I am trying to remember to write down the little things that Davey does and says!  Just a few weeks until his 2nd birthday.

He loves to put his dishes in the sink when he is done with them.  It's best to remember to give him a plastic bowl, because when he is done he goes to the kitchen and reaches back and throws the bowl into the sink as hard as he can.   🙂 Crash!  He wants to help!

He had so much fun in Branson this past weekend.  We went with the OBU International Club.  The students are all so sweet to him, and although he is a bit overwhelmed by them at times, he did enjoy them as well.

David took him on this ride at Silver Dollar City that we THOUGHT was going to be slow.  It was next to the elephant ride, where you can make your car go high or low, but it went slow.  Well, this ride was nearly the Himalaya!   It went around FAST!  I was a nervous wreck.  Davey was fine.  When it was over, he looked at David and said, "Daddy, that was crazy!  Let's do it again!"

Last week we went to eat at Pizza Shack.  He loves their pizza and spaghetti.  He was talking and talking.  We spilled something, and he said, "we need to get a rag and clean it up".  When I went to pay, I noticed that she'd charged him the kid's price.  I knew that under 3 eats for free, so I asked her about it.  She thought he was 3 from the way he was talking!  (She took my word for it though and he ate for free.) 

He loves the dogs.  Timber is big and so Davey doesn't want to get to close to him or really to Koko and Daisy either – which is great, I work to keep them away from each other, but he always wants to save part of his food for them.  "Give this to Koko.  Give this to Timber.  Give this to Daisy."  It can be the smallest smidgeon of a snack, but he wants them to have it.  He loves to watch me feed these things to the dogs too. 

We’ve had a nice day today.  Davey and I went to Atwood’s, but we’d missed the fall batch of Chicks, ducks and geese.  Davey was disappointed, but he took it well.  “It’s okay Mommy”, he said.  So we went over to Dollar General next door, and he picked out a Christmas ornament for the tree.  He enjoyed that.

He slept from before 8pm last night until about 7:30 this morning.  It seems like the better he sleeps at night, the more likely it is that he will take a nap.  So he took a good long one today.  It had been a few days since he’d even taken a nap.  He woke up happy.  The first thing he said was, “It’s missing a piece,” and pointed at this little puzzle he’d been working on.  I found the piece later.  He’d left it in the living room.

He’s getting so excited about his birthday.  “My birthday’s coming”.  Then he will ask, “Is Oma coming?  Pa is coming?  Papa Jerry is coming?”  On different days he mentions different people.  He has asked a couple of times if Mitzi is coming!  He wants “cupcapes” and candles.  I asked him what he’d like to have for his birthday.  I don’t know why, he really doesn’t have much of a concept of that yet.  But he thought about it for awhile and then he said, “OH YEAH! Toys!”  I guess he has a little bit of a concept of it!

Last Saturday we went to Manchester (a little community outside of Arkadelphia) for the pumpkin days festival.  It was a lot of fun.  Davey loved it.  They had a fishing booth thing – just like when I was a kid at our Halloween carnival we used to have in Mannford.  Davey held the pole, and someone stood behind a wall and put a prize on his hook. He loved it.  He did it 6 times.  The nice thing about this festival was that everything was reasonably priced.  It cost 50 cents for one round of the fishing game.  There was a little playground which he loved.  He’s starting to really love the slide.  He had a cupcake.  Always a plus.  He enjoyed looking at the pumpkins too.

Davey has grown increasingly independent lately.  At least he wants to be!  "I can do it alll by myself!"  "I want to do it all by myself!"  So today he wanted to go up the steps at the art building by himself. They were too steep to walk up, so he semi-crawled up them, but he did it alll by himself!

I got him a mini Doodlepro thing today.  He loves to draw on it.  It is hard for him to pull the lever and erase the picture on this smaller one, (He does it great on the large one) so he says to me, "Mommy zip it!", and I pull the lever for him.  He told me he was drawing a mouse.  (We had just read, "If you Take a Mouse to School".)  He told me as he was drawing, "I am drawing the tail, the body," etc.  I couldn't tell exactly what he was drawing, but I know that he could tell in his mind!

No nap for Davey today.  That's two days in a row.  He was pooped when he went to bed.  But we had a nice afternoon at OBU.  He played and played outside.  I made the mistake of taking him into the bookstore to get t-shirts.  He was an incorrigible whirling dervish.  He wanted to touch all the stuffed tigers.  He wanted to take things off shelves.  He wanted to pull the shirts down off hangers.  If I told him, "please don't touch", he just went into faster whirling dervish mode.  Finally, I picked up the wiggly kid and got the heck out of there as fast as we could. 🙂  He had a great time!  Mostly he was just trying to show me things.  And if you see 10 stuffed tigers sitting on a bottom shelf, and they are all looking at you, what in the world are you supposed to do but try to pick them all up?!!?

Two weeks ago we went to the Ouachita football game.  Davey kept talking about the Tiger Mascots. He liked the Tiger, and he also liked the lady Tiger.  He calls her “Princess Tiger”.  He was too bashful to go shake hands that night however.  So after he knew we were going to the game again on Saturday night, he said he wanted to shake hands with the Tiger!  Well once we got there, he was too bashful to shake their hands.  They were silly with him though and soon he warmed up to them.

Davey enjoyed watching the game with David, but just for a little while.



