Our Little Stinker

I'm so busy lately, I can hardly keep up with blogging about Andrew. I'm sure he's doing things that are noteworthy - I just haven't had time to blog or take pictures, or even get pictures and videos off my camera to share here.

I'm hearing "play?" a lot lately. Or if I ask if he'd like to do something in particular.. "No.. play!" in such a sweet voice. But we are starting to see the occasional - throwing himself to the floor in fake tears - tantrums when he is brought inside against his will, or isn't getting what he wants. They're short lived for now.

At meeting last Wednesday night, Andrew wasn't just reading the words in his books anymore. He was spelling them out! He was pointing to each letter one by one and saying the name of the letter, and other letters he was making the sound for. Like "A-n-i-m-a-l-s" for Animals. He even saw "Andrew" written in the front of his Bible Stories book and said his name! He was sooo good, just sitting there reading.

When we left, the moon was shining nice and bright in the dark sky - he got excited and kept pointing to it and saying "moon!" and then he'd look up at me and say, "Up?" At one point he even picked one foot off the ground as he asked to be taken up to the moon.

One day last week I had all the Perry kids over so Fawn could go to an appointment. I turned them all into babysitters so that I could try and get some work done. It was interesting hearing Andrew react to Jade who is a year older. He didn't particularly like sharing his ride-on toys with her and was frustrated until I showed him he could ride on his tonka truck. Then he was following her around driving down the hallway after her.

He likes taking my taxes box out of the cabinet in my desk and shutting himself in there. Yet, he puts the box back in when he's done! What a good boy!

He has little conversations with himself. Say he's eating at the table all by himself. You might here, "All done? .. uh huh. Down? ... yeah!" It's like he's asking himself a question he wants to hear and then answering it himself. It's precious. However, if he drops something, he'll stand there pointing at it repeating "uh oh. uh oh. uh oh." until you tell him it's okay, just pick it back up. I think he really just wants our attention to be on everything he's doing.

He is saying more and more words.. it's so wonderful! I understand him most of the time too which I'm sure is nice for him. But I'm always astounded at how many words he can say in a day that I hadn't heard him say before. He has quite the vocabulary.

We can read books together now and I can stop reading and just point to the next word, and he'll say it! I think he is enjoying that.

Recently we'd bought him a toy vacuum cleaner. It's a little too short for him, but we were desperate to get him to stop playing with and taking apart our real vacuum cleaner. Anyway, today he tipped over Flash's cat food bowl, and then ran and got his toy vacuum and tried to clean it up!

He knows how to say every letter of the alphabet except for W. He recognizes them as uppercase and lowercase. He can count to ten except that he doesn't say six or seven.

He spells everything he reads now. The words on his sippy cups, the piano brand, the Max line on the vacuum cleaner, words on the walls at stores! He points to each letter and says it out loud and in order.

Nana says he is being much more mischievous lately. I guess I've noticed that too but took as trying to get me to pay attention to him more directly. But today, Nana had folded some laundry for me and put it on our bed. Andrew climbed onto the bed and was gleefully throwing all the clean, folded laundry off the side. He did that twice!
He also deliberately picked up his bowl of peas and turned them over onto the floor after Nana cautioned him to be careful. She picked it all up, and he did it again - and then made him pick it all up. (which by the way, he's usually really good at doing when we tell him to.) I know that he deliberately tries to eat the crayons just to get a reaction out of us.

Occasionally he gets frustrated with me. When he doesn't want to do something I'm making him do (like change clothes, or go potty) and he'll grab both of my wrists and squeeze as hard as he can while pushing on me. I'm not sure where he learned that. He's only hit me a few times, but his hitting usually stems from him having been spanked recently.. and that isn't often.

I've pretty much given up on cleaning up toys after him. He dumps everything out faster than I can clean.. so why bother. Some nights I'll go around and pick it all up so it doesn't feel so cluttered, but during the day, it's futile. Especially his ball pit. He dumps the balls out every single day and then sits on top of the tower, or rolls it with him inside.

He loves being in my studio. He pulls out the fabrics, plays in the backdrops, rides in the fire truck and on the tonka truck. Steals the pens on the table, steals the albums. Today he got in there right after one of my photoshoots, and while I was saying goodbye to my clients, he drew all over their contract with a pen. lol

He loves being chased or chasing you. We run in figure 8's and in circles around obstacles a lot. Sometimes we set it to music with some of his toys. He really enjoys it. And tumbling on the bed.. I pretend to steam-roll him and let him pounce on me and then buck him off with my hips and make him land on a pillow.

Oh.. I forgot to mention - he often bows his head for prayer, all on his own. Sometimes he hangs his head down to his feet, and then glances back up at us during the prayer. And he says "Amen" super enthusiastically and loud. I actually heard it over the phone on Sunday when I was listening in and he was at meeting with Ted.

And you should see him do the T-Tapp workout with me! LOVE IT. He doesn't do the same things every time, but he bends over to hang his head to the floor when I do, raises his arms up, laughs at me when I'm doing the plie's, raises a foot off the ground when he sees me do it. He's so cute. I love that he wants to do whatever I'm doing.