Amy’s quote of the day:
“You know it’s time to vacuum when your child is using your husband’s toenail clipping as a toy.”

Well, it’s happened… that time when a parent says something, either seriously or in jest, that a wee one should not hear. And, not only should they not have heard it, they repeat it. As we were driving on I-5 north to Tacoma on a Friday afternoon, the traffic was a bit nasty and as the passenger, I jokingly said to the driver, “Suck it up, Brendon.” Then…

“Suck eet up, Bendon” was repeated from the back seat. And as all parents know, when one laughs at something one’s child has said or done, they repeat it again and again for the fun of it.

So until we made it to our Tacoma destination, over and over we heard, and giggled about, “Suck eet up, Bendon.”

Tru’s been really fun lately. His vocabulary seems to grow daily… Right now we’re working on saying ‘excuse me’ before butting into someone else’s conversation. That works ok, except that instead of butting in with his demand/request/exclamation, he butts in with ‘excuse me, excuse me, excuse me!’

Mama: What kind of pizza do you want, Truman?
Truman: Circle.
Mama: Circle?
Truman: Meat circle.
Mama: Oh, pepperoni…

Man, I haven’t posted here enough lately. Tru’s doing really well on vacation. The flight to grammy and pappy’s (actually two flights) went very well. He just played for all three.5 hours of the first leg, then did good during our layover, then crashed for the last 1-hour flight.

He’s been having a ball since he’s been here. Grammy set him up with a little “home-base” area with cars, puzzles, blocks, etc. He loves it. He also loves Rosie the dog (except he says “Roe-thee”) and she’s fond of him too. They play ball together, they go on walks together and Tru gives her hugs. When she barks, Tru commands her to “be a nice dog.”

The time change didn’t seem to mess him up too much. He’s been going to sleep between 7:30 and 8:00 and waking up as early as 6:30am. Ugh. Grammy and Pappy get up that early though…

There is some new construction going on near here, and Tru’s been enjoying watching the ‘tractors’ and the workers. Reminds him of his hero, Bob The Builder.

Tru started swimming lessons this week. It’s a parent/kid style of class, so I’ve been getting in the water with him. He likes it and he’s doing pretty well. Right now we’re working on kicking in the water, both on his belly and on his back. We’re also working on blowing bubbles so he’ll get used to having his face in the water. He’s got kind of a short attention span, so we work on something for a couple of minutes, then we go play with a boat for a few seconds, then back to swimming, etc…

Tru has learned how to negotiate. He has inserted “one more time” with an index finger pointed up when he wants another cookie, book read, or whatever he’s focused on at the moment. Where he got this? Again, we aren’t sure. And what’s up with the finger pointing for extra effect? We have started to use it to our advantage. If I’m thinking ahead enough, I do agree to one more time but with the stipulation, “then you’re all done.” The crazy thing is he follows through on our deal 9 times out of 11.

Ahhh… the joys of summers off. Hangin’ with the little dude.

Ok, so I’ll come clean. Amy and I occasionally gawk at Tru and wonder where he picks stuff up. For instance, he can count to 10. I don’t know why, since we don’t push the counting thing. But he’ll be sitting in his sandbox counting stuff, or just hanging out in the backpack counting things we walk past. Weird.

His color recognition is getting a little broader. He seems to have figured out ‘red’, though he still doesn’t say it much. He’s got pink too. So that makes, red, pink, blue, white, green, yellow, black and purple.

He’s got a bunch of animals (and their sounds) down pat. Can’t even list ’em all, though cows are still the hands-down favorite. He knows his name too, though he gets it mixed up with “two.”

I think he brings a lot of stuff home from his daycare (which is over now that Amy’s done working for the summer). Jane, his daycare lady, has other kids that are older than Tru and I think she treats it more like preschool than daycare. He was always bringing home stuff he “made.” I think they work on numbers there, and I think that’s where he picked up the “me too” and “my turn.”

The other day Amy was changing Tru’s diaper and Leo-the-cat walked over and stopped by Tru’s head. Tru looked up at Leo’s butt and said, “Leo owie!”, then he touched it. Amy told him that was Leo’s ‘bum’, not an owie.

Then she told him that he (Tru) had a stinky bunger and Tru started saying stinky bunger, stinky bunger… Gotta be careful…

Just a quick pointer that I’ve refreshed Tru’s album–new stuff there.

He’s really been doing good with colors…has blue down pat, as well as green, purple, white and yellow. Pretty good with brown and ignores red. Shapes are coming along–circles are far and away his favorite shape. He picks them out everywhere, and makes circles with crayons and shows us.

Lately he’s been pulling our legs by pretending to be stuck somewhere and shouting, “stuck!” Today Amy went out to the living room after he hollered it and he was standing around–when he saw her he quickly got down on his butt and scooted his legs under the couch and hollered again…

We went on a walk the other day and I taught him to say “funk’s so rubba.” The “rubba” part comes out pretty clear, but the rest is kinda mumbled. Also, he digs ‘Bob the Builder’ so if we say, “Can we build it?”, he kinda hums “Yes, we can!”