Chatting on the phone

Here was Rychen P. lounging on the floor while talking with Aunt Emily on the phone. Observing his nonchalant, relaxed pose, Rychen grabbed the camera .

"We are friends!"

Here's some cute thing Rychen P. has been saying lately.

When we all hang out, he has a hard time with the fact that Dad and Mom like to talk to each other. He always says, "Please talk to Bubba!" So we had to inform him, "Mom and Dad are friends! We like to talk to each other!" This concept had never occured to him. We also reassured him that he was our friend too. He's only heard the word in the context of little children coming over to play with us, so he was surprised to hear that we as family members could be friends. Now at random times during the day, he'll proudly say "We are friends!"

He also likes to point out that "We are three people," although I have no clue where he got this one from.

The funniest thing happened the other day. He was playing alone downstairs while I worked on the computer upstairs, probably 45 minutes. After that long time, I came back downstairs just as he was coming up to find me. When he saw me he said, "Oh! I DO have a Mommy!" I said "What!?" and burst out laughing. What cleverness of a 2-year-old to be sarcastic like that!

From his states puzzle, he knows where certain states are, with the association that certain family members live there. Uncle Peter lives in Texas, which on the puzzle has the icon of a Mexican-style Aztec house. We haven't done this puzzle in a while now, so I was very surprised when we were driving and saw a Mexian restaurant in the architecture of the same Aztec house. Rychen P. got very excited and exclaimed, "That's Texas! Where Uncle Peter lives!"

"Little house"

(a.k.a. fort) Classic toddler activity, but we just now thought to do it. Rychen had a ton of fun playing in his little house. We had dinner guests that evening, but decided to leave the fort up so that their son could play in it too, before we set the table.

New desk!

I've been thinking Rychen Parker needs his own desk, a "work area" that he can call his own, and a place where he can organize his much random STUFF! So I mentioned this a couple times, saying we'd have to look for one, and one day he said, "Mommy, please find me a desk." So I sat down to the computer to search Craigslist. We found this desk which was a bit more than I intended on paying, but it's bigger than I imagined, new condition, and very sturdy. It will last him (and the hand-me-down-ees) many years.

Here he is showing you the drawers, and how we organized it: first drawer is puzzles, second drawer is coloring stuff, and top drawer is miscelleneous.

And here he is writing "mail" and showing you all his mail supplies (even mailbox!) in the top drawer.

Cute anecdotes

Rychen P. is growing and learning so much! Today we bought him one of those little pre-school workbooks, like where you circle the picture that doesn't belong, connect the dots, match similar items, etc. I didn't think he'd be ready but he surprised me, and he understood a lot of it! He is learning to control a pen really well. That was fun for us to do together.

We also watched "Cast Away" today and Rychen P. sat and watched most of it. He was intrigued and asked a lot of questions (well, mostly "What he doing??") So it was an educational movie for him--I told him how if you don't have matches, you have to try to make your own fire, and he had to make his own boat using trees, and he didn't have shoes so his feet got hurt a lot, and all he could eat were coconuts and fish. Rychen P. was really interested in this new way to live.

We've been playing a lot with my friend's daughter, who is 3 years older than Rychen P. But they play together really well. They giggle and run around the house playing. They ran upstairs together and I found them in the bedroom with the lights out!! But they were just playing with a flashlight. Ha! This girl is really sweet and really good with Rychen P. I am so glad that it's working out to be friends with her. She is his first real playmate. Rychen P. is pretty popular now that he has a slide (mom gave to him for christmas). The kids love going down the slide when we have playdates.

Another cute thing is that he remembers music so well. We've been listening to Regina Spektor's CD, and there are a lot of unique catchy parts, so of course he caught on to those. Today we were at a store and the song came on the intercom, and he started singing a long with it! Then as I was making dinner I heard him singing, "so cheap and juicy!" from another one of her songs. Speaking of singers, he recognizes Courtney's voice and anytime her music is playing he says "This is a Courtney song!"

Human pretzel!

Another kodak moment..... Rychen P. found he had a special talent, and he challenged Dad to do it too!

Bathtub Basketball

This picture is so hilarious to me. I am always sure to grab the camera when there are kodak moments. I could tell you what's going on, but really wouldn't it be more fun to guess?

The mailman

Rychen Parker's new obsession is making mail. He writes letters, using what looks like true characters of another language, folds them up, stuff envelopes, and addresses the envelope. He is writing a real letter--you can hear him reading aloud what he's writing. "Hello, How are you? Are you having a good day?" etc. I am trying to get him to make enough to send to relatives, but he wants to save them all--they are "Bubba's may-uh." Today we made a mailbox so that he can have a place to check his mail and keep his letters.











On the note of writing, while reading scriptures together he noticed that I write in my book. He wanted to do this, so I let him write on the last page (which is blank). He wrote out characters on the whole page, which I thought was funny. It looks like he wrote his testimony in the book!