problem solving

Drew is finally getting a pair of teeth on the top of his mouth to match his bottom teeth. You'll notice in most of these photos that his two bottom teeth are quite visible. The two teeth on the top of his mouth have broken through now and are coming in nicely. We're excited that Drew will be able to start chewing food rather than just gumming on it.

Drew was still dressed up after church not that long ago, and he and I took the opportunity to play some sports in the living room. We started out with a basketball/baseball combination. Drew has the bat in one hand and he just finished off a thunderous slam dunk with the other hand. He does everything with both hands still, so I have no idea if he will be right or left handed.
Next, we switched to just baseball and we played for a while with the bat and the spinning baseball.

Finally, we took some time to practice underhanded free throws. I didn't think Drew was ready for proper form yet, so he and I worked for several hours to get his underhanded technique down pat. It's hard to see in the photo, but Drew has nice backspin on his shot!

Jana found this stuffed hippopotamus, which was one of her stuffed animals from childhood, and Drew loves to play with it. He still loves to say "ball" and apparently this looks similar in shape to a ball because he carries it around saying "ball" over and over.

Look at Drew standing! He does this all the time now without even thinking about it. All of the sudden he'll just let go of everything and stand there playing with something. Then he'll realize that he's just standing there, so he either grabs onto something or sits down. Doesn't he look like a big boy in his shirt and khakis! Also, take note of his shoes. Drew got his first pair of big boy shoes! He's got some nice hiking shoes . . . in a toddler size 5!!! His feet are huge!

I had so much fun watching Drew figure this problem out. He was pushing his walker and he hit one of the animals from his farm. It got caught under the walker, so he tried pushing the walker forward and backward to get it out. That didn't work and only dragged the toy around under the bottom, so the he crawled around to the front of his walker and lifted up the front end. The toy was caught in the back, so lifting the front end just made it more stuck in the back. Drew couldn't reach the toy and he couldn't dislodge it. Therefore, Drew crawled around to the back of his walker, lifted the back end up and pushed the whole walker forward a little to get the toy out. In the picture below you are seeing him in the end stages of freeing the toy from under his walker. I was watching him in rapt attention the whole time because it was fascinating to see his mind work through how to solve the problem.

It is getting harder and harder to have Drew sit still for a picture. He is ALWAYS on the go! In this picture you can see that he's happy to be with Jana, but I couldn't get him to move his hand away from his mouth.

Drew loves to play with his basketballs, his blue soccer ball, and now also with this tennis ball. It doesn't fit through his basketball hoop though, so he drops it in to score, but it doesn't fall through the hoop. In this picture he is pushing up from the bottom of the hoop with one hand to grab the tennis ball with the other hand and get it out of the hoop. Look at his concentration!!

Almost every day Drew takes a couple steps unassisted, but this is his usual way of "walking." He likes to have one hand hanging onto our hand, and then he'll walk all over the house.

Last night I was cracking Drew up after he finished eating, so I had to take some pictures of him. When he's in his high chair, it is the only time he's immobilized and I can get some close ups of him!