A little update on the boys

Harrison doesn't say "yes". He says "uh huh" and uses a different intonation to tell you just how much he agrees with the answer. He has always done this. Mark and I can't think of a time when he's actually said the word "yes".

"Do you want a cookie?" merits a much different response than "Are you ready to take your nap now?". Up until now though, he freely (and frequently) said "no".

But now, he won't say "no" either. Instead, it's some version of "nope". It's pretty funny, just the way he says it. I think he finds it funny too because there are times he just laughs after he says it.

I swear we really do speak the English language around here although judging by a conversation with him you'd never know.

Over July 4th weekend Mark took Harrison to see his first movie in the theater. They went to see Cars 2. Since he already had many of the cars from the movie, he was ready. He had a really good time and surprisingly sat still for the majority of it. He did spent a lot of time in Mark's lap since the chairs are so heavy--when Harrison tried to sit in one by himself it kept folding in half on him.

We also went swimming a couple of times that weekend, both at a friends' house and at the club.

He had a great time going down to "Joel's pool" which is our neighbor. They have two teenage boys that he likes to watch, and by the time we left there that day he had Mark throwing him in the air across the pool to me. He'd come up laughing and yell for "more Harrison high up" or something like that. He is a little daredevil monkey!

He will also now jump off of the edge and swim to you. By the time we left the club on Monday, he was almost diving in head first and swimming to meet you. His swim is so cute, it's like this full body wiggle that somehow makes forward progress. He is definitely a little fish, and if he keeps this up I have a feeling we'll have some early morning swim meets in our future a few short summers from now.

Barrett is getting cuter every day. I know I'm biased, but he really is. He is just such a sweet, happy, smiley baby. He seems to try and "talk" more every day, and loves to just sit back on your legs and look at you. He seems happiest like that and really tries to talk with you.

Here he is on July 4th at 11 weeks old:

Harrison is still in love with his little brother. He wants to go get him out of his bed as soon as he hears him wake up. He shouts "baby wake" and runs to the room. He also wants to make sure Barrett is around when we are playing, and shares his toys. Frequently Barrett is "holding" a train or a car so he can participate. We'll see how Harrison feels about this when he isn't the one dictating which car/train/other toy Barrett is interested in having. Hopefully his generous nature will continue far into the future.

Harrison's new favorite show is Toy Story. We have all three of the movies, and Harrison is now in love with Buzz and Woody. He watches a bit more TV than I'd like, but sometimes there aren't a lot of options. When I'm trying to get Barrett down for a nap or feeding him, sometimes I just need Harrison to sit quietly (ha ha) or at least give me a few minutes where he isn't attached to my hip. We introduced Toy Story a couple of weeks ago and since then have seen A LOT of Buzz and Woody. We are finally onto Toy Story 3 today, so by the end of tomorrow I'm sure we'll know how the whole thing turns out :-)

Lately we have been doing a lot of counting. Harrison's version of counting to 10 starts like this: 1-2-3-9!!! He gets stuck on nine and gets quite excited about it. Once we get past that and can help him with the 1-2-3-4 sequence he can get all the way to 10. But, it takes quite a bit of convincing that four comes after three and nine is a bit later in the count.

He also likes to sing the alphabet, and if you alternate letters with him he's almost got it all. He does sort of run together L-M-N-O-P, but laughs about it like he knows it's not right.

Barrett enjoys chilling on his playmat and watching the lights and toys. Harrison must have fond memories of doing it as a baby because he feels compelled to join in the fun: