He's one smart cookie!

I was completely shocked by this during bath time this evening. Nathan was playing with his toys, which includes a foam number and letter set, and he started naming some of the letters correctly. He couldn't do them all but he got about 10 of them right on the first try . I had no idea he could do this since he usually just calls all letters "D."

In the video he does get one letter wrong. I just picked random letters and did them in no particular order. I didn't get this on video but for the letter "W" he calls it "WX." Most kids think L M N O P are all one letter, my kid thinks W X is one letter.

Nathan and Mommy sing the ABCs (and other things that make me so smart)

Nathan is trying to learn the alphabet song. We practice every day and he's getting quite good despite the fact that he seems to only join in around "H" or so.


Nathan's counting is also getting better. He no longer hates the numbers 1 and 4, so now he only discriminates against the number 9.
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10!

Nathan is also trying to learn his colors, but they can be tricky. He has orange, black, and brown pretty good now. He sometimes gets blue and green right too.

Nathan is starting to speak in little 2-3 word sentences, its great. His first sentence was "Shut the door."

As I said in the other post, Nathan is "reading." He has actually started memorizing some of his favorite books and reads along with us when we read to him. So cute!

Nathan knows that boats go in water and airplanes and stars are in the sky. And he knows so many other things, he is one smart cookie.

Nathan Reads a Book

We are very excited that Nathan's favorite activity seems to be reading. He enjoys reading even more than running around being crazy (which he does quite a bit). Most afternoons after his nap, Nathan will take his blankets and pillows off his bed and sit on the floor by the foot of his bed reading books until I go in and get him (I suspect that some afternoons he starts his nap out like this too because there have been times I have caught him sleeping on top of his pile of pillows and blankets and books and toys). Then I have a proud mommy moment because my not even 2 year old loves to read! Not only does he like to read but he loves being read to. Several times a day he will come up to me holding a book and say "read to to." I think he means "read to you" which is what I say ("Do you want me to read to you?").

Halloween 2008 Pictures

I'm finally getting around to adding this year's Halloween pictures. Both kids were little pumpkins so we had our own little family pumpkin patch.

Trick-or-Treat!

Although Nathan went out for Halloween last year this year he REALLY understood what Halloween is all about.

Halloween 2007- Dragon

(we didn't realize until after pictures that you can't see the teeth on the top of the cotume) Nathan had several opportunities to trick-or-treat this year. We went to Zoo Boo! We had our church "trunk"-or treat which ended up being a "hallway"-or-treat do to yucky weather. Then at Book Tots (story time at the library) they did a little trick-or-treat activity. And of course Halloween night. We went to Grandma and Grandpa's house to trick-or treat in their neighborhood. While we were at G-ma and G-pa's house waiting to start he found g-ma's candy that she was passing out and kept going up to the bowl, said trick-or-treat, and helped himself to a piece of candy! The first couple of houses he decided that he was just going to walk right on in the door. Luckily they were all houses of very good family friends. After that he got the hang of it and had a blast. He was very polite and said trick-or-treat and thank you at every house. He was even more excited if the house had a dog. He would say "dog, woof, woof." Now we just need to figure out where to hide the candy so we can control how much he eats. Between Nathan and Emily (because I of course had a basket for her candy too) we brought home about 5 lbs of candy. Not too bad for only doing two streets with only a few people giving out candy.

This year's pictures to come soon!

Nathan Goes To School!

Today was Nathan's first day of preschool! I can't believe that our little boy is going to school. We found a great program for toddlers that share many of our educational beliefs. He will be in school two mornings a week. I'm hoping this will give him the social interaction he craves. I'm also hoping that this will give him an outlet for all of his extra energy. And for me it gives me time to focus on Emily and doing things that are just so much more difficult to do with 2 children.

