This spring has been a whirlwind of new critters and new developments at our house. To start, we got baby chicks. Awesome, hilarious, and challenging. It's been a great adventure teaching Miles to handle them gently, and trying to keep them out of "Nica-ville" (because if she can get one, she squeezes a death-grip on it!). We've made it through the 'baby chick' phase with no tragedies!
We also added a "praying mantis egg sack" to our zoo ... and last week a whole pile of baby praying mantises hatched out. We're trying to keep them alive with 'fruit crawls' (flightless fruit flies) but our success rate is yet unknown.
Little Anika has gained mobility (hurray Sneaka!) but she's most adept at backwards and circular travel. Amazingly, she is able to sit herself up from a lying position (the first few times, we were sure she had been helped, but now she does it regularly - I am honestly shocked that she has the core strength for that at this age - I've signed her up to be an Olympian (no pressure!)). She's by far our smiley-est baby -- she seems to expect that someone is smiling at her at all times, and she looks around until she finds a smile. Perhaps that's a learned habit - the benefit of having 2 older siblings is that someone IS always smiling at her!
Little Miles has seen the most change this spring. Although he's still a little peanut in size, now at 2-and-a-half, he's matured into a full-blown little boy. His language has exploded such that he now speaks in full expressive paragraphs and gives us precise insight into his busy little mind. We used to marvel at how much he could communicate with a few carefully chosen words, and now he narrates his entire world-view "I slipped but I got up and I'm fine because I'm a
toughie." In the past few months, he's been full of endearment: "You are my FAV-orite mama" or "I want a hug from your tummy" and "Can I sleep on your tummy?" when he crawls into my bed in the morning. I get the feeling that these are the things he's wanted to say for months but until now he hasn't had the words. These days he has as much language as personality and it has been all together hilarious and lovable. I feel so proud of him, and yet this time around I know what a transition he is going through, and I am mourning the loss of the baby boy I love so much.
This spring has been a whirlwind of new critters and new developments at our house. To start, we got baby chicks. Awesome, hilarious, and challenging. It's been a great adventure teaching Miles to handle them gently, and trying to keep them out of "Nica-ville" (because if she can get one, she squeezes a death-grip on it!). We've made it through the 'baby chick' phase with no tragedies!
We also added a "praying mantis egg sack" to our zoo ... and last week a whole pile of baby praying mantises hatched out. We're trying to keep them alive with 'fruit crawls' (flightless fruit flies) but our success rate is yet unknown.
Little Anika has gained mobility (hurray Sneaka!) but she's most adept at backwards and circular travel. Amazingly, she is able to sit herself up from a lying position (the first few times, we were sure she had been helped, but now she does it regularly - I am honestly shocked that she has the core strength for that at this age - I've signed her up to be an Olympian (no pressure!)). She's by far our smiley-est baby -- she seems to expect that someone is smiling at her at all times, and she looks around until she finds a smile. Perhaps that's a learned habit - the benefit of having 2 older siblings is that someone IS always smiling at her!
Little Miles has seen the most change this spring. Although he's still a little peanut in size, now at 2-and-a-half, he's matured into a full-blown little boy. His language has exploded such that he now speaks in full expressive paragraphs and gives us precise insight into his busy little mind. We used to marvel at how much he could communicate with a few carefully chosen words, and now he narrates his entire world-view "I slipped but I got up and I'm fine because I'm a toughie." In the past few months, he's been full of endearment: "You are my FAV-orite mama" or "I want a hug from your tummy" and "Can I sleep on your tummy?" when he crawls into my bed in the morning. I get the feeling that these are the things he's wanted to say for months but until now he hasn't had the words. These days he has as much language as personality and it has been all together hilarious and lovable. I feel so proud of him, and yet this time around I know what a transition he is going through, and I am mourning the loss of the baby boy I love so much.
