Animals

We've got a lot of animals in our home. 5 cats and a bunch of fish. Outside the house, we have birds, chipmunks, squirrels, rabbits, raccoons, ducks, geese and moles roaming through our yard. Not to mention the occasional cat, deer and stuffed animal. We are also constantly asked if we want to take someone's else's cat. My brother has offered his cat to us several times. Tresa has been offered several cats in the past few days. We have enough animals! Ollie unintentionally tortures them by smacking them and laughing maniacally. So, you see, we really don't need more animals. Please do not offer us more animals, our house and rocking chair are full.

I'm So Excited

At least Ollie is so excited in the picture above. I like these pictures because it is not the usual 'look and smile' picture. You get something a bit more animated, just like Ollie. These are the type of pictures he'll like the most. The naked ones in the bathtub and riding fire trucks are the ones we'll embarrass him with when he gets older. Just like it is done to us now. The cycle continues.

Cabinet Crawling

The never ending quest of exploration has now moved into crawling into cabinets. He started by just pulling things out of the cabinets. He then moved on to cleaning out the cabinets. Once this was done, there was nothing left to do but put things back in the cabinet. Ollie decided to put himself in the cabinet.



There is nothing worse than an empty cabinet. Sometimes he gets into the cabinets with things still in them. He's gotten himself stuck in a few because of this. We know what has happened when we here him cry. Someday, he'll be too big to get inside the cabinets. For now, he's just the right size.

Singing(Wailing) in the Shower

The fascination with the shower continues. Ollie likes to open the door to our shower while his mom or I are taking a shower. He usually opens and closes the door and watches. He'll get tired of it and wander off. Most of the time he'll leave the door open, so we'll have to shut it.

A few times (like last night) Ollie will try and get in the shower with you. It wouldn't be too bad if he wasn't fully clothed! He tried to get in with his mom last night, but I stopped him and took his clothes off him before getting in. Once he was naked, he didn't want in and wailed about being near the open shower. He was dressed again and he went off to play. A few minutes later he was playing with the shower door again. Then he got really quiet. That is the parent alarm for 'he is up to something'.

I go over to the shower and he is in with his mom fully clothed and the door open. He gets wet and wails to get out. So he gets out and dried off. We then get him new pajamas for the night and he is on his way.

He loves his baths, but when water is coming down on his head, he doesn't like it so much. I guess it'll be awhile before he takes a real shower or gets in the sprinkler.

English as a First Language

English is Ollie's first language. Some of his gibberish is sounding comprehensible. He is up to quite a few words. At least the 'words' are recognizable to us when he says them. Most of them aren't specific to an object, but he is gaining ground in that department.

Ollie says:

1. Ma-ma
2. Da-da
3. bye-bye
4. uh-oh (when the doorbell rings)
5. Dale (his uncle)
6. Nay-na (Nathan - a kid at his sitters)
7. Kitty (for all 5 cats and the ceramic one)
8. Hi
9. Hi kitty
10. dadi (sassy - one of our cats, but applies to all 5).
11. teats (treats for the cats and yelled, just like his parents)
12. Bite (when he wants a bite of your food i.e. bite bite bite bite bite, until given the food).
13. Mine (not too much...yet)
14. See
15. Light

He's work on his F's for Fish and other multi-syllabic sentences that we can't understand. I'm sure there are more words that I forgot. I can't wait for the day he can fully talk and stop crying when he is upset. Of course when he begins to talk, I'm sure I'll wish for the days when he was quiet.

All Better & Eat Feet

Ollie was able to keep his food down yesterday afternoon. He didn't eat much after lunch, but he didn't throw up either. He caught up on his sleep during the day and went to bed at 10. He slept through the night without any problems. The only problem happened this morning when we had to wake him up to go to the sitter's. He was a major crab! The only time he was not crabby was on the ride to sitter's. When we got there, he resumed his crabbiness. His sitter has her hands full!

The newest baby game is rather interesting. We'll ask Ollie not to eat his toes. He'll grab his feet and put his toe in his mouth. That's disgusting, so we'll yell ewww, gross, etc. Ollie will laugh and laugh and then switch feet. He's still very flexible, so he has no problems getting his toes in his mouth. If only his feet weren't so dirty when they went in his mouth. You can't stop everything that goes into his mouth, I guess dirty feet aren't too bad compared to some of the other things that have gone into his mouth.

Catch

Unfortunately for us, Tresa and I got to play catch last night. It wasn't a fun catch, we got to catch Ollie's barf! He threw up on the way home and continued at intervals throughout the rest of the night. He eventually got the dry heaves about every hour until 3 am. None of us got much sleep. He is staying at home with his mom today and will be home with me tomorrow if he is still sick.

I feel awful for him. The stomach acid burns and he can't do anything about it. The only good thing is that he would go back to sleep almost immediately after he threw up. He doesn't understand that he needs to try and hit the trash bin, so we had a towel handy most of the night. We only had to change his bed once, it could easily have been more.

During one barfing session, I had him over the sink and he was playing with the things on the sink while he was throwing up! Some of the things kids do always surprise you.

He is in for a rough day. I'm hoping he can keep some food down today. The only good thing is that this isn't like his first flu when he had 103 temp. The only symptom he seems to have is the barfing. If we are lucky, he'll be done with it by tomorrow. Just in time for company.

Newest Baby Nanny

Climbing Expedition

Ollie constantly learns new things, then he shows us what he has learned. This weekend, he started using his chairs as a climbing apparatus. He picked one up, moved it to the sink, stood on it and started investigating the inside of the sink. It was bad enough that he can easily pull things off the cabinets, now we have to push anything we don't want broken all the way back. He's already brought us the Kleenex box and glasses from the counter.

We are also at a lost as to what happened to his baby monitor. He brought it downstairs with him, I took it from him and put it somewhere. Apparently, that somewhere was a place Ollie could get to because we haven't seen it since. I had to buy another one so we could use it that night. We are guessing that he put it in the trash when we weren't looking. He has gotten in the habit of dropping things in the trash, just like his parents. That's what grown ups do! Unfortunately for us, he puts things in the trash that don't belong.

Occasionally there is the reappearance of objects. We had lost the remote to the kitchen TV. We looked for the thing all over. Ollie showed up with the remote 2 days later. We have no idea where it was or how he got it. If you come to our house and want to keep your property, don't give it to Ollie or it could disappear forever.

Toys

The toy box you see above was made for me when I was little. It didn't quite look like it does now. It was yellow and had animals and other things decoupaged on it. We added the top, covered it, repainted the box and added the wooden animals. It makes a good seat for Ollie and his larger stuffed animals. It also helps keep the room clean.

Ollie likes to raise the lid and climb in on occasion. He will grab the toys and throw them out. We could probably bury him in toys and he wouldn't mind. He also likes to just open and close the lid. So far no fingers have been caught, but we are usually helping him. He is such an active boy, it is rare he sits down and then it is only to rock as hard as he can in his chair. Maybe some day he'll actually sit still long enough to read a short book.