Fun Christmas Times

The celebration isn't over yet as we have my family's get-together this weekend. We had a great time in IC on Christmas Eve and Christmas day. Bud and I cut out sugar cookies together while B worked and we all went to a candle light church service that night. We came home and opened presents and Bud really likes the cleaning set we gave him (with working vacuum!). He got Buzz Lightyear pjs, slippers, and toy plus Mickey ears from the CT family! Grandma B. & Jim gave him books, a shirt, and a Lego/Thomas & Friends train and station that we put together right away. It's great because he got the circle track Lego/Thomas set from Grandma & Grandpa V! He loves trains and Legos so it's perfect for him. That night we put out milk and a cookie for Santa and in the morning he had put gifts in our stockings! Bud got some books and Harry Potter Every Flavor Beans. Santa even remembered the baby by giving a UI baby board book and pacifier! B worked again Christmas Day so Bud and I got our things together for the trip to G & G V's. We also visited Kathy & Dennis' and spent time with my cousins plus Great Grandma & Grandpa T and G & G T! We had a good time playing songs on the piano and guitar.

We headed up to B's parents that afternoon. B & I made dinner for the family on Monday and everyone really enjoyed it. That evening we opened lots of gifts and Bud got a lot of books! It was good to spend time with Great Grandma V, Aunt Kara, Zach, & Colin. Bud is having fun this week with his grandparents, Aunt Kara, & Colin even though he has a cold. We miss him but are keeping busy! We saw Harry Potter one night, went out to dinner with friends last night, and are going to Kathy & Dennis' again tonight. Hopefully I'll get some pictures onto his site soon.

More next year after our final Christmas celebration! Happy New Year!!
K :o)

Christmas Is Almost Here!

We announced at Thanksgiving that Bud is going to be a big brother in June! He's very excited, as are we, and will randomly mention the baby. A few weeks ago he said to his daddy, You have a baby in your tummy! We laughed and corrected him. He loves hearing the baby's heartbeat and even imitated it using his microphone that is hooked up to a keyboard.

Christmas is so much fun this year now that Bud knows what is going on. We had fun decorating the tree and he did a great job putting ornaments on the lower branches. It also helps when he is misbehaving to threaten no gifts at Christmas if he doesn't behave! That tactic works very well. We got him a Playmobil nativity set and he likes lining the people and animals up around the stable and recognizes Mary, Joseph, & Jesus in any nativity set. He also got an early gift from Grandma and Grandpa T. - a kitchen! He loves to play Emeril and cook but also enjoys doing the dishes. :-) Now when he wants to "help" us with the dishwasher we can just tell him to go play with his own dishwasher. He knows the words to Jingle Bells and his favorite song to hear on the radio is Frosty the Snowman. He even helped build his first snowman at Louise's house last week.

Louise is having a Christmas party for the kids today so Bud took gifts for his friends. It will be fun to hear all about it. Bud loves going to her house and loves his friends. He's starting to play with the kids more now instead of just along side them. He is starting to ask us to come play with him, like he'll say, Come play with my kitchen with me.

Louise has all of next week off but luckily Aunt Kara will be around to watch Bud the three days that we have to work. Colin will be with them those days, too, so Kara will be very busy playing with the two boys! It will be nice for us to have some time to ourselves for a few days. For New Year's we're going to Milwaukee to visit Joe and Becky and celebrate Christmas with my side of the family. We're looking forward to the trip and seeing their new house!

Will write more after Christmas!
K :-D

2 Month Update

Wow, I guess it's been a while since I wrote last! Bud is still loving his "school" and his friends and Louise really like having him there. He gets to read, sing, dance, play, and do crafts and coloring all day long. Louise even had a birthday party for him and I took cupcakes and partied with the kids. Bud got gifts and the kids loved the cupcakes. It was so fun to see him with his friends!

Now that he's two, Bud is a little more demanding and we're reminding him of his good manners. Potty training is going okay, we're still not pushing him to use the potty and he isn't bothered by wet or messy diapers/pull-ups so I don't think it's going to really work until he doesn't like the wetness. He occasionally tells us he needs to go and that's good enough for us.

Some of Bud's favorite songs right now are Down By The Bay, 5 Little Monkeys Jumping On The Bed, and Marsupial Sue (by John Lithgow). He'll just break into song whenever he feels like it and even gets most of the words in. :-)

Our big news right now is that BV got a job at the university hospital as a pharmacy technician! He starts in a week and a half and will be filling prescriptions and mixing chemo drugs. We're very excited he got a job with the U.

