Zombies & Toyotas

It's so good to be home! I got stuck at the Atlanta airport last night on my way back into town from Charleston. It was initially a big bummer, but I was able to stay with my high school buddy Matt and spend some time catching up with him. He was gracious enough to pick me up at the MARTA station and offer me his guest room for the short night. I think the trouble and unfriendly employees were Delta's ways of getting back at me for taking this shot via Twitter on Tuesday about how much it sucks flying through the delay-plagued Atlanta airport. No worries now, though. I'm home and with my family.

The weather has been beautiful these last couple weeks. During one of those nice days we were outside working on the yard. Susie gave Cade a grape popsicle since it was pretty warm out. I was bent over a garden working and I heard Cade come walking over and then fall down in the garden near me. As I looked up I saw what looked like a dirty bloody little zombie (opinion probably influenced by my recent viewing of "Zombieland"). So here are a couple pictures of our little living dead (another one here). The pictures definitely don't do the makeup trailer any justice.

This afternoon we went down to a small carnival that had set up at Kentucky Wesleyan College. We took Cade on the carousel. He's been on carousels before, so he was pretty excited to ride it as you can tell in this picture.

After Susie rode with him it was my turn. As we walked on the ride I asked Cade which one he wanted to ride on. He looked at me and said, "Ride on rooster!" I had no idea he even knew that word. About halfway through the ride he wanted to switch over to the "piggie." I told him no due to the piggie's sharp teeth. He seemed ok with that answer and agreed that pigs with sharp teeth should be avoided. (Somehow four-foot-tall roosters aren't cause for any concern though...)

We picked up a pizza on the way home and Cade got to play the car racing game at the restaurant. If you've seen other posts, you know that he loves racing car games, so we're not covering any new ground here. The only reason I'm posting this picture is because I let Cade pick out our vehicle. Notice he picked out the Toyota truck. Now that's a kid with great taste. The game turned out to be kind of a dud. We didn't have any sticky accelerator issues. Rather, the shift knob in my right hand didn't exactly work, and it's hard to win any races when you're stuck in first gear. Cade asked me why the transmission was faulty. He said he was confused because he hadn't chosen the Dodge. ;) I just told him it was an unrealistic simulation.

Thanks for reading. We hope you are enjoying spring as much as we are!

I love you little buddy

Here are a few reasons why I love you Cade:
* I love the way you say "Good Moming Daddy!"
* I love the way you are always looking to make a joke. Like this morning, when you usually say "Good Moming Daddy." Over and over I said "Good Morning Cade," and over and over you looked at me with a glimmer in your eyes and said with a half straight face: "Good Moming Mommy!"
* I love how you want to dance with your daddy. I especially love it how sometimes when you dance with daddy you fall asleep on his chest.
* I love how you love your mommy.
* I love how even at a young age you are showing a love for Jesus. You always want us to pause to say "blessing" before every meal and you love saying "Amen!" at the end of any prayer. And every night you ask us to sing "Jesus" as you fall asleep. These are very simple things, but they indicate a beginning knowledge and love.
* I love how you are curious and love to explore the world around you. Sometimes this results in "bo-bo's," but that doesn't slow you down, and that brings me to my next one:
* I love how you know where to come for comfort from bo-bo's, hurting gums, and other problems. Please know that you can always come to Mommy and Daddy when things don't seem right.
* I love how your interests are seemingly broad. You love to watch and play basketball as well as all kinds of other games with balls and bats. You love to listen to and play music. You love to play with Chili. You love to read books. I don't know where your interests will take you and what you will eventually gravitate towards as you grow, but I can't wait to watch.
* I love how you are outgoing and friendly. You haven't met anyone you don't like; you'll go up to anyone and say "Hi!," which reminds me a lot of my Grandpa. You would have loved him.
* I love your assertiveness. You know what you want. Even though it creates tension at times, and probably will continue to create tension in the future, I believe this quality will serve you well as you grow up.
* I love how much you look like your mommy.
* I love how much you look like me.

