Thad's Words

I thought I'd take a minute to make a list of the words that Thaddeus says. He doesn't really say much and prefers using gestures and voice inflection to his little sounds to get his point across. Actual words that he says, preceded by the way that he pronounces them:

"bah" = bye
"hey" = hey
"mama" = mommy, daddy, auntie, memaw
"djuece" = juice
"koo keh" = cookie
"ka kuh" = cracker
"kah" = car
"mow" = more

He also says animals sounds for a cow "moo", sheep "baa", dog "wuh wuh" (his version of a dog barking), and an in and out "f" sound which he believes is made by a bunny since that is what we taught him :).

He also uses sign language to say cat and please, always with a big proud smile.

He has said other words once or twice without putting them into use and we do not hear them anymore or only did once:

"yaya" = Callia (not anymore)
"mayma" = Memaw (not anymore)
"dada" = daddy (not anymore)
"eeee" = horse neighing (once)
"uh yuh" = I love you (once)

I am trying to teach him more signs and please is a new one that I require him to say in order to get something he wants, just to get him to use some type of language. I don't know if he has more words than I know of and that I just can't understand them, but I doubt it because most of his noises sound like "uh duh" and another one I can't think of right now. He uses various tones that really do say a lot, like he is singing the way he feels. Fits are becoming very frequent as he has more complex thoughts that he cannot express and he gets angry with me for not understanding his gestures and sounds, especially when he wants something specific. I'm trying to figure out how I can learn more signs myself because I really don't know that many relative to how many words I use when I talk to him, and he seems to have less aversion to signing things than saying them.

Pictures

Sho...for anyone who ish intereshted, I have added and backdated a bunch of pictures for July-September.

Busy Man

Thaddeus makes us all laugh when he plays because he seems so serious and purposeful about what he is doing.

He was playing with blocks here yesterday after his nap while Sarah and Julie were over, and was moving them around in the little wagon that they are kept in. There were two blocks missing so two holes, and he was moving blocks from full spaces to empty ones, over and over and over, essentially rearranging them endlessly while we were talking. Eventually Sarah pointed out that although he was doing almost nothing, he felt it was something significant and at one point when the blocks looked no different to us, he clasped his hands in delight and when Sarah congratulated him he bashfully scrunched up his shoulders, covered his face with his clasped hands and grinned!

This type of play is very typical for him and he will, for instance, get tupperware out of the pantry and use it to carry blocks around. He'll put blocks or other items from one container to the next, endlessly rearranging them, and carrying them to different locations in the house, such as from the living room carpet to the bottom step in the foyer and back again on various trays and in buckets. Every little movement is so purposeful and his face is so dead panned serious. He will not be interrupted except to be congratulated and sometimes not even them. If I try to talk to him he just brushes past as if he's too busy for such things.

What a funny silly little guy. I think he is absolutely delightful.

Not Again

Callia is still not feeling great about pictures.

Silliness

"Bunnybear"

He's almost good enough to eat.

Starting School

Tuesday was Callia's first day of Kindergarten at Hugh Mercer Elementary. Her teacher's name is Ms. Jones, who is a seemingly sweet and quite professional black woman who has apparently been teaching for about 30 years, according to Barbara down the street, who we met at the bus stop Tuesday afternoon. Anyhow, so far so good with school for Callia, although she has only gone for two days. Today she didn't go because she had some kidney tests down at VCU Medical Center and an appointment with the urinologist, which thankfully went quite well.


Comments Callia had about her first day of school:

While sitting in the car waiting to be dropped off at the curb:
"I don't want to go to school, Mommy, I think I just will miss you and I want to stay with you"

After school referring to my promise that someone would be there to hold her hand and help her to class:
"Nobody held my hand and I just had to walk down the hall and find my class where they pointed."

