Our house slowly emptied itself of people after everyone came to visit, and on January 2 we left as well and headed north to visit our friends Antoine and Jasmine in Michigan. While there we went to a park (because it was so nice out) and learned that Matthias loves slides. Unlike his older sisters, he has absolutely no qualms about going down the slide, with or without a person at the bottom to catch him. By his third or fourth time down, he discovered that he could go down on his stomach and thereafter only slid down face first.
I went to Chicago to visit Jacque and attend a Music Together Songs and Skills workshop. I enjoyed the visit and also chatting on the phone with all sorts of people while I drove. I did not enjoy driving in Chicago at night.
Gretchen lost a tooth a month or so ago. She was very excited when the tooth came out and equally as excited when the new one started coming in. She has two more teeth that she claims are loose, but they are not yet loose enough for anyone except Gretchen to tell.
Did I mention that Matthias didn't know how to clap for a while? I think I did, but just in case... I tried to help him clap when he was little by holding his hands and clapping them together. When he tried to replicate it, he flopped his hands on his wrists in front of his body, making no effort to run them into each other. This was his clapping motion for a few months. At some point he transitioned to actual clapping, but only if he heard the word "Yay!" If someone told him to clap, he would flap his hands. By now he's completely forgotten the hand flopping and claps like a normal person. :)
Jacob visited a while ago, as he is wont to do, and stayed in the basement overnight. We gave him a spare key so that he could let himself into the house if necessary, but he dropped it between the basement stairs where it is quite difficult to retrieve. We have other spare keys, so it was not a big deal, but when Jacob stayed in the basement again last weekend I was reluctant to part with another spare. I happened upon a solution that pleased me, and Jacob resigned himself to carrying an (empty) ice cream bucket of shame, to which was affixed a length of ribbon and a key. As the ice cream bucket is too large to fit between the stairs, this is now our official basement traveling key.
A checkup happened. Matthias is 33.25 inches tall and weighs 27.75 pounds.
You know you're comfortable making bread when a batch doesn't rise correctly and your immediate response is to make a new batch and turn the sad, dense loaves into croutons. :)
New Matthias words: hot, coat, shoes, hat, I need that, I like that, Daddy, hi, hello. He also has a fake burp and a fake sneeze, and he discovered that he can make a farting noise by blowing on his arm.
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