Church, part 2

I was talking with Nate about what he did at church this morning, and it went like this:

Me: What did you do at church this morning? Did you read a story?
Nate: Uh!
Me: Did you color a picture?
Nate: Uh!
Me: Did you ... blow bubbles?!
Nate (lighting up): Pop! Pop! Pop 'em!
Me: Did you have a snack?
Nate: Yeah! Mmm, cookies!
Me: Did you .... play with blocks?
Nate (rubbing his head): It's okay. It's okay.

Ha! I laughed so hard that he started laughing too!

Church

We had a lazy morning and waited until the last minute to start getting ready for church. But as soon as we mentioned it, Nate was ready! Go to church! Go to church! Blake was bringing him upstairs to get ready, and I heard Nate say, "Come on! Let's go to church!"

After the service, Blake and I went to go pick Nate up from "Wing F" and while Blake was waiting in line, I walked around the halls until I found a window where I could see into Nate's room. Apparently it's a mirror inside the room, so he couldn't see me. He and another little boy were playing with a box with leggos in it, and Nate picked up the box and poured all the leggos over his own head! It must have hurt or at least scared him, because he started bawling. There were about 3 nursery workers in there, and they missed the split second when it happened, so all of them rushed over to him to see if he was okay and ask what happened, and one picked him up to hug him. They were so attentive and tried everything to get him to stop crying. Finally, one of them found a Thomas the Train engine, and the tears dried up quick! Then they immediately had to take it away because Blake was there to pick him up, and he started bawling again. It was way past naptime! They said he was happy the whole time until just at the end. But I was so glad to get that little glimpse into his room to see that the staff really is wonderful with the kids! I think I'll be checking out that window more often from now on to see him playing with the other kids.

He's already correcting me.

Conversations from last night:

Nate: Mama?
Me: Yes?
Nate: Yes, PWEASE.

Okay, he's two! He shouldn't be correcting me yet!


Nate: Go night night.
Me: Oh, do you want to go night night?
Nate: No, train.
Me: Hmm, okay.
Nate (pretending to go to bed): Night night, Nate. (stroking his hair like I do) Love you.

Awwwww!

Conversations from today:

This morning we were looking at a picture book, and I showed him a picture of a baby crying. Nate started petting the picture and said, "It's okay! It's okay, baby." How sweet is that!

And just a few minutes ago, his tractor ran into a chair. Nate said, "It's okay, tractor. It's okay!" He's so reassuring these days!

It's Okay. I got this.

Every morning, Blake goes into Nate's room to get him out of his crib, and he makes Nate stand up in the crib before he gets him. Just about every morning I hear Nate on the monitor saying, "Oh, I stuck!" and Blake tells him it's okay and he gets un-stuck. This morning Nate slept in and I went to get him out of his crib as Blake was leaving for work. I said, "Stand up!" He rolled over, got stuck on his arm, and just as I was expecting him to say he was stuck, he put his hand up and said, "It's okay, it's okay!" and then stood up. Hahaha.

He had hippotherapy this afternoon, and first of all, I was amazed at Nate maneuvering his walker. He's been using it since September, but he still always needed help turning it--the wheels don't swivel, so he actually has to lift it up a little and turn it. I've seen him do it a few times when he REALLY wants to get somewhere, but for the most part, he walks straight as long as he can, and then I turn him before he runs into a wall or person or street. However, this week I've been making him walk in his gait trainer around the house, and it does have swivel wheels (it's just really heavy and doesn't collapse, so we don't take it anywhere), so I guess he got used to turning on his own. So today at hippo, Nate was slinging that walker around every which way. He also walked quite a ways backwards for no real reason. Very impressive.

Anyway, during the OT portion of hippotherapy, they were having him blow on a few different whistles. One was shaped like a boat, and wouldn't you know it, sounded just like a train. So he didn't want to put it down and started naming all his trains for Miss Katie. "Thomas, Percy, James ..." I thought, Oh lord, I can't get away from it! :)

Why do I take him to the mall?

Nate hadn't been out of the house for a couple days, and I had a few returns to make, so we headed to the mall(s) this evening. We first went to Macy's to return a maternity sweater that had a hole in it, and after getting Nate out of the car and set up in his stroller and walking over every square inch of Macy's, an employee told me they don't even have a maternity department. Grr. I also had returns to make at JCPenney, but of course that's at a different mall! I loaded Nate back up, then unloaded him again at Penney's, took the elevator to the right floor, and found what I was looking for. That's when Nate decided he wanted to walk. So I got the walker out and he took off! He had a great time running, then slowing down to look at the shiny jewelry, then running some more, then telling me "This way!" over and over until I would follow him.

