Vacation Update

Andrew and I are still in Arkansas, currently experiencing an Arkansas rain storm. Paul has been enjoying his time home alone by building an arcade cabinet and shampooing our downstairs carpets (yes!). Here are some pics from our trip so far:

Jeffrey gets a bathAndrew sweeps the yardJeffrey takes a nap

Andrew has fun in the high chair

Trip to Arkansas

Andrew and I made our way on Saturday to Arkansas to visit Lindsey, Doug, and baby Jeffrey. Unfortunately, we got stuck in the Detroit airport for about 6 hours due to some airplane maintenance. I don't even know how we made it though, but we eventually got to our destination and now get to enjoy a whole week before we fly again. Hopefully I'll get around to updating the blog soon with some photos and such from our visit. Here's a picture of Andrew running around the Detroit airport with his cute little Elmo leash harness on.

Andrew's First Word?

For quite a while Andrew has said various versions of "Mama" at various times such that I haven't been comfortable claiming that he is purposely saying "mama" and meaning me. So that might be his first word or might not be. But Paul and I have concluded that he is now officially, deliberately saying a word. When Andrew picks up a phone or any object that he is pretending to be a phone, he says "hello"! It sounds like "ah-wah", but he definitely means "hello". It has the same inflection as when we answer the phone saying "hello." Yay!

Other words that he now seems to understand:
shoes
socks
stretch (he loves to stretch his arms up and hear you say "stretch")
dip (something you dip your food into)
clap
nose
hot (he will sometimes blow on hot food, and today Paul just mentioned that something was hot and Andrew started spontaneously blowing)
kiss
hug
sippy cup
water
milk

In other Andrew news:
We've been going to playgrounds a lot lately since all of a sudden it's summer here. Andrew is now able to go down slides all by himself, including getting himself started at the top and getting off the slide at the bottom. He's also gotten really good at going down individual steps by sitting down and scooting himself forward with his legs until he can reach the bottom of the step with his feet and stand up. This is really useful in climbing around on playground equipment. He still can't go down a flight of stairs by himself, probably because I don't really let him practice that. One of the great things about where we live is the abundance of playgrounds. We have one in our neighborhood just about two blocks away that we walk to often, but there are tons more all over within short drives. We're really enjoying being back in Pittsburgh.