Category: Updates about Andrew

May 12: I never got around to posting last weekend, but I wanted to share the story of Andrew helping me to make a rhubarb pie.  We were out in the yard, and I decided to pick some rhubarb.  Andrew was quite a sight as he purposely tromped back to the house, holding two big, leafy rhubarb stalks in each hand.  He loves to help, and he was a good helper as I chopped up the rhubarb.  I gave him some pieces of rhubarb dipped in sugar, and he gobbled them up.  Then he started pulling handfuls of raw rhubarb and eating them too.  He helped me stir up the pie mixture, and he nearly ate the pie crust by diving into it, mouth open.  I had to feed him niblets to keep him from taking a handful out of the middle of the topped pie.  He seemed to enjoy the cooked version (along with Michael’s custard) as much as he liked helping to make it.
You might also enjoy seeing a picture of Andrew’s pouting lip.  He has begun folding his bottom lip out whenever he is unhappy, and it’s so cute, it’s hard not to smile.
Pictures from the last couple weeks are in the gallery.

May 12:  Andrew was a sick boy today.  Even with a good dose of medicine, his fever was in the 102-104 range.  He was so sleepy and cuddly, and HOT.  Several times today, he fell asleep in my arms.  I am very thankful today for DVDs.  Back in January when he was sick, and then again today, I’ve found that there is no better way to get through some tough hours.  When I tried to read to him, he would find a reason to sob (I turned the page wrong, I picked up a bad book, I asked him what the animal says).  He watched Animals are Beautiful People and both Fantasia movies.  When his medicine kicked in, he would come over and ask to read.  I felt like watching his shows let his mind tune out and helped him feel maybe a little less miserable.  If only there were numbing treatments like that for life’s larger crises.  “Wake me when it’s over,” one could say.
Before supper, Andrew and I took a stroller ride, and he was clearly feeling a lot better.  I’m hoping he wakes up in the morning feeling more like himself.  And I’m also hoping that Bryan and I don’t come down with it!  It doesn’t look like much fun!

May 12: For the last six months, Andrew’s leaving-the-tub routine involves Bryan or myself making up a baby burrito to wrap Andrew in.  In the last week, we’ve stopped doing bath time burritos, so I wanted to record that routine for posterity since it was such as constant in our lives.
It all starts with the towel (the tortilla).  As bath time wraps up, Andrew would announce (rolling his “r”s) “Brrito!”  Brandishing the towel, one of us would lay it down on the floor and ask Andrew what should go on this burrito.  Andrew has a pretty standard ingredient list.  Once upon a time, prompted by us, he put beans, cheese, onions, or sour cream on the tortilla.  The final ingredient is always a baby.  That’s why it is a baby burrito.
These days, he’s gotten much simpler and more bizarre.  Andrew always requests beans.  And usually rice.  And onions.  Then more beans and more onions.  More onions.  More onions. More onions.  “Andrew, we’re out of onions…what else?”  “Oranges!” “Oranges?  That’s a funny thing to go on a burrito, oh well, oranges it is.   What else?”  “Onions!”  “We’re out of onions, honey, what else?” “Beans!”  “OK, beans on the burrito.  What else.”  “Beans!”  “OK, beans. What else goes on the baby burrito?”  “Beans!”  “Out of beans, hon.  What else?”  “BABY!”  “Excellent, my favorite part!  A baby goes in the burrito. Wrap him up tight.  Mmmm good.  Who wants a delicious baby burrito?”
Recently, other strange toppings include milk, lots of oranges (including an orange on top), burger, butter, and water.  The game was getting excessively long, and Andrew often didn’t want Mommy to do it.  “Daddy do it.  DADDY DO IT!”  So I have started holding out the towel and asking him to be a horse and jump into the towel.  How quickly the burrito has been forgotten. Tonight when he was done with his tubby time, he said “Horsey, towel.  Jump.”