We're not sure what Bud will be for Halloween yet...but yesterday I found Nemo and Rolie Polie Olie costumes on Disney's website. Maybe we'll let Bud pick which one he wants to be. I have new pictures to add to his site from this past weekend and our trip to the appleless apple orchard. There was a freeze in May and all of the blossoms died, so we just roamed around the pumpkin patches. Just a minute after we pulled into the orchard Zach, Nicole, & Colin came in! I finally got some updated photos of the boys.

I will try to update this more often in the coming weeks!

K

Child Care

So far Luke loves his child care at Louise's house! He likes the other kids and all of her toys, books, and puzzles. He was there for half the day yesterday and today is his first full day. Hopefully he didn't have any trouble napping and had a good day. Louise said the only time he got upset yesterday was at lunch; he took a bite of peas but accidentally got a piece of pineapple in his mouth. The pineapple upset him so much that he cried! He was happy to see me when I picked him up but went right back to the group and listened to the stories Louise was reading.

New Schedule

This summer is flying by and we've been busy! Uncle Joe & Aunt Becky got married last month, Bud went to the pool for the first time and loved it, and we had a fourth of July cookout. Right now we are working on getting child care for Bud because BV got a job! There is a spot for him in a center that we really like and we are talking to a woman this evening who does child care in her home just to compare to the center. The center is very close to my work so I would be able to visit him whenever I wanted! Bud is a little familiar with the child care center already because it is in the church that we have been going to. He has been to the nursery twice and had no problem with me leaving him. He'll start on Wednesday and hopefully everything will go well!

This past weekend Chris, Ryley, Bud, & I visited Ann & Josh in DM. Bud and I had duck at PF Chang's and we went to the zoo. We made the mistake of telling Bud there would be an elephant but it turned out there was not. :-( After every animal he asked to see the elephant. Ann taught him to say elephant, giraffe, and turtle in Spanish and bud enjoyed playing with Mags & Ollie, the cats. There will be pictures of our trip soon!

Potty Time!

So far the potty chair is more a toy for Bud than a functional object, but every once in a while I sit him on it and hope he'll go. Tuesday night he asked for the potty chair so I took him in the bathroom and he sat on it, then got up and played, I set him back on it and he peed! When he heard it his eyes lit up and he cracked a little smile. Then we washed his hands with is new special soap that Grandma T gave him, and I quick made a potty chart with crayons and we put a star sticker on it. He loves his potty chart and we put it on the fridge.

Aunt Kara has been visiting this week and she is spoiling Bud! B and Bud visited her at their parents' house the past couple of days and Bud learned about the big Mississippi River and can even say Mississippi! He's been having lots of fun with bubbles and even helped Aunt Kara wash her car.

We're really looking forward to Joe & Becky's wedding in 2 weeks (!!) and seeing all of the family. Bud & Tig are going to have a great time!

The Nuk is Gone!!

Bud is finally falling asleep without his precious "nanni", a.k.a. the pacifier. Saturday night I decided to see what would happen if I didn't give him his nuk at bedtime. He ended up talking for 45 minutes before I gave it to him and then he feel asleep. His schedule was off during the day Saturday so I really shouldn't have even tried. Sunday night during our bedtime routine he asked for the nanni and I told him that he is a big boy now and only babies get nuks (I'd been telling him for a few weeks that he really didn't need the nuk). He pouted but didn't really cry. I had a pillow in his bed that Grandma T. made him (it's his favorite right now, has Winnie the Pooh, Tigger, & Piglet on it) and I gave him his Beanie Baby Eagle. He didn't fuss much and fell asleep! Yesterday he wouldn't take his afternoon nap (we don't know if he just wasn't tired or if it was because he didn't have his nanni) but then last night he fell asleep with no problem. I think now we are going to have to remember to take the pillow and Eagle when we have overnight trips!

Another new thing...I put his alphabet magnets in order on the fridge and Bud properly recognized the W, X, and O! A couple of times he has said a complete sentence using "I", like "I dropped it."

This morning I heard him crying when I got out of the shower and found out that he had heard some sirens and got scared. He told BV, "Ambulance car, sirens, scared" and he had actually been crying with tears. We didn't even know he knew the word ambulance let alone what it is! I told him that he shouldn't be scared when he hears sirens, that ambulances are there to help people. We can tell he's really learning his emotions right now because he's so dramatic!

