Nate went to "school" today and was, as usual, having such a good time that he didn't want to come home. Today they were playing in this big tub of rice with shovels and funnels. This is Nate's idea of heaven. I tried telling him it was snowing outside (well, it was flurrying when I left the house, so a half-truth), that we would go home and play with trains, etc., but he still cried when I pulled him away from the rice. Miss Leslie told him he could play with it next week, and he kept repeating, "Next week. Next week. Next week." That seemed to make him feel better. When we got out to the car, he sat in the back jabbering away. "School fun! ... Play with rice ... spoon, shovel ... Next week ... Play with rice ... School fun!" He cracked me up!

When we got home, I asked Nate if he wanted to check the mail with me, and he was very excited. I made him hold only one of my hands, which he doesn't really like to do, but it helps if I say "Chugga chugga, chugga chugga, choo choo!" I think it gives him rhythm or something. :) We went to get the mail then came back up to the car (this took several minutes) and Nate said, "We did it!"

A couple new things Nate is saying ... He continues to experiment with putting words together, so now just instead of asking for help, he asks, "Help you?" Um, he has his pronouns a little mixed up, but it's pretty funny.

And with some prompting, his latest saying is "Big Brudder!" :) For those who don't know, Nate will be a big brother next August! Yay! Here's a bad picture of his little brother or sister. Before we knew Nate was a boy and had picked out a name for him, we called him Cletus. So we had to come up with a good name for this baby too. Introducing ... Buster. We saw a little heartbeat last week. :)