Our New Schedule and New Milestones...

This is our first week of our new schedule with me back to working. Honestly, I had anticipated my being out of the house for 2 days a week to present some challenges for all of us. Happily, things have gone more smoothly than I had expected. Lily is loving preschool and continues to thrive there. Bill really enjoys his Mondays and Wednesdays home with the kids. Andrew is eating up all the attention from Daddy and loving it and I'm enjoying the time with my colleagues and students. All in all, not a bad first week back:)

On another note, Andrew has hit some new milestones this week. My job is helpfull and a hinderance as a Mommy sometimes. Sure, I'm aware of developmental milestones and strategies to help children reach them. On the downside, I can overanalyze and over-worry about things. Andrew is now 10 months old and has been with us for 4 months. He's actually ahead of the game in the gross and fine motor department. While social emotional development seems on target, his speech/language development seems a bit behind to me. Now, that totally makes sense given the language change and lack of stimulation in the orphange/foster home. I had been thinking to myself "Gee, I'd like to hear him make some repetitive sounds like 'da-da-da' or 'ba-ba-ba'. I'd also like to see him imitate us more in speech sounds."

Well, apparently Andrew read my mind and just started doing these 2 things this week. He's consistently saying "ba-ba-ba, la-la-la and da-da-da" and will repeat them after us. I *think* he may be getting the idea of Da-da for Bill, La-La for Lily and ba-ba for bottle. I don't know if they are true words yet, but I think he'll get there soon. On a funny note, if I point to Bill and say "Da-Da", Andrew will repeat me. If I point to Lily and say "La-La", he'll repeat that too. If I point to myself and say "Ma-Ma", he'll look right at me and say "Pftttttttt."

I'll leave you all with one my favorite pictures taken professionally: