Fun in the Snow

Finally a little bit of snow this winter.

Devin's favorite activity so far: clapping the snow off his mittens

Mommy's favorite activity: keeping the mittens on.












The first taste of fresh snow.

Half of a snow angel, too.

Grandparents and Naps

These two rarely coincide with each other. (Family visit = bad sleep for Devin).



But we love and celebrate both just the same.


Fun winter walks with Grandma and Grandpa.










And Nana and Bampa.

And Devin must have both hands or no hands at all. Then he leans forward with all of his weight (which is close to 30 pounds these days).











Ah, sleep. We've made the switch to one nap a day. And for the last few days Devin has gotten a good 3 hours or so. Now to get rid of the early morning wake-up and we'll be set!

This is the typical sleeping position. Thumb in mouth, bottoms up, cuddly blanket, and Snarls (his black and white tiger - probably under him)

It's a...

Girl! We celebrated the inauguration today with a sonogram!



Here's her profile.









And she's a squirmy one too! Interestingly though she does kick me as strongly as Devin did (yet) but we could see her moving all around in the ultrasound. It even took a little while for the technician to get all the views she needed.









In her room...

First this...and then this

Ah, snow. Barely. We had enough flurries in the air to see it in the picture. Since we haven't had much of anything to date, I decided to put Devin in his snowsuit anyway. It was one I wore as kid as well. Had to make sure he wore it before it was outgrown.








So first we played in the 'snow' and tried to play with Blue. Blue doesn't like playing with Devin for some reason. I believe he is trying to make a point.











Then this happened. He actually fell twice. The first time Wendy came running over and jumped at his back taking both Devin and me by surprise. This was almost harmless and after the surprise and washing of the dirt Devin was fine. The second time we weren't so lucky. Not used to his boots yet Devin tried to take off running down the sidewalk at normal speed and skidded on his face instead. A minor scrape and Devin handled it well (just a few tears until we cleaned up) but it's our worst yet. And I know, so many more are to come...

It's not just about basketball

In Devin's world of sports there is now a little competition. His playset for Christmas came with a golf club and golf balls and he took to it immediately. We're impressed how much he puts around the basement. I hope to have a video or pic soon.














The basement is also fully finished now and just a tiny bit of trim painting left for me to do. So more pics to follow on that as well. And hopefully more sleep too. We have been staying up WAY to late to get the work done the last two weeks.









Lots of space behind the couch for Devin and his sister to play.














A little tile entryway from the basement door - you know, for muddy paws and the like.















The music studio/office.

Lost in the tunnels

Words and Signs

Anytime people ask me if Devin is saying any words I blank about his recent accomplishments so after a rather educational day today, I feel the need to jot them so I don't forget.

Regarding the sign language it has been interesting, we let the sign language drop away the last several months as he began actually speaking and he'd only used a couple of signs anyway, but we kept up with a couple signs which stuck and then a friend turned me on to a great resource: Signing Time (also on youTube) The following link also has an adorable animation/song which is how Devin quickly picked up 'please': More Milk Please

Based on our experience with Devin, we will definitely continue baby sign language with our second baby. It's fun, can't hurt, and I love learning the language myself!

Signs:
More (like crazy the last few days)
Milk
Please (today!)
Basketball (last few days)
Potty/Bathroom
Bath
All done/All gone
Eat
Apple (today!)
Hot

Words Spoken (not in the order in which he learned them and some are obviously more clear than others):
more
milk
please
basketball
ball/bike (they sound the same at the moment)
bass
poo
done/gone
apple
banana
Boowa
door
bath
bird
duck
cat
dog
fish
goat
donkey
BooBoo (Blue) Poor Wendy is just 'dog' or gets BooBoo as well
Nana
Grandma (finally getting the hang of this one)
Bamba/Grandpa (I'm not sure they count as separate words yet)
Bambi (not to be confused with the above)
Mama
Dada
Jesus (was too cute just before Christmas)
YoBaby
baby
byebye
hot
uh-oh
nose
bump
car
truck
cheers
star