"I made a friend on the bus" "I don't know what her name is" "The bus driver was very very mad and yelling a lot" "Me and my friend were being quiet while the other kids were yelling when the bus driver got mad" "She was just yelling and yelling and yelling"

"I made a friend in class and her name is Clair"

"The B-I-B-L-E yes that's the book for me....we sang that song in class today"


So overall to me it sounds like a pretty rough start and I'm a bit concerned about how harsh her bus driver is. I'm sure Callia will be able to adjust but I'm not sure that I want her to get used to that kind of situation...I'll have to think about that for a bit. Running back and forth to pick her up and drop her off will be difficult especially once the weather starts getting cold and I'll have to bundle Thad and strap him into the car seat....ugh! We'll see. Callia's view so far is that school is good, despite all the negative comments. I think that in general she shared with me the things that she thought were bad and not so many of the things she thought were good, since she would probably consider good to be normal. Hopefully. Thank goodness she is a good communicator. What do parents do when there child isn't? I'd be out of my mind with worry.

Thanks Uncle Brent

Went down to MCV for Callia to get some tests done and Brent met us there. While we were hanging out in the garden and "lawn" of the Museum of the Confederacy next to the hospital he convinced Callia to let me take her picture by getting in the picture with her! Yay! So here are some long overdue pictures of Callia:In the picture above they are sitting on the anchor chain of the Merrimac, and below is our dear sweet Callia posing on a shaft from the same ship. I love this picture:
And one with Thad, too:

I think it'd be nice to actually visit this museum sometime. I'll probably need to wait until these little angels are a little older, though. :)

Rocks are fun...

...but tomatoes...





...are more fun!

Wrinkles for the Brain

Thaddeus especially enjoyed the watermelon, and used it as a learning experience on the subject of how liquids work. Apparently, you can't eat watermelon juice with a fork.


Maybe I should be directing him a little more, though...

Watermelon Eating Technique

So I cut up one of the watermelons that I grew in the garden and it was delicious!

Bedtime Snuggles

Thaddeus is such a snuggler. Tonight we were having a hard time getting him to bed and I think it was because he was just a little low on snuggling. He had a lot of good play time with me today and it was a great day, but when Nathan went to put him to bed and I went to put Callia to bed, Thaddeus just cried and cried like we were killing him. I put Callia to bed, which is not a short process, and as I came down her stairs and still heard Thad crying, I decided to see if Nathan needed any backup. I opened the door and he was leaning over the crib rubbing Thad's back and trying to get him to lay down, but Thad was just a tearful, boogery, sobbing mess. So with Nathan's permission I picked him up and held him. Then when Nathan was going to leave the room Thad was very upset about that, so Nathan stayed in the room and paced around. We went through several rounds of throwing the blanket on the floor and fussing and getting put back in the crib and crying and being picked back up and crying a little less and then getting mad about something and starting over. I think it takes a while once he gets upset for him to realize that I am in for the long haul and I am going to be there for him as long as he needs me. At some point Nathan decided to go ahead and leave which temporarily made things worse. But at the end of the next "round" when I picked him up, he snuggled into my shoulder with his blanket, didn't scream when I sat down in the rocking chair, and we rocked together comfortably. I kissed the top of his little head and the back of his little hand which was on my shoulder. He pushed the back of his hand back onto my lips for another kiss. Then again and again, and I must have kissed his hand two dozen times. Then I started kissing his little fuzzy head again and must have kissed his head a few dozen times as well. I squeezed him and he "sang" a song that went "uuuuUUUHhh....uuuuUUUHhh....dada..dada...dada..daDA...daduuuuhda" and rubbed his face on me and got a few more kisses on top of his head. After about ten minutes he was ready to be put in bed. He didn't seem any closer to being asleep than he was when we started, but I guess he had been thoroughly snuggled and was secure enough to lay down and try to sleep.

Summer Reading

Callia is going to be starting Kindergarten soon and we have gone to the library to get books from the summer reading list for rising kindergartners. Corduroy was on the list and I remember it being one of my favorites when I was little!

No Pictures!

