Lately Andrew has taken to “reading” his favorite book to us, and the other night we finally got it on tape. Here it is for your viewing pleasure in QuickTime (7.5MB) or WMV (4.0 MB) format. My QT codec is somewhat lousy so in that version it’s hard to tell that he’s actually doing a good job of parroting the words on the page. At least we know he’s paying attention.
Today was a rough day for the little guy, he’s got a pretty bad cough so we spent the whole day on the couch. History Channel was running a “Hands on History” marathon so we got to see how Mack trucks, John Deere tractors and Honda Gold Wing motorcycles are made…maybe cable ain’t so bad after all.

This is pretty advanced stuff for a not-quite-two-and-a-half-year-old.
A: “I want a kitty!”
E: “We can’t get a kitty, I’m allergic.”
A: “I not ‘lergic, Daddy not ‘lergic…”
I suppose it’s going to get worse from here.

A couple of cute clips from this weekend…Andrew has started singing. He’s pretty good with the ABCs song and a couple other standards, as you’ll see here (WMV, 6.3MB) or here (QuickTime, 8.1MB). On Sunday afternoon we went bowling (candlepin, of course) with some friends. This turned out to be far less disasterous than you might imagine, since the alley has bumpers they put up over the gutters for the pipsqueaks. Andrew enjoyed himself immensely, though his desire to throw the ball “himself” meant that we ended up with a few that lost steam about halfway down the alley. Here’s a clip of one of his more successful, mommy-assisted tosses: (WMV, 1.8MB) (QuickTime, 2.3 MB)

I’ve finally had a chance to put up the pictures from Dad’s retirement back in February, they’re available here. Clicking on one of the thumbnail images will take you to a full-size version.
If anybody has suggestions for captioning, please email me or post a comment.

The site has been down for a while, but we’re back up and I have a couple of Andrew video clips ready. The first is from the St. Michael’s Easter Egg Hunt WMV (3 MB) QT (4 MB). The second is from this weekend’s trip to Drumlin Farm – Andrew checks out the pigpen WMV (3.5 MB) QT (3 MB).
Andrew is very much enjoying the warmer weather; he loves to run around in the back yard. Sometimes it’s a struggle to get him into pants before we leave the house, but we’re working on him.

Tonight, Andrew pointed to my sweatshirt and said “letters!” We proceeded to have a speak-n-spell session where he pointed to a letter and I said its name. To balance out that stellar achievement, he’s become afraid of being sucked down the bathtub drain. It took both of us to get him in the tub tonight – one to hold the drain plug and the other to coax him in.
I’m going to miss this when he grows up, right?

Andrew turned two on Friday, and we had a small party for him on Saturday. Truth be told, any operation involving a toddler and his doting parents can’t really be characterized as “small.” We made a Nemo birthday cake and invited a few friends (ranging in age from nine months to three years) to help us eat it. My boss has a rule that birthday parties should involve no more than n+2 kids total, where n is the guest of honor’s age. We exceeded it by one, but the youngest guest wasn’t very mobile so we didn’t have too much trouble.
Of course there’s a video, too…here’s the short version (3.0 MB, Windows format). Stills will follow as soon as we get the film developed. Yup, we’re still using paleo-cameras.
Update: Video now available in QuickTime (4.0MB)