Daniel can pedal, Rachel knows about diapers...

Friends

Today we went out for an easter egg hunt with Carlos, Sergio and Ella and their parents Eddie and Kristy. It was fun, but it was all over in about 30 seconds - you have seriously never seen a field get cleaned up so fast.

Daniel has learned how to pedal his tricycle. Until now, he's been riding on it and scootching along, but he now can propel himself forward for quite a distance by pedaling, which is fun.

He also went in for a checkup on his foot with Dr. B. We have tended to forget that Daniel ever had a clubfoot because he's so mobile, but it's still important to get professional advice. Dr. B. is very pleased with the current state of his foot. There is a little more "play" in his ankle than the norm, but nothing that warrants any treatment now.

Rachel continues to pull off stunts that indicate that she understands more than she can express. No new words, but she's more consistent with them.

Today when she was dirty, so we asked her to get a clean diaper. Sure enough, she toddles over to the bathroom, opens the cabinet, pulls out 4 diapers and comes back with them.

Rachel also likes to climb on things. She can now get up on the couch by herself, which is trouble in the making, and we've caught her climbing up on her little red chair in the middle of the playroom floor. On a fun note, she's a little dancer. Play any song with a beat to it, and she'll stomp her feet and move her body to the sound. At this point, her enthusiasm for dancing resembles her mama, while her moves look more like her papa's dancing...

Daniel started swimming lessons last week. More on this later, but he had a good time.

And March Madness is almost here again. Grandpa and Farmor come this week. Go Xavier...

Until next time,

Love D.E.A.R.

Colors? Rachel knows colors?

Friends.

So about an hour ago, we had one of those jaw-dropping, "how-do-they-do-that?" moments, when we asked Rachel to go get a ball. Now, we know that she knows what a ball is, and so that request was pretty simple, but just to mess with her a little, Eric changed it to "get a yellow ball".

When she selected the yellow ball on the first try we said "ah, a fluke". Then we asked for the red ball, the purple ball, the yellow ball again and she got it right every time.

Now we knew that she understood a lot more than she could express in words, but the idea that she knows colors just blows us away because we haven't worked on that at all. By our latest count, Rachel can communicate 11 definite words (more, eat, milk, book , ball, cat, dog, bear, hat, that, Daniel) and maybe 3 more (duck, shoe, sleep). But she understands a lot more.

Daniel is big on rules these days. There is a certain way that things are supposed to be, and not supposed to be. One rule we have at the house is "no toys on the table". The other day, our dryer was broken and Anida hung some clothes to dry on the kitchen table. Daniel woke up the next morning, came downstairs and said "no clothes on the table Mama. - this is a warning". A warning is what you get before a time-out or a toy is taken away, and clearly, mama's transgression warranted a warning.

He's also big on pretend play. He's a fireman, a medic, a garbage man, a bug, a shark, a you-name-it. If you don't know how to play with a bug, he'll tell you what your next line should be; "Papa, say 'help medic'".

There are signs that Daniel is starting to see Rachel as a valid playmate. They'll alternate turns when playing basketball, and he's initiated a few things where he wanted to play with her. (though it still needs to be on his terms)

I'd love to be able to report that we're sleeping through the night these days, but that's just not true. It's a rare night that Rachel doesn't wake up around 4am, and many a night Daniel comes in to announce that he "has to go potty". He'll go on his own, he just wants us to know about it and hang out with him.

If you have a moment, we'd like to promote the following video. Our second cousin Brett has Down syndrome and this is a beautiful video with stunning pictures of individuals with Down's. Brett is appropriately placed right after the quote about the perfect person.

And that's about it for now.

Love, A.D.R. E

Taking control

Friends

Rachel has entered the "Oh no, I'm not letting you feed me" stage of eating. She'll grab ahold of the spoon and get incredibly angry if you persist in trying to feed her - she wants to feed herself.

