Happy Valentine's Day!

Happy Valentine's Day from James and Matthew!

James's recent new words are bawk (chicken noise), moon, and vacuum ("bak", just like Matthew). He's also definitely saying cracker ("da-der"). He repeated "owl" very clearly when we saw the owl at the park the other day. He is starting to sign two-word combinations of "more" plus something else. This morning it was "more baby" (more Baby Signing Time), but yesterday it was more and then a sign that I couldn't figure out -- but he was clearly signing something, because he did the same gesture several times in a row.

James is also much more interested in Elmo than I would expect from a kid who hasn't seen much Sesame Street. When we arrived at Nora and Adrian's, he immediately spotted an Elmo stool, and an Elmo toy, and happily carried around Daniel's stuffed Elmo for a while. And then this morning he pointed out our Elmo DVD. (We also have a couple of books that James and Matthew like about a patchwork elephant named Elmer. Mattie says Elmer, and I'm pretty sure Jamesie does, too.)

Mattie is doing well with his colors. He's reasonably consistent with blue and white (and says them very clearly), and I think he also knows red and yellow, although his words for those two are a lot less clear. He's added Q and Y and M to the list of letters that he can sometimes identify. He may also have said his first three-word sentence ("Mama, more rice.") and is doing more two-word combinations ("brother seat" for brother's seat; "Mama sit"). He tries to say "hearing aids", although I don't think you'd guess ever that's what it was just from hearing him! Other recent words include "Daniel", "Abby" (the dog), and "airplane."  And Uncle Adrian sang the first verse of "Wheels on the Bus", and asked Daniel what else was on the bus, and Mattie answered (correctly), "baby".

Mattie is doing so much better with going to bed at night, although I think he may be starting in on the delaying tactics. Tonight we were out in the living room and I told him it was about time for night-nights. He brought me a book and I told him we could go in the bedroom and read it ("no, sit") and so then he brought another one, and another one, and another one. No, we didn't read all of them!

And, I am so excited to say, it appears that we have switched Mattie from formula to milk! We forgot to pack his formula when we went to Nora and Adrian's, and since we had some bottles made up for the trip, we didn't realize this until bedtime. So we just gave him a bottle of regular (cow's) milk. He drank it without any protest, and even better, it didn't seem to upset his digestive system like it had the last few times we tried. So we just gave him milk all yesterday and all today, and so far, so good! Woo-hoo!!