6 months

I shouldn't give the impresion that it's all bad with Ollie and Sam. Usually Ollie is very sweet with Sam. When Sam is crying he will run over and pat him on the stomach and say "It's OK Sam, it's OK". And they are really starting to entertain each other. Anything that Ollie does that gets a giggle out of Sam he will do over and over and over again. Last week he was pressing the button on one of his toys that plays a bit of music and dancing around for Sam because it made Sam laugh, for about half an hour. And they often giggle at each other in the car which makes most trips much better.

Sam is 6 months old, can you believe it? He can roll over if he chooses to, but mostly he chooses not to. We are working on sitting up, but mostly he just folds forwards on to his legs and gets stuck there. Now he can officially have solids, I thought he would be thrilled as he is totally fascinated whenever we are eating and drinking - he's always ttrying to grab my bagel and tea. But so far he is not tht taken with it, most of the food gets pushed right back out of his mouth. He is still not all that keen on bottles either, he just thinks they are teething toys and doesn't really drink out of them, evn if he is starving. We have been working very hard at it though this week and hopefully that will change soon.

Ollie is doing great, talking to us all the time. Our neighbour Karen is a speech pathologist and she is most impressed with his abilities. When he has difficulties with pronounciation (lellow instead of yellow), she tells him to watch her mouth as she says the word. This is surprsingly effective, he gets it right immediately after watching her say it. He is such a mimic though, the other day he was eating some yoghurt and he said to me "watch my mouth -- yyyoghurt".

April was a very busy month for us, it seems like every weekend there was something going on. We had a garage sale, we had a small party for my grandmother's 102nd birthday, last week we had a wedding shower for a friend, we dug up and planted the garden (and by we I mean I). It's all over now and we are looking forward to a relaxing month with no engagements or obligations. The weather was gorgeous last weekend, the cherries all over the city have been fabulous and right now the tulips are peaking. Tomorrow is supposed to be gorgeous as well and for once we will have time to appreciate it.

Blowing out the candle