Month-by-month: April

R goes on leave
Once Grandma went back home, R took his scheduled four-week leave, and almost went batty. Heh. Lukas needed a lot more holding than Annika did at the same age, which meant that R didn't get to some of the household projects he had been hoping to do (like repair and refinish the deck) -- but he did do a lot of other things (mostly research and planning). It was a good chance to hang with the baby, and a needed break from work, but by the end, he was more than ready to get back to the routine!

Solid foods
A bad run of bad nights sleepwise for Lukas (and thus for me) prompted us to try solid foods a month or so early, on the theory that if we fed him enough, he'd go back to his newborn sleeping patterns. That didn't exactly pan out, but he did like the rice cereal, so we kept that in his diet when we remembered to.

The bouncer thingy saves the day
Finally, finally we discovered a baby product that Lukas likes: the bouncer thingy that Amanda bought off of our registry. He loves to jump two-footed in it, and will stay in there (safe, interested, occupied) for quite awhile -- including for nearly an hour while the rest of us lounged around in the hot tub one summery weekend afternoon. This is how I'm able to get dinner going, or clean up, or do ANYTHING else, so: Yay!

First pool day
We had a week of really warm weather -- actually hot, in the 90s -- so we decided to fire up the pool heater and enjoy. Annika LOVES the water, and continues to work on her skills (she'll dunk underwater now, and put her face in, and she's really fast at dogpaddling -- she might not need that floaty suit by the end of the summer!). Lukas had his first pool experience, sitting in a baby floaty thing with a little sun canopy, a swim diaper on, and me in attendance, and he really seemed to dig it; he was all big eyes and gently exploring little hands.

Baby skills
This month, Lukas was really working on purposeful movements (learning to control those flailing hands), muh-muh-muh sounds, and hilarious baby-raptor roaring sounds. He laughs a lot (including in his sleep sometimes), and is fascinated by the old baby monitor (it lights up when it registers sounds, and it gets a lot of interference, so the lights are always flashing -- he loves the thing). The first time he saw it, he leaned waaay over me, making this sound like "caaaaaaaah" ... and tried to grab it to put it in his mouth.

Big-girl skills
Annika is reading out words she knows whenever she sees them (e.g. "now" and "the"); she bursts into our room every morning with a book for us to read (adorable, but sometimes brutal when the summer light wakes her up at 6:00 on a weekend ... oi). She's working on math concepts. She can follow really complex directions and make up complex stories. She can play board games by the rules. She is finally becoming amenable to reason when we won't let her have or do something she wants -- she understands a bargain or a deal, and can accept explanations as to why the answer is sometimes no. That doesn't mean she never flips out or that it works all the time ... but it's real progress and it makes so many things easier.

Yo Gabba Gabba gets company
There's a new TV obsession these days: Pee-Wee's Playhouse. Gabba isn't over and done with by any means -- but Pee-Wee (which failed to make an impression a year ago) is hilarious to her now, and it's been the go-to entertainment for some weeks.