A Boy and His Hoop

My son loves sports.

Loves is actually an understatement. He is obsessed with sports. This was destined to happen. I had no say in the matter. And it all began in the hospital the day he was born. While I took a much needed nap, Adam and his little G watched an OU baseball game. But that's not the only sports little G got that day. The record breaking tennis match between John Isner and Nicolas Mahut ended on the day Graham was born. It was the longest match in tennis history lasting more than 11 hours over the course of three days.

See, he was destined to love sports. And love them he does. With passion and zeal and vigor.

Since he's been seeing a lot of basketball lately with March Madness just wrapping up, G has been wanting to play a lot of "shoot." This game entails one of the parents (usually Dad) standing on his knees with his arms out to create the hoop while Graham shoots, dunks, and airballs to his heart's content. If the "hoop" gets tired and sits down, moves to the couch, etc., our bossy little boy says, "no, no, no" while pointing to the floor where the "hoop" must resume his/her position. Mom gets tired of this game much faster than Dad does, mainly because G's choice in balls is not always soft and Mom's "backboard" is a little more delicate. Plus, little sister doesn't like it when the ball hits her.

The game of "shoot" gets more tricky when we go outside. Our backyard came with a basketball goal that G is totally enthralled with. Gone are the days when he would wander around the yard picking up sticks and playing a game of chase with the puppy next door. Now, he just makes a bee-line for the hoop and tries his best to throw his ball high enough. When that doesn't work very well, he enlists a parent to hold him up so he can shoot. Lifting a 20+ pound kid above your head when you are seven months pregnant is not easy. Or recommended. It doesn't help that he likes to use your chest as a springboard to reach even higher. Really fun for the little boy; really unpleasant for the Mom.

We had decided to get the G-man a basketball goal that is his size. We desperately wanted to wait until his birthday, but we folded and got it for Easter. G doesn't really know about Easter baskets or presents, but we knew he would be thrilled.

And thrilled he was.

Beyond thrilled.

He woke up at 7:15 and we brought him into the living room to see his surprise. When he saw the hoop he was giddy and knew exactly what to do. We had a meltdown when it was time to eat breakfast. We had a meltdown when it was time to get dressed for church. We had a meltdown when we had to leave the house. For two hours straight, he did nothing but "shoot." When we pulled into the garage from church, G started talking about his "new hoop." Hoping to avoid yet another meltdown, we put him immediately into his highchair and bypassed even looking at the hoop. After just a couple bites he handed me his plate and said, "Done. Shoot. New hoop." He shot around for another hour until naptime.

Cue meltdown.

G has started talking in his bed for a while before he falls asleep. As he lay there in the dark, we heard him saying, "Ah meese (ah miss)," over and over.

We put the hoop away during naptime since we knew it might make heading to our friend's house for Easter dinner a challenge. Not surprisingly, Graham searched the house for the "new hoop" as soon as he woke up. Thankfully going to his buddy Jordan's house was exciting enough to get him in the car without any tears.

He asked about the hoop when he woke up this morning and looked everywhere for it, but I wanted him to actually eat, so we waited until after breakfast to bring it out of hiding. Suffice it to say, G was happy to see his hoop again.

I was kind of nervous about how day number two would go since we had three hoop related meltdowns before 10am on day number one, but G seems to have reached some balance with his basketball goal. Don't get me wrong, he's played "shoot" for a majority of the day, but he did take a 20 minute break to play in his room. He sat in my lap to read several books before he took a nap and hasn't had any hoop related meltdowns so far.

Yay for Mom and Dad picking out the perfect toy! It so much fun to see the joy on your kid's face when you give him a gift that you know he'll love. And as much as we wanted to wait until his birthday, hearing him say, "ah meese" or "bick (brick)" when he misses a shot, or "dunk" and "nice shot" when he makes one has been totally worth it. Plus, he's getting a little sister for his birthday. That's the present every little boy wants, right?

