Voting

Saturday, January 22, 2011

Sweet Prayers

My dear Brady was praying with me today before his nap and I prayed for Grandpa Dunne to be at peace as he has been in the hospital for more than a week now and the doctors are turning the oxygen off tomorrow.  As we were praying he said "if Grandpa Dunne doesn't get better in the hospital and goes to heaven, I pray that he has fun with Jesus."

What a sweetheart.....such a sweet, kind spirit!  I am so thankful for his heart!


*just as I posted this, I got a call at 1 am to have me say goodbye to my grandfather as they don't think he is going to make it through the night...."have fun with Jesus, Grandpa"  We will see you again!

Sunday, January 16, 2011

20 Months Old...ALREADY!!

There are so many fun things with this fireball (Evan) at 20 months old. He is “talking” a lot…in what we call “mandarin”…isn’t he so smart? He totes his Woody (“Wooeee”) doll around with him and will say the things Woody says…”yeehaw” and “hello” and he will laugh like Woody at the times Woody laughs.

We are still so in love with his affectionate side…he pats your back when you’re holding him, if you rub his back while hugging him, he reciprocates on yours. When he wants to be picked up, he reaches up his arms high for you to pick him up.

He has added some words to his vocabulary: “MiMi’, “sue me” (excuse me), instead of the previous “bye bye” we used to get, it is just the very succinct “bye” now. He says “eyes” now and points to his eyes. He says “ah-knee-en” (alien) when he sees the alien toys from Toy Story 3.

What a singer I have!! So adorable. He sings ALL the time…driving in the car, around the house, in the bathtub…I absolutely LOVE that!!!

Some recent firsts as we have approached this 20 month mark is sitting on the potty and sitting on the time out stool. We pulled the potty out with Brady at about this age …just to introduce it…so when the time came it would not be a new, scary thing. We decided to do the same with Evan. We have him sit on the potty before nap, before bath…just to sit there and get used to the idea, used to the habit. Often, Brady will be on the big potty next to him and say things like: “Here that, Evan? That is the pee pee. You could go pee pee too. Do you want to try it? Did you hear that, Evan? That is the poop splashing. Did you hear that?” Then we he gets up, he says: “Come here, Evan. See…See the poop in the potty. You can do that too.” All of this is said in such a sweet, parent-type tone. It is so cute. Evan seems to listen and nod and watch Brady.

The time out stool….so sad. Evan has already had his first time out. We would just put him in his room and shut the door. Well I figured it was time to introduce the time out stool in the hall and for him to have to learn the restraint and self control and discipline of actually having to sit there, without getting up, until we come to get him. We put him on the stool for the first time last week and it was so pitiful. His sad little face crying…breaks your heart!

He has the big "oooooo" face when he sees something he likes or something that is exciting to him!! It is such a dramatic long "o" face that distorts his entire face as he points at whatever it is and says "ooooo".  We went to the McWane Science Center not that long ago and with everything he enjoyed seeing (which is a lot there), he just kept pointing...elbow up against his body, index finger pointing at the object from right against his cheek saying "ooooo". 

He has also managed to impress us with stairs.  We have never really taught him how to go up and down stairs because we live mainly on one story.  The first time I noticed it was at the playground.  He just walked right up to the stairs to the play area, grabbed the railing, and walked himself right up to the top of the play area...no problem.  When it was time to come down, he did the same thing.  He did not do the typical climb up on your knees, come down on your bottom that most little ones do when they are first figuring out stairs...just walked right up them and right down them.  Pretty good...especially for someone who had only been walking at the time for less than 3 months and does not encounter stairs in his day to day life at home.