Zeke the cat, Ayla the mathematician

Zeke loves cats. Stuffed animal ones that is. Actually Zeke pretty much loves stuffed animals of any sort. He mushes his face into theirs, makes little snuggley, whiney, cooey noises and hugs them between his head and shoulder. But I would have to say his favorite is cats thanks to Ayla who also loves them. Zeke meows alot. He walks around our house meowing. He has different meows for different moods-sad meows, happy meows. Meows expressing his displeasure with a situation. "mee-yooow" He also is fairly fond of mooing but usually has to see a picture of a cow to bring that on!

Zeke's vocabulary is growing by the day (as it should be at this age I guess) and not just in animal sounds. Yesterday he said "the end" when we finished a book, tonight he said "book" and something that is either "show" "shoe" or "cheerio" (guess he's still workin' on that one). His regular words are still "all done" ("dall done"), "down" (when he wants up), "uh-oh" "meow," "go go," "potty" (bobby"), "hooray" ("aw- WAY!" accompanied by tiny fist pumps- that one will make your day.) Every time we pray before dinner and say amen he claps and yells hooray. He also still signs "eat" and makes this funny, gulpy swallowing noise when he's thirsty.

He sings. If you say "super" he'll sing "WHY!" which is a favorite show on PBS. When he's tired he'll lay on his blanket and sing the lullaby to himself that I sing to him every night. He also has adopted Ayla's "goo goo gell gell gubye" song and signs it note for note.

When he watches tv you will catch him standing with his hands neatly clasped behind his back so he looks all proper. It's so cute.

Man, when I'm doing other things I can think of a thousand things I want to get into the blog that the kids are doing these days and now with the computer in front of me, I can't think of anything I wanted to say!

Ayla is really into numbers and art lately. She is really into peoples age, and size of clothes and shoes. She asks that of everyone. She fits into size 9, 10 and 11 in shoes depending and thinks everyone should be as impressed with that fact as she is. She is just really fascinated by how the older you get, your shoe and clothing size changes. She is also really fascinated with reading the clock and over the last week will sit and give you minute by minute updates yelled to you from our bedroom where she can sit on the bed and watch the clock. "Mommy! It's 10:53! (Gasp!) Mom! Now it's 10:54!!" She also can count to 100.

Ayla has a little table in her bedroom with art supplies (mostly drawing stuff) in bins right next to it. She has been spending LOTS of time sitting at her little table drawing and writing. She is really getting the hang of sounding out words and is reading just a tiny bit ("that says cat!") She will write notes to her school friends or her cousin Allie by asking how you spell words and then will draw hearts on the note. She keeps herself busy.

As I write all this, I find I smile the entire time. What neat little people they are. we enjoy them so much (most of the time!)

Sorry I don't have a lot of pictures uploaded to the computer right now, so you'll have to be happy with just this one lucky one we got one morning we were all goofing around. Enjoy!