BFF's

G has a buddy. They've been friends since the womb. They didn't know they were friends at that point, but their moms knew it. We've been pushing them to play together since they were born.

For a long time they just looked at each other and blinked. Then G, because he's a few months older, started poking J's blinking eyes.

It caused a little friction in their relationship, but they seemed to work through it. Especially since their mom's were more diligent to keep them more contained.

Eventually, J started poking back. That evened the playing field. 

At G's birthday party, J launched an escape. It's amazing how they communicated so well despite not being able to talk.

After a while they started playing beside each other. 

G's eye poking turned into ball throwing. Unfortunately for J, the G-man is pretty accurate throwing a ball and made a habit of hitting J in the head as many times as he could before one of the parents confiscated all the balls.

But J was about to have an advantage. Walking. 

G finally caught up and life started to get more and more fun for these two best friends. In fact, they transitioned from playing beside each other, to playing with each other. 

A world of fun unfolded for the two buddies when they discovered how to play together. But they don't just play together. Oh no. They look forward to it. G races to the front door when he hears that J is coming over. They squeal and run toward each other when they meet up at church or the park. 

These two boys sure have come a long way from this:

To this:

It's fun to have a best friend.

(On a sidenote, J's mom wrote a post about this special friendship too. We didn't plan to write about it at the same time, but I guess when your kiddos are this much fun together, you just can't help it. Visit her site for some more BFF cuteness from this week.) 

Jibber-Jabber

G-man has become quite the talker these days. Of course, he's not forming sentences or having understandable conversations with us, but he's super chatty and saying lots of new words. We seem to be in some kind of learning boom right now, so I want to make a list of his words so I don't forget.

He's been saying Daddy and Mommy for quite a while. Of course, Daddy came first and is somewhat of an obsession. I love that he loves his Dad, but we were having wailing and gnashing of teeth every time Adam even went into the garage or got out of the car to pump gas. Seriously? It got a little annoying. That seems to have calmed down (thankfully), but I still get a daily run down of all the things in our house that belong to Daddy.

*point to sweatshirt, "Daddy."
*point to t-shirt while I'm folding laundry, "Daddy."
*point to Adam's closet, "Daddy."
*point to driveway where Adam parks, "Daddy."
*point to random beat up pick-up parked on the street, "Daddy." "Yes, Daddy drives a truck."

You get the idea. He does it for Mommy's stuff too, so I can't totally complain. And really, it's pretty amazing how he knows which clothes are each of ours. He even likes to point out our different articles of clothing in the laundry hamper. Weird. Sweet, but weird.

He, of course, says ball. Behind Daddy, that was his first word. He uses the word ball to describe any type of ball, anything with an OU logo (he shouted "BALL" one day at Lowe's when an elderly man drove by on his scooter because there was an OU sticker on the side), round fruit like oranges or grapefruit, sports equipment like basketball hoops in driveways or football helmets, sports related video game logos like EA sports (he "plays" FIFA soccer with Adam on the playstation), anything that says ESPN, and the TV. In fact, lately he's been totally enthralled during diaper changes with two of the card stock ad inserts from Sports Illustrated because they have the NFL logo (sporting a football) on them. He's also become really interested in Sports Illustrated because there is a ball on almost every page. One afternoon while Adam I were at the dining room table, we realized G had been sitting in a chair in the living room "reading" SI for almost 15 mins. The kid loves sports. Surprise. Surprise.

He also loves stars. Before Christmas he chose a Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star book for us to read over and over and over. He started to point out the big star on each page, then one day he started saying the word star as he pointed. Since it was Christmas-time we heard the word star a lot! They were everywhere! He's added moon to the mix since it easily goes with stars. At first he said moon without the O's. It was possibly the cutest thing I've ever heard. "Mn." I made him say it repeatedly, which is what probably led to him learning to say it correctly. Bummer. It's lots of fun when we're outside at night and can look at the real moon and stars.

