Eloquent Ed

Eddie continues to learn new words every day. Some of the things he says crack us up. Some of the other things he says make us a little embarrassed. Here are a few of his newest words:

Edward


Thanks to one of Eddie's Christmas presents, the LeapFrog My Pal Scout, Eddie can now say his real name. The puppy can connect to the computer and you can upload songs and other things like the kid's name, favorite food, favorite color, and favorite animal. Then it will say "Hello Edward" when you turn it on and sings songs with his name in it. It is a little awkward sounding, but Eddie doesn't mind. And I love it when he said, "Ewrd."

Yep

For the longest time, Eddie's only answer to questions was "no." Now that he says "yep," I am never sure if I should believe him. I will say, "Eddie, are you stinky?" and he'll say "yep." Sometimes it's true and sometimes it isn't.

All Right

I must say this a lot more than I realize because Eddie says it all the time now, too. It is pretty cute, though, so I guess it's okay.

Quack

This one is also thanks to My Pal Scout. The problem with the word "quack" is that it sounds too much like, "crock pot," except that it is one syllable. Eddie replaces the "qu" with an "f" and the "a" with an "o," so it sounds pretty bad. We're still working on that.



Truck

Another dirty sounding word... Eddie is finally starting to distinguish between cars, vans, buses, and trucks. After I taught him this word, I regretted it and wish he would go back to calling them cars. It sounds much nicer.

Some

Eddie says "some?" whenever he wants some of something. When he was on his latest round of antibiotics, I would be getting it out for him and filling the syringe and he would say, "some?" Apparently he liked it because he always wanted some.

Like

I realized one day while we were all riding in the car that I use the word "like" a lot in the middle of my sentences. When I mentioned this to Dave, we started making fun of me and Eddie chimed in with a "so, um, like," from the back seat. He did this the whole way home and it cracked us up. Apparently I need to watch what I say so he doesn't grow up to be a valley girl.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

Dave already posted photos of our Christmas festivities on our blog. The thing he failed to mention was our recent encounter with strep. Yes, Eddie had strep over Thanksgiving weekend, but lucky him, he got to have it again just in time for Christmas. It started with me, then Dave got it, and finally Eddie got it. Since I was deathly ill the Saturday before Christmas, we had to miss a Christmas party with my extended family on my mom's side. I felt really bad about missing it because we rarely travel down to Price and/or Huntington any more and it has been months and months since my Grandma has seen Eddie. But, we thought it best not to infect the entire family, so we stayed home.

My brother brought back gifts, including this amazing quilt that my Grandma made for Eddie. It is an "I Spy" quilt and he loves it. His favorite part is the square featuring two dogs. It has been lying on our living room floor ever since we got it, strategically folded so that the dogs are up, so every once in a while, he will walk over, bend down, and say "hi puppy!"


My Grandma also got him a fabric book that has numbers, letters, and all sorts of animals in it. Eddie likes to open it to the counting page and say, "von, two, shree."


We are very grateful for all the gifts that we have received and for all the wonderful people who have helped make our holidays special.

3 Minutes With Eddie

As promised, we have captured Eddie saying a whole bunch of his words on video. The finished 3 minute product took probably an hour or so of combined filming on two different days, then another few hours to sort through the rough footage and dig out the coherent words. Hopefully it was worth it.

Let It Snow

After the last time it snowed, I decided that I had better buy Eddie snow gear while I could. We bought him a coat, snow pants, boots, and (after some struggle) found some snow-worthy gloves that fit him. So this week when it snowed, we were prepared!

Tuesday afternoon, I decided it was time to suit up and head outside. It took a while. First I had to convince him to let me put the snow pants on him. I managed to persuade him by saying the word "outside" a lot. I think he is finally starting to understand that we can't just go outside whenever the thought occurs to us, but it requires a little preparation. So I got his snow pants on, then his boots. Then I put his "coke" on him. Last came the hat and gloves. Let me just say this: gloves are hard to put on a squirmy toddler who doesn't know how to put his thumb in the thumb slot. Then I grabbed my coat and camera and we went out.

Eddie didn't get in the snow much.

He walked around the block on the sidewalks, but eventually ventured onto the snowy lawn.

He tried bending over to pick up some snow, but once he was over, he couldn't get back up.

