Holly, Dan, Gregory and Asher!: March 2010

Gregory has been doing a lot of growing up lately, experiencing a major phase of motor skill development. Maybe its just because its been such a long time since the big skill developments of the first year, but I am just astounded every day at the things he is suddenly doing! He is climbing on everything, jumping off of said things, and hopping, twirling, somersaulting, and otherwise flailing all over the place! He does frog leaps, gets quite a bit of air on his hopping, and experiments with balancing on one foot. He is also constantly dancing, even imitating some dances he has seen on TV, like ballet! He is getting much better at using a spoon to eat things like cereal with milk, without making such a huge mess. He has an increased interest in coloring and drawing, going from just scribbling without regard, to trying to actually color in the picture on the coloring book page. Perhaps one of the most amazing things to me was when he grabbed a crayon and a blank paper this last week and drew something, saying "This is a G." Sure enough, it was actually a G, though backwards!! Incredible! I have never attempted to teach him to write, but of course we do show him the letters and his name, etc. Yesterday he was drawing reasonable semblances of spiderwebs. I can't wait to see what he draws next! He's drawing recognizable pictures - WHAT!?!

Another major accomplishment is that he suddenly is able to keep himself dry during sleeping times. This happened spontaneously when we visited Omaha at the end of Feb. He did not dirty a diaper or have an accident on the entire 5 day/4 night trip! He has been in regular undies during the day for a few months now, but today we took him to buy some "big boy nighttime underwear" aka padded training undies to be worn with a wool cover at night, just in case. Goodbye diapers, at least for a few months! There is a part of me that thinks surely he will regress any day now, but then again, considering all the other major leaps lately, maybe not!

Another fun thing is that Gregory has been showing increasing interest in his baby brother. He loves to look at pictures of developing babies in a couple of books we have. He often asks me if he can feel the baby kicking, and I think that just the other night he actually did feel a little kick! He loves to hug and kiss my belly and talk to Asher through my belly button. He will tell anyone who asks that his baby brother Asher is inside Mommy's tummy, and when he comes out he will share the milkies with him! He is down to nursing only once or twice a day for only about a minute at a time, which is just fine with me! He might increase again once the milk comes back, and that will be fine too! He has also been pretending to nurse all of his dolls lately, which is too cute. He has been paying more attention to the babies at our playgroups, and is always very sweet, touching their cheeks and noses so gently, and giving them hugs. He is going to be a wonderful big brother!

I guess there has been one downside to all this growth - seems that whatever level of impulse control he had before (and it wasn't much) is completely gone! Or maybe its just that since he is using his body in all these new ways, he is thinking of lots of new and impulsive things to try. Things like hitting other kids, throwing stuff, dumping things out, banging on everything in sight, and making really loud irritating noises. Ah, to be two and a half... This too shall pass, right!?!

Ballet Dancing