No more bottles

Our boys have finally given up their bottles…..

We (Tracie and Sal) have been giving them a bottle every night before bed since birth. We have been talking about stopping this bottle for a while now, but it has been a good way to get a few extra calories into our skinny little boys, so we kept giving it to them.

For a about 2 weeks before giving up the bottle we have introduced a daily “milkshake” that we give the boys after their nap. This “milkshake” is essentially a milk drink fortified with formula, and flavoured with a banana or some vanilla essence or chocolate powder. They love their afternoon milkshake and especially love helping to make it.

With this added calories, we felt it’s now ok for them to give up their bottle. One night, without even really talking about it, we put them to bed without a bottle. They didn’t complain….. they didn’t say anything. We wondered if they even noticed!

They had their last bottle on Thursday April 1st, 2010. Aged almost 23months.

Random Pictures of Home Life

Below are some random pictures from daily life.

Benjamin is eating a block of cheese that he pinched off the bench one day after lunch. Interestingly he didn’t eat the cheese when it was chopped and put on his plate for lunch. Apparently it tastes better right off the block!

 

Ben is now offering Ethan a bite of the cheese….. cheeky boys!

Benjamin sitting on his couch to read a book. Reading time is still a very popular activity. Both boys love books and we read every day.

Book case after reading time 

And the floor…. we read about this many books in one sitting if they are in a good mood.

Getting up on chairs has become a new habit. Both boys love to push the kitchen chairs up to the door, window or bench and climb up, just to get up to mischief. Below Ben is trying to open the door so he can go outside. Ethan is “helping”

Up on the chairs again. Ben and Ethan are playing with the iPod dock in this clip. They are turning the volume up and down, and they think it’s very funny!

Random picture of Ethan. He wanted me to take it, because we were playing with the camera.

BUBBLES

Ben and Ethan LOVE playing with bubbles. They chase them and pop them. It’s all great fun. Below are some pics of them playing with bubbles.

In general they also love being outside. They really enjoy exploring the garden. We have lots of creatures in our garden. Most popular are the lizards. Below Mummy (Sal) and the boys are searching for lizards.

Here we found a lizard, but it ran into the wall too fast for us to get a proper look.

Here we are examining the rocks and plants.

Mummy and Ethan playing a game in the garden

Lastly, a video of the game we were playing. Mummy (Sal) would ‘roar’ at Ethan, and Ethan would run to Mummy laughing and laughing. He thought it was great fun!

Easter Egg Hunt

Happy Easter.

Ethan and Ben are almost 23 months old this Easter. This is their first Easter that that can really enjoy an egg hunt. The Easter Bunny left lots of eggs in the garden, and the boys had a great time finding them. I didn’t get many great shots, as it was an action packed egg hunt, and it’s hard to get their faces when they are so busy!

Ethan and Ben begin the hunt.

Ben

Ethan

Finding another egg

Mumma, Ben and Ethan 

Ethan – sorry it’s blurry, but it’s an action shot, he’s running to the egg he’s spotted!

Ben and Aunty Shell

Ben

Ethan showing Mumma his eggs. 

Ben and Ethan, showing us their egg collection

Ben searching for eggs.

Ethan searching for eggs.

A funny story….

I hope this makes sense…..

The other day Ben spilt some water on the floor. When this happens, he likes to get a tea-towel and clean it up. We keep our tea-towels hung over the handle of the oven.

Ben went to the oven and grabbed the tea-towel and tried to pull it off. Unfortunately he grabbed too much, and pulled the front and the back, meaning it would not come at all.

Tracie said to Ben “pull it from the bottom” (as it wasn’t hanging evenly, and pulling it from the bottom would mean could get it off easier).

Benjamin misinterpreted what was said, and turned around so his bottom was touching the tea-towel. He then put his hand near his bottom, grabbed the tea-towel (now behind him) and pulled. It worked and the tea-towel came free.

