New words

Tamlin still babbles nearly ALL the time...it is just that he is speaking Martian instead of English.
According to all the books, he is still a bit behind in the verbal communication skills, but we are still not worried yet.
However, we have heard a few new words to add to his increasing vocabulary list:
Hot - though the 'H' is usually dropped. I think he picked this up because we have all been complaining about how hot it is outside.
Hat - Because Tam and Brian both nearly always wear their hats outside.
Car - Finally!
No - Thankfully, he's just starting using this one and it isn't annoyingly negative yet

Hi - complete with wave

Bye - Though he often says "hi" instead...kind of like Aloha.

Down - With the downward pointing finger, used when wanting out of the highchair

4th of july

So I'm a little behind with the posts....but I'm sure the cyber-world will forgive me.

I just wanted to take a moment to jot down our fun-filled 4th of July holiday with the family.
My sister came up on Friday night for the weekend and my mom & step-dad came up on Saturday as well. Good thing we've got a house and beds for everyone (and central air).

We were all up bright and early Saturday morning to go to a local parade at 8:30AM. This is supposedly Grand Rapids' longest running Independance day parade at 76 years. Brian and I got drafted into the neighborhood volunteer marching band. Woeee...It was fun to carry a marching bass drum again, but I sure was glad it was the tiny baby bass, and not the jumbo 40-pounder big bass drum. Brian did pretty good on the trombone, but had to admit his lips were fairly shot after so many years without much practice. Lucky for him, there were only 2 pieces and we marched a good deal between the songs. As usual, the drum section (myself and the snare drum player) tried our chops for the entire length of the route. On the upside, with no other drummers, we could play whatever we damn well felt like it as the cadance... as long as the beat was steady. Cool.

This was Tam's first parade :-) Shelly was a trooper by getting up so early and watching Tam, even though she complained that most "normal" parades start at 10am! (I was glad it was early and not so hot yet.) She said Tam loved watching the antique cars and politician cars go by. He also like getting the free candy hand-outs.

Later on Saturday, we got out the kiddie wadding pool and my folks brought a new sand-box to play in. Oh, boy, Tam's such a lucky boy! And the wadding pool was good for grown-up feet too :-) It was really nice to just sit outside, relax, and talk with the family.

The highlight of Sunday morning was church service with our new pastor. He's British, with a pretty thick accent still, even though he's been in the states 10 years. He joked that it was a great sense of irony that we hired the British guy to preach on Independence day. He followed this thought with a story about the idiots in our home town. He said at the hair salon, his hair cutter person asked if he celebrated the 4th of July in England. . Luckily he countered saying that no, they don't...but they celebrate Thanksgiving Day as the day they finally got rid of all those pesky pilgrams! I know that throughout the sermon, I just kept waiting for him to say "And now for something completely different..." (Monty Python's Flying Circus). Sheesh.

We didn't get to down-town to see any official fireworks on Sunday night (July 4th). It would have been way past Tam's bedtime and I think it would have freaked him out quite a bit. However, our hick neighbors on the next street oer provided a show until 3:00AM. Sheesh. On our street, our immediate neighbors came out for an impromptu street party between 10-11, complete with adult beverages and bug spray. We all stood around chatting, drinking, and saying "oooh & ahhh" at the appropriate moments. Luckily, Tam did sleep through EVERYTHING. I'll take it as a sign that next year we'll try to get out and see a real show.

I totally LOVE science

Snicker...Snicker...Snicker

bottle infatuation

I haven't figured this one out...but Tam adores bottles and tubes. In our bedroom, we have a series of baskets full of travel bottles, hand soap, lotions, toothpaste, etc. Basically, it is three baskets chock full of bottles. Tam repeatedly likes to take out ALL of the bottles. He then chooses his favorites or whatever fits in his arms and hauls them across the bedroom to the cedar chest. There, he very carefully sets them all upright.

It makes me laugh . . . and wonder why? Luckily, he rarely tries to open any of these bottles. The exception being the toothpaste. He would very readily gobble down the toothpaste if he could open it. To thwart this, I have removed all full toothpaste tubes from the collection and left the empty one.

His bottle adoration continues outside as well. I finally gave in and let him have a few old dish-soap bottles. Here he is filling a bubble bottle with squirts from the dish soap bottle. (he's filled the bottle with water from his kiddie pool). I love that he is concentrating so deeply about this task. He then took bottle back to the pool and had a merry time flinging the water around his head :-)

Wordless Wednesday - Big shoes

Tamlin trying to walk in his mama's footsteps.

Our little dude is growing up!

Tam is tackling the stairs in full upright bipedal fashion. On his own, with no help, he's pretty good at the few steps at the front of the house. However, the stairs to the second floor has proven fairly daunting to him. He still uses a hand or the wall, but has mostly and successfully navigated the 15+ stairs completely standing upright.

A few days ago, Tam realized that by standing tall on the third stair, he can reach over and turn on the hallway light. Ooohhh...did this ever elicit a big, toothy, self-satisfied grin! Now, we can't go up the stairs without a pause and a couple of flicks of the light switch.

This doesn't mean that he hasn't had a few falls as his little feet don't quite move exactly as his little brain wants them too. It is hard not to laugh because he is trying hard to be more grown-up. Such a sweetie.