Joshua repeats after the "house"

Joshua can recite words from his audio toys. He can predict what words come next and will say them before the toy does. My mind is blown ...

He was playing with his "house" in the car as usual, and as we pulled into the house, I heard him repeating words from the "house", like "up up upppp" etc... I realised that he has been saying "The End" for the past 2 weeks because he learned it from storytime at the "house".

So basically, he's learning whole sentences now because he can recite most of the words in the storytime. The "house" is amazing! James also learned a lot of sentences from it. Best toy EVER!

Joshua Finally Walks

The long awaited day finally came!

For weeks, the little fellow's been teasing us with a few steps and lunges from one piece of furniture to another, or standing on his own for minutes on end. But try to lead him to take steps on his own, and he sits down the minute you remove his support or keeps walking on tip toe and threatening to fall over if you loosen your grip.

We knew he could do it, just that confidence seemed to be the issue. Plus, he seemed happy to do his weird sit-crawl, since he could get around really fast that way AND hold a toy at the same time.

This afternoon, he started taking a few steps on his own, near the lizard shit patio area. But lunged for the exploded bouncy castle. I figured it would be a few more days.

Then during dinner at my in-laws', he was playing around the TV area and we just let go of him and off he went. Toddling away, with his feet flat on the ground for once. He took more than 10 steps and I was sure he would either sit or pitch forward, but he continued walking with GREAT stability - even stoppping and making a 90 degree turn.

The maids were already letting him walk 15 minutes before that, while we were eating, so they didn't find this as exciting as we did.

But we let him walk all over the house, and the way he was going, it seemed like he had been doing it for weeks, not having just started moments before! My little cutie pie. He looks adorable when walking, as I thought he would.

James kicks ass

At playgroup today, there was a much older boy (maybe about 4 or 5 years old) playing with the kids. He was pretty rough, and kept snatching the spatula James was playing with right out of his hand.

I managed to quieten James' wails when I found another one. But the boy returned and started to sword fight with James using the spatula. Since James' latest obsession was Puss In Boots, he was very happy to oblige.

But while James was smiling and giggling as they locked spatulas, I noticed the boy had a belligerent expression and was actually TRYING to hurt James. He kept aiming for James' hands, instead of his spatula, and had already swiped various parts of his body. I saw a red line across James' cheek.

I was unsure if I should intervene, because James was still smiling and having fun. So I just stood there, wringing my hands, 10 feet away.

Then, the boy disarmed James by snatching his spatula, so he now had both while James had none. I started moving towards them, because given the boy's expression, he was going to hit my defenseless baby with both spatulas!

James surprised me first.

He looked down at his empty hand, looked up at the boy who was about the swing the spatulas at him, and immediately stepped forward to slam his hand into the boy's chest. The boy flew backwards several feet and started crying for his mommy.

I have NEVER been as proud of my son as I was that day. When I regaled his daddy, my mom and my in-laws with this story, everyone broke out in applause.

It was so unexpected, because despite his size, James is a gentle giant. He usually gets bullied by the more aggressive kids, and just takes their hits in his stride, never retaliating. I was actually worried that he would never learn to defend himself.

But with everything else that he does, he's led by his instincts. And such KILLER instincts he has. Oooo.

I thought it was a coincidence at first, that James was just playing with him. But several times the boy disarmed him, and each time (before the boy could do him any harm) James would slam his palm into the boy's chest and send him flying.

BUDDHIST PALM!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BHJM5ZS4dmQ&feature=player_detailpage#t=498s

I am such a proud mommy right now.

Marriage and Kids. Do we have the right expectations?

I was quite shaken to learn that there were many marriages in my generation of marriages which are / were / going to be in trouble.

Shaken because it seemed to be happening at the same time for all of them, and because my own marriage was also in the same "place" as the other marriages - as in, not married long, just had kids etc...

Shaken because it seemed like no marriage was safe.

Is this a phase everyone's marriage is supposed to go through? Like the 7-year itch?

Is mine going to go through the wringer as well??

The Husband and I were really worried. We started examing the health of our relationship to see if there were things we missed, since life with kids keeps you so busy you sometimes forget to change your underwear, much less remember to check-in with your spouse on their "feelings".

Yeah there are things I'm sure he's not happy with ... like I'm no domestic goddess, and he's lucky if I boil an egg for him and dust the room once every 6 months. And, after 2 kids, I don't look like a Victoria's Secret underwear model. Then again, I didn't look like one BEFORE the 2 kids ....

But I am an awesome person. And I am just plain awesome to be married to. And he was a good match to my awesomeness. He's soft where I am hard, and sensible where I am too emotional. He's my matching jigsaw piece. I am aware of it, and I appreciate it, often.

And we're lucky that we had discussed our mutual awesomeness and lack of awesomeness before we got married, and knew what our expectations of each other, of marriage and of parenthood were before all these things hit us.

And we're lucky that no matter how fucking tired we are at the end of the day, we still look forward to talking to each other in the twilight moments before we fall asleep.

We're just fucking lucky.

We're also always reminded how we were intended for each other by the grace of God. Literally brought together by His hand. And we're not going to waste all His efforts by sniping over who didn't put up the toilet seat.

James and his pronunciation

His diction is very sharp for his age, I think largely thanks to breastfeeding.

The "CH" at the end of words like "lunch" and "bench" are very enunciated, his little lips curled cutely around the words. But there are still some words that escape his abilities :

Snicker-perry (slippery)
Bus stop (bath tub)
Kung-pewter (computer)

And he still has a lot of made up words that I don't know the source of, like "boo-kay" for lamp post.

Joshua's 1st steps

He was holding a toy and standing on his own, near my computer, while James was bounding about the room and around him. He got caught up in the moment and kept taking steps forward, feet flat on the ground.

He was trying to walk after James, and not trapezing from one piece of furniture to another for once. I was amazed to see him plodding one foot after another, with GREAT stability. He even turned and continued on his journey.

I got the camera out and started videoing and he stopped. Stared at me. Realised what he was doing. Sat down. GAAAAAH.

Guess it's just a confidence thing for him now. He definitely can walk. It'll be so cute to see him walk. I can't wait! He's much more careful than James, so it should be less stressful than James' first year of walking. No need to follow him around everywhere, hovering right behind him in fear of tripping or an intentional backflip.

Joshua speaks & James is SOOO CUUUUTE

Joshua has been demonstrating great verbal skills in the last couple of weeks. Although his first official word was "Hewwwwoooo?", he's hardly repeated it. But he's been able to imitate me when I over-pronounce and repeat all these words so far :

- Aaaah-puh (apple)
- Baa-buh (bubble)
- Am-puh (Pampers)
- Thoop (soup)
- Tahhh (star)

He also likes dogs because it's one of the first animals he's learned to recognise and gets very excited whenever he sees one, squealing and exclaiming in his staccatto bursts, and POINTING at them. He's very responsive to Bolt, standing on his own to watch it (he doesn't realise, or he'd straight away sit down) and squawking and exclaiming at various points of the intro.

And James, the ever lazy to feed himself, did something so adorable.

I had piled chips and chicken nuggets on his plate and put it on his table. He ignored it, busy doodling on his magnetic doodle pad. Nearly knocked the plate down a few times, pissing me off. So I took it away and put it on the main table, and ignored James to feed Josh.

I went to the kitchen, and while there I heard James sort of humming to himself outside (like "tum te tum" or something similar), and when I returned, the whole plate of food was back on James' table and he was putting a tomatoed nugget into his mouth.

My little clumsy had very carefully balanced and brought the plate from the main table to his table, without spilling anything on it, and started eating on his own! SO CUUUUUTE.