Another little update ...

Just a little more about life here with the Oregon Douglas clan ...

We had Alia's parent/teacher conference at school on Wednesday and got to hear lots of wonderful things about how she is progressing there. Alia is a little caregiver and the big sister of her class. She is very concerned about all of her classmates and tries to help them when they feel sad. "Academically" she's doing well. We had to laugh because apparently our shy little Bean won't count out loud for her teacher. Her teacher was trying to ask her how many of something there were so that she could hear her count and Alia kept counting the objects in her head and then telling her the answer. At home the kid counts in English, Spanish and some other made up languages every now and then :-) In January, after she turns 3, she'll be moving up to the "Frogs" class. She is so excited about it! However, I'm feeling a little sad and nervous. Her teachers in the Hedgehogs class have been so good for her. I hate to see her move on :-(

In other news, we are still having poop in the potty issues here. I've given up stressing about it! I tried that and it didn't do me any good! Oh, well! Dance class is a huge hit (Mommy is thrilled!)! Alia asks every day if its dance day and she does lots of practicing at home. She can repeat word for word just about everything Miss Lynn says in dance class. Jason was able to come watch for the first time this week and he was pretty impressed with her. For not even technically being old enough to be in the class, I think she's really kicking butt :-)

A very brief and rare moment, luckily caught on camera ...

Can you believe that he is already 13 months old and she'll be 3 in just 2 months? YIKES!

In Max news, we are just getting over a very sudden and random ear infection. Max had a cold and seemed to be getting better and then out of the blue at 3:30am one morning, screaming kid ... for 3 hours. We got him right into the doctor (I suspected ear infection, because Jason had just been in the day before and he had one too) and got him on meds. By later that evening he seemed to already be feeling better. He's a pretty tough little guy!

Max is such a little character and just so much fun! He's really working on his signs. He can now do more, all done, eat, water, please, diaper, dog, orange (and that's all I can think of right now). His favorite move is to sign please and point. He's learned this is a pretty good way to get what you want! I think we are finally on the cusp of getting some words out of him. He can say Da (dad), Ma-Ma (mommy, but he almost never will), Ya (which we think is him saying Alia), Ba (Boo, we do a lot of peek-a-boo around here) and something that sounds like All Done. However, with the exception of Da, none of these come out with any consistency. It's crazy, because at this age we already couldn't shut Alia up and Max just isn't at interested. However, he can climb up and hang on the baby gate like a monkey and is nearly breaking into a run these days. He's also a big fan of playing fetch .... He loves to throw the ball and then run after it and get it and then throw it again. Keeps him nice and busy and burns off some of that boy energy :-)