I can do it by myself!

Andrew has just become such an independent little guy these last few weeks and wants things to go his way. If not, watch out! He does not want to be confined to anything (this is nothing new) and he wants to walk (not be carried). He also wants nothing to do with holding my hand. He wants his freedom!

In this picture, he begged me to put his boots on, and then when we didn't go outside (we just came in 15 minutes prior), he was not a happy camper!

About to let me have it again for not going outside...

Here he is at the park the other day. He would have spent the night there if I let him. This is me leaving and waving bye to him.

He did walk all the way back to the car, though, which was impressive! The getting in the car part was not so impressive. I thought I was going to have to call Mike at work for a second, because I couldn't get him in his car seat. I wasn't sure what to do. I considered doing a Britney Spears and driving home with him on my lap. Now that he can put his feet on the back of the seat with his new car seat, he even uses the back of the seat to do his back-bend and locks in place. It's all a little comical when I think of somebody walking by watching me try to pin him down with my elbows while getting the straps on him.

He has also been making me laugh this week. We are still working on getting used to his "toothbrush", and he was doing a good job until he started brushing the dog with it.

Nothing like a snack after brushing your teeth and the dog...

He has also been getting off his schedule a bit since he was sick for the first half of the week. I couldn't get him to go to bed the other night, because he was crying and coughing. The second he gets out, he walks to the kitchen, opens up the stove drawer, and takes a pan out and sits in it.

Today I would tell him to "say mama", and he would say, "dada", and burst into laughter throwing his head back. He had me laughing so hard, that we did it all afternoon. When Mike got home, I had him do it for him, and of course he loved it! Andrew just loves his daddy. When Mike got home from golfing this morning, he "golfed" with Andrew in the living room for a while. Andrew is really great at watching somebody do something and then imitating it right away. He was supposed to get his new golf set for Easter, but he saw it when I was cleaning the closet this morning, and of course I could not resist giving it to him!

He has also been into offering people his food lately. I am the only person that will take the food from his grubby little hands into my mouth. :) Here he is offering me a goldfish.

On Wednesday night, we went to go see Tammy's son, Kaden, play basketball. While Andrew did not want me to carry him in or hold his hand, he did a really great job of sitting still for most of the game. Emily and her mom, Kathie, came to the game, too.

Please don't touch me...

Do I look nervous here?

Last night Mike's parents had us over for dinner, and his mom cooked us a delicious dinner. Andrew loves going there to see them and to play with all the toys they have over there for the grand kids. Today Andrew and I hung around the house while Mike went golfing. Andrew ended up getting his first scraped knee (and face). We were blowing bubbles in the driveway, and he was running for one of the bubbles and fell. He went down on his knee and actually rolled after landing, so his face got it too. They were both just bleeding a little bit, but I think my gasp through the neighborhood scared him the most. I don't think we will be doing as much playing in the driveway. It's just the basement well in the backyard makes me so nervous that I want to stay away from that until we get it covered. I have to think of something, because he wants to spend 100% of this time outside. He needs more toys and a safe place to play. I'll get it figured out!

Welcome, Spring...errr, Summer??

OK, so I thought were out of the woods with everybody being sick, but it looks like Andrew and Mike are sick now.  Mike somehow survived the last round where Andrew, Lauren, and I were sick. This new virus is probably coming my way over the next few days, but you never know. I put Andrew down about an hour early tonight, and his temp was 101, so hopefully he is feeling better tomorrow.

I'm not sure what is going on with the weather, but it has been 70's and 80's for the last week. I was not ready for such freakish weather, so Andrew did not have any summer clothes at all, and I barely had anything for him to wear until I bought some some stuff at lunch on Friday. Here is is wearing some boxers that were very tight and a shirt from last year that still fit. You can see he has about 10 different shades of blue on with some dress shoes (his only shoes). Apparently, he is also unhappy with the outfit, as he is going through his hamper for something else to wear.

The other clothes I found that were summer clothes were some ASU clothes my friend, Nicki, sent last year. So cute! He is ready to watch the tournament!

One of the million times he gets his shoes in any given day and brings them to you to put on...

He also wore his dress shoes with his basketball "uniform", because he didn't have anything else to wear.

He did get a chance to wear his spring pajamas, though! I thought I wouldn't be able to break these out until May or so. Here he is wearing his "Monster Hugs" and "Sleepy Monkey" p.j's.

