Updates for July

I just thought I would take some time to update you all on how Caleb and Sadie are doing...

Sadie

Sadie is 8 and 1/2 months and is very mobile. She belly crawls where she wants to go (usually wherever Caleb is). She loves pulling up to standing and is getting the hang of that quickly. She's starting to cruise a little but seems more cautious about that. It's funny...it's almost like she watched us all standing and thought "hey, I want to do that." So she did it and now she doesn't quite know what to do next.

She has also started clapping her hands and will do that if you clap and say "yeah" to her. She never tried patting her knees like Caleb used to do. Guess we'll never know where he picked that up.

Sadie loves blowing raspberries and that's often the response we get when we try talking to her. She also has been enjoying squealing a lot. It can get pretty noisy in the house with Caleb shrieking and Sadie squealing.

We'll be visiting the doctors in a couple of weeks for her 9 mos checkup. I'm curious to see how much weight she's gained. We think she's around 15 lbs and all the chub has gone to her legs.

Caleb

Caleb has almost mastered going up the stairs standing up all by himself and does that quite a bit. He loves the freedom we've given him of letting him go up and play in his room on his own. This morning, for the first time, he even went down the stairs, standing up, carrying a book, by himself. I didn't want to stop him because he's so cautious I figured that he wouldn't attempt it if he thought he couldn't do it.

Caleb's very good at puzzles and enjoys figuring them out and even making new challenges for himself. The other day, he was putting together his shape puzzle and decided that he would make it more interesting by trying out the pieces in the other spots, saying "no" when they don't fit and saying "yeah" and clapping when they do fit. He knew where the pieces went, just wanted to make it more interesting.

He loves his cars and trains and trucks and loves driving them all over, upstairs and downstairs. We also started a new coloring game. Caleb hasn't been to interested in drawing and seems to like just making dots when we do get out the crayons. This morning, I got out his big drawing tablet and he started handing me crayons. So I started drawing different things (animals, buses, cars). He loved it, so I started asking him to hand me specific colors. He was pretty good at that- He seems to know red, blue, green and was able to find black.

Talking-

We're still not saying a lot but there are new words and phrases and sounds that appear. Here's the latest list of things he can say.

eow- meow, cat (says for the sound and when he sees cats)
wwf- woof, dog (same for dogs)
da- quack, duck
mmm- moo, cow - also when eating, yum
nay- horse
baa- sheep
maa- goat
who- owl
sss- spider, sleeping or snake
nnn- pig (that's the closest he can get to oink)

down
uh-oh- any kind of accidents
uh-oh boom- when someone/thing falls
who is that?- who is that, what is that
ahs a wff- that's a dog (he says this a lot when the neighbors puppy is outside)

that's all I can think of right now. He still does a lot of babbling and he understands so much. He seems to get more frustrated when you try to get him to imitate sounds almost like you're reminding him that he can't do it so we haven't been pushing him too much. He hears us and understands us and most of the time, listens to us when we ask him to do things so I'm sure the talking will come in his own time.



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Now- as for Andy and I, Andy has fully recovered from his back surgery and is doing fine researching important things at CMU. I have recently been diagnosed as having celiac (like my brother) so we're adjusting to a new diet absent of gluten for me. Fortunately we're used to making the adjustments for my brother so it hasn't been that difficult of a transition. However, I am missing pierogies, Jioio's pizza and gnocchi but at least it's not a chocolate allergy.