But enough of the long descriptions. This is mostly a list for myself. I just want to remember all that he's learning to say.
--G can do the animal sounds for cow, puppy, chicken, horse, duck, sheep, lion, owl, pig, elephant, monkey and kitty. Some of them are hit and miss, but he's getting more consistent.
--He can actually say kitty, puppy, cow, duck (sort of), goose, and bird. For a long time all animals were kitties. He would point to a cow and say, "Kitty. Papa." And I would respond with, "Yes, Papa has cows." We don't have a cat, so I'm not really sure where that came from.
--Graham says Papa (my dad), Bryce, Mel which sounds like Mo, Jordan (usually minus the "a," it must be a vowel thing), and Emma. We have tried to teach him Amy for Adam's sister but now he just associates her with the puppy at her house and says that instead. He refuses to say Grandma. When we ask him to say Grandma he just replies with, "and Papa." He doesn't say his own name either, so it must be the "gr" sound.
--Papa is associated with lots of things in the same way ball is connected with lots of things. Anytime we see cows, a barn, pasture ground, tractors, 4-wheelers or motorcycles (I guess they're similar), horses, and EIEIO since we changed the Old MacDonald to be "my Papa has a farm." It's really funny that he has connected all these things with my dad. We definitely didn't teach him to point out the window at a pasture and say, "Papa."
--He calls the slide a "whee."
--All liquids for drinking are juice. Cups are juice too.
--G can point out a lot of body parts: eyes, nose, mouth, teeth, tongue, cheek, ears, hair, tummy, fingers, hands, arms, legs, feet, chin, and forehead (the last two are new as of yesterday). He can only say nose, eyes, and sometimes mouth, though.
--"Morse" is more.
--He's finally signing the word please instead of freaking out and demanding things. He's even said it a few times. Now we have to work on thank you.
--He asks for a "nana" and cheese but those are the only foods he knows by name. After we had spaghetti the other night he repeated noodles, sauce and meat. I posted that video last time if you missed it.
--G-man says shoes, which encompass shoes, slippers and socks. He loves shoes. He likes to wear shoes, try on Adam's shoes, carry around shoes in the store...We had to leave a sporting goods store recently because the combination of balls and shoes was just too much. Yes, there was crying when we left.
--He says "night-night." It's sweet.
--He sometimes says go. "Go, go, go!"
--Graham will throw out a random, "guys" every now and then. This words shows up most often when he sees a group of teenage boys.
--We worked on baby a lot at Christmastime, but he never said it. Then one day a few weeks ago, he just blurted it out. He calls most of his friends baby and any pictures of babies that he sees. And sometimes, if I'm lucky, he will point to my belly and say baby. He has no idea that there is really a baby in there but he's heard us talk about it. Little does he know how much "baby" is going to change his life in a few months.
--One of Graham's favorite books is Dr. Seuss ABC. It was one of my favorites too, so I didn't dissuade him from loving it. Of course, now I can recite it word for word from memory because we have read it so much, but it's still a fun book. Since we read it so often, G has learned to recognize some letters. Obviously at this point (he's only 20 months) we're not learning our alphabet or "teaching our baby to read," but I'm happy to practice what he's picked up on his own. Yay for another little English lover in the house! Right now he recognizes B, P, T, O, Y, Z (notice the similar sounds of most of those letters). He knows D but calls it "Dono" which could be Donald or donut since both of those words show up on the D page. He also knows F but just makes an F-ish sound trying to say "Fiffer feffer feff" which is the wacky animal on that page. Sometime he says C, but not often. Oh and sometimes V. He doesn't say V, but he plugs his ear when he sees it since "Vera Violet Vinn is very, very, very awful on her violin." (We plug our ears when we read that page.)
--His first sentence was "shoot the ball." He hasn't said it since. He does say shoot, especially when basketball is on TV.
--He just started saying cars.
--He also just started saying balloon, well "boon."
--He doesn't say I love you, but if we say "I love" he follows with "ooo."
--G sometimes throws out a bye-bye, but usually just waves or blows kisses.
--He says home and keys.
--He loves to sing. At Christmas he adopted Silent Night as his favorite song because he got a book that played the music when he pushed the star. You can imagine what a hit that was. It's now the song we use to calm him if he won't go to sleep and if we're lucky he will sing a little..."Night night, O-y night."
--This week he learned green. Following the trend he leaves out a letter. The "r." So it's "geen." A "geen bood" (green bird) is my favorite.
--Graham has started "reading" aloud to us from books, junk mail, and magazines. It's not just a description of the pictures, either. He often chooses pages that are mostly text. Funny kid.

