jump

This past weekend Jana, Drew, and I left Lansing and visited Holland, MI. We had a wonderful weekend! The weather was perfect, and we enjoyed spending time together as a family. One of the highlights of getting away is having some guilty pleasures to eat that you wouldn't normally eat at home. Drew discovered the joy of potato chips while on vacation and found that he loves to say, "Chip, please!" He is pictured here in the hotel room that we stayed in, which came fully equipped with a stove, microwave, and refrigerator in the kitchen area. The setup in the hotel worked out perfectly for our family. Drew had a room for his pack and play, and Jana and I had our own room. The two rooms gave Drew lots of room to roam!

Drew loved the hallways in the hotel. He ran up and down them saying, "Echo! Echo!" We made sure he did that during the day!

On Saturday night Drew experienced a restaurant first: we ordered a kid's meal for him! The food that Jana and I ordered wasn't great for sharing with him, so we decided to order a kid's pizza for Drew. He ate a little of it, and we decided that we're still not ready to get him his own food for right now. He usually prefers what we have on our plates anyway because he always eats whatever we're eating at home.

On Sunday morning Jana and I visited the Saugatuck Dunes State Park. We took Drew on a very short hike and let him wander in the leaves. He was VERY intent on looking where he was going! This is usually how Drew walks when we're on a trail: with his head DOWN.

In this video you can see some of Drew's hike with us. He loved brushing his feet along the ground through the leaves. At the end of the video he tripped on a root, and I stopped the video. I didn't think it was nice for me to film his little accident!

Drew found a stick on our walk and had fun poking around with it. What's under all those leaves?

In another part of the park Drew found some rocks and loved picking them up. He remembered finding rocks on the beach this summer and was having fun finding them.

Drew found dirt and leaves and all sorts of things to sift through his hands. He was a dirty little boy by the time we got him back in the car!

The other night we decided to let Drew sit at the table with us in his booster seat. He did awesome! As you can tell, he had a great time eating at the "big person" table with us.

I had to throw another of these pictures in just because Drew's smile was so big and he was doing such a good job of looking at the camera.

In a previous post I showed a video of Drew putting a diaper on his teddy bear. Well, here he is at it again with his teddy bear. Drew tries to put the teddy bear in his chair and finds some of his old shoes for the teddy bear to wear!

He's definitely not an amazing leaper yet, but Drew has learned to jump. At the end of this video he manages to get both feet off the ground. Jump, Drew! Jump!

MSU Homecoming Parade

Last weekend we had a great time going to the Michigan State homecoming parade. We wanted Drew to wear his Spartan shirt (he's going to be a big MSU basketball fan), so we put him in MANY layers of clothes so he'd be warm. Under that Shannon Brown jersey he's wearing two jackets, a long sleeve t-shirt, and a short sleeve shirt. He was not going to get cold!
We went to the parade as well last year. Look at how much smaller Drew was last year!

The MSU Marching Band started off the parade and we got pumped up clapping and singing along to the fight song. A little while later Sparty showed up. Drew didn't know what to make of Sparty; he was part curious and part scared!

This is Zeke the Wonder Dog, who actually was pretty impressive chasing down frisbees. Drew, of course, chimed in with a "doooog," and a "woof, woof!"

We went to the parade with other people (you'll see them in a second), so we got a picture of the three of us. It was fun to display our school spirit as a family!

Here are our friends Jeremy and Kristin. You may remember seeing them from apple picking with us a few weeks ago. They live in East Lansing, so we walked to the parade from their house.

These are two of my friends, Jeremy and Jayme. If you guessed that they are brothers and that they are twins, you'd be right! If I hadn't identified Jeremy in the previous picture, could you tell who was who?

"Firetruck?," "(siren noise)," "beep, beep," "truck," (that's what Drew said)

My favorite part of the parade was holding Drew and talking with him about what we were watching. He didn't say much while in his stroller, but as soon as I picked him up, Drew was chatting away with me about all the cool stuff we were seeing.

Drew not only likes to watch football, but he's also gotten excited about throwing the football. He's got a pretty good arm, but he still can't figure out what arm he wants to throw with. He's often a lefty, but you'll notice that in this picture he just threw right handed.

This is a typical Drew picture. He's on the move and busy doing his thing.

Drew still loves the laundry basket and climbing into it. He's also been more interested in his stuffed animals lately and he'll walk around the house at times showing his teddy bear things.

Speaking of Drew's teddy bear, Jana and I think this video is adorable. The other day Drew grabbed the lid for his Duplo blocks and put it on the ground. Then he got his bear, set it down on its back on the lid, and went for a diaper. He was using the lid as a changing pad and tried to give the teddy bear a clean pants! How cute!

Drew loves diving into stacks of laundry. Usually he does it with unfolded laundry, but you can see how active he is in this video. In this video Drew also wanders around the house and knocks one of his bath toys into the bath. Drew is wearing footed pajamas in this video with a t-shirt over them. The first time this fall that Drew got into those pajamas we woke up in the middle of the night (around 2 a.m.) to Drew screaming. We went into his room and found that Drew had unzipped himself out of his footed pajamas, had taken them most of the way off, and had taken his diaper most of the way off. He peed all over himself without the diaper, so he was a wet, cold boy! We were so amused as we cleaned him up. It was such a sad sight!

messy

This picture goes with the video that I posted earlier of Drew eating pasta (and putting the spoon on his head). You got an idea of how he made the mess from the video, this close-up of his face shows the resulting mess. It took a while to get him cleaned up! We have been working for months with Drew to do "soft touches." Here he is in action practicing his soft touches on our living room plant. It was so amusing to watch him pet the leaves! I was remembering as he did this that the pot for this plant was one of the first things that Drew pulled himself up on. Now the top of the pot is at waist height!

Drew loves to pull the pillows off our couch and then try to stand on them or else to wrestle with them. At other times, he'll pull a pillow down, lie down on it, and say, "night, night!"

After Drew's bath his hair was a little crazy!

Drew found my gloves in the closet, so we had some fun playing with them.

Drew is so into the camera at times that it makes it hard to get a picture! I pulled out the camera to take some video of him and he immediately came over, tried to grab the camera to put it on him, and started saying "cheese!" I've learned to take pictures from a distance and to zoom in :)

In this video Drew is flipping through the pages of one of his books. He is very good at flipping the panels open and this is one of the books that he "reads" to us. He knows the names of the animals, so he'll flip from page to page saying the name of each animal. At the end of this video he gets a little crazy with a couch pillow, lands on his head, and says "ow."

say cheese

We've been working with Drew on smiling for pictures. He used to be a rock star at posing for pictures, but he's gotten so active that when we actually get him to sit still he doesn't smile. In this video I pulled out the camera and he started using his new camera phrase, "Cheese!" He also does some winking for the camera. Jana and I are enjoying Drew's emerging sense of humor. He is pretty good at making us laugh!

Here's another video of Drew showing off for us. He continues to love pasta with marinara sauce. It is very messy!! At the end of this video he expresses his pleasure with a "Mmmmmmm."

I'm hoping to post a bunch of pictures soon, so keep an eye out for those. I apologize for not posting more consistently. I'll try to do better!