Callia has not been wanting to have her picture taken lately. Here is a good one of her playing with Play Doh:

Story of a Morning

I was about to send Nathan an email about how my morning was going and I thought to myself "There's no need to bother him with this, I'll just blog it and it'll probably be funny later".

So Thaddeus is cutting at least three teeth at once right now. I'm not sure about the top but as he was screaming yesterday I saw two molars and one of the second incisors partially through on the bottom. So he has been a little grumpy, especially in the morning, yesterday and today.

When I got him out of his crib I needed to go to the bathroom so I put him down on the floor. He found a flower pot that he had been playing with the other day while I was cleaning my room. He had been putting some of Callia's necklaces in and out of it very carefully as he sat on the floor. But this morning for no apparent reason he threw it on the bathroom floor and it shattered. So I had Callia carry him into his room and close the door while I cleaned it up. Of course he screamed. But then I saw his crocheted blanket, which he had left in the hall, dissappear under the (rather wide) crack in the door, and the crying stopped.

Then, who knows why, but he was mad at his juice this morning. He took one sip and handed it back to me. I inspected it and there was nothing wrong with it so I gave it back to him, and he threw it on the floor. I picked it up and checked the lid to see if it had loosed, and set it down on the dining room floor saying he could have it if he wanted. He went and sat down beside it while I was getting something for them to eat for breakfast, and Callia sounded the alarm "Mom! Thaddeus just spilled all of his juice!" His pajamas were soaked and there was a large pool around him on the floor. He crawled out of the wettest area as I mopped it up with a towel, then I stripped his clothes off of him. Then of course he needed a bath but I decided to just use wipes.

I suppose the story is a little anti-climatic, but as a mom who woke up hoping that I'd be able to get ahead on the chores around the house instead of just keeping up, it was a pretty crazy and discouraging first fifteen minutes of the day. We'll see how the rest of it goes. Hopefully he has it out of his system but that's not usually the way these things go.

Idlewild with Jeff and Mary

We went to Idlewild amusement park for children with Jeff and Mary during a visit to Grandpa Mike's family up in Johnstown, PA. The kids had a great time and Callia really hit it off with her second cousin Abby. Aren't they cute?

Thad Watching TV

Sleep Crash

Lately we've been having trouble getting Thaddeus to go to sleep. The normal routine for naps and bedtime is:

1. Pick him and his blanket up
2. Lay the blanket over your shoulder
3. Lay Thaddeus over your shoulder
4. Thaddeus quickly relaxes and falls asleep
5. Gently lay the baby in his bed
6. He immediately stands up and starts screaming
7. Listen to him scream for 10 minutes until he goes to sleep

Today at nap time however, after he stood up I (for no particular reason) started rubbing his face gently with his blanket. Then to my surprise he slowly sat down and then rolled from a sitting position onto his stomach and fell asleep. Then this evening I got even more dramatic results. Same general scenario except when I rubbed his face with the blanket, he fell over like a tree struck by lightning and slammed face down onto his mattress, and he was out! It was kind of crazy, and made me glad I hadn't set him in bed to close to the side of the bed.

Thad's Antics

We went to lunch today at one of the many nearby burrito places, and Thaddeus was cracking me up there so I thought I'd put it down here!

He was eating a chicken quesadilla by holding one of the triangles and taking bites off of it. He feigned surprise at the taste of the first bite, even though he had already eaten two other triangles. After taking a couple more bites, with breaks in between to give Nathan huge, cheesy smiles, he peeled it open a little, stuck his finger through it, and held it up like a flag. Then he squeezed it in his little fist, placed it carefully onto his shoulder, and left it there. After he removed the quesadilla from his shoulder he asked for a chip by pointing and saying "duh?", and when he got it, he held it out in front of him with two hands and danced with it. We don't want to encourage him to play with his food so we tried to keep our laughter down, and did scold him when he threw something on the floor, but it is just so funny!

Another funny thing he did today was point to my chest and ask for "juice". For me that is a sign that he needs to be completely weaned as soon as possible before he gets too verbal about it and can argue with me when I tell him no! He is already down to just once a day.

bunny bear, meet toilet...

