More weekend pictures

When we were walking at the lake one evening after dinner, my Dad noticed that a snake was "sunning" on the rocks, which seemed at given the time of day.  Upon closer inspection, we noticed that the poor snake was tangled in a clump of fishing line and a hook.  Luckily, the supervisor on duty at the boat house is a wildlife management major at the local university.  He knew that the snake was non-poisonous (Great Banded watersnake to be exact), and quickly worked to untangle the snake.  He had to hold the snake's jaw and use a pocket knife to free him.  While he worked, the snake's "tail" wrapped around this guy's arm, all the way up his elbow; he didn't even flinch!  The snake swam away to live another day.  Very cool!   

Grammie brought STICKERS!

Malachi turned the tables on Mama and started quizzing her on the identity of the animals in his book.  I just melt when I think of his smile. He really got a kick out of this.

Papa and Grammie gave Malachi a ride on "Thomas."  Yes, Malachi is saying Thomas now.

Malachi pitched balls to Papa from this bin--over and over and over again.  He had a blast!

We just found out this afternoon that Malachi has another ear infection--both ears.  I'll be calling the ENT on Monday for sure.  Another set of tubes seems to be in order.  He's getting infections about every 6 weeks.  I can't imagine how he's going to fare through cold and flu season at that rate.  He's usually such a trooper that most people wouldn't suspect he had an infection, but this time it was really bad--high fever (around 103 all night last night), no appetite, lethargic.  He was starting to perk back up late this evening though, which was encouraging.

Despite all the ear infections, Malachi is making great progress with his speech.  He knows a lot of words (i.e., understands a lot of what we're saying and can correctly identify a lot of objects by their name and/or action), so the vocabulary is there and it's finally coming out.  Recently we've heard:
*yellow--When you ask Malachi what color something is, it's either red or yellow.  We've persuaded him to say blue on a few occassions though.  Tonight when we were playing with a bunch of balls, they were all red.  When we tried to correct him, it was a very "cougar-tiger" like conversation! :)
*K--Ask Malachi any yes/no question, and the response is "K" as in okay.  He totally gets this from me.  It is so funny to start hearing Kevin and I in his speech.  I guess we have to be careful what we say!
*"Impanzee"--I have witnesses--he really did say Chimpanzee (three syllables!), spontaneously, when we were reading a book. 
*Dolphin
*Diapers
*Soap (said like "sup")
*Babies--He loves to pretend with his farmer boy made by Grammie and his Raggedy Andy from Grandma.  We feed them and rock them.  I love the pretend play!
*Seasame street characters (because of that new Elmo toy Grammie and Papa!): Bert, Ernie
*Donkey (for Winnie the Pooh's friend Eyore)
*Barney--all the time!  We have two DVDs, a Baby Einstein we borrowed from a friend and a Barney songs DVD (Thanks Auntie Stacey and Uncle Wayne).  He LOVES Barney.  When Barney starts signing off with his signature I Love You song, Malachi wimpers because he knows Barney is going bye-bye.  Oh, we've been trying to get him to wave bye-bye for how long without much success?  Barney did the trick.  If Barney waves bye-bye, Malachi will wave bye-bye.

I'm loving all these new words.  Can you tell from the frequent posting of lists? :)