Laleblog: August 2008

Dear Rachel,

Today, you turned 26 months old. As you can tell by the title, I've decided to stop referring to your age in months because I once worked with a woman who referred to her child's age in months and her child was 10 years old. It was a bit annoying. And a little creepy.

We did some more traveling this month, and I'm glad that we did. You need to get used to taking trips during the summer because we'll probably do it a lot, especially as you get older. And the older you get, the better you travel. For the most part. If
the trip is short.

You got to meet almost all of the Laleman side of the family this month, and while there were quite a few people you already knew, there were also a bunch you'd never met before. I'm glad that we got to go - you had a great time, and I remember how much fun it was for me being at large family gatherings like that as a child. I hope we get to do more of those as you grow up.

You absolutely loved ~~going to the beach~~swimming in the ocean when we went to Corpus earlier in the month. It was so weird though, because when we went in the fall, you had no problem walking in the sand, all over the beach with me, but this time, you wanted nothing to do with the sand. In fact, you made us carry you almost everywhere, even into the water. But the swimming, you couldn't get enough of. In fact, when you woke up Sunday morning after being at the beach Saturday afternoon, the first thing you said was "I go simming in bid oh-sun?" So we went to the beach Sunday morning and went swimming.

When we came back from the coast, you came down with what we thought was a nasty cold and sinus infection. You were all snotty and stuffed up to the point that we had to give you a pillow to sleep on to keep your head elevated. We thought you had caught something terrible from the ocean, or had gotten sick from our hotel room being so cold, but about three days after you got sick, we noticed that you were chewing a lot on your fingers. One day at dinner, I noticed you really gnawing on your fork, and it clicked - the runny nose, the chewing on your fingers and anything else that you could jam back into your mouth...I stuck my finger in there and felt your top molars coming in! Your bottom ones came in without us even noticing, but the top ones you had a lot harder time with. I'm glad that we're finally done with all the teething.

You learned to jump this month, and much to my dismay, you discovered that jumping on the bed and other furniture is really fun. So now starts years upon years of me being a dad and yelling at you for jumping on the furniture, or even standing up on the couch, when what I really want to do is join you in jumping on stuff, but I know that if I try it, we'll be buying new furniture really soon.

We converted your crib to a "big girl bed" this past month, meaning that we took the sliding rail off the side of it, lowered the mattress so you can climb into it by yourself, and put some smaller, non-sliding rails on each end. You loved climbing in and out of it, and the first night you got to sleep in it, you promptly fell out. Three times. Evidently, the space between the small rails is just what you needed to wriggle your way right onto the floor. At about 3 AM we both heard a thump, then heard you moan once, then nothing. I went in to check on you and found you sound asleep on your stomach on the floor. You didn't even wake up when I put you back into bed. The next day, we went and got you a movable rail to help keep you in bed.

You have become quite the little tape recorder, and now your mother and I really have to watch what we say around you. In fact, just today, someone hit my car in a parking lot and as I was kneeling down inspecting the damage, you came over and asked me what was wrong (which was very sweet), and as I continued to look at the scrapes, I must have muttered something under my breath because the next thing I knew, you were touching the scrapes just like I was and saying "dammit...dammit...dammit." Whoops. Earlier today, we were watching the US Women's volleyball team on the Olympics and you started in with "Yeah! Nice!" just like your mother was saying whenever there was a good shot.

You've also started singing to yourself. You know a bunch of songs now, and every once in a while, we'll hear you singing loudly and way out of key, but it is very cute. A couple of weeks ago, we were putting toys away in the garage and you broke out with "Please, please, please do not goooooo" and it was actually in tune. I was very impressed.

We are constantly amazed at how smart you are (or at least we think so). You know almost all of your colors, and identify things by color all the time (boo car, purple butterfly and so on). You can also count to ten all by yourself and even know quite a few of your numbers and letters by sight. Along with working on those, we started trying to get you to say your whole name this month. So far, it comes out "Way-shul Eeesa Mon-ez Ma-nen." But you're working on it.