I've been meaning to write this post for at least three weeks. It's been long enough for Miles to go from "kind of sitting up on his own" to "nothing below 3 feet is safe", so I'd better get it done before it's too late.
Miles has discovered mobility, and he loves it. He's always been very active, but now he's harnessing that power for the cause of slobbery destruction. He can't crawl continuously, but he can crawl for a few crawls at a time now, which when combined with the rolling and army crawl means he can get where he wants to go deceptively fast. And where he wants to go is the coffee table, to rip and eat magazines. He's in the stage where he grabs everything and tries to put it in his mouth. He figured out how to go from crawling to sitting on his own recently, and seems pretty please with himself. We started him on solid foods a while ago. He eats baby food just fine, but he loves cheerios and the baby puffs and yogurt drops. He is still very sweet and good-natured, and smiles at everybody. He is extremely pale, which is usually the first thing people that know our other kids say about him.
Damon is growing up and thinning out. He has discovered "no", but hasn't started abusing it yet. My favorite is when I say, "Damon, it's time to go to bed" and he replies, very sweetly and matter-of-factly, "No, daddy". He is still very active and curious, but is slowly getting better at not getting into everything. He even listens occasionally to our cries of "Get out of there!" and "Don't break that!" Along with "no" comes that stage where he wants to do everything himself. He has started dressing himself (he refuses to wear two-piece pajamas, only footie pjs will do) and even started potty training himself. And of course, he wants to wear backpacks and cut food with a knife and whatever anyone else is doing. He is talking more and more, but it's still a struggle to understand him much of the time. One of his favorite things to do now is to read books and repeat all the words as we read them. He has always mixed his consonants, like "dimosaur" and "gyankie" (blankie), but I've noticed improvements lately. Two of my favorites that he still says sometimes are "hellocopter" and "eye brown".
Carmen continues to assert her independence, which has led to lots of bickering with Olivia, who is used to always getting her way. Perhaps it's the youngest child in me, but I have a hard time not being partial to her plight (Olivia can be really domineering during playtime). On recent Sundays, Carmen has wanted to wear matching dresses with Olivia, but of course Olivia never wants to. Carmen is very emotional and any slight can throw her into a sullen state, but the flip side is that she is also very loving. She has been proactively helping around the house, like throwing away dirty diapers without being asked. She is like me in that she observes more than she talks, so we can often just communicate with a look. A few nights ago at dinner we had cuties (mandarin oranges). In the past, Olivia had gotten all the stickers and Carmen all the peels, but Carmen wanted stickers this time and Olivia refused, so they each kept their own stickers and peels. During dinner I caught Carmen's eye and snuck her at least 3 extra stickers under Olivia's oblivious nose and we shared a mischevous giggle when Olivia realized Carmen had more stickers and got upset. Carmen is to the point that she will probably start reading pretty soon. She knows how to read, and can read if coerced, but I think she doesn't like practicing with other people watching (and with her show-off sister around).
Olivia is getting to that age where I'm not sure I understand her (and probably won't for another 10 years). She and Carmen seem to compete about everything; their current competition is who gets to play with Miles. She gets frustrated when Carmen stands up for herself, but doesn't know how to play by herself, so she'll either annoy someone into doing something with her, or disappear for an hour reading a book. For a while she was really into an online math game/competition provided by the school. She's very smart. She is several grades ahead in reading, math has been a breeze so far, and she's very good on the piano. Her teacher had nothing but good things to say about her at the parent-teacher conference. Amber says Olivia is her brightest piano student. Olivia learned a simple, two-handed song with chords recently and she has been playing it constantly. She could be accurately described as hyperactive and is always jumping, bouncing, and giving spontaneous hugs at weird times (all while talking constantly, of course). One of the things I like about that energy, though, is that she's indomitably happy and bubbly to the point that she has trouble staying mad for very long. She always finds something good to talk or laugh about.
I've gotten into the habit of picking up a few extra mints when I go to restaurants for lunch, or grabbing three candies when I encounter them at work, and bringing them home to the kids. I've had a lot of catering/restuarant/celebrations/etc towards the end of the year, so now every day when I get home from work, like Pavlov ringing a bell I'm greeted by three cries of "Daddy's home! Do you have any treats?!?". Carmen and Damon stick to me like glue the rest of the night, and Olivia often trails behind unless she's reading a book, and Miles, well, he's got magazines to eat.
