Happy Halloween!

Malachi did pretty well trick-or-treating.  We did a couple of trial runs in the house.  He was a little uncertain when we started out, but once he had that first piece of candy, he was sold!  He said trick-or-treat a couple of times, and thank you very clearly one time, so that was fun, too.  He had a tendency to want to go IN the houses (yikes!).  When people held out bowls of candy for him to pick from, he always took just one, without us or anyone else telling him that!  I was shocked!  Although, come to think about it...they went trick-or-treating around school on Friday, so he probably picked it up there.

I'm red-faced and sweaty (lovely, I know).  It's mid-70's and Malachi wanted to be carried the WHOLE way, as usual. Although tiring, I really enjoyed carrying my little skunk! :)  He's going through a Mama-phase right now, so Daddy wasn't allowed to lend a hand (poor Kev-he's handling it pretty well, but I can tell it's hard on him). 

Kevin was a cat--of course!

I spy...a skunk!

Side note...Oh, I asked Malachi today, "What's your favorite animal?"  And he said, "Bear."  Mini-conversations like this are starting to happen!  Because the bear is his favorite, we've been singing "The Bear Climbed Over the Mountain," over and over and over again.

Grammie's Little Stinker

My mom made this.skunk costume for Malachi.  She's awesome!

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? :)

A start

I'm having major issues getting these pictures to post, but here's a start.

Visit from Grammie and Papa

We had so much fun with my Mom and Dad (Malachi's Grammie and Papa) this weekend!

*We played at Chik-fil-A. Malachi wanted Grammie to climb on the jungle gym with him. He also wanted me to sit in Grammie's lap on the slide. We couldn't get him to the top of the jungle gym, so we're wondering if maybe he's scared of heights. Kevin and I have taken him to the top of those kinds of jungle gyms before, but this one was less enclosed with lots of "windows" where you could really see how high up you are.

*We went shopping. Malachi conned Grammie and Papa into buying him a toy. While I was shopping, they were in the toy section and he kept pointing to an Elmo toy and signing/saying "please!" Grammie and Papa were quick to oblige! :) Thanks, Mom and Dad. We love the cute new outfits, too!

*We went to an outdoor festival where 4-H had animals on display. A ze-bo (type of cow and I think my Mom's favorite), horses, sheep, goats, chickens, bunnies, and kittens were all there to see. We took a ride on a wagon hooked to a pickup truck and an old fashioned wagon pulled by two beautiful Belgium horses (trained by the Amish in PA). There were quilts and crafts on display, too. Malachi LOVED this one stall in the barn that had about 10 sheep and goats in it. He figured out how to open the stall...luckily I caught that in time before he let the animals out in the process of him trying to get in with them!

*We went to Pet Smart where Malachi jumped up and down in excitement for what seemed like half an hour watching the dogs in doggy day care and the birds for sale. He named the fish when we saw the tanks, but the birds and dogs had his attention.

*We played lots of baseball and hockey with Papa, which was so much fun. And Malachi enjoyed reading, playing with stickers, and pretending with the babies with Grammie.

Fun was had by all. I'll update with pics later; blogger is not cooperating right now.

More pictures...

We're on a roll, folks! Enjoy!

Kicking back and relaxing. No, I don't allow him to do this; it just kind of happened. He's been exploring so much more lately, and I think we are on the cusp of a climbing phase. Oh, boy!
He looks so grown up here!

My sleeping angel with his Steeler bear.

OK, Taylors, Malachi is gearing up for Thanksgiving. He can correctly identify every single one of us in the Thanksgiving 2007 photo. That's 19 of us, plus 2 dogs! Remind me that we all need to print both 2008 and 2009 photos before leaving this year. Somehow we're missing 2008 and that was Malachi's first one.

*I caught him singing for the first time this weekend! A new song he learned in Sunday school--so cute!

*We "made" sugar cookies (the Pillsbury kind that you just place on the cookie sheet). We had a plate of the cookies out during small group (i.e., Bible study) and Malachi was grabbing cookies every chance he got. To limit the intake, I took one and broke in half to share with him. The result? Immediate crying. I pushed the cookie halves back together, and everything was right with the world again.