I wasn't sure how Nathan was going to react. When he first started gong to nursery at church he would cry, but now he is excited to go to nursery and bounces down the hall and right on in without any tears. Of course at home we have been preparing him by telling him that he was going to school. When we got there he was excited and recognized the classroom from our visit earlier this month. I was able to walk out the door without any tears from him or me. I think he is really going to like going to preschool. Only 1.5 hours until I pick him up. I better go do the things I need to get done!

In the car with the school in the background:

In the office getting all the paperwork turned in:

With his teacher, Miss Megan:

Playing:

More pictures to come after I pick him up! OK I lied, no more pictures. There weren't very many photo ops (didn't want to get pictures of the other kids knowing that I wanted to put them online). I have decided 3 hours is NOT a long time at all and I still barely got anything done, but Nathan had a blast and that is all that counts!

Pictures!

Here are some recent pictures (we freed up so computer space by deleting programs that came preloaded on the computer that we have NEVER used and didn't even know were there, so we have pictures again). Enjoy!

Carving the pumpkin. Nathan actually was not into touching all the pumpkin goo. He wanted nothing to do with it until it was completely cleaned out. The picture with him reaching his arm in he is trying to get a toy. It's the only way we could get him to reach inside the pumpkin.




The finished product. Daddy did the carving but Nathan picked the design. We gave him a few to choose from and of course he wanted "Twinkle, twinkle little stars" because he can't just call them starts, they are twinkle, twinkle little stars.Zoo Boo:

I just wanted to show that even Nathan can fit in my baby wrap. So yes even if you have a good sized baby you can still benefit from the sleepy wrap!

Just being cute:Loving my sister:
Hurricane Nathan struck. What he's still there!
He's been wanting to get in this swing since we brought it upstairs. Something tells me he's just too big:

Potty Training?

Back when Nathan was 12-13 months old I was determined to attempt potty training. So we would put him on the potty throughout the day and every time he would go pee. Then when he was 14 months I (Michelle) took a temporary job for a month and that ended our potty efforts. Since then Nathan has had no interest in the potty. I was so afraid that we had missed our window, that now it would be a very long time before he showed any interest in potty training.

A few days ago he came up to me holding a pair of Big Boy Underwear (we bought him a few pairs to try to encourage). He was trying to put them on over his pants. So I took off his diaper and put them on. Of course he wet his pants, but he was at least showing interest.

This evening Jon was changing Emily's diaper and Nathan comes up to me and says "poop." Every once in a while he will tell me when he has already gone poop, so I just assumed that was what he was telling me so I told Jon to change Nathan when he was done with Emily. Well it turns out that Nathan was mid-poop when Jon started changing him. So he ran to the toilet and Nathan finished up on the potty! I really think he may have been trying to tell me he had to go poop. I hope this is the start of the process!

Zoo-Boo!

This past Saturday we went to Zoo-Boo with some friends who we have not seen in quite a while. It was great to see old friends. Nathan (and Emily) are our little pumpkin patch this year. They were so cute in their costumes. I will post pictures as soon as I get my computer issue resolved (see Emily's blog if you are interested in exactly what those computer issues are).

The Pumpkin Patch

Today was our first annual trip to the pumpkin patch. Mommy took tons of pictures. Enjoy!











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Nathan also got to bounce in the bounce house and see lots of animals. Maybe I will get those pictures uploaded another day, but if not your not missing much (the bounce house pictures aren't that good and the animals don't have Nathan in any of the pictures).

Playing Catch-Up!!!

We have been so busy this past month (you forget how much of your time new babies really take up) so I am sorry that I have been neglecting my blogging duties. Here are tons of Nathan pictures from the couple weeks. We went to the Cider Mill a couple weeks ago with my MOMS Club and Nathan got to ride the "train" so here are the few pics I snapped of that.


That same day we got home and had a package on the front porch. Nathan's new dresser had arrived. It matches his race car toddler bed. Of course Nathan had to test it all out before we could load it up.


And what little kid can get something in a huge box and not play with the box!

A few days later Nathan wanted to play "Daddy".

And after having so much fun during the day here are the classic sleeping toddler pictures.