Back by popular demand!

Hi everyone, sorry for the delay in updates. The weather and early nightfall of the past few weeks has made us less than motivated to take many pictures nor do anything else interesting worth writing about. We did venture out to a neighborhood park last weekend when the temps broke into the fifties for a day or so, but all of the snow melt made it a sloppy mess, so we didn't play too long. That park is however located very close to an interstate overpass. Why is this interesting? Because we sat Manu in one of the little kid swings that faced the interstate, and he had the time of his life watching the semi-trucks go over the bridge. Every time he saw a new one he would point and say "WOW" at the top of his lungs. So much so that other families at the park would stop and look to see what was so exciting. He did that for about 45 minutes, and we had to pull him away!

Manu has really taken a liking to all sorts of mechanized vehicles, but trains in particular. We try not to let him watch too much TV, but there is a new show in the Disney Channel called Chuggington that he loves so much, we have every episode on DVR, and let him watch one every day. It's basically a knock-off on Thomas the Train, which he is fascinated with too. Our local Barns and Noble has a Thomas the Train wooden setup in the children's section that he would play with for hours if we let him. Leslie has taken him there a few times and just sits and reads a book while he "choo choos" around the tracks. Can you guess what he's getting for his Birthday? If any grandparents, aunts and uncles need gift ideas, make sure what ever you get are part of the "wooden" series, as I think there are 3 or 4 different lines of trains.

Manu continues to love school, at least after the obligatory crying fit at drop-off is over most mornings, LOL. It gets mentioned every day, how much energy he has. They tell us they've never seen anything like it before; he's so fast. We did have one interesting report a week or so ago. Apparently one day Manu took to pushing other little children down and laying on them until they cried! We were concerned about this, as we had no idea how to try and correct such behavior, as obviously he doesn't do that at home. They said that it looked like a new type of play for him and nothing malicious toward the other children. They asked us if we let him watch professional wrestling, LOL! No. Apparently that was a one day thing and he's back to playing nice again.

Finally, he's growing like a weed and talking up a storm. He's just starting to put multiple words together to express his desires. It's still confusing, but getting easier to understand what he wants...usually something we don't want him to have. He loves the word no, and uses it frequently. He says "peas" and "tank ooh", almost to a fault. "Luv ooh" is our favorite though!