Milestones

Iris has her 3rd tooth. She ate her first shrimp last night. We are trying to keep her from eating grains, but she eats lots of chips and rice off of the floor. She remains completely awesome. She wakes about twice at night, sometimes zero, sometimes 4, when she's sick. She can walk if you hold her hands. Yesterday she climbed the stairs at my friend's house in the 2 minutes it took me to turn my back to change Clark's diaper. Yes, she is my danger girl. She babbles her own little baby language and doesn't do any baby signs. She does shake her head sometimes to say no, but that one she made up herself. She adores all of us, as she should. She loves dogs and laughs uncontrollably in their presence.

Clark has 20 teeth. He eats everything except for gluten, and whatever else he doesn't want to eat. If it was up to him, all meals would involve cake, candy, cookies, chocolate, Brussel sprouts, carrots or peas. He asks if everything is "gluten free" and revels in things that are. When we were going through the halloween candy, Tom let Iris chew on a bag of Skittles. Clark told her, "that's gluten free, Iris." it was super cute. He loves Iris and involves her in almost everything. He does not like it when he is sitting or standing on a chair and she cruises over. In those circumstances he pushes her. He also likes to roll on her, but I think he thinks its loving and a fun game. She does not always agree. He steals her walker all of the time and calls it his bulldozer. He loves trucks, firetrucks, tractors, construction equipment, rockets, airplanes, helicopters, machines of any sort. He is taking a soccer class this fall with his friend, Will Clark (born 4 days after him to Katie Noonan). It is a little over his head, but it is for all of the kids too. Maybe we'll try again next year. He loves his friends, especially Owen Farmer, who he asks about all of the time. Anytime we get in the car or I talk on the phone he hopefully says, "Owen?" He likes painting, glueing things, cooking with me - especially pouring and mixing. He pulls the chair all over the house to be able to reach things that we've put out of his reach. He has an imagination now and is always talking about monsters. He isn't afraid of them, sometimes we hide from the monsters and jump out to scare them. He is at an incredibly fun age. We go to the playground every day. He loves the swings - still, and is a great climber. He is able to play games with the other kids in the park, and I especially like it when they chase each other! He's very polite and says "thank you" unprompted most of the time, "your welcome" when someone says thank you to him. I wish he would always say "please" instead of whining, but he doesn't. Hmmmmm....... He has a guitar toy and loves to dance around with it while listening to music. He has a career in the Rock arts in the future. He loves to dance, then slam the guitar on the ground, and then roll around. He is awesome. I have zero clue where he got that.

I have 27 teeth. I have my most profound thoughts about life, children, motherhood, faith and family when we are walking in our nearby woods (Rock Creek). I always hope to come home and write a blog about it but never do. I ran a 10K in 1 hour 9 minutes and 36 seconds. I stopped to tie my shoe and use a port a potty in that time. I am amazing. It was an incredible race. I should write about it one day, but not today. I am taking ballet which is offered by our city and I love it. I hope I can take it forever, but it will depend on my work/teaching schedule. I am working with friends Kathryn and Sarah to make a co-op preschool for our kids, its fun. I am co-leading the moms group at our church with a program called Play and Pray. Its a playgroup with prayer, just like it sounds. We meet once a month and love it. I've got a number of parenting groups on facebook that I'm coordinating. I'm teaching childbirth stuff and starting to take Doula clients. I've been to two births so far and I like it. I continue to love Tom, Clark and Iris, which is perhaps the most important thing I do.

Tom has 28 teeth. He will turn 35 this weekend and is very excited about this landmark birthday. He recently had sinus surgery. His mom came out to help us through it, watching the kids while I went to the hospital and to appointments with him. Thank God she was here. He likes work and is doing his big neuroscience conference next week. He's excited to be planning a big road trip for us. We will be driving down to Louisiana for Thanksgiving! He was in a triathlon at the beginning of October and got 1st place in Swimming, 15th overall. Isn't that awesome?!?! He really kicked its butt! He likes his job still, but I think we all secretly want to move further South. So, keep that in mind when searching the government classifieds for neuroscience jobs. ;-) (if any NEI people are reading this, its just a fantasy, and we aren't really ever moving, so don't worry).

That's all I can think of now. Thanks for listening! =)

Clark Lists.

Here's some lists of things about Clark at 1 year and 3 weeks.

Clark can make the following word-like sounds...

• mama
• dada
• yumyum
• eggeggegg
• oh no/uh oh
• bababababa
• do (dog)
• ttttttt (turtle)
• kkkkkkk (Clark)
• he also "sings" along with me when I sing to him, its like humming with an open mouth and its precious.
  
