Lessons From Parker

Everybody Dance Now

We have a lot of dance sessions in our house. I had so many clips piled up of Parker dancing/running/jamming that I decided to make a music video to his current favorite dance song by C + C Music Factory "Gonna Make You Sweat."

(Facebook users click View Original Post to see video)

Grandpa, Grandpa, He's Our Man!

Fun Video Friday

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"At that same time, Jesus felt the joy that comes from the Holy Spirit, and he said: 'My Father, Lord of heaven and earth, I am grateful that you hid all this from wise and educated people and showed it to ordinary people. Yes, Father, that is what pleased you. My Father has given me everything, and he is the only one who knows the Son. The only one who really knows the Father is the Son. But the Son wants to tell others about the Father, so that they can know him too.'" Luke 10:21-22

Parker's First Quilt

There's something very special about a first blanket, especially one made by your grandma. I still have my first blankie that my grandma knitted for me when I was a baby. So when Jake's Grandma Betty asked if she could make a quilt for Parker before he was even born, we were honored and thrilled. Here we are unwrapping it at the baby shower. We loved the music theme!


Two years later, Parker is in love with it just as we were when we first saw it. He pretends to play all the instruments. Below is a video of him playing with it one day.

Fun Video Friday - Musical Poop Time

Finally, Some New Songs!

Jake and I are downright tired of Jingle Bells. When Parker wants us to sing it, we are literally slumping our shoulders, singing in monotone. OK, that's exaggerating, but I can't wait until he finds a new favorite song. So, I've been on a mission to introduce some new songs to Parker's repertoire. Here are a couple of the latest songs he's been learning (this was from the first day he sang the ABC's... I'm so happy to have caught it on video!):

ABC's

Happy "Poop" Day
(well, it sounds like it, doesn't it?)

Fun Video Friday - Singing!

Parker has been obsessed with singing lately. His two favorites at the moment are:

Jingle Bells

and

On Top of Spaghetti

This Week's Adventures: Part II

So, on with the rest of this past week's adventures as promised...

We've been hanging out a lot with our neighbors this past week. Our little friend Carly (10 going on 11 soon) is a burst of sunshine energy on even our most mundane days. Sometimes serious Parker doesn't quite get this giggly high-strung girl, but he tolerates her on his grumpy days and has a blast with her on his own high-energy days.






Parker LOVES going to Carly's soccer games. He's been to two so far (last Saturday and yesterday). He watches the girls play and imitates the coach and yells nonsense at them very sternly. There's also a park with sand attached to the soccer field, so Parker is all about that.



Parker also sometimes plays with his other neighbor, Liam. They are funny together because they're both kind of serious guys. Although he doesn't look like it, Liam is almost 5 months younger than Parker. I think Parker realizes it because he tries to show Liam how to do things (his way). And he tries to bribe Liam with his toys so he can get a hold of Liam's toys.


Parker also had fun visiting his friend Ethan's house for the first time this week. Parker was in awe of all the fun toys Ethan had. It was almost like being in Toys R Us! (Just teasing, Morgan, but I thought Parker had a lot of toys until I saw Ethan's stash)!

Parker is a lucky dude and got a new addition to his "toy" collection this week. We had ordered some potty training items online and the company accidentally sent us these really nice alphabet foam blocks (TWO sets of them). After inquiring with the company, they said we could keep them (a $60 value) for free! Parker loves them and has been impressing us this week with his knowledge of the alphabet (you can see bits of them in the pics above playing with Carly). He has quite a few alphabet books, but these have seemed to make a bigger impression on him. He knows almost all the names of the letters now!

We also took a short trip to the beach this week since it was really hot most days and Parker enjoyed feeding the seagulls. The last time we did this at this beach we got chewed out by a few locals, but this time the beach was practically empty so we escaped hearing any nasty comments. That's the OC for ya, I suppose. We left sooner than expected because Parker rubbed sand in his eyes and decided he'd had enough of the beach, thank you very much!




The last thing to note is that Parker has been singing a lot lately, and he always has to have a "microphone."

Rocking Out to U2

Changing, Growing and Other Fun Stuff

Parker is growing more and more into a little boy and is less and less like a baby every day. He is becoming more independent and is so proud of his accomplishments. He has been letting us know more often when he has to use the potty and has had five poo-poos on the potty so far. We haven't done anything special to coerce him into wanting to use it - he just thinks it's awesome because Mama and Dada do it and now he can too! He gets lots of praise when he tinkles or poops and we think that's another incentive because almost more than anything else he loves to please us. The only bummer about this whole potty thing is that it is a huge time-buster because I have to sit in the bathroom with him while he goes and he will sit there reading or drawing for a half hour sometimes if he has to poop. It's nice when it happens to coincide with me getting ready for the day because I can brush my teeth and do my hair and make-up while he's otherwise occupied.

