Milo, Lately

This chunky monkey loves his bath. He could be fussing and crying but when we sit him in the water all of that is forgotten and he smiles and coos while he splashes.

Levi, Lately

It's hot. It's too hot for this Mama to sit outside next to the sandbox with a toddler and a wiggly, sweaty infant. Instead of digging in the sand today, Levi spent a long time working with dried beans instead. Yay for cool, conditioned air.

Boys in Motion

These two keep me on my toes!



For the Levi and Milo Superfans that read this site (you know who you are) here are some details from their worlds as of late:

Levi
- He loves reading his High 5 Highlights magazine. The subscription was a Christmas present from great Grandma and Grandpa Corzine. It's absolutely no exageration to report that we've read every issue dozens of times.
-His favorite crafty activity is cutting paper with his scissors. I'm happy to report that he is quite talented at making confetti.
-His playtime has become more and more imaginative. This week he has been dedicated to pretending to be an alligator. Also, he likes to pretend to be a construction worker (pronounced "Stuck-son verker")
-Currently his favorite dvd to watch is either Clifford the Big Red Dog or Curious George. He asks to watch them by saying, "Time to watch TVDVDVD, Mama?"
-Potty training is going well though there is still quite a bit of room for improvement. He very rarely has an accident at home and only occasionally when we are out. He wears a diaper still for nap and bedtime.
-Levi loves to go swimming. We go once or twice a week at the Y and each time you can see that he is getting more comfortable in the water.
-He wants to do more and more things by himself- going to the potty, getting a snack, buckling his carseat, opening packages (with the scissors mentioned earlier). He helpfully threw out the perfectly good batteries in the remote control because as he stated, "They were old, Mama. They do not work very very well
-His favorite foods include mac and cheese, prunes, fruit snacks, grapes, plain yogurt with brown sugar, oatmeal with brown sugar, potato chips, milkshakes that he makes with Daddy, spinach with ranch dressing, chicken with ranch dressing, cabbage with ranch dressing, Ranch dressing with ranch dressing (usually called 'white dip').

And now Milo:
-He is very strong and likes to stand up while you're holding him. His favorite maneuver is sitting on your lap, settling in, lulling you into a false sense of security, then LUNGING backwards suddenly.
-He does well with tummy time and had been rolling over quite a bit but decided he was not interested in doing that anymore. I haven't seen him roll for a couple of weeks now.
-He is teething. With that comes lots of drooling and gnawing and chomping and drama.
-Milo loves to watch his big brother play.
-He switches between being very smiley to very serious quickly and often.
-He sleeps from 7pm to around 6am and naps 3 times a day
-He nurses 5 or 6 times a day.
-He spits up 1,000,000 times a day.
-Milo is wearing 6-9 month old sizes now.
-He had a flat spot on the back lefthand side of his head. Apparently early on he developed a preference for sleeping with his head in a certain position. Due to the fact that infants heads are very pliable, his flattened in that area from the weight of his head. We took him to see a specialist and have been instructed to follow 'aggressive re-positioning'. This pretty much boils down to never letting the back of his head rest on anything during the hours that he is awake. Hopefully this will allow it to round out.

Cousins!

Joel and Kelly watched the boys for us last week so we could go out and celebrate Luke's birthday. Levi and Milo had a great time, of course. Kelly made a cardboard box house with a flip-top roof. The kids had a blast. I'm not sure which Levi and Ben enjoyed more- playing in the house or the next day when they were allowed to demolish it.

Ruby helping Milo roll over:

Taken Over the Course of 5 Minutes

Introducing General Droolisimo

What could a four month old be this serious and concerned about??

I'm yummy and gummy.

Whatchoo Talkin' 'Bout, Willis?

Teething is so perplexing!

Creating

Here's Levi hard at work making one of the cards we gave Luke.

Lots of glitter!

Happy Birthday, Luke

Luke is now 33 years old! The picture below was taken at Mom and Dad Dickson's house over the weekend. They cooked us a nice dinner to celebrate. Some of the gifts Luke received may have actually been for Levi. He's been having a lot of fun 'fishing' all week.

Tonight we remininced about his birthday last year when I took a home pregnancy test and found out that we were expecting. A lot has happened in a year!

Milo at 4 months old

Milo had his 4 month well baby check-up today. He was measured at 26.5 inches long which is the 90th percentile and weighed 16#14oz which put him in the 82nd percentile. (Levi at this age was 27.5" and 16#9.8oz, 97% and 60% respectively). Of course we were glad to see that he is growing well but sad when it came time for the shots. As is usual, he recovered from them more quickly than his Mama.

As you might have noticed, all the pictures of Levi lately show him without pants. We're in the midst of potty training and he's doing very well. Here he's saying, "Watch me, Mama!", a phrase I hear many times throughout the day.

He loves his Daddy!

Sleepy baby in a round crib.

Special Day

Everyone here at LaDickson Blog Headquarters would like to wish Mom a very Happy Birthday!

Here is a very brief pictorial tour. Mom as an adorable preschooler with her mom. This picture always reminds me of my niece, Ruby.