Which is messy. Very messy. This is lasagna for dinner. Breakfast was blueberry yogurt all over her head. We learned some tricks with Daniel, though. Anything served on a grown-up utensil, or from a grown-up plate still gets eaten.

Daniel's favorite book these days is "the Gruffalo" which is a great little story about a clever mouse. Amazon says it's for reading agest 4-8, but it's just about right for him these days. Daniel's memory is incredible, it just is. He has entire passages of this book memorized. If you're reading it to him, you can stop at any point, give him a little nudge, and he'll give you the next sentence or two. The same is true of his other current favorite; Dr. Seuss' "Green Eggs and Ham". It's not just memory, though - he understands the story too, and can answer questions about it.

For President's day (Daniel thought it was "presents day" and was looking for the mailman), we went to the Children's museum along with every other family in town. Good fun. Daniel was a fireman, as he always is.

And since I didn't wait two weeks to provide an update, that's about it for now.
Love, R.E.A.D

¡Hola Amigos!

Hola!

Last week, we went on a super-secret vacation to Mazatlan, Mexico. Anida arranged the whole thing, and until the day before, Eric knew we were going "somewhere" but not where. Where the heck is Mazatlan?


It's time to confess... In the past we might have made fun of "package tours" or "all-inclusive resorts", but truth be told, it was the perfect solution for us right now. The kids had a great time playing at the beach, in the pool and in the little play area by the pool. Daniel loved being able to choose his meals from the buffet, and it was a relaxing vacation. D's vocabulary now includes "Gracias" and "Por Favor".

We only left the hotel area on a couple of occasions. Once to go to the city aquarium where Daniel was enthralled by the big sea turtle and the seal "spectacular" show. We also took a city tour by trolley. Midway through the tour, there was a cliff diver who jumped off a 45-foot cliff into the sea, and for the rest of the trip, Daniel wanted to be a "cleef diver" and fling himself into the pool.

It doesn't matter how many pink clothes Rachel wears - because her hair is short, people assume she's a boy. Someone asked "Why do you cut her hair like that?" when told she was a girl. Oh well, it's growing in. Rachel's big, beautiful blue eyes got everyone's attention.


The hotel guests were mostly families with young kids and retirees who missed their grandkids, so there were plenty of others to play with.

Our visit to Mazatlan coincided with the Carnevale celebration this year, and they have a HUGE parade of floats on Mardi Gras. Daniel thought it was pretty spectacular, but he was more interested in the tractors that pulled the floats than the floats themselves.















Both of the kids love the sand and water, so we'll be taking more vacations like this. Daniel things that everyone who is swimming is a "scuba diver" and he wants to be one too, so he'll be going to swim lessons once he turns 3.

Rachel's sign language took a big step forward in that she now knows "Ball" and can sign it and if you ask her to find it, she'll do so. Ball is significant because it's not a "need" like food.

And that's about it for now.

Love

A.D.R.E.

Queen Bee turns one.

Friends

Last Saturday, chaos reigned supreme as Rachel celebrated her first birthday.

8 kids, 8 adults and it would have been more if Ethan and Reid were healthy. A good time was had by all. Rachel made the expected mess out of the lasagna and cake, and all of the kids played well together, and until later than the parents expected.


Some gender stereotyping was on display in that she got a play kitchen set and a baby doll to play with. Rachel's not one for easy categorizations, though - when it was time to open the box with the doll, she went to get Daniel's toy drill to help.


Her one-year appointment was earlier this week, and she is, of course, perfect. Five shots were no fun, though. She weighed in at 20lbs, 11oz (40th percentile), 30 inches tall (75th percentile) and 18,125" head (also 75th). So she's tall and skinny, but no longer with a little head.


And that has to be because there's a lot going on in there. The doctor was impressed that she's both walking and has some verbal skills/words. She signs mama, papa, dog, hat, food, more, eat and what is basically "gimme that" and probably some additional signs (possibly "book"). She also understands a lot of things she can't verbalize yet. When we sing "the cleanup song" she starts putting things in boxes, when we sing "bathtime song" she goes to the stairs and climbs up. If you say "Daniel" she finds him.
















