Video: Thomas walking, opening door

14 1/2 months old

Matthew's been home for a week now, and he's adapted very quickly to Thomas' new skills. When he left on his last trip, Thomas wasn't walking yet! And when he came back, Thomas was a pretty adept walker. Matthew says he became used to the idea of Thomas walking from our many internet video chats, where Mom, Dad and I would show off Thomas' new walking skills by calling him and getting him to walk from one grandparent to another. The other day, we all went to Sweet Tomatoes for Sunday brunch, and Mom took a restless Thomas for a walk around the restaurant, and 15 minutes later when they came back, Mom said that Thomas spent the whole time walking solo. How quickly he became adept at walking! This is a picture of another restaurant we visited this week, Sushi Tomi. Thomas liked the fish eggs.


This week, Thomas' top two canines have erupted, one right after another! So now we know what all that ear-shattering shrieking was about this week. Teething pain! And now he has six teeth on top and two on the bottom! Does that seem a little lopsided? Oh well, he seems to be coping. He's even waking up and going to bed really easily, considering! After I put him down in his crib, I sometimes hear the occasional "da" but he usually falls asleep without uttering another sound. And he used to cry bitterly when he woke up, but these days he seems to be in a better frame of mind, with a lot more cooing, cheery talking and pointing at objects.




Thomas is becoming ever more initiating and interactive. He requests books at bedtime now by pulling them off the shelf and giving them to me. When I'm done, he'll close the book and then open it to the first page again so that he can hear it again. Books that are showing up a lot recently: "Stranger in the Woods," "Where the Wild Things Are," "Santa Duck," and recently, "Kapai's New Mates." He'll also try to climb up the side of his playpen to get inside (when there's a cool toy still in it, like the rice cooker). And sometimes he'll walk into the room and straight into my (or Matthew's, or Mom's or Dad's) legs and bury his face into them and cuddle us and give a happy hum. Out of nowhere -- for no reason I can fathom! What a lovely warm feeling to get a hug from my little boy! And yesterday Matthew and I made a "Thomas sandwich" for the first time: we squished him between us with cuddles and kisses. When we came up for air, he signed "more" with a big grin on his face! And then again after that! He also loves to show affection to Chloe by patting her and pulling her tail. He's a lot more gentle now, actually patting most of the time instead of grabbing handfuls of fur, but she has started defending herself a little so she's not as easy a target as she once was. And he's starting to play with rubber balls recently: rolling, carrying, bouncing, chasing. And while he's dressing, we play a game that he loves: when I put on his shirt, I'll say, "Where's your hand?" and he'll look into his sleeve and give such a grin when he sees his hand! So cute!

By the way, Thomas is not in a real airplane, so don't worry. None of the switches are hooked up to anything. At Matthew's ground ops' office, there's a 727 cockpit parked in the lobby area for show. It's fun to go there and take photos ... like the one below. Last time we took a photo there, Jocelyn was there, along with a 1 1/2-month old Thomas. A year ago! How time flies!

14 1/4 months old

Hi everybody! Happy inauguration day! We watched President Obama get sworn in this morning ... very exciting to feel history being made!

Matthew came back on Sunday from chilly Toledo, where it's been snowing heavily and as low as 17 degrees below zero, or -27 degrees Celsius. It was only marginally better here in Florida, down to 46 degrees Fahrenheit or 8 degrees Celsius! I've been bundling up Thomas for our morning walks in a snowsuit that I had bought for Asheville, North Carolina. Might as well use it as long as I've got it, right? Sometimes Thomas is so cozy out there that he falls asleep in the stroller and has to be very carefully wiggled out of his snowsuit when we get back, lest he wake up and be grumpy because his morning nap was cut short.

Thomas has started trotting quickly all by himself. And he is hardly crawling at all now -- he finds it much easier to walk than to crawl already. Mom and Dad went dancing for a three day stretch, and they were amazed at his progress while they were gone. He went from careful stepper who watches where he puts his feet to a steady zoomer who really gets up speed even while holding multiple toys! He is much more comfortable holding one hand while walking, and he frequently strikes off on his own. I'm trying to learn how to steer him since he has quite the mind of his own.

