Walking and Talking

Sweet Baby J,
You’re really walking now!! Of course it seems that you took your first independent steps when I went out of town for the one night, my first night away from you. But you’re really doing it now. You walk about 8 steps alone, although if you’re in a hurry you revert to crawling. You started off by just lunging or running between Dad and me. But now you take deliberate steps on your own. And you look so pleased with yourself. As I expected, you didn’t start walking until you were totally capable of it. You didn’t want to mess around with falling.

And the other milestone- you’re talking! Oddly enough, your first distinguishable word was “light”. It sounds more like “schmy” but you point to the light and say it over and over. It’s really funny. You also say “dog” while pointing to Scout and Ruby. I have to laugh that you’re saying these 2 words before Mommy and Daddy but that’s ok.

You’re sleeping great these days, for the most part. 10 beautiful hours of consecutive sleep. Last night was an exception- you were ready to go at 5am.

You made the transition to whole milk without missing a beat. You slurp it down as fast as I serve it up. So you’re fully weaned now. After a full year of nursing you, it’s over. It was sad for me, but you were ready. I’m proud that we made it without ever needing formula, and nursing you was really wonderful, despite the hassle of pumping at work.

I haven't been able to capture your new feats on camera yet, but we'll post some as soon as possible.
Love, Momma

Damaged Goods

I don't have a fancy car by any means. It's a cloth seated station wagon- no frills. But it's a good car, and I like to drive it. But it appears that I will only be able to drive it and park it with the windows down for the foreseeable future. This is because today my son projectile vomited in the back seat. As you might expect with a 13 month old, it was mostly milk. So despite my best cleaning efforts, (involving the hose all the way down to q-tips) my car smells like curdled milk. It is awful. sigh...

Sidewalks

After months of deliberation, we hired a contractor to install brick pavers around the house. The sidewalks were in terrible shape, where we had them. W toyed with the idea of doing it himself for a long time, mostly because I think he enjoyed the idea of renting really big machines. But these guys did a great job! Check out the before and after shots. I tried to match up the pair of before and after shots... hopefully that's not confusing.

It is so nice to be able to walk around the house without jumping over cracked concrete. I can now push the stroller from the garage to the front of the house without going through mud puddles. And it's a joy to walk up the back steps, and not have a wood pallet as a door mat.