Today, Thaddeus discovered the joys of fishing.
Unfortunately, he was not fishing in a river. Further adding to the misfortune, he was fishing with his precious stuffed animal, bunny bear.
Needless to say, it was still very cute, and bunny bear is being washed!

15 months old

Nathan and I looked back at some pictures of Callia when she was around Thad's age and I thought it would be nice to post up a picture of each of them. Each of them are supremely special in completely different ways, and it is even evident in the pictures. Aren't they sweet? I love this age and both of these pictures.

I'm not sure if your browser is doing as bad a job of resizing the picture of Thad as ours is, but if so, click on it to see a clearer version at 800x600px.

Walking Baby

Yay! We've got a walking baby! He is unsteadily toddling around now, and has been playing in the yard some this week. He took his first steps about two weeks ago (oops, I should have written it down!) and just within the past two or three days he has been doing it enough that I actually expect it when I put him down, whereas before I was expecting him to immediately drop down and crawl. He is unsteadily toddling around on a fairly regular basis and has been able to play around in the yard a little bit, which he has enjoyed a lot and I have appreciated since I can put him down without him being in the dirt.

Hooray Thaddeus! We're so proud of you!

Censored

Baby's have no shame, and that can be really cute sometimes. We'll have to show his girlfriend this when he's 16...

"Uhm...there's something in there."

Today for the first time Thaddeus told us that he had a poopy diaper. He was standing in front of the TV watching it and I actually heard him do it, which is unusual. He turned around and looked at me and pulled on the bottom of his onesie, pointed to his butt, looked down there, up at me, down there and back up at me again and said "duh?" Nathan saw it happen, too, and we both had to laugh. Silly little guy. :)

Thad loves gadgets

Lately, Thaddeus has been obsessing over anything with buttons on it, or a flashy screen. So, he's been dying to get a hold of our cell phones and camera. I got a new cell phone yesterday, and he would start screaming his head off every time he saw it and didn't get it in his little hand. Not just "boo hoo hoo" crying, but full out shark attack victim screams. Crazy kid...

Who likes ice cream covered shirts?

THADDEUS!!!

Earlier today we went to Carl's for ice cream, and Tammy let Thad have a few bites of ice cream (he won't lick, just bite). So, after a couple of minutes, the area around his mouth is pink and dripping with delicious, strawberry ice cream. There was apparently a little to much delicious, strawberry ice cream around his mouth, because he proceeded to wipe it on Tammy's green shirt. A moment ticks by, and then he looks at the shirt and sees a decent sized pile of ice cream on Tammy's shoulder and starts biting the ice cream off of her. It was hilarious.

Diaper Cream

I've finally come across a diaper cream that helps a little. We went through many tubes of stuff that didn't do any good. Its called "California Baby"; its white and smells minty. A funny thing about it is that you have to shake it.

Thaddeus HATES having his diaper changed, especially if he has a rash, which has been the case over the past week because I have a lot of head congestion and can't smell anything. When I can't smell anything I don't know his diaper is dirty until I check, which is seldom soon enough to prevent a rash, especially if it happens over and over again. Poor baby! He screams like crazy.

But, if he is not screaming he does something really funny when I get the cream out and shake it. He holds out his little tiny index finger. I put the cream on my index finger so its his way of asking if he could please have some, too. Of course I can't let him have any so it makes me feel bad, but its oh so very cute!

Gardening

I have been spending a lot of time outside turning our little front yard into a garden the past couple of weeks. Callia enjoys helping me, too, and we have had some special time together. We were planting some English ivy last week and she was helping a lot. She dug a couple of the holes, put some of the plants in, and put in a lot of the compost. She'd say "compost comin' up!" and come over with a scoop of the composted manure to put in a hole. She was so cute. I used to love gardening with my mom, and I'm so glad she does, too! I know not all kids like that kind of thing. It has been really special and I look forward to doing it some more with her.

