The Blessed life...

Shea took Austin on a train ride last weekend--and every day since eh says "Austin ride on big train, mama?" Pretty certain he will not forget riding on the big train!

A friend of ours had their sons birthday party last week and it included a trip to the fire station..Austin was in awe and loved being with all the kids...I think even more than the fire station itself!

So I am am sure I can look back through my blog archives and see where i may have written that I could not wait until Austin was talking more....so some one remind me of that now! In the past week the phrases that I am hearing are things such as....
"Mama, dont like it"
"Dont want to mama"
"I did it mama!"
"walk backwards, mama"

The days of not speaking are long gone....one thing I do LOVE is when I give him something and he says "thank you mama!" And then I say "your welcome" and he says "welcome" back to me....too cute!

Enjoying the "choo Choo Station" store at the Mall. I think Austin rode on Thomas for about 30 minutes when we were there....he loved it!

yes...those are the words I heard last night as i was getting Austin to sleep. Maybe not Quite that clear...but you could tell what he was saying. My baby is growing up. And if that was not enough--tonight as I read him a "chew, chew" story, he recited every line after me...Shea and I looked at him like he was an alien,. Because it did seem very alien to me to hear my sweet, little baby repeating phrases after me...seriously when did he start talking this much?

I guess over the past few weeks and months that i have not been blogging--ha!

So let me update you a little on Austin and what his life consists of now a days....
His LOVES:
----- "Chew , Chew's"--that means choo choo trains for anyone not sure. We talk about choo, choos all the time, we play with choo, choo's all the time, we watch "Thomas the Tank Engine" about a million times a day--and we have to stop whatever we are doing and get excited if we happen to hear a choo, choo on the track about a mile or so from our house.
----"stack" --which means stacking blocks. Actually it means he wants you to stack and he wants to knock them down with a "cash" ( crash.) He LOVES to play stack--especially with his daddy!
----He LOVES to swim. The kid is crazy in the water. Jumping off the side, jumping off the diving board, playing in the deep end as long as he has his float vest on. This makes me wish so bad that we had a pool--I am so blessed to my friends who let us come to swim at their houses and neighborhood pools so that my fish can play!

----His other favorite things to tell us are " snack"(meaning get me some type of food!), "bye, bye" ( when we go some where, leave something or he needs to poop and wants to be alone!) , "hey mommy" ( I went from be called mum, mum to hey mommy--not sure if its an improvement or what!), "t.b. on" ( which means tv--yes I know I need to be totally ashamed of this but seriously....whats a mom to do when Thomas allows me to cook dinner or go to the bathroom alone!), "Hun-ter" ( which he asks about every time I explain to him we are going bye, bye--which is funny since we NEVER take Hunter bye, bye with us. Guess he thinks one day we will) and then he repeats pretty much anything else we say! Its especially fun when he tries to repeat phrases-cause he forget some of the words he was trying to say and just kinda runs everything together!

What he is DOING:
-----Well "operation Race Car bed" has been in affect for about 10 days now. For those of you unfamiliar with this special operation--it consists of getting Austin to sleep in his own "race car" bed. Right now we are also working on making sure he knows that he can not come into our bed until its "light" outside. Yesterday morning around 6:15am I caught his peeking around the curtain to see if the "light" was out before jumping in bed with us!
----Testing the boundaries and limits BIG time!! The boy has a will of steel and is not afraid to show it. Pretty certain we have done more disciplining in the last week than in the last 2 months--its been insane! Whats really bad is when Shea will say " Ausitn sit in your chair , NOW" and Austin will say "sit NOW" right back at us...oh we have such a hard time not laughing!
----He is in his MDO program once a week during the summer for 6 weeks--we have two weeks left. They have based the days on "books"--so last week the book was about an animal parade so they had a small parade with a stuffed Bear --and they made drums and played "music" in the parade. The week before the book was about camping out--so they had tents pitched ( in 100 degree heat!) and the kids had snack in the tent and then had Hotdogs for lunch.
He is in an older class now since he turned two--and in this class they take their nap time on nap mats...well needless to say every week we have to talk about him taking a nap on his nap mat and not playing around. Last week he only slept for about 20 minutes because the rest of the time he was too busy holding hands with the girl next to him...eye yi yi! ( better than pulling her hair which is what he did to the last little girl who slept next to him!)
-----Before we leave to go "bye'bye" he always remembers to give Hunter his treat--and then he proceeds to grab as many "cars" as he can carry in his hands to take with us. He also started wanting to fed Hunter his dog food in the evening--so I am teaching him how to, so he can take over dog feeding in the near future!! Ah, ha--he is becoming useful!! ( such a useful engine....ack...too much Thomas I tell you!)

I have lots of fun pictures to upload from our wonderful visit to OKC for the 4th.. We had such a great time and Austin LOVED playing with his cousins--the boy slept so good at night there--and slept late Because he was so worn out!
Here are a few....