What We've Been Up To This Summer

There have been quite a few things here and there this summer that have happened that I've thought, "Oh, I should blog about that," but then I never get to it. No real reason why- just being lazy, I guess. So this will be yet another random post about many different things that have been going on.

I think I'll start with 3 quotes of Zach's that made me smile.

The first quote came when the boys and I were driving through some farmland, and we saw some horses. Zach said that when he grew up he was going to have a farm with lots of horses named PJ (our neighbor Molly has a horse named PJ that Zach got to ride last year on Labor Day). Then he said that he'd let Mike, Drew, and me visit him there. "I'm checking dates to see when I'll be available," he said. Where does he get this stuff?

The second one came a couple of nights ago- "Be quiet as thunder, Mom." I had gone into Zach's room right after putting him to bed to look for his swim trunks, which I wanted to throw in the washing machine. They weren't there, so I told him that I thought maybe they were in Drew's room. He offered to go get them, but seeing as how Drew was also in bed, I didn't want that, so I said I'd just sneak in, and Zach's advice to me was, "Be quiet as thunder, Mom."

The last quote is from last night. Mike was talking to me about something and Zach, being Zach, desperately wanted to be part of the conversation, even though he had no way of understanding what we were talking about. So when Mike said something about someone receiving a glowing review, Zach chimed in, "Yeah, because it's hard to make yourself glow." Right.

We've had quite a few chilly days this summer, which is actually kind of nice. Better than extremely hot and humid days, but I'm guessing those will come in August and September. Zach spent some time outside on one rainy day, blowing his "outside only" whistle and using his new umbrella.

The caterpillars for Zach's butterfly pavilion came in the mail a few weeks ago. Grandma Cynthia and Grandpa Kevin gave this to him for his birthday in June, and Grandma had already ordered the caterpillars. I didn't get a picture of them in that stage, but here they are once they formed their chrysalids about a week later.

After about another week to 10 days, we saw our painted lady butterflies had hatched. These next few pictures are taken through the mesh of the butterfly pavilion, so sorry for the fogginess.

We cut some fresh flowers from our garden and put sugar water on them to feed the butterflies. The one negative thing was that when the butterflies hatch, they release this red meconium that looks a lot like blood. Not a big deal, really, except that it soaked through the bottom of the mesh container and got all over my off-white table runner, which is now ruined. I really don't enjoy decorating/redecorating my house because I'm not very skilled at it, and now I have to redecorate, and that's a stressful and annoying notion to me.

Ideally we would have had the butterflies in our enclosure for 3-4 days, but they hatched Thursday evening/Friday morning, and we were leaving Friday morning to go up to Minneapolis for the weekend. I knew with us being gone that we would need to set them free so they could find their own food. The only problem with that, other than not being able to observe them for longer, was that it was super cold that day, and it was supposed to get down to 53 degrees that night. The butterfly directions said that they should only be released when temps were above 55 degrees, so I hope they all made it through the night!

This past weekend Mike was playing in a golf tournament with some neighbors of ours, so the boys and I headed up to Big Creek State Park with my college friend Kristi, her husband Mike, and their boys, Mitch and Logan. Mitch and Zach are the same age (exactly, born on the same day in the same hospital, no less), and Logan is about 4 months older than Drew. Here's the whole crew at the beach.

Zach enjoyed burying his feet and digging in the sand. For awhile Zach and Mitch just sort of ignored each other, but after lunch they went up to the playground and seemed to have a lot of fun together.

Drew enjoyed playing with this dump truck and throwing sand in the water.

Even though the water looked kinda gross on the edges (algae) and didn't smell great, the boys still enjoyed getting in the water. Drew really liked just wading back and forth along the shore.

It was really fun to see Kristi and her family again. We live close but just don't get to see each other often enough. Thanks for inviting us up to the beach, Kisch! It was fun!

Later in the weekend we just played around. Here's a couple of pictures of Drew being silly. He recently discovered these necklaces and has been enjoying wearing them around. The producers of Babies Gone Wild are hitting me up for this picture, but I'm not gonna sell my baby out.

Here he's showing me his belly button and doing his "smile for the camera" face.

In addition to sucking his arm, Drew's other new thing is sticking his hand down his pants. I guess I should be relieved he's sucking on his arm and not his fingers.