I think that's it right now. It's kind of a long list, which is fun, but I'm sure I left something off. G just started repeating things that we ask him to say which opens up a whole new world of language. I love it! I'm so thankful to be able to spend time teaching him new things. There are those days...hello, yesterday...that I want to escape for a while, but it's still worth it to hear him say "geen bood."

Oh Dear

If today is any indication of what life will be like with G once the new baby comes, I don't think I'm ready. He has just been blatantly naughty this morning. I have a feeling he'll be jealous when I'm holding or feeding his sister and this is probably just a taste of the things we'll encounter during those times.

1. After declaring that it was "pretty" he tore the corner off one of my painting from Africa that was lying on the table.
2. While I was finishing an email about youth group tonight, I hear a strange scratching sound coming from the living room only to find that he has written on the wall with a pencil. Better than a sharpie, but still very frustrating.
3. I washed some grapes and, to his delight, handed him one. He ran to the living room, popped it in his mouth, chewed it up, and promptly spit it out on the carpet. Then he pointed to it so I could clean it up. Really?
4. He climbed onto the bench near the table where we keep our keys, found mine, looked at me as I said "no sir" and pushed the panic button. I'm sure that was fun for the neighbors.

It doesn't help that he got up 30 minutes early this morning and jabbered through his "nap." I've been a little annoyed with him from the start, I guess. Probably not the best way to start a morning with a toddler.

It's a good thing he's cute.

We're walkin', yes indeed...

...and we're talkin', just you and me!

That's the theme of our week it seems. After finally taking his first two steps on the day he turned 16 months, Graham has officially entered the world of the walkers. Of course, he's not exclusively walking yet, but we're getting there.

I think he's been feeling a little peer pressure. Or not. I guess he's been the only non-walker in the "Walkers" class at church for a couple months now. And when he sees his friends on two legs, he has been known to push them down. I guess if he's not walking, they can't either. That, or my son is the neighborhood bully. So, maybe it isn't peer pressure.

To be honest I think he's stubborn. I think he's just wanted to do it on his own schedule when no one was really paying attention. Last night he just stood up and walked across the room a few times without being begged by Adam or I to "walk to me." And the big show was this morning when he found his little volleyball (let's pretend it's a soccer ball for all practical purposes) and decided it was time he started practicing his kicking/dribbling skills. What? Who is this kid?

I'm afraid I'm in for a big shock once he starts to run because I have this sinking feeling he's going to be running away from me quite a bit. I was the sneaky kid who ran away in stores or hid in the center of the clothing rack. This will probably be payback time. Great.

He's just so darn cute though. And I can't wait to hold his hand while we walk places. Sweet......

As far as talking goes, he says "daddy" all the time. On a good day he'll tell me what a monkey, lion, puppy dog, and owl say, but that's about it. I guess we did get him to repeat the word ball last night and he may have said "night-night" a couple of times, but it's hard to tell. He's quite the conversationalist and loves to yell at the TV during football games. Hmm, I wonder where he learned that? Right now, though, I just like his babbling. Especially when he whispers.

Life is changing quick around here. Sometimes it's hard to keep up!

