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Roar!

Spencer the Tiger

Spencer the Tiger
Spencer the Tiger
Spencer’s Great Aunt Jean got him a tiger costume for halloween. It fits perfectly, and Spencer seems to tolerate wearing it some. Last night we did some practice to get him used to it. He does a really great job roaring. This video is from my phone, which doesn’t do too well in low light, but the audio is pretty good.
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Happy birthday Bret!

Cake from Das Meyer

Cake from Das Meyer
Cake from Das Meyer
This past Thursday Bret flew up from Arizona, and then Friday he drove our old Ford Focus (which he purchased) back. Thursday was his birthday, so we got a cake from Das Meyer. He also brought up some cool foam alphabet and number magnets from Ellen. He immediately wanted to play with them.

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Brinkermiller 2010

Spencer, Sarah, Clare, and Chris on the stairs

Spencer, Sarah, Clare, and Chris on the stairs
Spencer, Sarah, Clare, and Chris on the stairs
Last weekend Chris and Sarah visited us, almost exactly one year after their last visit. This time around Spencer had all sorts of new tricks to show them. Saturday we hung around for awhile, walked to Das Meyer for some treats, and then we went up to Boulder. Greg and Mekayla watched Spencer, and the adults got to go to happy hour at The Med. (Thanks Greg and Mekayla!)

Sunday morning we went to the zoo. It was beautiful weather and a great time. Spencer seemed very engaged by the elephants – more engaged in any animal than ever before. We also finally got to the Lorikeet adventure, which was really neat. Clare, Chris, and Sarah took turns feeding the lories and lorikeets. We also got to see 1 week old komodo dragons. Denver is the only zoo in the world to have successfully hatched komodo dragons for a third time.
pictures follow

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Kisses

Clare, Spencer, and Ellen on the stairs

Clare, Spencer, and Ellen on the stairs
Clare, Spencer, and Ellen on the stairs
Several weeks ago Spencer surprised us by giving us kisses on the cheek. A really nice kiss, with an audible smack, and not all wet and sloppy like he used to several months ago. Even better, he started understanding the word kiss, so that if we are sitting on the couch together, and I said: Give your mom a kiss, he will (and he usually kisses me too). Ellen visited us two weekends ago. She got in very late on Friday night. Saturday morning, Spencer woke up, and was cuddling with us a bit. Ellen woke up too, and said good morning to us. I told Spencer: Go give grandma a kiss. He walked over to her room and gave her a nice kiss! Even better was the next morning when we were video-chatting with Dave. I asked Spencer to kiss grandma again. Except this time he kissed Grandpa, by kissing the laptop screen.
Spencer and Ellen
Spencer and Ellen
We had a very nice visit with Ellen. Saturday she watched Spencer while Clare and I went out to dinner with friends. Then Sunday Clare and Ellen took Spencer swimming at the Apex while I cleaned house a bit.

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Toddler bed

Spencer in his toddler bed

Spencer in his toddler bed
Spencer in his toddler bed
10 days ago I converted Spencer’s crib into a toddler bed. I remember reading my friend Kevin’s blog about how it took 13 days for his daughter Nora to figure out she could get out of bed by herself. I was curious to see how long it would take Spencer. Right around the time I set it up, Spencer had been having some nightmares. This continued for the first few nights of the toddler bed. Several nights in a row he woke up screaming, and we found him in his bed standing up. Then last Sunday I had a really hard time getting him to sleep. He kept crying and crying. I finally went downstairs to make him another bottle of milk, when I saw him coming down the stairs. I wasn’t sure if I had closed his door fully or not, but he definitely got out of bed. And sure enough, he went to right to sleep after another bottle. I realized that he had said [baba] several times, and that he was referring to bottle. It can be confusing these days, since [baba] can mean many things coming from Spencer.

Monday morning around 7 a.m. I heard a thump. I looked up, and Spencer was walking into our bedroom. The thump was the sound of the door knob hitting the wall when he opened the door. Again, I wasn’t 100% certain that I had closed his door fully, but he definitely got out of bed. The same thing happened yesterday and today, so I can conclusively say that not only can Spencer get out of bed by himself, but he can also turn doorknobs and open doors. I am impressed!

Perhaps even more impressive is that Spencer peed in the potty for the second time last night before taking a bath. The first time was about two weeks ago. Tonight he tried to pee standing up into the potty, which didn’t go too well. It seems like he is well on his way towards being potty-trained.

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Drummer boy

Spencer playing the drums

Spencer playing the drums
Spencer playing the drums
I have been teaching Spencer how to play drums since he was about 6 months old or so. I took a video of him playing drums in January, but never got around to editing the 15 minute video down to its best parts until today. I think it is pretty impressive drumming for an 11 month old. Now he can sit on the stool himself and use both sticks. He can also press the hi-hat and bass drum pedals (but not while sitting).
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Goodbye Grave Digger

Spencer playing with grave digger

Spencer playing with grave digger
Spencer playing with grave digger
One of our neighbors has a Power Wheels Grave Digger car. Spencer really likes to sit in it. They frequently leave it outside, and if we go on a walk, he will climb in, and usually we never get past our block. He likes to open and close the doors. They usually leave the battery out, so he can’t go anywhere.

Besides playing with Grave Digger, Spencer has been saying more words recently. One word which is pretty clear is bye. He usually waves when he says it, and he usually says it at appropriate times, like when I pick him up from The Academy. He will also say bye when he is riding some sort of toy car, which also makes sense. He also likes to say no, though not always at the right time. One example would be in reply to a question such as: do you want ice cream, which he usually does. In addition, his receptive vocabulary continues to grow quite fast, as is evidenced in the video here, in which he will close the door when I ask him to.