Tuesday, May 22, 2007

March 2007








March 5-March 11, 2007
James was out of town for business this week and Isaac really wanted to go to the airport to find him. One the morning Isaac gave Levi a hug and said, “bebe Levi, quieres buscar a papa?” He also frequently asks Levi if he wants to go to Costco or will just state that baby Levi wants to go to Costco or wants a Happy Meal.
Levi is determined to move. He’s starting to scoot himself off of blankets where I leave him. He’s also starting to sit up. He can stay sitting up for a few seconds and then he’ll loose his balance.
Levi is getting very interested in Isaac’s books and toys (mostly so that he can try to put them in his mouth).
Isaac has two new favorite phrases, “welcome to the party” and “what a tizzy” (he gets that last one from the Llama llama red pajama book.
Isaac is starting to grasp the concept of quantity. On Friday he picked up the two Diego action figures and said two Diegos.
We had Sunday dinner over at Alisa and Lonnie’s place and when we left I told Isaac to say goodbye to Alisa as I put him in the car. He looked up at Alisa and said, “good-bye Alisa.” And then he paused and said, “I’ll be back Alisa” It was pretty cute, especially since I didn’t prompt him.

March 12-18, 2007
Isaac can say a lot of phrases in Spanish now. Yesterday he said “mama, quieres jugar con los juguetes?” and tonight he said “mama, quieres leer cuentos?”
James and Isaac have several new bedtime ritual games “oh no” “touch the bathroom, run and jump” “superman” “upside down touch the ground” “bing with the ball” (also called “pachunk” and “hattionk”—a word invented by Isaac himself)
Levi really wants to sit up by himself but he tips over if you don’t steady him.
Isaac’s favorite stories lately are “Dragon in a Wagon” “Como Comen los Dinosaurios” “Barney’s Alphabet Soup” “Tito the Firefighter” “Mi Mami” and “Mi Papi”
Levi has been doing really well and going to sleep after going through the bedtime routine with Isaac—he’s still sleeping in his little red snow suit that we borrowed from the neighbors.
Levi- we started giving him solids on Sunday and he got right into it
Isaac surprised us by reciting almost all of the Llama Llama Red Pajama book. His favorite new phrase from the book is “what a tizzy”
Our old friend from Michigan, Jake Stroupe, just got married and moved to Houston with his wife Alyssa. It was fun to hang out with them and meet his media naranja. She’s the kind of girl we pictured Jake marrying.
Levi got some vaccinations but he didn’t get too out of wack—just a slight fever.
Isaac counting to 40 in both lang- now counting backwards too
Isaac is crazy about sequence- insists on developing lists of things in sequence… eg. #1 go to church, #2 go to nursery, #3 come home, #4 take a nap, etc.
Levi is making lots of vocalizations now—“ada” is the main one
James and I have a new babysitting agreement with the neighbors—we each watch each other’s kids once a month so that we can do a date night. On Friday night our date night was inviting Alisa, Lonnie, Hannako, and Brant over for a dinner party. We had beef kabobs with mint sauce and then played cranium. Everyone clicked amazingly well (Lonnie and Brant are both geologists) and there were some funny coincidences we discovered—both Lonnie and Brant have been to Morenci, AZ.
March 19-25. 2007
Isaac has started calling everyone “Mr.” lately and it sound pretty funny especially when he says “Mr. Papi” and “Mr. Mami”
Levi is starting to complain when toys get taken from him
So the “sleep rules” have been a big success and a couple of weeks later, Isaac decided he wanted to make eating rules. He didn’t want to stop at 10 so we had to add all of the numbers all the way up to forty even though we only wrote ten actual rules. It was cute because he knew what the first rule should be, “number one, wash your hands!” then we added 2. say a prayer, 3. eat your food, 4. be polite, 5. no throwing 6. don’t make a mess 7. sit in your chair, 8. say please and thankyou, 9. clean up your mess 10. give hugs.
Isaac’s phrase of the week is “welcome to the party”
I found this really cool marble tower toy at the thrift store by our house for 50 cents and Isaac has had “a ball” playing with it all week. He feels like a big kid playing it and he’ll say, “its fun to be a big kid,” and “that’s pretty cool.”
Isaac is doing cool stuff with language that I learned about in my linguistic classes. He’s learned the “ed” for past tense rule and now he’s overgeneralizing that rule for irregular verbs. For example, he’ll say “momma he breaked it” “he throwed it”—He hasn’t heard us say those words, so he’s sorting out the grammar in his mind and soon he’ll figure out the verbs that are irregular. Pretty cool.
Levi can sit up by himself pretty well and he is VERY interested in touching everything and exploring the taste, size, and feel of anything you put in front of him. He loves handling our big foam alphabet puzzle pieces and plastic nesting cups.
Now that Levi is more intested in Isaac’s stuff, Isaac is instantly interested in whatever Levi happens to touch or pick up and wants it to be “Isaac’s turn.” Sharing is a tough concept.
We’ve started going to my friend Amerika’s house on Mondays for another Spanish playgroup and Isaac absolutely loves it. He’ll say “vamos a bailar con Ava!”
On Saturday we were listening to a CD we found at the library with a very slow, ballad-like version of the ABC’s and I was singing along to it. Isaac looked over at Levi and said, “Baby Levi, Momma’s crying to tell us something!” (there’s a line in his big brother book about how new babies cry to tell us something.) I got a good laugh.
Levi can’t quite crawl yet, but he can sure move. He can do a few rolls and scoot himself off blankets and he always surprises me now with how far he can move from where I laid him down. He also gets kind of offended now if you lay him down because he’d rather be sitting up! (or held in a standing position or jumping!)
March 26- April 1, 2007
We couldn’t go to Ava’s house on Monday because Amerika had to run errands and Isaac was very disappointed. He really gets excited when we go to visit friends and he’s pretty disappointed when plans don’t work out. He kept saying, “vamos a bailar con Eva?” “vamos a la casa de Eva?”
Levi is sitting up very well now and he seems like he’s on the brink of crawling—yikes!! He’s get on his hands and knees and rock back and forth like Isaac did right before he crawled.
Levi is grabbing very well now and anyone wearing glasses has to be careful if his hands get too close to their face.
Jumpy, jumpy, jumpy—Levi has decided that life is a jumperoo—he loves to bounce and likes to bounce in his jumperoo, his exersaucer, the bathtub, on the floor—endless possibilities.
Isaac has discovered the fun of counting backwards and we’ve started doing “countdowns” to practice.
Grandma and Grandpa Nuttall drove all the way from Utah to visit us and they arrived on Friday night. Isaac was so happy to see them, he couldn’t stop smiling and trying to get them to dance with him. He also kept yelling, “Where are you Grandpa?, Where are you Grandma?”
Isaac has decided he’s going to be a music DJ when he grows up. He absolutely loves being in charge of the music and putting the cd player on the right “number” of song that he wants. When we’re in the car it can get kind of annoying because he’s always requesting all of the different numbers of songs he wants to hear and sometimes its just after a few notes of another song he just asked for.
On Sunday we went over to visit Grandpa Nuttall’s sister (Rosie) who lives in part of Houston called Spring. We watched general conference and then had a big family dinner (a bunch of Rosie’s kids and grandkids were there too). When we told Isaac that we were going to see Aunt Rosie he said, “Can we go do Ring Around Aunt Rosie?” It was pretty cute. When we were there, we made sure to do ring around Aunt Rosie—she’s a good sport.

1 comment:

Lew said...

I love all the pictures and updates! Happy birthday Isaac!! Your kids are so precious. We miss you guys!!