April 29: Andrew is really getting the hang of climbing ladders and jungle gyms!  See a video here.

New photos of Vicki, Alex, Andrew, and me at the arboretum and of Andrew playing at Tenney Park are in the gallery.

April 22: Andrew’s ability to put words together is growing dramatically, and he’s really starting to amaze us with his ability to recall things that we did and to tell us about how he feels and what he thinks.  He is also doing just adorable make-believe games with his toys.  His favorite is to put his toys in a pile and put them to “seep” with “bankies” and sometimes his “pacie.”  He has his animals eat and drink and sleep, climb mountains (a big person) and the other day, they were dancing.

When we play outside, he likes to go to the side fence, look into the neighbor’s yard, and tell us about all the animals he sees.  The pandas may be sleeping (shhhh), the tiger is hiding, the monkeys are eating, oh, and Bruno the dog is there too. When we were walking in the arb last week, Andrew suddenly stopped and very slowly turned to me to tell me that there were rhinos.  They were sleeping, so we tiptoed by.  I am continually stunned at the way he can suddenly share all this wonder with us.  I find myself thinking, “Where does he come up with all this!”

April 12: Andrew has discovered a new approach to being unhappy: throwing himself on the floor.  Sometimes he isn’t even unhappy…he’s just done being vertical.  While we were traveling over the weekend, he would regularly stop walking and drop to the ground, spread eagle.  Staring up at the ceiling, he would then begin inching his feet in a circle.  Bryan or I would stand nearby to make sure he wasn’t going to trip up a fellow traveler or be run over by a beeping airport car.  At one point, her rolled over onto his belly and began crawling down the hall.  This seemed to amuse some tired travelers.
We’ve found that picking him up usually results in an unhappy boy, so if at all possible, we let him spend his quality time with the floor.

March 18: I woke up this morning with a start.  It was 7:35 am, and both Bryan and I were asleep in bed.  Since Andrew normally wakes up sometime between 6:30 and 7:00, and since I don’t believe he has ever in his life slept past 7:10, I kind of panicked that something had happened to him.  I leapt out of bed and raced into his room, and there he was, soundly sleeping at 7:35 am.  He was bunched into a corner and had his “bankie” tucked under his arm.  What a sweetheart.  Tiptoeing out of his room, I thought I’d pop on the computer as long as I was now wide awake!
Fifteen minutes later, I still have a lot of adrenaline pumping through my body.  I can hear that he’s woken up now, and he found the books at the foot of his bed.  He’s reading them out loud to himself.  What a sweetie.
Hope your St. Patrick’s Days was a good one.  What a fun and happy holiday.  It will be such fun to share the excitement of holidays (especially St. Patrick’s Day since it is my favorite) with Andrew as he grows.  Pictures from the last few days including some of his daycare pals and a big Babler family celebration are in the gallery.

March 15: It seems to me that nearly every day Andrew does something that seems worthy of a website post.  I file these moments in my mind, but now I am finding that when I sit down to share them with his adoring public that I’m not sure what to say.  The snow is melting…that’s a big one.  It was super warm earlier this week, and our feet of snow have shrunk to inches of snow. Lovely new daylight savings time has given us more light in the evening, and Andrew is having fun walking through increasingly mushy snow in his “BOOTS!” He’s also counting a lot.  “One, six, seveneight, nine, TEN!”

Photos from the last week are in the gallery.  They include some pictures of a recent wintry trip to Olbrich Gardens and a visit from Andrew’s buddy Wyatt.

The neighborhood owl(s) continue to hoot, hoot, hoot in the evenings, and it makes for a lovely end of the day.  As we leave the house in the mornings, I entice Andrew out the door by encouraging him to go outside to hear the birds sing.  And sing they do!  Andrew notes that they say “cheep cheep.”  He has a cute accent, and I love the way he says, “berds. sing-ing. berds. cheep cheep.”