This has been the week of the fair.  On Wednesday, we went over the fairgrounds so I could submit 3 things that I knit.  Socks, An infant kimono, and a sweater I made for Davey. I noticed as I submitted them that they were all some shade of green.  I didn’t do that on purpose, and although I do love green, I do knit things in other colors.

After I turned those in, we took our first walk around the livestock. Davey loved the cows, bunnies, poultry, pigs and goats. We looked around their several times.

On Thursday, we went to the parade. Davey loved that too. Loud fire trucks, horses, the bands (OBU, HSU and Arkadelphia High), he was very excited. He also loved picking up the candy that was thrown out. He can’t even eat most of it yet, but he did not care. It was just fun picking it up.

It’s been raining cats and dogs all week too. But it let up for the parade yesterday, and it let up for our two visits today. Davey and I went this morning. We looked at all the animals, again and again and again! Davey loved seeing the cows. He told me that the bunnies and poultry were trapped in their cages and they couldn’t get out! I told him that they were keeping them safe in there so they wouldn’t get hurt. He seems to already have a very kind heart toward animals. Yay for that. He also got to pet a cow. He was a little hesitant, but I reached out and petted what actually was probably an enormous bull, and I said, “he’s very soft”, so then he tried it. Just once though.

We went back tonight with David. We had planned to try to go to the livestock show, but Davey wasn’t interested in watching it for too long. Too slow-paced I guess. We looked at all the exhibits (my knitted stuff all got first place. I don’t quite understand how that whole process works. Everyone gets first or second (mostly firsts) and then there is one (or two or three) awards for Best in Show. It was fun though.

Davey had his first ride on the merry-go-round. He loved it!

Here is another one of my favorite pictures of the night. The little boy is learning to say cheese and throw us a great grin with it. 🙂

Another highlight was Davey milking the huge cow. (not a real cow). He just had so much fun!

Today Davey was eating some vanilla wafers.  He brought me part of one and asked me to give it to Timber.  I got the dogs each a vanilla wafer plus Davey's extra piece for Timber.  Later, he was eating crackers, and this time he gave me a small piece saying: "Give this to Koko".  So the dogs each got a cracker, plus a little extra for Koko.  It was such a sweet gesture.

Davey is having such a good time riding his horse. We brought it back from Glenwood yesterday because he is finally just about big enough for it. He doesn’t want to ride it without a hat, and he has specifically requested a cowboy hat. 🙂

We’ve had a nice weekend.  Yesterday we took Davey to DeGray.  It’s so pretty there.  We got Sonic burgers and cheetos.  Actually David ran 13 miles yesterday, so he felt that he should have a foot long chili cheese coney.  Davey had a few cheetos and that was about it.  He was too excited to run around and play.

On our way back, we drove up 26th street and noticed that the water park was open.  We hadn’t gotten any pictures of him there yet this summer, so we decided to go.  It was about 6:15 or so, and the weather was beautiful.  It was almost chilly to get out of the water.  Davey attempted the small frog slide one time.  David let him go at the top, and I caught him at the bottom.  It is a very short slide, but it scared him.  Poor thing, he was very brave.  I caught him and he said, “I’m ok, I’m OK!”  We didn’t try the slide again.  I bet that next summer he will be flying down it all by himself.

He liked building sandcastles at the lake.

This picture is a little blurry, but I just love it.

Davey’s eyes appear closed, but in this photo – I really thought it was a nice photo of David.

Davey was having so much fun!

I took some pictures of the guys I am making.  Davey is really enjoying them.  I crocheted the giraffe and the alligator from patterns.  I knit the chicken from a pattern.  (I refer to him as worried chicken!)  Davey wanted a flamingo and I didn't have a pattern, so I made him up.  Now that was fun.  I am just making it up as I go along from now on.  He turned out ok for my first try.  His neck is a little long and his legs could be a little longer.  I ordered some safety eyes, but I haven't gotten them in yet.  I could sew on some eyes, but I don't mind him without eyes either.  

Not the best photo of the giraffe.  I was trying to be fast, because Davey wanted him back!

See why I call him the worried chicken?  Poor guy – what an expression I gave him!

Same story as the giraffe on the photo.  I wanted to "pose" him better!

But this is a lot of fun.  Now Davey is asking me, "are you making a fox?"  I just started one.

I have been making Davey some little animals.  I started by knitting a little bitty chicken.  I call him the "worried chicken" because well the expression I sewed on his face makes him look worried.  Now I am crocheting amigurumi animals.  I started with an elephant.  I used too fine of yarn and too big of a crochet hook, so he's not great.  You can see stuffing.  The hippopotamus was much better, but the yarn was a little soft and the hook a little big.  The giraffe that I finished today is much better.  Good old cheap acrylic yarn seems to work best, and using a hook a least a size smaller.  He's cute.  

Davey loves to watch my process.  He walks up to me and says, "a giraffe?  You making me a giraffe?"  I tell him that I am.  He likes to check my progress and ask me many many times.  He was so happy to see the finished giraffe tonight.  He gathered it up with the rest of the animals.

He knows that I am making them using a pattern from a Vanna White book.  He loves to look at the book and pick out the other ones that he wants me to make.  He walks up to me out of the blue all the time and says, "you going to make me a walrus?  a seal?  a lion?  an alligator?"  He has studied the pictures and knows which ones he would like to have.  We talk about this a lot!