Summer Lovin'

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Guess who slept through the night for the first time ever!

Sent from my Droid Charge on Verizon 4GLTE

My Andrew

I have said before that it is impossible to put into words the love I have for Andrew, or for any of my three boys for that matter.  Since I did  Joey's six month post earlier today, I wanted to do a post for Andrew.  I love everything about this little boy--his laugh, his smell, his fascination with smoke detectors, the way he puts his hands together to pray before each meal, the way he blows me a kiss when I am driving if he sees me looking at him through the rear view mirror, the way he cannot control himself when Mickey's Hotdog song comes on, and the list could continue forever.  He is growing up so fast and developing such a personality. 

He is picking up words left and right.  I know that I will forget some, but here is a list off the top of my head.  I will not list animal sounds since I did that in the zoo post.

• Mama
• Dada
• Bubba
• eat eat...and then puts himself in his booster
• blue
• purple
• red
• ball
• boo boo and ow
• out
• cat
• Paw Paw
• bump bump...when we are driving and hit a bump
• Tootles...from Mickey Mouse
• No No (with a finger shake, too:)
• milk
• teeth
• toe
• shoe
• cheese...when I am taking a picture
• turtle
• whoa...when Joey was still shaky on sitting up and would topple over
• bubbles
• uh-oh
• night-night
• bear
• bird

He can also point to almost every body part when asked. 

He still absolutely LOVES books.  Reading is by far his favorite thing to do.  He loves to crawl up in our laps with a book.  He likes to hear the same stories over, and over, and OVER again.  I can basically recite them all without even looking at the pages.

 I think one of my favorite things about Andrew is how particular he is about everything.  I can imagine that his dad was the same as a little boy.  I could never capture all of the little "Andrewisms," but here are a few.  He has three puzzles.  He will not work on just one puzzle at a time. He must do all three.   The puzzles must be in a perfect line.

 He likes to play with shoes.  He puts them perfectly in lines.  Here are some of Joey's shoes that he lined up for him in the foyer the other day.  I think it is pretty impressive that he has them with their matching shoe, all facing the correct way, etc.  Joey came home that evening and just smiled when he saw it.

 He keeps all like objects together.  For example, if he puts one ball in the recliner, there is no way that it will stay there alone.  He will go and get all of his balls and add it to the stack.

 Finally, he likes to park his cars in the straight line on top of the trashcan.

Birmingham Zoo

Joey was off for Memorial Day, everyone was finally healthy, and we wanted to find something fun to do.  We decided to go to the zoo because Andrew really loves reading about animals in books.  When reading books, he will:

• Say "woof woof" for a dog
• Roar and act like his hands are claws for both lions and tigers
• Pretend that he is smacking leaves with his mouth for giraffes
• Say "baa" for sheep
• Say "moo" for cows
• Say "cat" for cats
• Do his hands in the motion for "Roll Tide" for elephants, but he does not say anything
• Shake his head and say "neigh" for horses.
• Say "sssss" for snakes.

As we were driving to the zoo, I was hoping that he would not be scared of the animals and that he would be able to make the connection between what he had read in books and real life.  Both of these things happened, and he LOVED the zoo.  It was such an awesome day.  Here are some pictures.  Please excuse my boys' hair.  I think that they have an entire bottle of sunscreen on, including all through their hair.



 Notice his fist...he is doing "Roll Tide" at the elephant!

 Smacking his leaves with his mouth:

 Attempt and failure at getting a good picture of my boys:

 The lions were by far his favorite. He would run up to the glass, roar at them, and act like his hands were paws.  There were benches to watch them, so we took a juice break and let him enjoy them.

 Cooling off under the elephant that sprayed water out of his trunk:

 Andrew walked some, rode in the stroller some, and wanted to be carried a lot.  I asked Joey if he wanted me to take a turn carrying him, and his response was classic Joey and shows what kind of a dad he is.  He looked at me and said, "Emily, I will carry my buddy anywhere he wants for as long as he wants."  He rarely calls Andrew by name.  It is always "My Buddy" or "Sweetheart."

 I love this picture because Andrew has started saying "Cheese" for the camera.  It is really cute, but this is what his mouth looks like when he does it.

 Here we are taking another break.  Andrew was watching the giant splashpad filled with children while he drank his water.  I did not know that there was a splashpad, so we were totally unprepared.  I did not have a swimsuit, swim diaper, etc.  I told Joey that we would do a better job next time so that he could play.  Then, we decided just to let him go for it.  We took off his shirt (because we did not have a towel, so we wanted to save it to dry him off),  and his shoes, and in he went.  All of the other children were in their swim clothes, while our buddy was in a saggy, wet diaper.  He had a blast, so who cares?

 I do always have a change of clothes with me, so we dried him off and continued looking at the animals. Here is Andrew saying "baa" to the sheep.

 Joey was such a good boy.  I carried him a lot, and we took breaks to let him stretch.  He took a long nap in his stroller, and just went with the flow!

Mothers' Day and Joey's Dedication

I had a wonderful second Mothers' Day.  When I woke up that morning, Andrew brought me a card and wrapped present.  Both boys also made me presents at school.  Here is what Andrew made me.

 Here is what Joey made me.

 We also dedicated Joey to the Lord at church that Sunday. 

 Steve and Olivia both preach on Sundays, and Amelia was being dedicated in Birmingham at the same time.  The rest of the family was able to celebrate with us. 

 After the service, we had a lunch to celebrate Joey's dedication at our house.

 Andrew gave his grandmommy her Mothers' Day present.

It was a great day, and we were so very proud of our Joey!