This Little Piggy.. loves karaoke!

I have a camera flash mounted to a tripod. Andrew sometimes plays with it thinking it's a camera to take pictures with. The other day he pointed it toward me and said, "say cheese!"  (mind you, I do not say this to my clients, but he has picked it up from someplace!)  Then the tripod started to fall over and he yells out, "oh no! the cheese is falling!"  So cute! 

Tuesday evening, Andrew and I were coming home from a photoshoot of the Perry family at the Arnold's house. He was carrying his little bag up the front steps and tripped. I ran to him thinking he hit his mouth on the top step, but actually he cut his chin open. It took a couple of minutes to get him to calm down and he was really scared to let daddy touch it with a wet rag trying to clean it. Poor munchkin.

The past couple of weeks has been the first time I'm aware of hearing Andrew sing songs other than baby songs (like twinkle little star.)  He recently was singing, "At the car wash, car wash.. at the car wash yeah."  Ted would occasionally sing it while getting Andrew dressed because he has a train set that has an engine wash and it makes him think of that song.  Then recently we were playing the game Encore and the song word was "train" and I sang, "Come on ride this train, come ride it..." and Andrew picked up on it immediately. The next couple of days I'd randomly hear him singing, "come ride the train, come ride the train, choo choo!"  He still loves to sing "Frere Jacques".

One of his favorite things to do lately is "This little piggy went to the market...."  Friday I was reorganizing my closet and he was sitting on the floor. He starts touching his toes and says, "This little piggy went to the market (really emphasizing the T on market), this little piggy stayed home. This little piggy had sushi (he says all excited), and this little piggy had none (sounding disappointed.) And this little piggy went 'wee wee wee wee wee wee all the way home'  (as he tickles himself from his foot up to his head, and then laughs)  ha ha ha "  

He likes to rhyme more. Sometimes he'll say a word and then just start spouting out words that rhyme with it, sometimes making up sounds and words.. then changing words and rhyming with that. His little mind is always in full force!

Wednesday night was our first time to go to Kingdom Hall and not put Andrew in pull-ups for the "just in case" feeling.  He always tells us when he needs to go, and his pull ups are always dry - so I figured we needed to get over our fear and see what happened. Of course he did fine! 

One thing that impresses me is how perceptive Andrew is. He notices the smallest details as he watches something. The only example I can think of at the moment is when we were watching Nana leave one day. She was having to reverse at an odd angle in the driveway and as she was straightening out, the front tire touched the grass. THAT is what Andrew narrated to me as he is studying the car's movements. He wasn't watching Nana, or distracted by something in the sky or on the fence or in the 50 feet between us and the car. He was studying the tires and where they were going.
He also is perceptive with sounds and will imitate, with great accuracy, the sounds or rhythms another object is making. The first time he heard a rooster, he gave the most wonderful imitation of it. More accurate than any adult I've heard try to sound like one.  The same with the weedwacker and lawn mower. His latest one is the air gun attached to the air compressor. When daddy was installing the crown molding in the bathroom, with each nail driven through, Andrew would yell out "Tick - e - Jack!"  with the same rhythm the air gun produces.  I tried to listen better, and sure enough, with the echo in that bathroom - that is exactly what it sounds like!

Andrew loves Karaoke!  Andrew and I went to a going away party tonight. After dinner they were trying to get karaoke started. After someone sang a song, Andrew asked for the microphone. When Jaime offered it to him, he got shy. We did that three or four times. Then he had to wait his turn again. Finally he got enough courage to sing into the microphone and he liked it so much he wanted to sing Frere Jacques after every one else's song!  I finally got him to stop singing in between and told him he had to figure out a new song.  Eventually he sang his alphabet, and at the end of the night he sang Twinkle Little Star.  In between all that, he was dancing and playing with the other kids, and also trying to steal the microphone from people singing.  He tried to sing La Bamba with me - I let him have the second mic and he did try to say the words though he'd never heard the song before.

On the way home from the party, a few minutes from home, Andrew starts, "We're almost there. Are we there yet? ... Are we there yet?"  This is how our conversation went:
"Andrew, we are going home. Does this look like home?"
"No."
"Okay, then you know we're not there yet."   (brief pause)
"Mommy are we there yet?"  (i ignore him)  "Mommy, are we there yet?  ... Andrew, does this look like home?  Mommy say it: 'Andrew does this look like home?' "
"Andrew, does this look like home."
"No. It doesn't. We're not there yet."  .... "Mommy are we there yet?"
"Andrew, that's not nice. Please stop asking. You know we're not."
By then we are almost home.. we pull onto our street and he gets all excited "Here we are! Daddy's home!"