• he also sings a high note when I play the guitar or he gets excited!
  

Clark can...

• clap
• wave hello
• wave goodbye (although a minute after the person has left)
• indicate all done (kind-of)
• shake his head "no"
• stab with the fork (like a murderer)
• get food on his fork
• fork food into his mouth
• put the spoon into the bowl/food area
• put the spoon into his mouth (most of the food falls off, but he's getting better)
• open cabinets
• climb stairs
• go down steps face first - crawling style
• walk
• stand up without pulling-up on an object
• bang objects together
• "play" the guitar and piano
• climb into a cardboard box
• sit happily on his potty chair
• stand on the potty stool and get his hands washed
• hug
• kiss mama and dada
• blow on our bellies =)
• sing a very high noted aria.
• almost always sleep through the night until 6am (we are now working on a 7 am wake up/expect mommy to get-to-work time)
  

things Clark doesn't like...

• wearing hats
• wearing his bike helmet
• being laid down to get his diaper changed
• balls or balloons or things that are larger than his head.
  

things that will make Clark ridiculously happy...

• being ticked on his knees, toes, and neck
• extreme peekaboo
• running between dangling things (strings, curtains)
• watching himself on video
• Tom's funny faces
• plastic Solo cups

things that Clark really likes to do right now.
Drag things around the house including:

• Alligator Piano/Xylophone drug by the string and mallet
• Puppy Dog drug by the leash
• Camera Case drug by the shoulder strap
• Shoes drug by the laces

Chew on things and walk including:

• very large cardboard boxes
• pencils, spoons, long stick-like objects (we remain vigilant for his safety)

Door interactions

• stand by the door and look out at the world
• bang on the door
• open and close the door (but not his fingers- that goes under "dislikes!"
  
• climb face first out of the doorstep

Other things

• walk around with toys and leave them scattered all over the house
• open and close cabinets and doors
• inspect everything that looks like a button, grommet, knob or protruding round thing (and see if it has milk in it)
• turn things like gears or handles and generally try to modify the environment
  
• this kid really loves mechanics.
  

We love him.
Love, Veronica and Tom.

Mobility

Here are two videos of Clark's current level of mobility.

He barely holds onto our hands now, but still needs to or he will fall forward. I tried getting him to hold onto a dowel rod and then let go, but he still leaned on it quite a bit. He's getting there...


He finds crawling faster, with an assisted walk when possible to be the best form of transportation.



We're not really ready for him to start walking yet, so its good. =)

Dishwasher love

Clark loves: the dishwasher, utensils, dancing, cruise walking, babbling and mama!

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas (although its still Advent!)

On Friday we were supposed to fly to sunny, warm Southern California for a visit with the Greenwells of SD. (Nana, Grampa, Andrea and fam and John). We cancelled this trip due to the sickos. As a consolation prize for cancelling our trip it snowed yesterday! Around 9 am the rain changed to big fat feathers of snow. They were falling thick and fast. We watched the snowfall all morning long in our jammies. (Of course I'm not in any pictures because I was taking them all. I need to keep this in mind in the future. Our great grand children will think I was an absentee mother). Since the weather outside was frightful, and we had no other plans. We took out our Christmas decorations. We had a hard time finding the tree base, but eventually we found it. We set up our artificial pre-lit tree and decorated it with the shell ornaments we bought when we lived in OB, and fake birds that I bought one year at and after Thanksgiving sale with my sister, Katie in Texas. We had a few other ornaments. Some from an ornament exchange at the Peterson's house (Stephanie from Tom's high school). Some from when I was a little girl, decorated with my name, or ones that mom made out of yarn. The cutest thing that happened, was that Clark, our little baby, crawled over to this Advent Church that we have. He started investigating it just like a little boy. He tried to grab the knobs and open the doors. He is really turning into a little explorer now. He crawls all over the house checking out corners, heating vents, knobs, handles, and doors. He is really amazing us. He just started babbling "ba ba ba ba ba" all of the weekend now. His favorite thing is still being walked around the house by his hands, or doing it himself with his walker. The sum of our decorations. Dr. and Baby Goofy. Goofy Tom is helping Clark develop his sense of humor. Clark is a big laugher and will laugh along with us if we are laughing. He's also figuring out cause-and-effect. Yesterday, Clark made a noise in a cup and Tom laughed. Then Clark did it again resulting in more laughter. So now, when he puts his mouth on a cup, he is trying to make us laugh. He gets a little glimmer in his eye like, "he he he, I'm going to make them crack up this time!" You can hear him make the noise a few times in the video.

Walking with the walker.

Here's a video of Clark walking with the walker.