Another Random Post

Earlier this afternoon I uploaded a bunch of pictures I wanted to post on here, and they don't necessarily all go together, so this will be yet another random post.

First, here's our new photo wall in the dining room.  

Notice the lovely green color of the wall.  I love the green, and I love the photo wall, though I'm having a difficult time picking all the pictures to go up there.  There were some old  ones I wanted to put up, like one of my sisters and me when we were little girls and one of Mike and his little sister when they were a lot younger, but old pictures are too small for these frames.  I need all pictures to be at least 4", and old pictures are 3.5" tall.  So that is kind of a bummer.  I'm not sure yet what the other 5x7 photos will be, but I'll get it figured out soon, I hope!  I think I need to change the picture of Drew that's on the left so that it's horizontal.  I may use one of the pictures below that Mike took the other day.  I spent 2 days trying to get a good picture to put on Drew's birthday invitation, and the day after I printed the invitations Mike got all of these.  Figures.  There were about 3 other good ones from this night, but I decided to "just" put four of them on here. 

Now here's a picture from yesterday of Zach the artist.  I asked him to draw a person, so he started with the big head, then added the legs, then the eyes and mouth, and finally the arms.  It was interesting to see how his brain was working.  He told me that when you draw eyes you have to fill them in, because eyes are filled in. Then he looked at me with big eyes and said, "See- my eyes are filled in."  He also wrote his name by himself on the whiteboard.  We've been working on making his A's a little more triangular.

Yesterday we got to go out to lunch with our friend Moira, who I used to teach with and who also taught our private music class from when Zach had just turned one until this past summer.  We miss her and her class sooooo much, so it was really awesome to meet up with her and have lunch and catch up.  Zach had a blast of course, because he thinks Moira is the cat's meow.  We went to Panera, and Zach got a meal that has a sandwich and a squeezable yogurt thing.  I said something to Zach like, "It's ok if you eat the yogurt now, as long as you don't just focus on it and eat your sandwich, too."  So he eats a little yogurt, and then a little sandwich, and then some more yogurt, and more yogurt.  I think then I said, "Buddy, you need to eat your sandwich, too," and Zach said to Moira, "I'm just going to finish this yogurt so I can focus on my sandwich."  We couldn't really argue with that, I guess.  Thanks for meeting us for lunch, Moira!

Later in the afternoon our friend Carey was here from Kansas City.  Zach has met Carey a couple of times, and I wasn't sure if he'd be shy or not.  He was not.  Right away when he got up from his nap he got Carey roped into reading a bunch of books to him, and it was so sweet to see how he kept scooting closer and closer to her to snuggle her up.  We hope your test went well, Carey!

Last night Zach and Mike went to a high school basketball game together, so Drew and I hung out and played.  It's really fun to have uninterrupted time with Drew these days, because he's just learning so much.

First we played with spoons, and Drew would pretend to feed himself.  He puts the spoon to his mouth, and then takes it away quickly, and opens and closes his mouth quickly like he's eating.  He loves doing this.  He also tried to "feed" me once.

Then we moved into the dining room, where Drew looked out the window.  Both of our boys have been huge fans of the windows in our house and the window blinds.  If Drew is just in a nasty mood where nothing makes him happy, put him at the window, let him suck on the crank or the little toggle thing on the blinds, and he's happy as can be.  I have a picture of Zach as a baby just like this one of Drew.

It was very difficult, but I finally got a picture of Drew standing unassisted.  The last couple of days he really has gotten better and more brave about doing this.  It was tough to get the picture, because I'd trick him into standing without holding onto me by handing him something else to hold onto, and then I'd have to quickly get the camera and get it focused before he realized what he was doing and went down to his knees.  I swear he took 3 steps one time, but I don't know if that really counts as walking.  Sorry about the shadow in this one- it's from the dining room table.

Drew really likes the grandfather clock that Mike's dad made for us, but I don't want him touching it or leaning on it or anything.  I'm paranoid about it getting broken, and if he slipped or something, there are sharp corners and a big slab of granite underneath it that would not feel good on his head.  Anyway, he kept trying to touch it, and I kept saying, "Please don't touch the clock!" and moving him away.  Drew is our little drama queen, so here he is reacting to my saying no again.  It's really funny to watch him get upset about things like this and throw his little fits.  If you try to hand him a toy to distract him, he often flings it aside as if to say, "I don't want that!"

After playing in the dining room, we decided it was time to get ready for bed, so we headed to the stairs.  Foudy was waiting there for us, and was happy to give Drew a big, wet kiss on the face.  He went for it, though, going up to her with his mouth open, like he wanted the kiss, too.

After getting a couple of kisses he figured out how to get around Foudy, and climbed up the steps.  He stopped to make sure I was coming, too.

Some things I want to remember about Drew as he's about to turn one:

-He does the signs for Foudy, milk, and eat.

-It seems like he calls Zach.  If Zach's not around, I'll say, "Where's Zach?"  And Drew goes, "Baa!  Baa!" and the way he says it really sounds like how I would say, "Zach!  Zach!"

-He plays a game with Maggie where he picks up a toy and hands it to her to take from him.  Maggie seems a little more competitive with Drew than she is with Zach (probably because he can't tell her to "give" yet), so she of course is happy to take toys from him. 

-He is no longer phased by me sternly telling him, "No!  We don't throw food on the floor!" when he purposely drops food on the floor towards the end of his meals.  In fact, he seems mildly amused by me when this happens, which is not good.

-He loves to see how things work.  He really likes things that spin, and it's very cute to watch him move his hand to make things spin.  He also loves books with flaps to open and just books in general.  He'll sit and look at books by himself just to turn the pages.

-As I mentioned before, he's a bit of a drama queen, but he gets very tickled with himself when he figures something out.

-Oh!  I almost forgot.  He makes this hilarious face sometimes just to be silly, where he basically closes his eyes and gets this huge grin.  I never have the camera ready, but the other day I got him doing it and Mike got a picture.  This isn't exactly the look, but it sort of is.  

One more Zach story- today during Zach's nap I could hear him getting out of bed a lot.  I figured he was getting up to get books, and though I wanted him to sleep because he went to bed late last night and got up early this morning, I figured that if he was really tired, he would fall asleep.  Well, there were a few quiet times, but then I'd hear more moving around.  At 4:03, I swear I heard him talking to himself, and I expected him to get up, because he knows he can get up at 4:00.  Well, I went upstairs to get Drew, and suddenly it seemed like Zach was totally quiet.  So 4:45 rolls around, and I decide I don't want Zach sleeping any later.  So I go into his room, and there are books scattered all over the floor and all over his bed.  He's totally under the covers and his clock is under there with him, and he is dead asleep.  Seems like he was tired enough to finally fall asleep.  After I woke him up and was helping him clean up books, I saw that his clock said it was 11:20, but it really was 5:00.  So I think that he was playing with his clock, and that he was really awake at 4:00 but didn't realize it was 4:00, and then he fell asleep.  He tricked himself!  One day last week we found him totally asleep with his face on an open book.  So cute.  I hope he always loves books.

I'm certain there's stuff I'm forgetting, but I'll get it next time, hopefully. I thought there were other stories about Zach I wanted to write down, too, but I can't remember them, either.   Once again, it's past my bedtime, my contacts are dry and foggy, and I'm tired!  I'm not proofreading again, so Sandy, you can let me know how many mistakes you find this time! :-)