15 Months



Updates:
* Blows kisses and loves to wave goodbye (hands very high over his head and just moves his wrists). With these additional skills, he is starting to enjoy wishing Joshua and Alma well as they leave for school and work instead of bursting into tears as they head for the door. He also bows his head for kisses on the top of his head from Alma (one regular and one silent kiss, as she insists).

* He loves the show-me quilt which Alma's godfather gifted to her for her baptism. He points at all of the images and talks and talk about them. His vocabulary consists of the following ... signs: please, more, all done/all gone/not an option, bath, apple, light, water, cheese, bird, doggie, book, thank you, bear, sheep; words: daddy, ball, balloon, Simon, Shanti, sis, horse (clicking noise).  Daddy, ball and doggie are his clearest words.  Pretzel is his favorite word  that he cannot say ... he will do anything for one.  Sometimes when I call "pretzel" to him it makes me think of my childhood when we would yell "cheese" to my family's golden retriever as if it was his name.

* Finally he has mastered the stairs. I say finally because he was sooo hesitant to even try them. While he is super stable on his feet and can nearly run, he was completely unwilling to try going down the stairs backwards until very recently. But once he tried it, he was hooked and now insists on going down everything on his own. As a point of reference, Alma was going down the stairs in our South Philly house, which we moved from when she was 8 months old.

* He drinks whole organic milk and seems to really like it.  Wish we could say the same for Alma, who still will not drink it. He is generally a good eater although he is very adamant about throwing any uneaten/undesired food behind him on the floor. I keep telling him that we are happy to clean up for him directly from the table.

* He loves the mirror that is in front of him in the car (so that I can see his face) and spends our drives to pick up Alma at preschool making funny faces at himself.

* Easter morning he had his first taste of candies .... then proceeded to dance like a silly crazy man. It was awesome.

* We are in the midst of cutting back on nursing.  For Lent, like a good Catholic, he didn't "snack" between meals.  He was frustrated with me at first but now seems to understand that we will only nurse at certain times.  We are down to just three times a day, instead of our recent ten times a day. 

* When Alma offers him a Cinderella costume to play dress up, he will follow me around with it until I put it on him. Once it is on, he spins around slowly with a big smile. He is simply mirroring Alma's behavior, but it is super cute.

* He still takes a two hour morning nap (9-11am) and an hour nap in the afternoon (2:30-3:30pm). During the first nap, I work. During the second nap, which overlaps Alma's nap by 45 minutes, I usually prep dinner.

* The other night before dinner, as we held hands as a family and bowed our heads for a silent prayer, James joined the circle for the first time and smiled a sly, knowing smile during the pray. It was a very tender moment.