Patty-Cake and Prayers

Well January was a surprisingly great month and passed like a flash!

A huge highlight was having Dane's parents come and stay with us toward the end of the month.  What a blessing it was to have them with us.

Atticus was in heaven. 

 I'm happy to report that (other than a gnarly abscess on his leg) Atticus didn't get sick this month!  That alone is worth celebrating, but it gets even better.  He has been sleeping!  For the first time in his life the little guy is sleeping through the night.  Well, he's doing so most nights.  It only took two years!

Just for the record, he cried for 2.5 hours once we got home from our travels and we were sure he was 100% healthy.  2.5 hours of crying the first night, 2 hrs for a nap, 40 min. the next night, 30 min. the next night, and then we got to 15 minutes.  Hallelujah.  He now averages 5-10 minutes of crying at night before falling asleep.  Blessed, blessed sleep.

Dane and I have felt so rested, in fact, that we've been trying some DIY projects around the house.  I chalk painted some furniture and then Dane, of course, had to one-up me, so he BUILT furniture.  From scratch!  As you can imagine, I'm pretty proud of him.

Atticus LOVES it when he gets a chance to help Daddy "fix" things.

But enough about this grownup stuff!  Let's talk about our adorable little guy.

He is connecting 3 words together!  Yay!

He goes to nursery like a champ!  Thank you, awesome leaders!!!

He is still counting, but now he skips 5, so he goes straight from 4 to 7.  We're working on it, but he's a stubborn one.

Umm... he wrote the letter "A"?  Dane and I were there- he kept saying, "A, A, A.." and we looked down at what he was drawing with his chalk and it definitely looks like the letter "A"...  There have been no encore performances, though, so we're not 100% positive he knew what he was doing.

There were at least three of these scattered about.

Here he is with a couple of his favorite people.

He not only loves Elmo, he now LOVES Cookie Monster and loves to eat just about anything (including his hand and Mommy) Cookie-Monster-Style.  It's adorable, but we probably shouldn't encourage the poor table manners.  Oops.

He is now aware of things being "scary."  For example, when we finally saw a doctor for his 24-month appointment, he kept saying, "Scary!" and clinging to me.  He calls the dark and new doggies "Scary," too.

He also likes to try and be scary (and mostly funny) with a new limp walk that he has.  It's a bit hard to describe, but he does this limp for just about any strong emotion.  When he's angry he starts hitting the air and chasing you with a limp.  When he's trying to be funny or chase you like a monster, he walks around with objects in his mouth, or bites his shirt and limps toward you.  Funny little duck.

This is him saying, "Tuna, tuna, tuna!"  (A favorite snack of his is tuna with olive oil in it!)

Another "scary" development has been his fascination with falling.  He loves to pretend to fall and thinks it's really funny when he almost falls.  He'll laugh and say, "Fall.  Atticus fall!"  He rarely actually falls, so that might be why.  When he really takes a tumble, he might not find it so amusing.

A favorite word of mine that he started saying this month is "Yeah!"  I love the enthusiastic way he often says it.

A favorite new phrase is "See-saw, Marjorie Daw."  💕💕💕

A less favorite word of ours is "Mine!"  It's funny- we're pretty sure he still doesn't know what it means.  It's just an angry word that he throws out whenever he isn't getting what he wants,

He also went from saying, "Beep Bop!" to, "Deep Up!" for "Clean up!"  He still hates cleaning up when it's my idea, but when it's his idea he quite enjoys it.

He surprised me one morning by doing the Hokey Pokey!  He's getting better and better.

We love the way he runs.  He's been running for a long time now, but I just thought I should document just how adorable his hips are as they twist from side to side.

He loves to do Patty-Cake with fabric, laundry, paper and the clothes he's wearing.  Instead of rolling things, he folds them and pats them and marks them with a B.  :)

Without a doubt, my favorite development of all is praying.  This month he has begun saying, "Hev-ee Fader... Dat-doo day..." and he has to say thank you for Bobba, Nana, Mimi, and Danny (he gets very upset if you miss one of those four!)  Then we're working on asking for blessings (he sometimes says, "Bless...food," and he's getting great at saying, "Name" (we'll say, "Jesus") and he'll say "Christ, AMEN!"

Oh, how we love this crazy boy!