Daniel has been a great sport lately. He's been helping out with the party preparations, and he ground the nuts for Papa's hazelnut birthday cake.

"See you later Nuts. You're going to be cake.."

From the rear left:
Daniel, Harrison, Carly, Rachel, Eli, Ella, Carlos and Sergio.

That's about it for now. We'll have some fun things to report next week, but until then we'll have to leave it as a surprise.

Hasta Luego, Amigos. A.D.R.E

Little boy genius speaks

So, I know it gets old when parents brag about their kids, but Daniel is just SO smart. He really is, and I worry that if I don't write down the cool things he does, we'll forget them.

So yesterday, Anida was out of the room and Daniel asked "Where's Mama?".
I said "I don't know"
He said "I don't know too" and then thought about it for a split second and corrected himself:
"I don't know either..."

We haven't worked on this. This is all the work of little Mr. big-brain.

The day before, he was sitting at the kitchen table and he said something to the effect of "I eat the napkin, and then I spit it out" - and then he proceeded to repeat the sentence, but with a new word. He probably went on for 10 minutes. He probably ran through 100 separate words of things he could see and some he couldn't. He never repeated a word - there were 100+ unique things he "spit out".

OK, I'm not sure if that's being smart or being obsessive, but the boy is bright.

Love, A.D.R.E

I want to go on the date too...

Friends.

Almost three weeks without an update? Sorry. There was a business trip in there, and Anida's camera was/is out of commission again (never buy Canon compact cameras), but that's just not right.

Especially since it's been a really packed couple of weeks. The quote in the title came from Daniel on Friday night. The playschool hosts once-per-month date nights, and dropped off the kids and went to a nice dinner. Despite a last-minute desire to join us, they had a great time and were still playing at full speed when we picked them up 3 hours later, so we'll be doing that again.

Daniel's big thing lately has been imaginary play. He'll declare that he is a Lion/Tiger/Monkey/Scuba Diver/Mailman/garbage man and will roleplay with his toys. Then he asks that you join him: "You're a mama scuba diver" or "Rachel's a baby lion". It's good fun, and it's just remarkable to follow his fantasies. He's also really good at drawing parallels between things and coming up with accurate conclusions.

Oh, and if we didn't know it before, we need to be careful about what we say around him. The other day, Rachel was crying because she slipped and her pride was hurt, and he said "Oh, get over yourself Rachel...."





Yes, it is a video. Doubleclicking on the link or on the picture should launch it. It's from January 4 or so, so her walking is a lot more stable and now she'll stand herself up.

Rachel, well - she's been walking exclusively for the last couple of weeks. She's walk, slip and then crawl over to a wall to push herself up, but then about a week ago, she figured out how to stand up on her own. So now there's no stopping her. She'll walk up the stair from the playroom to the kitchen without falling, tries to run (and falls) and does an adorable little dance if music is playing. Basically, she has a role model to live up to, so she hasn't stopped building on the walking skill at all.

She walks with her arms slightly raised, and if Daniel is playing with something, she'll walk straight into it, and usually destroy whatever he's built in legos or his train track. She's earned her nickname of "Godzilla" - she lurches over and just knocks it over. But she does it with style...
Oh, and Daniel can now dress and undress himself (mostly, buttons are hard). He's learned how to spit out toothpaste (spitting is harder than you'd think) rather than swallowing it. And he now has a little automatic sensor on his faucet, so he can wash his own hands without any help. In his own words "I'm not little" and "I'm not big" but "I'm a little bit big".

Reid turned 2 and had a barnyard-themed party to which Daniel went as a horse, Anida as cow and Rachel was a pig in a pink dress. Next weekend, we'll have a one-year-old party for Rachel. It's amazing that it's already been a year.

Hope all is well with everyone. I'll try to get another posting out next week.


Love, R.E.A.D.