14th monthday!

Just on the heels of your 13th monthday post!
This month you have made some serious strides, literally! Ha! You are officially walking. You are still a bit tentative, and if mama is around, you will pretty much plop down and demand that I either pick you up, or hold your hand to get around. But, you are definitely able to do it, and just need to build up your confidence.
So, I fear, your scooting days are numbered. But this is probably a good thing for the seats of your pants, skirts, diapers, and legs.



You are still not very verbal, although you definitely get your point across when you are NOT HAPPY! You grunt and squeal and dramatically throw your whole body down to the ground when something displeases you. It is very hard to keep a straight face in the middle of one of your baby tantrums. You are good at gesturing when you want something but are not really that into the sign language, although when Domi flushes the toilet you always are the first to wave bye-bye to his poopies. It's very thoughtful of you. (and never ever ceases to crack me up) I'm sure you'll be gabbing away soon enough, since you definitely speak your own language non-stop as it is. So rather than get too worked up over it, I am just enjoying the fact that one of your few words is mama, which you say often.

Some of your favorite things currently are your board books, especially "Donde esta mi ombliguito" and "colors", the dreaded "music cube" which you would play 24 hours a day if we let you, drawing on anything and everything, and of course food. We'll get to your incredible palate in a moment, but first back to the drawing board, HA! Two puns in one monthday post, someone must stop me. But really, you love drawing. One of your favorite pastimes is sitting outside at abuela's house drawing on the side walk with chalk, or sitting in the tub drawing on the tiles with the tub crayons. Or drawing in books with pens, pencils or whatever other writing implement you can find. This leads to much consternation on the part of your fastidious older brother. He looked in a dinosaur book you had "improved" and said, "Mommy, who wrote in this book? I think it was Amalia. I want it to be as good as new."



Don't be too offended that he immediately thought it was you, he pretty much blames you for any destruction he finds. We were in the doctor's office last week for his check up and he picked up a book in the waiting room that had been ripped and immediately accused you.
However, he really isn't too far off and making baseless accusations. I have said on more than one occasion that we should have named you Genghis, or Baby Kahn, or maybe Bob Villa because you are so very fond of dismantling or destroying everything you find. Books, papers, puzzles, blocks, toys, pillows, anything, everything is a puzzle that must be taken apart. You are so curious and adventurous and inquisitive, it's such a difference from your brother who is (and was) content to sit quietly playing with toys, or looking at books for hours on end. You need to be on the move, or taking something apart, or just doing something it's great, and exhausting.



Another big difference between you and Domingo is your ability and love of all things edible. Whereas your brother eats about 10 things total, most of those in the sweet and/or white carb category, you will eat just about anything I put in front of you. Tonight for dinner we had spinach lasagna, and you could not get enough. Domingo had orzo "wiv nufing on it", ah how that phrase never applies to what you are eating. The only foods that you really don't care for are sour things, if the blueberries are too tart, you spit them out, or if I put lemon on the avocado, etc. but other than that, you eat more things than I do. Let's just say that cooked fruit is not taboo for you, and while we haven't given you peanut butter, I'm sure you would not object. Helping you discover all these new delicious flavors are your 4 molars that decided to come out all at once. It has been a painful, sad, hard experience, but through it all, you are such a cheerful happy baby, you only complain when it's really painful and then as soon as the medicine kicks in you are happy as a clam once again. You are so sweet and loving, giving your family giant bear hugs and kisses on demand. I have to mention that this month once again, Mama is the person to be in Amalia's book, and while sometimes it makes me wish I could give the award to someone else for a minute, like say when I want to get two bites to eat, or go to the bathroom in private, usually it just makes me feel so very very loved by the sweetest girl in the world.



Love,
Mama

p.s. here is a video of your brother singing his new favorite song, and you scoot-dancing along. Yeah, you rule.

Little Gigalo from alice on Vimeo.

edited to add: I have no idea why this video is not syncing right, but I've tried to do it twice and it's just not working. Anyway, you can hear the awesome song, and see Amalia's equally awesome moves, so try to ignore the fact that they don't match up if you can!

Milestone!

I know that I've been a bit delinquent with the posts these days, but I it couldn't go without noting that Amalia took her very first solo steps this week!

Yeah it's exciting I know!

She is still a little timid, and only takes about 3 steps at a time, but I am pretty sure that she'll be running around in no time at all.



In other news, here are two dinosaurs.

Potty training, now with underpants!

So we've moved on to phase two of potty training, and are using underpants! I started this post a few weeks ago, and never finished. I figure I should update with how it's going. Domi is doing great! He is so proud of his big boy underwear, it eases some of my misgivings about buying the ones with the cartoon cars, or (this is the worst) the dinosaur/Pleistocene movie themed underwear. I have a HUGE problem with the whole premise of that movie, and have made my feelings known to anyone who will listen, so the fact that I actually purchased a promotional type item for my child is kind of absurd. Why is there no other choice in dinosaur underwear? I ask you, why? The only thing that makes me slightly less annoyed is that Domingo knows that mammoths and saber toothed tigers lived millions of years AFTER the last dinosaurs died off. He actually told Esther that!
Well, back to the potty talk. Domingo is really getting the hang of potty training, he is motivated by M&Ms and his fancy pants, and I think, his desire to stay clean and dry. Of course there are accidents, particularly when he is distracted, or really focused on something like an engrossing book, or program or game, but those are becoming fewer and farther between. All in all, I think its working because he is ready, not because of anything that we're doing. So here's to one more milestone under our belts, and a pair of anachronistic undies under our pants!

There was a turtle...

This is the best song ever. Again, the production values on this video are pretty poor, but the lyrics make up for it.

There was a turtle... from alice on Vimeo.

Musical

The apples really don't fall far from the trees over here. One of Domingo's favorite things to do is make up silly songs. This is one of Chris and my favorite pastimes, we even used to keep a tape recorder in the car for when the muse would strike. It seems that Domingo has taken up our passion as well. He has made up some really bizarre and funny songs while he's just playing around. For example yesterday he made up a song while sitting in the car. Chris was listening to Paul and Linda McCartney and Domi decided he'd rather listen to his own song:
There was a turtle
peeking in a shell,
when all of a sudden
a dolphin came to eat...
crabs.
(Crabs pronounced "krebs" and followed by peels of laughter.)
I made a video, but it's really hard to see. I'll post it up here asap.

Another perennial favorite is in the morning Domingo will throw blankets on Amalia's head and sing "cabbages around the baby, cabbages around the 'bay-beh'!" It was one of his first and weirdest songs. I still don't know what it means, or why he sings it while throwing blankets.



This one loves music too. She "sings" songs and bangs her little bongo set, or plinks on the piano and looks up with such pride. It's really great. I hope they are in a band together some day.