A Few Pictures

Here are a few pictures we've taken recently. I hope you enjoy!

Canaan and Daddy reading "Wake Up, Night" before bedtime.




Canaan standing on a chair looking out the window at the cars and trucks. If you notice, he found a way to get even higher!




Canaan getting ready to go outside and push his stroller. It has been in the low 40's for over a week!













This is Canaan sitting on the arm chair, listening to his music. He sits on the arm chair because the speakers are above it on the shelf!

You bought him what??? and pregnancy pictures

Pregnancy Progress

Hello to all. Things have been going much better recently as it seems that I have finally gained a bit of energy and am able to make it through the day without a nap or two! I am starting to look pretty big now. It is more obvious that I am pregnant these days; I am just growing more rapidly than my previous pregnancy, which I hear is normal. It is exciting, because I love looking pregnant! I think I might have felt the baby kick, but it is so hard to tell when they are so little. The baby is now about 5 1/2 inches long (head to rump), though my uterus is the size of a cantaloupe!!

You Bought Him What??

Well, we have a confession. We bought our son a toy stroller! Yes. We did. It is not pink, though. We made sure to choose the more boy color of blue! Let me explain.

Here all the little girls seem to have these small little toy strollers that they push around. Canaan absolutely loves pushing things around, strollers being no exception. Moms here bring toys to the play grounds for their kiddos: toy strollers, trucks and cars, sand box toys like shovels, buckets and molds, noise makers, etc. I've learned from watching that it is perfectly acceptable for the kids to play with each others toys, as long as the owner isn't demanding it and they aren't stealing toys from each other. If there is a problem, either the toy owner or the youngest child gets to play with it. Well, Canaan loves to push around the strollers if there are any. Well, it seemed out of the question to buy our BOY a stroller, and there were no boyish options that were in an acceptable price range.

So, that leads us up to last Saturday. We were invited over to Alexei and Katya's house to have a small celebration for their son's second birthday. They have two boys, Leonid who turned two, and Alexei Jr (Leoysha is the nickname, though I am sure I am butchering the spellings) who is 8 years old. Canaan loves going to their house because it is like a car/truck heaven; I think they have more cars/trucks than we have!! Well, when we were there, I pointed out to Dougle that there in the corner of their livingroom, stood a toy. blue stroller. Later, we went to the park with them. The big boys played Frisbee and the little ones played on the playground. Much to Canaan's delight, he found a bright pink stroller just waiting for him to push it all over. He pushed it for at least 20 minutes, having the time of his life. We snapped some pictures and remarked how Canaan loves pushing things. Alexei said that their youngest son also loves pushing things, like strollers. Every time they'd go to the park, he'd find someone's stroller and push it around the whole time. That is why they finally broke down and bought one for him, even though it seemed ridiculous to buy a toy stroller for a boy! So, shortly after visiting their house, we bought Canaan his own little stroller! And he loves it!

The Slideshow

The slideshow of pictures has some from the birthday, some from our day downtown while waiting to submit our Ukrainian visas (see Dougle's blog for the story), and some other random recent photos. Hope you enjoy!

22 months and counting!

So, I am about 9 days late posting a 22 month post about Canaan. This seems to be the way I've been posting things recently...a bit tardy! Oh well. Is being pregnant a good excuse?? :)

New Words: There are many. I can't list them all, but here are a few: play (pay), stack (tak), see, cookies, off, on, there, here (these 2 sound almost the same: ear/ere), sit, big, small (mall), shower (wower), milk (bok), monkey (onkey), frog (og), bird, over, under, away, potatoes (tatoes), coin, heart (arch), dog, too, towel, and dry.

New Phrases: He is starting to put words together and talk in sentences or semi-sentences more and more each day. His longest little phrase is about 5 words: "A blue choo-choo there too!" He has started saying lots of short phrases:
"sit ball"
"up stair truck" (when moving his trucks up and down things)
"play trucks/cars" (I want to or can I play with my trucks and cars)
"a new, Yeah!" (when he is requesting another song)
"See Canaan" (when he wants to look in the mirror)
"here go" (here it goes)
"choo-choo on truck"
"stinky diaper"
"a new diaper momma"
"more cars here"
"all over" (he said this today when the music ended
"3 'O's' truck" (three O's in the truck)
"mama, catch" (he says this a lot when throwing me a ball or when he wants me to catch him at the bottom of a big slide)

New Concepts
He has learned big/small. He successfully can identify which things are big/small about 90-95% of the time! He has learned off and on and will tell us when things are off/on. He knows the difference between a fan being off and on, and when a truck is off or on a book, etc. Being his Mommy, I am so impressed! Canaan also has picked up on the concept of "too." He is always saying such and such too, when there is more than one thing. He has also started to pick up other prepositions, like over/under and he definitely knows what push means. We are working on pull. He also loves to use the words here/there. They sound really similar, so I can't always tell if he uses them correctly all the time. But he is always pointing and saying "there" when he is talking about things at a distance. We continue to work on colors, but I feel he just must not be ready yet. He calls everything "blue." I think it is his new favorite word!!

