We Think It's Spring

We have (unofficially) diagnosed Zeke with a thriving case of spring fever. It's nearly impossible to get him inside once he goes out, and while he is outside he runs around laughing hysterically. One night this week while we were waiting for Aaron to get home, we went out on the porch to play. It felt a lot colder than the 43°F the thermometer said, but the fact that we were able to go out and play after the sun went down made it worth it.

We took Zeke's new soccer ball outside with us and tried it out. He picked the ball out himself at the toy store last weekend.

He must be a goalie, because he uses his hands a lot more than he uses his feet.

It's a lot of ball for a little kid.

And the snow was melting the whole time we were out; well after then sun had gone down. Ah, spring. It's coming. And we're acting like it's already here.

Birthday Batteries

When Aaron got his plane for Christmas, he went frugal and didn't buy the batteries he needed to fly it. At the end of January, we decided to order the batteries and call it an early birthday present. Last week we took the plane out for its first flight. Everything went perfectly and Aaron is so excited for an electric plane because the clean-up after the fun is less than with a gas-powered plane.

Yesterday the weather was so beautiful that we went out flying again. It was sunny and spring-like and warm enough that Aaron's hands didn't freeze as he flew. There was a big crowd at the modelport and we had as much fun watching the other planes fly as we did flying ourselves!

Some Unexpected Tub Time

Zeke's own personal addition to the bedtime routine is putting all of the tub toys in the bathtub (as opposed to on the edge of the tub or on the floor). Not sure why that's so important to him; maybe it's just that the bathtub is where tub toys belong. So we let him get away with it even though we don't prefer to fish all of the toys out every morning so we can use the tub.

Earlier this week we were all brushing teeth before bed and Zeke went over to the tub to take care of the toys. Earlier in the day, Aaron had tried to out-think Zeke by putting the toys on the far side of the tub, next to the wall where Zeke couldn't really reach. But that didn't stop Zeke from trying! We heard a sudden thump and when we turned around Zeke was sitting in the bathtub, still holding his toothbrush and looking quite surprised.

Aaron went to him to ask if he was okay, while I tried to regain my composure - if Zeke was hurt I didn't want to be laughing so hard at his pain. He was fine, just surprised, and really seemed to enjoy the extra bathtub play time while he continued to brush his teeth.

Mind reading made EASY

You can't do it. There now wasn't that easy. :D

Along the same lines if family, friends, strangly compelled people, any of the aforementioned individuals' pets, zoo residents, ect. do not leave comments on blogs how will you know they read them. YOU DON'T.

Wow there's a couple of really easy things that you can do on a fine Friday the 13th with no effort at all.

Have a lucky day all. :D

Such A Silly Goose

Zeke and I took the trash out yesterday and our neighbors' trio of geese were out in the yard doing what they do best - making noise. Zeke looked a bit concerned, because there was obviously some sort of alarm going off. I told him that it was a goose and tried to get him to repeat the word 'goose.' After two or three repetitions he tried it: 'gooos'. I am so impressed that he caught on so fast. Now whenever he hears them honking (which is frequent), he looks at me with a big smile and a look that says 'Hey I know what that is!' and says 'gooos'. Adorable.

Obviously this picture isn't exactly recent - but it's still cute! And yes those are two of the three geese that Zeke now talks about.

Bonus silly Zeke story: this afternon Zeke got kind of whiny, which I understood to mean he wanted a drink. So we went downstairs to go on the sippy cup hunt. He has a tendency to just drop it wherever he gets done with it, so I started looking in all the usual places. Of course by this time Zeke couldn't remember where it was, and when I had no luck I gave in and got a new cup. After I had given Zeke his milk and he was chugging away, I walked out of the kitchen and saw the first cup: he had been standing next to Grandma in her recliner and when he was done with his milk he just tucked the cup under the blanket next to her feet!

Oooh! Pick Me! Pick Me!

So -- how many of you read our sidebar?

[ . . . ]

That's what we thought.

If you did read our sidebar, you would already know that we have started a photo blog to share more of our life with you. It's not a one-photo-a-day effort, but more of a chance to share our fun photos and the stories they tell. (Thanks to Skye for her photo blog, which inspired ours.)
Really, you should start looking at all the good stuff to the right of our posts: our latest, greatest, breaking news, the ever-increasing list of blogs we read, and the pictures and lists that are updated regularly.

Now don't fret - we've only been photo-blogging for a week, so you'll be able to catch up.

Champion Coloring

Zeke got his first coloring book and crayons for Christmas a year ago. That would be 2007. And about the only thing he thought they were good for was eating.

He finally showed some interest in coloring over the summer, so I found the supplies and let him go at it. He was interested, all right. Interested in playing with the crayons, putting them in and out of the box and rolling them all over the floor.

We kept at it, with not much luck besides a few passes at a page while I held the book open. But in the past month or two Zeke has become a champion colorer. He loves it. And he puts effort into it. We keep the coloring book and crayons on the edge of my desk and he gets them down almost every day. He especially likes the single coloring pages printed from the web just for him. Plus they are great to keep in the diaper bag for church and while we were waiting for our steakhouse dinner.

It was almost an overnight change. I was asking myself how I missed this coloring phase beginning. Then I realized this coloring thing has become a bigger part of Zeke's life - he colors in nursery, he colors at story hour, he colors at home - and one day it just must have clicked. It shows he's learning from his experiences, and that is so exciting to watch. I'm constantly amazed that I can see the connections forming in his mind. How he maintains this high rate of learning I don't quite understand.

He hasn't totally changed though - although Zeke has discovered the joys of coloring on the paper, he still loves to play with the crayons. Today after Zeke finished coloring his butterfly at story hour, we had to pick up all the crayons he and his neighbors had used, put them back in the jar, and put on the lid. We were pretty much the first wave of the clean-up crew.