MacHaffie Kids

New skills

February 13, 2007

Owen has learned to do a flat-footed jump. He can jump straight up–only a few inches, but it’s a start. Andrew has learned to jump on the trampoline at Gymboree. Owen learned another new trick. We have a small slide with a platform on top for the boys sitting in the Great Room. Owen climbed up on the platform and jumped over the edge of the couch, landing on the pillows next to me.

The boys are getting very good at helping to clean up. After they eat, we all get down on the floor and pick up any food that hit the ground. Then the boys grab the mop and broom and go to town while the adults throw away the garbage and clean up the trays.

We’ve been building a lot of train tracks for the boys recently. They keep asking to play with their trains. The train table is a big hit. They also like to pretend to make food in their kitchen set.

The boys are gradually learning to talk more on the phone. Mimi asked Owen if it was cold outside. Owen said, “Brrr cold. Brrr cold.”

New words and phrases: “fall down”, jump, purple, please (spoken now in addition to the sign), “blue Dick” (we have two versions of Dick and Jane, a yellow copy and a blue copy), “suitcase”, “sausage”, and “toothpaste”.

Pictures

Andrew and mommy riding the train

Andrew sleeping with his blanket

The boys and Abby sitting with Grandpa Larry on a bench

The boys and Abby walking with Grandpa Larry

Owen cleaning up

Owen sleeping next to daddy

Birthdays

February 2, 2007

Only five weeks until the boys turn two! Hard to believe.

Everyone was sick early in January.

We’ve had my birthday and my dad’s birthday since the last post.

The boys had to help unwrap all the presents. They were very disappointed that I didn’t get any trains for them to play with.

Every day their verbal skills continue to improve. They say quite a few two word sentences and more three words sentences: “Daddy, sit down”, “Green go” ( at lights), “Come dip”, “milk bottle”, “brrr cold”.

They also know a lot of words. I think these are some of the new ones: red, green, blue, zoommama (not sure what that means ), take, Dick, Jane, and Spot (from the Dick and Jane books), Elmo, stop, sign, shoes, socks, mustard, syrup.

They have also been working on their signs: sorry, baby, shoes, socks.

They figured out how to get through the baby gates. The gates are held closed by pressure on one side. They figured out that if they whacked the top really hard, it would move enough so it wasn’t held closed any more. Then they would just slide out the top. I fixed it temporarily by nailing a wooden block by the top of each gate.

Owen has three speeds: stop, fast, and faster. We were at the mall last night walking around. I was hanging out with Owen, and Andrew was walking with Nancy and my parents. Owen would wait until they were 50 yards or so in front of us, then he would take off running to catch up.

Andrew dragged us down to ride the train. Owen rode it once but wasn’t interested in going the second or third times. On the way out, he wanted to ride the carousel, but we had to get going. We might try taking them out to the carousel museum in Hood River later this year.

We took the boys to my company’s dinner a few weeks ago. Owen walked around with a breadstick in one hand and a large piece of bread in the other. He alternated bites from them.

For Christmas, Karen and Bob bought the boys a kitchen set. It took me two weeks to put it together. It had all these fiddly little parts.

We had enough snow that I got to work from home two extra days. We took the boys out to play in it.

Anyway, that’s about it, though I will try to update the site more frequently now.

Pictures

Owen being cute