Month 23

Busy Travelers
Wesley loves his little guys. He loves to have them visit China and India. And they do, many times a day. What do they do in these faraway countries? Look at pandas and tigers, eat Chinese and Indian food, visit the yogis and do tai chi, of course. How do they get there? They take tractors, lego-trucks, and various cars. They occasionally visit Whole Foods or The Farmer's Market.

Dark still needs Chinese food

Wesley prefers playing this to any other activity, by a landslide.

His perfect pronunciation of Ankylosaurus makes me smile

Wesley named each of his little guys, except for one. "Dark" and "New" are featured above. "New Guy", "Mouse(y)", Kevin (we named him), and Donkey are present at the tea part below. Pegleg is not in attendance.

Tea party in New's garden

Yum!

Lego plane

Language
Sentences!
Wesley now uses a lot of them. A large portion of his communication is still not in sentences, but full sentences are definitely intermixed with his other words.

Wesley absolutely loves his books. They inform his play as he acts out scenarios in the books we are currently reading. They inform his language as he incorporates words and phrases he hears. And reading together is one of his favorite activities.

Storytime

Wesley has begun telling stories this month. They are simple, sweet little stories that are becoming more complex all the time. His own stories might sound like this...

"Amalope (antelope) passing by...SUDDENLY Zebra passing by...Wesley driving baby...baby says go-go-ga-ga ::hysterical laughter"

He also likes to tell stories together. That is, we offer part of the sentence including connector words and he fills in many of the nouns, activities, and content of the story.

He calls it "singing a song". He'll say, "Mommy, sing a song, dump truck" which is a cue to tell a story featuring a dump truck.

Happy Toddler

He's such a happy little, funny character...

At Bodega

At a garage sale, we found a tiny little sandbox including mini construction trucks. He gets so focused on scooping with the tiny shovel, pushing the bulldozer around, and loading up his concrete mixer with little scoops of sand.

We still garden...

Daddy Time

Wesley sometimes helps Casey with his woodworking projects. Here he is rasping.

This image makes my heart swell...Wes after waking from a nap on a hot day, and continuing said nap in Daddy's arms...

Brooke was in the final weeks of finishing her Master's program, so we watched Kaira for a couple hours each morning for a couple weeks. It was fun to watch them play so much. They got along really well, with the occasional easily managed skirmish. I felt like it was really good for them to practice managing interpersonal relationships so frequently. They are both pretty attuned and responsive to the other's needs, and respond to suggestions of taking turns, etc, most of the time.

They loved to make each other drinks and food at the play kitchen and were very engaged in imaginative play together. 

Yogurt Time

It was fun to see them working and playing together. Lots of cuteness...

Stringing Beads

Storytime

Wednesday evening Farmer's Markets are in full swing now. Casey works the day shift on Wednesdays now, so we can all enjoy the festivities together. We walked to the market with Uncle Jesse whose hand Wesley chose to hold across each street.

The Petaluma Wildlife Museum is often at the market with their snakes and turtles...

Redwood Forest

On a scorching 90+ degree day in Petaluma, we escaped north to Armstrong Redwoods. It was cooler in the forest, and we had a wonderful walk. 

Wesley was so joyful. He ran up the path thoroughly enjoying himself.

It was such a nice family day in nature.

A very pregnant Mommy with a very excited Wesley...

With the arrival of Baby#2 on the near horizon, these days with Wesley seem all the more special. We are savoring our special time with Wes as a family of three. We are enjoying giving him our full attention, appreciating his special ways, and imagining how different things will be with a newborn. At the same time we are all (perhaps Wesley most of all) growing excited to meet Baby Brother.

A trip to the Redwoods like this was filled with Wesley toddler glory. He can talk about the Redwood Forest and how tall the trees are. He can climb in and out of a "goblin cave" and talk about what he thinks the goblin eats (plants and peas). He can run and walk far distances (at least as far as pregnant Mommy) and hug trees. He can tell us that he has to go potty and happily pee in the bushes. Then he can go for a relaxing, delicious meal at The Garden Grill, making the day feel like luxurious paradise.

He can keep talking about the trip for days afterwards, helping us all to remember how fun it was.

Garden: Year 2

Though I haven't posted about it, our garden is growing again this year. It was pretty sleepy during the winter months.

We planted tomatoes, peas, kale, collard greens, lettuce, and carrots. Everything is thriving. This is our first year growing peas, carrots, and collards. I am excited for them.

I can hardly wait for fresh tomatoes. This year Welsey can talk about the garden. He can tell you what is growing, that we're waiting for the tomatoes to get red but they still need to grow more. He also assists with the harvest. He often sits in front of the rows of kale and collards with his scissors and bucket and snips the leaves at the stem while I water the plot. He can fill up a whole bucket, which is quite helpful.

We thinned our carrots, and Welsey LOVES them. These are the first carrots I've ever grown, and they are delicious.  So sweet and yummy.

They're the first raw carrots Wes has ever eaten. I wasn't sure when he'd be old enough to chew raw carrots, so we never really tried, but now he can eat them from our garden.

Gram & Grandpa Visit

Gram and Grandpa visited from Kauai. They did a home stay in a house that is right around the corner from our place, directly across from our community garden plot. The proximity was amazing. We had a great time.

We went to the coast at Salmon Creek. It was chilly and windy but we bundled and enjoyed it. Our kite flew itself in such strong wind which was both fun (in that it flew the entire time) and a little anticlimactic (in that it took no attention). After awhile, we literally strapped it to the diaper bag and it stayed in the air the whole time.

We saw multiple kites that had escaped their owners and were soaring free bumping across the ground. We had front row seats to one dad chasing his kite across the beach and up the bluffs (it ended in success).

Uncle Jesse & Wes built an awesome sandcastle with an extremely deep moat. Gram and Wes dug nearly to China (Wes loves China these days).

And we rested on the warm sand.

On a different day, we went to McNear Park for some outdoor fun.

We ate a lot of delicious food. Wesley enjoys restaurants now, which is really nice. So, we hadsome great meals out as well as sharing some at our place and theirs. 

We read books.

Lunch at Aqus Cafe

We celebrated Gram's belated birthday with a delicious dinner and a cake. Wesley helped Gram blow out her candles. He also helped decorate. He enjoyed a scrumptious bowl of berries and cherries and didn't even notice that we were eating cake.

We went to the Farmer's Market and Wesley devoured Gram's peaches and blackberries. What a treat!

It was a fun visit, and we're so glad they made the long trip out to see us.