Can't believe he's grown so much in only 7 months

Andrei is really get to be a big boy in many many ways. First his physical growth is really becoming apparent. It's kind of hard to measure him with our growth chart that we put up outside his room. He either doesn't stand flat-footed, instead he stands on his tip-toes (maybe he wants to be taller), or he hunches over a bit or bends his head down.

So the way we actually measure him is similar to what they do in the doctor's office. We lay him down on his back and put his feet up against the baseboards of the wall. Then we stretch him out (yes, this is a two adult exercise) holding his head as straight as possible and mark a spot on the carpet and then take the tape measure and do the measurement. Then transfer that to the growth chart (we bought this in Russia so it's in centimeters, which we think is way cool by the way).



Anyway, he is now been home a mere 7 months and has grown about 4 inches in that time. He's moved from size 5 shoes to 8 1/2. But it's the things he is able to do that seem to marvel us. We were so excited when he was able to open a door by himself by standing on his tip-toes, now a few months later he does it flat-footed.

But his growth as a person is even more pronounced. Although his pronunciation of words is pretty rough (even we have difficulty trying to figure out which word he's trying to say), he reasons in whole sentences and is putting together two word sentences and more importantly multi word concepts. So even if he doesn't know all the words he will couple words with physical actions. For example, if he wants to put something back in a certain place he will say "Ah-ddrr" (Andrei) "ba" (back) and "Eh" (his word for something he hasn't yet learned) and then points to a shelf.

He understands the concept of time and knows if we say we'll do something "later" what that means and will often remind us of the promise (which is not always a good thing, since we use to say "later" to get out of doing something).

And his bonding with us is almost scary in both it's depth and speed. He will arbitrarily go up to Stef or myself and give us a hug or a kiss. Several times a day he'll go over to his (overly) vast collection of books and then bring a few of them to me or Stef to have us read to him. Not really for the story but just so he can sit with us and enjoy some quiet personal activity together. The kid is such a happy little boy but he is clearly most happy when the whole family is together (so when Stef comes home from work or the weekends).

The other thing I'm now seeing is how his sense of humor is expanding. He always enjoyed laughing. Usually playing silly or getting tickled. But now he seems to laugh at things that strike him funny. There's this show on the Sprout channel (that's the PBS children's programming channel) that has a cartoon called Pingu which is about a penguin. Well, he loves penguins and starts saying "peng-peng-peng" and pointing to the TV. So I start saying it just as loud "penguin-penguin-penguin" while pointing at Andrei.

He starts laughing so hard he almost couldn't get a breath. I have no idea why this struck him so funny but now days later I can say really fast "penguin-penguin-penguin" and he still cracks up.