Appointment with Dr. Love (oops... forgot to include this yesterday)...

I knew that I was forgetting something in my update yesterday and last night it occurred to me that I forgot to share what a great doctor's appointment Jake had last week. It was his 15 month appointment and he weighed 20 lbs and had grown to 29 1/2" tall.

When we arrived at the pediatrician's office there was an adorable little girl in the waiting room with her Dad. She was probably 3 or 4 years old and Jake was totally taken with her. He literally could not take his eyes off her. He was sitting in my lap and he would smile at her and then bury his face against me over and over again. After a little while he asked for my keys so I gave them to him and he said "down" so I put him down on the floor. He then proceeded to march across the waiting room right up to the little girl where he smiled at her... held out my keys and said "keys". Her Dad thought it was hilarious that a 15 month old already knew how to win over a girl by offering up the keys to Mama's car :)

When the nurse called us back for Jake's appointment she told us to go to the "J" room and Jake started sounding out the "J". The nurse could not believe it and started asking him other letters which he was more than happy to sound out for her. He said a bunch of words for her while she was measuring and weighing him and she was just amazed. When Dr. Love came in he asked how many words Jake was saying now and I told him that he hit 100 several weeks ago and we had stopped counting at that point. Jake then said a few words for him including "doctor" and Dr. Love was thrilled and jokingly said that if Jake kept going at this rate that he would expect him to be able to read words soon. He was a little shocked when I told him that Jake could read most of his words now so I grabbed a piece of paper and started writing down various words (girls... eyes... shoes... trees... nose... teeth... cup... etc.) and Jake read each one of them as I wrote them down. Dr. Love smiled.. stood up and said ... "I'm going to get another Doctor, I'll be right back". He came back with another pediatrician in the practice and asked me to write down some more words for Jake (birds... car... keys... etc.). I did and Jake read them out loud and then the other doctor sat down and said... "in all my years of practice... I've never seen anything like that". When the nurse came back in later to give Jake his shots she said that the doctor's were all huddled up talking about Jake reading. I was so proud of my little boy!!!! He's just such a little sponge and he loves learning new words. I'm sure you can now understand why I couldn't resist sharing this story :-)

Snakes and tomatoes...

Yep... we're still hiking. Almost everyday when Jake wakes up from his afternoon nap he very loudly says... "DOT" to let us know that he's ready to go hiking and touch the dots on the trail. We've hiked back to the river a couple more times so Jake could throw rocks in the water and its tough to get him to leave. He loves to watch the splash when his rock hits the water. In the past couple of weeks we've also met several "friends" along the way. We've encountered 4 snakes (all non-venomous) on the trail so far this year including a 5 foot long black snake yesterday that nearly gave me a heart attack. I didn't see him until I was right upon him... yikes! He was trying to cross the trail and we happily got out of his way. We've also seen two really large black snakes in our neighborhood in the past week. I'm not a snake person but I refuse to let them keep me from hiking with my family so I guess I'll just have to keep my eyes open.

DOOOOT!!!

I love to hike!

Lets go Daddy!

Splash!

Mama ... when will Daddy be finished mowing?

Hold still Circles and I'll brush your hair.

I see you Daddy.

We love to grow fresh veggies... especially tomatoes... but haven't had any luck since we moved into this house in 2001. There just isn't a good spot for a garden since we're in the woods. We tried a raised bed on the side of our house and we also tried containers on our back deck but neither one received enough sunlight to produce. This year we decided that we just had to have some homegrown tomatoes so we planted them in containers in front of our house. They are doing great! They are already loaded with blooms and one even has a little bitty tomato. We are so excited that it looks like we'll have yummy fresh homegrown tomatoes this year.

Mama... I can help take care of the tomatoes.