Category: Updates about Andrew

Sept. 9: Andrew has gotten short shrift in terms of web postings this past month.  Fortunately, it’s not because he’s any less adorable, demanding, and marvelous than ever.  Some pictures of Andrew including a few fantastic ones of Anne giving him a bath are in the gallery.
Here are a couple Andrew stories I’ve been meaning to share.
He now loves Robin Hood.  Since Mom got sick, Andrew has seen quite a few movies.  By far, his favorite is Disney’s Robin Hood.  He especially likes it when we make up Robin Hood stories to tell him.  “Tell me story ’bout ROBIN HOOOD,” he says. Several times a day.  Who knew the crazy adventures Robin Hood had until we made them up these last weeks!

To my great joy, Andrew also really likes reading field guides.  His very favorites are the Sibley Guide to Birds and my African animals field guide.  Since they are my books, he has to read them with the help of an adult.  It’s so cute to see him want to start at the beginning of the book and to hear him repeat the names shearwater, petrel, and albatross.
The little mister has been on a no-nap kick these last couple weeks.  Isn’t that good timing…  Yesterday while he wasn’t napping, he crawled mostly out of his crib, pulled some porcelain toys off the dresser next to him, and broke a couple of them.  Yikes!  I think we’re going to be moving him to a mattress on the floor *very shortly!
The mosquitoes are super thick right now, and when we go outside and the bugs are out, he runs around saying, “Get away from the bugs!  GO AWAY mosquitoes!”
That’s a few cute Andrew notes for now.  They just keep coming!

August 11: Just a quick update on some of Andrew’s sweet activities.  In the last few days, he’s been saying, “I love you” much more than normal.  When Bryan came home from work yesterday, he raced over to him, leapt into his arms, and said, “Oh Daddy, I LOVE you.  I missed you!”  And this morning, feeling full of happiness about our Saturday morning togetherness, he ran from me to Bryan, saying “I love you, Mommy.”  “I love you, Daddy.”  It’s music to our ears:)
This morning, Andrew and I got up early and made a loaf of banana bread together.  Andrew dumped all the ingredients in, he helped stir, and he even pulled apart the egg shell (“It fell in, Mommy.  Slimy.”).  He also had fun tasting a lot of the batter (“I yike it, Mommy.  Sugar.  Yummy.”)  We’ve baked together quite a bit, but I think he’s getting to a point where he really gets the process and enjoys knowing that we worked together to make our breakfast together.
Pictures of the last week are in the gallery.

August 1: I’ve realized to my chagrin that this summer I haven’t done a very thorough job of documenting some of the wonderfully sweet and enduring things that my sweet son says and does.  So here’s a stream-of-consciousness set of Andrewisms.

Last month, I started asking Andrew to tell me stories.  To my great surprise, he really likes telling stories.  Mostly just one, but he really gets into it.  It goes like this.

Andrew: “Onceupontime there was…MONSTER.”
Adult:  “A monster? Wow!  What did the monster do?”
Andrew: “White monster.  Big.  Ate a table.”

That’s pretty much the story:)

We have two big cherry tomato pants in our back yard.  All early summer, Andrew desperately wanted to pick the green tomatoes.  It was a compulsion.  It was as if he couldn’t help himself.  Now that it’s the height of summer, he can pick as many ripe tomatoes as he wants.  But sometimes he still grabs the green ones.  He calls them “tomataoes.”  “Go see tomataoes, Mommy!”

Another of Andrew’s favorite games is to hide under the covers in our bed while a ferocious bear (his dad) sniffs around him and roars.  Then Dad shouts, “Shoo bear!” The bear runs away, and Andrew pops out of the covers.  Sometimes Andrew considers the fact that a bear is now loose in the house, and he yells, “Mommy, bear coming!”   I then yell, “Shoo bear, get out!” and let Andrew know that it ran far away and we’re all safe.  He just loves this game.  Daddy is a wonderful sport and plays it overandoverandover.

Favoritisms:  Off and on for the last six months, Bryan has been the favored parent.  When I’m alone with Andrew, we have a great time together, but if Daddy is home, there’s a constant struggle for Andrew to let me do things like play with him or change his diaper or pick him up.  Bryan is a super-amazing dad, and he fulfills his requested duties well, but I’m sure he wouldn’t mind a change in the young master’s heart so he was a little less in the constant limelight!

Playing in the sprinkler:  Andrew loves having me squirt him with the garden hose.  For a little boy who so very much detests getting his face wet while having his hair washed, he loves getting sprinkled with the hose.  He calls it “rainbow,” I think because I would try to show him the rainbow in the water and that was when he first realized how fun it was to run through the water.  He’s such a cutie playing in the front yard as I try to water our dry, dry garden.

Speaking in sentences:  Suddenly it seems, Andrew is moving from two-word phrases to much more complex sentences.  The other morning, I brought his toy elephant into his room.  He looked at the elephant and said, “Good morning, elephant.  I am getting my diaper changed.”  Bryan and I exchanged shocked glances.  When did he learn how to talk like that!
He’s also started reciting books more.  He’ll often repeat a couple lines, but last night while he was taking his bath, he pretty much recited Freight Train to himself.  “Moving.  Going through tunnels.  Going by cities.  Crossing tressles.  Moving in darkness, moving in daylight.  Going, going (whispered) gone.”  It’s amazing to watch him learn and do new things.

We were reading a book this morning about 10 little fish, and he pointed and counted the 10 fish (sometimes counting to 11) several times.  He’s been really into counting for a few months, but it’s not until more recently that he’s started pointing and counting the actual number instead of pointing at a group of objects and just saying numbers for a while.  It’s so weird to think that someday he’ll be reading too!