Last week Zach had Vacation Bible School at our church. He was very excited about it and had a blast. They do such a great job there getting the kids into what they're doing. Zach learned new Bible stories and lots of fun songs. Our church is really big to begin with (about its only drawback in my opinion), and VBS is HUGE there. Pastor Mike told us on Sunday that over the 2 weeks that they had VBS (3 sessions in those 2 weeks, ages 3-12), they had about 4200 kids attend, and the majority of those are not members of the church. Here's a picture of some of the VBS kids singing at church on Sunday.

Zach was excited to go up on stage to sing. He maybe went up a little early, though, and as a result, he was a bit far back in the crowd and was tucked behind a lot of bigger kids. In this picture you can just see his little head and white shirt. See the tall kid in the black shirt on the left side of the picture? Zach is just to his right, coming up not even to that kid's shoulder. I was worried he'd be kinda scared/overwhelmed being behind so many big kids, but he thought it was just great.

Every year the VBS organizers take popular songs (some current, some older) and change the words to fit the things they are teaching the kids. For example, this year the songs include 2 from the Village People- "In the Navy" changed to "In the Big Boat"- a song about Noah's ark (God wants you. God wants you. God wants you as a new recruit!), "Macho Man"- about David versus Goliath, some Aerosmith/Run DMC "Walk This Way"- a song about the 10 commandments (God wants you to walk this way; talk this way!), and some other songs that I recognize but don't know what they really are. I think one is a Miley Cyrus song, and there's a country-ish one about T-R-O-U-B-L-E. Zach's favorite is the one about David and Goliath. Once VBS is over, the kids get a free CD of all the music, so that has been on at our house a lot lately, and Zach and Drew have been doing a lot of dancing, but they're still working on their moves.

Make photo slide shows at www.OneTrueMedia.com

We filled up the pool yesterday and played in it for about an hour and a half after lunch. Drew's favorite thing is to climb into the pool and climb out of the pool. Into the pool, out of the pool. Into the pool, out of the pool. I don't know why he loves it, but he does. That is how he spent a good part of our time outside. He never cares if he falls on his face in the water and gets all wet (polar opposite of Zach there); that's almost more fun for him.

Photo and video editing at www.OneTrueMedia.com

This is our first week where we have really just one scheduled thing to do (story time/toddler time at the library), and it's definitely nice to have our free time back. It seems like we went from t-ball to swim lessons to VBS all right in a row, and it's so nice this week to not have to get up and hurry to get ready to be somewhere by 8:30/9:00 in the morning. That feeling does have me thinking, though, about when Zach starts preschool and goes Monday through Thursday every week!

Hopefully I'll be better about posting more frequently throughout the rest of the summer. A long post like this takes me most of naptime and then even bedtime to get done, with uploading all the pictures and videos and everything.

Weekend At Sandy and Will's

This past weekend we headed up north to visit my sister, brother-in-law, and my nephew. We (or at least I) used to go up to their place a lot, but with the addition of Drew and Anders, it seems like everybody is busier and traveling just isn't as easy as it used to be. The last time we were up there was when my Grandpa died in October, so Drew and Anders have both changed a lot in that time. It was so good to see Anders and how he's changed, even since I saw him a month ago (or whenever that was). He's just as cute as ever!

We got there around 9:00 on Friday night. The drive up wasn't as bad as I expected, though we did hit a little road construction which slowed us down somewhat and raised my blood pressure a bit. Overall, though, the boys did really well in the car. Installing that DVD player a year and a half ago was probably one of the smarter things we've ever done. Though Drew is still small and not too interested in TV, it did help him stay entertained some. The boys and I also went to a fun store here on Friday morning and picked up a car bingo game for Zach and a small bead-toy for Drew that I thought would provide at least a little entertainment. They helped, too, along with some delicious animal crackers that Zach picked out.

Drew really didn't have any trouble going to sleep that first night- it was way past his bedtime and he was pretty tired. We considered having Zach and Drew share a room, but since we knew they'd be going to bed at the same time the first night and possibly the second night, we weren't sure how they'd do with that. I was afraid they would just try to play or something and struggle to go to sleep. Plus, at home Zach gets up every night to go potty, and we were worried about him sleeping upstairs in Sandy and Will's house and needing to potty, and then having to navigate the hallway and stairs in the dark by himself to get to the bathroom downstairs. So instead we decided to just put Zach on his little blow-up bed in our room. It was a tight squeeze, but we made it. I was definitely regretting this decision when Zach awoke at about 5:30/5:40 on Saturday morning. He wasn't trying to talk to us or anything, but he was doing a lot of loud whispering to himself and moving around, and the blow-up bed rubbing on the wood floor and our bed created a lot of squeaking, so I never really got back to sleep. At about 5:50 Mike told him he had to put the clock back (apparently he had gotten it off a shelf) and go back to sleep. Then a bit later he got up to tell me we forgot to name our butterflies. At 6:45 I decided I should get up to see if Drew was awake yet, and Zach started complaining about being hungry. I was less than sympathetic and told him he was only hungry because he'd been awake so long and that he needed to just go back to sleep.

