Andrew will be 35 months old!

It's a little early (we'll be in the Netherlands on the 10th), so I don't think I'll get it written up then. I can't believe Andrew is almost 3. This last year has gone really fast.

Andrew is totally adjusted to the move. He still pretends to play with his friends Jonas, Carter, and Greg (Katsu's old boss ... I'm not sure where that is from), but he doesn't ask to visit them any more. I think he is excited about his upcoming visit to Ann Arbor though. He still talks about "Arbor" sometimes, like today when he said that we went strawberry picking in "Arbor", but not here, yet. He doesn't have any friends here, yet, but I think he is much happier. The babysitter takes him and Seth to the park for 4-5 hours twice a week while I work (unless the weather is poor), and they play with lots of kids, there, so it helps. We go to the park frequently, too. And the zoo every week. We haven't made it to story time much because it conflicts with Seth's nap, but I think just the change in the weather and being able to be out all the time helps, too.

Andrew has basically quit taking naps, though I can convince him to "read" while lying down on the couch and he will nap, maybe one or two days a week. He sleeps late, till 7:30 or so usually, now which is fabulous. Too bad Seth's internal alarm clock goes off at 6:00 am on the dot every day.

Andrew can read the clock to know when it is 9:00, so he reminds me every day when Sesame Street comes on. Oh, well - he really enjoys it and is learning his letters, well. We read scriptures together before he watches and he also does his medicine and brushes his teeth while he watches. He is very cooperative about the TV and doesn't ask to watch more than that.

Andrew loves to go my room, which he calls "his work" and dance around while he puts different music on the keyboard. He made up this new move called a "slide-jump", which is like sliding into the base on baseball. He LOVES to do it all the time. He even demonstrated it to my parents on Skype (he LOVES skype, by the way if anyone wants to call us on it). He also loves to climb and jump off of anything, but usually the couch. Between him and Seth, it seems someone is always catapulting off the furniture.

Andrew also loves to throw things. Sometimes balls and he is interested in learning to catch. Unfortunately, it is often cars and other toys. It is amazing how the house can get messy so very quickly.

Andrew is very excited to go to preschool. I am hoping this will eventually motivate him to finish up potty training. He still has accidents as soon as we put pants on him, but if he only has underwear on, he is obsessed with his male genitalia. Oh, well. When we are out and about, sometimes he is interested in "just looking" at other bathrooms, although very occasionally, he will use one, too.

Andrew finally got his first real hair cut. I took him to a kid hair cutting place. He kept saying he just wanted to "look", but the prospect of sitting in a taxi cab and watching a movie was too much to resist, so he got it cut. It is cute as you will see when we post trip pictures. He did really well, though he kept trying to bend his hair away and a few times he looked a little freaked out. No tears, though.

We tried Andrew on his little bike, which he is finally tall enough for (another inch would be even more helpful). He still is having a hard time getting the jist of pedaling, though.

Other than that, mostly the same. We spend our days reading, eating, playing with cars, making up new dance steps, cooking, going to the park, watching for daddy and ambulances out the window, going to the zoo, going to the library, and looking at all the spring blossoms ("blos-ooms" as Andrew calls them). Spring in St Louis is sure pretty (and hot -like mid 80s, really?). You know you want to visit (ha ha).



One thing I love about Andrew (and find fascinating), is that he has no fear when it comes to older children. He will tell them what to do, even if they are like 10, and they will go along with it. He has confidence. As soon as we get to a park, he will tell the other adults facts about it (like whether the slides is wet) and then will go up to other kids and say, "Come over here and go down the slide with me". I love it.

Easter

The week before Easter, the city held an Easter egg hunt. The hunt itself was over in the matter of minutes, but they also had a super cute petting zoo and some crafts (just painting, actually). It was colder than I expected, so we weren't as warm as we should have been, but we still had fun playing, seeing the Easter bunny, and getting some eggs. Andrew liked getting eggs and especially liked playing on the playground. He wanted to watch the animals until every single one got onto the trailer at the end - we were almost the last to leave. Seth was in heaven with all the animals and wanted to touch every one. He really loves them. I have to say, the baby camel was about the cutest thing ever, but I wonder what they do with the animals once they are grown ...







