new discoveries

mason made a few new discoveries between last night and this morning. the first was discovering that he can laugh and squeal very loudly! at first he was surprised, but then he realized that it was fun to be loud. he stops when ever i get the camera or there would be video.

the second discovery was his feet. he likes to hold them up in the air like seen in this picture - same as madelyn at this age. he grabbed one of his feet last night, but hasn't done so since. and he has had lots of time because this boy has no interest in napping during the day! he is the polar opposite of madelyn who took two 4 hour naps a day and would sneak in a third 2-3 hour nap. for the past week mason does good to get three hours total! i don't mind because he sleeps at night and that is all that matters.

madelyn loves to help. and it really doesn't matter what she is helping with - she loves it all. today she helped pick groceries off the shelf and put them in the cart at the grocery store and then helped me prepare dinner. she helps with dinner pretty much every day and as she learns (and obeys) food prep rules she gets to help with more and more of the process. since she as mastered "don't touch raw meat", she got to help put the glaze on our salmon. she also ate a good portion of it with her creamed spinach as a result. dinner has been the one meal that madelyn hasn't really embraced and she will often choose to go to bed hungry instead of eating it.

today at the grocery store i asked madelyn to pick up a bag of mini marshmallows and instead of settling for the white ones, madelyn selected the multi colored ones. as i have posted several times before, madelyn is really good about putting things back that we aren't going to purchase, but there was no talking her out of these marshmallows. in fact, she carried that bag of marshmallows through the whole store with the tightest grip. and when she put it up on the belt so that we could buy them she told the cashier about buying her marshmallows. as a reward after dinner she got to eat 5 of them. a very small price to be for eating her dinner.

and mason spent dinner prep and dinner hanging in his swing and playing with the toys on it. he focuses so hard and is getting really good at grabbing what he sees. not to mention that he is obviously proud of his accomplishments. pretty soon he will be sitting up and he can join us at the table in his highchair! it is so fun to see him begin to show interest in toys - i know that it makes madelyn pretty excited too. love.