What's Ian up to now?: And we're back!

OK, I know it's been way too long. I can't believe it's March. And Ian has grown SO MUCH! On Saturday, February 24, we went to the mall to do some shopping in preparation for Tia Cindy and Tio Dennis' wedding in a few weeks. We were trying on a pair of shoes for Ian. Jeff held him and I put the shoes on. Ian was not happy about it. He was protesting, "No, no, no!" We ignored him and kept talking and trying to distract him. Ian finally said, "EVERYBODY STOP!" with this very perturbed look on his face. Jeff and I tried really hard not to burst out laughing. By the way, he now wears a size 9W toddler shoe.

While I was away in Buffalo on business February 28-March 2, Jeff took Ian to school and he sent me this message: "When I saw Ms. Pat this morning, she said that she was talking to her mom about Ian because the other day someone had brought pizza for the teachers. Ian waited until nap time and everyone else was asleep and sat up from his cot and smiled at Ms. Pat. She said, "You want some pizza, don't you?" and Ian smiled even wider so she gave him a piece." Little bugger.

Ian has stretched out so he looks like such a big boy. We went to get his hair cut on Saturday and he was such a good boy. It may have helped that I gave him pretzel snacks as we put him on the chair. He sat perfectly still and he didn't cry.

When he noticed some hair on his sleeve he started to look upset, but the barber gave him a big brush to clean it off and Ian seemed very happy with that.

He worked very hard brushing himself off. The barber would point out hairs and tell him to brush it. The barber said, "He likes to work! That's good -- it keeps him busy." I said, "He just likes to clean."

Ian is now drawing! About 2 weeks ago, he was drawing and I look down and it looks like a face with two eyes. Not just circles, but circles with the centers colored in. I asked Ian, "What's that?" and he said, 'That's Daddy!" He told me that the circles were Daddy's yian3-jing1 (eyes). So I asked him where Daddy's bi2-zi was and he drew a circle where the nose should be. Then a mouth, two ears and hair. It was clearly a face and it actually even slightly resembled Daddy... Ms. Pat says he is very advanced for his age, he really concentrates, and he is very careful about coloring on the paper (not so careful at home, though). He also draws buses and trucks and cars. It's a bit abstract, but if you know where to look, there are always two wheels with colored dots in the middle for the hub caps, windows, headlight and brake light. He was drawing in the park on Saturday (we had an unseasonably warm Friday and Saturday after torrential rains) and I took pictures of his chalk drawings. Here's a bus:

Just kidding! Jeff drew that one. Yay, Daddy!

This is a car drawn by Ian:

This is a da4 bus (see the wheels on the right side, the windows on the left, the door in the middle, a headlight to the left of the wheels and a tail light to the right of the wheels):