At His Best

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Just a few pictures taken recently. 

Showing his new skills of playing with the light switch in the basement. Luckily that is the only switch he can reach (right now). 

He choice of seating one Sunday afternoon.

Just finished a chocolate covered doughnut. (Not that messy!)

Practicing his stair stepping skills.

Fight!

At daycare today Gerrit got into a fight. He has the bite mark on his forehead (by his temple) to show for it too. I guess he was fighting over a toy with another boy and the boy bit him! I don't think Gerrit did any bodily harm to the other boy - or could before it was dealt with by Julie. She felt really bad about the whole situation and we just shrugged it off. It's going to happen....

New World

It seems like every few weeks we are in awe of what Gerrit has figured out. Today we reflected on what he is now capable of doing - both good and bad:

• Gerrit is now tall enough to reach the light switch in the basement. We often are playing in the dark or by dim lights. Adam wants to duct tape them so Gerrit can't mess with them.
• Gerrit is working on mastering the game of P.I.G. in basketball. He has discovered he can make a basket on his knees. (He has tried sitting and shooting but that hasn't been successful yet.) Opah watch out!
  
• Gerrit will walk up stairs instead of using his hands and knees.
  
• "Dribbling" (and I use that word loosely) is now a routine action before taking a shot.
• Gerrit rarely says 'no' which is quite nice - but will shake his head 'no' instead. I know toddlers can get pretty good at saying 'no' so I will take the head shaking while I can!
• Gerrit brought home his first piece of art from daycare yesterday. I'm not sure what it is, but he did glue some green squares (which I'm sure he got help). We now have started open the art gallery up displaying Gerrit's latest works; I will post the times it is open later. You may be wondering where the gallery is located -- The refrigerator!

Making Strides

Gerrit sat on the toilet tonight! No, we aren't pushing the potty training or even close to being ready. I thought I'd see what he'd do when I put him on it before bath time tonight. He was a bit timid at first but then didn't seem to mind. And if you are wondering, he did not 'go'.

Can't Win

Gerrit has started a bad habit of waking up at 1 am lately. We would be too tired to deal with his crying so we'd bring him into bed with us. So we basically started a bad habit for him - sleeping with us! Now it is time to break him of this habit - not fun. He is stubborn (like his mother some would say) and can cry up to an hour before finally giving in to exhaustion. I figured it would only take a few nights and he'd realize there was not going to be any more slumber parties in mom/dad's bed. But then one of us would get lazy and want to sleep so Gerrit would end up in our bed (I won't say who got lazy...).

The past few nights Adam and I have been on the same page and said to each other before going to bed that we would NOT be giving in to him if he wakes up in the middle of the night. And low and behold (such an old saying, what does that even mean?) he has been sleeping through the night! I think I wake up at 1 in anticipation that he will be crying and I often think I should go check to see if he's alive because I don't hear him! And my whole point is to get a good nights sleep and now I'm the one waking up! This am he didn't even wake at 5 30 when he tends to (and we let him come to bed at this point because its close to when we have to get up). Adam did go in and check on him because we hadn't heard from him since 8 pm!

We are hoping that we all will soon sleep through the night and be back on track.

New Look Etc.

My dear friend Elizabeth gave the site a face lift. I figured the pictures could be updated and she decided to take it one step further and give it a whole new look! Love it! So I won't take credit but wish I could.

Anyways, I'm at conferences again tonight so the boys are on their own. When I checked in they were eating Girl Scout cookies (at 5 pm) and about ready to order pizza for dinner. Got to love it when mom's not around! I think it was Hawaiian pizza too - which I don't like.

2 Day Birthday Celebration

Having a birthday on Leap Year isn't always bad; I get two days to celebrate! Yesterday I woke up and a gift was waiting for me. Adam and Gerrit got me a lavender scented eye pillow. I won't go into great detail as the reason behind it but I have one similar. I appreciated the effort behind the gift (he went to the Bibelot - a fav store of mine) and all but I will be returning it and as Adam put it 'getting myself something real nice' instead. Adam took Gerrit to coffee and I headed off to Lake City with a bunch of women for our first annual UFO day (UnFinished Objects). We had a variety of projects each were working on which was fun to see and hear about all the while looking out at Lake Pepin and admiring the view. (We often go here in the summer to swim and have never been there in the winter.) I worked on scrap booking and continue to make a dent in my photos. When I returned, Adam had brought home Chinese for dinner. I also walked in to a picked up house, a few loads of laundry completed, and the bathroom almost put back together! Adam has improved on his multitasking abilities! (That is a huge birthday present!!)

Today following church and my turn to teach Sunday school, we went to Bridget's for brunch. After naps we watched MSU win and headed out for my finale gift - dinner. We dropped Gerrit off at friends and headed to Roch to a nice Italian restaurant. We realized the last time we were there was for our anniversary which was when I told Adam I was pregnant. I made it clear that there were no big surprises I was going to drop on him this time! A coffee to go and a short visit at Dahlen's ended my birthday celebration.

I can handle not having a birthday 3 out of 4 years if I can celebrate for 2 days - I definitely milked it this year and will continue to do so in years to come!