This list could go on and on. Notice that nowhere on this list do I tell you that I love you because of anything that you can or cannot do. I think that you're handsome and you're smart and you're fun to be around, but these aren't the reasons I love you. My love for you is not based on any condition or any expectation we have of you. No matter what you do and no matter who you choose to become your mommy and I will always love you because of the most important reason on this list:
* You are our son and you are a gift from God.

Happy Easter!

Happy Easter everyone! We hope you were able to spend Easter with people that are important to you and that your day gave you time to reflect on the importance of Jesus' resurrection. We weren't able to spend this Easter with any of our biological family, but that doesn't mean we didn't have a great weekend.

Yesterday one of Cade's buddies from church, Elizabeth, came over to help decorate eggs and do an egg hunt. As I mentioned in the last post, Cade loves stickers so I think his favorite part of decorating was putting stickers on the eggs after they were colored.

I got to hide eggs for the first time ever, so that was kind of fun. It was a little different being on this side of the game, and it was so fun to see Cade getting a kick out of looking for the eggs. I wondered if he would get into it, but once he figured out the idea of the game he was like a little blond-headed bloodhound out there. If you can remember, next time you see me ask me about a story from my childhood involving an Easter egg hunt, my cousins, and some doggie dookie.

I'm going to just take this platform and say that our friends Jeff and Denise are outstanding people. They invited us and another couple our age from our church over for an Easter meal today. They knew we didn't have any family in the area so they filled in just great! They are a selfless couple that have sacrificed for us before and love playing with Cade. They have a grandson a little older than Cade so they had tons of cool toys for Cade to play with.

When I was a kid I always wanted a Power Wheels but never got one. Well, Jeff and Denise had one and Cade wasn't so sure what to do at first. He's a big fan of the racing games at the arcade. Also, whenever we get home from going somewhere he likes to climb into my lap before I get out of the car and pretend like he is driving. This truck was a little big for him; he had to stretch to reach the gas pedal. I don't know if giving a one-year-old control of a motorized vehicle is really that prudent, but the look on his face when he realized what he had in his hands was sooooo worth it. This picture is as close as we came to capturing that look. We showed him the pedal and demonstrated it for him and then kind of let him sit in it. After a while he figured it out and his expression was a combination of a big smile, complete wonder, total surprise, and anticipation.

Another cool toy Jeff brought out was a kite. Again, not sure how he'd react, but he ended up loving it. I love this picture. That kid is smiling with his whole face.

We had round two of the egg hunt. I think Cade is telling us that he sees an airplane and where it is located in case we also wanted to view the airplane.

Out back they had a trampoline. Cade had never been on one before and it shouldn't be any surprise that he loved it. I bounced him all over and he was pretty bummed out when it was time to get off and do something else. I don't know if I'll ever be able to convince Susie to get one of these if we ever have a yard with a place for one. (Another toy I wanted as a kid but never got. Looking back on today I may have had more fun than Cade.)

Here's a video of Cade in the truck. He's not doing too bad considering he still has over 14 years to go before he can legally operate a vehicle. Shortly after this take he ran into a tree, so maybe it's a good thing he has over 14 years...

Sorry if you see multiple typos or grammar errors. I just learned Wilco was on Austin City Limits last night so I'm skipping proofreading and heading over to the PBS website to watch the show. Have a great night!

Let's have a spelling contest!

My favorite movie ever made through all these years remains Tombstone. Nothing made since then has come close to unseating it in my mind. And one of the best lines in that movie is when Doc Holliday was taking Ike Clanton's money at the poker table. Ike clearly insinuates Doc's cheating, to which Doc replies: "Maybe poker's just not your game, Ike. I know, let's have a spelling contest!"

