A boy and his tractor

My parents are here until tomorrow morning, so I'll post pictures of our time together soon.  However, I have to share these ones tonight.  Judson really loves tractors (and can say "tractor" pretty well).  In fact, there are basically three things on the roads according to him: buses, cars, and tractors (anything out of the ordinary falls into the last category).  My mom pushed him around on his tractor for a very long time today.  He had a blast and I got some pretty good pictures.  Win, win.  :)

Little Helper

Judson loves to help me load and unload the dishwasher.  He loads and unloads the silverware for me.  Once the clean silverware is out, he goes for anything he can get his hands on while I frantically grab the most fragile items first.  He's usually pretty good about putting his plastic dishes in "his" drawer and he hands me most other things.  Sometimes he starts to put things in random drawers, but not very often.

Yesterday he helped me unload the dishwasher and apparently I left it open while I went off to take his cloth diapers out of the washing machine.  Nate and I heard a noise in the kitchen and went to investigate.  There was Judson, standing on the door (not something he's allowed to do), loading the clean dishes from the drainer into the dishwasher.  He was SO PROUD...not to mention cute!

Alliteration

A boy in a box with lots of balls.  He LOVES balls all of a sudden.  Not that I'm surprised.  Playing "catch" is currently one of his favorite daily activities.  It's amazing how quickly he's becoming more coordinated.

A few of my favorite things

I've had a few people lately ask me how I feel about being home with Judson full time.  I am happy to report that I absolutely LOVE it.  It's what I've always ultimately wanted to do.  And just when I think it's not possible, Judson becomes even more fun than he already was.  A few of my favorite things he's been doing lately include:

• He's talking a ton.  He says, "Mon" for "come on" and a daily scenario goes like this:  One or both of the cats will be sitting at the door waiting to be let in.  He'll open it (all by himself), stand in the doorway, wave his arm, and say, "Mon!" really loudly.  More often than not, they're not brave enough to run by him and decide they didn't really want in that badly.
• He loves to spot birds and calls them "boods" or "booeeds."  It makes driving a lot of fun, especially since Salem is inundated with Canada geese every winter.  He says "geese" instead when he hears them honking and he can say "hawk" too.
• He says "thank you" ALL THE TIME and often without being asked.  Yesterday we were collecting pine cones outside and he said "thank you" almost every time I handed him one.  It sounds sort of like"dankoo" and it's seriously precious.
• Finally,  he did another thing yesterday that blew me away.  Over a month ago, while waiting an obscenely long time to pick up a prescription at Walgreens, I showed him a TV that was connected to a surveillance camera.  We entertained ourselves by waving at the TV.  I'd long forgotten all about it.  Not Judson.  Yesterday at Wal-Mart, he spotted a TV way up high and started waving.  Different store a month later, but he wasn't fooled.  :)

I could go on forever, but I won't.  Partly because I started this post a couple of days ago and partly because I really ought to be productive during nap time.  Speaking of which, I'm including a couple of pictures from January.  These are one of two sets of "sleeping" pictures that I have.  I never wanted to risk waking him up, but this particular day I needed to wake him up.  Of course the flashing camera didn't phase him.  :)

Cousins

Morgan, Anna, and Macy stopped briefly at our house last Sunday.  They were on their way home from Portland.  (We'll get more time together in a couple of weeks, because Morgan got some Blazer box seat tickets for himself and Nate through a work connection.)

Macy was a little out of sorts and thus screamed when Nate came anywhere near.  (She's teething, and she hadn't slept nearly as well as she does at home.  Though I did tell Morgan and Anna that now they know how the rest of us felt in the early days of parenthood.  Macy has been an AMAZING sleeper basically since birth.  I've worked hard at not being jealous! :)  Thankfully by now Judson's a great sleeper, too...)

We did get a few cute pictures of our time together.  And then I noticed that yet again, Judson's not wearing any pants in these pictures.  It's a fairly common occurrence around here, and somehow it seems to happen every time we take pictures of the two of them together.  :)

P.S. Judson just woke up and saw these pictures and started saying, "Mimi."  That's what he calls her.  So cute!