Even with the early morning, we all had a great time when we went to the zoo. I was glad that I packed warm clothes for us all, because it never got past the low to mid-60's the whole day, and at times it felt rather chilly. I think we were lucky, though, because a typical July day in MN would probably be too hot and humid for the animals to be doing much other than sleeping. We actually got to see quite a bit of activity from many animals.

Here's the moose that was right by us. She had 2 babies in May and they were sort of hiding out up on the hill.

Zach and Uncle Will were checking out the animals together and trying to not let the rest of us catch up to them. Zach sure was having a lot of fun.

This is usually how we found them- with Will helping Zach see the animals better and probably telling Zach interesting facts about all the animals. I think this is a really neat picture.

Drew absolutely loves giraffes. I'm not sure why, but he does. This was Drew's third time at a zoo this summer, and each time he's gotten a close-up view of the giraffes, so maybe that's it. Just a week ago I took the boys to our hometown zoo and we got to feed the giraffes crackers- $1 per cracker. Things are a little more expensive in the Twin Cities, though, where it was $5 for 2 crackers! Oh well, I still forked over the cash for it.

Then we got a nice view of the prairie-dogs.

I love the big cats. They are my favorite part of the zoo. This tiger has a neat habitat in which to live, and he/she was roaming around right where we could see her. Zach started roaring and soon after the tiger did, too, which Zach thought was very cool.

The bears were a little to sleepy to do anything. I suppose the cold temps made them think it was time to hibernate.

The otters were one of Zach's favorite things to watch. They were getting clams from their trainers while we were watching, and it was so neat to see them get a clam, go into the water, bang the clam against the glass to break it open, and then swim on and eat it. We also got to see a close-up of one of the otters pooping in the water, which wasn't so cool, but I guess that's nature, right?

The otters were also having fun playing in this big crate.

The gibbons are fun animals, too. We have them at our zoo, and they make such great noises. Unfortunately, they weren't being too noisy on Saturday. I actually stopped to read the sign by the gibbons, though, and I learned a few things. First of all, I learned the difference between monkeys and apes. Monkeys have tails, and apes don't. I'll be honest- I sort of just thought the terms monkey and ape were interchangeable- guess I've never really taken a zoology class or anything.

I also learned that female gibbons are white, like the picture above, and male gibbons are black, like below. When they're born, they're all white, so that they blend in with their moms. At about 6 months of age, they turn all black, and when females reach maturity, they turn back to white. Interesting, huh?

This puma/cougar was in the Minnesota section of the zoo, which kind of surprised me. I wouldn't have thought that cougars lived in Minnesota. However, the sign said that they live anywhere that deer roam, as deer are their main source of food.

The lynx was one of the last animals we saw. This one has some crazy eyes on it!

After exhausting ourselves at the zoo, we all headed home and the kids and Sandy took much needed naps. Once they got up, Anders resumed his terrorizing of Drew.

I'm not sure what Drew's deal was. He is not used to being around kids smaller than him, and with our playgroup friends, the kids generally leave Drew alone because they're mostly all so much bigger than he is. So Drew was just really unsure of how to handle Anders trying to take his toys or touch him. There was one time where Anders was sort of poking Drew in the face, and Zach reached up to make Anders stop. It was sweet to see the protective big brother side of Zach, as opposed to the antagonizing big brother I usually see. Then Anders reached for the tractor Drew was playing with, and Drew, instead of letting Anders take it and crying about it like he had been doing, sort of moved it away from Anders. Zach said, "Good job, Drew!" which also made me laugh. Anders took it all in stride, though, and mostly thought Drew's crying was a little comical. This reminded me of how Drew used to laugh at Zach when Zach cried. Must be something all babies do.

Anders took a short nap that day, so he headed to bed early, and Drew finally relaxed and had fun with Zach. Drew is suddenly definitely aware of cameras and does his best silly face/cheesy grin when I ask him to smile for me.

Zach and Drew figured out that Drew could fit in the wagon, but Zach pretty quickly realized it wasn't that easy to push Drew in it, so he quit pushing. Drew kept climbing in, though, even if nobody was going to push him.

In Zach's mind there are a few things that no weekend at Aunt Sandy and Uncle Will's is complete without, like feeding the fish, playing pinball, and playing with the pinballs and magnets.

Sunday morning Drew finally seemed a little more comfortable with Anders, and he even let Anders sit by him and touch him some.

Zach quickly found the pinball machines and got to work. He played down there by himself for an hour, probably. Before our delicious homemade waffle breakfast (thanks, Will!), I played with Zach, and he was so funny, talking smack to the game and all. And, once, when one of my balls went straight down the middle where I couldn't stop it with the flippers, Zach said, "Good job, Mom. See, even though you did a bad job, I still said good job to make you feel better." We might need to work on his pep talks a little bit.

While Zach played pinball, we watched the Tour de France and played with the little boys.

After the bike race was done, we quickly made a picnic and loaded up the bikes and went out for a bike ride to the mighty Mississippi. Zach had a blast honking Uncle Will's horn at all the people we passed along the way. I, being a nervous bike-rider as it is (lots of crashes as a kid- gravel particularly makes me nervous), was on a very old Schwinn 3-speed that seemed like it just didn't have a great turning radius. I thought for sure I was going to eat it at some point, but thankfully, I didn't.

We ate lunch and the boys got a little playing in before we had to head back so we could leave for home.

Though Zach and Drew were in the same Burley on the way there, we decided to put Drew and Anders together on the way home. They seemed to do really great together; Anders was totally out of it by the time we all got home.

We got the boys unloaded and packed the car up, and we headed out. Zach was very sad to leave. He said his favorite parts were feeding the fish (his usual answer when we go up there), playing with the claw (see Sandy's blog for an explanation on this), and seeing Sandy, Will, and Anders. He continued to talk about the claw a lot, asking if we could get one. He said once we were home that he was really sad to leave Anders, because "Anders laughs and thinks I'm funny and likes to play with me," which made me a little sad for him because I think he feels like Drew doesn't feel the same way about him.

Zach was exhausted from the excitement of the weekend, so he crashed pretty easily in the car once we got on the road, but not until after he almost tearfully told me, "But it's just so hard to fall asleep without a story!" Thankfully I had his backpack with us, and I was able to grab a few books out of there to read to the boys to help them get into nap mode.

Drew finally helped himself get to sleep by sucking on his arm, which seems to be his new thing. I wonder what he'll do when winter comes and he doesn't have access to his actual arm because of longer sleeves...

Unfortunately Drew's nap didn't last long, but overall, the ride home wasn't too bad. Once the boys were both awake, we put in a DVD for them to watch, and that helped them be content. We made it home safely by about 6:00 p.m., and had a good night. What a fun weekend! Thanks, Sandy, Will, and Anders, for sharing it with us!

You can see Sandy and Will's blog for some other pictures from the weekend.

Evening Prayer

This evening as I finished reading with Zach before bed, he asked me to put his ring (a nice green, plastic thing he got out of a treasure chest at the library for completing a reading challenge) on his nightstand for him. I put it on there, back where he couldn't reach it, because I was worried he would grab it and play with it rather than going to sleep. I know, what's the big deal? No big deal, really, now that I think about it, but he was up before 6 this morning, so I didn't really want him messing around too much. Anyway, he started to get a little upset because he thought I didn't put it right where he had put it before. After more fussing than was necessary, I told him that if he continued to whine and fuss about it, I was going to just leave his room without praying or singing like we usually do. So he quieted down, and I started a pretty standard bedtime prayer:

"Dear God, thank you so much for this awesome day and all the fun we got to have today. Thank you for giving us so much time to play outside in the sprinkler, and for swim lessons, and for all the time to play with Grandma and Grandpa tonight. Please be with us all tonight and help us all sleep well and have a great day tomorrow. Help Zach be brave at swim lessons and remember to stay down in the water to stay warm (an extra reminder for Zach, really), and help us have a great time at the library, too. Please take care of all of our friends and family, too. Amen."

Zach then said, "I had something I wanted to say. 'Dear God, please help Mom not to argue. Amen.'"

Hmmmmm. I didn't know if I should be a little miffed or if it was just plain funny. I waited about a minute, and then looked at him and said, "Should I ask God to help Zach not argue?" He smiled at me. Then we started the amen song and we both sort of started to lose it with the giggles. That kid.

One other thing- this morning at the grocery store, Drew and Zach were being so sweet with each other. They were sitting side-by-side in the rocket ship cart, and Drew kept leaning his head on Zach to cuddle him. It was absolutely precious. Once I said something like, "Oh, Zach, Drew is snuggling you." So then Zach would put his arm around Drew and snuggle him back. This happened at least 3 or 4 times. The last time we were in the produce section and there was another mom with her little boy, who looked a little younger than Zach, and he said, "Mom, I want a baby just like that," gesturing towards Drew.

After our grocery store trip, we came home and played in the sprinkler, the water table, and on the swingset out back. It was such a gorgeous day outside. We ate lunch outside and the boys took naps long enough for me to get dinner made, get the kitchen cleaned up, and get a little reading done in Harry Potter (I'm rereading the 6th book so that it's all fresh in my mind when we see the movie).

Life is good. We are so blessed.

Superboys

Make photo slide shows at www.OneTrueMedia.com

Ring Around the Rosie

Yesterday the boys and I had some good playtime in the basement. I'm often resistant to playing in the basement, but then I give in and have a lot of fun. Anyway, yesterday didn't start out so fun, because Zach was in a bad mood, and was being a baby about everything. He had a long train on the train table, probably so he could use all the train cars and Drew wouldn't have any. Then Zach walked away and Drew picked up Gordon and started playing with him. Zach came back and still had about 10 cars making up his train, but it just would not work if he didn't have Gordon. He got all teary about it, and tried to trade Percy for Gordon, but Drew wasn't having it. I think Drew probably thought he had Thomas, as he loves Thomas and sees him in some of our books. Percy, being green, doesn't look the same as Thomas and Gordon, who are both blue. So Zach cried about that, and he cried about something else, and it was all quite annoying that the four year-old was acting like a baby.

A little later Drew was trying to get past Zach and kind of pushed him in the face, which Zach of course did not appreciate, especially given his crabby mood. I said to Drew, "Drew, that's not nice. You need to say say 'Excuse me,'" to Zach. So Drew did his sign for thank you (must be interchangeable in his mind, I guess) and did his little "mah" noise, and then about 2 seconds later, leaned down to Zach's face and gave him the sweetest little kiss. It was the first time I've seen Drew give a kiss without being asked first. And Zach didn't even get mad or wipe it off like he often does.

After that we played some soccer, some basketball, some t-ball, and Drew did a little golfing (actually standing up and hitting the golf ball with his club- we're making progress here!), and then we played this horsey game we do in music class where we say a little rhyme and gallop around. At the end we fall down on the ground, and it was so cute to see Drew do it. I tried to get it on video, but by the time I got the video camera down there, we'd already done it a few times, and Drew had lost interest. But then we started doing Ring Around the Rosie, and I got some of that on video. After the song I got Drew to show me some of his body parts- I randomly started asking him about his body parts the other day and was amazed at what he knew, because we haven't practiced this a whole lot. Oh, and please ignore the weird noise I make when the boys fall down in the beginning. I don't know what was going on with that.

Photo and video editing at www.OneTrueMedia.com

16 Months Old

Drew turned 16 months a few days ago. It doesn't really feel like a milestone date, but I had some cute pictures of him, so I thought I'd also take the time to write down some of his latest tricks. I'm not taking the time to look back at previous posts to see what I've already written, so some of this may be redundant. Sorry.

He's saying a few more words now. One of the latest I've noticed and understood is bubble. While he's pushing his little lawnmower and bubbles are coming out, he says, "Buh-buh." Other words he says include uh-oh, bye, Mama, Dada, and it seems like there's something for Thomas, but I can't remember what it is. Oh, and he also seems to sort of say goodnight, but I'm not exactly sure how he does it. It's consistent, though, so I think that counts.

While Drew originally did the more sign as one of his first signs, once he learned the sign for please, he pretty much quit doing more. Suddenly today, he did the more sign again. He also signs for water, help, dog, and thank you, but I can't think of any other signs. He used to do milk, but since he still won't really drink milk from a cup and I am no longer breastfeeding, he really never gets milk, so we never use the sign.

Drew still screams when he sees something exciting, like big trucks, vans, pick-up trucks, basketball hoops, birds or other animals, and some other random stuff. He is obsessed with trashcans, the big kind that the trash truck picks up. Our next door neighbors keep their trashcan outside their garage, and Drew gets pretty excited whenever he sees it, which is pretty much every day. Anytime he sees a trashcan, he immediately picks a few blades of grass and heads straight for it, and he won't be distracted until he's thrown the grass in the trash. It's cute, but can be annoying. For example, on a Wednesday or Thursday afternoon, when all the trashcans are out on the curb, it takes us about 30 minutes to walk the 4 houses down to the mailbox, because we have to stop at every trashcan at least 2 times. If I let him walk on his own it takes even longer, so eventually I have to just pick him up and carry him. When Drew sees a trashcan, he makes a sound like "aaaaachhhh," kind of an exaggerated "ack" sound, which is what we say when something is yucky, like trash. We'll say, "Acky, Drew," or "Ack!" It's really funny to hear him make this sound. I will try to get a video of this tomorrow, maybe. When Zach was about this age, he got obsessed with trash, too. He would pick up the tiniest thing off the floor and say, "Tash!" and head straight for the trashcan. The great thing about Drew is that after he throws something away in our kitchen trash, he's always sure to replace the child-safety lock so that he "can't" get into the cabinet next time. So considerate. Yesterday Drew got a kleenex from Zach's room, wiped his nose with it, and then took it into the boys' bathroom to put it in the trash in there. On his way back into Zach's room, I told him, "Good job, Drew!" So he grabbed another kleenex, barely wiped his nose, and threw it away in the bathroom. This time he was his own cheerleader, and on his way back into Zach's room he clapped and said, "Aaaaaah!" Then he grabbed another kleenex and just took it straight to the trash, with none of this fake nose-wiping. This happened a few more times. I know, it's not good to just waste kleenex like that. It was just too cute to stop, though, and it was only a few kleenexes overall.

Drew really loves his dogs. He very often just hugs Maggie and Foudy, or if they're laying down, he goes up and rests his head on them. They're good sports about it, and it absolutely melts my heart. I have always hoped I'd pass my dog-lover gene on to my kids, and I think maybe I have.

Drew's new favorite toy is the Little People bus. He thinks it's pretty fun, but he needs help putting the people in their seats sometimes.

Drew started trying to kick balls. I posted the video of him dribbling the soccer ball, but now he actually tries to kick it.

Drew seems to be more fearless than Zach was at this age, though it's hard for me to remember just what Zach was like. Some of it is just circumstantial, I think. For example, Drew likes to climb up on all the step stools we have for Zach to use. Zach couldn't do that because we didn't have the step stools then. Drew also loves to climb up the ladder on the playset in our backyard. Last week he started turning around and going down the slide, too. That is sometimes a little tricky, because I can't just let him climb up on his own, and there are two levels to the clubhouse at the top, so I'm sure to stay up there with him to make sure he doesn't fall. Of course if I put my hands out to make sure he doesn't fall, he pushes them away. Then as he goes to the slide to go down, I have to quickly get to the rock wall, where I can stand on some of the supports and reach over to the slide to make sure Drew doesn't fall as he turns around. Then I quickly jump down to stop him from flying off the slide (it's really fast) and landing face first on the ground. I have no idea if Zach would have tried all this at 16 months because we didn't have the playset then.

Zach has never enjoyed getting his face wet, but when we were playing in the swimming pool yesterday, Drew slipped and went on his back in the water. If it were Zach at 16 months, I'm sure there would have been crying, but Drew just quickly flipped himself over to his tummy and laughed. Then he purposely tried to do it again, and again, and again. Then he tried to climb the slide so he could slide down it and land in the water. I've heard that second children are less fearful than their older siblings because they see the older one do everything and figure they can do it, too, and I'd say this definitely holds true for Drew!

Oh, I almost forgot- Drew now has a whopping 5 teeth! His fifth tooth broke through about a week ago. So now he has two on bottom and three on top.

Here's Drew a week or two ago. He discovered this tupperware container and put it on his head, and whoa! he could see through it! So he decided to wear it around for a while, to see what the world looked like through a tupperware lens.

Then he decided he wanted this tiny Playmobil pirate boat paddle in his mouth, but there was a slight problem.

Aahhh! That's my boy! Good problem-solving, Drew!

And here he was just being cute at the table.

Thankfully Drew still makes his "silly face" when we ask him too. I wonder when this will change. I hope never!

And this is just a random picture from a few weeks ago when my sister Sandy, brother-in-law Will, and my adorable nephew Anders stopped by on their way home from Iowa City. I love how Zach is playing with the baby toy while the two babies watch. Typical big brother/cousin.