100 Posts of Ed

When Kristen first suggested we give Eddie his own blog, I was a little hesitant. I wondered if our regular blog readers were all that interested in following every step of his development. But as time has gone by, I have come to really appreciate what we have compiled here. Are others interested in following? Who cares! I'm just happy we have this great record to look back on. Hopefully Eddie feels the same way when he gets a little older. Here are some of our favorite posts from the first 100:

Adventures
• Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year 1.01.09
• Don't Toy With Me 3.15.09
• Happy Birthday 5.03.09
• Farmer Ed 6.04.09

Misadventures
• The Airing of Grievances (Eddie-Style) 9.17.08
• Whiz Kid 11.19.08
• Butter Ball 7.11.09
• Life's a Beach 8.28.09

Video
• Eddie's Laughter Guide 12.23.08
• Eddie's Therapy: Session 4 4.21.09
• Just a Little Off the Top 8.26.09
• Eddie Loves... 12.06.09

Our boy is growing up.

Eddie Loves...

On Saturday afternoon we broke out the video camera to capture Eddie saying some of his words (coming soon). After we finished with that, Kristen sat down on the floor next to Eddie and turned the viewfinder toward him. Once she started recording, his reactions to seeing himself on the screen were priceless. The footage I have cut together irrefutably answers the question: who does Eddie love the most? (Make sure your sound is on.)

Quiet Book

As many of you have already heard, Eddie is a menace when it comes to sitting through sacrament meeting. I am sure most kids his age are, but from my observation, he is worse than most of the kids in our ward. For months, I have been considering making a Eddie a quiet book for church as a way to keep him entertained without having anything to chuck at the people sitting behind us. I have done a lot of research on different kinds of quiet books. I found one that we could purchase, but thought that many of the pages were too advanced for Eddie. So after church a few weeks ago when we took Eddie out of sacrament meeting a record 6 times, I decided it was time to do something. That is when I found this amazing idea: A Pot Holder Quiet Book.

The next day, Eddie and I made a stop at the dollar store and bought some fabulous holiday pot holders and some felt. I got right to work. I wanted to make pages that Eddie could have fun with at his current stage of development. So I did some more research and made a list of potential page ideas.

Eddie likes numbers (especially twos and nines), so I decided to start with counting.

First, I cut numbers 1-9 out of black felt and stitched each number onto a square of red felt. I sewed a second red square to the back of the first to hide my stitches.




Next, I sewed all sorts of little doo-dads onto squares of black felt. Each section corresponds to the number that will cover it -- two lady bugs under the 2, five baseballs under the 5, etc. Then I sewed the black felt onto a piece of blue cotton fabric that was large enough to cover my potholder.


Next, I sewed the blue fabric with attached doo-dads onto the potholder. The fabric covers the lame design on the front of the potholder, so it really doesn't matter how ugly the pot holders are. You only end up seeing the trim and the back. Since I was using white thread, I didn't use the sewing machine because I didn't want the stitches to show on the back side. If you have the right color of thread, you won't have this problem. Just turn the edges under and stitch all the way around.

Last, I sewed the number flaps on top of the corresponding doo-dads. Voila! The counting page is complete.





The next page I decided to do is shape matching.

First, I cut shapes out of green and white felt. Then, I pinned the shapes to my red fabric and stitched with white around the outside of the shapes to create an outline of each shape on the red fabric.




Next, I cut out the shapes again so I could create a double-layer. I sewed a small piece of velcro onto the back, then sewed the layers together so the stitches are hidden between layers. Last, I sewed velcro into the center of each shape outline on the red fabric.

Now all I need to do is sew my red fabric onto my pot holder and this page will be done.

Care, who writes the Obsessively Stitching blog deserves all the credit for this idea. She has tons of cute crafty ideas, so be sure to check it out. I plan to make more pages in the quiet book as I come up with ideas. The book will be bound with some sort of ring through the loops on the pot holder, so I will be able to expand it as Eddie learns to do new things. If you have any ideas for future pages that a kid like Eddie might enjoy, please leave a comment!

Strep

I am thinking of starting up a regular feature on Eddie's blog about all of his diseases. At the rate he gets them, it could be a weekly post! In this week's edition: Strep Throat.

I feel pretty bad about this illness because not only is Eddie sick, but we also exposed almost everyone we know over the Thanksgiving holiday. In our defense, we didn't know he had strep until Friday or we could've avoided exposing the entire Barton family and the friends we had dinner with on Wednesday night.