Then he saw the escalator. Apparently, Nate has never noticed escalators before. Probably because we always use elevators with the stroller and all. He stood there just staring at it with this awe-struck smile on his face. We talked about what it was for a little while, and Nate was attracting a small crowd with his cuteness. A woman came down the escalator, and when she got to the bottom, Nate cheered for her: "Yay!!!" I told her, "Good job!" :) After standing there for several minutes, I told Nate it was time to go find a shirt for Daddy and pushed him in the right direction several feet. He then said, "Back up" and started walking backwards in his walker until he got back to the escalator! I would have liked to take him on it, but it was just impossible with the stroller and the walker and our bags. Next time Blake is with us at the mall, I'm sure riding the escalators will occupy a lot of time.

Anyway, then he whined a lot and wanted to leave while I was finishing my shopping. Somehow when I was putting him in the stroller I just laid my purse down in the floor and left it there, and didn't notice until I was checking out. Fortunately, an employee had just found it when I got back to it, and we had to get to the back of the line to check out again. Oh, it was just loads of fun. I don't know why I try to take Nate along when I have actual shopping to do. I need to either leave him with Blake to go shop, or just take Nate to the mall to let him run around and ride escalators.

Oops, sorry!

This morning while I was giving Nate a bath, I accidentally knocked over his bathtub Dora castle. Nate says, "Castle! Sorry!" and picked it back up. :) Then later in the morning, he knocked over his milk and said to his cup, "Oops, sorry!" He is way more polite to his things than he is to most people!

The physical therapist came this morning. This is the second week that Nate has pretty much refused to do anything and cried most of the session. I think his allergies are making him feel bad, and the PT prompted me to remember that I had changed his medication from claritin to alavert because it was cheaper and supposedly the same thing, but now that I think about it, I don't think it's working. So back to the claritin we go, and hopefully that will fix this allergy issue.

Most of the time I'm a pretty tough mom about PT. Even when he's whining and refusing to do anything, we push right through. PT is time to work. But when he feels bad, that's so hard. We had to take a break to hug for a little bit. :( But I'm glad the PT pushes him. Nate never complained so much about PT before we got this latest person. Part of it may be his age, but I think most of it is that she really pushes him. She has been so great for Nate.

Speaking of pushing him, our homework for this week is a toughie: No more crawling! :0 Say what? When we are out, he pretty much always walks except for long distances. But at home, his walker is kind of bulky and not easy to maneuver. But the PT wants us to make him either use his walker or walk holding onto one hand at all times. As daunting as this sounds, I do think it's exactly what he needs, and I was even thinking this morning before the PT got here that I don't make him walk as much as he should around the house. So we'll give it our best try.

Nate's joke

Nate is sitting in his tent, and I just heard him yelling:

KNOCK KNOCK!!!! (giggle)
WHO'S THERE!!!! (giggle)
BOO WHO!!!! (giggle)
WHATCHA CRYIN BOUT!!!! (giggle)

Oh, and I forgot to say yesterday that Nate tinkled a little in his potty! I have him sit on the potty after his bath while I read him a potty book. When he got off the potty, I said, "Nate! You went pee pee in the potty!!!!" He looked in and seemed just as surprised as I was. :) It was just an accident, but it was still a little exciting (for me ... Nate was not impressed).

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. :)

Some pictures from Christmas

I've been having problems uploading pictures, but I'll give it another try. Here are some of my favorites from Christmas.

At the SB holiday party

Eating Santa's cookies

Uh!

I haven't updated this week because I thought I would spare you from more train talk. All day long we play with trains, watch trains on TV, sing songs about trains ... you get the idea.

Nate recently picked up the annoying habit of saying "Uh!" in a really whiny voice when he's not happy about something. It's especially annoying because I know he can say "No thank you" or just plain "No" or even suggest what he wants instead. But I guess he can see that "Uh!" is driving us crazy, so he's sticking with it. It goes something like this: "Nate, let's change your diaper." "Uh!" "Nate, time to turn off the train and take a nap." "Uh!" Well, Blake has found the cure to "Uh!" A couple days ago, he was saying to Nate:

Blake: Nate, do you love Daddy?
Nate: Uh!
Blake: Can you say, Love you, Daddy?
Nate: Uh!
Blake: Do you want a snack!
Nate: Snack!
Blake: Okay, then, can you say, Love you, Daddy?
Nate: Love you, Daddy!!

Nate has been watching Blake play the Wii sometimes lately, and he really gets into it. He cheers for him and says "Oh no!" when he messes up. Once, Blake fell off a cliff and Nate cried. :) Blake likes having a cheerleader.

Earlier today, just out of the blue, Nate said so sweetly "Whatcha doin, Daddy?" Awww. He loves having his daddy here on holidays.