Thomas 2, Sophia 8 1/4 months

Driving Daddy to the airport just before bedtime. Hey, that's Daddy's plane in the background!

Thomas 2, Sophia 8 months

Sophia is crawling! And pulling herself up to standing on everything! Just today she crossed half the living room in one go to get to the cat's scratch pad. It looks like she has finally coordinated her arms and legs and really gets what to do now when she wants to go somewhere. She will cross rooms for Thomas' trains (Thomas' reaction: "No! No! MY train!"), the cat's tail, and any paper lying around. I think she's also started following me, even across the tile which must be hard on her knees. This is actually starting to be a little bit of a problem: no more playing with teeny-tiny toys in her line of sight (today, Thomas discovered the game boards and all of their little chess pieces, checker pieces, backgammon pieces, Scrabble tiles, and Outburst dice) because she will chug straight for them and put them into her mouth. Also, what do I do with Sophia when I'm giving Thomas a bath? She usually plays so well in the playroom but at bathtime, she wants to be in there with us, on the cold hard tile. It just makes me so nervous for her to be on the tile ... I must be remembering when she was still learning to crawl, she fell over or hit her face on the tile a few times and really cried! So unusual for her to hurt herself such that she cries, but I suppose there'll be a lot more of that in the near future since she's learning how to move! Must drag out the indoor play yard fence ... or something.

Perhaps it is because she's wanting to move around so much, or perhaps it's her recent cold, or teething, but these days she is not sleeping as well as she did even a month ago. It used to be that I could bundle her up in her sheet, sing her a few songs, see eyes close, put her down in her crib, and then come back 11 hours later to find her in the exact same position I had left her. It was a beautiful dream for me, after what I remember of Thomas' bedtime ritual. But now as soon as I put her down, she rolls onto her stomach and pushes herself up to all fours and starts crawling around. And I can't get her to lie down. She's like Frankenstein, or the Terminator... just when you think they're down for good and things have been still for half a minute, the eyes fly open, and the jerky movements drag them after you! And then in the past few days, there's been the wake-up after being asleep for one or two hours, and then the five-a.m. wakeup... where she's awake for over an hour. Argh! At least Thomas is sleeping better. He's back to an 8:30pm bedtime, but we often have to add a child-proof gate and more threats of closing the door to the normal bedtime routine, before he's quiet enough for sleep.

Thomas is doing a lot more imaginative play these days. Sometimes I see him playing with his engines, having them talk together, ("Hi Percy, I'm in ditch! Please help!" "Oh, poor James!" "Oh, Thank you, Percy, thank you!") with dialogue that is loosely based off his books, or the DVD show, or nothing in particular. This morning we went to my Chiropractor and he charmed them by picking up the toys and putting them in the toy basket without being asked by Mommy. Sometimes he does such charming, wonderful things! And sometimes he does them in front of other people! What a darling little boy.

We were all sick! And then Matthew left. That's been our week.

Thomas 2, Sophia 7 3/4 months

Sophia is starting to crawl!

Matthew came back from work!

We all got sick!

Thomas 2 years, Sophia 7 1/2 months

Sophia is on the move! She's not crawling, but she is doing a sort of creeping, stretching, bouncing, rolling, inchworm action. I put her down on her blanket, and when I look back, she's moved a couple of feet! She's also trying to pull up on things, and she's also saying "mamama" and a silent gaping of the mouth like bubbles popping "pah pah." So cute! No teeth yet, but I can feel things under her gums, and for the past few nights, she has been waking up in the middle of the night complaining (loudly). Sophia has also been transitioning to only two naps a day. If her morning and early afternoon naps are long enough, she doesn't take a nap at dinner-prep time and goes to bed a little early. This is a big "if" these days because we usually go do something in the morning, so often her first nap of the day is only a half-hour nap in the car on the way to our activity. She's a trooper though, rarely grumpy and smiling often at everyone. She seems to be developing a little separation anxiety, manifesting itself as crying once we are reunited. No tears when I say bye-bye, though. We are rarely apart so I guess she hasn't really had practice saying bye-bye to Mommy!

Thomas is still talking up a storm. Here's a sample monologue while he was drawing pictures last week: "Tommy draw Chloe. Tommy draw Katie. Katie so big! Tommy draw Diesel 10. So big, Mommy! Draw Thomas. Thomas draw eyes. Here's wheels. Tommy draw ... excuse me, Mommy. Tommy need box! Box! Box! [Where] are you, box? This one box? No. This one bucket, Mommy. Oh, bye-bye, Thomas. Bye-bye, wheels ..." [rubbing out picture]. He's pretty mild-mannered in public, but at home he's starting with the whole "no!" thing, and we've started doing time-outs in his room with the gate up. On the other hand, he is still expanding socially. Today, when Matthew took the kids to the park, Thomas watched two older girls slide (one in the others lap) together down one of the three parallel slides. He smiled happily, watched them a bit more, then ran up to the top of the third slide, waited until they climbed the ladder, and then slid down side by side with the girls!

Matthew's back from his trip at last. We were only going to have him for a few days before his next trip, but thankfully things have changed around and I think he's going to be here for the usual two weeks. I was going a bit loopy there, thank goodness Rose and Pam and my Mom's group were keeping us distracted! The first day Matthew came back, I went to the store for 45 minutes all by myself for the first time in two weeks, and it was heaven. Must do more of that in the coming weeks.

