I took Adam to get his pictures done yesterday morning. He was super chatty and talked to the photographer pretty much non-stop. He remembered her from Luke’s pictures back in June, and had to tell her (repeatedly) that the balloon she gave him after Luke’s photos blew out the window of the car on our way home. He also told her that Luke gets called “Sherman” sometimes, Mabel almost fell out of the car once, his favorite show is “Fireman Sam”, Aunt Stacy and Uncle Robbie have a cat named Tibby, Mommy hasn’t got his Halloween costume yet – but she got Luke’s, and that he was going to go home and put on his new firetruck jammies for rest time…among other things.

The photographer sent me this sneak-peek yesterday afternoon, and now I can’t wait to see the rest.

She even took some pictures of Sherman.

Last night Adam and I made cookies together (or “tookies” as he calls them).

He helped me by getting supplies from the pantry (and putting them away), counting with me as we measured the ingredients, emptying the measuring cups and spoons in to the bowl, and stirring.

He declined sampling the dough, but was more than happy to taste test the finished product once it came out of the oven.

And he was very pleased with the results.

‘Tis the season for little boys in cozy footed pajamas.

I’m a big fan.

Earlier, on our way back from getting Adam’s hair cut, he told me a story.

“Once upon a time when Papa and Daddy were little and Adam was big. Papa and Daddy couldn’t reach the fish crackers on top of the refrigerator and so Adam got them down for them. And they were happy. The End.”

The boys were both supposed to get haircuts yesterday. Luke sat perfectly still on Dave’s lap and let her cut his hair with no complaints.

Adam complained loudly and they recommended we make him an appointment for today with the salon manager, who was supposed to be really good with kids. So that’s what we did.

And that’s what we’ll do next time too. She did a great job, and while Adam wasn’t happy about getting his hair cut, there was no crying or yelling either – I’ll take it.

Yesterday wrapped up the end of “T Week”.

Adam was slightly more interested in practicing writing this week.

One of his favorite activities was doing Tangrams (pretty impressive “T” word, no?). He actually just called it his “shapes puzzles”. I will point out though, that five of the seven shapes used in Tangrams are triangles, and so that totally works.

The other two shapes are a square and the “tricky” parallelogram (Adam refers to it that way because sometimes he would have to flip it over to make it fit the way he needed it to).

Adam also did a color-by-number picture for the first time this week. I colored the key on the bottom of the page, so that he knew which color went with which number, before I gave it to him.

I think he did an awesome job. Having the numbers as guides made him try to stay inside the lines more the he normally does. If he did cross over in to another number’s area by mistake though, he was quick to apologize “sorry number five!”

Then there was a turtle counting activity where he had to match the number on a card to the number of turtles on a separate sheet. This was fun to watch. I had the turtles all out of order to make it a little harder for him. He would pick a number, then count the turtles on the cards until he found the right one. It was especially funny when he would realize there were more turtles than the number in his hand. He would get so excited counting up to the number, thinking it might be the right one, then when he realized he had counted to his goal and there were still more turtles left, he’d give a very exasperated sigh before moving on to the next card and counting again.

When I brought out the cards the next day though, he took a different approach. Instead of counting each set of turtles to see if they matched the number in his hand, he would count the turtles, then sort through the numbers to find the right one – much more efficient (and he came up with it all on his own).

Adam also did some work with patterns and sorting. I had him sort these turtles and teddy bears, by animal and color. Then I made up some patterns with them and had him complete them.

The next day we worked with a set of just teddy bears. Adam told me he wanted to make a rainbow pattern with them, so I let him.

If you noticed that Adam’s rainbow has two purples – he’ll be quick to tell you it is not a mistake. The rainbow goes, “red, ornange, lellow, green, blue, in-a-go, and violet too”, and since we didn’t have indigo and violet bears, he just made do with double purple.

Once his rainbow pattern was complete he used the bears to do some more counting.

Adam woke up each day asking if he could do school and I loved seeing how excited he got about it each of the activities. In addition to what I have pictures of, we also talked about the life cycle of a turtle (“Turtles come from eggs, but Luke came from the hospitable”), did some tiger and turkey projects, and learned another bible verse (“Thou shall not steal, that means don’t take things that aren’t yours”), among other things.

One of the worksheets he did had rows of trees that were different heights. I asked him to find the tallest tree in each row (it was “T” week after all). He asked me if he could find the shortest tree in each row instead, “I really like short trees, to why I am short!”.

There was also an art failure involving an unattended three-year-old and a stamp pad of ink. Adam ended up with very, very blue hands. Thankfully it was washable and came off easily in the bath. That didn’t stop Adam from giving me a reproachful look and saying, “I need to tell Mabel and Papa about this”.

Thanks for ratting me out little dude.

Poor Luke woke up not feeling well this morning. He has a stuffy/runny nose. It’s bad enough not being able to breath out of your nose, but when Luke is tired or doesn’t feel well all he wants is his pacifier. Stuffy noses and pacifiers don’t go well together.

He’s been extra cuddly today and even took a morning nap (further proof he’s not feeling well). He did have enough energy for some mischief though – I caught him dipping Adam’s toothbrush in the toilet before bath time this morning.

The other night Adam told me and Dave that he is a pack rat. I asked him why he was a pack rat and he said, “to why I don’t throw my old stuff away”. The things he comes up with sometimes are just too much.

Like last week, when I mentioned to Adam that story time would be starting up at the library again soon he told me that he didn’t want to go. He told me, “I not sit down nice. I run around and be loud”.

I guess I’ve been warned right?

Luke is a great helper. Whenever he hears the printer start going he drops whatever he is doing, runs over to stand in front of it, waits for the paper to come out, and then bring it to me (slightly crumpled most of the time).

He’s also getting really good at following simple directions, like if I tell him to close a cabinet, take something to Dave, or put something in the garbage can. I’m most excited about the “taking things to Dave”, it’s like having our own little carrier pigeon.

Sometimes he goes rogue though and plans his own course.