Hmmmmm...

We will have to keep a more watchful eye on Stanley now that he is acquiring new climbing skills at a rapid clip.  We just discovered he could do this on his own in the last week.  I guess we get to keep the bedroom door shut when we are not in there from now on.

It seems this is popular around this age.  Stanley's friend Wheeler is into climbing right now also.

Too cool for school

Names

Stanley has been progressing on names in the last few weeks. Yesterday, Halima mentioned that both boys now say 'Ma' for Hali-MA. For example, Atoo Ma = Open the door Halima. It took her a bit to confirm, but then this morning I asked Stanley who Halima was and he said Ma.

I have turned into Mama quite consistently. And, Stanley  now says the names of his two grandmothers. EE= Lele  and OO= Lolo. Pretty good since 'L''s can be very hard to say.

And, when pointing to pictures, Stanley says Papa for both Papa Doug and Grandpa Tom.

The only person really missing is poor father. Stanley has a variety of names for Steve: Dada, Papa and ... Mama. He plays all of the roles well, but hopefully Stanley narrows the list down to Dada or Papa soon.

As for his own name he does say something for it, but I haven't pinpointed how to spell it yet. He also will say 'me', but he does not have the concept yet of me is only himself. And, thinking of confusing concepts, he uses the words 'up' and 'down' quite often, however, he says up when he is up on something and wants to get down and uses down when he is down and wants to go up. I guess this could be confusing.

Reading with Lele last week

Dinner!!

Now please!

Language

We love that Stanley is picking up words from Russian and English with a little French in there. It is so much fun to hear him saying words. Sadly, the Russian words fly right over Steve and my head. We were a bit confused though why he kept pointing to a door and saying 'atoo'. Turns out 'Atcrew' (no idea how to spell this) means 'open' in Russian. No wonder why he was adamant when he would point to a door and say 'atoo' he did not want me to point to the door and tell him the word for door, but instead he wanted me to open the door so he could go outside. He uses the word for lots of actions--opening a door, opening a jar, getting him out of his sleep sack.

I also get a kick out of when he very clearly says 'die'. Peter also enjoys saying 'die mama'; in Russian this means 'give me that mama'. Yes, we do get strange looks when Stanley clearly says 'die' to us. I'm glad he has not picked up on the term 'die mama'.

And, the last Russian word that has really taken us by surprise is 'dada'. Stanley mixes up 'vada' and 'dada'. The first meaning water in Russian, the later being his father.

Hopefully our son will be much better at languages that either of his parents. 

Other English words that he enjoys saying are apple, ubles(bubbles), door, happy, bye, hi, mama, keys, lie (light) and his favorite anana (banana).

There are lots of others that he says once in a while, but the above he has down quite solidly.

Running quickly

This past weekend at Kate's house, Stanley learned to run quickly. We went to a fun playground with lots of ramps. Stanley found one part of the ramp and ran down it. He realized how quickly he could run going down the ramp and kept on doing it, over, and over, and over again. It made me happy seeing him enjoy running. 

Here is a little video of him. 

Then, he and Ronan spend the next 40 minutes making the below lap. Stanley sometimes cheated and crawled under the fence rather than go all of the way around, but both boys still enjoyed the running. Sometime they would come down the slide into their moms or each other and say 'crash' at the bottom of the slide when they ran into the person at the bottom. They sure had fun together.

Here they are on a crazy swaying seat thing...

My Flounder

I love when my uncle Flounder takes care of me... these are from his camera.

Uncle founder, come get me I'm outside.

Making graham cracker crust for a pudding pie.

New table

We made a water table for Stanley out of a used coffee table we picked up at a garage sale and some plastic bins. We have multiple bins that can be switched out for each other. He and Peter seemed to enjoy the oats bin quite a bit right now.

Cooking with spices

Oats

Two nights ago I was cooking dinner and wanted to keep Stanley busy while I did the prep and cooking. I thought giving him bowls, cups, and oats was a great solution. I put him on a big garbage bag and had him play with the oats. It definitely kept him busy, but in the end, we had quite a few oats spread out on the carpet next to him. 

Biking with Dad

I came home from work and found Julia and Stanley outside our house. Stanley was riding his strange backwards trike/four wheeler around and I just arrived on my bike, so we decided to go on a little ride down the block together. Stanley is not the fastest, but I think part of it is the small vehicle he is on (and the small legs pushing that vehicle). He seemed to have a good time participating in the ride and not just being a passenger on the dummy. Hopefully this bodes well for the future.

Camping

We had a fabulous weekend camping near Santa Cruz. Uncle Flounder joined us and then lots of our friends joined on Saturday. Thanks for coming Brenna, Sam, Kate, & John. And, Stanley was happy that his friends Wheeler and Ronan joined too.

On Saturday, we went on a 'Julia forced march' hike in the red woods to a beach. It was beautiful but definitely longer than we expected. And then the rest of the time we spend hanging around the camp. It was a relaxing enjoyable trip. Below are a few pictures from Sam. Thanks Sam!

Stanley loved playing with other boys his age. He learned a lot from both of them! And he even showed the other boys how to sleep till 8am. Hurray for Steve and me! 

More from our camera to come...

Ronan was nice and shared his toys. We did not have enough room in the car for toys.

 

Hiking

By the end, Stanley and Wheeler were pretty tired from an exciting weekend.

If you can tell in the distance--Steve and I are walking together and Uncle Flounder is carrying Stanley.