Michael's Development Blog

Michael managed to lock himself in his room today...with me and Aiden. I had to go out the window into the garden barefoot, in the rain, at 7:30am to get back in the house and open up the door. In other news, Michael's first swim class at the YMCA finished last week and it was pretty great. He'll be signing p with Mrs. V again at the end of January. He doesn't move to the next class until he can put his head under the water and float on his back by himself. He really enjoys being in the water...even if he doesn't realize it (never "wants" to go to class but is always sad to leave). He can almost count to 10 now. Usually he gets one number mixed up in there if he's going all the way but he counts from 1-5 and 5-10 without any problems.

We joined the YMCA today and signed Michael up for "water discovery" swim lessons. Michael ran around the track, swam in the pool (including putting his head under the water for the first time for me), climbed on the play structure and spent a minute on the climbing wall. Then we went home and he crashed. Michael's last day in daycare was Halloween...at least until Aiden is old enough to join him. Michael is wonderfully conversational now. He uses the past tense and constructs very complicated complete sentences out of nowhere :) Michael is excellent with Aiden and Aiden smiles at Michael more than anybody else. On Halloween we took Michael (smoky bear) and Aiden (little teddy bear) around the nearby residential area and had a blast trick or treating. Michael did amazing saying "trick or treat," roaring at people, and saying "Only prevent forest fires" about 100 times as we prompted him at every door...it was too cute not to. He was very well b...

Yesterday, Michael ate a 4-egg omelet with two pieces of toast and then rode his balance bike all the way around the 2-mile loop.

When Michael was sick with a high fever the weekend before Aiden was born Anton spent one of the nights sleeping on the floor in his room so that he would get some sleep. Michael came home early from daycare today because he threw up (or "puked" as he likes to use his new word now...) during nap time. As Anton was laying him down for bed tonight he said, "Daddy sleep on floor? Michael sick." Awww (he's not really sick though...aside from throwing up he's been totally fine and full of energy all day). Then he latched himself around Anton's neck and wouldn't let go, with a little mischievous grin. Impossible not to laugh.

Michael is talking up a storm now...in fact, he rarely stops talking and communicates quite well. He attempts very large words but often only gets the end of them: superfragilisticexpialidocious turns into "docious," for example. He repeats like a parrot, often very hilariously. He repeated Grandpa Preisinger saying "episode" and sometimes gets into moods where he just repeats a person almost word for word as they're telling a story. Update on Michael stripping down at bedtime is that "Operation Muffin Pants" was a success...Simple bribery to get him to keep his clothes on. Actually he's come so far now that he doesn't even need to wear the onesy over his PJs which is very nice. Anton installed the lawn retaining wall this spring and Michael had a lot of fun joining him at the gravel yard and watching all the work with the excavator. We tried reading Salamandastron during dinner and got a few chapters in before Michael seemed to lose int...

Alright so it's been a long time. Michael is starting to string together short sentences and communicating concepts that make me double-take all the time. Lately he won't stop stripping himself naked during nap/bedtime...using his wet diapers as pillows :( Here's some updates Rachel recorded over the past couple months: 2/7/17 Michael was eating dinner and started asking about Allison and Grandma Carol. We asked him if he had fun with them this weekend. He said yeah. Then I think he asked about seeing them again (can't remember what words he was using). I told him then he'd have to tell them to come over again soon. I said he'd have to give them a letter telling then to come visit him. And Michael said "A"? After looking at him blankly for a second we realized he was suggesting the letter "A". So Grandma and Allison, Michael sends you the letter A. ;) 1/23/2017 Michael said "lullaby". It took us a bit to figure ou...