Tracie and Sal melted in hysterical laughter at his technique of pulling from the “bottom”……….  so funny, very clever, and very cute!!

Ethan’s Vocabulary

Since speech pathology the other day Ethan has learnt a few new words.

He has said the following words a few times: bubble, pop, Dorothy (the dinosaur from the wiggles) nigh-nigh (good night) and apple.

He can also now sign: milk and water

Speech Pathology Again

Last Friday we took Ben to the speech pathologist for his eating. This was the same speech path we took Ethan to the day before….

Ben has always had trouble chewing his food. He’s been to the speech pathologist once before when he was about 9months old. Recently, he has developed a few techniques to eat his food. He either seems to shove all his food in his mouth, then end up with a large mouthful of food that takes him ages to swallow, or he’ll use the next mouthful of food to push the food in his mouth down his throat. She has told us to really control how much food Ben gets at a time, and to use a mirror so he can see him self eating. We tell him to make sure his mouth is empty before taking the next bite. So far, this technique is quite good, but he does seem to play with his mirror too much!

We’ll give it a few weeks and see how he goes.

Speech Development at 22.5 months

Speech development with Ben and Ethan is very different… Ben is a little chatterbox who says too many words to count. Ethan is our strong and silent type who says about 20 words.

ETHAN

This morning we took Ethan to a speech pathology consult to get her opinion on his speech development. She took a history, and listened to our stories of his speech and language skills. She said she is very happy with his hearing, comprehension and ability to follow commands. She believes that he is just slow to develop in speech, but will get there eventually….. just a little late. Just for our own records, here’s a list of Ethan’s words:

Words he uses appropriately - Mummy, Mumma, Mum, Ben, Benny, Nana, Grandma, go, no, uh-oh, ta, hi, bye

Words he mimics – bubba, daddy, tree, car, cheese, oh-man, backpack, zazy (our cat)

A few weeks ago, we decided we’d try to teach the boys (particularly Ethan) some simple sign language to help communication. The speech pathologist was very impressed (and so are we) that Ethan has picked up signing very quickly.

He can now sign: - eat, drink, more, help, cat, bird and book.

She gave us lots of information on speech and language development, how to help Ethan learn to speak. She also gave us some information about sign language and examples of some more key word signing. Research shows baby/toddler signing helps speech development. We look forward to teaching Ethan more signs over the next few weeks. (videos of signing to come)

BENJAMIN

Benjamin’s speech is moving along in leaps and bounds. He repeats almost everything we say. He is ADDICTED to reading books. He has a few favourites each day, and us poor mummies get really sick of the same book over and over. We read so many books a day, and we really do like the fact that he is so interested in books, and we encourage it daily. His favourites at the moment are books that have pictures of objects with their names. He repeats the words after we say them.

Ben is now speaking in 2-3 word phrases. A few days ago early in the morning, when he’d just woken up he said to me “Mummy, where’s Mumma?” I answered “at work”. About 2 hours later I asked Ben “Where’s Mumma?” and he answered “work”.

Today as we walked through the car park at the shopping centre we passed 3 cars. As we walked past Ben said “green car, blue car, white car”, pointed at each car as he went past it. Tracie and I were totally amazed. He got all 3 colours right!! We had no idea he knew his colours that well. We regularly try to teach the boys about colours with their blocks and other toys, but we have never really had much success with it – until now.

Also, this evening I was outside doing some garden work with Tracie and the boys. Tracie started to take the boys inside for some dinner and Ben stopped, looked at me and said “Mummy, are you coming?”

It’s incredible to watch his speech and language skills developing so fast. He learns several new words a day.

One of Ben’s latest phrases is “Ahhh, a morphie”. (meaning he’s seen the object he’s talking about) I have tried and tried to work out what a morphie (or maybe it’s amorphie) is, but so far I haven’t worked it out. He’s said it about 5-6 times in the last 3-4 days. I look forward to knowing what he’s talking about!!