Ian's Doings

We haven't taken many photos lately, mostly because we're almost always outside with Ian, trying to keep up with him. This is a particularly bad time of year to be carrying a camera around outside, because everything is covered with pollen. We get pollen storms every year at this time, but this year is the worst since we've been here. It's an amazing phenomenon. This was a few days ago, and doesn't do it justice since I had just been driving around before taking this:


The pollen doesn't slow Ian down one bit. Fortunately he's occasionally happy enough to play with indoor toys. Here I caught him in a rare diaperless moment, helping Daddy build a block pagoda:


In addition to blocks, trains, and Legos, Ian is also a big fan of "Squish!" (playdoh). Grandma made him some back in February and then sent more along with Grandpa last month. Miraculously, it's all still usable, and Ian plays with it a lot. He just learned how to use the rolling pin:



Ian has generally be delightful to hang out with these days, and we're really starting to enjoy being with him. But, he has had intermittent periods of extreme fussiness in the last couple weeks. The doctor ruled out any physical causes, but suggested that it could be a reaction to weaning and some disruption of his routine while I was sick. He is at an age that is typically the second period of separation anxiety (the other is around 9 months). So, we've been trying to help him cope. For the last few days we've been bringing Moose ( a gift from Aunt Julie, one of his babies that sleeps in his crib at night) with him every day. The first day that we brought Moose Ian was so happy for his companionship that he didn't cry at all when I left him in the morning (for months he has been fine when I leave each day, but for the last couple weeks he has been very unhappy). He was very excited to tell me about "Moose!", "Nap!" when I picked him up, and Lisa reported that he took a record 4 hour afternoon nap. Since I don't want to chance him having trouble sleeping at night due to Mooselessness, now that he is finally reliably sleeping through the night, we bring Moose home each day. This means that he sometimes accompanies us on errands on our way. Here he is keeping Ian company while we're grocery shopping:


Ian continues to get more verbal every day. In general we are thrilled to see him growing up and being able to understand and communicate more. However, there are a few cute little boy words that we hate to lose. Already "io!", his way of calling his favorite dog, is sounding a lot more like Lilo. Instead of flapping his tongue in and out of his mouth when he's thirsty, he is starting to ask for "water". The word we're anticipating mourning the most is "Me-mop". It tooks us a long time to figure out what this meant, and we finally discovered that he was saying "cleanup". He says it in a singsongy voice (because he sings a cleanup song with Lisa) while he's putting his toys away. He is very adamant that one set of toys requires "me-mop" before he gets out another. We're trying hard to capture the adorable "me-mop, me-mop" while we still have it.

We're happy to be getting to hear more of what's on our boy's mind as he can say more things. This evening during his pre-bed time on Daddy's bed, he responded to Doug, "Wuv-oo" (love you). So sweet!