April 2007: Happy Birthday Isaac!!

April 2-April 8, 2007
Isaac wakes up every morning convinced that he can eat icecream and chocolate cake for breakfast. He’ll say “Let’s eat icecream or vamos a comer helado” or I want cake or quiero pastel de chocolate. I just tell him that he’s being silly and we can’t eat cake and icecream for breakfast. He usually tries repeatedly, and when he realizes that once more, I’m not going to give in—he usually settles on rice crispies or papa cereal for breakfast. It’s pretty amusing.
Levi had pink-eye in his right eye on Sunday, but I just squirted a bunch of breast milk in his eye at each feeding and on Monday morning it was miraculously healed.
Levi is officially ticklish and he also thinks his brother is very amusing and he’ll let out full on giggles at things Isaac does.
Both of the boys had fun spending quality time with Grandma and Grandpa Nuttall this week (they left on Thursday morning). Grandpa also helped us with a ton of projects around the house. Grandma gave Isaac an animal croquet game for his birthday and he had a lot of fun playing with the balls, numbers, and mallets.
Isaac is putting together some good phrases in Spanish lately. He’ll say, “quieres jugar con los juguetes?” and “quieres ir al aeropuerto.” He also said to James, “no hagas eso” when he was about to turn on the shower when Isaac was in the bath.
On Tuesday Isaac had a complete meltdown over wanting to watch part of a baby Einstein dvd that wasn’t working because the dvd was scratched. He wanted to see the pentagon put in the elephant shape toy and when it kept skipping that part he lost it. So I decided that the TV would be “broken” for the rest of the week. It worked really well actually and its been nice to have the TV “break.”(hee hee)
We got Isaac a haircut on Saturday. Pretty ambitious. It still takes 3 people to do the process—James holds his body still, I hold his head still and the lady cuts his hair while Isaac screams his head off.
We went to Lonnie and Alisa Mercer's house for Easter dinner on Sunday and it was alot of fun and it felt like being with family. We did a mini Easter egg hunt for the kids and Isaac and Levi searched for eggs with Loretta's (Alisa's cousin) kids. Isaac really loves the idea of getting a special treat in the Easter egg, but I discovered that there are actually some sweet things he doesn't like (he make the ick face after biting into a blue peep).

April 9-15, 2007
Isaac is the master DJ—he loves to be in charge of the music. He can sit and change the songs on the CD and he’ll rock out with the rhythm.
It was Isaac's friend Michael's birthday on Tuesday and Isaac and Levi had a blast with all of the balloons that Claudia had.
We had a fun birthday party for Isaac on Friday. I can't believe that he's now 3!! Wow. He definitely got into the birthday party idea this year. He wanted a pizza party so I ordered Dominos. I did it after the Spanish playgroup to make things easier. I found an activity parachute at Costco that worked great for games and dancing and making a giant bubble to run under.
Isaac can say a lot of phrases in Spanish now. He’ll say, “Quieres ver una pelicula?” and the other day when he got on the phone to a Spanish speaking friend he said, “Quieres jugar con los juguetes?” He can also say “Que es esto?” y “Donde esta papa” “Ahorrita viene papa.” We go back and forth between Spanish and English a lot and its also funny when Isaac tries to say things like the Wiggles in Spanish. He’ll do a really cute accent and say “los wee-glays”.
Levi does not realize that he’s only five months old!!! He really wants to crawl and he’s pretty darn close. He can get across the room by lunging when he’s on all fours and then rolling. He can also sit really well and he loves to shake maracas. He loves to touch new textures and shapes and he’s very self entertained if you put a pile of interesting stuff in front of him to explore.
We played a lot at the Norwegian’s house this week—Isaac can now say “no” in Norwegian (“nie”) quite well because he always has a sharing crisis with either Daniel or Sondre. They have a ball toy that he loves to play with.

April 16-22, 2007
For Isaac’s birthday on Monday we went to a new park with his friends Ava, Michael, Ernesto, and Miranda. Amerika (Ava’s mom) showed us a really cool park called Bear Creek park when there are a ton of playgrounds and also animals to see like buffalo, emus, goats, deer, owls, parrots, and turtles. Isaac liked the owls the best. There’s also a little stream with ducks and Isaac had a wonderful time throwing pebbles in the water.
Isaac has the habit of talking about himself in the third person and it cracks me up. He’ll say, “He wants to play with the ball toy” or “He wants to watch a movie.” If I correct him, he’ll usually repeat it with “I” but the habit is hard to break.
Levi jabbers a lot now-bababa, mamama and he lets out good giggles when he’s watching Isaac. He is also the master of escaping the diaper change lately. When you lay him down to change him he does a professional scissor kick and flips over and tries to wiggle away.
I told Isaac Thursday afternoon that we were going to the airport in the morning. He promptly ran into his room shut the door and laid down. I opened the door and asking him what he was doing. He said, “Can I wake up mom? Can I wake up and go to the airport?” He was VERY excited about the prospect of going to the airport.
Friday was James’ birthday so I made him breakfast in bed and gave him a big framed collage of family fotos that I put together.
On Friday Levi started officially crawling when we were staying at Manuel and Mariela’s house. His inspiration was a balloon. He was determined to move his little body over to a shiny balloon and play with it, so he managed to coordinate his body motion into a crawl.
* Isaac fell out of the big boy swing and scraped up his face pretty bad at the park, but hopefully he’ll heal quickly.

*James bought a used red VW rabbit from a friend at his office so we are now back to having 2 cars and its really nice. I had been driving James to work everyday and picking him up, which was fun but it kind of messed with the kids sleeping schedules when they would fall asleep on the way there or back. We named the new car “Gladys the Big RED Car” and Isaac loves “driving the big red car with papa.” We’ll walk down the road to meet him when he comes home and Isaac loves running over to him, jumping in the car and pretending to drive with James.

ISAAC's 3rd BIRTHDAY PARTY!!

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.