Leif hit a milestone today- He said he is done with pacifiers and threw his last one away. He has a habit of chewing on his pacifiers and they get all torn up and not safe since they could break off and choke him. I have been warning him for months that if he chews on them, it makes them not safe and he will have to get rid of them. We have slowly been throwing them away, but the big change now is that he threw one away himself last night and the very last one this morning. We have yet to get to nap time, bedtime, or a major upsetting event in which he might suddenly decide he needs the comfort of a pacifier, so we'll see how that goes. I do know there is at least one more pacifier floating around the house somewhere that he lost weeks ago and we never found- hopefully that doesn't pop up while he is trying to get over using them all together. We have been trying to get him off of pacifiers for months, so it will be nice to just be done with them.
Leif is such a fun little character in our family. He still loves to sing, especially "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" and often launches into it if his little sister starts crying or fussing. Its almost like an automatic response for him- she cries and he sings. It's really cute.
Something else particular to Leif at this age is that we often find him out of bed at night for one reason or another. Most nights he comes out of his room at least 3 times because he needs a drink of water, he needs a certain toy, he wants to put something away, or mostly just because he wants to see what we are doing. His brother comes out of their room every now and then too, but Leif is definitely the kid we are most likely to find wandering the house after hours.
I have been doing a preschool co-op with the boys with some other moms in the area. We are doing a letter each week, so Leif is slowly learning his letters and sounds, although he occasionally still calls "L" (his special letter) "A" (which is Asher's special letter). Letters are a little hard for him, but I'm not too worried since he is still so young and has plenty of time to learn them. Numbers are a different story- Leif has caught on to rote counting (just saying the numbers in order) and counts up to 5 without mistakes all the time and sometimes goes higher. He also counts objects up to three without mistakes. Numbers just seem to be easier for him than letters.
The boys have been dealing with hand-foot-mouth disease for about the last week. At first it looked like just Asher was going to get it, but then Leif came down with it too, although in a milder form. He got one spot on his face and a blister or two on his hand, but most of his symptoms seem to be from a cold, so I think he had one of those too. They have seemed to feel okay, besides general grumpiness from being worn down, but we hasve missed out on some activities since we don't want to pass the virus on to other kids.
Here are the pictures that Austin got of Leif today. They speak volumes about him and how he likes to spend his time. The shirt he is wearing is his "dragon shirt" which he wears every chance he gets even though it is a size 4T. We also have another one that is exactly the same except it has short sleeves. For some reason that one is considered "Asher's dragon shirt". Leif will gladly wear that one if his is too dirty to wear and occasionally he breaks out and wears a different shirt all together. You may not be able to tell, but the cushions are not on the couch in these pictures, The boys are constantly taking them off for some game or building project or, in this case, just to drive cars on. They also love to drag pillows and blankets all over the place. Gotta love these little mess makers.