My goal with Easter is to make it a big deal in our house, more akin to Christmas. I think this year was an improvement over last year, but I still have high hopes to do even better next year (hopefully, I'll be done with my PhD by then and have some more discretionary time). This is what we did this year:

Palm Sunday - we made faux palm branches (Andrew tried his hand for the first time with scissors) and acted out the Triumphal Entry.




Daily - we tried to do scripture reading. We also talked about what happened of significance on that day and we put up a wall of pictures, added as each event occurred in Jesus' life that week. Our babysitter loved the pictures and wondered where we got them - maybe I should get her a Gospel Art Kit!



Monday - We introduced the Resurrection eggs for family night. Each egg (12 of them) has a little thing inside to remind us of an event in Easter (for example). Andrew loved this last year and loves it this year. He still wants to do it every day and he can tell you what every egg means, too.



Thursday - I really wanted to talk about the symbolism of Passover and eat some lamb, but alas, we went on a date night instead. Next year!

Friday - Nothing special, really. I have grand plans for next year. And I forgot to make the hot cross buns!!!

Saturday - Well, it was a little crazy with General Conference ... (not again until 2015!). But we made hot cross buns - they didn't rise very well, but they still tasted good:



We did a "Jesus dinner", as we called it, where we ate food like Jesus ate for supper. This year was pretty simple with a lentil soup and grape juice. But just wait, I have better plans for next year.

While Katsu was at Priesthood Session, Andrew and I made Resurrection Cookies. He was almost as excited on Sunday morning to see if the oven was still taped up as he was to get his Easter eggs.



Sunday - We did the obligatory easter egg hunt around the house. Both the boys loved it. No pictures as we took video instead. We also sat down and talked about easter and did a mini testimony meeting (very mini - think like 2 minutes).

We also had a ham for dinner and shared some of our easter treats with our neighbor, Martha. She was very kind and had gotten the boys easter baskets, too, only hers were complete with stuffed animals, ducks in eggs that "hatch" in the water, and candy. Ours only had candy (though we also bought the boys a kite, too).

Grandparents Visit

My parents and my sister Sarah visited. I mentioned it briefly in Seth's update. We had fun, though I think everyone was a little shell-shocked with Sarah's announcement of her up-coming proposal. She got engaged less than a week after she got home.

We went to the Butterfly House on Saturday and had lunch at Culver's with some free ice cream coupons. The Morpho (blue) butterflies were out and everywhere. There must have been thousands and thousands of butterflies there. It was humid, so Seth conked out immediately. Andrew loved it and enjoyed looking at the bugs afterwards, too. He even looked at all the cockroaches (yuck!)








Seth LOVED ice cream as did everyone else. We need to the science museum which was unbelievable packed. I was getting claustrophobia - but Andrew found a little corner to his own and played happily for at least half an hour. He always loves the transportation exhibits and he had fun putting together a dinosaur. Seth gets a little scared of those big dinosaurs, so we have to be careful about that. Katsu and I went out for a date that evening (pizza at Il Vicino - close by, but we drove because it was raining with some dessert from the grocery store).







Sunday, we hung out and attempted to take a short walk, but mostly hung around the house and went to church.

Monday, we all went (Katsu excluded) to the zoo. The boys loved it of course. We walked over to the Cheesecake Factory for dinner and it was delicious!!!







Tuesday, we went to the History museum, not a lot to do, as I expected. We stopped at the park, too. Then we went home and hung out till the family drove home.

St Patrick's Day

I am trying to catch up on some posts before we leave to Europe on Friday. I always wonder why we do these international trips with the kids when it comes time to get ready and pack, but I'm sure we'll have fun. And I seriously doubt we'll get back to Europe anytime in the near (or not-so-near) future ... unless of course, we do.

