Mowing the Lawn

Anthony is SO EXCITED to help Daddy mow the lawn. Hopefully he'll remember this 10 years from now when its his job!

"Can I have a shot?"

Yes, Anthony asked Dr. Babcock for a shot today.

We had an appointment to discuss Anthony's asthma medication (after his last flare-up he is now taking Singulair and Pulmacort). Dr. Babcock gave him a few bandaids to play with while we talked.

Anthony opened up his Snoopy bandaid, played with it for awhile and then asked quite politely for a shot. I, of course, had already informed the nurses that Anthony needed an influenza vaccination, carefully avoiding the use of the "s-word".

The nurse came back and gave him his shot. Anthony happily applied his own bandaid and we were good to go.

Strange. But who am I to complain?

Fun with Lego

In the past few weeks Anthony has been really enjoying playing with his legos. Left to his own devices he builds towers of squares as high as he can reach. With dad's help he builds more sophisticated structures like this house/castle. Anthony deconstructed it a few minutes before the picture was taken. It used to have a pitched roof and a slide, too. Once his creations are built he incorporates them into imaginary play. We have about a dozen little lego people to play all sorts of roles.

Big A. Little A, What Begins With A?

A few weeks ago, Bob was reading Anthony his "name book" and Bob came to me all excited that Anthony new most of the letters in his name. I told him that Anthony was just demonstrating remote memorization. Later that week they were playing with alphabet blocks and Anthony could clearly identify an "M".

Anthony is very interested in letters now. I opened up a box of (Honey Maid) graham crackers the other day and Anthony yelled "H". Where ever we go he picks out the letters he recognizes.

He also seems to have made the cognitive leap that the letters on his books make words. Now when he picks up books to browse he complains that he doesn't know what the words are.

Neighborhood Picnic

Today was the Cuesta Park Neighborhood Association annual picnic. It just gets bigger and better every year. Anthony had a grand old time. He got his face painted, ate all sorts of treats (and little lunch) and had a great time visiting with some old friends.

One of the neighbors came dressed up as a clown and made balloons creations for all the kids. A lot of the little ones were intimidated by him, but not Anthony. It took him about 20 seconds to decide that he wanted to say Hi to the clown and get a balloon.

Palo Alto Airport Day

Today Anthony and Daddy went on an excursion together to Palo Alto Airport Day. Sounds like they had a good time. They got to watch "The Beech Boys" fly in formation. (Those would be Beechcraft airplanes, Bob is learning a little formation flying from them.) He decorated an airplane cookie AND got a dirigible cookie. The plane Anthony is flying is a Bonanza, just like daddy flies. Well, Daddy flies a V-tail Bonanza, which Anthony will proudly tell anyone who listens.

More Fun

A few more pictures of the fun we had in Colorado.

Trip to Tiny Town

I dig alliteration.

Anyway, while Grandma and her siblings were off at "A Taste of Denver", we took the little ones up to Tiny Town. It was the cutest little place. Its a mineature town and most of the buildings were recreations of historic Colorado buildings. Some like the Saloon above were large doll-houses complete with models inside. Others were large enough to go inside and play. Anthony and Joshua had fun exploring.

We finished our day at Tiny Town with a train ride. I need to get pictures from Julie.

The Cousins Together

A few of the best cousins moments from our trip:

1. Watching Anthony teach Joshua to play "Ring Around the Rosie". (top picture)

2. Watching them ride the doggy.

3. When Anthony gave Joshua his "thank you present". He peeked in the gift bag, saw a die-cast airplane, grabbed the airplane and handed Joshua the empty bag. We insisted that he give the toy to Joshua too, and then the boys proceeded to fly their airplanes around the family room together.

4. Anthony kept feeding Joshua treats. One chip that he picked up to give him had a bit of dip on it. Anthony stopped and carefully wiped the chip off in the grass before giving it to Joshua to eat. How's that for service??

5. Just watching them be together, enjoying each other's company. Such sweet little boys!

First Day of Preschool

What an exciting day! As we skipped up to preschool Anthony announced, "I'm exciting" and boy was he! He had his new backpack with his name embroidered on it and was all ready for preschool. He's attending Children's Center and I'm very excited about it, too!

Parents were required to attend the first day so I got to watch the fun first hand. He painted with water colors, drew with markers on big art paper, played with play-dough, played dress-up, raced cars with his pal W and started cooking in the kitchen. And that was all in the first 30 minutes or so.

We then gathered together to walk across the yard for tricycle time. Anthony was a pro at the tricycles and quickly separated from me to go zooming around the track. (Some of his classmates were a little less sure of themselves.)

After tricycle time we went back to the room for hand-washing and snack which Anthony thoroughly enjoyed. We then had circle time, which he found to be a little difficult. He was great with the singing, but had a hard time sitting in his spot in the circle for story time. He ended up on a teacher's lap and that worked out just fine.

It was back to the yard for more outdoor playtime and then off to daycare for the rest of the day. He was pretty wiped out by then!

























You can't tell from the picture above, but he's clearly one of the youngest kids. His pal W is 8 days younger and they are the two youngest in the class. It showed--they looked younger and the others could all sit still. Honestly, I think sitting still is overrated. We're still going to work on it, though.

A GREAT Trip!

I really mean it, we had a great time in Colorado. Better still, we had a "better than expected time". Over the next week I'll post pictures, but here's my summary as a whole.

1. The airplane part of the trip was relatively painless thanks to the DVD player and the copy of Mary Poppins we borrowed from Claire and Robert. We had a whole collection of DVDs with us, but Anthony would ONLY watch Mary Poppins. He woke up from his nap on the airplane and 5 seconds later demanded his movie. This picture is the of Anthony and Joshua watching it together before breakfast.

For dealing with him in the airport I still wore Anthony on my back in the Ergo carrier. We experimented briefly with letting him walk with the help of the hand-holding-helper (aka leash). That was less successful. The leash keeps him from being able to run, but it doesn't temper his DESIRE to run, which means you've just got an angry kid trying to make a break for it. He likes riding in the Ergo and I like wearing him, so that worked well.

2. We stayed with Dave, Julie and Joshua. Besides the fact that they were great hosts (Thanks guys!), the house was child-proofed, filled with age-appropriate toys, had a backyard filled with more toys AND Joshua was there to play the whole time.

The best part really was watching the boys play together, they had so much fun! I'll post more about that later.

3. We only stayed 3 nights. Two would have been better. Anthony doesn't sleep as well on the road as he does at home. He also is fighting naps on principle. Each day he took a 30-40 minute car nap and that was it. Since it was a short trip he didn't get TOO overtired. The last day the lack of sleep started to show. He was difficult in the morning and downright awful when we got home.