Today's Vocabulary Lesson

Unless you are in the construction business and come across these all the time, I think you will be impressed with the objects J can now recognize.

Thanks to our new favorite book, Construction Zone , rubber-tired backhoe, crane with clamshell digger, tamper, paver, roller, and concrete mixer are as identifiable as a fire truck, bird, and daddy. It's really amazing. There are these little pictures at the end of the book with explanations of what each machine does, and J can pick out each of them without prompting. I think I knew bulldozer, paver and dump truck before this book came along!

That's all good. What is not good is that J has figured out that he can try to manipulate B and me. When things aren't going his way and he's with me, he calls "Dad-deee!" If he's with B, he shouts, "Mom-mee!" This has been occurring during the day, but also at fun hours like 2, 4, and 5 am. This morning he got so mad that I wouldn't get him out of bed at 5:15 that he sat there and screamed for B for about 30 minutes. Before that, he yelled for me. I'm sure we'll get him back on track just in time fore the holiday visitors to arrive!

We did some very exciting things this morning. We went to a propane store and bought blower. My mom and dad bought it for us as a housewarming gift and we had to pick out one that wasn't at Home Depot or Lowe's. We also went to the paint store and picked up the red for the family room. I am very excited about this project. It will be interesting to see how it turns out because some have told me they think the room will look too small, while others have told me that it may look too dark. I'm just going to do it and if it looks bad, we can always go back to white again. We'd also really like to scrape the popcorn ceiling, but that would be committing us to the entire downstairs because it would look funny to just stop in the family room and not do the kitchen, etc. etc. So I think we will leave that be for now.

Hope everyone has a great weekend!