Wednesday night, Ed started getting congested and developed a little cough. Thursday he had no appetite (he had crackers, toast, more crackers, and pie for Thanksgiving). Friday, he awoke from his nap in a pile of vomit and threw up 5 times in the next two hours -- including twice while we waited for the doctor to see us in the exam room at the Instacare. Due to Eddie's history, I thought these symptoms meant another ear infection. The doctor looked into his ears and didn't see any problems. Then she tortured him by sticking a tongue depressor in his mouth to get a look at his throat. She swabbed it and did the test and it came back positive for strep. So apparently, Eddie throws up whenever he has any sort of infection. Who would've thunk?

Since she made him so mad, the doctor offered to bring him an Otter Pop. I wasn't having that until she gave him some anti-nausea meds (because the last thing I needed was more throw-up in brighter colors). So they brought the anti-nausea medicine in and we force-fed that to him. Then he got his Otter Pop and was happy. Luckily, he got on antibiotics at the right time so that 24 hours later, he stopped being contagious -- before he could expose Dax & Riley at dinner on Saturday.

He's doing much better now that he is not contagious and there is nobody new to expose. So, if you get strep this week, you can blame us... and I apologize in advance for it.

Here are some silly photos from last week. We emptied our trash can in our office and Eddie found a new toy. He climbed in:

And then this happened:

To answer your question, no, I didn't catch him in time.

Did Someone Call for a Hero?

One of Eddie's favorite places to hang out these days is in our bedroom. This is mostly because of the ceiling fan, but also partly because of the big bed. He comes up next to it and says, "seat!" so that we will lift him up. Then he stands on the bed to look at the fan. He gets excited because can see himself (and the fan) in the mirror on the other side of the room. Since he loves it so much, most nights after his bath, we'll put him in his jammies and let him run loose in our room for a while before he goes to bed. Here are a couple of photos from the other night in his new Buzz Lightyear jammies:

He was running all over like a crazy person and wouldn't hold still long enough for a photo.

The one shot where I got him to stand still for 2 seconds and sort of smile. Luckily he happened to catch his reflection on the front of the camera, so he paused to take a look.

Ed-Word

Eddie's vocabulary seems to be growing by the minute. Since my last post about his words, he has learned several more. Here are the words that we hear most frequently these days:

Fan

I should be careful what I wish for. In my last post about Eddie's words, I said that I wanted him to learn the words "fan" and "light." Now those are the words we hear most often and some days, it really drives me crazy. Plus, anything that a similar shape is also a fan, such as stars, the letter "X," and even the new Walmart logo.

Candle

Eddie loves to look at our candles when they're lit and he finally started to say "candle." It sounds more like, "tan-doo," but every once in a while he gets the "c" right.

Juice

Up until very recently, Eddie didn't drink much juice, mostly because I never gave him any. But he has learned to love juice and will ask for it by name. At first, he would call it "joo," but now he can say it quite clearly.

Pizza

Eddie has a favorite food. It is pizza. I'll open up the fridge to figure out what to make for his lunch or dinner and he stands there, looking in, and says, "pizza?" Or I'll ask what he wants, and he always says "pizza!" He doesn't really understand when I tell him that we don't have any pizza... so we've started improvizing with whatever ingredients we have on hand.

Come On

Eddie likes to repeat things we say sometimes. Just this weekend while Dave was playing the PS2, something upsetting would happen and Dave would say "Come on!" So Eddie started saying, "Mon!"

Good

This one cracks me up. Every day when Dave gets home from work, I'll say, "how was your day?" And Eddie will immediately respond, "good." He never uses it in any other context, though, so I'm fairly sure he has no idea what he's talking about.

Wait

I tell Eddie to wait a lot. I tell him to wait when he tries to escape mid-diaper-change. I tell him to wait when he demands more fishy crackers while we're driving on the freeway. He has started to say "wait" when he knows that it is what I am about to say. Just the other day, I told him to wait for fishies in the car since we were almost at our destination and he exclaimed, "NO WAIT!" I think that qualifies as his first full sentence (unless you count "Wazzat?"), plus it sums up his personal philosophy.

"Dirty" Words

Clock

Eddie likes to point out clocks almost as much as he likes to point out fans. However, he hasn't yet learned the "cl" combination, so he always leaves out the L. Dave and I can't help but feel a little embarrassed when he shouts this word out in the middle of sacrament meeting.

Sit

Here's another word that frequently has embarrassing results. He hasn't quite figured out how to do just the "s" without adding an "h" in there. He can do it when he says "seat," but not when he says "sit."

How many of Ed's words can you spot in this photo?