original little hellraisers

dylan and owen,

it’s been another incredible month — full of wonder, shenanigans and trick or treating.

dylan: you have released your first giggle this month.  it starts with your mother or i being a total moron, making all sorts of silly faces and sound.  your face cracks a soul-melting, fully opened mouth smile and then two syllables of a laugh.  just two — feels like you need to follow through, but we’re close… we’re close.  next month.

according to your mother, you go to bed really easily — no rocking, singing or nursing required.  we just put you down when you look a bit tired and blammo, you’re out.

you already look up to your brother — literally.  as you play on your playmat your head will track the whirlwind that is owen (who is learning to ‘run fast’ from his room to the living room and back).  you watch somewhat stoically, you don’t smile or giggle.  you just observe and presumably cast judgment.  you do a lot of over your shoulder television watching.  you like soccer, and while i hope this will stick, it is most likely the result of the contrasting colors that entrances you, not the wonderful first touch of the world’s greatest players.

earlier in the month you showed us what it is like to have a conversation with you.  it goes like this:

PARENT or GRANDPARENT

dooo-bee-bee-boo-boo

DYLAN
(smiles)

goo!

then if we walk away, you go from smile to pout and then start crying until we return to your field of vision and you have a chance to actually finish the conversation we started.  it’s relentless, but sufferable because it is so cute.

you’re growing really fast and likely as a result of the growth spurt, your head cannot handle keeping your hair.  could also be stress related — living in this house can be pretty stressful. we’ve been trying to perfect the baby comb-over to little success so you tend to wear a lot of beanies or hats now.  hopefully you don’t stay bald forever (you won’t.)

and then finally, and this is something of a point of pride for me as a father of boys: you are the undisputed blowout king.  you can have them anytime, anywhere and without warning.  it usually begins with your face getting very red, somewhere in the middle it sounds like chunky milk sloshing around in a bottle and then it ends with an apocalyptic poo-mess and you smiling as if to say: yeah, mo-fo, i won.

happy third month.

owen: you learned your last name this month.  your mother posted about it.  it’s weird — we never taught the concept to you and i’m pretty sure sesame street never covered off on it either.  it sounds like ‘no-wan-ec’ — maybe you’re trying to tell us something, i’m not sure.

you’re also in the process of finding a pre-school.  i have to admit, we were pretty worried in how you’d integrate, as you have some funny, but cute things you do:

1) when you are being shy, you shove one (or both) hands into your mouth.  it is like you’re trying to eat your arm.  this results in a pool of drool and dribble.  you won’t talk to anyone during this.  just fist in your mouth silence.

2) you try to wait your turn in a crowd of kids.  this is seen most often at your toddler soccer class where, at the end, you get stamps.  thing is, you’re the only kid that waits — it’s a line of one.  it’s totally cute because you don’t want to cut in front of anyone, but everyone cuts in front of you.  you’re oblivious to this, but we’re proud of you for it.

thankfully at the preschool tours you integrate yourself pretty quickly.  we think you have a preference for kids a little older than you and not the same age.  you definitely like older chicks.

you’ve also hit the toddler milestone of doing your own somersaults and you love to paint.  and coinciding with what we know about you, you’re absolutley neat in painting.  you don’t get anything on the table or your clothes — only on the canvas.  some of your work is pretty cool too.

and, ahead of the curve (i think), your potty training is complete.  you sleep without diapers now and have had a few accidents overnight, which are our fault for feeding you liquids before bed.  but you wake up, stand on your bed and scream a the top of your lungs, ‘peeeeeeeee peeeeeeeee!’  this replaces our need for an alarm clock.  you have also learned how to pee on trees.  one of the downsides of taking you out of diapers is that we can’t be so lazy in our trip planning — we need to know where you can go at any given point.

love you little guys.