Thanksgiving was a blast with little boys all over the place. Cousins Andrew, Steve, Conner & Mason were a blast to play with. Tyler and Mason are the same age, just a couple months apart. Tyler kept calling Mason Maisy because Maisy is a character on a cartoon we watch. Andrew and Conner brought their bikes to great grandma & grandpa's and Conner (who is the sweetest four year old I know) let Tyler ride his bike. I know what we're getting Tyler for his second birthday. He knew exactly how to pedal that bike around! Tyler finished his potatoes, turkey and green beans long before any of the adults got a chance to sit down to eat. He loved the pumpkin cake and went around asking for bites from Mommy, Daddy and Grandma's plates. He's no dummy. Happy Thanksgiving it was.

Sweet Tyler has come down with pneumonia. This is his third bout with it. I'm wishing I would have documented the medicines we tried last year because one worked way better than another so from here on out, I'm using this space to document it. The good news here is we just switched back to Kaiser and our old Pediatrician Dr. Zubach who we all love. It was sad leaving Kaiser and so frustrating using the Sutter doctors under Blue Cross/Blue Shield. I'm so glad Shawn's new job provides Kaiser! Less than one week after getting our new Kaiser membership cards, Tyler came down with this. Like always, they got us in right away (very unlike stupid Sutter ugh!). They put him on Zithromax and within 6 hours of taking the first 4 ml, his fever broke. Poor guy woke up in a pool of sweat. Dr. Zubach isn't recommending we go back to Dr. Leong's pulmonology department just yet because it's now been one week and Tyler seems to be getting better, although his cough sounds awful.

Tyler is talking up a storm. So is Gavin these days. The difference is Tyler says words and Gavin just gurgles and coos. He sings oooo so he's got one of the 26 letters down. But Tyler is just on a roll these days saying sentences, telling us he wants, and get this...counting! He counts to six like he's been doing it forever. He doesn't get mixed up and put four before two or anything like that. When he gets to six, you can tell he wants to keep going because he just keeps repeating the word six. So awesome! The only thing that would make it better is if he would do this on command. Of course, we are bragging about this feat to everyone but so far nobody outside of school and home has actually heard him do it. When we ask him to, he just clams up. This is a minor frustration that we as parents must make sure we handle properly so we don't scar him from ever wanting to count outloud again. So, if he wants to be shy-boy that's fine with me. I know he's advanced and maybe he wants that to be our little secret.

This weekend was full of the Wiggles. Tyler has many of their dance routines memorized and is becoming quite the dancer. Lately, everywhere we go there is a song by the Wiggles playing. Yesterday at Target we heard a song and Tyler started waving his arms like Henry the Octopus. At gymnastics they played a song that got us pointing our fingers and doing the twist. When the song stopped, Tyler announced "Dog" because Wags the Dog's song comes on right after the twist on the video we watched all weekend. We just can't get away from the Wiggles! Gymnastics was so fun and Tyler demonstrated a huge improvement over the prior week. He actually jumped! Now he's trying to jump more than once but keeps landing on his bottom. Thank goodness for the comfortable padding in his diapers!

This is hilarious and so true! Give it a few minutes if you're on dial up, and turn the sound ON!

I picked up a pile of artwork from daycare, as his file was overflowing. I love that the teachers keep every little thing, but that puts a lot of pressure on me to decide whether it's ok to throw any of it away. Like a piece of black construction paper with two chalk lines on it. Shawn would probably kill me if he knew I threw some of the artwork away, but I'm just not the pack-rat he is. So as I flipped through the pile, a few things jumped out at me. There was this paper plate decorated with a bunch of string, yarn, marker colors, and one of those big round wiggly eyeballs they sell at the craft stores. I immediately thought that was supposed to be a self portrait and laughed at the lone eyeball and the fact that it was placed down by the ear, if the yarn was in fact hair. Then there was a project on shapes. There was a big square with the word HOUSE, triangle with the word ROOF, rectangle with the word DOOR, and another square with the word WINDOW. I envisioned the teachers talking about your house and showing the kids where each shape goes, then giving the kids one shape at a time, letting them place it accordingly. Tyler's window was directly on top of the door which was pasted on top of the roof which was upside down at the bottom of the house. Definitely a keeper! I did make a correlation though, because about two weeks ago he started talking about "Home" so I turned the project over and saw the date of October 21. That's pretty cool.

