wright brothers lately

 
 

i love these little boy so. crazy. much. i honestly feel like i am going to burst sometimes with how richly i adore them and how deeply i care for them. i feel enormously blessed to be moses and gabriel's mom.

both of the wright brothers are growing up and changing every day. here's a snapshot of them each, at 2.6 years and 9.6 months old, so i can remember as time flies past.

(the pictures at the beginning and end of this post, of the boys together, are from just after christmas, in their semi-matching christmas jumpers. the pictures of them on their own are from our trip to the canary islands - we just got back a few days ago!)

- m o s e s -  




he's really a remarkably good, clear communicator and it's so fun to have conversations with him. some of the things he says really often right now are, "not right now, in a little minute," "ready, steady, go," "i love it!" and "mommy, can i please have..." he is constantly learning and using new words, like "actually," "usually," and "especially." he often repeats our names (mommy or daddy) more than once in a sentence when he's talking to us, and sometimes his brain goes faster than his words can and you can just tell there's so much he wants to get out!

he continues to love stories and asks me to tell him a story at least a half a dozen times a day. sometimes i have to tell him that "my brain is really tired of stories and needs a break"! for the past six months or so he has been asking consistently for jack and the beanstalk. i seriously probably have told him that story more than a hundred times. he had a phase of loving "chicken stories" that his dad would make up, and lately if we are telling a story on the fly he likes to interject his own ideas for what happens next. he especially likes to make up names for characters in stories and they are always something totally off-the-wall like "hagaiaii."

mo is very inquisitive and full of questions. lots of "why?" these days.

he loves to sing and very often is making up songs around the house or in the buggy. his songs are mostly jibberish interspersed with actual words. these songs are such a fun little window into his mind!

about a year and a half of requesting that he say please and thank you has finally paid off and mo has turned into quite the polite young man, saying the magic words without any prompting and very often.

a couple of weeks ago, daddy gave moses a sticker chart (actually just an unused paper plate, ha!) and let him pick out some stickers at the store. mo was told that if he was very obedient for an entire day he could get a sticker on his chart, and when he earned five stickers he could go get ice cream with daddy! i so wish i had a video of when moses earned his first sticker and when he earned his fifth. you can't imagine the excitement and joy that was just bursting out of his little dancing, bouncing body. this week moses got a new chart and is going for five days of being very gentle.

he started climbing out of his crib about a month ago, and last saturday we went to ikea to pick out a big boy bed! we haven't put it together yet, but mo is pretty pumped about it. he has gotten really good at waiting for "mr. sun to wake up" on his special clock (this means he can get out of bed and come wake us up).

his favourite food continues to be mangoes - he's passionate about them. he's been a bit picky when it comes to eating lately, but it helps when we use imagination to bring some animals to mealtimes. (moses usually shows us how a hedgehog or warthog eats the food we are having!) once he takes a first bite he usually loves whatever it is we are eating - but that first try can be so difficult! every single morning he has at least two bowl-fulls of multigrain cheerios and milk. and every single morning he says, "i love cheerios and milk!"

mo is so excited when daddy comes home at the end of the day. he waits in the big bay window in front of our flat. sometimes he will go there totally unprompted as soon as he feels like it's probably about time for daddy to be home and says things like, "daddy, where are you? come!" when he sees his dad, he gives a big wave, waves his chest to sign "i love you," and runs to the front door to give hugs and kisses!

he can now say a prayer pretty much entirely by himself. 99% of those prayers include "thank you for farm animals and thank you for the grinch." but pretty much each day he thinks of something different and thoughtful to include in his prayer. often when mom or dad is praying aloud, moses pipes up to contribute something to the prayer. last night while i was saying a blessing on the food, moses said, "and please bless the refugees." we hadn't talked much about refugees since christmas (when we decided as a family to donate some money to a refugee camp), but mo had remembered and wanted to pray for the children whose pictures i showed him.

we have started going to the library every tuesday. moses got his very own library card and is quite the proud owner of that thing. his appetite for books seems quite insatiable, and he usually gets really into one of the four books that we check out from the library at the end of each visit. his favourite books in the world are richard scarry books (gifted to him by his grandparents).

 

mo has started saying "i love you" spontaneously, and the person he says that to the most is definitely gabriel. he adores his little brother. he gets so excited when he hears that gabriel has woken up in the mornings and rushes in to him, saying "gabey baby, gabey baby!" in a sweet baby talk voice. he is a fantastic helper when it comes to gabriel's needs and he gives his little bro dozens of hugs and kisses everyday. he loves to make gabe laugh, and seeing them giggle together is mommy's favourite thing ever!

moses loves painting, bath time, and dancing (his moves just get better and better - he's now perfected a spin-on-one-leg), and his deep passion for the colour blue continues. he's getting a bit better at independent play, but he usually really, really wants mom or dad to play with him. he's into games lately, like hide and seek and duck duck goose. he always gives away where he is hiding immediately after "ready or not, here i come" is said, haha. we also have a few little games with dice that he loooves.