You Would Think I Starve Him

Thaddeus is such a little scavenger, and I try to sweep and vacuum the floors a lot because of it.

Just a couple of minutes ago I was sweeping the living room floor around and under the couch and computers while Thaddeus played around on the floor. I would sweep some cereal and miscellaneous items out from under the couch and he would eat the cereal, so I started quickly sweeping it into the dust pan, which prompted him to just eat it out of the dust pan. So I go to empty the dust pan before I am anywhere near done sweeping, and as I come back from the kitchen I see him lifting up the skirt of the couch, pulling out cereal, and eating it!

"Yeah?"

Earlier this week I thought maybe Thaddeus was nodding in answer to my questions, so I started asking him extra questions to see if maybe he'd nod. I'd ask things like "You ready to go get Callia from preschool?" and he'd nod. :) So cute! Then a couple of days later he started saying "Yeah?" while he was nodding, I guess because I would ask him a question such as "Do you want more yogurt?" and I would say "Yeah?" as he was nodding. So he started saying "Yeah?" as he was nodding, too, in exactly the same tone as I did. He's so smart!

That's what Nathan said, too. When I told him about it he tested it out, asking Thad a question, and Thad responded appropriately to show Daddy his new trick. Nathan said "Well, maybe he'll talk pretty soon after all"! I thought the same thing. He has been so quiet I thought maybe he'd take a while to talk but maybe he'll just skip the babbling and go straight to talking. For now he mostly "talks" when he is really trying to communicate something. He points and says "duh".

Callia was constantly making noises as she was learning to talk but honestly she still does constantly make noise so I guess it wasn't really an effort to talk, more like just because noise is fun. No joke, she is playing a video game right now and making noises and saying a mix of actual words and nonsense words related to the game just to keep her voice busy. Its funny because at the time I felt like her babbling was part of the process of learning to talk (which for her it may have been), so I figured since Thad was not babbling much he is not bothering to learn to talk. However, it appears his little brain is still absorbing and learning language, just not as loudly! Silly me for thinking he'd go through the same steps as Callia!

Applesauce Eyes

Thaddeus is so funny when he eats (what 13 month old isn't?) !! Whenever he doesn't want something you're trying to feed him, he swipes his hands all over the place in an effort to keep you from being able to put it in his mouth. Then if you actually do get it in there he will gag and stick out his tongue to get it out! Although there are times where he does it for the entire meal, sometimes it is even with food that he was enjoying just a moment before, and sometimes he starts enjoying it again if you just wait a minute!

This morning he was cracking me up. I was feeding him applesauce, which he was enjoying, but he decided he'd had enough, so he started flailing his arms all around in front of his face. The funny part was that he was squeezing his eyes shut, fully expecting something to hit him in the eye! Its a testament to how often that actually happens. When he went to open his eyes, it was as if they were stuck shut and he was mentally prying them open slowly; he was so convinced he was going to get something in them.

Yay! Cuteness!!!

Poor little Thaddeus is sick tonight, all bright with fever. We took pity on the little guy when he cried instead of going to sleep at bedtime, and "just this once" he was allowed to come downstairs with us to fall asleep on Nathan at the computer, which he loves to do. Nathan watched a video on utube of a guy playing "Indiana Jones" on the organ. At the end there was applause, and...

...Thaddeus clapped along with them!

Now Nathan is watching SNL clips and Thad is clapping along with the audience for that, too. The sound of the fat little hands patting together couldn't be any cuter!!! And the proud smile on his little face tops it all off. He's delightful!

Born on My Birthday

I had a conversation with Callia in the car on the way to Maegen's house yesterday about how Cambric is going to be born soon. Callia asked when she was born and I told her, April 5th, 2003. She said "April 5th! My birthday is in April!," so I told her "That's why your birthday is on April 5th, because you were born that day." The expression I saw her make next in the rearview mirror was so adorable and it said "Ohhh, thats an incredibly deep concept, but I get it." It made me smile. She's a smart kid.