Birthday fun continues

Good call, Grandma Carla. Xander loves his new easel. As predicted, his favorite part is cleaning & erasing.

Xander's younger sibling

He or she is due to come into this world in March 2011.

Endless summer

I'm sure I'll be missing this on that one day of year that it gets below 40 degrees. Xander enjoyed his new birthday present water table toy in his kiddie pool. The good thing is that this toy is for all seasons--it fits in the bathtub.

The photographer

I have two cameras. One is a very nice DSLR still camera that I don't let Xander touch. It has too many moving parts. The last time, he managed to get a hold of it, he broke the USB connector on it. The second camera is a very light-weight digital video recorder. It's essentially fool-proof and reasonably robust. I let Xander use it to take some pictures. He went around the house pointing the camera at various things saying "I see ". Here are some of his work:

Gross food entertainment

Well, Grandma Jo, this one's for you. I find it very entertaining to see how brave Xander is will to try new foods. Grandma Jo always buys various types of canned seafood or fish delicacies from Central Market when she visits Austin. At her last visit, she left some of the cans accidentally. Xander found one and insisted on trying some.

In this picture, he is trying some mussels. At least, I think they are mussels. I was not really going to try one myself. Ew! The result? He liked the oil sauce the mussels were in. As soon as he put a mussel in his mouth though, he was done.

Lesson learned

It's really nice when Xander demonstrates that he understands "the rules." Tonight, I was picking up our dinner. On the occasions that I have done this before, Xander has thrown in the fit in the car, screaming for me to give him some of the food immediately. I always tell him that we have to wait until we get home and sit at the table and it's too messy for the car. Tonight, I didn't have to say anything. Xander told me calmly "too messy, mommy."

OK, I'm ready for winter time now

Aside from the fact, that the triple digit weather makes outside time miserable, I really am looking forward to some cooler days for Xander. First and foremost, cooler weather will give Xander some natural consequences for his apparel choices. Right now, he'd prefer to be naked at ALL times. Every dressing or diapering occasion is a battle. I'm hoping some colder days might help turn the tide there.

Second, we just bought a bunch of super cute long sleeved clothes for Xander. This weekend was tax-free weekend. I think it is supposed to help out parents of school kids, but for some reason some pre-school stuff is tax free, too. We bought some new shoes and I couldn't believe that he is already size 8. At 13 months, he was size 5.5. We got some new jackets, too. At least for a few days, when the weather cools, we'll have some stain-free outfits.

Just 8 more weeks of hot left!

Dreams

Sunday morning at breakfast, we all shared our dreams from the night before. We probably can remember them because our neighbors were very loud and repeatedly woke us.

Daddy shared about his dream of being stalked by a video game store employee. Mommy shared her dream about taking Copper and Peanut on a walk at the bottom of the ocean.

We wondered if Xander knew what a dream was. So, we asked Xander what did he dream about? His answer: Handy Manny. I guess there could be worse things to dream about....I mean as long as "The Tools" were not possessed by demons, it probably was a good dream.

Ready for the movies?

This weekend, Xander watched almost an entire movie, "Monster, Inc." Well, at least from where we started all the way to the end. I was very impressed that he was able to sit in once place for that long, considering sitting still is not one of his talents. He made it though!

I'm not sure he's quite ready for any theater yet, maybe Alamo Baby Days where a little noise is ok. He did give us a running commentary through out the movie of what was going on. "Baby hiding over there", "foot in the potty", and "apple monster" (what he called the big green single eyeball guy). Not everyone appreciates that kind of chatter if you know what I mean.

Imagination

Yesterday, I was sitting on a couch while Xander was playing on the floor. He came over to me with empty cupped hands. Then, picked invisible "cake" out of one hand and put it in my hand. So, do I dare guess what flavor the invisible cake is? I opted to just chew it loudly and say "yum".