This little boy

Oh Alton.  What would we do without you?  We sure would listen to way less toddler music haha... but our hearts wouldn't be nearly as full and we would be missing out on all the hugs.

Alton is such a sweet boy and I am so thankful to have him.  Looking back at some old blog posts- he has changed!  That boy LOVES music.  LOVES it.  He doesn't call it music though.  He calls it "dance".  He somehow manages to make that word two syllables but you can understand it.  He is constantly singing songs.  It took us a while to figure this out though.  He'll randomly start to squeal... I can't say scream.. because that makes it sound like he's upset... but it's this high pitch squeal and then he'll say a word that you understand and you're like "oh.. that's definitely this song".  Currently his favorite song to sing is "row row row your boat"  However, it's one of those things where only I know that that's what he's singing.  "wo wo wo uh oat.... may may may may.  Eye-ff deem"... yeah... lol

I am a little worried about his speech, but that may just be being a first time mom with no idea.  He used to mimic everything we said- now it's very selective.  If he really wants something he'll use his words.  Or if it has to do with food.    At his 2 year appointment his doctor was a little worried about it (thanks for giving me something else to stay up at night for...).  She kept asking all sorts of questions to me  "What if he wants something?"   the answer to that is that he'll say "more" and make the sign for more too.  Or sometimes he'll say the word.  For example, we got him up one morning after they had been put to bed by a babysitter the night before.  Unfortunately, the sitter really didn't feed the kids dinner.  That is a whole other story... Anyways, so when we got him up instead of saying "hi!" or anything that he'll grunt or squeal.. all he said was "chicken??".. sorry.. "chickuuuuun" haha... so, he does communicate things to us.  It's just hard to know if it's laziness or something else.  Especially when you have Ashlyn saying 2-4 word sentences. "See friend day?"  day = today.  Or my favorite lol  "See elle-fant day??"  Alton doesn't do that.  He is a very one word kid.  Park, walk, slide, sky, sun...  well.. okay, the one two word phrase he says is "all done".  Can't go without giving him credit for that :)

If you are ever with him and you need him to cooperate with you- tell him he's getting "straws" and he'll immediately do anything you want.  These are veggie straws.  Don't be that fooled, they're not like amazingly healthy... just better than giving him chips :)   He begs for them constantly.  Last week I caught him eating Ashlyn's.  Whenever we run out of "straws" it's a bad day... kind've like those recent commercials where the kid runs out of those halo oranges?  lol...

Oh, and I'm convinced that he will be very like Jon in this one way (well, probably in a lot of ways, but i'm focusing on this one).  So, maybe it was the mission, but Jon is really good at figuring out where he is.  He can look at a map for like 5-10 mins and he pretty much has a large area memorized for the most part.  Alton has learned my routes.  Walking or driving.. he knows what direction we're going.  If you start heading in the direction to where we go to church but we don't end up going to church he starts going "church? church?" Or if we're walking and I make a turn that wouldn't end up taking us to a park (park isn't even visible) he starts going crazy "park! park!".  So, if you ever get lost, just ask Alton.. he'll at least be able to give you directions to a park, church or grandma's house :)