Grocery Shopping

Grocery shopping is an adventure with our almost three year old. He constantly and joyfully makes conversation with himself and other shoppers as he is perched up in the seat area on the front of the shopping cart. (If you are ever in Bolivar Wal-Mart and hear a happy little voice loudly squeaking and singing, it's probably us.)

As we pass by other customers, sometimes he will introduce himself or repeat words that he hears them say. If there is another child in a cart, he loves to grin and hold out his hand as if he expects them to return a high five. Thinking we are clever, we try to distract him with songs, rhymes, etc... but he often quickly catches on to our ploy refusing to participate.

Sometimes he critiques our selection of food and will strongly suggest another item in a different shape or color. We have even tried making him his own "list" with several pictures of items we usually buy hoping that helps tame his behavior. (That list does not include ice cream, the toy department, cookies or other things often mentioned by our son.)

Recently, we tried to humor him by asking Avery to "help" hold things. While we were trying to compare prices on lunchmeat and couldn't concentrate with all the toddler jabber, we gave him a package of ham to hold while we tried to calculate our decision.

Needless to say, we ended up purchasing the package of ham Avery so neatly imprinted his teeth marks in.

Merry Christmas

The Christmas Spirit

The Wooderson family has been in the Christmas spirit this month. We've been making Christmas cards, attending Christmas parties, finishing the holiday shopping, driving around at night to see lights, drinking hot cocoa and cider, making/decorating gingerbread cookies, listening to the Trans Siberian Orchestra, watching the holiday specials on TV, etc... This was also the first year that we put up Christmas lights outside of our home.

Avery has been having so much fun with Christmas. The older he becomes, the more he understands what is going on and enjoys experiencing the festivities. This year we let him help us decorate the tree. We strung the string to hang the ornament at one end of the room. Avery grabbed ornaments, one at a time, and raced to the opposite side of the room to hang them on the Christmas tree. When the ornaments were all hung, we realized that they were all "toddler height" around the bottom branches. A few days later, Avery had taken all of them off again and sorted them by color and finish at the bottom of the tree skirt. He did such a great job sorting, we decided not to re-hang them.

Our ornament-less tree is also pre-lit. Much to our horror, we left the room the tree was located only to return and find that our son had taken out the outlet plug cover and plugged the tree in by himself! He is more clever than we give him credit.

Avery likes to point out gingerbread men when he sees them. So, we thought it would be fun to make actual gingerbread cookies and decorate them with Avery. The icing came in a white tube. Before we put the icing on, Avery exclaimed "NO, NO don't put MUSTARD on them Mama!" We explained to Avery that the icing wasn't mustard, and we let him had a taste. (This was really fun to us since he hates mustard by the way.) He was then "Ok" with us applying the design. He asked for the gingerbread cookies "with toothpaste" many times later that week.

To bake the cookies, we used a kitchen timer. Avery likes to play with the timer too when we let him. He will tell us that it's "thirty-o-clock". Besides the timer, numbers on clocks, watches, etc... sometimes catch his eye as well. When we are in the store and discussing prices, sometimes he will tell me that something costs "forty dollars". Everything in his mind is "forty dollars". If he starts begging us to buy something, I tell him that if he has the money for it, he can buy it. He assumes that he does, and lets us know he has "forty dollars" and to go ahead and give it to him.

Having a child has brought a different and special meaning to us each holiday.

Car Soup

Here is a picture of Avery's latest dish, "Car Soup". You mix it up by turning the lever, and he tells us that it tastes like "Yuck".

While splashing in the bathtub, Avery laughs and tells me "Look! The bubbles are tickling me!'.

Before laying down for a nap, our son says that he is going to "go to sleep and have pictures in (his) head" (dreams).

New Places for Old Things

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Children are special in the fact that they see the world in a unique way as compared to adults. Avery's curiosity about the world is fun to observe, and it is interesting to see what he does with objects in which he doesn't know the function to. We captured some photos of such instances the past couple of weeks. Avery was given various random objects (such as a pipe cleaner, pom pom ball, sifter, popsicle mold, ice cream scoop, party noise maker, etc...) while we watched what he did with them. As it turns out, we saw these objects in new places across the house throughout the week. He seems to like to understand how things are put together, and will stick things in odd places to see if they fit. For example, sometimes we find our shoelaces strewn in the wrong holes, or TV cables in the opposite slots. Avery also enjoys building things with his blocks and gives names to them (like an airplane or firetruck). It will be fun to see that develop as his thinking and creativity matures.

This Week at the Woodersons

Avery's Words of Wisdom:

Avery has enjoyed reading the Aesop's Fable about the tortoise and the hare (we call it the turtle and the rabbit story). While sitting on the potty, he informs me that he will "pee pee fast like a rabbit, and sloooooow like a turtle".

He has dubbed lima beans "dinosaur beans".

The county courthouse recently placed Christmas lights around it's perimeters. Avery loves seeing it lit up at night. He says that it is "the castle" where the "king and queen live".

Avery was sick a while back, and we started the habit or rubbing Vicks vapor rub on his chest. He thought we were just finding an excuse to tickle him. Now, every night before bed, he asks for "bicks por rub" as a tactic to stall the bedtime process.

Avery and I usually wave "bye bye" to Clint as he leaves for work in the morning. I had tried explaining to Avery that his dada is a teacher, and he goes to the high school to work. Avery disagreed with me and told me that dada "goes to the YMCA, library and the park.....and I go too!!".

The sun sometimes bothers Avery while he is riding in the car. We keep an empty ice cream bucket full of toys, a hat, sunglasses and a blanket for him to use. Even with his hat and sunglasses on (usually upside down), he still complains about the sun. This week he told us that "the sun is bright, you need to turn it down!".

Fun as a Family this Week:

Clint had a birthday this week. We celebrated with homemade chocolate marble cake. Avery loved singing "Happy Birthday" to "dada" (he also added "Avery" to the song) in the dark with candles shining on the cake. Our family each had a small piece together. Avery loved the cake so much, he giggled out of sheer pleasure while eating it.

Avery loves to shake cinnamon powder on his applesauce. Sometimes we can get this picky eater to actually eat his food by letting him sprinkle cinnamon on it.

Recently, we read the story about the Gingerbread man together. Avery related the story to the gingerbread man character in the Shrek movies. I remembered that we had gingerbread men cookie cutters, so we've been finding ways to use them for fun.

Halloween Fun as a Family