This small piece of Daddy Gronseth trivia happens to be a perfect segway into the video you're about to see. Cade's been learning all kinds of things lately. Just last week we were in the car and he started spouting out months that he'd been learning at his babysitter (she does a great job of not only watching the boys, but having a school time everyday, which we appreciate a TON). He named most of them very well and in order and November (No-muh-muh-muh) came out sounding a lot like his version of cucumber (cu-muh-muh-muh). I mean, they kind of rhyme in real life, so I don't see a problem with them rhyming in Cade dialect. Well, tonight when Cade and Susie pulled in from Bloomington they hit me with this jewel. I had to get it on video (more than once, of course). His time at a major university must be rubbing off. Doc would be proud:

For the last few years Susie has been faithfully driving her 1995 Camry up to Bloomington and back. It has been a great car, and it was something she'd been driving since 1998 when she bought it with just under 40K miles on it. Now it has over 231K. We'd had a couple repairs over the last year that had made me more leery of her driving long distances with it, especially with Cade and especially since they were traveling some more or less deserted state roads between Owensboro and B-town. If we just were just using it around town I'd keep it until it ran into the ground; that thing still has a number of years of local driving left in it. But the travel Susie was doing with it (and me too, for business occasionally) got us thinking about something new. And since Toyota had a 0% incentive going on, we finally took the plunge. (I'm a pretty firm believer in paying for something instead of going into debt, but when someone offers you 0% financing anyone who's had any economics course that covers the time-value of money will tell you to take it. Just to cover my bases I called my good buddy Matt who has worked for Crown Financial Ministries for the last 9ish years and whose financial advice I greatly admire. He confirmed my thoughts so off we went!) We're sad to see "Tinkerbell" go, but Susie is definitely excited about her Rav4. We haven't lost faith in Toyota. Here she is, ready to drive off the lot.

If you give Cade a sticker he'll be your buddy forever (or at least until the sticky wears off). So last week when we got a new bunch of bananas he just HAD to get those stickers. He loves putting them on everything, including his own face.

My mom sent Cade a new treat: applesauce in a pouch. Well, it wasn't really applesauce, it was kind of like this apple and grape mush, which I guess is kind of like applesauce. It had a cool little spout like a straw and he downed it in no time. The only downfall was that it wasn't bigger. Cade is a big fan of apples (applesauce, apple pie, apple juice, apple slushies, etc.), so this was a good gift. I can't get over how big and tall he's getting and how much he looks like a boy instead of a baby. I guess this is good since baby to boy pretty much the natural progression for male humans (growing into a goat instead of a boy would raise some concern). He almost weighs 28 pounds now, which I think is right about the middle of the percentile range. We know this because he wanted to stand on the scale all by himself the other day. What a big boy!

Oh, and I almost forgot the story I promised in the last post. Like I mentioned, we're starting to try a little bit of low-pressure encouragement to go in the toilet. The genesis of that was noticing how much he would crack up at peeing in the bath. Right when he'd get in the bath, probably encouraged by the warm water, he'd start and stop his stream and just laugh at it the whole time saying, "pee-pee!" He was completely enamored at the discovery of his own personal little water gun. So we reasoned that if he's used to going at bathtime (one time he peed on the floor while we were filling the tub), we'd try and see if he'd pee in the toilet. So for about a week instead of going right to the tub we'd get him up on a stool in front of the toilet to see if he'd go. I know he wanted to. He'd stand there and say, "Pee-pee in the toilet!" and you could see him flexing his lower abdomen, but it never happened. We even tried having Daddy demonstrate (sorry if that was TMI), but no luck. The last couple times we tried, we'd wait for a while and then put him in the tub. However, he would be so frustrated that he'd just scream instead of enjoying bath time like normal. I'm pretty sure he understood the concept but just couldn't figure out how to make it happen. He was so focused on using the toilet and so frustrated that he couldn't do it that it would completely ruin the rest of the evening. So.... we put that idea back on the shelf. Maybe we'll come back to it, maybe not. I'm positive he's not ready, but we thought we'd give it a shot.

In slightly related news, he has figured out how to FLUSH the toilet, so I'm curious how much our water bill will go up.

Anyone still reading?

Well, if you're reading this and you're not an immediate member of Susie's or my family, I commend you. It's been over a month since I posted last, so I can understand casual bloggies dropping off the radar. I don't know about anyone else, but it just feels like it's been a very busy transition to spring. Between traveling for work, a pretty nasty flu bug, a disabled laptop, surgery, work, school, the beginnings of teething on the two-year molars, etc., it just feels like life has been busy. Not necessarily in a stressful overbearing way for the most part. Mostly good things going on. Just busy.

