This is such an exciting time for us. I feel like in the past week, everything is starting to change again. I don't have many pictures this month - it has been a relaxing time. Will had almost 2 weeks off, and we spent a lot of that as just the 5 of us. It was really nice having him home and spending time with the kids. We spent the holidays Skyping with both sides of the family. It's nice to have a way for the children to better communicate with family in a live format. I posted a picture of them at their spot near the computer (but not able to reach they keys).
Right before the holidays, both boys got tubes in their ears. It was not as easy as I thought it would be, and both boys had blood and needed drops. Nathan just got his tube suctioned and was cleared, Daniel still has a scab we are trying to get off with lubrication drops. Hopefully, we'll get a full clean bill of health on that in a couple of weeks. We also had respiratory viruses and one high fever, but all seem healthy now - and boy are they busy.
Emily is now walking all over the place. She started with slow, hesitant steps and simply standing. Slowly, she moved more and more and is now almost running. She still goes to a crawl if she is in a real hurry, but she is so cute as she walks around. She also loves to play with clothing and sometimes wears hats. Daniel started standing last night on his own and took a couple of steps toward me a few times. He seemed to be watching Emily all day yesterday and made the decision to walk - I can't wait to see what will happen in the next week. He also told me where his foot and head were yesterday when I asked. It was a really neat day for him. I wonder how much more they know that they haven't told me yet! We work on these all the time! Nathan started doing what I call people tricks in the past week. He never seemed interested. All of a sudden, he can clap, loves to clap things together to make noise, blow kisses, and a bunch of other tricks. He stopped doing the military crawl this month and runs across the room pushing the walkers. He gets the biggest kick of doing songs with hand motions now (like Itsy Bitsy Spider). Nathan also had his first haircut this month. He had sooo much hair, and he did a much better job than I expected sitting through it with veggie stick reinforcement!
All of them do a lot of imitating now. "Uh oh" is a favorite. I can tell they are listening to the vocabulary I am teaching and imitating inflection and tones often. They also always check the child safety at our house. They love to climb on things, try to get the computer, climb through on and on furniture or over toys. It is a very exciting time for us. As they start identifying things and answering and copying, we know this month is going to be amazing.
