Two new videos of Oliver!

Oliver walks!

On Wednesday night after dinner, we encourage Oliver to walk and he walked back and forth between Daddy and me several times.  We were so excited!  I don't remember it happening suddenly for Ben.  His pumps his left arm in a strange way when he walks, and looks so proud of himself.  He fell flat on his face a few times and we expected him to start crying.  Instead he just lay with his head on the carpet for a few seconds and then stood up to try again.  Ben was a little jealous and wanted us to cheer for him as he ran fast and knocked poor Oliver down a couple of times. 

Yay Oliver!

Big Brother Ben

I've been trying to explain to Ben that Daddy and I are the bosses in the house, and that we decide many things, such as whether Oliver can play with a toy that Ben thinks is unsafe or a toy that he suddenly is dying to play with, etc. Ben tells me no, I'm not the "bus" and then later he'll bring it up and say he is the "bus." I guess he doesn't really understand, so we'll have to work on that more. He is constantly telling Oliver he can't play with something and ripping it out of his hands, causing a previously content baby to cry and scream. He also tells Oliver "No!" with his finger wagging back and forth. And, he warns Oliver not to use things as weapons (sounds like they've learned about that at Wee Creekers).  One day Oliver was flinging a shirt around and Ben told him "Don't use that as a weapon, Liv!"


Yesterday morning all four of us piled in Ben's bed to wake up and Ben gave me a hug and said "I'm here for you Mama, I'll keep you safe.  I'll keep your heart safe and happy."  Where does he get such sweet sayings?

Ben loves to say "Hey you guys!  Watch this..."  Tim and neighbor Todd have an agreement that Ben can go over there and Mattux can come over to our house without formal arrangement, so Ben is always watching to see Mattux outside.  When he sees him he yells, "Hey you guys!  I come play?"  I watched Tim take him across yesterday and then we could see a little bit of their playing when they were outside.  Ben was having a blast doing who knows what with Mattux and Alta and Boo.

I'm so glad he is outgoing and confident.  I've said it before, but it seems he can enjoy life more than I did at his age because of my shyness.  At the Wee Creekers picnic, which I couldn't attend, Tim says Zachary and Maya (best friends) went off to play together and didn't invite him, and his feelings were hurt.  How sad!  Tim said Linda went to talk to him and then he went to talk to him, so hopefully it was a learning moment instead of a sad moment.

If you hand Oliver a bottle of lotion or shampoo or something similar, he pretends to get some on his hands from the top and then rubs it on his head.

Words Ben still says cute:  "Mingo" for mango, "crayground" for playground.  There were a couple more but I forget.

Ben suddenly loves Flynn again and has been giving him lots of attention.  One day he asked Flynn to follow him around everywhere and Flynn did.  Tim found an old can of cat treats and Ben has enjoyed giving Flynn treats.  Ben also said that Flynn could jump in the air and catch, kill, and eat a crow.  Flynn has been killing lots of mice and gophers, so Ben thinks a crow is up next, I guess.

Squeezing in some updates

Tim just emailed me at work to say that Oliver walked across the room by himself tonight!! 

Ben has started calling Tim Dada, perhaps because Oliver says something like dada and we say "Yes!  That is Dada over there!"  Ben told me he wanted a little dog and he would name it Dogga. 

Mosquitoes think Oliver tastes really yummy and he gets at least four bites each night that we are outside, while the rest of us get one or none.  And his bites swell up pretty big, though they don't seem to bother him. 

It's funny to hear Ben come up with snippets of songs and nursery rhymes he learns from Wee Creekers.  I've heard him sing a little of "Singin' in the Rain" and recite a little of Humpty Dumpty.

I've actually tried a little harder to teach my poor pre-schooler his alphabet and he knows a lot of letters by sight.  He usually calls letters "numbers."  He still loves reading.  I'm amazed that if we read a book once (and I don't remember much about it myself, and I never emphasize the titles much), he will read the title to us the next day!  One time he said he wanted to read the book about the little boy going to the playground naked.  I had no idea which book that was, so I commenced reading what we had.  Lo and behold, on the last page of one of the books we had read only once, the little boy goes to the playground in his underwear. 

It's so fun to see the boys having fun together.  The latest thing they do is:  Ben sits on his tricycle and Oliver holds onto the seat back and pushes him (walking), around and around the deck.  It's so cute to see them go back and forth in front of the glass door. 

We have a magnet thingie for the fridge that makes noises.  Oliver knows to press the button that plays a few songs and he presses it, then starts his knee-bouncy dance and looks to me for approval with a big smile on his face. 

Oliver updates

Ben learned a high-five, low-five thing (what are those called?) from his friend Zachary and we have done it a few times with him. It goes: High five, low five, in the middle, cut the pickle, tickle tickle! Oliver watched a few times and then did the cut the pickle, tickle, tickle parts with his hands! It was so cute!


Have I already told about Oliver's little dancy thing? He bounces a certain way with his knees when he is standing and leaning against something and it makes me laugh and laugh.  Now he does it just to make me laugh.

Oliver is graduating from the infant room at Wee Creekers to the toddler room.  What a big boy!

Weekend in Almena

We had a nice weekend visiting Grammy Pat and Grandpa Darrell (and Aunt Wende came too) in Almena.  Oliver was super snuggly and cuddled so long with Grammy and then with Wende that we thought he might be sick.  Perhaps the heat was a little strange to his system, but he seemed ok otherwise.  Ben played in Grammy's pool and caught bugs with his new bug catcher and slept with Grammy.  We went to a festival in Phillipsburg and Ben got to ride in a little train, sit in a fire truck, and jump in four bounce thingies.

Oliver took a couple of steps in between furniture - yippee!

Aunt Wende took some photos with her iPhone and here are a couple of Oliver looking so unexcited.

Oliver's personality

Oliver is getting such a big and sweet personality! 

He loves to play catch and puts his hands in the cutest pose to catch a ball, and then he throws it pretty well.  He was rolling a monster truck back and forth with Ben the other night and each time Oliver caught it, he turned the truck around to face front.  Ben did that too when he was little and we thought it was curious - how do babies know which side of a truck is the front?

He loves to play "Chase" with Ben too.  Ben runs away and Oliver laughs and crawls as fast as he can after him.

Oliver has been in the "diaper Olympics" stage when a baby hates to lie still and have his diaper changed.  When he is finally done and gets to sit up on the changing table, he smiles and points to the teddy bears on the shelf.  If you get one bear down for him, he gives it a sweet hug and then points to the next bear.  This continues until all bears have been hugged and returned to the shelf.

I can't believe how well he can feed himself.  He loves to walk holding our hands, like Ben did for so many months, but his legs don't seem strong enough to even be close to walking on his own yet.  He can go all the up and all the way down the staircase by himself.  He seems really careful, like Ben, but it still scares me.  He wants to practice his new skills and gets mad if you take him away.

I think Oliver's first real word is "uh oh."  He says it after he drops something, so he either understands what it means or he understands that you say it after you drop something.  He says mamamama and dadadada a lot, but I still don't think he knows what he is saying. 

Since Oliver wants to be held so much, I end up putting him in the backpack to do a lot of stuff, mostly fixing dinner.  We created a game where I turn my head and stick out my tongue and he tries to grab it.  I pull my tongue in right before he can touch it and scream.  Then he laughs.  If we play the game face to face, he sticks his tongue out too, for his turn. 

It's so wonderful to hear the boys laughing together.