Eating ice cream at the worlds largest McDonald's

Nine year interview

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Available until Sep 29, 2016

Happy bday drew

Drew at 9 years old

Wearing my 1986 celts t shirt

Ben in action

Sent from my iPhone

Ben's first travel soccer game. And his buddy Carson

Cute Jake Sayings

I know I need to get around to posting Jake's weight and height from his 2 year check-up, but I will get to that soon. I just wanted to write the cute things Jake is saying right now.

First, Jake and I went to wake up Ben last week and I said, "Benny, wake up!" and Jake said, "Ben! Benamin" From then until now, Jake has called Ben "Benamin" more than anything else. It's so funny because nobody calls Ben 'Benjamin' unless we are fussing at him about something (and we still don't often use Benjamin in that case).

I just looked at Jake while he was sitting in his chair eating dinner and said, "Jake, you're so special. Did you know that you're special?" He looked at me and nodded and pointed to himself and said, "God." He's hearing me because I often tell him that God made him special and that God loves him.

Jakes birthday cake made by Kate

Jakes second birthday cake

TN aquarium

Jake is hiding

Backyard playground

Quick Update on Jake

There are a few things I've meant to blog about for a while and a couple of new things:

From around the ages of 18 months through 21 months, Jake would make sure Mommy frog, baby frog, and Grover kissed him before every nap. He would ask for them one by one and after they kissed him, I would lay them down next to Jake somewhere. After he had received all his animal/Grover kisses, he would promptly toss every one of the "visitors" out of the crib and sleep alone. At some point, he decided that Grover was the one he wanted. Seemingly overnight, Jake stopped asking for the frogs and just wanted little Grover to sleep with him. It is important to note that this little Grover is one he can hold in one hand and is not clothed. Every morning, Grover gets out of bed with him and Jake usually places him inside one of the bigger cars to drive. This morning, Jake brought Grover into our bathroom and decided he needed a shower. After he landed in a puddle of water, Jake had to put Grover with the dirty clothes for a bath. After much deliberation, a small Tigger replaced Grover during naptime - but only until Grover could get clean. 

More recently: 

Jake is referring to himself as "me".

He has started to make jokes and understand silliness - like he would pretend to put his shirt on his leg and laugh. He loves to wear all the bigger shoes in our house, but he also likes to try on his "KDs" (he calls them that) even though they are still too big.

Jake gets along really well with everyone in his class. We only know the parents of three of the girls in his class (out of 4) and each one has approached us to say how much their daughter likes/talks about Jake. "My daughter says 'church. boys. JAKE." "My daughter talks about Jake all the time." "My granddaughter is so sad when she comes to the nursery outside of church time. She just sighs, shrugs, and says, 'No Jake." Jake consistently says his favorite person in class is "B" (JB). JB is almost a full year older than Jake and the only interaction we've seen from them is JB pinning Jake to the floor for a 'hug' and Jake sharing a zebra with JB when JB was sad and having a little tantrum on the floor.

Even though he says at most 2 words at a time, he completely knows what we are talking about and will sometimes interject into a conversation he's not even a part of. 

One of Jakes favorite things is unwrapping straws at restaurants. Whenever we go into Chickfila, he things he has to have a straw to unwrap RIGHT AWAY.

Jake has all of a sudden started letting me read all the words of a book to him before he turns the page. He has always loved books - his favorites always include his favorite characters (Disney or Sesame Street), but until very recently, the only book he ever listened to all the words to was 10 Apples Up on Top. Today, he let me read a Tigger/Pooh book that had a number of words on each page and he patiently waited until I asked him to turn the page. 

Jake is still behaving like a herding dog when it comes to his siblings. When we were leaving the playground to go to Chickfila the other morning, I asked Jake if he wanted to go and eat at Chickfila. He immediately started looking around and said, "Meh (Ben)! Bock!" because Ben was the furthest away at the time. He continued to call several times until Ben got close enough to satisfy Jake.

Jake Saying Andrew

Jake pronounces andrew as Elmo no matter how hard we try

A few pics from the Brookhaven Basketball Camp