playing catch-up

wow. it's been a while. whiles of words and developments well beyond my expectations. alasdair's language + vocabulary is blowing up, as they say. and i'm discounting the fact that most of his words are only understood by ben and i---they are words, still. for example, this morning when he woke up he played, got of the bed and pointed to the bedside table... "wah-ta." so i offered him a sip. he nodded his head and smiled. a 'no, thank you' in his way. there are lots of words that he repeats consistently: bird, dog, book, water, koia (our new dog), danger, thank you. his newest: bear. it's amazing to watch him communicate---and especially amazing to communicate with him, with words. utterances. body language.
all of this new communication is coming at a much needed time, too. we are weaning. he is weaning. i am weaning. not sure how you say it, we, i suppose. i think he's ready, and i'm definitely ready. so, about five days ago i began a process of offering more solids, in place of nursing times. whereas i used to nurse first, then offer food, it's now going the other way---and he's great. he only really begs for 'mee-mee' when he's tired, though i'm doing my best to offer different sleep associations. it worked great for nap about 20 minutes ago! also, we're night-weaning, which has been a much smoother transition that i anticipated. it's crazy to think that we tried the same night-weaning method when he was 11 months, and it was unbearable. now, at 14 (nearly) months, things are so different. i'm happy that we paid close attention to his cues and waited until now.
hmmmm... so much has happened around here. ben has screened in half of the front porch. it looks amazing, and we can now utilize that space like it's another room. he sealed every bit of it, keeping the bugs out. it gets a nice breeze. rugs are down, alasdair's toys are out there. it's lovely. we eat meals outside now.
we've also painted two out of the four white rooms. the bathroom, mustard yellow, and alasdair's room, olive green. onto our room next: burnt orange, then the hallway: yet to be decided.
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