Pitt Game

To celebrate Kevin's birthday, we spent Saturday afternoon outside in a cold, drizzly rain...watching the Pitt/NC State game. I think despite the chilly, wet weather we all had a good time. Malachi and I almost made it to half time before heading home.

Dare I say that Malachi seems to be exiting the camera obsession phase? I managed to get a few pics before he demanded the camera. Enjoy!

Tailgating. Malachi is certainly the apple of his daddy's eye.

Ah, goldfish.

Uncle Brian, Paul (with the wrong colors on), Kevin, and Malachi (still munching away).

Thanks for handing down your Pitt gear, Cousin David! Malachi loves his Pitt bear, Grandma!

Mama's Best Helper

Ketchup! A new word and new fav "food," along with pepper (I think he just likes the sprinkling of the pepper).

My little man is doing a great job following directions these days, and takes a lot of pride in helping out his Mama. He now helps put the milk on the table, as well as putting it back in the refrigerator. He even helped wash dishes the other day, and he helped make birthday muffins for Daddy.

We went to a high school football game, thinking that Malachi would like to see the game in person. The highlight of the experience? The mascot. A cougar. Malachi touched the cougar's hand and pet his head (we were in the bleachers, which were elevated from the ground/track where the cougar was). He watched and watched for him, screaming, "Tiger!" Kevin responded, "Cougar." Malachi responded, "Tiger!" with much zeal. Kevin responded, "Cougar." ...You see where this is going. :)

Enjoy the pics.

THE Turtle Towel. Asked for by name. He plays with it on and sleeps with it on. He can eat and go to school without it, but he asks for it as soon as we head out of school at the end of the day and right after meals. I believe it's his "security" blanket. He looks so darn cute with it on.

I'm shy, Mama...

Just kidding!

Making some progress...

I can now get one picture taken at a time. Yeah!

And Malachi is definitely talking now! :) And talking ALL THE TIME! It is so wonderful to finally hear his voice saying words, communicating his wants and needs. He came to the kitchen the other night, grabbed a juice cup and said, "More please." Music to my ears. I didn't have to ask him if he wanted a drink. He told me!

He is mimicking what Kevin and I say, which is so cute, and his vocabulary seems to be growing exponentially. Some new words (or words that have gotten clearer recently):

Please

Thank you (Even unprompted from time to time!)

Car ("tar")

Truck ("tuck")

Tow truck

Kitty cat

Daddy and Dad

Mama (He has said Daddy and Mama in the past, but he says them with much more intentionality-to get our attention or "ask" us a question-and correctly-I'm Mama and Kevin is Daddy and not vice versa.)

Duck (He LOVES his ducks at the lake.)

Dog

Puppy

Go (We hear this ALL THE TIME!)

Stop ("top")

He is also doing really well at picture identification. We have a bunch of books with just one picture per page. You can ask him questions such as, "Which one goes in the water?" and he'll correctly point to a boat. So exciting!

OK, enough bragging. Sorry. I just had to share.

Fourth of July

Still catching up on my lack of blogging...Fourth of July was fun. Our neighbor hosts quite the celebration for the kids. A bike parade, complete with a banner, starts off the festivities, followed by the star spangled banner and the Pledge of Allegiance. Next up? Old-fashioned games: three-legged races, sack races. The finale? A massive water balloon fight, a watermelon seed spitting contest, and ice cream sandwiches. Does it get any more American than this?
Doesn't my little guy look so grown up with his new haircut?

With Grandma and Grandpa. A quick visit on their way back from Florida for a Taylor family reunion (which we sadly had to miss).

Yes, we're still here.

I know it's been a really long time...not so sure anyone is even checking our site these days, but here's an update.

Kevin is in his fourth and final year of dental school. He's doing a couple of internships this summer. The first was at a hospital and REALLY intense. Right now he's working with kids at a public health clinic and enjoying it. The work is good and the hours are great. We're enjoying the extra time he's had at home.

I've cut back my hours at work...just by 10% (which is 4 hours per week), so nothing drastic. It will help me have more time at home in mornings a couple of days a week.

Malachi is making some developmental jumps right now. He's saying a lot more. Still single words, but his vocabulary is growing, especially now that he is mimicking us. The other day I told Malachi that we were going to get in the car after I grabbed him a snack and sippy. When I turned my back to walk in the kitchen I heard, "snackandsippy?" :) I was so excited!!!

Some other new tricks/skills:

-He can jump.

-He can climb up on his little chairs (much to my dismay he giggles in delight that he can do this).

-He can wave bye-bye now. On a recent trip we were getting our shoes on after going through security. He didn't want to stand up, so I took a couple steps away and said, "OK. Bye-bye." To which he smiled really big and waved bye-bye...and remained seated.)

-He is scribbling with crayons now. He insists on having one crayon in each hand. At school, the rule is one crayon at a time, unless you're Malachi.

