Pikkers

A whole lotta photos finally uploaded to Flickr today. They are all from over the last 6 months and I haven't had time to label or organize them. But, here's a hint--the less hair Leo has, the younger he is. :-)

[added by Jeff:] Friday night was a reception at Kirstin's office for her, Leo, and me. Mostly for Leo, if you ask several of the other adults in attendance. it was good to get a chance to meet (most of) everybody. After that, we stopped by most of the first half of one of the few Centennial HS home football games this year. While I was walking around with him, we stopped near the band, since I'm a former drum major. The band director was a impressed by the little guy, and called out:

"Hey, band!"

"Hey what?"

"Say, 'Hi, Leo!'"

"Hi, Leo!"

It didn't register with him, but I got a kick out of it.

Went to the Farmers Market yesterday and also went to several furniture stores on our quest to find a new dining set. No luck so far... Today I'm making apple bread with the apples we got at the market--one of my favorite recipes from the Penzeys Spices catalog. They don't have that recipe online (it's from 2000), but here's one of their apple cake recipes.

This week Lowes came and installed the new bamboo floor in the office. It looks great and now we can't call it the cat room anymore since it doesn't smell like cat. Hallelujah! Now we need to order more storage--we lost some storage space in the office closet because we are having to make up for the fact that our bedroom closet is smaller.

Apu?

Leo is big on helping lately and when he offers to help he says "Apu?" It's a good thing he knows the sign for it, or we'd constantly be confusing it with "apple" and sometimes "up" (if he says it really fast).

Over the last few days Leo has been saying "owwie" a lot and when we ask him what hurts he says his feet. So we took him to the mall to see if he needs new shoes. We discovered that there is no Striderite in the Champaign mall. But, we did find a Track and Trail that had some baby shoes. They measured him and said he was a size 6. Striderite said he was a 7 back in July. So...I got him a new pair of Merrell's for fall/winter--but still in a size 7. We'll see if they work. I've heard there is a Striderite at the outlet mall about a half hour from here, so we may need to check it out.

One good piece of news from the mall trip is that yesterday was the opening day for the new Banana Republic--yay!

Mr Popular

"Bless you mama" and "five more minutes" are two phrases you'll hear Leo using lately. His diction isn't perfect of course, but he's pretty understandable. The latter has come about as we try to let him know when it's time to leave the park or get ready for bed (trying to avoid meltdowns). When we then say it's time for whatever it is, he'll hold out his hand showing all five fingers and say "five more minutes."




(Like my hat? Yes, I know I'm a huge ham, and when I see the camera come out I've starting saying "pikker".)






Tomorrow night Leo's been invited to a little get together with his friend Mason who lives across the street. We're going to walk to Meadowbrook Park for the Jazz Walk and then go back to Mason's for dessert. Some of Mason's other friends are invited, so Leo may get to make new friends.





(Watching some 'toons.)








Last weekend was pretty busy--more painting (it'll never end) and hanging out with Mason and his folks on Saturday. We were originally all going to go to the U of I football game, but it was raining and we weren't that interested even though we all had free tickets. So we had dinner at their house and the boys played. Sunday there was more painting and our friends Mark and Robin came by on their way home to Chicago from IN to drop off the lawnmower they were giving us. Lawnmower is another of Leo's new words. They stayed for dinner and a rousing game of frisbee in the back yard. I love that we can play frisbee in our back yard!




(What do you mean my mouth isn't big enough for both?)

Settling in

Saturday we went to the wonderful Urbana farmer's market--which is a lot like the Madison one, just smaller. We got a chicken, green beans, potatoes, and orange grape tomatoes (which all became Sun night dinner), red and green peppers (which will be part of tonight's fajitas on the grill), and a cantaloupe (which Leo loves--last night's bedtime snack was 3 graham crackers, 2 slices of melon and 2 cups of milk--!!!).

Saturday Leo eschewed a nap entirely--something that hasn't happened in a long time. In desperation Jeff finally took him to the library while I tried to finish my article that was due for a publication.

Yesterday morning we played frisbee in the yard (he thought that was fun!) and blew bubbles (which he also loved). Leo took a 3+ hour nap which gave us a chance to finally finish painting the kitchen. It's now very cheerful. Pictures will be forthcoming (at some point!). After his nap he and I played in his wading pool in the yard.

Today there are more chores, and more paint colors to pick out. At breakfast Leo reminded me of one of his other cute mispronounciations--faffey for coffee.
Here are some pics. We promise we have lots to upload to Flickr soon.

Huh, something isn't right here.













Leo--your pants fell down!













Look ma (and Granny M)--no nukker!













I'm ready for my closeup.