Vertical Thinker

Isaac is 13 months old today!

He is our vertical thinker. His outlook on life is vertical, not horizontal. Whenever he enters a room, he looks around for things to climb on. He's not walking yet because he's mostly focused on crawling or creeping to his next climbing spot. I'm sure he'll be walking soon - it's naturally going to happen, but it's not too much of a concern to him at the moment. He prefers to spend his time climbing on the kitchen chairs and trying to get up on the kitchen table, climbing up any unattened step stool, emptying out drawers and toy bins so he can climb in them, and climbing up stairs. We've been teaching him how to go down stairs feet first on his belly, and he gets a kick out of that too. He likes to climb up on the ottoman then swing his feet around and slide off on his belly.

We get such a kick out if Isaac's view of the world!

Thanksgiving Day Snuggles

We had a great Thanksgiving at Baubie's house in Atlanta. Isaac enjoyed a very rare moment of stillness and snuggles with Baubie, and that made her day! Noah had a lot of fun snuggling up with Mitzi and trying out her comfy dog bed. Both boys had a blast playing in Baubie's "little kitchen" and serving food and coffee to the family. We were so glad to see that Baubie's health is continuing to improve. It was a great Thanksgiving weekend!

Sewer Man

Noah has re-discovered the tunnel and he is having so much fun with it. He first started out pretending he was the tunnel digger (he's been watching the tunnel digger machine in our neighborhood as it buries cables). That only lasted awhile, and now the tunnel has become the sewer. Noah announces, "Here comes the sewer man!" with great excitement and he goes into the tunnel to clean out the sewers. Sometimes he lays the tunnel on the ground and stays inside it for a while. I ask him what he's doing and he replies, "I'm fixing something in the sewer." It's certainly a game I never would have thought of myself!

The Great Diaper Change Challenge

I'm getting quite the workout when I change Isaac's diaper these days. He's just too busy to be bothered with such trivial things. I usually have to force him to lay on his back by squeezing him in between my knees and power through the screaming and grunting (his, not mine). Once in a while, he wins and crawls away as fast as he can while laughing hysterically. Well, yesterday I had my camera near by, so I waited to see where he was planning on going. He was on top of his firetruck in an instant and made a valiant effort to get on the coffee table before the truck rolled away. Isaac, I apologize to you in advance if you ever find out I've put this picture on our blog. It's just too cute, I couldn't resist!

Counting Letters

Noah has developed a strong interest in spelling words and counting the letters in words. He loves it when I spell words out loud so he can count the letters on his fingers. He's memorized a few words and phrases, and one of his favorites is "I-L-O-V-E-Y-O-U" It's very sweet to have him tell us he loves us by spelling it!!

We made an activity together where I wrote out all the names of his school friends, and he sorted them according to the number of letters that each name has. It's a great pre-reading skill. For instance, he knows that his friend Ethan starts with an "E" and has 5 letters, so when he sees that strip of paper, he instantly knows it spells Ethan's name. Friends' names are great first sight words!

Two Cooks in the Kitchen

Matt and Noah make pancakes from scratch every Saturday morning - it's their tradition. Since it involves standing on a step stool, stirring, and time with Daddy, Isaac decided that he's old enough to help too!

Pure Happiness

I love this picture of Noah. He was running into Matt's arms in Grammy and Yaya's field in Michigan. It's pure happiness.