A Page in the Book

My last post was in October?! Shame, shame on me...

So much has happened since then, nothing at the moment I can think of that is terribly negative, unless you take into account how sad it makes me to see my little boys grow up before my eyes!

First, Xavier:

I keep setting goals for myself with Xavier, so as to not let his education stagnate. My first one of these was that he should know his colors (strongly) at 2 years old. Check. Then, it was that I wanted him to recognize his upper case alphabet at 2.5. Already hit before the mark, so I ammended it to recognition of upper and lower case at 2.5. Done. So, how we are onto phonics, and he's got most major consanant sounds down now (he's just a little over 2.5 now) so our new goal is all phonetical sounds by 3. I keep trying to hold myself off on starting sight words yet, just because everything I've read says to hold off until a strong grasp of phonics exsists.

Now, onto Joseph:

Joseph is up on all fours, getting ready to start crawling. If left to his own means, he can move about a foot per half hour with a combination of scooting and rolling. Joseph's first few months were rough, not in the getting adjusted to having two children, but rather, it turns out he had a dairy intolerance. For the longest time I just assumed Joseph was just a fussy little baby, very different from how Xavier was, but once I made a comment to my LLL group, they made casual mention of checking on his stool, and perhaps a possible dairy intolerance. A week later of no dairy (that means milk, butter, cheese, dairy derivitives in processed food...the works) and I had the same happy loving baby Xavier was. Poor guy, no wonder he was cranky. :( I know how I feel when I chug a glass of milk, I can't imagine what it's like to be such a little baby and suffer through that!

To bring it to the present, he is starting a little bit on solids now, and he's had some mashed avacado, and I am now starting him on a bite or two of greek yogurt to test if he is still dairy sensitive. So far, so good, but we are going to gradually up the amount over the next week to ensure no reaction. I decided not to indgest the milk product myself, so as to not contaminate my entire milk supply should he still be sensitive to dairy. It really made nursing tough the first few weeks, and even further on because he didn't sleep well. Not that he sleeps great now since we are co sleeping a bit so as to not wake Xavier...but that's a whole 'nother issue.

So much to write about...but for now, I think I just want to post some photos of my beautiful boys. :)

Carnegie Science Center, New Years Eve: