Raking

As a father, you get to experience many firsts with your son...first step, first word. Well today at lunch, Zach asked me for the first time, "daddy, do you want to rake chicks with me?" I think maybe we've been hanging around Rosy too much. In addition to making me laugh harder than I have in quite some time, it made me consider a few questions. Can a 2-year-old get into The Lone Tree? Is there still a Lone Tree?

Real smiles

I got a few pictures of Zach with a genuine smile on his face, so I thought I'd share a few. He was doing some painting, and you can see pretty easily what brought about the laughs.

This is how the painting started:

And this is how it ended:

This boy makes us laugh pretty regularly these days, usually when we hear our own words coming out of his mouth. Today Zach completely cracked me up when he was "helping" Scott figure out why our upstairs hall ceiling lights weren't working. I don't know exactly what Scott had done, but I do know they hadn't been up there long when I heard Zach say "Wow, you're really good at that Daddy!" Always nice to get a little encouragement from your two year old.

And my own personal favorite was when Zach parroted me, not only with the words, but also the tone. When Zach is doing something he shouldn't, I have the habit of saying "Zach, please don't play with the blinds. Thank you!" I get the "thank you" in there quickly, in a very chipper voice; perhaps I'm under the illusion he'll think he's doing me a favor rather than following an order...? Anyway, the other day I told him we needed to change his diaper. This is rarely his favorite activity, so Zach put a chair between us and said "I don't need to change my diaper. Thank you!" Literally the exact same chipper tone; I guess I'm not fooling anyone!

Ouch

We've had a day of painful firsts today, and it's only 1:30...

First we went to our ECFE class, where Zach got bit on the finger by another little boy. Sigh. It wasn't bad, didn't break the skin or anything, but still.

Then we went to get some new shoes for Zach for summer, and while walking towards the register carrying his new shoebox, he tripped and fell. Since he was holding the box, he didn't get his hands down fast enough to catch himself, and slammed his upper lip into the floor. Blood everywhere.

So Zach's first human bite, and his first bloody lip, all in one morning! He recovered from both of these events well, although I don't think he's going to be forgetting the bite any time soon. I suspect he'll be keeping a distance from that particular little boy for quite a while!

Is syrup its own food group?

If not, what food group does syrup belong to? The same one as ketchup, I'm guessing. Well, it does come from trees, right? That must mean it's healthy. So it's good that Zach likes to eat as much syrup as he does pancakes, right? Ok, good.

Cousins galore

My aunt Judy and uncle Jerry hosted an easter egg hunt this year, and were brave enough to include not only their own grandchildren, but also their grand-nieces and nephews. I believe that brought the total to 9 kids total. It was a great chance for Zach to spend some fun times with his cousins - immediate and extended.

Goofy cousins:

(my brother Andy's kids Sophie, age 3, and Chase, age 4.5)

Cute cousins:

Second (third? I never have understood how that works) cousins on an easter egg hunt:

(Spencer; Allie, Emily, and Zach; Maya; Emily and Allie; Zach)

Zach's egg hunt helpers:

Zach was too excited to hold his own basket, so grandma and grandpa helped him out. :)

Easter fun

Baking cookies for Easter!

I'm learning... I finally realized I should just give Zach his own hunk of dough and let him do what he wanted with it. That worked much better than trying to get him to do what I wanted him to do, which is true of all things, not just baking cookies! He loved it - now he drags a chair over to the island and asks if we can bake cookies every day.

Trying to smile for the camera. I think this is progress...?

Dying eggs at G&G Klicka's house.

Another time we realized we just had to stand back and let him go, and not worry about his dyed fingers and the cracked eggshells (we're eating egg salad with blue spots now).

Fun with cousin Chase (age 4). Sophie wasn't able to come over that night, but the boys managed to have fun anyway, especially with grandma's new gardening wagon.

Finding his Easter basket

(coming soon... the easter egg hunt!)

Simple pleasures

I'm a little overwhelmed with the amount of photos I took over Easter weekend, and the days leading up to it, so it's going to take me a little while to go through them and post them. Baking cookies, dying eggs, Easter egg hunts, fun with cousins - lots to report on. But in the meantime, I thought I'd share a fun moment Zach and I had yesterday.

It is incredibly fun as a parent to introduce your child to all the wonderful things that exist in this world. Yesterday I got to watch Zach discover... m&ms!!!

We were reading a book that his Grandma Cookie (Willard) had given him a long time ago, that until recently he was not at all interested in. It's a counting book that uses m&ms to teach counting, colors, shapes, and basic math. Now he loves it; this was probably the 4th time I'd read it that day. Then I remembered we had m&ms in the goody bag from the easter egg hunt, so I asked if Zach wanted to see what an m&m was. Needless to say - he loved them. For those of you who know him well, I think you can see the evidence in the pictures - notice how his milk is sitting there untouched??!?!? We've never found anything that trumped milk before, but apparently m&ms do. But as much as he loved them - he was still willing to share with me! :)

Cake and flowers

We have lots of adventures to update you about...