New Feats

Canaan is full of new stuff. I just can't remember it all right now. However, he is starting to feed himself more and more. If the soup is thick enough, he can eat it by himself. He eats oatmeal by himself too. And he cleans out his yogurt containers pretty well now. He is getting so big!

As far as large motor skills, he is throwing and kicking well. We are still working on catching. Small motor skills are developing well too. He plays with some uncooked kidney beans and has started stacking coins. He has also taken up watercoloring. When I try to get him to color with crayons, he just wants to hold all of them in his hand or line them up in a row! 

Well, that's all for now folks. I hope to post another blog soon about our recent exploints and my pregnancy growth. Hope you all are doing well!!

Climbing out of Bed

Here is the promised video of Canaan climbing out of his bed! As you can see, it is only safe with our bed right there! He does great at not getting up when he isn't supposed to; but he knows he can call our names when he wakes up, and once given permission, he climbs out by himself!

We've been taking turns being sick this week, that is why I haven't put on his 22 month update! Hope you enjoy the video!

Cool Days Playing

Yesterday we went out to play, and I was armed with my camera. It was actually cool enough that we wore coats and hats. It warmed up a bit more today, which was nice. We had fun, just Canaan and I. We took our time walking to a playground near by. He stopped to play with his cars on a slope/"stair" that we crossed. He got distracted by a ledge we passed and then we stopped again to smell some pansies that are still out blooming after we jumped in a big puddle of water a few times. (He had his boots on, which are water resistant and he just has so much fun when he can jump in puddles!)
When we got to the playground, he enjoyed the slide and sandbox, as well as sitting on the benches and chasing a bird. The bird finally flew up to a ledge (after hopping away from him halfway across the playground). It was cute to see him standing at the wall, looking up at the bird while the bird looked down on him.
Hope you enjoy the pictures. I thought there were several cute ones and wanted to share!

Rainy Day Water Colors

This morning we woke up to rain. It was a gloomy day, looking like it wasn't going to let up for a while. So, what can Mommy and Canaan do all day inside?? Hooray for Mommy! She bought paints last week to try out. So, we finally had an excuse to break them out and give them a test run!

Thankfully (at the last minute), I remembered it might be a good idea to strip Canaan down before venturing too far into the project. We practiced WCP: Water, Color, Paper. Put the brush in the water, then in a (preferably one) Color, then onto the Paper. It worked sometimes, but then sometimes he got messed up in the excitement of it all and it went from the color to the water and then onto the paper. But I remember that being normal from my teaching Bible class days. Overall, he seemed to have fun. He painted on blank pieces of paper first; after he started getting a bit bored with that, I pulled out the papers on which I had drawn some of this favorite things: cars, trucks, and tractors. He really liked painting over those and wanted to paint and paint and paint over again each vehicle. I quickly drew a few more vehicles and a barn scene (of which he wasn't interested). When I put one paper up, he would say, "See truck. See choo-choo." I would show him they were just on the table and encouraged him to paint his other pictures. At one point, he did get a bit distracted when he got some paint on his fingers. But, I was able to distract him from that a few times and he was able to get back to painting. Afterwards, of course, we had a clean-up bath!
It was fun. Canaan really seemed to like it. He even liked holding the finished products when they were dry. I think he was proud of what he did! And Mommy had fun and was proud too!

More ABC's

Here it is again: Canaan saying his ABC's. Don't feel compelled to watch it; we figure grandparents and aunts and uncles are most likely those interested in another video of our smarty pants! But, this one is short: 30 seconds. He says the alphabet through, on his own, skipping N and W (he still won't say them). At the end, he says "no-know, F, G, way." Let me explain. "No-know" is his ways of saying "now I know." When he says "F, G, way," it is his way of saying "A,B,C's." Usually I am telling him to put his ABC's away (his foam letters), so that is why he puts "way" on the end of it. It is funny because several times a day he will see letters, when we are out, or if we are writing something, and out of nowhere, he will start in saying his ABC's. He almost always claps for himself when he is finished, which is cute. Hope you enjoy!