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My APU baby is dangerously close to exiting this category! Leo is coming up on 11months old, he crawls at the speed of light, cruises around on furniture, plays ball with his big sis, giggles and belly laughs all the time and gives the best, open-mouth slobbery kisses! Just yesterday Leo clapped for the first time, last week he learned to wave, he is basically at that explosion phase of development, he copies noises (like coughs, cars driving by, and certain words) and impresses us all daily.
I'm exhausted by keeping up with him though. I've done lots more baby proofing this time around for my little inquisitive boy. He loves his Papa - as long as I am in the room too
I think he's at the beginning of separation anxiety, on Friday I went to visit friends and walked around the corner of the room to see what Clara was doing. Leo let out a wail like his leg was being cut off. I rushed back around the corner and as soon as he saw me he smiled with tears in his eyes and crawled over to me and clasped my leg tightly (oh yeah, he loves climbing my leg to get into a standing position). He's done stuff like this with Marc too if I leave the apartment to go to the store or put the garbage out! He eats well, nurses plenty (although the scratching and pinching has not improved) and sleeps OK. He has a pretty cool internal schedule, I can count on a few things... nap 2 hours after he wakes in the morning, poop about an hour after waking, nap again at about 3pm, bed at around 8pm. Clara was never so helpful as to provide me with a schedule so I'm enjoying this lifestyle quite a bit. Of course it took about 9 months for it to crystallize but I'm happy none the less! He is sleeping for a few hours by himself in the evenings which is also a huge improvement from earlier in the Summer and he loves being read to before bed. Right now Mr Brown Can Moo is his favorite book
Can you tell I'm in love with my little guy? It feels good to gush about him a bit! Thanks for asking
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Clara is 3 years old now and so so BIG. She is tall and strong and is always assumed to be at least 4 or 5 years old by other moms at the park. She talks a million miles a minute and her vocabulary comes straight from me
When she talks I hear myself, she uses the same words, inflections, and body language that I do, it is so very weird!! Her speech is getting clearer, just when I started to wonder if I should have her assessed by a speech therapist she starts correcting some of her long time mispronunciations. I may still have her checked out, because she has yet to make an "F" sound as far as I know and there are lots of other oddities in her speech still hanging about. This summer Clara's been having so much fun in the water. Every opportunity we get to swim has brought on huge improvements in her abilities in the water. I swear if I were brave enough to let her take off her water wings she'd be swimming on her own by now. What gets me is her lack of fear. She goes underwater, goes down waterslides, jumps into lakes and pools and loves it all.
Clara is quite the city girl. I feel very confident with her now on the sidewalk. She knows the rules for walking in the city and I let her run a bit ahead or hang behind me when she wants some independence without my heart racing, wondering if she's gonna dart off the sidewalk or something.
Right now she's totally pumped to start "school", she'll be in a program for 3-5 year olds that is 2 days a week and is entirely in French. I'm not entirely ready but she seems good to go. It helps that it is through the same community organization that runs the mom and me playgroups we've been attending for 2 years already. She says she'll miss Leo but we'll see about that!
Clara is still all about imaginative play. Mostly using stuffed animals, Little People, or her hands as the characters. She loves to paint and every time we set up the paints I get at least a dozen works of art. I've been teaching her to fold (laundry) and she enjoys the feeling of pride when she succeeds but I get the feeling that frustration gets in the way of enjoying the process of learning. We've abandoned learning writing skills at the moment because she'd just get so upset when she couldn't reproduce what I'd done. She loves it when I point out a "T" or a "1" in her drawings, she can make "C" and "O" deliberately so we write that a LOT
OK, this is getting long... point form for everything else that comes to my head -Tantrums are getting fewer and more far between. Mostly because we've been connecting well lately. -Bedtime is so much more pleasant.
-Plays so well with her brother most of the time. Loves to make him laugh or have him follow her around.
-She's super connected with her Papa. It is the end of the world if she doesn't get a "Hug n' a kiss" before he leaves for work
OK, so in a nutshell, I've got an awesome kid
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