Sitting down...

Lately when Caleb and I play together, I'm usually sitting on the floor or the chair next to his play table. Now that he has become more verbal these days, he'll say to me "sit down!" as a way of telling me that he wants to play with me. It's amazing what those two words from my 2 year old can do to me. At that moment, it causes my heart to melt at his desire to be with me and interact with me, and it can completely rearrange my priorities into a better perspective. Suddenly, the dishes can wait, or the laundry can sit in the dryer a little longer, or I can send that email a little later in the day. My son wants to spend time with me and that is much more important.


Speaking of sitting, Ryan is mastering the art of sitting up on
his own. This allows for many more play options. With his
hands and arms free, he can now bang things, move objects from hand to hand, and have more room to shake and rattle his toys. I can tell he's enjoying this new found freedom, except when he thinks about it, at which point he usually falls over. But this just gives him the opportunity to engage in his other favorite passtime, rolling over.

Through the eyes of a child

Recently we took a trip to the Seattle area to visit with my parents. We really enjoyed our time there and being able to spend some time with them. Caleb is still talking about our trip there. Also, it was my first time in the Pacific Northwest, very beautiful area. One thing that struck me was how much more I was able to enjoy the new experiences while sharing them with the little guys. Being able to see their looks of wonder and amazement at the things they see just makes those experiences even more rich. Viewing life through their eyes reminds me how beautiful and amazing the simple things in life are, and how wonderful our Creator is.

Ryan, watching a waterfall at a park in Bellevue.

Caleb, at Pike Place Market in Seattle, watching the men throw fish at the fish market.

There are more pics of our trip to Seattle in my photo album. The link is on the left side of this blog.

Milestone Report: Ryan turned 6 months old this past week. Happy 1/2 Birthday, Ryan! We visited the doctor this week and he is in the 97th percentile for both height and weight, 28 1/2 inches and 21 lbs 12 oz. So in 1/2 a year Ryan has grown more than half a foot and more than doubled his birth weight. He's been a busy little guy!

Raising an Extrovert

Usually I think it can be difficult to definitively assess the personality type of a person when they are only two years old, but Jason and I were pretty sure that Caleb was an extrovert as early as the second week of his life. (That's a whole other story I'll have to save for later.) Lately that has been confirmed day after day, while he begs and pleads repeatedly, "Let's go!" "Car!" "See friends!". Now I consider myself a fairly outgoing introvert, but keeping up with his social agenda has been a challenge at times. I was worn out this past weekend after all our week's excursions. I do like to take him out of the house whenever possible though. It gets him a chance to run around and experience different things. And any time we are with friends of ours or even just other people, his energy level shoots up a notch.

Ryan also seems to enjoy Caleb's personality. Ryan readily smiles for just about anybody, but his biggest smiles and laughs seem to be reserved for his brother. He enjoys watching Caleb play and interact with him. They'll even go back and forth making funny noises and laughing at each other. It's fun to watch them already at such a young age begin to form their relationship as brothers.

"Smart" and Smiles

Caleb and I were playing together earlier this week when he had a breakthrough of sorts in his social development. We were playing with some of his toys pretending to eat with play forks and plates. Then I decided to share some of mine and offered him to "eat" from my fork. He sampled some of my pretend food and then said "Thank you!". I was so pleased since this was the first time he had said it at all, and without my prompting him to. He got a big grin on his face and then decided to share his food with me. After I pretended to eat off of his fork, I said thank you to him and he said "your welcome" back to me. I told him I was proud of him for the way he was using "thank you" and "your welcome" to which he replied, "I smart!" I affirmed his declaration and had to giggle at how cute it was. It was so nice to realize that they really do listen to you as you are trying to teach them things.

Ryan has become quite the smiler these past few weeks. He'll smile at pretty much any face he sees. At church he'll even smile at people walking down the aisles on the other side of the sanctuary. And if you've been to Lake Ave Church you know how far away that is. The other day I was holding him while watching the news and noticed that everytime they showed a closeup of the news reporter, Ryan flashed a wide smile at them.

Phrase and Milestone of the Week

Caleb is into saying "SALSA" whenever he eats something that's a bit spicy. He pronounces it with great emphasis on the vowels, so it ends up sounding pretty funny and cute. Lately he'll even say "salsa and chips".

Ryan has been rolling over from his tummy to his back. He's been working on the reverse and has actually succeeded a couple of times. He also likes sitting on my lap while I'm sitting on the floor "Indian style". It makes a great place for him to practice sitting up by himself.

I love Central Park

This past Thursday morning, Caleb, Ryan, and I went to Central Park, near old town Pasadena. Since the weather was cooler we could finally spend some time outdoors comfortably. Pasadena has many great parks, but lately Central Park has been my favorite. It has a nice shady play area that is built low to the ground, great for toddlers, lots of big trees which Ryan likes to watch as their leaves move in the wind, and a coffee shop nearby where I can get my morning java. Also, lots of trucks run up and down Fair Oaks, the street adjacent to the park, and Caleb loves to watch them go by. He will exuberantly name each type of truck as it passes. There's a Fire Station across the street as well, so every once in a while we get a show of a fire truck or two pulling out or coming in, also very thrilling for Caleb. Usually, it's just the three of us at the park, but this morning as I was unloading us from the car, I happened to see two little figures running up to us out of the corner of my eye. I looked up to see the brightly smiling faces of Evan and Arron. They are around the same age as Caleb and a part of the weekly Mom's Group that we attend. They had seen us getting out of our car as they were playing with their mommies and siblings in the play area and decided to come greet us. So our morning at our favorite park got even better, since we got to enjoy it with some friends.

Family Outing at the Mall

Every Sunday, Jason and I and the kids spend some time together doing something as a family. Today we decided to get out of the heat and head to the air conditioned mall. We got there about 10:30 and didn't realize that they didn't open until 11:00. But even though the stores don't open til then, the mall walkways are open. I was very excited to discover this as a great way to let Caleb run around without worrying about him darting into stores or having to chase him while navigating around a lot of people. I'll have to find out how early they open their doors and remember this as a future hot weather option.
However, though the mall seemed empty, when we got to the toddler play area, it was full of parents and their kids. I guess many people have had this great revelation before I did. But Caleb doesn't seem to mind it when there are lots of kids in the play area. In fact, I think he likes it even more. He gets so excited when he runs around playing with the other kids. He does this cute lil bouncy trot when he's completely thrilled with the situation and he squeals with delight. (Which reminds me, I'm going to need to start introducing the concept of indoor and outdoor voices.) After Caleb tired of playing, we went to the food court to eat lunch. Then we headed back to our hot apartment so Caleb and Ryan (and Mommy) could take a nap.