Weeks seem to be flying. It's finally cooled down so I'm starting to walk Sophie and Ellie to school. Mathew is obsessed with screaming...that's all he does. I'm really trying to wean him. I've tried before but failed I'm hoping it works this time.

We've found 2 scorpions in the last 4 days. Saturday, I almost stepped on one with my bare foot in the garage and then today we found a dead one at the bottom of the pool. We have black widows outside too that we keep finding. Oh well.

Mathew's first words

I took Mathew to the doctor's office on Wednesday and he is 95 percentile for his head size, 50th percentile for height and 25th percentile for weight. The doctor told me I need to feed him more. He told me I needed to talk to him more to get him to start saying things so I've started to work on it more. Although it's been months since he's been imitating--for example, putting phones to his ear and saying "DAAaa" which basically means hello but he hasn't properly articulated any words. Well now he'll point to his eye and say "aaahhh" and point to the lights and say "aaaaahhhh". If I ask him to point to one of those things he does. Do those count as first words? He is constantly imitating what we do. He insists on eating what we are eating and will scream his lungs out if we dont give him his food on a plate and with utensils. He also plays with dolls and pretends to feed them with bottles--smacking his lips while he feeds them. He is probably better at picking up toys than Ellie. He'll go around and put toys in bins.

puff

There's a man that's been going to Sophie's school to talk about composers once a week--he also plays different instruments. Sophie has been fascinated with it and comes home describing in great detail everything he played and how it sounded. The first time she heard the violin she acting like she was overwhelmed with how beautiful it was. She is so articulate--she described the music so beautifully.

Last week the guy brought his guitar and taught them puff the magic dragon. Sophie came home and sang the whole thing to me. Then she proceeded to explain to me what the song meant--When she got to the part about the boy growing up, I could see tears welling up in her eyes. She was explaining that when kids grow up they don't have time to play with their toys and that Puff would never see his best friend again. The way she described it was so touching that it brought tears to my eyes too. Then she stopped and said..."Mom-- look at us, we're both crying about a song". We both laughed through our tears. It was such a tender moment, I wish I had her gift of description to better document it.