My favorite things...

As mom, one of my favorite things Fender has been doing lately is to hold my cheeks with the palm of his hands and pull my head down to kiss me on the forehead. He's started to do it repeatedly at times and it is one of the most wonderful feelings ever!!! At first I was so entranced that I would say "I love it, I love it, I love it" after his kisses so now sometimes he'll say that after he gives me a forehead kiss. Then I guess I started saying "Thank you, thank you" after the kisses and now he'll grab me, kiss me, and say "You're welcome." So cute! Just another phase I hate for him to grow out of. Hard to imagine that the day will come when mom kisses will be "ooey." :( But I know it is coming.

Some of Fender's favorite things include:
Star Wars: Clone Wars. Yep. Probably not the best for a 2 year old, but he loves it. He has one on DVD and then we watch the new episodes every Friday night that come on TV. He reads all his Star Wars books, especially the Clone Wars dictionary. And we play with our lightsabers pretty much every day.

Noggin is our favorite channel. We don't watch TV all the time, but anytime you turn it on, he's hooked on whatever is there. I highly recommend it for youngsters! He's learning some Spanish and all about animal rescuing with Diego and recently started learning bits of Chinese with Ni hao, Ki Lan. He also enjoys The backyardigans, who are always up for some singing and fun. And we can't go without The Wonder Pets, who fumble their way through helping baby animals in trouble. That's where we learned "What's gonna work? Teamwork!" Despite my best efforts, Fender isn't all that interested in Sesame Street yet. He doesn't even want to watch Elmo anymore, though he still likes his Elmo books and talking Elmo toys.

When he isn't watching TV he likes to play with his trains. He's learned how to open the one we call "Chocolate" and where his battery goes and that he needs the battery to work and how to put it back in and put Chocolate back together again. He isn't a fan of making the trains pull cars...he prefers them "by hisself." (And yes...I know that isn't a word.)

He still loves to color, paint, and draw. He colors real dark and heavy in one spot now, trying to stay in the lines...so you can distinctly tell he's colored shoes purple or a lightsaber blue...but nothing stays in the lines, of course. And he's breaking crayons all the time when he colors so hard, despite our efforts to show him he can color more lightly. Must not look as good, I guess.

And we have no bedtime schedule anymore. Not sure what happened...I guess it was the long lazy holiday schedule, but Fender stays up until 10 and 11PM most nights and is sleeping in until nearly 9AM if left alone. We're going to work on this and pray we get things back to a better schedule. We'll be getting up early for my eye doctor appointment tomorrow so that should help.