One and a half years old!

Words the boys can both say and understand the meaning of: Flower, bye-bye, dog, hat, eye, ball, baby, airplane, book, shower, juice, shell, dad.

Words/phrases the boys understand: Hand, foot, nose, ear, cracker, cookie, milk, horse, Grandpa, Uncle Chris, brother, Caleb, Joshua, Do you love ____?.

Words the boys pretend not to understand: No! Don't go into the street! Come back here!

Words the boys still seem not to understand: Halmoni, Mommy :(

The boys' favorite thing to do nowadays is show that they love something or someone by hugging them or, if it's something difficult to hug (such as an azalea plant) leaning into it and cocking their heads sideways and smiling sweetly. We customarily prompt or respond to such actions by asking them, "Do you love the flowers?" and they will bend even farther over into the flower bush. It's like the farther they bend sideways, the more loudly they proclaim their love. I have no idea where they learned to do this, but they both do it and it's just about the cutest thing I've ever seen! When we ask Joshua "Do you love your brother?" he will rub Caleb's head, then wrap both arms around it and squeeze tightly. We know that Joshua means well, but Caleb is not so fond of this display of affection!

Joshua and Caleb love to play outside. They crave it. One of the first things they do when they wake up in the morning is ask to go "bye-bye". Now that the weather is warmer, we usually go outside twice a day, for a walk either riding in or pushing the wagon, or to play in our yard or Halmoni and Grandpa's yard, or to play with their little friends who live around the corner, or at one of the nearby playgrounds. Even though we have a huge beautiful backyard, their favorite place to hang out is of course the front yard, along the curb. They love watching cars zoom by, people walking their dogs (they always point and say "DOG!"), and planes and helicopters flying overhead.

We're pretty amazed at how the boys are able to associate things that are related but not quite the same. For example, in the boys' minds, any furry animal is a "dog". Any plant is a "flower". The other day, they were very intrigued by an illustration of a baby at the bottom of their yogurt bowl, so I told them it was a "baby". Then later on that afternoon we bumped into a neighborhood friend who was carrying her 6-month-old baby girl. The boys pointed to her and said "baby!" I was surprised that they were able to associate an illustration on a bowl with a real life baby. Their baby brains must be processing a lot more than we usually give them credit for!