brotherly love

Lewis and Owen spend a lot of time together. Together might be a strong word, since Owen is constantly chasing Lewis and Lewis is constantly avoiding Owen. But they do interact more and more as Owen gets bigger and is able to demand our attention! Justin set the boys up on this tree stump in our yard the other day so that they would have a good view of a train going by (see above picture). Since then Lewis has requested to sit up there on a couple of occasions, and we've taken more pics.



Owen is becoming a very cuddly little guy. He loves snuggling with his blankie at bedtime (he calls it "guh guh"). But he also likes to give kisses randomly, and even hugged me all through Kroger today. He would lean forward out of the cart and just hold onto me. Funny child! He's very sweet, and loves his big brother. Owen is also much easier to wake up than Lewis. We took a little video of Owen helping to wake Lewis up after a nap a few days ago. Oddly, his kisses aren't making contact (it looked like he was only getting to the edge of Lewis' hair), but the sentiment is here!



Owen is starting to make a lot more vocalizations recently. He is saying:
"ba" for ball
"dada" for dad
"guh guh" for blankie
"ca kuh" for cracker
"boo" for balloon, and sometime blue
"my" for mine
"baah" what a sheep says
other animal sounds:
elephant
lion
kitty cat

He mimics the "k" sound, and even said "mama" today, but is not consistent with it yet. It was very nice hearing it though! He is producing a lot of good gibberish that sounds like "boodah boodah buh." He's also signing some. He's signing "more", "please", "milk", "mine", "all done", and "open." He's trying to shake his head 'no' too. Still no true pointing, which concerns us, and he's not figured out how to stand up without pulling up on something. Not a huge deal, but an oddity nonetheless!

Lewis, on the other hand, continues to progress with potty training. He requested to go poopy the other day and said "no poopy in underwear" because he'd had the slightest accident over the weekend where he didn't make it quite in time. Typically we just take him to the potty on a schedule and ask him every time if he's all done or needs to do more. The last couple of days he's been asking to go, and heading to the potty on his own (though he still needs help when he gets there). His accidents have been few and far between (once a week maybe), and he even wakes up dry 90% of the time, but taking the initiative is a huge step. The internal potty clock is always ticking, and thankfully everyone has adjusted (school, church nursery, our therapists) to keep Lewis from having accidents. It will be wonderful when the potty is totally Lewis-directed.

One other random note: Lewis has a knack for learning how to spell names. He's been using his toy computer to type his name and now can spell and type Owen, Krista, Mandy, mom and dad.

This last picture is of Lewis next to a fire truck. He's become obsessed with fire alarms, and points them out every time he sees one. Today he almost pulled one that was way down low at the Medical Center when we were leaving speech therapy. Anyway, he was excited at first to see this fire truck, but quickly lost interest and started staring at leaves on the ground. It just struck me as funny!