The New Old Highchair

While we were in St. Francis, I asked my mom to dig out my brother and my old highchair. It's a sweet specimen from the 70's, and I love it. Officially it's a vintage Cosco Peterson highchair and pretty hard to find. My google search has landed on one that sold in November on etsy. Lucky me for having a mom who saves stuff! It's made of stainless steel and has a shiny, metal tray. The seat is covered in orange vinyl with flowers and animals scattered across it.

Let's pause for a moment and list the animals represented on this highchair:
Zebra
Moose
Koala Bear
Camel
Ostrich
Yak
Duckbilled Platypus

Seriously, who decided those animals went together? What a random, random group.

Despite the strange assortment from the animal kingdom, G loved it!

My purpose for asking my mom to dig out this relic from my past was not just so G would have somewhere to sit while he ate his veggies. I was planning to take it home with me. Our house isn't very big and we just don't have a good place to fit a huge, plastic highchair. This little chrome beauty takes up much less space and folds flat-ish if it needs to be stashed away somewhere. Plus, it's super cool.

My plan was to recover the seat with some fun fabric. I had seen someone do it once on a blog years ago, so I knew it could work. Adam and I chose some crazy fabric I had in my stash of African cloth. The other crucial element was some clear plastic because, let's be honest, babies are messy eaters. I found clear plastic on rolls at Walmart and surprisingly it was ridiculously cheap.

I was totally insecure in my sewing abilities for this project, so I was glad my mom was there to help. Of course I can't find the blog where I originally saw this project, so we were just making it up as we went. We basically sewed a "pillowcase" for the back and the seat. Then I hot glued (don't look closely) the opening closed and screwed both pieces back onto the frame. Oh, and we found some new webbing for the "seatbelt" part. Adam had the great idea to add a strap between G's legs and I'm so glad we did. This was definitely a trial and error kind of project, but I really like how it turned out.

new webbing, old buckles

And G likes it too!

Soft Kitty

As much as I don't want to admit that TV affects my life, it does. I'm pathetic and I let TV impact me. There, I said it. The first step is admitting something, right?

I've let reality TV suck me in. I am REALLY looking forward to the new season of Amazing Race. I am fascinated by 16 and Pregnant. It's a total train wreck and I can't look away. I count down the weeks when I know So You Think You Can Dance is getting close. And I record Biggest Loser just to see the transformation moment at the end.

But it doesn't stop at reality TV. My friends had a LOST season finale party and we all dressed like characters from the show. And that's not all...we staged a photo in the back yard that is reminiscent of the official LOST cast photo. We'll call it "loosely based."

Although I don't have a picture, Adam dressed kind of like Chuck from the show Chuck for his last day working in an office. He didn't wear the pocket protector, but he did wear his high-top cons.

At one of my jobs, I could identify nearly everyone from The Office on our staff. Yes, there was a Dwight and a Michael Scott.

TV has permeated my existence. And now it's affecting my son.

On the show Big Bang Theory, one of the characters, Sheldon, has a certain lullaby that he requests when he doesn't feel good. The song is called "Soft Kitty."

Soft kitty,
Warm kitty,
Little ball of fur.
Happy kitty,
Sleepy kitty,
Purr, purr, purr.

It's true, I know the lyrics.

In a moment of desperation, Adam and I tried singing it to G when he was crying one night. And he stopped. Turns out, the G-man loves "Soft Kitty." It has become our go-to song when he is unconsolable. We have sung these words over and over and over. They work nearly every time. In fact, just this week we had some screaming/crying and, as a last resort, I tried some mommy snuggles and "Soft Kitty." I whisper-sang it in his ear for about five minutes and he fell asleep.

I have a feeling that "Soft Kitty" is going to be the song of choice for our future kiddos too. Who knew a sitcom could have such an impact.

Let's Make It Move

Please watch this video. It will make you happy. And give you some sweet dance moves.

Empathy

I watched my friend's little boy yesterday morning. He and G are buddies. J wanted to take a nap and G felt his pain. Observe:

I hope this means G will have an empathetic and merciful character. Let's hope that overrides the fact that he tried to steal every toy J picked up.