Saturday, October 07, 2006
Thursday, October 05, 2006
In The Meantime...
It's amazing how quickly babies absorb stuff. It turns out he is saying abuelita...sounds like abatita. He was definitely using this word a lot today...or maybe it's just that we can now recognize it in the stream of gibberish.
He has also learned something new that took us by surprise. Among his birthday gifts he received this lovely train from Pippi and, honestly, loved taking it apart and throwing (as hard as possible) the pieces all over the house. So...we hid it.
Everyday he finds it tucked next to the couch and grabs his favorites, the red pieces, and tosses them all over the place and everyday we pick them up and hide them again. Today he came home and went into the living room while we where in the kitchen. Daniel thought it was way too quiet, though we could hear him humming softly to himself. We found him, totally focused (just like his dad) in this little corner trying to stack the pieces on the pegs. It didn't look this good, but he got a bunch on! WOW! Which happens to be another favorite new word.
In the morning I took pictures as we got ready to leave the house. You might notice new shoes on his feet, which his oma bought for him and we, mistakenly, thought they didn't fit. It turns out they do! He was just scrunching up his toes when we tried them on. This is great news for us. We are set with shoes for a while, we hope!
Can you see what he has in his hand? A tomato! He grabbed it and ran off with it. His favorite thing to do this summer was pick the ripe cherry tomatoes and squeeze his hand until he had mashed them. Guess how this situation ended?
Wednesday, October 04, 2006
Fame
Yes, Xavier is famous...somewhat. His picture has made it in a recent publication of the University of Chicago's Graduate School of Business...their viewbook. We just got copies of the pictures that were shot the same day and I wanted to post one, but I'm having trouble working with the format the pictures are in. Click on viewbook and it should take you to the PDF and scroll down to page 20. We also have many hard copies.
On a similar note, I'm still having trouble with videos so I have decided not to post them in flash format...that means they will start playing as soon as you get on the site. After I convert them to flash, you will still be able to click on the link below the video, which will take you to the vimeo site and you can view the video there...but probably won't be able to view directly on the blog like now. I will give this one a few more days and then post a new one.
The new video is Xavier trying to say bath as he heads up for his bath and bedtime routine. He starts saying it at the bottom and points up the stairs before heading up (sometimes on his own!! But not this time). We kept repeating so he wouldn't stop while one of us ran for the camera. It's annoying, sorry. BUT he rarely says anything on command. Once he's said it we can sometimes get him to say it again if we repeat, but it doesn't work 98% of the time.
He also has tooth number 7 coming in...it is a bottom tooth (remember he has both front...so this one is just to the left of those). At this point he either sleeps through the night or is up because of his teeth...and up for an hour on average.
He is also saying, "aba tita". Could it be, "agua, 'buelita"..."water, grandma"?...woah...that actually just came to me. Or much simpler than that...Daniel suggested "aba lita"..."abuelita"? He's just saying grandma! That one makes more sense. We play this game every day...what did he just say?
Sunday, October 01, 2006
Happy Birthday to Gramps!
Today is Xavier's grampa's birthday! Happy birthday, gramps. Xavier can't say gramps yet, but I'm sure he'll learn soon. You can teach him when you visit.
I'll have to teach him to say mami again. It seems he has forgotten how to say mami these days. He is still actively practicing papi, kitty, bath and thank you. And there are those days when he babbles away and it sounds like real words. Like the other day when his gibberish sounded exactly like "I didn't do it". I'm serious. It really did. He's practicing for the day he'll need to deny some accident he's caused.
It also sounds like he says abuelita...though his version sounds like "tita" and possibly "arriba" - up. Oh, and I must not forget his singing "shake, shake, shake"..."shake, your booty"...this is from his aunts. It's better than "booty, booty, botty, rockin everywhere".
And in this video, aside from saying papi, he also shakes his finger at me to say no - after I 've said no to him.
He is also very good at tickling and growling. Though this past week this got him into trouble. A few months ago he met a second cousin named Niki, who is two weeks older than him. They didn't get along then, but his tita thought they might hit it off now that they are more mobile. At first things went well, they ran around and chased each other. Then Nikki, who was running ahead of him, tripped and he couldn't stop in time and landed on her. She was fine but a bit upset and whimpered a little. Xavier thought she wanted to play his favorite game, tickle wrestling, and started tickling her and growling. This really freaked her out and they may never be play buddies again.