One of my excuses for not posting occurred right at the start of March. Cade had a stomach bug starting on the Thursday right at the end of February. I came home late from a work trip late Friday night, and Susie got back from B-town the next morning (Susie's mom was watching Cade at our house that week). We went to a some friends' house Saturday night for a baby shower and some of the people at that shower had been at a youth function at their church in a packed room all weekend. So we don't know if we/Cade passed it over to them or if they passed it to me, but two of our friends and I got very sick the next day/night. I missed half the gold medal hockey game, so you know it had to be bad. :)

Unfortunately, one of our friends that got sick was Carla, the person whose baby shower we had just attended. The flu caused her to go into labor about eight weeks early and she ended up in the hospital. Fortunately for her and her baby, they were able to stop the labor and she went home a couple days later. So far, the baby has stayed put, so we're thankful for that.

Back at our house, Susie was dishing out the Pedialyte to both Cade and I with alarming efficiency. Between bathroom sessions, I pulled out my laptop to catch up on some work and school emails. I set my laptop down near the bed and tried to sleep, but I suddenly felt the urge. In my dash to the bathroom I knocked the Pedialyte onto my laptop's ultimately too accepting keyboard: not good. This is a work laptop, and luckily our Helpless Desk was able to direct me straight to Dell. Dell fixed me up, I didn't lose any of my hard drive, but I was without my link to work and school for almost two weeks. I had a couple days of slowly coming back out of my cloud and then a week out in the field working on a compressor, so I didn't need it too much, but I found out how much I take technology for granted. So that's my excuse for roughly half the month.

I guess if I was going to make an excuse for the other half I'd cite Susie's knee surgery two Fridays ago. Her left knee had been bothering her for a few months so she had it checked out and it turns out she had a torn meniscus. Her surgery went very well and she only needed a few days on crutches, but it still slowed things down for us. Susie's mom came into town before the surgery and stayed a few days afterwards. We are so fortunate to have her and her servant heart and I know Cade enjoyed all the time he was able to spend with his VeeVee.

So between those two events and work and school, I haven't done a very good job of maintaining this blog. We haven't even been very good picture takers. But here are a few that we've taken over the last month.

Bloomington has some great parks, and now that the weather is warming up we've taken Cade out a few times. He loves sliding and swinging the best.
Last Saturday the weather was perfect: mid-sixties and sunny. I had a 10K race in the morning and was able to spend a lot of the rest of the day working outside in the yard. Cade came out and was a big help. It was the first time we'd been able to spend a decent amount of time cleaning the yard and gardens up after the winter. It's amazing how much the yard waste and leaves and sticks and dog turds build up over the winter. Cade really does like to be a help. He was actually very good at putting leaves and sticks in the yard trash bags and I didn't catch him putting even one small Chili bomb in his mouth! Another thing we determined that day is that Cade likes to hang out in the bed of the truck.
As you can see, he's figured out how to say "Cheese!"
We spent a lot of time in the TV room the last Thursday through Sunday evenings because once Cade learned there was going to be a lot of basketball on TV he wanted to watch all the time. He also wants to wear any clothing that has basketballs on it and he wants to shoot baskets all the time too. I guess it only makes sense since he's a Kentucky native and this is definitely a roundball state.
This is a picture of our everyday life. We try to keep the same bedtime routine every night and Cade usually responds pretty well to it. We give him a bath, then read stories while he drinks his milk. Then we brush his teeth, say our prayers, and it's off to bed. As you can see, Cade doesn't lack for books. He loves them all and can recite sizeable chunks out of quite a few of them. He's kind of funny because he hasn't really developed a snotty toddler "NO!" yet. And his communication skills are getting better and better. You can give him choices and options and he really comprehends a lot and responds pretty consistently. So sometimes when we're reading stories we'll pick one up and if he doesn't want to read that one he'll say a little "nope." Not "no" or "NO!" Just "nope." Pretty cute.

News Flash! I guess we may be at a developmental transition. As I was typing this, Susie just informed me that Cade climbed out of his crib while she was putting him to bed tonight. So we're looking at how to transform the crib into the toddler bed tomorrow. I guess if he knows how to get out I'd rather have him slide off the mattress instead of skydiving from the top rail. More updates to come on that, so hopefully we'll have good things to post sooner rather than later. We're also starting a little bit of the beginnings of potty training, so I'll save that story for a sooner post as well. Like I mentioned earlier, if you're still with us: Thanks!