Thomas 2 years, Sophia 7 1/4 months

Thomas is talking a lot these days! Sample Thomas monologue while drawing pictures:

"Tommy draw Chloe. Tommy draw Katie. Katie so big! Tommy draw Diesel 10. So big, Mommy! Draw Thomas. Thomas draw eyes. Here's wheels. Tommy draw ... excuse me, Mommy. Tommy needs box, Mommy! Box! Box! [Where] are you? This one box? No. This one bucket, Mommy. Oh bye-bye, Thomas. Bye-bye, wheels ..." [rubbing out picture]

Thomas 2 years, Sophia 7 months

First of all, we went to New Zealand with the two kids to see Matthew's family. They were all pretty excited to see us, how big Thomas has gotten, and meet the new arrival of course! We were there for three and a half weeks or so, and it was wonderful. On the way there, we stopped in San Francisco for a day to see Utaka and Shauna, and to break up the trip a bit. It was so wonderful to see them, their new house and their town. They took us around here and there, and we just enjoyed hanging around. They got to know Thomas a bit, and he did like his "Uncle Taka" and "Auntie Sha-na." Sophia was a dream on the long-haul flights, sleeping for practically the entire time in her bassinet. Thomas wasn't bad either. And yay Air New Zealand! So accommodating and helpful, good service and good food. We actually bought real tickets this time! We stayed with Jocelyn, Matthew's mother in Auckland and then zipped down to Wellington to see everyone down there. Thomas met a huge number of people, and he remembered so many people's names and faces! And he loved meeting his cousins. I think that's really where his language wheels really started turning. Anyway, we were there for almost a whole month, and I could write a book about the time we were there....suffice it to say for now that it was wonderful to be there, thanks to everyone especially Jocelyn for having us and spending time with us, and it was so great to see everyone and we had a fabulous time and thank you, thank you, thank you everyone! I posted some pictures of the first couple of weeks on the website, and will post more later.

So in three months, Thomas has gone from stringing three words together to full-blown sentences and paragraphs. Sometimes I hear him reciting parts of stories or his videos (mostly of Thomas the Tank Engine). "Diesel 10 naughty engine. Henry boilerache. Uh-oh, Emily all wet. Mister Hatt 'Thomas, my car, ..." "James have Tommy hands. Just wheels down here." "Tommy try open that one. Look look! Rock, Mommy, rock. Hold that one, Mommy." "Poor Mommy. Mommy not happy." He is still obsessed with Thomas the Tank Engine, especially when we visit other people's train sets, but other things close to his heart are Ivor the Engine, digging in sand at the lakeside, going to the park, "BabaJiji crackers" (graham crackers), Barnes and Noble, and of course he still talks about BabaJiji (Baba = my mom, Jiji = my dad). Matthew can snap him out of any funk by playing a ring tone of a guy singing "boom chicken wow wow". As soon as Thomas hears it, he immediately grins and sits up. I'm not sure if sister Sophia comes into this inner circle, judging on the number of times I have to tell him to be gentle with her, but he does talk about her a lot. He calls her "Baby Dophia," once holding up a miniscule broccoli floret at dinnertime and naming it "Baby Dophia broccoli!" Right now the big issues of the day are sharing (or lack thereof), be gentle with Sophia, Mommy can't understand you when you talk like that (whining), and be still when I'm changing your diaper. Sounds like categories in Jeopardy! "Yes, Alex, I'll take 'Acting like the Baby' for $200!" But it is WAAAAY better than being at the airport, from what I hear from my friends these days! Especially now that he can say "I duv you, Mommy!" or puts a pretend band-aid on my boo-boo and gives it a kiss.

Sophia, three months ago, was struggling up from her reclined position on the floor. These days, she sits up with confidence and bounces up and down, sometimes moving several inches! When on her tummy, she can move around 360 degrees, sometimes push herself backwards and has started to get up on hands and knees and rock. Her "circle of influence" is getting a lot bigger, so we really have to clear a big swath around her to make sure she doesn't get anything inappropriate, because it all goes straight into her mouth! When we stand her up, we hold her hands for balance and she looks around and smiles her beautiful huge smile. See a picture of Sophia standing up on the website in last week's picture bank. She has twice pulled herself up halfway to standing, once in her crib, and once on Thomas' bed. No teeth yet, but she's drooling a lot and bites down with zeal anything that comes near her mouth, especially knuckles or big sticks of carrot, or Thomas' Thomas the Tank Engine Ice Pack. Her latest foods are pureed carrot. She does a great job playing by herself unless it's dinnertime or Thomas' bedtime. Then she gets noisy, bouncing up and down, trying to crawl around, getting really vocal. When I'm reading a goodnight story to Thomas, sometimes I have to really concentrate on what I'm reading because she's so distracting! I don't know what it is, but she seems to be only slightly quieter when she's on the bed with us. I guess she just wants to be a part of the action, or she's getting really hungry and ready for bed. She takes three naps a day still, the first in the morning, the second at the same time as Thomas', and the third right around dinner or dinner preparation time. When everything is on time, it's really convenient!! And then she goes to bed around nine and usually sleeps until after eight in the morning. I'm not spending as much time doing "enriching things" as I feel like I should with her, mostly because the other one takes up so much time and energy! I'm sure she's getting a lot out of her big brother, though. She loves to watch what he's doing.

Well! As for the rest of it, Matthew's gone to Mexico, Mom and Dad are back in Wisconsin for the summer and we miss them lots. I've been busy going to a chiropractor to get these aches out of my spine, meeting up with my friends, and rereading some of my favorite novels in between housework and stuff. Whew! This, madam and gentlemen, is a faithful narrative of events concerning our lives in the past three months. I intend to be a regular correspondent in the future!

Thomas 2 years, Sophia 6 3/4 months