Spike The Dinosaur

Tractor On Slide

Christmas a little early

For Christmas this year, I had my Aunt make matching pj bottoms for Matt and Connor as a gift from Connor to Matt. As soon as we got home tonight, I had Connor come in the room with me so we could wrap them up for Matt, who wasn't home yet. While I rummaged through the closet for the wrapping paper, ribbon and tape, Connor runs out into the hallway, where Matt has just come home. He takes the jams out of the bag and throws them across the floor screaming, "Daddy!!! We have PRESENTS for you!" lol guess he got his Christmas present a little early this year.

ABCD Dinosaur

superfriends

while reading a book with matt...
(pointing to batman who foiled penguin's plan): good job, batman. you can go to my party.
(pointing to penguin) you can't go to my party because you're being a bad guy in this story.

toilet talk

we're decorating the house for christmas while connor and cana are in connor's room playing. connor comes running out down the hall, lifts up and drops the toilet seat lid, then flushes the toilet then turns around to run back down the hall. I stopped him and asked:

mom: connor, what did you put in the toilet?
connor: nufing.
mom: then why did you flush the toilet?
connor: i flushed the pee.
mom: when did you go pee? (because he wasn't in there long enough to actually go)
connor: I just like to pee!! (raises his hands up in a what-do-you-want-from-me? gesture)

dinner convo

Connor has already eaten and joins us at the table while we eat.

Connor: Can I have a fork to play with?

Sabrina: No, you don't need a fork to play with at the table.

Connor: Dad, can I have a fork to play with?

Dad: No.

Connor: Okay, I'll start this again...Can I have a fork to play with?

I got up and got him a fork. He earned it.

avoiding the issue

mom: why are you in trouble connor?
(no response)
mom: connor, why are you in trouble?
connor: i have food in my mouth.

Rock Musician In The Making

Connor's song lyrics when he's ornery and thinks no one is listening:

The wheels on the bus go shut up shut shut up

Shut up shut up shut up.

The wheels on the bus go I don't like you I don't like you I don't like you.

trick or treating

Connor got to go trick or treating with his friend, Jaden this year and he loved it. At first, he would knock on the door while saying Trick or Treat and then not say anything when someone would answer the door. After a (very short) while, Connor decided that his bucket was too heavy and would pass it off to Jaden to carry. Funny enough, Jaden didn't mind. We kept telling him that he didn't need to do that, but Jaden would take it every time. It was cute to see the boys and how well they got along.

pumpkin carving

here are some pics of connor carving his pumpkin this year. he specifically designed that face on the pumpkin based on some choices that matt gave him.

Halloween Party

Connor's school had a halloween party for all the kids last week. Here are some pics of him there.

at the park

matt took connor to the park yesterday. apparently there was a little girl close to his age there, swinging on a swing. connor walks away from matt and turn his hat around so it's on backwards, then goes and sits on a swing that is 2 over from the little girl. he's just swinging and looking the the girl, trying to be nonchalant. matt comes up to connor since the swings are pretty big and connor can still fall off them. connor tells matt, "go away dad" a couple of times. evnetually the little girl leaves and connor moves over and starts swinging on her swing.

some pics

here are some pics of Connor reading one of the new books his Nanny got for him.

Excerpts From BedTime Stories

Connor has book reading time every single night before bed. Tonight, we were reading a random book with a dog in the background that he couldn't quite make out. I asked him what it was and his categorizing response was impressive, "Hmm, its some kind of animal."

Next we read a book of animals and their associated sounds. He got them all right from snakes to mice to orangutans, horses, frogs, and more, but the two responses I chuckled at were:

me: what does the elephant say?

connor: WEE-HAA!!!

me: what does the seagull say?

connor: caw ... caw ... caw ... and then it dies.

party

we were in the car this afternoon coming back from a friend's house. The terror in Connor was very much awake and he was being a little punk. At one point, I turned around and smacked his foot because he kept trying to pull my hair with his feet. Without waiting, he says "You're not coming to my party!"

somebody's dad

the other day connor wanted to wear a hat to school, so matt grabbed one and put it on him. connor took i it and turned it around so it was backwards and said "now i look like somebody's dad"

playing at the park

Matt took Connor to the park last weekend for some good outside time. They had a great time puling Grover around in his wagon. Apparently, Grover was hungry so Connor "fed" him lunch by shoving a bunch of dead grass in his mouth. I only found out about the grass part the other night when Connor told me at bedtime that Grover had yuckies in his mouth and asked me to get them out. (Matt had gotten out most of it, but there were still a couple of pieces.)

Rudolph

Connor has been on this kick of asking me to sing him Christmas songs at night before he goes to bed. Last night I was singing Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer and he interrupts me after I said the part about Rudolph's nose being very shinny to say, "Is the reindeer's nose busted?"

farming conversations

matt: are you going to be a farmer when you grow up?
connor: yeah
matt: what kind of trees are you going to have on your farm?
connor: a brownie tree and a milk tree and a cheese tree


matt: what kind of animals are you going to have?
connor dogs, cows, chickens & worms
matt: what do the worms do?
connor: nothing because they don't have any legs

when i am a...

