15 months/6 years

The other day we got out of the house early to get the boys in to the doctor. They are both growing well.

Gareth was happy he didn't need any shots. He's staying in the 50% for his weight at just over 46 pounds, and has jumped to the 60% for his height at just over 46 inches. He's asked to cut his hair, so we'll be going back to a shorter cut sometime this summer. He's starting to get into Legos and still loves video games and is constantly asking questions. A very social kid, he's always wanting to have someone to play with and loves making others, especially his brother, laugh. He's a voracious reader these days, staying up at night to read and reading just about anything he can get his hands on. He's currently into Captain Underpants/Super Diaper Baby and is really interested in the Ivy and Bean series after we picked one of those up at a little free library a few blocks away. But he's also steadily working through one of the Henry Huggins books that we got at the library and loves books about space as well. His writing improved a lot throughout the school year, he asked me today if I could teach him cursive (because I totally remember how to do that) and he also does very well in math, though this is the area where his perfectionism is most likely to cause frustration (he wants to work ahead of his level and gets upset if he doesn't understand things perfectly on the first try).

Malcolm is also growing well. He's up in the 50% for height at 31 inches and hanging around the 15% for weight at 20 pounds, 5 ounces. I'm excited he's hit 20 pounds because that means we can turn the car seat around whenever we want (they encourage you to keep them rear-facing for two years, but I'm getting really, really tired of having to buckle Gareth's seat belt for him (the latch in our car is poorly positioned and makes buckling other seat belts extremely difficult and the only way the car seat fits rear facing is in the center seat, right next to Gareth)). Malcolm loves to climb stairs and one of these days will decide to walk. He cruises a lot and will occasionally stand without holding anything. The doctor isn't too worried about the not walking, but is hoping he'll be doing that by 18 months. Like me, she's fairly certain he's just a bit lazy. Why do something that's kinda hard when you can get around so quickly crawling? She says he's showing good social skills, despite his crying for the majority of the visit. He jabbers a lot, but isn't really speaking yet. He says "uh-oh" all the time and has occasionally said "ba" after we say "ball", but that's about it. A couple days ago I did realize though that he says "da da doh" or occasionally "dee da doh" for "peek-a-boo" and "aye" for "hi". I think, anyway. He likes imitating sounds - Gareth almost got Malcolm saying "thank you" this morning just by saying it over and over in a silly way that caught Malcolm's attention.

Malcolm suddenly has cute curly locks, especially on the back of his head. I'm pretty sure his hair was all straight until I gave him a bath the other day and then after I dried his hair it curled up a bit and seems to have gotten more curls at the bottom each day. It's quite cute. I was looking at a picture from Michaela's wedding the other day that has an almost 15-month old Gareth in it, trying to compare him with Malcolm at the same age. I'll have to post a picture of then-Gareth and a recent picture of Malcolm for comparison. Tons of people say that Malcolm looks like a miniature version of Gareth. I can see that there are definite differences, but I just can't put my finger on what they are. But they do share a lot of features as well.