The Dancing Man

It seems like it has been forever since an update was posted but David is doing well and continues to grow and learn and talk (and talk, and talk...) He still loves his books and has to have a story every night. He has started to learn some French from Mom and some Japanese from Dad. He can now identifysabout 12 letters of the alphabet when shown all 26. Truly, we are amazed and feel very blessed.

Here is a video of the little man dancing randomly one day over the Christmas break and another random moment where he made up his own lyrics. He has really started to like Raffi and other music. He often turns on the clock radio in our room and will say, "Rock and Roll" or "Too much talking," depending on what station is tuned in. He is not a fan of the CBC (Canada's national broadcaster) but insists on listening to Japanese lessons on CD in the car on the way to the daycare centre.

The Toddling Man Cometh

David has started toddling around and has stood on his own for a few seconds at a time over the past three weeks. He is walking just fine while pushing his car, too. We are sure he will soon be even harder to catch than he is now on all fours!

More Recent Photos

The biggest news is that Diana and I sat down and wrote out all the words David can say on his own, not including the ones he understands but has never said himself. We got to just over 120 words and are sure we missed some. He is chatty, that boy of ours!







In other news...

• David has started taking his first steps. He has been standing for a while and we thought he would be an early walker but this did not come to pass. However, once he does get the hang of walking we know we are in trouble so we don't mind waiting a little longer...
• David got his first haircut last month and was pretty good about sitting still as long as he had a MegaBlok to play with.
• David loves to imitate us and caught me off guard one day when he picked up my empty coffee cup, said "Hot" and started to pretend to drink it.
  
• David now has 11 teeth and we think he has just started number 12!

Some recent pictures

The Birthday Boy!

It is a cliche, but it is true: How time flies! David turned 1 year old today. Officially, he was 1 at 1:06 this morning but he got his first Happy Birthday from Mom at around 6:30 this morning when he woke up. It is amazing how he has changed over the past year, going from this fragile, little, crying thing to the big, talkative little boy he is now.

He loves playing with his cars, any ball he can find, and crawling around very quickly. His newest words include "flower", "key", "ears", "hair", and many others. He seems to learn something new every minute.

I Get Around

Just for fun, here is a little time-lapse video of David playing with some washcloths...

Mr. Talkative

David's favorite thing is learning and practicing new words. When he first wakes up in the morning, he starts saying whichever new word he is working on. There are already several words that he can say very well: "ball", "turtle", "poop", "bus", "pants", "shoes", "toes", "toast"; and others that he uses consistently but can't quite pronounce: "guck" (truck), "cook" (cookie), "pup" (pumpkin/ puppy), "ba" (banana), "caa" (car), "bup" (button).

Here he is in his turtle costume!