Connor has this thing that he does lately that's pretty funny. When he learns that only certain people do certain things he asks if he can do those things when he's that person. like this:

"when i am the mommy, then i can say matt?" (as opposed to daddy)

but yesterday, he said this:

"when i am the car, then i can drive stuff?"

trouble already

So one day last week when I picked up Connor from school I found out that he had to be moved at nap time. When I asked why I was told because he kept trying to kiss one of the little girls while they were laying on their cots. hahaha, already?? really? boy, am I in for trouble when he's older!

After the Games

So when we got home from the Games today, Matt asked Connor what his favorite part about today was. Connor said "jumping around". then he said, " I lost my Grandma Hill today."

It was pretty cute to see that he realized his Grandma wasn't at the Games today because Papa was.

the Games

We went to the Scottish Games today and Connor had a great time. He actually made it with a pretty good attitude considering he hadn't slept at all by the time we left at 3pm. He was so excited to wear his new kilt that Auntie Grandma made for him.

Here are a couple of pics from today.

garbage trucks

Connor is obsessed with garbage trucks. Every Friday morning he runs out to the living room to watch them pick up our garbage. I swear, it's the highlight of his day. Here's a conversation he had with Matt in the truck on the way to school today

Connor: no, garbage truck! you don't take other people's garbage.
Matt: yeah they do. they help us and throw it away for us, huh?
Connor: yeah. cuz it dinks. and its gross and so yucky

conversation with connor

I was putting Connor to bed last night and here was the conversation we had:

Connor: Mommy, can you sing the Itsy Bitsy Spider?
Me: Sure
(we sang the song together)
Connor: That was a great song, mommy.
Me: thank you Connor
Connor: you're welcome.
(a few seconds of silence pass)
Connor: (whispering) say "that was a great song Connor"
Me: That was a great song Connor.
Connor: thank you mommy.
(a few more seconds of silence pass)
Connor: (whispering) say "you're welcome"
Me: you're welcome.
Connor: Thank you for saying "you're welcome"
Me: you're welcome for saying "you're welcome"

some pics of the kids..

Preschool

Some pretty exciting news for us; Connor's school decided to bump him up to the Preschool class from his normal daycare class that he's in now. It was actually recommended by his teachers, the preschool teachers AND the kindergarten prep teacher! They all think that he's too smart to be in the class that he's in now and would like to see him challenged more.

His first day in the new class was yesterday and he had a great day.

Aiming

Last week, I called Connor's school to check up on how he was doing that day. (He'd been having some rough ones) The director answered the phone and started laughing...here's the story she told me:

I went in to his classroom and happened to glance in the bathroom and saw Connor standing on the toilet seat attempting to balance and aim in the toilet. I was so shocked that for a minute, I forgot his name and all I could say was hey. you. stop. get down.

my son, ladies & gentlemen.

walking the line

my son pushes the boundaries of what is acceptable so much. it drives me crazy most of the time, but every now and then it cracks me up. just now, i was making some guacamole and connor asked if he could hold the garlic powder jar. i told him he could as long as he didn't take the lid off. so he takes the jar and starts to twist it. i told him, "hey! i told you not to take the lid off." he just looks at me at says, "i'm not, i'm tightening it."

helmet

We were at my mom's house earlier this week and Connor wanted to try on her helmet. It was so funny to see how ginormous the helmet was on him.

Once he had it on, he told me. "Ima go to the bookstore and get a book for me. I'll be right back. You stay here." (then he put his hand out like he does to show me he wants me to wait.) He walked around the corner and came back and said, "Here, I got a book for you." So we sat down and read his pretend book.

Doctor

Connor was playing with these bead necklaces that he has over at my mom's house and he kept putting the necklace over his ears. Eventually we got him to explain that by doing that, he was being a doctor. The only thing we could figure is that he trying to mimic the stethoscopes that doctors have in their ears.

Exercising with Grandma

We were over at my mom's place earlier this week and Connor decided to workout with Grandma. He was so cute trying to do the stretches and stuff with us. I didn't think to get the camera until later and at that point, we couldn't get him to do the same things he had been doing...but we did manage to get a few cute shots.

gamer

so i'm sitting at the computer right now and connor is sitting on my lap. to keep him occupied, i told him he could press the big button (the spacebar) while i'm fighting the chillwind beasts in the game. He was continually pressing it and said, "ima get you, mama doesn't like you guy."

our son the linguist

matt was taking Connor to school this morning in his truck and out of nowhere, he says
"stop getting in my eyes golden sunshine, that hurts my eyes!"

i think we have a writer in the making. he's already testing out the waters of describing the world around him.

