December

It has been an unseasonably warm December, which is FINE by me! This has meant a few extra days spent outside in the backyard and at the park on the weekends.

Dylan is now 18 months old.  He's cute as a button.  And rotten as all get-out.  So, it's a good thing he's so cute.

 He is extremely active and busy.  He loves all the dangerous things that keep a mama on her toes.  He is constantly checking the electric outlets.  The plug protectors do no good because he has the fine motor ability to pull them out.   His daycare has confirmed his outlet de-plugging abilities.  On the positive side, if I ask him to plug in our Christmas tree, he can and will (supervised naturally).   He has broken the baby-latch on the cabinet under the sink (I have no idea how).  He constantly pulls out trash bags and runs around shaking them.  I clean up about 10 trash bags from around the house each evening.  It makes for a fun game of "chase the baby" when I hear the shaking.
He likes to empty my kitchen utensil drawer.  He seems to frequently find the meat-mallet entertaining.  He likes to run around smashing toys and laughing.  So far, nothing has been broken.  We are extremely lucky.
He can take off his pants and diaper.  He is proudest of all of this accomplishment.  We recently woke up to find a naked baby in a messy crib.  I'm trying out a new tip--put the diaper on backwards.  Results are pending.  He is a problem solver.  If there's something he wants up high, he pushes boxes, crates, chairs around and climbs up to reach what he wants.  We put all our breakable ornaments near the top of our tree and all the cloth and handmade ornaments on the bottom.  I think he just laughed at us before climbing on top of the rocking chair and throwing the breakable glass bulbs like grenades.

Dylan's language is starting to take off.  Instead of just signing "help" he can tell me.   He also says: Open, more, eat, ribbit, quack-quack, pig, neigh-neigh, moo cow, rawr (for lion, tiger, anything that roars), e-bent (elephant), foot, eye, nose, ear, mouth (for some reason he also tries to bite me if I say, "where's your mouth?), Mommy, Daddy, Ryan, Elliott, E-ban (Esteban), Oh no!, drop, off, up.

Ryan:
Ryan is now 3 and 3/4.   He is very sweet natured.  He is quick to apologize when given correction.  He loves picnics and giving flowers to girls.  He uses very creative grammar.  He has a lisp.   He loves the family iPad.  He's learning his letters in preschool.  He will tell us which letters climbed the coconut tree that day.  Yesterday I caught him playing preschool with himself, pretending he was the teacher.  It went something like this: "Anthony, what month is it? Saturday? That's correct!"  He is a very protective and good big brother to Dylan.  When he sees Dylan doing something dangerous I can count on him to let me know or try to intervene, steering Dylan away, "No no Dylan, that's not a good idea."  He ask's for "snuggle-bug" time before bed (storytime).  No one can irritate him like his father.    I could not have asked for a sweeter boy.