15 monthiversary: toddlerhood!

Ronan the helper comes to school (and erases the board)! He apparently
recognized my terrible line drawings as animals because he made the matching sounds.
Big month!

Ronan is walking, talking, and changing fast. This must be that time period they refer to as flying by, since it sure wasn't 0-4 months!

Over the long weekend we got to see auntie J (Tata) and uncle B (now dubbed Boo) visiting from CA. It was so nice to see them, and great for Ro to have more time with adoring family. NOT so sure it was a great idea for them to teach him the tickling game, though. Guess how I woke up when a certain SOMEONE visited on his monthday morning! ;)

Monday night Ro spiked a fever so Tuesday he came to work with me. He played pretty quietly while I gave a test, and we ducked out into the hall during his outburst of "duck duck duck duck duck duck DUCK duck!"). The rest of the day I played hookie to take care of him and we had a grand old time. He was in a great mood for a supposedly sick kid, and he learned how climb up the stairs to a slide, spin around, and slide down the front. I think I needed the break too. (Wednesday Ro spent the day with Dada, and soon we are heading South to visit more family.)

What he's up to:

Ro is starting to follow instructions, and he's at an age where he likes to do what we do: brush his teeth, brush his "hair", put socks in the laundry basket and trash in the trash can. One of these days we're going to lose some small but valuable item when Ro decides it's trash and deposits it there! As an aside: we sometimes refer to our cat as "Maile the helper, " and when we do it always means something ominous, like she's helping topple all our magazines. Ro's efforts so far are about 80% entropy-increasing, 20% ordering. He's edged out the cat!

Ronan is ever more communicative, which is one the things I'm liking best about this age. He tells us what he sees, points to things he's interested in, and repeats new words with heartbreakingly sweet enthusiasm (like mushroom = MUMOOM!!!!). DADOO seems to refer to any two-syllable word that's hard to say, as well as the sound of a choo-choo train. He's tried saying cracker, carrot, and many more that I forget...with only a few phonemes in his repertoire they all start to sound like DADOO to me. Mama and Dada are slowly turning into Mommy and Daddy as he figures out the "Y" sound and grasps the idea that syllables can be different.

Favorite thing:

One of the "instructions" Ronan likes to follow is to give a hug. (Instructions he ignores as if we weren't talking include "come here", "let me sniff your diaper", "please don't throw that"). When he came to work with me the second time he found ANOTHER hamster he thinks is a cat. So of course: hamster hugs!

Ronan convenes the council of hamsters he believes to be cats (Mao-maos)	Hamster Hug!!!!

One of these days I'm going to have to take him to lab and show him a real hamster.

Ronan has started to give hugs to his humans too (J+B got the first non-parental hugs this weekend, but I forgot to use my camera the whole visit). I don't generally get gushy about parenting (I think), but if you have a chance you have got to get in on one of these hugs!!!!

Happy belated snuggle-day. We look forward to many years of hugs to come.

Mommy..............................................................Daddy