today

this is what my son looked like when he came home from school today. Apparently someone forgot to tell the kids that the markers were for the paper.

dads

connor: hey, what's your dad's name?
matt: his name is Ron
connor: no, it's Grandpa.

all gone

mom: hey connor, come give mommy a kiss
connor: i wanna give daddy a kiss
(gives matt a kiss)
mom: hey, where's my kiss
connor: it's all gone.

cute picture

Matt took this pic Memorial weekend while we were up with some friends. Turned out pretty cute.

hammock

matt has this hammock that he set up last weekend in the backyard. It was a bit too small for himself, but made a perfect swing for Connor.

dinosaurs

Matt and Connor were talking about dinosaurs this evening while Connor was in the bath. When Matt asked him where they dinosaurs are, Connor replied, "they are dead".

the morning after

So this morning, while I was in the shower, Connor came in our room and told a sleeping Matt he was going to get a book to read with him. A couple minutes later, when I was out of the shower, I heard him somewhere down the hall. I went to go check on him and make sure he wasn't waking up his sister. When I rounded the corner, there he was in the bathroom, trying to get his pull ups on. He says to me, "I did it Mom!"

Sure enough, he had gone potty in the toilet. Not only that, but his pull-ups were DRY! He had held it all night long! We are doubly impressed that he
1. went potty without announcing it first and
2. that he went all night long without peeing and knew to get up and go in the morning.

I don't really think it's going to continue to be this simple the rest of the way through, but it's pretty exciting to see him make so much progress in so little time. Especially because we thought we were going to pull our hair out after this last weekend.

potty training

This last weekend we decided to just hit potty training full force and ditch all diapers. We made Connor wear underwear during all his waking hours and let him use pull-ups while he slept. That had to be one of the most frustrating weekends we've had in a long time.

Determined not to give up, we sent him to school in underwear and packed along several changes of clothes, underwear, socks and shoes. I even sent along a plastic bag for all the wet clothes I would be washing that evening. When I picked Connor up from school, though, I was told that he only had ONE accident....yep, he only went through ONE pair of underwear!!! I was so excited and so proud of Connor. Actually, I think I embarrassed him a bit because I was gushing over how proud I was of my big boy.

school pics

here are connor's school photos. i love them!

Trip to the Zoo

We took Connor to the Zoo this last weekend. He had a blast seeing all the animals and riding on the little train ride they had there too. It was a perfect weekend outing for a toddler; we saw everything and were done in time for his nap.

it's icky

Connor has a blue dinosaur bottle of some kind of punch as we're leaving the zoo...

matt: Can daddy have a sip
connor: It's icky daddy. (as he takes another sip)

dirty

We were at the Zoo this last weekend, and Connor was playing in some of the dirt on the ground, when he says, "It's all dirty, this whole park!"

Songs

Connor has been ramping up in the songs he can sing. Every night when I put him to bed, I sing Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star, Rock-a-bye Connor and Heavy & Light (an Elmo song). He'll sing along with all of them...although he still is working on getting all the words and the speed down.

He also likes to sing the ABCs, but the condensed version. It goes like this:

"Abcdefg, next time don't you sing with me"


Itsy, bitsy spider is another one he trys to sing along with.

no cry travis

We've been working with Connor on 2 things a lot at home. One is him not constantly crying or whining when he wants something. He's been very focus on being independent and a big boy, so we'll tell him... "Do big boys cry? No, babies cry. Are you a big boy or a baby?" It works really well because most of the time he'll stop crying and talk like normal to convey what it is he wants.

The second thing is trying to get him to realize that he can't just take other kids toys. He's been coming home with an abundance of scratches and bruises because of other kids getting him after he's taken their toy away. So we were trying to tell him that he can't take other kids toys because it's not nice and because he's just going to get hurt.

He must have been thinking about putting these 2 lessons together because while I was talking to him about not taking kids toys (specifically a kid named Travis) he says, " Yeah. No cry Travis, only babies cry!" and he said it with the most amount of attitude he could muster up. After I was done laughing, I had to explain to him that he can't take Travis' toy and then say that; that it doesn't work that way.

eyeballs

The other day, I picked Connor up from school and he was all about color of eyes. He told me, "mommy has green eyes" "connor has blue eyes". I was only partially listening to him, so I acknowledged what he said with a simple, "yep".

A couple of minutes later, look back at him in the carseat and he was using his fingers to pull down the bottom lid on his eyes. He looks at me like that and says "I have blue eyeballs, mommy!"

I busted up laughing.

going potty

Connor is starting to become more aware of the benefits of using the potty. A couple of times now, he has specifically told us he needs to go and waited until he could go on the potty instead of in his diaper. With Connor, we have to be really careful to encourage him because he's so stubborn. If he even gets a hint that it's not his idea, he won't do it, just because.

Wish us luck!

Reading with Grandma

Grandma was at our house last night after the play and read (sort of) a book to Connor before it was time to go to bed.