A small update on Nathan’s new language skills- he will repeat pretty much the entire alphabet after us, which I’m hoping to catch on video. He’ll say I Love You if prompted. And he can, or will at least try, to repeat pretty much any words we say. We really need to watch our language now!!

I was excited to learn that Nathan’s teacher had a TV brought into their room for lunchtime on Inauguration Day so that the kids could watch, and when I asked Nathan who the president was that night, he replied “Omama!”

Nathan’s also stringing more and more words together to make sentences and he’s referring to himself a lot more. He loves books about parents and kids so he can tell me who is the Mommy or Daddy, and who is Nathan. And if there’s a kid in a book, he wants me to change the name to Nathan, so “Spot Loves His Mommy” is now “Nathan Loves His Mommy”. All of this is very cool because we’re hearing him say things that show he’s processing stuff in a whole new way now.

These two have gotten a little more cuddly lately. Nathan wants to pet or hug Fen more than he used to and is always asking where he is, and Fen is sticking around longer when Nathan starts poking him

They both love looking out the front window.

We took our third trip up to Ithaca last week and I got the snow I’d been hoping for. I forgot how snow sticks around up there because it’s so cold, so when we got in Friday there was lots of snow on the ground and we had time to take Nathan out for his first time sledding.

Saturday we went to the Science Center. I think Nathan had a great time, and we had fun playing with him. He could have easily stayed there all day!

Gary and I got to go out and enjoy dinner while we watched the Ravens game. We watched the snow coming down the whole time we were out and got a little nervous about driving home, but made it back safely. We got at least 6 inches that night, but it was so cold we weren’t able to take Nathan out for very long the next day, especially because he wouldn’t keep his gloves on.

The drive was pretty good both ways. Nathan got carsick on the way up but nothing too bad, and there wasn’t any of the bad construction traffic we sometimes run into. My mom and Nathan played a ton and she had so many great toys that we hardly touched any of the ones we brought with us. Nathan also loved chasing the two cats around the house, yelling “kitty! kitty!”. I’m not so sure they loved him back, but they were tolerant. By the end of the weekend Nathan was calling my mom “Ama” for Grandma, and Grandpa Bob was “Ahbob”. He’s carried on some very cute pretend phone conversations with them since we’ve been back.

No idea what this face is, but thought it was worth sharing

Since I didn’t do much updating in December, here’s a recap of some of the things we did.

We went to visit the train garden with Gary’s family. It’s this huge train set up with moving people and towns and themes like circuses, and it’s a huge attraction around the holidays. Nathan loved it of course. He spent a lot of time staring at everything and pushing buttons that made different things move.

We’ve been spending a lot of time at libraries this winter since a couple of the branches near us have nice play areas with toys. Storyville is by far the most entertaining and we went there recently with Olive. There are so many different things for Nathan to investigate and play with there!

Nathan loves his tent. It connects to the tunnel we have and he’ll crawl in and then play peekaboo, or put a pillow in and lay down.

We do lots of coloring. Nathan likes to dump all his crayons out on the table and draw a couple lines with each color. He asks us to draw things for him too, like Elmo, Cookie or his name.

There were some nicer days in the last few weeks, so we got to spend some time outside. We took walks down our street.

We played in the backyard. Nathan likes to collect sticks.

And Fen likes to try to steal them away.

In other updates, Nathan is talking up a storm, sometimes stringing 3 words together. He will repeat back most words you say to him now and it feels like he understands just about everything. When he bumps his head he’ll pat his head and tell you “bumphishead”, all strung together like one word. He played “knock knock, who’s there?” with us tonight…he’d say Knock Knock, and after we said Who’s There? (and he kind of repeated it), he’d yell Daddy! or Mommy! He was also mumbling some words to Twinkle Twinkle Little Star and will yell out Town! at the end of Wheels on the Bus, and does something similar with some other songs. When we sing ABCs he will sing ABC and then yell out a few letters here or there throughout the song…P!Z!. He also says 2 after you say 1 and is getting better at communicating what he wants. Of course, when he tells us what he wants and he can’t have it, it’s pretty much guaranteed he’s going to get really upset. But he’s started taking our hand and saying “walk” if he wants us to go somewhere with him, or he’ll say what he wants- juice, snack, outside- while he looks you right in the eye and nods- like, “this is what I want okay? Got it?.” He’s getting better at please and thank you, but still needs to be reminded a lot. It’s neat that he still signs more and please at the same time he says them. Another cute thing is how he likes to “feed” his Little People or stuffed animals his milk, and the other day he got a treat for Fen and refused to give it to him until he could get his stuffed dog Slushie and “feed” it to him first.

I could go on and on with all the stuff he’s doing now, it’s just amazing what he comes up with everyday! I definitely have to credit daycare with a lot of it, he learns so much through all the songs they sing and games they play.