it is still very often that moses is found crossing his ankles. we first noticed him doing this in the womb via ultrasound and it's been a distinct mannerism of his ever since!

i have been impressed by his awareness of others' emotions. he has said to me, "mama, you look upset," and "mama, you're not running out of patience?"

moses is loving joy school and has developed some really sweet friendships with his classmates. he gets soooo excited to see his friends, especially when joy school is at his flat. he is a really excellent listener during lesson time, and he's struggling with being gentle during free play time. he sings the joy school rules song multiple times a day (i think it just gets constantly stuck in his head!).

he recently earned 10 pounds by doing 10 jobs around the house (cleaning the toilets, helping sort laundry, taking out the trash, etc). he saved one pound to "give to jesus" (for tithing) and spent the other 9 on an awesome pack of animal toys that we ordered from amazon.

mo loves to laugh and often laughs very heartily at himself - things he says or does that he finds totally hilarious. he has an amazing memory and absorbs things he is taught remarkably well. he is learning how to control his body and his voice (homeboy can be wild and loud!) and likes to test boundaries and see what happens when he disobeys. he's affectionate and gives excellent hugs and kisses, and he is probably the most excitable person i've ever met.

we love our moses soooo much!

- g a b r i e l - 

 

he's officially, as of yesterday pretty much!, a crawler! for weeks he has been getting around pretty much any way he can figure out besides actually crawling - scooting and dragging himself both on his belly and his bum. something must have just clicked and now he's scrambling around on his hands and knees! he has also started pulling himself up to kneeling and standing, especially in his crib.

four big teeth popped through the top of his gums all at essentially the same time at the beginning of februrary. while baby boy produces lots of drool, he doesn't seem bothered by teething pretty much at all.

gabey is such a giggly baby. he has the best laughs that range from chuckles to squeals to hearty belly laughs. once you get him started he has total giggle attacks that go on for a quite a while. he particularly loves being tickled and being spun around or tossed up a little.

he loves eating (as evidenced by the pictures above!). and he often eats so much that you wonder where the heck he puts it all! he has jumped up percentiles in weight from his low at 0.3% to now about 6% - hooray! his favourite food bar none is breastmilk. we are going on a trip without the kids the day after his first birthday so we are working towards weaning but gabriel really loves nursing. when i hold him in a way that it's obvious that he's about to get milk, he starts kicking his legs and smacking his lips like crazy, just soooo excited. of solid foods, he likes bread (with peanut butter), crackers, strawberries and avocado the best.



his two tricks are that he often gives kisses when asked and the sometimes repeats back "mama" and "baba" when prompted. we are working on some other tricks like waving, clapping, signing, etc.

if we give gabriel an exciting toy or something new to eat, he often will look up at us with his huge blue eyes and expression that looks a bit like, "wow! this is awesome! can you believe this?" and then a big huuuuge smile with his two darling dimples.

gabe adores his brother. whenever he sees moses he truly lights up. he can watch mo dance or run or play for long periods of time, mesmerized. he has started hugging and kissing moses back, which is so sweet!

he kicks his legs whenever he is excited, and he is verrry excited when daddy comes home from work.

gabey is a good sleeper for the most part - now sleeping from 8pm to at least 7am straight through most nights. he seemed to have a growth spurt a few weeks ago and was sleeping close to 13 hours a night (as well as gobbling up sooo much food!).

he is wiggly as all get-out, and often getting his diaper changed and clothes on is a big feat that probably counts as a workout for the day. he hates having his face wiped clean but he loves making a mess while eating.

he can be very loud, but that loudness is not often crying. 90% of the time it is happy squealing. he's really discovered his vocal cords in the past few weeks.

gabriel loooves swinging in a swing at the playground and he looooves bath time with his brother.

we love our gabriel soooo much!

 
 

ian and i are just obsessed with these two wonderful boys. every single night we lay in bed and talk about how awesome they are. so often we share a moment when we just look at each other incredulously as our hearts melt at something moses or gabriel has done. we have so much to learn from these special souls. sooooo glad they are our sons. 

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i have a question for you, blog readers. what do you think about posts like this one?
as my children are growing, i am becoming more and more sensitive to their privacy. it's not like i have some huge internet following, but a good amount of strangers read this blog. i want to keep my blog public, because many have suggested they enjoy reading it and find it uplifting, and because i feel that i am very enriched by interactions i have with and insights i gain from connections made here. but this blog's primary purpose is family record-keeping - it's a place for me to organize pictures and keep tidbits like these that i really want to remember. so i want it to include details like this about my children. 
do you think this is violating their privacy? would you mind information like this about you as a small child posted on the internet? should i keep posts like this in a separate place so they aren't available for all to read? or are these types of posts good ones to share? 
what do you think? i'd really value the sharing of any perspectives/thoughts on this!