He's now 20 months old and we can't believe he'll be 2 years old in only 4 months!

Effective Discipline

We have a dining room chair next to the refridgerator to keep Bud from touching the back of the fridge. Last night he kept climbing up in the chair and making us nervous by sitting on the edge of the chair and acting like he was just going to climb off that way (we want him to turn around and go on his belly). So after telling him not to get in the chair and him disobeying we removed the chair. Then he went right for the back of the fridge and touched it again after we told him not too. So B took him in his room, put him in his megasaucer and told him what he had done wrong and what we wanted him to do. We left him there for 1.5 minutes and when I brought him out he started repeating what B had told him and pointing at the back of the fridge. And he stayed away the rest of the night!

Bud has this word he says, shabas (at least that's how it sounds) and I asked a professor what that means in Hebrew and he said it means the Sabbath. Either Bud made it up or he heard it somewhere! Whenever I ask him what it means he answers, "some."

He has been playing pretend quite a bit lately. A few times over the weekend he baked a cake, put a candle on top and sang happy birthday! I didn't even know he knew that song and all of a sudden he was singing it. Crazy.

K :D

Fun in the Sun

It's been a few weeks since I've written an update! Bud looks like he is putting on some weight in his belly, which is a good thing - the 12 mth. pants are fitting really well! He's been playing outside a lot now that the weather is awesome and he likes to chase bunnies and birds. BV and him went to the park yesterday and Bud is getting more adventurous and went down the slide by himself!

Bud said a whole sentence sometime in the past few weeks, too. I went in his room to get him up from a nap and he said, "Hello. How are you?" It was the funniest thing to hear a complete sentence come out of him!

A week ago we went to Chicago to see Bud's aunt and cousin Tig who were visiting from Conneticut! Bud and Tig got along really well, although Tig gave more hugs than Bud really wanted :) She was very protective of him and would alert us when he would start to climb the stairs. She loved showing him all of her puzzles & books. We took lots of pictures and I'll get some on the site soon. We can't wait to see the family from Conneticut in June at the wedding!

Potty Chair

We just had a nice weekend at Grandma & Grandpa T.'s house and celebrated Easter. Bud got a potty chair and my Dad actually got him to sit on it and push. I think it was Bud's idea; him and Grandpa were in the bathroom and Bud said, Poopy, so Dad took his diaper off and set him on the potty. It was so funny to see him sitting there. Then when I started putting his diaper back on he started whining and said poopy again, so I put him back. He had a book and crossed his ankles (his feet don't touch the floor) but we didn't have a camera to capture the hilarious moment. We're not going to push him to start using the potty, we just got it so he knows it's there.

Great Grandma B.S. had an Easter egg hunt and Bud enjoyed finding the eggs and putting them in his bucket. We all got really nice things in our Easter baskets.

We are looking forward to a visit from Aunt Kara who flies in tomorrow. She's going to spend a night with us and we'll see her this weekend for Easter.

Bud is really starting to memorize the alphabet now. BV called me earlier to tell me he was singing the ABC song to him and would stop and Bud would say the next letter. B was really surprised!

18 month Check-Up

Everything went well at the doctor today although Bud was still kinda scared. He weighs 22 lbs and is 33 inches tall. He's been kind of whiny lately and the doctor said that is typical of 18 mth olds - my Mom said it's the terrible twos. Luckily he doesn't really throw any tantrums, he just cries when he doesn't get his way. My mom is coming up for the afternoon to give BV a little break so he can get out and enjoy this nice weather!

Spelling Bee

Last night I spelled Bud's name out with his fridge magnets and told him that's how we spell his name. I repeated the letters to him a few times and then he said them! BV wasn't in the room at the time but then 5 minutes later when he was, Bud was sitting on the floor playing and spelled his name without being asked! The other times I would ask him to spell his name he would say, "ABCD, " and I'd say, No, it begins with_, then he'd say the other three letters. I can't believe his memory.

He had a really good time at Grandma & Grandpa T.'s house last weekend and was a good boy. He got to entertain his great-grandparents, too. Grandma got him a potty book that makes a flushing sound and Bud read Click Clack Moo, Cows that Type the whole time he was there. He was sad when they brought him back to us and wanted Click Clack Moo, so Mom & Dad gave us some money to buy him the book. BV reads it to him about 10 times a day and I get to read it a few times in evening.