Tyler's teachers are always telling me how much he loves his brother. They are separated most of the day, and usually reunited around 4:00 in the afternoons. The other day, he ran straight over to Baby and kissed him 15 times, according to Ms. Falon. And yesterday, he laid down on Baby's blanket next to him, gently patting his head. Ms. Andrea said she was really nervous and kept a watchful eye but he never got carried away or did anything close to hurting Baby. They can't believe it. He really is a doting big brother. I attribute much of this sweet behavior to one episode of Sesame Street we happened to record right after Baby was born. Elmo (Tyler's hero) pretends to be a big brother, learning to hold, diaper, and take care of a baby doll. As Elmo is learning, he gets carried away with rocking the doll and it goes flying out of his arms, landing in a nearby tree. Every time Tyler watches this he cries and gets very concerned for the baby. This is excellent compassion.

Tyler & I got flu shots yesterday. I picked him up from school saying we were going to the doctor. Dotor? Dotor? the whole drive there. He made friends with everyone in the waiting room, definitely making the day of a few senior citizens. Then it was our turn. First he sat on my lap and watched me get the shot. He was very interested. Then it was his turn. He watched intently as they prepped the shot, rubbed his leg with a swab of rubbing alcohol, and stuck the needle in his leg. Then he realized this was all very wrong, cried two big screams and then it was over. He got a sticker and we left, no more tears. Big boy. We had time to kill before picking up Gavin so I took him to a store that had Christmas stuff out. There was a 5-foot tall dancing Santa and some lit up reindeer. Tyler was scared of the Santa at first, he looked very real. But after he realized Santa was dancing he decided that was cool. He kept calling the reindeer goats. Not too far off, I guess. So, we talked all about how Santa comes to kids homes, gives them presents, says "Ho Ho Ho" and flies off with his reindeer. When we got home and told Daddy what we learned about Santa, Tyler mimicked the dance Santa was doing perfectly. He is just a little sponge!

Yesterday I was sitting down and Tyler grabbed my two hands, pulling them apart. He said a word but Shawn and I exchanged our look that says: I don't know what he just said, do you?, so we remained quiet trying to figure it out. Then he put my hands together and said another word. It took a few seconds but I figured it out just as he pulled my hands apart again. "Owaan," he said "Yes, my hands are open!" then he clapped them together and said very clearly "Close!" He was sharing with us what he had learned at school that day. Maybe he's going to be a teacher when he grows up, because he did a great job of demonstrating to us the difference between open and closed.

Every now and then, Tyler does something that makes me step back and realize how young he really is. It's like I have to remind myself he is only one, and then I start to think I have been expecting too much of him if this fact just suddenly dawned on me. We were in Target yesterday, Tyler in the shopping cart (thank goodness he loves to ride in the cart, unlike so many toddlers we know) and I was wearing Gavin in the Baby Bjorn. As we walked up and down the aisles, Tyler was talking about all the things he saw. This is always a fun time because in the cart, he is face-to-face with me, so we get a great dialog going. We were in the picture frame aisle, as I have more pictures than I know what to do with, and Tyler started saying 'monkey.' I looked all over the place trying to see what he was pointing to, figuring a stuffed monkey was misplaced on the picture aisle. About to give up and go to the next aisle, this abstract jungle print caught my eye at the very last minute. I would never have thought he could recognize a monkey out of this picture, I barely did, and wanted to buy it just to show everybody what a great mind he has. After talking all about monkeys, pants, diapers, and other things we looked at throughout the store, I guess I was feeling like I was talking to a grown up because when we got out to the car and Tyler got all wound up doing his quick-step, excitedly flapping his hands around when I said we were going home to see daddy, it dawned on me that he's still just a little boy.

We were trying to catch a few more minutes of sleep while Tyler was stirring and talking way too early Sunday morning. The things he said just warmed my heart. He is such an angel. 'Mama. Dada. Baby. Home.'