Chased by Daniel

Nora and Adrian wanted Daniel to get some exercise before their car ride home, so we hit the playground this morning. Daniel's game was to chase us all the way up the playset to the slide, and down and then do it again -- so the adults got their exercise, too!

James and Matthew wanted to climb all the way up to the top of the blue climbing thing (second picture), which is tough because it's hard to hang on to them when they're that high up.

We had so much fun with our visitors -- we were sad to see them go. Daniel is so polite these days, and he was great with sharing with the boys. He's also in the midst of potty training and doing well (although that didn't seem to provide much additional inspiration for our guys.)

I think Jamesie has gotten a little taller, because he can now reach the kitchen counters, too. He can also reach the main reciever for our phones, which is annoying because he pushes any button he can reach, and he deleted all the messages on the answering machine! (Fortunately I'm pretty sure we'd listened to them all already.) His other new hobby is climbing up on a chair in order to climb on to a table.

Someone who I won't name (but will refer to simply as "my husband") was getting stressed out about James's weight, so we made another appointment with his feeding therapist. And lo and behold, after we made that phone call, he's now up to 20 lbs, 9 oz or so, after hanging out at 20 lbs, 1 oz for a while. (Such is the power of the therapist -- James improves by us merely scheduling a visit with her!) We hope he keeps up the good work!

James continues to pick up new words all the time, though I've mostly stopped keeping track of them here. Recent ones include "stop sign", "ice cream" (though he still won't eat it), and "dinosaur."

Uncle Adrian said he heard Mattie count up to 13. Wow! (I've only heard him do up to four.) He will tell you that his brother's name is "Jamesie" (which is about the cutest thing in the world). He sings parts of lots of songs, though he doesn't know most of the words yet. And in case there's any doubt that he's a child of the modern world, today he said, "I need the iPod."