The last couple of times Bud and cousin Colin (Ty-Ty) have played together they've actually interacted and kind of chased one another. Colin is starting to walk so they're seeing eye to eye. When one of them is up on the slide the other wants to be there, too, and they'll push each other down the slide. This summer should be really fun for them. Bud can't wait for warmer weather because he loves to be outside and watch the birdies and seeshows (squirrels).

We're looking forward to a weekend at home and more spelling bees :)

KV

The Street, the Purple Dinosaur and 10!

Bud is officially a Sesame Street and Barney addict. It all started last Monday when BV put Sesame Street on, Bud planted himself in front of the tv and didn't move for an hour. B wasn't quick enough with the remote and Barney came on, so he watched another half hour. He knows most of the main characters' names and really likes Slimy, Oscar's worm who says "Weee, weee!" He watches everyday and asks for them throughout the day. We'll have to keep our eye out for Sesame Street Live.

His big accomplishment this week is counting to ten! He did it twice for me last night and he gets so embarassed he covers his face and giggles when he's done. We're going to have to get it on video because of course when anyone else is around he won't do it. Hopefully he'll count for Grandma & Grandpa T. this weekend because he's staying with them Saturday and Sunday!

Memorization

I couldn't believe it, I was changing Bud's diaper yesterday and gave him two beanie giraffes to play with. They are different sizes so I pointed that out to him, and he started reading his "Opposites" book from memory! He said, big-little, up-down, in-out, fast-slow! He says most of the words when we flip through the book, too, but this was the first time he did it without looking at the book. I was so amazed!

I was home for the afternoon yesterday because Ben is not feeling well, we think it's the flu. He took a 2 hour nap and felt better so he went out to shovel the 3 inches of powder we got yesterday. Bud and I bundled up to go out and watch him and Bud loved it! I think he was just glad to be out of the house but he also had fun watching the birds fly around. When I went in the house to put the camera and mail away he started cyring; he wasn't ready to go in! We took some pictures of him and I hope to get them developed tomorrow so they'll probably be online Monday.

Random Stories

Today is Colin's first birthday and we celebrated over the weekend at our house. Colin and Bud had a good time opening the presents and eating cake & ice cream. It's so hard to believe Colin is a year old! And it's hard to believe Bud is 17 months old.

He's starting to put three words together now. The first time he said, "Ty-Ty (Colin), buddy, fun." And he has said, "Outside, cold, brrr." He has also learned how to make himself dizzy by spinning around, he's quite the show-off. He loves learning new words and will say the word over and over until he pronounces it fairly well. He watches Seasame Street and his favorite character is Big Bird. When I tell him we're going downstairs he says, "Big Bird, tv." But I have to explain that Big Bird isn't on during prime time. I'm going to see if the library has any Seasame Street videos that we can watch together. Yesterday BV and Bud went to the grocery store and when they pulled into the parking lot Bud said, "Pat, hi." The clerk that works regulary is named Pat. He's always surprising us!

1, 2, 3...4!

About 2 weeks ago Bud counted to 3, then a few days later to 4! We read quite a few counting books, and a lot of books in general, to him and he is starting to memorize things in the books. He is also putting two words together more often like "light on."

Yesterday we went sledding at Don & Shirley's house. Bud really enjoyed watching everyone else slide down the hill and would say weeee, but after a few times of sliding down with us he had enough and just wanted to watch. It was very amusing to watch him walk around in his boots and huge snow pants, I definitly need to get a picture of that.

We went to Zach & Nicole's on Saturday and on the way over I asked Bud who lives with Colin and he answered, "toys."

Holidaze

We had a good time at Christmas with all of the family and even had Bud baptized while they were all around. Bud is enjoying his new toys and books, although we didn't get all of the toys and puzzles out yet so that he can get excited all over again when we get them out in a few months. It was such a busy time but fun. Bud enjoyed taking cousin Tig's dollhouse furniture while she was playing with it and never wanted to give it back. They got along really well, though and gave each other hugs.

Last weekend Bud spent the weekend with his grandparents and Aunt Kara so Mom & Dad could party for New Year's Eve! We stayed up later than when we were in college but woke up in time to watch the Hawks beat LSU!! We hadn't been away from Luke overnight since July and it was really strange in the house without him. But we're hoping his other set of grandparents can have him for a weekend sometime soon.

Bud has been saying ewww a lot and at appropriate times, it's so funny. He's also been very clingy and wants to held - I think mostly so he can see things out of his sight. But it is nice when he gives us hugs.