For St. Patrick's day. We did the dye everything green that evening for dinner. Waffles and scrambled eggs - it was one of those days.

We did the Irish thing that Sunday (and then again later) with corned beef, cabbage, and irish soda bread.

Seth is 9 months old!

Seth turned 9 months old this month. This has been a really hard month for Seth. He is the worst (and slowest) teether I have ever seen. He has spent most of the last 2 months crying half the day and crying and waking up all night. Finally, his last tooth came through and we can see its edge. Seriously - two months to get two teeth partially out. The poor boy - its going to be a long couple years if they all take this long.

Otherwise, Seth is a pretty happy boy. He is getting pretty fast at crawling, but seems content to do the army crawl. He pulls up on everything all the time. He is standing no matter where you look. He is a huge climber, too. He climbs out of everything - your arms, his highchair, the seat in the grocery cart, and with seat buckles on, too. This kid does not want to be contained! He still hates his car seat as much as ever.

Seth is a little too interested in moving to be interesting in eating. He gets bored after nursing for just a few minutes. He climbs out of his high chair and tries to do contortionist stuff to get out of buckles. If he doesn't want to eat (which is most of time), he will cry and shake him head back and forth vigorously. I have mostly given up, so I let him sit on Andrew's little chair on the floor and climb all over that while I feed him. He mostly just likes cheerios and bananas and curry. He likes bread products, too. And he sure loved the ice cream he had when my parents were here - couldn't get enough of that.

Seth is still babbling a lot more. He says Mama and Dada still. He said "Yuck" when my parents were here - I think it might have been for the ice cream .... it was definitely for something yummy. I swear I have heard him say Andrew, but I haven't heard it recently, so I could be wrong. Most of the time, it seems like Seth just says stuff after much premeditation.

My parents and sister Sarah visited for several days. Seth, true to form, wanted no one but Mom and would quickly crawl into my laugh whenever anyone else tried to hold him. He is a HUGE mommy's boy, right now, which can be kind of hard for me. I am surprised he does so well with our babysitter. But as soon as I come out of my room from working, he goes straight to me and then gets this huge smile on his face, like "Ha ha. Now I have what I want".

Seth really loves reading stories now, mostly because he likes to sit on my lap. He really loves Karen Katz book "Where is Baby's Pumpkin" as well as "Snuggly Puppy" and a fisher price Peekaboo book. He gets the hugest smile and shakes out of excitement when he sees them. He loves listening and dancing to music. He also likes playing with Andrew's toys, seeing Mom cook, being held, and pulling things off of shelves. He loves to chew on everything, look outside, go places, and see things. Suprisingly, though, he is not a big fan of his stroller and cries and wants to be held half way through a trip.

Here are pictures of Seth, probably mostly from when my parents were here. Enjoy. As you can see, Seth loves the zoo (we go every week), the humidity of the butterfly house makes him sleeping (he loves to sleep in his swing), and when he gets impatient in the double stroller (old and ghetto, but it was only $15 on craigslist), he pulls on Andrew's coat (or now, that's it's warmer, his hair).

Finally!

We finally bought a new (to us) car yesterday! And we paid cash for it (super yeah!). We bought a 2006 Mazda5 and it's blue. It looks like this. Soon, we'll take a picture of proud us next to our car. We needed a bigger car, since we'll keep it for a long time and we'll probably have another kid in the next 10 years (NOT an announcement. I want to have the next child after I'm done with grad school so I can enjoy pregnancy and babyness without being stressed continually with grad school). And we just couldn't stomach a mini-van yet, so this is a nice transition. It's flexible and can seat up to 6 people (though a little tight in the back for anyone but kids).

This is the first time we bought a car for reals since we've had a 1995 Ford Taurus that I've had since high school! Hopefully we can run this one into the ground as well and keep it for 10 years. Probably unlikely, but we'll see. We kept the Taurus a lot longer than we imagined.

