My Other Car Is Made Of Meat

How crazy is this? I now regularly play Candy Land with My 2-year-old Precious. It was a Christmas present from his Uncle Jeff and Aunt Jessie, and I was pretty sure I'd be storing it for at least a few months ... but no. He loves it. I confess, we don't exactly play by the rules. Even though he understands the concept of "next" (as in, move your ginger bread man to the next blue square) he often prefers to just move his guy to whatever blue first catches his eye. And he doesn't concern himself with getting to the end, he just looks forward to the next special card which sends him searching for the lolly pop or gum drop. We will play this for 20 minutes straight.

Another new fixation: The pipes under the sink. I was cleaning out the cabinet space in the guest bathroom the other day, and he climbed in to discover that not only could he see the bottom of the sink, but also THE PLUMBING! Who knew this was such big excitement? His little mind is thrilled by understanding how things work (not how his mommy's mind works at all, so it continues to boggle me), and when I told him that's where the water goes after it goes down the drain ... well, that was the end of toys for the day. He had to run to each bathroom to check out the pipes, then he wanted to see the water going down. I told him though we couldn't actually see it, we could hear it, and for a week now every time I wash my hands I have to stop up the water in the sink, turn off the faucet so that it's quiet enough to hear the water drain, then pull up the stopper. He would have me do this all day.

Below you can see him taking a break from his pipe-watching vigil to play in my make-up. He got into some sort of sparkly, powdery stuff that I think is supposed to go on my eye lids (that's what's all over his jeans) just as we were headed out for quesidillas.

Andrew also appears desperate to read. He's big into memorizing his books and often wants me to underline the words I'm reading with my finger so he can see where I am. And anything he finds with words on it he thrusts in my direction, pointing at the writing, wanting to know exactly what it says. I find myself reading out to him things like "package slip #AZ15782," "corrugated recyclables" and the ingredient list on the Cheerio box. He'll repeat it after me, fascinated. He knows all his letters and most of the sounds, and I occasionally will make pitiful attempts to show him how to sound out the words he wants to know, but I don't know what else to do to help him in his quest to become a freaky reading toddler nerd. I guess we'll just keep reading lots of stuff together as long as it intrigues him so.

He feels like such a big boy. We've been working to convert the guest room into "Andrew's Special Big Boy Room," which has been a lot of fun (well, a lot of fun for me since I wasn't the one hauling sofa-of-death up the stairs and the sewing-machine-table-of-death down the stairs). His fall from the crib a couple months ago made quite an impression - he understood clearly what he'd done to make that happen and seemed even less interested in repeating the event than I, so we didn't rush him to the toddler bed as originally planned. Phil just put it together a few days ago (thanks, Emmy, for sharing your bed!), and I think it's the cutest thing in the world. I especially love that the quilt my grandmother made for me (out of pieces from quilts my great-grandmother had made, no less) looks so beautiful on it.


He hasn't slept in it yet. I want to make the room a little more "his" before trying that transition. When I first mentioned him sleeping in this room (before the guest queen bed had been taken down, which I'm sure was what he thought I was talking about), he gave me a dark look and pointed emphatically at his crib and said, "That cozy bed." I'm a little more hopeful now that I've seen how much he loves to sit on his Big Boy Cozy Bed (as opposed to just Cozy Bed - the crib - or Tiny Cozy Bed - his pack-n-play). We'll see how it goes. If it stresses his little bickies out, we'll just leave him in Cozy Bed and put our Nibblet in a bassinet for a while.

In just a couple days we're off to see my Nana (the quilt-maker) and Auntie, Uncle and fabulous cousin Ashton. We can't wait!!!