Father's Day

On Saturday afternoon, I went to go see Tammy's daughter's dance recital, which was really fun, because it was the same dance school that we all went to as kids. The same owner was still running the show, and she is probably in her 80's! After the recital, I met Mike and Andrew at his parents' house for a Father's Day cook out. It was delicious!

On Sunday, I was excited for Mike to receive his present that I had been working on with Andrew. I had Andrew paint a frame and then put on dad stickers that I bought at Michael's. We also found the perfect card for him. I crack up every time I look at these pics, because Andrew makes the funniest faces now when you ask him to smile. 

 

Mike was craving Mexican food from one of his favorites spots in Woodstock, so we drove out there for a little while. We looked at houses again, but the frustration is starting to seep in because of the cost of living there. I guess there is one benefit to living in one of the worst cities in America! Ha! Andrew was not feeling the car ride this time and started to get a little loud. We had to find a park on the Garmin so he could get out and move, which made us late getting back to meet my dad and Myrna. 

Dad and Myrna brought Andrew a really cool balloon rocket kit and an Etch a Sketch. 

We all went out for Italian food for dinner and then came back to launch some rockets in the yard. 

Andrew also showed off his baseball skills to dad and Myrna. He has been playing a lot with his new tee ball set. Here are a few pics from the past month. 

And 2  videos:

Puddle spashing, a virus, and other updates!

The weekend after Memorial Day, I participated in the neighborhood garage sale again. It was a little stressful bringing up everything to sell from the basement and price it, but it just felt SO GOOD to get all of that stuff out of the house! The sale days were Friday and Saturday, with Friday being pretty successful. I took off Thursday, Friday, and Monday from work, so I could get ready for the sale and then clean it all up. On Monday, I cleaned the entire garage and basement and made a trip to goodwill. On Saturday, I ended up closing down early because we were slow, and Andrew came with me to a few sales that were still going on. We found some fun things, including ANOTHER soccer ball, a book, and some sorting bears. The bears seemed like a good idea at the time, so he could practice his colors, but they are pretty much taking over the house (all 100 of them):

Saturday afternoon, a thunderstorm rolled in, and Andrew was able to get some good use out of his dino rain boots.

 

Since I had already taken 3 days off of work, it was no surprise when Andrew got sick on Monday night. I noticed when we were getting ready for bed that he felt really warm. His temp was 103.2, so I gave him some Tylenol. In the morning, it was still over 103, so we took him to the doctor. Even though his only symptom was a fever, he said it was virus. Things got really scary on Tuesday night when his temp got to 104.5. I gave him more Tylenol and went to sleep with him in the guest bed. I woke up at 1 AM, because he was shaking next to me. His temp was now 105.5. I went into panic mode and ran to wake Mike up. We gave him more Tylenol, and I sat by his side for 40 minutes until it went down. It didn't get under 103 until Thursday, so we took turns taking off work. It was a very scary 3 days!

Thursday I knew he was feeling better when he wanted to wear his glasses.

Lately, Andrew has really been into his "babies", as he calls them. These are all his stuffed animals, plus some beanie babies that my mom had from a long time ago. He knows all of the beanie babies' names, and sleeps with over 20 stuffed animals every night. The other night, he was almost asleep, but opens his eyes and says, "Where's Wrinkles, Mama?" I was too tired to get up, so I had him go find Wrinkles in the living room. Over 20 animals is just not enough, and he actually realizes when one of them is missing!

Last week, Andrew told me he loved me for the first time and I cried. :) We were singing songs in bed, and he stopped singing to say, "I love you, Mama." He said again last night out of the blue, so I am on cloud nine. :) 

Last weekend we took Andrew out Mike's parents' boat, as he seemed to be feeling much better. He loves being out on the water!

Holding "Ralphie"

A few other shots from the last week or two:

Pushing Clifford around the yard

He has really been into eating bananas and asking me to take his picture in this box.

 

Watching a thunderstorm from the garage

One last thing that has affected us quite a bit for the past couple of weeks is some changes at Andrew's daycare. His daycare provider's husband has 3 sons from a previous marriage and they come to visit once in a while. Since they live out of state, they have only been here 2 or 3 times for a week since he started there last August. Well, they are here visiting again, but they are staying for 9 weeks because of the summer. So, instead of there being just 5 kids (including Andrew), there are these 3 older boys in addition to her 7 year old son that lives with them. The kids are great, but it is just way more noise and chaos than Andrew is used to. He is pretty shy and prefers things to be pretty quite. He also has a tough time with change. Since they arrived, I have had trouble getting him to her house in the mornings, and we really had some issues with his tantrums the first week or two. Things seemed to have improved the past week or so as he is trying to adjust, but it has been really stressful on me, as I want him to be happy during the day. :(

Memorial Day

Memorial Day was pretty low key this year, as it was cold and rainy most of the weekend. We even had the heat on one day! Friday evening was probably the nicest part of the whole weekend. Here is Andrew showing off his awesome soccer skills...

He has also been really into coins lately. He has this little piggy bank that he likes to put the coins in. He has been doing a great job counting and is now counting up to 15. Here he is counting to ten (he already enjoys counting his money).

Saturday morning, we met my dad and Myrna for breakfast. On Sunday, we went to the Summerfield zoo. We had a hard time pulling Andrew away from the reindeer (he kept asking for Santa), but his favorite part was probably the monkeys. 

Here he is at Mike's parents' house. He had such a fun time playing hide and seek with his cousins.

With his best buddy, Jez:

He has also been saying a lot of funny things lately. It seems that he may be getting the last of his 4 teeth, because he has been biting his hands and saying his teeth hurt. I went ahead and put some baby orajel on his teeth one night to see if it would help. A few minutes later, I asked how his teeth felt, and he said, "I feel good. I feel good. I feel REAL good!" I guess it helped! 

When we were at the park over Memorial Day, this guy kept telling his son to sit in time out, but he wouldn't go. Andrew screams out, "SIT DOWN!!" I was just mildly embarrassed. 

Then the other night, I told him that we could think about having his birthday party at Monkey Joe's this year, because he always talking about going there to bounce. When I asked him who he wanted to invite, he said gaga (grandma) and ho-ho (Santa). These types of responses just throw me off. So funny!

Mother's Day Weekend

The Saturday before Mother's Day, we went to a birthday party in the suburbs for Carissa's daughters, Lucy and Sienna. We were in the car for almost 2 hours on the way there, which was the longest Andrew had ever been in the car, and he did GREAT! We left at nap time, and he slept for the first 1.5 hours. 

 

On Mother's Day, we went to Monroe, WI for lunch with Mike's parents. Andrew planted this cute flower at daycare, which I absolutely love, of course! 

The following weekend, he had a blast going to his cousins' soccer games. We all just got a little bit sun-burned. I missed a small area under both of Andrew's eyes, because I was afraid to get sunblock in his eyes. Poor guy! I know he will be so excited when he starts soccer again this next month. 

He has also been doing a better job of brushing his teeth since I brought this stool out (it's really his little toilet).