Through the years

October 3, 2008 and October 3, 2009

October 3, 2010

Jude spent his second birthday surrounded by love from family and friends from near and far. He played many hours on the play ground, ate lots of cookout food, but none of his own birthday cake, and didn't want to open any more presents once he opened the fire trucks from Mrs. Maggie and Libby Kate;-) 

As exhausting as parting hosting is for me (I am soooo not an extrovert!) watching my little man have so much fun makes it all worth it! 

Food

Jude really enjoys "wice" these days:-)

Now I Know My ABCs. . .

Jude identified his first letter early in July (late in June?) and we don't really know where he learned it from. He just pointed at an O on Grandpa Phil's shirt and kept saying, "Oh! Oooooh! oooOOOooh!"

So we decided to capitalize on that and start working on a few more. My grandmother didn't know this when she gave Jude a set of foam letters for the bath in mid-July. He took to those things right away. He would carry them from person to person asking them to tell him what letter he had. My grandfather was the most favored letter holder/reciter. What can I say? The kid definitely has a preference for men (except Mommy, of course!).

By the middle of August, when we returned to Florida to bring Aunt Vickie home, he knew all but maybe 5 or 6 of the letters. Now days, he can usually say all of them except V. In the videos below he blanked on H, too. No worries, though. He has plenty of time to get that down before he actually has to start learning what they mean.

This is broken up in two parts: A-L and M-Z. Mainly because Jude got distracted halfway through and wanted to play with the camera;-) If you're only going to watch one of the clips, it should definitely be the second one, because in that one he says W and that's the best! (bub-oh-woo!)

Yes, he definitely still calls the letter C "cookie" and yes, he is doing part of the little dance he does when we play the Cookie Monster song. So, even though we tell him repeatedly that it is C, it is probably our own fault that he still calls it "cookie."

So, please excuse a shameless brag from a proud mama. I really didn't expect him to learn his letters before he was 2. Maybe that's the normal age for that, but it was a surprise to me:-)

I KNOW!

I have GOT to update my blog! With the little sister visiting and summer travel and coming home to start my tutoring gig right away, I haven't had a moment to organize any thoughts.

But, the weekend is coming:-)

If I Ran the Zoo

Big shout out to Dr. Seuss for lending me the title of my post today. 

Have I mentioned that I love our little zoo here in Chattanooga. Let me tell you why I love it so much. It cost $55 for a family membership! And, since they are part of the Reciprocal Zoo program, we have a huge list of other zoos across the country where we can use our membership card to get in for free or at a discounted rate.

Well, Lowery Park Zoo in Tampa is one of the ones that we get into for free. Do you know that it is $19.95 per adult to get into that place?! So for Jeff, Vickie, and me it would have cost us over $60 with tax figured in to spend a day there. That's more than we paid for our Chattanooga membership and we can go as often as we like:-)

The manatees have always been  my favorite thing at Lowery Park. It just makes it feel so much like Florida to have manatees in the zoo. They are actually an official manatee "hospital." The take care of injured ones. I have no idea if it's a rehab where they release them again later, or if they just keep them on indefinitely. 

 

By far, this was the oddest thing we saw at the zoo that day. Living in Georgia these past 13 years, I have seen an abundance of skunks; more than I have ever wanted to see in my life and I just can not imagine what makes them zoo-worthy!

Some of the other sightings that day: 

A camel

The giraffes

The elephants

The zebras

The Flamingos

The monkeys, er, I mean, my son. . .