Daddy’s View

Mommy, Eric, and I were riding in the car to dinner yesterday, and a fun song came on the radio.  Mommy and I started dancing in our seats.  One of us said, “Let’s dance!”  Eric replied with, “Let’s break it down!”

 Nearing bedtime last night, Eric wanted to watch cars on the TV.  We had watched some of the Daytona 500 on TV last weekend.  Eric liked to see the cars going very fast, especially when there was smoke or crashing!  So, last night I started browsing through the channels looking for something that might have cars.  I did not expect to find much, but I did!  I found a NASCAR truck race on TV.  Eric had a lot of fun watching the “cars” go around the track really fast.  He kept cheering, “Go green car!”  “That red car is fast!”  “Go white car, go as fast as you can, you can do it!”

Today, we went to get a haircut for me.  Afterward, Mommy, Eric, and I stopped at a restaurant for lunch.  When the waitress came to our table, she placed two small cocktail napkins on the table for our drinks.  Eric said, “I want a wiper!”, referring to the napkins.  The waitress right away understood his language, so she hurried to go get Eric a napkin, too.  When she returned with a napkin for Eric, he said, “Thank you!”  We ordered some drinks, and asked the waitress to give us a few minutes to decide on our food.  Eric piped up and said, “I’m having pizza!”  I told Eric that I didn’t think they had pizza here, but Mommy corrected me.  They did have pizza on the menu!  We ordered some pizza, and while we were waiting, Eric and I went over by some video games in the corner.  Eric sat behinf the wheel of a race car game and spun the wheel back and forth.  He was having a lot of fun!  He didn’t seem to mind that he was not really playing, but the demo was playing, so he could see cars driving really fast.  After we finished eating our pizza, Mommy and I said, “It’s time to go!”  Eric replied, “Let’s rock and roll!”

Below are a few pictures that Mommy took during the day the last couple weeks while I was at work.

Mommy and Eric met Grandma G. at the mall, and Eric played at the playground…

Eric tried on Mommy’s reading glasses…

Mommy asked me today if I had noticed Eric’s house.  She said that he cleaned it.  I have noticed before that he will straighten a few things and place some toys in a straight line.  I looked inside his house this afternoon, and I was impressed with what I saw.

A place for everything, and everything in its place!

It’s a winter wonderland!  Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow!

On top of the 3″ of ice still covering my driveway and sidewalk, on top of already 2″ of snow in the yard, we now have 8″ of fresh heavy snow to top everything.  Eric ventured outside today for a few minutes while I was clearing the snow from the driveway, er, iceway.  Then he was ready to go back in.  Apparently, he thought Mommy was taking him to the store.  He wasn’t prepared for just standing outside or playing in the snow.  So, after just a few minutes in the driveway, Mommy took him back in the house.  I continued clearing the snow from the cars and the driveway.

Earlier this week, we got the ice.  Thursday after I went to work, Mommy decided to try and go to Grandma’s house.  I had forgotten to tell Mommy to not even try, since her little car was iced in pretty good.  I took the bigger car to work, because I did not know what the road conditions would be.  While Mommy was trying to get the car out, Eric waited in his seat.  Mommy tried everything from salt to carpets, but she could not get any traction to drive out of the ruts.  Mommy persisted for quite a while until Eric said, “I just want to go home!”  This comment from Eric finally convinced Mommy to give up, and they went back into the warm house.  That evening, Eric told me the whole story.  He told me how he said, “I just want to go home”.  He repeated this several times to be sure that I understood him.  I praised him and said that he had a great idea.  I also thanked him for taking good care of Mommy.  I was worried that Mommy might have fallen or strained her back or something.  Eric had it all under control.  He described the sound to me, “Rrrr Rrrr Rrrr”, as the wheels just spun in place.  “Rrrr Rrrr Rrrr”  “It was stuck!”

That evening, after Eric went to bed, I went outside to get the small car unstuck.  On Friday, I drove the little car to work, and Mommy and Eric went over to Grandma’s house.  Cousin Tyler was out of school due to the weather, so he and Eric played.  They all went to Monkey Joe’s to play.  This is an indoor playground for kids that has all inflatable slides, bouncing houses, etc.  They had so much fun!  Eric talked all night about it.  When I got home, he told me “We went to Monkey Joe’s!”

Eric also told me about a “pancake stack”.  Apparently this was on one of his shows that he watched during the day.  He kept talking about the “pancake stack”, so I asked him if he wanted me to make him a pancake stack for breakfast tomorrow morning.  He said, “Yes!  Only Mickey’s ears!”  He was referring to the Mickey Mouse pancakes that I always make for him.  I make a big deal about the ears when he is eating, referring to the ears as “ear meat”.  He likes the ears.  So this morning, I made all “ear meat” pancakes for breakfast – really small pancakes.  “Oh how cute!  Silver dollar pancakes!”, Mommy said.  I stacked 3 of these on Eric’s plate.  He was thrilled!  He ate 2 full stacks and half of a 3rd stack.  He loved it!

February already?!  I doubt that the groundhog will see his shadow today, unless he keeps an ice pick down in his hole.  Our yard (and driveway and sidewalk) is covered in nearly 4 inches of ice!

I never had a chance to blog in January.  I will recap the whole month for you today:  Eric did cute things.  Eric said cute things.  Eric acted very cute.  Eric grew cuter every day.  There.  That sums it up 🙂

I may be short on words today, but plenty of photos below.

Running and playing…

I caught him coming around the corner.  He was surprised!

So happy…

Hmm…this puzzle was hard work.

Eric was really taking to the pool table.  He started playing with it a few weeks ago, just pushing the balls around with his hand.  Cousin Tyler came to visit two weekends ago, and they really had a lot of fun playing together, especially at the pool table.  I showed Tyler how to hold the cue and aim the cue ball.  I also helped Eric hold the cue and make a few shots.  The next few days, Eric did almost nothing except play at the pool table.  He used his step stool to reach the table.  This discovery was very exciting for him.  He played for hours at a time.  Unfortunately, Eric discovered all the fun of the pool table, and grew tall enough to reach it, at just the same time that Mommy and I had decided to sell it.  Last week, a couple guys came over one evening, disassembled it, and took it away.  Eric was very interested in the process of taking it apart.  He kept going in the room to check on the guys’ progress, “Are you okay?”, “How’s it going?”.  We let him stay up late that night until the table was out the door, since he likely would not have slept anyway with all the noise.  After it was gone, we both stood in the middle of the room and looked around.  He really thought the big empty room was kind of cool.  After he went to bed, I moved our dining table into the room.  Mommy tells me that the next morning when he got up, he was very disappointed to see his big empty room had been filled up.  I imagine he had big plans for the empty space, probably involved lots of running! 🙂  Mostly, he did not say anything about the missing pool table, except one comment that next evening about when are going to buy a new one?

 Bundled up after a nice warm bath.  A great way to wind down for bed in the evening…