Cole Update

Cole has been embarrassing my nephew Caleb lots lately. When we were at the park the other day, Cole splashed in a puddle for a while before I found him. He was soaking wet from the waist down and looked pretty scraggly with his unkempt hair and messy face (as you can see in this pic). After playing on the toys, he went over to some 8-9 year olds that had set out a big beach towel for a picnic. Cole just plopped his dirty self down on it and started making friends. When we saw what was going on, my sister asked Caleb to go grab Cole to help out. Caleb was semi-hiding behind a tree a ways off, and as I walked over to get Cole, Caleb muttered, "Oh, I'm so embarrassed!"

Cole also ran up to some big kids on the computer at the library and started wiggling his way up to the keyboard. Caleb started to back away from Cole in a way that would make it look like "I'm not with that 2 year old." I saw the big kid ask Cole what his name was and Cole replied, "I'm BUZZ LIGHTYEAR! And you're Zurg... {laser/shooting sounds}." Caleb made his way farther and farther away from his embarrassing cousin.

We had lots of fun with Tyler's sister and her family in town last weekend. Marlie's little boy Jack and Cole are 4 months apart, and it was so fun for me to see Cole have a cousin-buddy his same age. They loved playing chase throughout our home... poor Jack got his finger smashed in a door during one of their chases. They loved playing with toys and Cole got some practice sharing his toys. Come back soon, guys!

Oh... The other day I went in to check on Cole during his nap. I found him off the bed and playing with his McQueen car. There were scribbles all over 2 walls and 2 doors in my room. I wanted to scream, but I couldn't tell exactly what had been scribbled all over my wall. I wanted to know if it was pencil, pen, or McQueen racecar tire-markings so I asked, "What is that?!?!" His most serious reply was, "It's a SUPER BIG problem!" If any of you have seen PBS's "SuperWhy" program, you'll know where he got that line from. It made me laugh so hard...inside of course. But I wasn't laughing as we scrubbed the pencil off the walls. Thank goodness for Mr. Clean's Magic Erasers; it helped the job move along pretty well.

Cole has many obsessions right now like Spiderman, Batman, Cars, Thomas the train, and Buzz Lightyear. However, his constant obsession is Sharks. He can identify about a dozen breeds of sharks, and he always requests shark books at the library. The other afternoon I was showing Cole some clips on Youtube about killer whales, dolphins, and great white sharks and we were learning quite a bit. But then we saw a link for this JAWS parody and our learning stopped. The video was SO dumb and cheesy; I'm almost embarrassed to admit that I clicked on it, but Cole LOVED it. He requests it daily by saying, "Mom, can we watch 'Human, no fish swimming in the water?'" I only let him watch it once a day after his request, and he giggles all the way through it. Ah Youtube, thanks for providing such quality entertainment...

We love you Cole... and all of your quirkiness too!