Parker has developed another security blanket (or sheet, actually). Parker always wants to sleep with something covering him, but it's been too warm for a blanket and since they don't sell crib sized top sheets anywhere that we've been able to find, I took an old twin-sized top sheet, cut it in half, sewed the cut area and now he has two identical sheets. Thank goodness he has two because now he has decided that he doesn't just want to carry his blanket around, but he also wants to carry around his sheet too, so it needs to be washed often, just like his blanket.


Parker has also been finding new ways to entertain himself and has been so much better about playing by himself so I can get things done. He loves to make ramps for his cars to go down, or just push them off an upside down box. He found my hot rollers and has fun taking them out and putting them back in the container. It's like a puzzle for him since there are different sized rollers and he has to figure out which holes they go into.


Just this week he has decided to talk a lot and has been trying to repeat a ton of words we say. I've mentioned in a Myspace and Facebook blog that he is learning his colors and his favorite one is blue (he says brew). He has also been using all the following words in addition to his usuals (not very clearly, but he tries): Drew (this is the name for his uncle Andy whose full name is Andrew) sorry, down, red, yellow, brown, green, peas, please (yeah, these words sound exactly the same) juice, beans, truck, pee-pee, poo-poo (those he just used today for the first time), and probably more that I'm not thinking of.

Parker also loves to help me with everything (this only becomes a problem when I'm washing dishes or cooking) so it's been a lot easier to clean when he's awake now and not have to wait for everything for the weekend when Jake is home to help watch him and/or help clean. Today Parker helped me clean the bathroom, sweep and clean the floors, do a ton of laundry, and vacuum. He loves to push the vacuum cleaner so we each take turns and I count backwards from 10 to 1 so he knows when it is his turn or my turn (we do this with his toothbrush, too). We have found a timer to be a very useful tool, not just for time-outs but also for giving him a specific time frame to finish what he's doing before he has to move on to something he doesn't really want to do. It really helps to curb tantrums.

I'll finish this up with a couple of fun videos. Yes, the Helen Keller dance is completely non-PC, but here is a good analysis that my Dad wrote of the song from which the Helen Keller reference originates.

There's a First for Everything!

We've had quite a few firsts this week. Parker went to his first concert on Tuesday, which happened to also be Dada's first show with Noon on Sunday. Parker was thrilled and sang and danced the whole time. He only got annoyed when Mama wouldn't let him on the stage.

Later on Tuesday, Parker went pee-pee in the potty for the first time! We haven't started the full potty learning process yet, but since he has been asking to sit on the toilet for a few months, we finally bought him a little Elmo seat that goes on the toilet so he could sit comfortably. Parker loves it. We only pull it out when he asks. He sits on it and reads his guitar magazines. Tuesday night he sat there for over 10 minutes and had 4 tinkles! He has gone two more times on the potty over the last few days... Mama still isn't convinced he's ready to be fully potty trained though.

Parker has also decided this week to start doing somersaults. We're not sure where he picked it up, but we kinda caught one on video. What a silly boy!




The last thing to note is that Mama has picked up running again to de-stress after a long day with Parker (let's see if she can keep this up). The first two times she went out she couldn't get up the big hill in their neighborhood without walking, but the third time, on Tuesday, she was able to jog up the whole thing for the first time and was quite proud of herself. She was able to do it again on Thursday night so maybe she's getting stronger! Let's just hope she doesn't injure herself doing all this. *knock on wood*

Playing Piano

Parker still loves playing piano. He likes to jazz it up a bit and be very soulful. He is the next Norah Jones... or so he says.

Video 1: 4 months old
Video 2: 5 months old
Video 3: 17 months old

Storytime

Parker and Mama have been attending storytime almost every Wednesday at the Laguna Niguel Library. Mama thinks Parker has a little crush on the storytime lady, Tracy, as he insisted on giving her a kiss goodbye one week. Here are a couple of pictures of them together (Austin and his nanny are in the background). Parker is usually very good about participating for the whole half hour, but that's mostly because Tracy mixes up the books with some finger play songs and music time, where she brings out fun noisy instruments for the kids to play. That's Parker's favorite part, of course!

Noon on Sunday

Jake recently had an online article written about him by a fellow co-worker who has started to write about the lives of South Orange County Community College employees. See the article here.

To further add to that article - Jake is now playing in a new band that consists of four other members that are also employees at Saddleback College. They are still deciding on a band name, but at the moment the most favored is "Noon on Sunday" (which is the time they meet regularly to practice). They already have a few gigs lined up, but having had only four practices, they are trying hard to get polished for the first gig which is at the school Chancellor's Open Session, which welcomes district faculty and staff and gives an overview of the year to come. They are only doing covers at the moment, but depending on how things go, they may end up working on original music as well. Jake is the lead guitarist and is also singing lead on one of the songs so far.

To hear some of Jake's music, you can visit the following websites:
Jake's first band, Pepperstomp: http://www.myspace.com/pepperstomp
Jake's solo album, TOOSI: www.outofstyleinnocent.com