nooooooooooo

Super Dude has a major toddler crush on his CDH pal, Sofie.  Although she is a Kansas Jayhawks fan, he says he can overlook that because she is so stinkin' cute.  For a very long time, the only way that Super Dude would sit long enough to eat or take his breathing treatments was if he was watching videos of Sofie.  His favorite one is of Sofie counting and saying "noooooo!" when she gets to three.  He laughs so hard at her that he loses his breath.  Click on this link for Sofie's video (and I have to admit that it's super cute):  COUNTING NO!

I took this video of Super Dude counting so you can see his awesome counting skills....that he learned from Sofie :)

go cool??

The dude LOVES school.  Every morning when he wakes up, he asks "go cool?" and if you tell him that today is not a school day, he sternly says "GO COOL!!!"  We are very fortunate to have found a fabulous school with low student to teacher ratios.  He is in a toddler class, three days a week, with only children 2 - 2 1/2 years old.  They send home a daily activity report detailing activities such as language (they teach 1-2 new signs each day), tactile experiences, music, reading, science, creative art, motor skills, life skills and manners (a CDH parent's dream--ha!).  They are also working on potty training him and his teachers say that he'll be fully potty trained very soon!  Writing that tuition check each month is painful, but it's worth it to see the payoff.

The dude's verbal skills and sign language are improving drastically.  He's become very independent, too.  They expect him to put on/take off his coat and hang it up in his cubby; help get dressed after going potty; clean up after lunch (putting his bowls and utensils away and throwing away his trash); wipe his area at the table after eating; wash and dry his own hands; remove his sheet and blanket from his mat after nap-time and put them away in his cubby; put away the toys he plays with, etc.  It's certainly made life at home much easier!

Today, Mrs. L told me that she was shocked when they were doing number puzzles and the dude started counting on his fingers!  She said she ran to the next classroom to get another teacher just so she could witness it.  Mrs. L told me that a lot of the kids can count out loud a few numbers, but they don't really know what it means and can't count on their fingers.  The dude can count to 5 consistently (with 6 and 10 thrown in there sometimes).  She said she randomly said a number and he'd show it to her on his fingers!

It's such a relief to see him prosper so well in school.  We had to have him isolated for the first 2 years and we were concerned about his social skills and learning.  There's only so much that the mommy and daddy can do at home before he gets bored with us.  I also think that the interaction with other kids is helping him learn to talk, learn that the world doesn't revolve around just him, and have certainly helped to improve his eating.

Of course, I'd love "cool" too if I got to do stuff like this:

i wuv my lala

Teehee...mommy walked in my room and found me and LaLa snuggling in my bed!

there's an elf in the house

In preparation for Thanksgiving, I had to make several side dishes today and Super Dude the little elf was a huge help!

Putting pecans in the food processor

Stirring the sugar and butter into the sweet potatoes for the casserole

Realizing that there's sugar and butter in the sweet potatoes

Yummy!!!!

Hey, Mommy!  You gotta try this.

perfecting the flirt

please excuse the spaghetti face!  make sure you watch until the end for the "flirt"

two peas in a pod....or bed

i love getting into things, especially the trash can.  it's the kind where you can step on the pedal and the lid pops up.  it's so much fun to open and close and open and close.  sometimes, i even see something in there that looks yummy and i'll eat it.  mommy and daddy really freak out when i do this, which of course is funny to me.  daddy likes james brown and has a james brown "doll" that sings and dances and i'm terrified of it, so he put james brown in front of the trash can to guard it from me.  they think it's sooooo cute to see me stop in my tracks when i see james.  lately, i've been a really brave little boy and i've been inching closer and closer to james.  this week, i started feeding james some of my snacks and realized that he's not so scary.

tonight, james and i became best buds.  i've been carrying him around all night and insist that he goes everywhere i go.  and this is what mommy and daddy found when i went to bed...