Adventures with A

I realized I have not dedicated a blog to Armour yet and just wanted to share a little about him. He will be one next week, and we are so excited. He is always active! He learned to walk around the time we moved here, and now he is trying to learn to run. It is funny, cause he will get himself sturdy, look ahead, then just try to go as fast as he can-usually he goes about 3 steps bafore he has to stop and steady himself again.

We have stairs in this place, and he LOVES to climb up when we aren't looking. The first day Wes was at work, twice when I was in the bathroom, he tried to cruise upstairs and fell down. Now, he is great with up but not so good with down. I have been teaching him to back down the stairs, but he doesn't like that much. A few minutes ago, I was on the phone with our car insurance (just trying to fix a mistake in our new Washington coverage-no accidents!) (BTW-not to take away from this Armour spotlight, but as I am typing this, Solace is quoting the elevator monologue from the Disneyland Haunted Mansion in her scariest, most manly voice-she is even throwing in a fake vibrato...)

So, back to Armour...I was on the phone, and I suddenly hear this yelling "Mommmmmm, Daddddddddd, Dowwwwnnnnnn." These are three of the words Armour has figured out in his limited vocabulary. So I walk the direction of the screaming, of course to the stairs, and see Armour mid way up standing facing the bottom as if he was going to try to dive. Luckily, he thought better of it and called for help instead! Nice, he is learning!

Since I mentioned his limited, but rapidly growing vocabulary, let me just say, he may not know a lot of words, but man, he can communicate. He uses signs, words, and very loud noises to let us know what he needs or wants. He is loud enough that in a line the other day, an old man with a hearing aid that was yelling "what, what" to everyone he tried to speak to, commented on how loud our kids, particularly our boys, and even more specifically our baby was... So, I thought it must be the product of being the third child in a family of 2 very loud and attention needy older siblings. It is hard to compete, so you have to be louder and more attention seeking than they are-thus he loud LOUD baby...then I remembered Melanie is my families third and Andrea and I are possible as loud and attention seeking as my older two...so, maybe it's a somewhat flawed theory...Mel is a lot of things, but loud is NOT one of them.

It is an adventure every day with these kids, and Armour makes it even more exciting. For those that don't know, Armour is our tie breaker-there are now more boys than girls in our family. I come from a long line lacking boys...I have only one brother and he is only 9 (almost 10 I guess), and, my mom has only sisters (5 of them)...(Wesley's family is a tie-3 of each)...Basically, I have never had to deal with two boys, brothers together until now and man the constant wrestling alone was a surprise...ah...Life...gotta love it!