I have been trying to get him to eat different things, and I found an idea online Friday about mixing peas with mac and cheese. So, I get everything prepared, and that little stinker actually separated all of the peas from the noodles and put them in a pile. He then threw a bunch of them on the floor and even Jez wouldn't eat them.

However, I shredded carrots in his grilled cheese yesterday and got away with it, so we are one and one. I will win this battle. :)

I also realized after hanging out in the yard for a few days that he had nothing to play with but the dog's frisbee.

Andrew and I went on a little ToysRUs shopping spree yesterday, and I got him a water table, a lawn mower, and a canopy for his new wagon.

He's a mowing machine! He is also wearing some normal clothing and shoes that I bought on Friday.

This water table was only a hit inside the house. Once I filled it with water outside, he wasn't as interested. He and Mike played with it inside last night for a about 30 minutes. They had a blast.

I even broke out the old pool yesterday, but he wasn't too interested with that, either. His swim trucks still fit, and they are 6-9 months!

 The dog's frisbee is still a pretty big hit...

Here are some silly pics of him eating...

This morning, Mike's mom was nice enough to come over and watch Andrew while Mike went golfing, and I went hiking with my dad and the dogs. It was nice to get outdoors after being cooped up all winter. Now I just hope Mike and Andrew get to feeling better this week!

Sickness, Sickness, please go away!

The subject line pretty much sums up the week! I came down with something earlier in the week, and then Andrew ended up getting it on Thursday. It just seems like it has been constant sickness for the past month, and it's driving me nuts! Mike's birthday was this week, and Andrew was so sick on his birthday that we didn't do much celebrating. We were going to go out today, but didn't want to get anybody else sick that would come over here to watch him. Andrew even missed a birthday party he was invited to on Saturday at Monkey Joe's, because we were not up to par. My friend, Andrea, has a daughter named Bella that is turning four. I was really looking forward to the day. It seems like he was doing much better today, though, and we put together his wagon that has been sitting in the box for a month now!

Once in a while Mike will say something that makes me laugh so hard that I can't catch my breath. When we were trying to get the wagon out of the box to put it together, Mike told Jez she better get out of the way or we were going to put  her in the wagon box and mail her to an orphanage. He said the kids would be so excited when they saw that a a radio flyer had arrived, but would be disappointed when they opened it and saw it was just a stinky dog.

For the last few weeks, I wanted to see if I could ween Andrew off his pacifiers a little bit, but he ended up finding the stash in the cabinet when I opened it to make dinner a few days ago. Jackpot!

Last week he ended up getting a real first haircut (not me trying to cut a chunk off while Mike holds him on his lap). The girl that watches Andrew during the week has a friend that cuts hair, so she was nice enough to come to our home. Yeah. Not a good day for Andrew. We had to pin him down while she did what she could. Big tears were rolling down his face. Can hardly wait for next time. I swear his hair has already grown since she cut it, too. He also used a fork for the first time this week. He did pretty good! Not much food got in his mouth, because he was having so much fun, but it was a good first try!

He has also been doing this head shake thing that cracks us up. I posted a video below of the head shaking in action.

All I can say is that I see warm weather coming this week, and I am SO HAPPY. I didn't know how much more winter I could take. The winters can be so depressing here. It's also frustrating to see my Arizona friends doing all sorts of outdoor things on facebook during the weekends. Finally, that will be us! Nobody loves going outside more than Andrew!

Ball Throwing and Dizzy Dancing

As promised, here are some videos of him throwing the ball and then later doing some "dancing". While he used to bounce his knees when he heard a song he liked, he has now started spinning for some reason. You can really see this fabulous spinning at about 30 seconds in in the second video.

A Beautiful Blanket of Snow

 Late Friday afternoon, I took Jez out to the park to see if I could get some good shots after the snowfall we had here Thursday night. She also really needed some good Jezzie and Mommy time, as she has not gotten a lot of attention these past few weeks. It turned out to be colder than I thought with the wind, so I let Jez run for about 10 minutes, and then drove through the park. The scenery was STUNNING.  The woods looked so beautiful, and the photos will never compare to what it looked like in person; however, I put some of my favorite shots below. You can see in the first shot below that the snow is so heavy on the trees that it actually brushed the top of my car as I drove through. I wanted to get out of the car to get some really good shots, but the wind was blowing so hard, and there was not really a good place to park in the areas that were the most beautiful.