Caden is 26 months and such a joy!

With all that has happened lately, I am constantly reminded how great life is.  God has blessed me with the most wonderful boy.  He is so kind, loving, smart, and funny.  He keeps me laughing.  Since Caden turned 2, I decided not to do monthly updates.  However, with all that is going on, it's time for a happy update.

The newest milestone for him is potty training.  He is doing very well with this.  I am probably holding him back more than I should.  He is even getting very good at using the bathroom in public and finally went poop in the potty last night!  Yay!  That is one thing he had not done until then.  Today he told me he had to poop so we ran upstairs (the bathroom upstairs is set up better) and he sat on the potty.  He just had gas but he kept looking to see if anything was coming out.  He's such a boy!  I love it!  I still haven't moved him to undies, just diapers and pull-ups.  We'll probably switch to pull-ups then underwear gradually. 

Something else I've been impressed with is how quickly he's picking up is the months of the year.  He knows them by heart and will even say them randomly while playing.  Of course when I get the camera out to film he stops talking.  I finally caught him saying it but he saw me so he started talking quietly.  He's been doing really well with the days of the week too but I have not heard him say all days the from memory yet.  We just started doing calendar time a few weeks ago and it is one of the highlights of our mornings.  Last week we missed doing it about half the week.  I'm not sure if we'll bring this to the States or not.  So we may pick that up again when we return. 

Caden's vocabulary and communication skills continue to grow.  Little people are so smart!  One of our favorite games is something I call "What is?"  I'll ask him if something is the wrong color such as, "is the sky pink?" and he'll say, "noooo, the sky is blue."  I also ask him questions like "do horses say, 'meow?'"  He'll laugh and say, "noooo, horses say, 'neigh!'"  He loves me to ask him the wrong question so he can get it right. 

I am starting to teach him to read.  I guess all along we have taught him by reading to him.  But now he will look at word and spell it.  He'll say for example, "d-u-c-k spells duck."  One of his favorite things to play with is the Melissa and Doug See and Spell.  I can ask him how to spell any of those words and he'll pick up the board and spell the word.  We don't work on spelling as much as I wish we did, mainly we just don't have time.  I feel like lately we've had so much going on.  But I do try and read to him 15-20 minutes during the day and we read to him 15-20 minutes at night before bed.  Words that I think he knows or can sound out I'll have him try and read them.  Thankfully the alphabet and phonics have come quite easily for him and I think he'll be reading by his 3rd birthday.  He loves books and words like his Mom and Dad.  He also gets the right letter that certain words start with about 8 out of 10 times.  I don't do really hard words, but I'll say, "what does Mommy start with?"  He'll say, "Mommy starts with 'M'!"  Or "what does hat start with."  He'll say "H," etc.  Sometimes he'll tell us randomly when we're talking about someone what their name starts with or what an object, such as the door starts with.  Tonight Collin heard him talking to himself.  He was looking at shampoo bottle with a picture of strawberries and the word milk on it but no picture of milk.  Caden was sounding out the word.  Collin could not hear all of what he said but he heard, "mu, ei...milk." 

Caden's favorite book at the moment is Are you My Mother? which I loved a child.  He has the book almost memorized and is very dramatic when he reads it, especially when you get to the part where the baby bird is high in the air on the Snort and says, "Where am I?  I want to go home! I want my Mother!"

The only concern we have is possible allergies.  He still throws up quite often and randomly.  When we come in town we're going to try and get him in with a doctor there. 

We love you, Caden Jake!

Love,
Mom and Dad

P.S. Here's the link to the YouTube video. I tried putting it on here but am having problems. It's not as clear or good as he usually says it because he gets camera shy. But it's still really good.

Favorite book of the month

I love those blue eyes

Playing with Jordan a friend from church at a baby shower this past weekend

Having fun playing with his toys.  He set up his toys like this and I thought it was cute.

I had him try and balance a bean bag on his head then walk. 
Then I asked him to stand on one foot.  He did pretty good with the walking but not on one foot.

Placing the bean bags on a letter with the same color.

We read The Purple Crayon, which he thought was funny and loved.
I asked him if he wanted to color with a purple crayon and of course he said, "yes!"