Andrew is 34 months old!

Andrew has had a tough month, but seems to be getting finally adjusted to St. Louis. He still hasn't made any friends yet, but we are enjoying the city and he is meeting lots of kids, just never the same ones twice.

We have had a busy month. Andrew loves the zoo. Since it's gotten warm, we have been trying to go there every week. I'm sure as it gets closer to summer, the zoo is going to start to get really crowded, but we'll see how it goes. Andrew tells everyone and anyone about every single animal that he didn't get to see. He is so disappointed whenever any animal isn't there, and he wants to see very single animal every time.

Andrew also LOVES story time. We have been going 1-4 times a week! Andrew loves the one at Richmond Heights, because they play with play-dough and have suckers. He likes the one in Clayton because they do crafts and they have the Dora and Thomas books shelved separately so he can get a new one every time. And the ones at the Barnes and Noble and Borders are fun, too. Maybe tomorrow we can try out the one at the History museum. He loves story time and is always begging to go. The other kids get antsy, but he keeps asking for more stories. I also like that all the story times here do singing and crafts - I feel like its developing some other skills (scissors, glue, coloring) that Andrew shows no interest in at home.

We have also been able to go the park almost every day now. We live about a 5 minute walk from the city park which has three separate playgrounds (and a pool and a ice skating ring!). Andrew has a new babysitter who watches him and Seth two afternoons a week and she takes them to the park almost the whole time. He loves it! Especially on sunny days where there are other kids at the park.

We are also lucky to have Parents as Teachers here in Clayton. Our educator is great - gives me really great parenting advice and they have a playroom there that Andrew loves. He screams and screams when we leave.

In other news, Andrew is completely potty trained at home, but as soon as we put pants on him, he can't remember to go. I'm sure it will come in time - at least I hope so.

Andrew has been starting to talk a little more aggressively. He keeps saying "Shut up", even though he goes to time out for it. It drives me crazy. When he is mad, he says things like "I don't like you. I'm going to shut you and Seth up in the closet and you will die". I'm not quite sure how to respond to that, so I mostly ignore it.

Andrew has started to get really picky about food. He doesn't want to eat during meals, wants to snack all day, and only wants to eat a handful of food - mostly fried rice with soy sauce, plain yogurt with blueberries, crackers, cheese, cereal with fruit, milk, popcorn, crackers with hummus, soup, and chicken nuggets. He could live on that food - at least it is mostly healthy. He still is spitting things out a lot, but it is getting a little better.

Andrew's new love this month is Berenstain Bear books, which we have been checking out of the library. He wants to read ALL the time, seriously hours a day. Sometimes, even I, the queen of books, get tired of it.

I also have started letting Andrew watch Sesame Street most days. He really enjoys it, it is mostly educational, and it helps so I can get Seth down for his nap which is right when the show is on.

Andrew learns so quickly now. Sometimes I feel like I need to teach him more, but I feel that learning through playing and reading books is the best way. I might start working on letters. Andrew has picked up some on his own. He knows the letter "S" and says "sssss" whenever he sees it. Andrew has completely memorized the CD my parents gave him for Christmas and now knows tons of nursery rhymes. He sings along to all the songs at story times, even though none of the other kids, too. I'm glad he loves these things and I really don't want to push it.

We bought him some watercolors and this is finally the first art he is interested in. Now, he wants to paint every day. Yeah! Hopefully that develops a few of the hand muscles. I do worry a little about whether he'll be ready to write when he hits kindergarten.

Andrew is super excited about preschool - I am really excited about the preschool we picked out. It is really great. They are having a playdate on Andrew's birthday so we can meet other kids in his class. I am also thinking about having Andrew go to camp there for a week or two in the super - it's just in the mornings 3 days a week and would probably be fun for Andrew.

Well, that's all I can think of off the top of my head.