One day, I see that he is standing on one of the socks that he is supposed to be wearing. I ask him, "Thomas, where's your sock? Where's your sock?" He looks down and around his feet and slowly, carefully walks out of the room. A minute later, he walks in again, holding a matching sock in each hand! And I don't even know where he got them! And sometimes we will be in his playroom (the solarium/porch/lanai/Florida room), and he will wander out and then walk back in again, saying "nanana" -- and holding a banana in his hand that the had picked up off the table. As in, I'm hungry for the rest of this banana that is leftover from lunch! Feed me!

Oh yes! I went back to work! Part time, twice a week, to cover the other interpreter's days off. Later this month we are moving operations over to where Delta is to begin the integration process (Northwest and Delta are merging).

Amazing developments this week!

14 months old

Thomas is 14 months old today! And what a busy one it has been. Matthew is still out and about doing a Mexico-Toledo line, with fine weather on the Mexico side and snowstorms and single-digit weather on the Toledo side. He sent a bunch of photos of snow that he took while walking to Borders in Toledo, and it brought back so many memories of winter in Wisconsin. Snow halfway to the knee, icicles on cars, snowplows, shoveling the sidewalk, dirty, icy, salty brown slush at the bottom of it all. It occurred to me that Thomas will probably not have the same experience as I do of snow on the ground for five to six months out of the year, so I bought him a cute book at Borders called The Snowy Day. It's about a little boy who wakes up to a big snowfall and his exploration of all the different ways that you can play with snow. Somehow I think that this book will mean a lot more to me than it will to him!

Other things that have happened this week: Thomas is walking! He's gone from staggering a couple of steps to measured, deliberate steps that take him across a small room! His eyes light up and he cackles with laughter as he walks. I've counted more than 15 steps at a time! It's amazing how quickly it all came together. He's also started feeding me Cheerios at mealtime when he's losing his appetite or his interest in food. And he can now open up my cell phone and hold it up to my ear as if it's for me. No reaction when I hold it up to his ear and pretend it's for him, though. He's also become dexterous enough to hold a bubble wand and dip it into the bubble solution and hold it up over his head so that I can blow on it. He loves to see bubbles come out of the wand and giggles happily. When I hold the wand up to his mouth, though, he either tries to bite it or he blows air out through his nose! So cute!

After three days of a very grumpy Thomas, this morning I woke up at 5:30am (his usual wake-up time these days) to hear him quietly chatting to himself: "mamama.... da... da... da... mamama.... thbttttt.... da". So unusual! He seems to have his usual happy demeanor again, and his appetite seems to be back, thank goodness. For both breakfast and dinner I had to go back to the kitchen to get more food for him because I underestimated how much he would eat by half! It seems that the moment I stop worrying about how much he's eating, I start worrying about him eating too much! His happy demeanor lasted until after his second nap, when on the way from his room to the diaper changing station in our room, something changed and it was a full-blown meltdown. What the heck happened? I only wish I knew what was the cause! I suppose there are more where that came from, as the "terrible twos" are coming!

Video: Thomas walking unassisted

13 4/5 months

Today, I read Thomas "Where the Wild Things Are" from cover to cover. It's usually a bit long for Thomas, so I either end up skipping pages or lines to keep up with his manic page-turning. But today, I think he was a little under the weather since he sat quietly as I read in a hypnotic voice about Max becoming king of all wild things. Thomas feels a little hot at times, his appetite has really diminished, and he's a little touchier than usual. It's either teething (he's always chewing his fingers), or he's fighting off a bug he picked up from a girl from his playdate.





He picked up the sign for "fan" this week. One day out of the blue, about two months after I had stopped trying to teach him the sign, he points at the fan and makes circles with his pointing finger. Fan! He can also walk six steps by himself. And open the door to the playroom. Oh dear! Now how do I keep him in there?

A few days ago, Thomas was in Mom's arms and he pointed to me and said, "Da!" And then to Matthew and said, "mamama." Then he paused and thought about it for a while, and then started giggling and bouncing up and down in Mom's arms as if he just got the joke. Looks like he has a sense of humor!