Peter can say a bunch of words: Dog, Duck (they sound the same), Dada, Mama, Bye, Thank you. He also has a certain set of screeches that communicate a variety of things. I've counted about 12 words.
Peter has hit ever since he could control his arm movements. The usage of his swatting has greatly increased these last couple months. He will walk by someone and just swat at them no matter their innocence and without any thought on his part. Its usage is increased when he's tired. We have curved the swatting with giving high 5's . It works sometimes. He also enjoys biting. It doesn't help that we play bit with him for a long time so he thinks it's funny. He is a very smart baby and just as sweet as he is feisty.
Benjamin can play all 7 twinkles on his cello and is starting French Folk Song to surprise Miss Lisa. Cello group class and Joy School just started up.
I have such deep and profound conversations with Benjamin. You can really communicate with him like an adult. We had Ali Ennenga, a former school teacher, watch the boys recently and she said the same thing - that it's like conversing with an adult, not a 3 year old. A couple of things on the top of my head are:
*In the bathroom on our trip to Colorado there was a picture of a skunk. Benjamin said, "The skunk has its tail raised to spray at its predators. That's how it defends itself." Or something along those lines. Predator? Defend? Wow!
*Trying to sound cool, asking a 9 year old boy if he's read "Little Prairie and the House."
*"I just thought of something: Batman is the ULTIMATE testament".
* Me: "How did you sleep?
Benjamin: "Difficult. Peter woke me up 2 times. One time during the night and one time this morning. That's why I'm still rubbing my eyes."
Peter is either feeding himself or won't eat at all. It's debatable whether more gets in his mouth or on him.
2 of Peter's favorite things - animals (which he calls dogs) and kisses.
Katheryn spent some time with us while Charity and Jarrett were moving.
Our swamp cooler went out and it took 6 days to repair it! Talk about miserable. Most days it was 87-89 degrees in our house. We endured for the most part, I taught elsewhere and we tried to stay away during the day. One night, though, our landlord sprayed some sort of rust remover and the smell was so strong in our house even a few seconds in it made us dizzy. We left for a few hours and came back at 9:30. It was still too strong to stay in. So we spent a bit of time trying to decide what to do and ended up going to a hotel finally at 11 p.m. Even though we got a hotel that was $100, marked down from $140 it was a total ghetto sketchy place. Everything that could go wrong went wrong. I had managed to keep a somewhat good attitude about the situation up til that point and then I lost it. :-/ It was a very very hard, character-building week. I hope we never have to go through that again.
Benjamin at physical therapy for his flat feet - Peter loves to be included.
At a swim party for a friend's birthday. Benjamin is getting more and more comfortable in water.
Peter can be as feisty as he is sweet right now while he's learning how to control himself. He threw a toy helicopter at Benjamin's face (not maliciously).
Ahh, what a cute little guy!!
Peter goes to his book shelf numerous times a day to pull out books and look at them. Sometimes he'll even put the book back when he's done. Lately he's been bringing the books to me to "read" to him (point out the pictures). His attention span isn't quite long enough to sit through a whole book yet. He mostly enjoys turning the pages and pointing out "dogs".
Going on a walk around the neighborhood.
