The boys.

Since most of our posts in the past several months have been about our travels or adventures, I thought I would instead send an update on the boys. Donovan will be two in just a few weeks and Nicholas will be four a month or so later ...

Donovan has been rapidly building his vocabulary. We think that Nicholas went through a vocabulary explosion at about the same age as well. While Donovan's words are often hard to understand - unless you spend time with him - he has tons of them now. The most common is "mk pease" (milk please). He can name most power machinery (crane, bulldozer, payloader, digger, jack hammer, fire truck, etc.). He still loves trains and he sleeps with one or two every night (and nap). Donovan loves to cuddle, especially with his blanket. His temper is mellowing a bit and he's had substantially fewer tantrums lately (perhaps because he is now better able to express himself). He is a little more cautious than Nicholas was at this age, but he still has his fair share of bruises. Fortunately, kisses solve most of his problems. Donovan is working on using the toilet. He decided that he would start crawling out of his crib two days ago... As soon as he wakes up, he crawls out of his crib, pounds on the door, and yells "knock knock" until we come get him. The flip side is that we can no longer just put him in his crib at nap or bed time -- we now need to make sure that he is very drowsy or asleep before we leave the room. We expect that we'll probably transition him into a "big boy bed" in Nicholas' room fairly soon...

Nicholas has really grown up a lot in the past few months. He's very expressive, always asking questions, and really enjoys the role of big brother. The boys play together non-stop and Nicholas is always explaining to Donovan either how to do things, or telling him why he shouldn't do them. I thought it was especially cute to see Nicholas "reading" to Donovan about power equipment (the picture above). He loves to help. Tonight we asked him to take off Donovan's shoes . Nicholas was very happy to help, but in pulling Donovan's shoe off, he also pulled Donovan right off the step he was sitting on... Nicholas has become very good at riding his bicycle. We take it with us when we go to the elementary school playground and he can ride around on the basketball courts. He especially loves to ride from the playground to the grocery store (about 1/3 mile). The first time we did this I had to help push him up the hill a bit and could keep up fairly well by walking. Today, I spent about half of the time running to keep up. (I know I am getting slower by the day, but not that much...).

Baby girl continues to grow and my belly keeps growing with her. We can't believe that we only have 8.5 more weeks until she is due to arrive! Nicholas and Donovan are pretty excited, as our Doug and I.