battles

As promised, here is a video of Drew not at his best. We've been working the past couple weeks on Drew saying "please." A phrase that he picked up at daycare to protect his right to play with a toy is "mine." In this way, the kids can't grab a toy from someone playing with it because the child playing with it says "mine" (instead of hitting or throwing a fit). Drew picked up that word pretty quickly, but now he has been trying to use it to get his way in other areas. For example, if he sees something on my plate while we're eating dinner and he wants it, he will say "mine" and point to it. Not good!

During one battle of wills (Drew finished his food and was trying to get more by using "mine") we took this video of Drew's extreme displeasure at our lack of response to him saying "mine." He's starting to get better now because we never respond when he says "mine" and we almost give him whatever he wants if he says "please." The amusing thing to us is that Drew knows how to say "please," but he just refuses to do it at times like we captured in this video. In this particular experience we battled him for over 30 minutes and finally supper was over and he didn't get anything more until his snack before bed. Notice that at one point Drew even tried a fake cough as a ploy to get his way. He's so wily!

On a much cuter note, Drew cuddled into Jana the other night to play with his car. You can hear him making "beeeeep, beeeeep" noises like a car horn as he pushes the car around. At the very beginning of the video he's making one of his car noises, which is supposed to sound like a car engine. Luckily, we usually have more of these Drew moments than the ones where we are battling him!

lawn mower

Jana and I have been so busy lately that we haven't had the chance to take a lot of pictures of Drew. He's still doing really well and he's just as cute as ever (at least to us :) but we've been enjoying him face-to-face, rather than from behind the camera.

One thing we've been having fun doing with Drew is continuing to work on wearing hats. We want to keep his skin baby white this summer, and with his lack of hair we are continuing to emphasize a hat. I don't know if this hat is one that he'll wear to the beach, but it does provide quite a bit of shade! Drew has had these "Spartan" beads for a while, and Jana and I get a kick out of his playing with them. He grabbed his beads the other day and started putting them into a small tupperware. We were fascinated watching Drew figure out how to get the beads into the small opening and get them to stay in there. He spent several minutes pulling the beads out and putting them back in.

This past week I mowed the lawn, and Jana brought Drew outside too with his lawn mower. We were both paying rapt attention to Drew because as I finished a row and turned around, Drew was watching me carefully, and he would do the same thing! He'd push his mower along the driveway, and when he saw me turn, he would head the other way down the driveway. Both Jana and I loved it!!

I turned the mower off and went on the driveway with Drew. You can see him watching what I'm doing. As soon as I started pushing the lawnmower, he moved his forward too. I had to make sure to stand still so that Drew would do it too!

Drew loves to play on our deck. He's gotten quite adept at going up and down the stairs. We LOVE watching him go down the stairs because he plops down onto all fours about 5 feet away from the stairs and then crawls backward until he reaches the steps. Jana worked really hard with Drew on "tummy, feet" for his going down things (off the couch, down stairs, etc.) and we use it to remind him to go on his stomach and to lead with his feet.

I'll have some videos coming soon, so keep posted. One of them illustrates that Drew is not always perfectly behaved and that he's definitely got some misbehaving in him that we're working to correct!

graduation

We've had a lot going on over the past few days, and I've finally found some time to sit down and update Drew's blog to address everything. I'll start with some pictures of Drew and the container for his Duplo blocks. He loves this container. Drew dumps all the blocks on the floor (making quite a mess) and then proceeds to play with the container. Here he is in the kitchen dragging it around. He also loves to put the container over his head and bang on it! It echoes in there and Drew is fascinated by it. He's actually walked into things with this on his head. It cracks us up!!

Sometimes he just sits on his container and smiles innocently at us.

Drew likes to pick up toy people and even his cup and say "Hello? Hello? Hello?" It never fails to amuse!

I have way too much fun putting my hats on Drew!

Last week Jana had a meeting really early in the morning, so we couldn't get Drew to daycare that morning and I got to stay home with him. It was tough to have to spend the morning playing with Drew, but I somehow managed it!

Here's another way to enjoy the Duplo container . . . Getting in it!You might think that I put Drew in there, but you'd be wrong. Check out this video of Drew getting in and out of his container:

We love it when Drew gets in the container, and then tries to put the lid on!

Last week we took Drew to the park. It was so much fun to watch him crawl all over the toys and go on the swing. In the picture below he's making his way up the climbing wall. The climbing wall made us feel old because we remembered when playground equipment was wood, metal, and dangerous. Now its all educational and safe with lots of plastic.

Drew climbed right up to the top of the climbing wall under Jana's watchful eye.

He also walked across a bridge.

