Updates

Matty has really taken to walking in the past few days. As of today, I'd say that walking took the place of crawling as his preferred means of getting around. I took several double takes this evening as I would catch a glimpse of Matty walking, not crawling, into the room. He continues to be so proud of his accomplishments. His smile melts my heart. A few other fun facts about my boy:

• Matty loves his shoes. I constantly find him in our "mud room," pulling shoes off the shelves and holding them up to me. Even though he is not talking, he grunts and grunts as if I should understand that he's trying to say "Come on, mom, let's go!"
• Matty cut two more teeth over the weekend. He cut his top right "I" tooth on 6/15 and cut his bottom right incisor on 6/16.
• Matty's hair is starting to curl. I imagine his first haircut is in our near future, but for now the curls are too cute!
• Matty has starting using a couple of words (if you can call them words). When he comes up to me, and pulls himself up on my leg, he raises his arms and says "Ma Ma!" He is also saying "Uh" (as in "Uh oh") when he purposely drops food from the table. Otherwise, he does a lot of pointing and grunting to communicate with us.
• Matty loves to watch his sister brush her teeth. He has his own toothbrush and does a pretty good job of brushing his own teeth (and chewing on the toothbrush).
• He LOVES playing with balls - soccer balls, basketballs, baseballs, and any other assortment of balls in our house. They are everywhere. Tonight, Taylor was cleaning up a ton of balls that were spilled on the floor, and Matty started handing balls to her to put away. It was so fun to observe their teamwork in action.

Taylor continues to amaze me with her "smartness." Nothing gets past this girl. She says things on a regular basis that truly baffle me. For example, I called a friend of mine the other day and left her a message. In my message, I simply said, "Hi Erin, hope you are doing well... call me later." After I hung up the phone, Taylor asked me how Baby Clare was doing. When I asked what made her think of Baby Clare, Taylor said, "Well, you just called Baby Clare's mommy, Erin." It has been many months since Taylor has seen Baby Clare or Erin, so it shocked me that she remembered such details.

T's first dance recital was last weekend. The name of her dance was "Circus March." There were five other little girls in her number, and they were all pretty darn cute. I can't say they did much dancing, but the audience certainly enjoyed them. Taylor enjoyed the attention and said that she wants to take dance again next year. We went out for pizza with two other little girls from her class afterwards.

It seems that we've turned a corner with Taylor. Her behavior is improving, thanks to some tough love from mom and dad. She still has her moments, but Tommy and I have such little tolerance for her whining and tantrums that we're "winning" more and more of the battles. When she's not "in a mood," she is a sweetheart. Her high-pitched, little voice fills our hearts with joy. Last night, Taylor woke up in the middle of the night and wanted to get into bed with Tommy and me. We relented (yes, we're suckers). As we all settled in and started to fall back to sleep, Taylor turned to Tommy and said, "Daddy, if you roll over I will rub your back." Ha! Tonight, as I tucked Taylor into bed and walked out of her room, she said "Mommy, I love you all over the world." Hearing those things make all of our long days together worth it!

Baby #3 is growing quickly. It is hard to believe I will be 18 weeks on Wednesday. Part of me wants to beam myself forward to November; the other part of me wants to enjoy every moment of my last pregnancy. Overall, I am feeling great. The total exhaustion has waned, but as of today the babe is sitting on my sciatic nerve and my right leg is tingling. Let's hope the pain does not last another 22 (or 24!) weeks.

Enough updates for now. More posts to come, as we have lots of fun summer activities in the works.