9 months.

To continue the trend of titling blog posts with numbers, this one will cover Thomas at 9 months (yes, he's really ~9 1/2 months).

Thomas has a slew of nicknames, though most commonly used are Thosmos, Tomasito, or Thosatron; even Jacob uses 'Tomasito' during his sweet and snugly moods...but it's certainly 'Thomas' when sharing is involved.

Thomas is our strong, stubborn, and curly-haired sweet giant.

Strong: Just today he both stood on his own for 3 long seconds and stood-up from squatting with no help whatsoever (following a breathing treatment, he could probably lift a car with all that caffeine-crazy energy).

Stubborn: Thosmos has already learned that by lowering his head while crawling, he can just use his heft to get closer to what he wants regardless of any obstacles (be they chairs, brothers, toys, etc). He also reserves most of his crying for expressing frustration at having a toy removed, plan diverted, ie. not getting exactly that which he had set his mind. I respect that...and I'm grateful he's not the first born getting everything he pouts about (HA, like Jacob ever did)!

Here's a video when persistence doesn't pay off.

Happy Giant: Today Thomas weighed in at 25 1/2 pounds (completely off the charts huge) and 29.5", which is between the 75th and 85th percentiles. holy moly. And he bypassed yet another size and comfortably wears 18 month clothing (but it has to be stretchy or it doesn't fit).

This video just shows both the continuation of Jacob being hilarious for Thomas and me being bossy(...truthfully, I'm not so bossy rather Jacob had been popping these very loudly for 10 minutes and our walls here are paper thin. I was feeling guilty for our noise!) Thanks Uncle Dana for the package and the packaging!

Part of the 9 month check-up was discussing development: if you mimic him, does he then repeat what you say? I'm gonna have to say yes.

28.

Daniel turns 28 years old(young) tomorrow. Hard to believe the pace by which these years are sliding;

we're still trying to wrap our minds around the fact that this will be the 11th year of us celebrating dp's birthday since beginning this crazy fun ride of love and then marriage. Whoa. Imagine who you were at 18...then at 28- Hopefully some changes and hopefully some things are the same; I'm just happy that we keep getting to celebrate Daniel for who he is each year.

Happy Birthday mon ami prefere!

On an entirely different note, here's a bit about our life the past week and a half.

When we lived here previously, the community garden was really important to us and we knew we wanted to see it flourish this year, too. So, last Saturday, we got to work with fellow neighbors and 'farmers of the Dels'. (Our apts are called the Delaware Apts...the dels...get it?).

Jacob refueled between shifts of digging in dirt and talking about "ew..smelly dirt and chicken poooop". Yeah, he's a 3 year old boy.

Thomas helped by being the sweet, mellow boy he is and NOT eating the dirt.

A look at the crops (lettuce, spinach, a bunch of herbs, kale, peas, basil) and some cute boys a few days later.

I just include this cause it makes me smile that Thomas gave up on steering. Smart cookie.

These tidbits are just to make you smile. This nugget was hiding in the files from the first few weeks after arriving back in Berkeley; this sweet boy can make anybody grin with this smile and laugh.

In this picture, we have Roman (4 1/2months old, daughter to our beloved KD and John whom we spoke of years ago while living here) and the feet of Thomas. He rather enjoyed sneaking a ride under Roman in her stroller, there was laughing, poking, and kicking involved.