Have you been to Choo Choo Bob's (http://www.grandtrains.com/)?? If you have a child who is even remotely interested in trains, I suggest you check it out. The front of the store is filled with an elaborate display of electric trains, while the back of the store has six (yes, six!) train tables filled with different Thomas the train set-ups for the kids to play with. And the best part - benches for the parents to sit and relax while their kids play! Zach and I went last week with some friends and the kids spent about an hour and a half playing while we moms got to catch up. Fun for all ages!

Scott and I competed in another bonspiel this past weekend. We did relatively well, although in our fourth game on Saturday we collapsed. We blamed fatigue, until Scott pointed out that wasn't really a valid excuse considering our opponents had also curled all day, and they were at least twice our age (literally). I do have to point out they were not at the club dancing until after midnight as we were... is that a valid excuse? Oh well, we had a good time playing with our friends Rueben and Tara for the first time. A big thanks to the Kunnicks for watching Zach for us - he didn't miss us at all!

Sunday Zach got to attend a birthday party - which I think he views as a chance to eat cake. He is definitely his father's son when it comes to cake. We were celebrating our friend Caitlin's birthday - happy "golden" 4th Caitlin!

Zach and I went to the flower show at the downtown Macy's this week, with our friends Liz and Sawyer (1). We participated in a tour and lunch organized for at-home moms and their kids, to provide opportunities to do things you might not normally be able to do with a baby or toddler in tow. I think both Zach and Sawyer would have appreciated the flowers a bit more if it wasn't so crowded, although as you can see below, Zach took a moment to smell the flowers. The boys enjoyed the lunch however, especially the older kids chasing each other through the room. We did our best to take advantage of the photo op, but it wasn't easy, as these boys were ready to be on the move.

Zach's latest

It's time for another Zach update... bear with me.

One of my favorites recently was an experience we had at a local bookstore, which conveniently had a train table set up in the children's section. So I was free to browse for a birthday gift while Zach played with Thomas the train. There was another little boy there as well, who was probably close to three years old. Suddenly I heard "what's your name?" I peeked around the corner to watch, because we've been trying to teach Zach to ask people's names, rather than refer to them as "that girl" or "red guy" (meaning a guy in a red shirt). Apparently the little boy had said hi to Zach first, and after saying hi, Zach asked him his name! Their conversation then went like this... A: My name is Alex.
Z: Alex... Alex...(long pause). My name is Zachary.
A: Zachary!! I like that name.

That was the extent of it, but I was standing in the stacks just laughing. I was so proud of him for remembering to ask the boy's name!! It was odd to watch him having his own conversation, and so very cute.

Zach loves to sing, and has a really good memory for remembering songs. While we were in Florida, Scott mused that Zach probably knew 50 songs. That sounded absolutely ridiculous to me, so we started keeping a list. We got up to about 43 before we lost interest, and I'm still amazed that he knows that many! Not every word, of course, but we counted it if he could get the general melody and most of the words right. I think the alphabet song and the wheels on the bus remain his favorites, but lately John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt (sp?) is popular too.

Since Zach learned the alphabet, it's been interesting to watch how his understanding of letters has evolved in realizing that the letters in his books make up words. He is constantly asking us how to spell things, and what a specific word is. And now Scott has been teaching him phonics. Zach does really well with most consonants; if you ask him what "dog" starts with, for example, he'll say "duh, duh, duh - D! D starts with dog!" We laugh that he can often get the letter right, but still mixes up the sentence. And we've remembered how difficult our language is; it's impossible to explain why some things start with a C and others with a K, and forget about the vowels!!

The finger-painting picture is yet another examples of Zach's smile... at least what you get when you ask him to smile for the camera. Sigh. I really miss the days when he would look right at the camera and give a big toothy grin.

And our latest news - Zach peed on the potty today! Whoo hoo! I think it was mostly lucky timing, but I cheered like a mad woman anyway. I'm not so sure he's ready, although I think it helped him a lot to see what peeing on the potty actually meant... he said "there's water coming out of there!"

PGA tour-bound

Check out that swing!! Scott's sister Kristin packed some gifts to Zach into grandpa's suitcase, and the set of golf clubs was a huge hit. He loves the driver and the putter, not so much the iron (I can relate). It took him a couple hours, but by afternoon he was sending golf balls flying all over the house. They're plastic and pretty light, but I am still looking forward to getting outside with this particular toy!