Here she is on her wedding day. Whoops, the 70s abducted my Dad's ears.

And a recent picture. Mom's had a big year. In addition to her job, all the work she does at her church, and all the attention and spoiling she does to her kids and grandkids, she graduated with her MBA. We are so proud of the work she did. Mom must have made quite the impression- her classmates voted her 'Most Likely to Succeed'.

Happy Birthday, Mom. We love you!

Present for Mama

Levi and Nana made me these 'flowers' out of gumdrops and cookies. Every 10 seconds during their construction Levi would ask her if he could have a cookie yet. "Can I eat one now?"

Baby Takes a Swim

Dear Daddy,

They finally let me go swimming! I've been hanging out on the side of the pool all week. Here's Nana helping me into my swim trunks. They even have a pocket. I can't for the life of me figure out why I'd need a pocket let alone one in my swim trunks, but it's good to have options.

Look at all my chub!

I kept a pretty serious face throughout my swim. After awhile I did make some happy sounds and start to kick around.

Big Brother wanted to help me swim. Mom protected me.

I get to see you tomorrow, Daddy, and I'll tell you all about it then.

love,

Miles

Trains!

Dear Daddy,
I went on a TRAIN RIDE! We went to Boston. Here's the station:

Here's me looking back and forth for the train:

Here's baby brother drooling on Papa:

It's coming. I can see it's headlight.

Auntie Lea and Ryan took me to the Boston Children's Museum. It was fun even when we got rained on.

I get to see you tomorrow, I can't wait!

love,

Levi

Dear Daddy (Friday's letters)

Dear Daddy,

I sure miss your hugs but Nana and Papa are doing their part to make sure I don't go without. I got to spend some time out by the pool today and loved watching my big brother jump and splash. I can't wait until next summer when I can get in the water, too!

At the children's museum this morning I also had fun watching the kids play. I would start to complain if Nana shifted me around in a way that blocked my view of them.

Nana watched me and Levi tonight so Mama could go out to dinner with Papa. She said I was like a little bear cub- lots of wiggles and grunts and growls. Yep, that sounds like me.

I miss you!

love,

Miles

Dear Daddy,

Can we get a pool? PLEEEAAASE???

I love to play around in the water. Probably my favorite part today was jumping into Nana's arms and trying to splash her with lots of water- over and over and over. She never seemed to get tired of it. I also really liked putting all the floaty toys in the water and then playing a kind of hide and seek game with Papa. It was so thrilling when he jumped out from behind the big inflated dog! Of course, I had him do it over and over and over again.

We also went to the Providence Children's Museum. Nana and Papa were right, it was definitely up my alley. I was pretty tired from all the activity that's been going on but I still had a great time. I really liked the construction equipment exhibit. I think my very favorite one, though, was the little room filled with the pneumatic tubes. It was like the ones at the bank that fascinate me, except these I got to play with myself! There were scarves and little soft yarn balls to feed into the tubes. They whipped around and then came shooting out somewhere else. I could have stayed in there all afternoon.

After my nap I swam until supper and then I swam after that until bedtime. I didn't complain one bit when Mama put me in bed. I was so tired!

Tomorrow we are going on a train ride! I'll have Mama take some pictures for you.

I miss you!

love,

Levi

Dear Daddy

Dear Daddy,

I had a great day here at Nana and Papa's. Guess what I figured out! I can roll over from my belly to my back. You should see the look on my face after I do it- apparently it's quite the mix of surprise and pride. I can't wait to show you.

I've been pretty well behaved though have thrown quite a few fits when they buckle me into the carseat. There was also the 'poop incident' on the plane ride here. Mama just went ahead and threw out the cute outfit I was wearing. The entire back was literally soaked all the way up past my shoulderblades. It got all over Mama's jeans, too. Whoops! When you've got to go, you've got to go, as they say.

I miss you already.

love,
Miles

Dear Daddy,

I wish you were here with us! It's been a fun day and I've been busy, busy, busy. The best part was all the swimming and playing I did this morning outside. You should see all the fun tricks I've been doing in the water.

Here I am having some fun inside. I'm sure you aren't surprised to find that I did plenty of jumping and thumping today.

Nana got out a bunch of toys for me to have fun with. Most of them were toys that Mama, Uncle Joel, and Auntie Lea played with when they were little. I guess over time it is pretty easy to lose track of some of the smaller pieces. That explains the little scene below. It's a cow/hippo/kudu farm being tended to by Minnie Mouse and two of the Bernstein Bears. As everyone knows, kudus and cows do NOT get along so we had to have a little people police presence there to keep the peace.

I'm sure the scene below will be familiar to most people. I mean, who, after eating part of an apple, doesn't get their headphones out and decide to plug the port into the apple?? It's not just me, right?

As I said earlier, the pool was so much fun. I took my play time very seriously and was busy taking care of many things: helping Papa filter out all the cool bugs, carrying things around, and filling up the bucket so my pretend goats would have something to drink.

I miss you lots and I know Mama does, too.

love,

Levi