June 23: Andrew has been going around all day singing, “Happy Birthday to Andrew!”  Yesterday we went to Olbrich gardens with Vicki and Alex and a couple of their friends.  Andrew had great fun trying to throw rocks into the pools (not allowed) and running up and down the paths (very encouraged).  Afterwards, we went to Michael’s Custard for a yummy lunch.  Granny Lu and Grandad arrived in town in the afternoon, and we had fun planning for Saturday’s party and playing together.  Dinner at Ella’s Deli ended our fun day together.
This morning, we had Andrew’s second birthday party at the zoo.  Andrew had nearly his entire immediate family gather together to celebrate.  After a romp through the zoo, we had a picnic and a Noah’s Ark shaped cake.  Loads of pictures are in the gallery.

June 9: We had a party for our Happy Bambino group at Tenney Park Beach tonight.  As always, it was wonderful to get to see all the parents and to marvel at how amazing and adorable all the little ones are.  Their birthdays range between mid-May and late-June, so this was a birthday-partyish beach party for them all.   Pictures from the evening of lots of adorable kids are in the gallery. For a comparison, see the pictures from the winter party, and  their 1 year birthday.

Andrew had a wonderful time playing in the water and with the sand.  It was his first time at a beach, and I think we’ll be heading back again soon.  We all shared a delicious potluck dinner and fed the little ones cupcakes.  Andrew had his first bite of chocolate cake, and it appears that he was quite happy and would like to eat it much, much more often.

June 9: It’s been a good week.  My work has been really hectic recently, but coming home in the evening to hang out with Bryan and Andrew is lovely.  Last weekend, we had plans to go camping, but they fell through due to rainy weather.  So instead we tried to go hiking out at Blue Mounds on Sunday.  As we arrived, the skies opened up with rain, so we had a change of plans and decided to head underground.  The Cave of the Mounds was a fun outing.  Andrew did really well in the cave.  In the last week, we’ve also gone biking around Lake Monona with Andrew a couple times.  Pictures of our caving experience, of Andrew picking radishes from our garden, and of us biking are in the gallery.  Our Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) share also started this week.  We’re so excited to get produce straight from a local farm every-other week for the summer.  For more information on our great CSA, see the Vermont Valley Community Farm’s website.

June 1: We had a great time tonight at a birthday party for one of the little girls with whom Andrew goes to day care.  Sonora turned three, and it was so fun to watch Andrew’s little friends all playing together.
The evening was a little bittersweet, though, because both Elyse and Sonora are leaving Karen’s day care this week.  They are both moving on to preschools, but that leaves Andrew and Peri as the two big kids.  How does time move so fast!?  Pictures of Sonora’s birthday party are in the gallery.
Elyse gave Andrew a note that she had dictated that said:

Andrew,
I like your curly hair.  I love you Andrew. I am going to miss you.
Elyse

A few other pictures of the Memorial Day parade and a trip to the zoo are in the gallery.

May 28: Andrew won’t nap. He’s been in his bed for about 15 minutes, shouting, “Daddy, WHERE ARE YOU?”  It’s a little wearing on us all.  Poor bubby needs to take a nap!  We had a fun morning, though.  We biked down to the Monona Memorial Day parade where we saw politicians and beauty queens and clowns and fire trucks, and (Andrew’s favorite) a person dressed up like a moose.  Then we biked into Monona and played at an amazing community-built playground.  Andrew had great fun in the sand box (I think it was his first sand box experience).  On the bike ride home, he fell asleep for the last couple blocks, so I think that made nap time the torture that it is.
Now he is singing, “Bah bah black sheep…”  At least he’s not super sad.  Sometimes he says, “Daddy, come play!”
Not really what you want your napping child to be thinking:)
I have a couple of new albums up in the gallery.  One is of a party we had with our neighbors last Wednesday night, and the other is of random moments from the last week including a field trip out to a beautiful piece of land in southwestern Wisconsin on Friday.  I can’t believe May has come and gone!  We got the rest of our vegetable garden planted yesterday, and we cleaned out a little weed patch next to the garage and planted cosmos and Rudbeckia seeds.  It was a perfect day.
And now, on to June!

May 21: I missed posting on Mother’s Day by about a week, but I do have some pictures from that general time period in the gallery.  It’s interesting that this holiday is coinciding with another very Daddy oriented time for Andrew. Back in January and February, he really wanted very little to do with me.  It was as if Daddy were the sun in his world.  For the last few months, I’ve been back in the loving, good graces of our young son, but these past few weeks, my suit seems to have fallen out of favor.  He’ll let me play with him and give him baths, but for example, this evening, he suddenly needed his Daddy.  I mentioned that Dad was in the back yard.  So Andrew stood at the screen door yelling, “Daddy, DADDY.  Where ARE you?  WHERE ARE YOU?”  Sweet boy loves his dad.  And I love them both:)

May 15: I just had to share a song that Andrew has been singing.  He is starting to modulate his voice, so he actually sort of sings the song,

“Twinkle, twinkle little star.  I would like; chocolate cake.”

Not sure where he came up with it, but it cracks me up.  Note: Andrew has never eaten chocolate cake.

Also, last night, Bryan and I were curious about how many animals Andrew can identify, so I sat down and counted, and I came up with about 75.  The boy loves his animals.  It makes me so proud.

Uncle Bubba (Michael) put up a fun post on his blog about spending mother’s day with Andrew, my mom, and me.

On Thursday, we’re off to Bayfield!