My big boy

Everybody says that your other little kids seem so much older when the new baby gets here. I am really feeling that with Andrew. He seems older every day. Part of me loves watching all the new phrases he uses, the comments he makes that show me he is trying to figure the world out, the way he mothers Natalie ("Don't touch that Natalie. We don't want to get hurt."). The other part of me feels like he is still too little to seem so big, that it's going by too quickly. I want to push the pause button and take him all in. But no pause button around here. So I'm trying to do better and taking pictures and writing things down about him. This post captures a few of the things he has said and done lately.

When John gets home from work he usually asks Andrew about his day. Lately Andrew makes sure to ask John, "Daddy, did you have fun at work today?" When John says yes, Andrew just says, "Oh." and sometimes adds a "good" in there. It is so cute.

My mom has been staying with us and helping (what will I do when she leaves?!). Andrew has just loved having grandma around. Yesterday somebody stopped by to visit and when they were leaving he was checking with me and John and then grandma that none of us were leaving and that we were all staying here. This is what I overheard:

"Granma, you not going anywhere? You staying here?"
"I'm staying here."
"That makes me happy."

Andrew loves having visitors and we laugh because the first thing he says when somebody comes in the door is "you wanna go up da game room" or "you wanna see my trains?"
Yesterday our visitors brought their 4-year-old daughter. As soon as she set foot inside the house, Andrew ran up in his underwear-on-backwards and said, "You wanna see my trains?" They were upstairs for a little bit and then came downstairs. John overheard him saying, "You wanna see my trains again?"

My mom put Andrew down for a nap the other day. Andrew doesn't like taking naps and is an expert delayer. He wants us to read him another book, he needs another drink of water, sing me another song. So my mom had read him some books, he had some water, but his favorite stuffed zebra Zzzzs was downstairs. So my mom got Zzzzs and brought him up to Andrew. Andrew took him and as she went to leave the room he said, "Gma, read Zzzzs a story." My mom and I laughed and laughed about that.

We have been reading in the children's Book of Mormon--the one with the pictures--and have reached 3rd Nephi and Jesus visiting the Americas. Andrew has really liked the pictures and stories in this part. Yesterday he said a blessing on the food. Most of his prayers are a mumbled/fast "bless the food, spirit, gospel, amen" But sometimes he really puts some thought into his prayers. Yesterday he blessed mom, the baby, dad, granma, Natalie, and then he said, "and Jesus loves me, and Jesus loves us." We have tried to teach our kids who Jesus is and that he loves us, but I have never felt like he got it. The night before we had read about Jesus blessing the children in the Book of Mormon. What a testimony to me of reading the scriptures with our kids--even if most of the time they are trying to get each other to laugh, we're trying to get them to sit still for just 2 minutes! But he got something out of it--and that Jesus loves him is one of the things I would most like Andrew to know.

Every time Andrew goes to school I try to find out how it was and what they did. He is always thrilled to show me the cute craft they did that day. Some days he will tell me a few things but more often, he says "we played." But he'll let drop a few words or ideas that let me know that they have circle time at school, that they sing songs, that the kids were talking and he said, "shhh", that they talked about "17" and that it's a "2" and a "7" (when I explained that 17 was a 1 and a 7 he adamantly insisted that no, it was a 2 and a 7. I decided that at age 3, 17 can be whatever you want it to be ;-)).

Last night I got a special treat. We were eating dinner and talking about school and he went ahead and sang all the words to the witch's hat song they had learned that day. I loved it! He was so cute and knew every word. Then he improvised on the 5 little pumkins song. That was fun too. Of course we had to have Natalie sing some songs also. She sang ABCs that went like this, "lmnop, qrs,lmnop,qrs,lmnop" and she sang Twinkle Twinkle Little Star and she sang Once there was a snowman, "noman, noman, tall, tall, tall, melting, melting, small, small, small." And the smalls she sings more slowly. So funny. It was such a fun dinner time.

We went on a walk on Sunday between conference sessions. It felt so good to be outside and it wasn't too hot. Yea! We took the path that goes from the street down through the park in our neighborhood. It's a downhill route and Andrew had insisted on pushing James in the stroller. He was so excited to take James down that hill fast and set off running, with me running along next to him to catch the stroller if necessary. After we got the stroller off the grass and back on the path, Andrew was off and running again and telling me, "Mom, James loves going fast." and "James is having fun!" James was fast asleep and didn't even realize how much fun he was having!
Andrew loves to help with everything right now. John took the kids swimming on Saturday--they mainly stayed in the heated hot tub because the pool was a little chilly--and Andrew was there helping with everything--the gate, the umbrella. He loves the pool. He even jumped off the diving board a few times, but got out every time and immediately ran for the hot tub. He was cold.