Teeth, Reading, and Walking

Alexander is losing his teeth, and Mieke finally has one - a little one poking up on the bottom.

The other big news in our family is that Alexander is now officially a reader. Yay!

He has been able to read simple books for a while now, but he never wanted to. Every time I tried to get him to read a word here or there, he would clam up and get all grumpy. But just the other day, he and Annabel were looking at books together, and she got him to read to her. Afterwards, he bounded over to me, saying, "Mom, I can read now!"

It finally clicked with him that he can do it. I'm still amazed at how Alexander learns big things. He did this with potty training and with riding a bike. He doesn't do it, doesn't do it, refuses, refuses, and then one day you turn around and he's doing it. Seemingly out of nowhere.

I just hope he doesn't do this with driving a car.

Oh, and Mieke is also walking behind a push-car. She puts on her proud little smile, sticks out her tongue, and walks along like she's been doing it for weeks. Any day now she'll take her first step. In the tenth month, just like big brother and sister.

Beach Trip

What a glorious long weekend at the beach! One house, my whole family, endless fun. The weather was perfect...as good as it is in the summer. The kids and big boys even jumped waves.

Standing, Legoing, and Writing

Oops! I actually composed the following three weeks ago and forgot to post it!

Tomorrow Mieke will be nine months old. Yikes! In September, on the 25th to be precise, she pulled herself up to standing for the first time. Now it's all she wants to do. She especially likes to crawl under the table and stand there. Won't be long before her head starts hitting.

She's still our Buddha baby with all her chubs and rolls, but now that she's a lot more mobile, I suspect she'll get leaner. She's getting into eating solid foods, but breast milk is still her go-to meal. No teeth yet.

Alexander and Michiel went to a Lego Expo up in Portland, which was amazing and wonderful, and they came home with tons of loot--a few minifigs, a game, etc, etc.

And our Annabel is learning so much in school. Already she's about a year ahead of Alexander at that age. Shhh, don't tell him. The other day she was writing letters and declared, "Look, I wrote Oma!" I started to give her some that's-very-nice-dear praise without really looking when I realized that she actually had written "Oma." Then she said, "I want to go visit Oma so I can show her what I wrote for her. Let's go today!"