Wednesday, March 12, 2014

Little voice

Danger has become a little parrot. He has started repeating things from shows. Dora keeps asking him to say BACKPACK. I think it's cute when he answers their questions, and "helps" them in their adventures. Dora, Diego, Word World, Super Why. He loves these shows, and he has started answering them just recently, and he usually answers correctly. I love it. 

However, Shark and I were watching Percy Jackson and the Sea of Monsters last night, it had adventure, and swords, and it wasn't a bad movie for Danger to watch, he actually sat thru most of it. But one thing you notice, as your kids start to taklk, is how much name calling there is in shows and movies. Percy was fighting a metal bull, and called "Hey, rust bucket!" to get it's attention. Danger walked around the rest of the night calling Bandit a "rust bucket." Yes, it's cute. But at the same time, it makes me think about everything we do with Danger. 

A lot of recent movies has a lot of name calling. In Cars, a truck calls Lighning a moron, Lightning hollers in frustration that he's in "hillbilly hell." That's the movie we're glued to lately. I know, Danger will learn worse words from others and in school and stuff, but it just reminds me how much he sees and he much he repeats. While on our Train Day, Shark had his rock candy in his mouth, not holding it with his hand, and Danger looked up and immediately put his in his mouth and let go with his hand. He sees everything Shark and I do, and he acts on it quite a bit. Anytime Shark is in the garage, Danger goes and grabs his own set of tools and runs to help. Anytime I'm sewing, he runs up to watch what I'm doing, to watch tp the moving parts. 

He's like a little sponge. He soaks EVERYTHING up. I can only hope to give him plenty of good things to soak up. To make sure he's not filling that smart little brain with junk. All I can do is try my best. This little boy is so full of life and curiosity. He loves trying to figure everything out. We have to watch him extra careful when he's into something new. When he's got his tongue sticking out, that means he's got the gears turning. We discovered Shark has to be even MORE careful about where he leaves his pocket knives, Danger knows how and it strong enough to open them. Neither of us expected him to be strong enough to open them. Shark keeps them up, but Danger is getting so tall, he can now reach UP, where things were usually out of reach. No longer out of reach. 

I'm getting very excited to add another little voice to my little family. Another little curious mind. Another little smiley face. Another little mancub. Maybe this one will even be snuggly. I've got 18 days to go! 

Monday, March 10, 2014

Train Day

So this week is Spring Break for Shark. He didn't have any classes to go to. We got to hang out with him all week. (And by all week, I mean Monday and Tuesday.) Well, Danger has fallen in LOVE with trains lately. Anytime we hear one, he puts his hand up to his ear and exclaims, "Hear trains, momma!" It's pretty cute. He gets just as excited to see motorcycles, helicopters, and airplanes. But I can take him to see some trains. I have wanted to take him on the Frontrunner for a while now. He's free to ride it, and Shark has a transit pass, so it would just cost $6 for an all-day ride pass for me. Not too shabby to watch that little boy's eyes light up at the trains!

Last week, I told Shark of my plan to take Danger on the train on Tuesday. I thought he had class. He told me didn't, and asked, why not take the train on Monday. So after my ultrasound on Monday


(baby boy is doing great, he's weighing an estimated 5lbs 7oz right now, he's head down, and has been for months, just tossing and turning, kicking and punching.) Shark and I snagged some lunch and headed to the train station. Danger was SOOOO excited to watch the train pull up to the station, so excited to see the other engines there. He skipped the whole way to the train.

The train has a double decker car, so we went up to the top deck and got a seat with a table. We were done with our lunch before the train even pulled away from the station. But that meant Danger could focus on the train going down the track. He loved it. At a few crossings, our train blew its horn, and Danger put his hand up to his ear, and looked up at me, with sheer joy on his face, "Hear trains, momma!!!" He then looked at Shark and told him the same thing.




Riding the train down to Salt Lake was a lot of fun, he was bouncing up and down in his seat. He loved looking out the window and looking at everything. There was an old set of tracks from the parking lot to the platform, and Shark found an old railroad spike, he picked it up and Danger played with it the rest of the trip. He'd hammer it against the rails and just listen to it resonate. It was so much fun to watch him try to figure out how and why that sound was made. Once we got to the Salt Lake station, we hopped on the Trax and Danger was ecstatic to get on, yet another train! It was different, but he loved it all the same. We went to the planetarium. It wasn't very far, but he enjoyed the ride, and we enjoyed watching his face light up.





We didn't spend a lot of time at the planetarium, we didn't go to a show, we just walked around the exhibits and watched the marbles bounce around. My little man was getting tired and cranky. So it was a very well-timed trip, we didn't stay too long, we didn't try to do too much.




He was so excited to get back on the Trax, he giggled and laughed. So happy! We waited at the station for a while for our train to arrive, but it was totally worth it to see that little boy jump up and down as the train pulled up to the station. For me, going to the planetarium is lots of fun, but there is a tradition Shark and I have, we always get rock candy. And it just so happened, they had a 3 pack of rock candy. Now, these rock candy are on the cheap side, they just dip the rock candy in food color after it's made, so Shark's teeth were green, Danger was red all over (it looked like blood, it was such a bad idea!!) and I had pink, probably, everywhere. Danger did have a melt down when I took his rock candy and put it back in the bag. We eventually got him distracted with the other trains we passed. We counted the train cars. He's been stuck on the numbers 18, 19, 20 lately. He'll say 2, 3, 4, but his go-to is 18, 19, 20. So when we got up to 17, I asked him what came next, and he belted out 18! 19! 20!!

Once we got home, the boys took a nap. I think Danger's Train Day was a huge success. It was good to give him a day with just us. We did things he wanted to do, we played with him, and let him go where he wanted, we just followed him. I think every month we can plan a Danger Day, where mom and dad just hang with him all day, just him. And once the Colonel gets bigger, we'll give him a day too, a day with just us.

I feel bad it's taken me so long to start spending good, fun time with Danger. I know he thinks every day is fun, but we never really went anywhere before. It means a lot that he enjoys spending time with me, and smiles as much as he does around me. I love being his mom and am so grateful for the blessing of him in my life. I adore him.