where has the summer gone?

I don't know where the time has gone.  We spent a lot of time and effort and sprouted many gray hairs over the process called "purchasing a short sale home."  In the end, we are thrilled that we stuck it out and we LOVE our new home and neighborhood.  It was certainly worth the wait.  The weekend that we chose to move, it was 105 degrees outside, but we survived!  

Super Dude + Lucy on the porch of our new house

Super Dude's new room

SD also was moved up to the next class at preschool, along with several of his best buds from his previous class.  It was bitter sweet because we love his previous teachers, but the new ones are wonderful, too.  This class is more structured and they work on potty training more actively.  Woohoo!

And, here's a video of him jamming to our amazingly talented friend, Melanie, on iTunes.  [Her website is http://www.melanieedwardslabs.com/home.html and her songs can be purchased on iTunes if you like what you hear]

ready....set....go!

monkey did it

Super Dude has been known to color on the walls if we don't watch him closely when he has markers.  After his surgery, monkey became his constant side-kick.  He even helps monkey color his own pictures!  One day, we discovered a large circle drawn on the wall and when asked "Who did that?" SD replied, "Monkey did it" which was partially true because the markers were physically in monkeys hands!

favorite things

I'm stealing this post idea from one of super dude's girlfriends.  Sofie's mom does a "favorite things" post every couple of months and I love it, so here it goes.

(1) Saying: "I do it" and "Nope!"  He has become VERY independent and wants to do everything himself.

(2) Purple shirts.  Every morning when we ask him what he wants to wear, he goes to his closet, points and says, "Puh-puh shirt, pweeze."  And when I ask him what I should wear, it's "Puh-puh shirt, mommy."

(3) Brown Shoes.  Nothing but THESE brown shoes.  In fact, I had to order another pair in a larger size so that we are never without the brown shoes.  He has several other pairs of shoes that look better with certain outfits, but in the grand scheme of things, it really doesn't matter which pair of shoes he wears, so he wears the brown shoes.  And if we attempt to convince him to wear another pair of shoes, he uses one of his two favorite phrases (see #1 above) and replies, "Nope!" while putting the unwanted shoes in the closet and digging out "brown shoes."

(4) "Pay-doh"

(5) Sleeping in his big-boy bed.

(6) Mini M&Ms.  Or in his words, "MMs"  We truly can bribe him to do just about anything with a few of these babies.  Plus, the tubes are a great size to stash in your bag and whip them out whenever needed - like in Target when he's "singing" loudly or when you're in a public restroom and need to distract him so he won't open the door and expose you to the free world.

.....and this is why we switched from larger M&Ms to minis.  Whoever said they "melt in your mouth, not in your hands" didn't have a 2-year-old!

(7) Blocks.  He loves to build "towas" with "bwocks."

(8) Playing in the water.  The only time he really gets into trouble at school is when he is supposed to finish washing his hands, but chooses to continue running the water and playing in the sink.

 (9) Playing outside.

(10) Uh-Huh!  The video speaks for itself!

If you're curious about what's so funny, you can view for yourself here:  UH-HUH!

elvis lives!

Super Dude loves to dance and tonight learned how to dance like Elvis.  At the start of "Jailhouse Rock" Elvis has his hands on his belt loops, so Super Dude copied him!

the dude loves mj

Super dude loves watching Michael Jackson perform.  He points to the laptop and says "moonwalk" when he wants us to play a video.  A few nights ago, after watching MJ moonwalk over, and over, and over, and over...he got down, ran to the hallway and started moonwalking!!!!

abcs and 123s

Super Dude gets a little carried away with his alphabet and his hands can't keep up!
[if you're wondering what he's looking at, it's an Elmo DVD...it's the only way to keep him still long enough]

it's finally warm enough to play outside

We've been stuck inside for weeks thanks to mother nature's temper tantrums.  She's dumped so much snow and ice on us that we were getting stir crazy.  Finally, the temps got into the 50s this weekend and we took advantage of it by going to one of the many wonderful parks in our little town.  I really can't believe that the dude is getting so big he can climb up the play ground equipment and go down the slides all by himself!  There was an adorable 3 year old boy at the park, whose parents had just adopted him from China a few weeks ago.  He and the dude had a blast racing up the stairs and going down the slides.  One of them would stand at the bottom of the slide and clap for the other one as he went down.  The other child didn't speak English, but it was wonderful to see them playing without a care in the world ~ grownups really could learn a lesson or two from toddlers.

p.s. no children were harmed in the making of this video!

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 :)

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"

privacy...what's that????

i love to color

Shapes

Color, color, color!

Mommy & Daddy will probably regret teaching me to use scissors one day!

Stickers are so much fun!

wash your hands

"Wash your hands for dinner, dude..."

I guess it's more convenient than standing on a stool at the sink.

By the way, he dried his hands on mommy's purse instead of a towel.

I was taking a video of the dude laughing at the dryer and caught him at the exact moment he broke the dryer!  Grrrrreat.

linus

The dude has a blankie that he insists on cuddling with, even in the car, even when it's 100 degrees outside.  I understand that it's a thick, really soft, snuggly blankie, but no matter how hot it is, he MUST have blankie in the car.  He recenly brought blankie inside and has been dragging it around like Linus from Peanuts.

See what I mean....

i just called to say i love you

{this post written by the mommy}

Yesterday, we discovered just how much we rely on our cell phones when AT&T experienced a day-long outage.  We do not have a land line in the house, but we do have a fax line.  Once I realized that I'd have no connection to the outside world, I dug around in some boxes in the attic to find a phone with a cord.  I (literally) blew the dust off of it and plugged it in into the fax line.  The dude was watching my every move, as always, and stared down the phone.  I could just see him thinking "what is that thing-a-ma-bobber?"  The dude knows how to use my Blackberry, even down to the scroll ball, but he didn't know what to do with a regular phone!  Knowing that naa-naad [granddad] was home, I showed the dude how to dial a number (I'm impressed that I remembered the number without speed dial) and held the receiver up to his ear.  He looked at me as if I'd put a monster near his head.  Then, naa-naad answered the phone and started talking to the dude and he realized that the thing-a-ma-bobber was pretty neat!  After a conversation with naa-naad, we hung up and I kinda forgot all about the phone after we got cell service back.  Until this morning, when I walked in to find this.....

I have no idea how many numbers he pushed or if he called anyone.  I guess we'll find out when we get the bill!

The dude has had a long-standing "issue" with eating.  After spending so long in the NICU and suffering from severe reflux, he lost the skills to eat.  He had an NG tube for the first year of life and has been going to therapy several times a week for almost two years for feeding therapy.  

This is the dude "eating" - we used a pump to administer formula through the tube in his nose, down into his stomach.

A close up of the tube

I don't even know how to describe just how difficult it has been to teach him that eating is fun and that it doesn't hurt (no thanks to the reflux and puking).  We've spent many hours, thrown our own tantrums, and traveled thousands of miles to see different specialists, all to help the dude.  It's still a constant battle with him, but it is getting so much better.  We are just getting to the point where we can all sit down at the table and eat.  And it's truly amazing.  So, when I'm able to capture a picture like this, it's something to celebrate!  

Super Dude's favorite thing to do with a cup and straw ~ bubbles!!!

[if you can't hear the video, make sure the video isn't muted]

silly dude

Just a few videos to share some of the dude's sillies.

kisses

help