I thought I'd try blogging again in a different location. So, here I am!

A is now just over two years old and talking up a storm!!! The terrible two's are in full force these days, but even so, we have a great time in our house. Lots of laughing and playing (in between those tantrums). He's gotten to be a bit bossy these days, insisting that we play on the linoleum in the kitchen or grabbing our shirts to drag us to wherever he wants us. It's all in good fun though.

He's doing well with his transition to the "new" day care. It's been six weeks now, so it's not really "new" any more. This morning, his class was outside when we got there. He insisted that I carry him, and I obliged. Once we got outside, his teacher, Mrs. Wanda came over to greet us and asked for a hug from A. He leaned over and she took him in her arms. No tears! I drove past the play area as I left and he was already on his own. I watched as he took his hands out of his pockets, then patted down the pockets (this is the way he does it!). Then he scrambled off and played. Makes a mom happy.

I've been spending my lunch hours playing with some digital scrapbooking here at work. This is one of the pages I worked on today. Notice that I figured out how to get a copy of the main picture blended into the background "paper" on the right side. Neat, huh? (Yes, I smudged his face a little on purpose.)

Credits:

Frame by Misty Cato at http://mistycatodesigns.blogspot.com/
Paper by Scrappy Pony Designs/Heather Green in her Grungy Solids freebie collection at http://horseshirts.blogspot.com

Entry for November 29, 2006

It's been a while since an update -

We had a GREAT Thanksgiving with Pete, Jo and Uncle Tom visiting. We enjoyed a big turkey dinner, toured campus, had family portraits taken and relaxed! It took A a little to warm up to our visitors, but I think he'll miss them now.

He did a bunch of things that surprised us over the long weekend. One night as we were finishing up dinner, he looked like he was done so I asked, "Are you ready to get down?". He gathered up his remaining animal crackers and looked at me as if to say, "Okay - I've got what I need. I'll get down now." So cute!

Outside Mom's office, there were little flowers still growing. A was so excited to see all of them. He kept pointing to them and saying "Flow(er) flow(er) flow(er)".

He's starting to speak in short sentences too. Yesterday morning, he left his brush on the toilet. I told him where it was and pointed. He went over to it and said "it's here".

This morning, as I opened the car door to get him out of the car, a wren was singing. He pointed and said "bir(d)". I hadn't said anything! He made the connection all his own.

Now, you have to remember that his speech isn't perfectly clear - most of the time the first consanent and the vowel are what comes out, but it's quite clear that he's connecting things and words.

Entry for November 13, 2006

I've been thinking about this for a while, and figured I'd just take the time to put it down. Here's a list of words that A says. Some are clear, others are mostly the consonants, and some it takes a trained ear to figure out. But here's the list in no particular order. Remember he's almost 15 months old.

da shoes

his name (you have to listen closely)
moon

car

flower
star

train

butterfly (or something like this)
my

mama

door

pumpkin
chair

nose

frog
cat

belly (button)

more (or so Brenda claims)
dog

hat
bird

go
bear

up
ball

fan

Did I miss any?

Entry for November 10, 2006

TGIF everyone! Last night was bath night for Little Man. He fits in his little yellow bathrobe with the NS tartan trim so he wore that for a little while last night. I'm waiting for pictures to be uploaded, and then maybe I'll post one.

He played a little with his spoon and my fork at supper. He's getting the hang of getting it into his mouth, but hasn't figured out how to get food onto the spoon yet. He turns the bowl upside down and pushes against the food on his plate. It works well when dinner includes mashed sweet potatoes from Boston Market, but with ground beef and corn in the dish, it doesn't work so well. We need to get him a toddler fork so he can practice stabbing his food. That might help. He was trying that process with my fork last night, but wouldn't let me help much. He was too afraid I'd take it away from him, I think.

We'll have supper at G-ma's and G-pa's tonight. We always like that!

Post Election Day 2006

Nifong won. Bleh. Glad I don't live in Durham County. /political comments

Well folks, last night was the same as the night before - one wound up toddler! After some researching, we decided to take the tray off A's high chair and slide it up to the table. He seemed to like it, but didn't eat much. I talked to the baby sitter today and she said he's getting about 24 oz of milk during the day. Plus breakfast (sausage and pancakes or french toast usually), and lunch (frequently fast food) and snacks. No wonder he's not hungry for supper!!! She agreed to try to give milk only with meals and water the rest of the time. A likes water, so it should be okay. We'll see! It's too bad he didn't want supper - he was offered an English muffin pizza with turkey pepperoni. We were waiting for the "yum" to come from him, but didn't get to hear it much. It's so cute when he does it! Makes me feel like he's appreciating my work at putting supper on the table.

Entry for November 07, 2006

Good morning folks! We had on our hands one wound-up toddler last night! He was running around, shrieking and flopping on pillows. He teased us by climbing up on the couch, flopping around and finally landing on his back with this look in his eye saying "Go ahead - I dare you to tickle me!" What could we do but oblige him? He didn't care much for dinner. I tried a new recipe using chicken, ramen noodles and stir-fry veggies. Either he wasn't hungry or there were too many veggies! Fortunately, he decided to hand his food back to me - one noodle at a time - instead of dumping it on the floor. He's learning! We made a big deal about him being such a good help, hoping that he'll continue with that behavior.

Once we got upstairs for bed time, he was pretty ready for bed. He willingly layed down on his pj's so we could put them on, and only ran around for a few minutes. We read for a little then he just layed down on the floor. After we said night-nights to all his kites, Daddy said good night and Mommy and A had a last few minutes to chat before A wanted to go to bed.

Cleaning up after dinner, a few minutes to make a birthday card, and a little rest, then it was bedtime for the grown-ups!