We’ve been working with him on two-word sentences, but he’s pretty into the one word world.  He also alway repeats the last word you say, so if I parrot back something to him, encouraging him to repeat me, he nearly always happily says the last word.

Andrew is still doing multi-person hugs, spreading his arms wide and animatedly saying “Buddies!”  What a great way to start or end a day:)

We went to Monore last weekend to visit my grandpa and grandma, and when we visited my grandpa in the hospital, he was in ICU and was all hooked up to tubes and he was in pain and it was all a little scary.  My mom and I stood near Grandpa, holding his hand, stroking his head, and generally offering comfort.  Andrew was pretty unsure about the situation, but he seemed to understand that Grandpa was someone who we love.  So he held his great-grandpa’s finger and even gave him a hug and kiss several times. It really warmed my heart to see my little guy being so kind and compassionate despite being a little nervous.

One other little story I wanted to write down for posterity.  When we are driving to Karen’s in the morning, we get in the car and Andrew starts asking for his favorite song, Drip, drip, drop.  He gets increasingly worried, saying, “Drip. DRIP.  DRIP!”  Unfortunately, that particular CD lives in his dad’s car, so we had to make do without it.  The big highlight of our three minute drive to Karen’s house is when we get to see Lake Monona.  We talk about it from the moment we leave the driveway.  Andrew says “lake” in such a way that it sounds a lot like “ick.”  As we get close to the lake, he gets increasingly excited.  When we see it, he tells me about how it is “frozen” with “ice.”  He also may or may not mention “fishies” “snoring sound” (meaning they are sleeping)…don’t know where he came up with that one… “wahter” or “gators.”  What a great kid!

Those are some of the stories I can think of today.  I look forward to seeing what he comes up with for tomorrow:)

March 5: Bryan was at a conference in Milwaukee all weekend, so Andrew and I had a mom-and-boy weekend together.  One highlight for me was the ten minutes we spent looking out the window and listening for our new neighborhood owls.  I’d lit some candles, and the sun was setting.  Venus was super bright and the white snow reflected the bright blue of the evening sky.  We had heart the Great Horned Owls hooting earlier (listen here for their lovely call) in the evening, and as we sat listening and watching the still outdoors, Andrew kept whispering “ooowwlll” “cahndahls” “owl”.

Another new and completely, disarmingly wonderful activity Andrew has taken up is saying, “Buddies!” He spreads his arms out and wants a group hug.  For example, “Mama, Dada.  BUDDIES!”  While we’re all hugging, he often softly repeats to himself, “buddies…”  Andrew is really starting to hug where he grabs both of my shoulders and pulls me to him.  I was telling Bryan that it is things like that which take all the sting out of the fact that he is growing up.  He is becoming such a wonderful little boy.
Pictures from the last week – messy eating, playing with Grandma, and rolling around in the snow – are in the gallery.

Feb. 26: Andrew got to see many of his friends this past weekend, and it was such fun to watch him interact with other kids his age. Pictures of the kids are in the gallery.
On Friday morning, Eli and Jessica came over for a little visit.  Andrew looks at this picture and says, “Tickle!” Andrew and Eli had fun knocking Andrew’s piggy bank off the coffee table and laughing when it CRASHED on the floor.  When they left, Andrew said, “I E I. Piggy.”
Later that day Clara (my co-worker Pam’s daughter) came over for the evening.  Clara is younger than Andrew (he is 20 months and she is 14 months), and it was quite bemusing to watch him showing off for her.  “Look at how wild and crazy I can be!” he seemed to be saying.  Clara is so petite; it was startling to see my baby look like such a large kid next to her!
On Sunday we hosted a little Academy Award watching party.  All weekend Andrew would find phone-shaped objects, pick them up, and say, “Ello? Par-tee!  Ello?”  Mike and Molly came with their daughter, 19-month-old Evelyn.  Andrew and Evie had great fun racing around the house and staying up past their bedtimes.  Parties are GREAT!