Drew also went on the slide. He went down it several times with us holding his hand, and then he stopped to check it out from the ground.

Last Friday afternoon Jana graduated! Hooray! She was officially hooded, her degree is complete, and she is Jana L. Aupperlee, Ph.D.

Drew and I are both very proud of Jana!

Jana's family came to celebrate with us.

My family also came to support Jana. I think both families also came to spend a little time with Drew too!!
I graduated as well on Friday, but I'm not officially done yet. I still have to finish and defend my dissertation. For now, we are Dr. and Mr. Aupperlee (as Jana LOVES to remind me :) I'll be finishing up in another month or two.

Drew continues to climb on anything he can. This week he managed to wriggle himself on top of a laundry basket (probably over two feet tall!), and was just about to stand on it when Jana caught him. He likes to push his Duplo container over to his toy chest so that he can reach in and get toys. We're just waiting for him to use his Duplo container to start getting on to furniture. We keep a very close eye on him!

We've been inconsistently working on brushing Drew's teeth. He loves doing it, but sometimes we forget to let him brush. Last night I started brushing my teeth, and Drew wanted to join me!

fun with the voice

I mentioned in my post last night that Drew really likes to climb up on things. This first video shows him playing with his Duplo blocks, then trying to get the lid on the container for them, and finally climbing up on top of the container. We always need to keep an eye on Drew because he really does climb up on EVERYTHING!

Drew has been continuing to explore the sounds he can make with his voice. There's not much to see in this next video, but Drew makes some WEIRD noises, and they are actually all happy noises. He's just playing around with his voice!

Drew cracks up if we shake our head back and forth while making a noise, and just recently he started trying to imitate that. At the beginning of this video he is imitating Jana, who is in the background and just made him laugh by doing that. Jana also makes Drew laugh by pushing her nose up and making a pig noise. Drew decided that he wanted to try to do that one as well, so after shaking his head for a little bit, you'll see him try making his "pig" noise (it's not very good yet) and attempt to push his nose up (he doesn't do that very well yet either). Anyhow, at least you have an explanation for why Drew is shaking his head in this video and then why he's got his finger by his nose. You'll notice that at the end of the video Drew finds a stray piece of food and decides, "Enough playing, let's get back to eating!!"

the climber

Finally, another blog post! I apologize for it being so long between posts. I've been doing pretty well with giving regular updates, but the past week or so has been really busy! I miss writing about Drew and putting pictures on here of him, so I'm happy that I am able to post again this week.

You might have noticed it in previous pictures, but this is Drew's toy chest in our living room. It's really nice because it's lightweight, so Drew can lift the lid and not pinch fingers, and it also fits in well with the rest of our room, so when all Drew's toys are in the chest it looks like only adults live in our house! :)We're starting to work more with Drew on using a utensil to eat. Drew will occassionally put the spoon in his mouth, but not always with any food on it!

Drew is starting to ham it up for the camera every once in a while. It's so cool how his personality is emerging and how sometimes he likes to be silly. You can tell he's giving me a funny smile in this picture.

Other times though, he gives me a real smile. In this picture I think you can almost see the twinkle in Drew's eyes. More and more Drew is becoming a little boy. He's not a baby anymore!

Ha! This is Drew's new favorite thing to do: climb on stuff! If there is anything on the ground, he will try to climb on it. Do you remember him putting his foot up on his walker in the last post? Well, now he gets both feet up on things! This is him on our computer case. He looks very pleased with himself, doesn't he?

Drew loves to play intently, and often he won't even notice what is going on around him. I can't imagine where he gets that intensity from! :) He can be silly and fun, but also very serious and intent.

He's at it again . . . this time he climbed up on a box! He worked so hard to get his whole body balanced on top of the box. Notice how his tongue is sticking out. Any box is one of his favorite things now because they are great to climb on.

That includes the box to Drew's Duplo, which is also good for climbing. In this picture he's working on getting the lid on, so he can climb up on the box.

The other night Jana was having fun folding laundry with Drew (you'll notice that we do that a lot with him), and Drew was having a great time with laundry basket (even though it is too tall for him to climb up on).

Woah, that is one dirty boy! After this meal Drew had sauce EVERYWHERE: it was in between every finger, on his arms, on his elbows, on his ears, on his face, in his eyebrows, on his eyelid, on the back of his neck, and in his hair. Guess who got a bath after dinner? :) By the way, one of Drew's favorite foods right now is . . . sauce. This was marinara sauce, which he will literally dip his fingers into and eat right from a pool of it on his tray.

Keep posted for some videos of Drew. I'm waiting for them to be processed by Google, so that I can put them on the blog.