-He's learing to play duck-duck-goose. He has the duck, duck, duck part down, but he just laughs really hard if you call him goose (he doesn't run around the circle).

-At red lights he signs and says "stop," and at green lights he points forward and says "go." He's so into it that in the car now he just waits for the next light. Very cute.

-He loves to help Daddy make coffee in the morning. He brings the ground coffee from the fridge to the counter, puts the filter in, and fills the carafe with water. He LOVES helping Daddy.

-He is close to being able to catch a ball, much to Kevin's delight, and he's learning to use a hockey stick. Yes, we bought him a hockey stick. He loves basketball and hockey. He can say: base for baseball, golf, hockey, hockey puck, basketball. We're working on tennis. Daddy and Malachi "read" the sports page almost every day. So cute.

-Malachi can point to his body parts, with elbow being the newest fascination.

-He is riding a bike now (not with the pedals, but walking/running on it instead of pushing it from behind). Such a big boy!

Just happened upon this pic. My poor baby had a bad fever, I still up late getting work done, so to keep an eye on him while I was working away on the computer, I laid Malachi down in the living room. Foster joined him. I think Foster appreciates it when Malachi sleeps--no louds squeals of delight, chasing around the room, pulling tail--although Malachi is very generous with the cat treats, which Foster definitely takes advantage of!

Hunting for Easter eggs. Wow, I really haven't posted in a while!

Hopefully more to come, more often. Our little guy's PASSION for the camera prevents a lot of the picture taking we used to do, but we'll do our best.

Bear

Grandma and Grandpa came to visit this weekend to celebrate Uncle Brian's birthday. They brought new Steelers gear for everyone in honor of the big superbowl win. I got a cute Steeler bear, which Malachi has apparently claimed. He says, "a bear, a bear, a bear," hugs it, and lays down with it on the ground. It is too cute! We've not seen him cuddle a stuffed animal or baby doll before, so it was really sweet to see him do this for the first time.

Malachi put on quite a show for Grandma and Grandpa. He babbled A LOT! Yea!!! He used his fork more at meals. He pointed at lots of things. Yea!!! He followed Grandma's directions to put his toys in the bins (hmmm...can Grandma come more often?). He played "music" with his cups during his bath (my eardrums are still ringing). He climbed up on Uncle Brian's bed and stood up on it--that was definitely a new one. And he never ceases to amaze Grandma and Grandpa with how much he can eat. He chowed down at a local buffet. His meal was free, but the restaurant had to have taken a loss. I think he ate almost as much as Daddy!

At some point, I'll try to post the one picture I got this weekend. Seriously, it is impossible to have the camera out without him having a meltdown if you don't give it to him. A budding photographer perhaps, or a toddler in full bloom! :)

New tricks

Malachi is keeping us busy these days. I thought I'd share some of his new tricks/habits/behaviors.

-He dances like crazy when he's excited (which is about all the time). It's adorable. His arms go up and he just marches fast in place.

-He seems to be stretching up these days. It will be interesting to see how tall he is at his two year check-up. Yes, he's almost two already! I don't know where the time goes.

-He LOVES flashcards. We have three sets now and he'll just sit and watch while we go through them one at a time, over and over and over again. His interest in the cards seemed to peek after I took away his computer priviledges. He loves to watch a slideshow of our pictures on the computer, but he became so obssessive about watching them. That's ALL he wanted to do--to the point where he would melt down if I didn't turn the computer on. So...no computer for a while. Mean Mama, I guess. I'm glad he's into the flashcards though. He can point out his hands now and signs "eat" for the picture of a girl eating.

-We're hearing more sounds from him. This weekend especially, he's been pretty vocal with his babbling. It's mostly Da and variations thereof, but we'll take it!

-He's great at petting our cat Foster now. Kevin worked with him on being very gentle, and now when Malachi pets the cat gently, Malachi claps for himself for doing such a good job. What a goober.

-Malachi is beginning to follow directions fairly consistently and seems to understand so much more of what we're saying. I love it!

-He still really enjoys his baths. The best part is after the bath, when I have him bundled up in his towel. He loves to just snuggle while we (uh, I) chit chat about our days at school and work. It's our special mama-Malachi time.

-He got a Little Tykes basketball hoop for Christmas and he's great at dunking.

-He loves when I hike a Nerf football to him. He throws himself onto his belly to watch me. So funny.

-He love ring around the rosey and playing with his new parachute.

-He doesn't like snow apparently (I'll try to upload video soon, but blogger isn't cooperating at the moment).

Onto the pictures...

We're having trouble getting good pics of Malachi these days. He insists upon having the camera the instant he spots it. Self-portraits seem to work.

Listening to some jazz at an African-American Festival. This is what we did to celebrate our First Annual Family Day.
Malachi's first real snow. We really got a lot this time, and it was a big surprise, too.