll hold my hand!”

His drawing skills have really taken off lately. His pictures look like people, with the right features. He shocked me one day last month with the clown picture I uploaded here. He drew the face and then the body (complete with belly button), then put on arms and legs, hands and feet. He started drawing fingers, counted to 5, paused and then kept going, while explaining that he had extra fingers because he was a clown and funny. Same with the toes. “They’re long, because he’s funny.” He loves to cut things out too, so he and Cary have taken to making finger puppets. The other picture here is of the puppets he made one morning last week. He brought them in to me and explained that there was a robot, a giant (the one with the long neck obviously), and a ghost daddy and a ghost mommy and the ghost mommy has a baby. I loved the pregnant “ghostie.”

In less pleasant news, his newest set of annoying tricks is saliva based. He is constantly filling his mouth up with spit and swishing it around and or occasionally spitting. It’s driving us nuts. Of course we don’t tolerate it, and have tried several approaches to getting him to stop, but nothing seems to work. So, life, while good overall, isn’t with out its challenges.


AVI
I feel like we’ve already lost our newborn to an active baby. Avi is close to 17 pounds. He is grabbing and holding things, transferring things between hands and mouth, giggling, blowing raspberries, screeching, teasing, and flirting with everyone. Nursing has new challenges. Though he often still rubs my chest back and forth with his free hand, he now has taken to hitting me enthusiastically as well. Pounding actually. And I unintentionally made him cry recently when he bit me so hard with his toothless gums that I yelped loudly, pulled him off and said, “No, Avi!” We were both shocked and surprised. I wish I could say that was the last time, but no, and that boy has a strong jaw! He also gets easily distracted whenever Noah is anywhere around. I even tried to have Noah just sit still beside me one time to see if Avi would be happy nursing if he could look at Noah, but no, he couldn’t nurse if he was ogling his brother. He adores Noah. He laughs easily and smiles at everyone, but Noah seems to get them even without trying. He just walks up to him and puts his face in Avi’s and Avi cracks up.

Avi has started fussing at dinnertime. It really seems like he’s saying, “Hey what’s going on here and why don’t I get a piece of this?” So we decided he was ready to try some rice cereal. Auntie Jenn pointed out that it might also give an option for feeding him so that Cary and I could go on a date when we are all in Hawaii, because he still refuses a bottle. I think in his 4.5 months of life this chubby baby has had less than an ounce from a bottle. We’ve tried a sippy cup several times too, but no luck, nevermind that it’s filled with breastmilk. We let Noah give him his first few spoonfuls of rice cereal. His face lit up. He looked so excited. That was three days ago. I think now that he was just excited that Noah was putting something into his mouth, because it hasn’t excited him since. Today he threw a fit about it. I wonder how weaning will go with this nipple-chomping, voracious velociraptor.

We’ve made no progress on sleeping through the night. Although we are frequently successful in letting him fall to sleep on his own in the crib, he still wakes up several times a night, rarely sleeping past 1 or 2 before his first feeding and then wanting feedings every one to two hours after that.

He’s getting much stronger. He doesn’t mind tummy time anymore and can hold him self up on his arms. He’s accidentally rolled over from tummy to back twice. He really startled himself both times. He still hasn’t managed to go from back to tummy but I think that’s because whenever he’s on his back he does crunches. He must have the best baby abs ever because he does hundreds of crunches a day, with each one lasting several seconds sometimes. He’s so focused on trying to sit up that he isn’t moving in the right position for rolling over. I have no doubt that he’ll get there eventually.