Photo shoot!

In honor of the advent of Spring, we headed out this past weekend to Lakeview cemetery, for what seems to be turning into an annual tradition of photographing our stunningly beautiful son among the spring greenery. It was a perfectly bright day, if crazy-warm for April... The photo shoot started out a bit rough as Jack was practicing his running on the road-- and fell, giving himself his very first skinned knee. Mommy was rather more upset by it than he was-- a few good shrieks then he was off and running again.

Here are some of my favorite shots...

Well, it's taken a while but here are pictures from our trip to upstate NY a week ago. We dashed off for a quick 3 day trip, my last weekend of spring break. Spring was just beginning to arrive in Aurora and we had a love day on Saturday, being outside as much as possible. We got to spend time with Stephanie, Bob and Alex (who enjoyed being the 'big kid' for a change, and was great with Jack!) and with Amy and Nola. Jack was a good boy, even sleeping pretty well....

(Above) Jack enjoying the "spinner" at the fabulous new playground at Long Point. We thoroughly enjoyed his post-spinner, "drunk baby" impression when he got off!

(Below) Jack and daddy really getting into swinging, in Lulu's yard. Jack was not at all interested in going on the swing with mommy. Turns out, daddy swings higher...



Here are Jack and Lulu, playing with the "bag of balls" in the front yard.


Three generations of Morehouses, searching for lucky stones at Long Point.





Practicing his kicking skills...



And his throwing skills....

Daddy hugs!



More time at the beach... he is ready for summer! kept trying to sneak into the water...

BMW Enthusiast

The very latest news flash (which should please Jack's dad very much) is that Jack has quite the eye for the mid-eighties BMW 3-series. Today as we were walking home from Coventry (following, I must note, a simply idyllic trip to Turtle Park and Chipotle), Jack pointed across the street and stated, "Car. Dada. cars." (trademark Jack: he puts the "s" on the wrong word, without fail...). I looked where he was pointing and lo and behold, there was a 325i, in white, approximately the same vintage as Nat's! ha!

His proud labeling of the care brings me to his other new development: the two word sentence. Or, rather. The. two. singleword. sentence. The way he talks is just so cute, each word set apart and said with the utmost deliberation. Today he talked with me about a robin:

Jack: wadat? (pointing to a robin)
Me: Oh! It's a robin.
Jack: uh-Huh! Roh. Cheep. cheep!
Me: Cheep! Yes, bird says cheep!
Jack: Up! Up.
Me: (clearly not getting it) What is up?
Jack: Up cheep. Cheep up!

Me: oh, yes. The bird does go up. That's righ.
Jack: up tee! Up. cheep. tee.

Yep, we had a good 2 minute conversation about a bird going up into a tree. I love it.

Tales of a boy and his dog

Jack's been very much his usual self today-- that is, opinionated, chatty, busy, and utterly adorable. We've had a lovely day, complemented by the perfect spring weather-- a blue sky-60 degrees sort of day where the trees are almost ready to bud...

This evening we spent a relaxing half hour in the backyard.

First he spent some time re-landscaping the garden border, carefully turning over each rock.






Then, he began the daily tradition of finding sticks, carrying them around the yard, brandishing the, taunting the dog, and of course, stealing sticks from her...


"I think I am close enough to steal this...



...almost got it.."



Cor races in and grabs it..


...and here is Jack racing after her, yelling in indignation that the dog would dare to take her own stick!



And then he really made us laugh: earlier today I trimmed Corydon's feet (well, not really her feet, rather the hair on her feet...) out in the yard, leaving piles of hair there for the birds to find... Jack found them first. He was very interested in this hair, thinking at first it was trash ("uck!') but seeming satisfied with my explanation that it was just Cor's hair.

Then, he picked up a big clump of hair....


..carried it over to Corydon...


...and very carefully placed it on her back...:)



He repeated this process for quite some time, dotting Cor's back with little pieces of her own fur. He was a bit dismayed when she stood up and the hair fell off, but, not to be deterred, he resumed his project a few minutes later when she laid down again.

Every day he amazes (and amuses!) us with the things he thinks of! He's becoming such an independent thinker, and so creative. Just about anything can be turned into a choo-choo, it turns out! Speaking of choo-choo's-- he can now independently use the toddler flashcards app on my iPod, to look at pictures of choo's. He can also identify the letters T, S, and O on a computer keyboard, and astounds me with how many different shapes, animals, and objects he can name in his books. He is able to ask for the books he wants by name or by subject matter. Oh, and this morning he ate some kiwi. What a kid! ;)

Happy Easter!

For your viewing pleasure, here is a video of Jack enjoying his first chocolate Easter bunny. We had put the chocolate bunny in his basket because, well, every little boy needs a chocolate bunny in his Easter basket. We didn't really expect him to a) know what it was or b) be able to open it. We were mistaken:

Love

That's one of Jack's new words! :) He doesn't really say "I love you" but he will say the word love when we ask. And it is the cutest, sweetest sounding word in the whole universe. I swear. Here are some other cute-isms he says right now:
Hello -- sounds like Heh --wo!-- with a lilting little inflection, always said with a smile.
Open-- sounds like Oat. It's one of a collection of words that he ends with a "t". Such as dap-dapt, his word for diaper. He likes to put dap-dapts on his stuffed animals now. This evening he also spent a long time saying "oat. close." over and over.
Three-- he can now count to three-- move over "two"! If we point to object and say "one, two..." he'll supply "three!"

potty time!

Well, now that Jack is 19 months old, we decided we'd better follow doctor's orders and get a potty into the house. I don't think he's actually quite ready to train yet, but he has indicated to us that he's wet or dirty a few times in the past week, and he's gotten very interested in talking about poop (which sounds more like "pope" when he says it). He talks about dog pope, says pope when he looks at the toilet-- and he knew right away where the pope would go in his new potty.

He LOVES his new potty. He has spent a good amount of time in the past two days carrying it around the house. He likes to sit on it (complete with a nice "ah!" sound effect!) but has to push the potty around a bit so it's in exactly the right spot, first.

It's very cute to have the potty in the house and to see him so excited. This does not, however, change the fact that I'm not looking forward to the potty training process, or that I have no idea where to start with it.... oh well. For now he's just getting used to having the potty around, we figure. We'll just try to follow his lead from there.

Shapes...

So, I've officially lost count of Jack's new words. I simply can't keep up with the onslaught of new language. He's been stringing two words together recently: Big truck, notebook, stick eat (talking about Corydon chewing a stick), water dump. He's become so much more clear in his communication in just the past few days. It's phenomenal. So is his knowledge of shapes... I think instead of a "new word count" I'll have to start keeping track of "new things Jack knows." This evening as we were reading the perennial favorite, Bow -wow, Jack just blew me away with how many shapes he could talk about. As we read the book, he confidently named the star, moon, and heart, and repeated, clear as day, the word "arrow" after me. Then, on the last page, which has a grid of all the shapes shown in the book, he wanted me to name all the shapes. After we did that, I asked him to find various shapes. He identified every single one! And named the heart, star, oval, arrow, and square while he was at it. Every day he is surprising me with all the things he knows. All the things we haven't really even taught him. He's just soaking it all up. One cute, funny, blue eyed, chatty little learning sponge.