20 months!

Well, today is Cade's 20 month birthday. What a great 20 months it's been, and it just seems to keep getting better. Cade continues to grow and grow and learn and learn. I keep saying this, but it's so much fun to watch his mind develop. And I feel like in the last few months the relationship between Cade and me has developed quite a bit. I feel like he's really starting to be daddy's little boy and I love it. He's been playing more and more like a little boy and when he's in distress he no longer only calls for mommy. Every once in a while it's daddy that he wants now instead of mommy. I've read that sometime between 18 and 36 months is when most little boys really start psychologically developing a sense of being a boy and learning what it is to be a male as opposed to a female. It's at this point that a dad is very important, and I've been noticing him looking more to me lately than he did when he was much smaller. There's nothing like it.

These last couple weeks have been very eventful for Cade. Two weekends ago my sister Amy and her husband Paul came to visit. Cade affectionately refers to them as "Apple Paul" and "A - A - A - my!" (Auntie Amy). Here's a picture of him helping us clean up while getting ready for their visit. He just had to wear my sock hat.

He's all about putting stuff on his head. I think it's Apple Paul's influence. Here he's doing his best Johnny Appleseed impression.
Paul and Amy took Cade back to Colorado with them to spend a week at Nana and Grandpa's house. It was so tempting to run after Paul and Amy in the airport yelling something about our kidnapped son......but we didn't. Traveling with a small child is challenging enough, so we appreciate their efforts. :) My mom had all kinds of fun things planned for Cade over the week. Here's a picture of Cade on a play date with our friend Jan's granddaughter Sage.
In keeping with the theme of head-wear, Cade and my dad spent some time playing with hats while he was there.

One thing Cade loves is basketball, and he really LOVES actually going to a game. While in Colorado my parents took him to a game in the same gym where I played high school basketball. As you can tell by this picture, he wasn't bored.

Unfortunately I wasn't there to introduce Cade to old friends. Here's one of my favorite teachers, Miss Bruce. She's almost solely responsible for my mathematical aptitude. I think we'd have a lot more calculus lovers (or at least a better understanding of the subject) if everyone got to take calculus from her. She's also been keeping the official scorebook at CSCS basketball games since before I played there. What a great individual.

My mom's sister, Deb, is building a house near my parents' house. Cade took a trip to the jobsite and was able to see some horses in a field nearby. Cade loves all kinds of animals, and these horses obliged his curiousity.

It was my sister's birthday while Cade was in Colorado so he enjoyed the birthday celebration for A - A - A - my.

I think Cade impressed my dad by being able to say "hockey stick." He likes to look through my Sports Illustrated, so I've been teaching him the equipment for different sports that are pictured. My dad cut down one of his old sticks and they played in the basement.

When my mom brought Cade back to Owensboro we went down to a church in town and played in their gym. It was difficult to jump this high with Cade, but I really wanted him to know what it feels like to dunk so he can have something to shoot for.

It's not just hats that Cade likes to put on his head. He also likes to put small trash cans on his head and run around bumping into stuff. Here he's wearing a Lego bucket that VeeVee brought him when she came last weekend.

It was fun to have both grandmas here last weekend. My mom headed back out on Monday and VeeVee is taking care of Cade this week while I'm in Arkansas and Susie is in Indiana. Cade is so lucky to have grandmas that love him so much.

Cade isn't prejudice to basketball. He will play with any kind of ball. The other night he was holding his bat and we tossed a couple of balls his way. He hit the first two right on the screws and sent them flying across the room. We were pretty amazed (and proud). Subsequent tosses unfortunately proved the first two to be a fluke, but we'll keep working on it. Here's a picture of Cade working on his first step to the hole.

One last picture with Nana before she had to head to the airport. As you can tell she's a much better picture taker than Susie and I are, so thanks to her for many great pictures. It was hard to narrow down the pictures to post here. There were so many good ones. It's been a great couple of weeks with family. Cade's a lucky boy.

Snow!

We've had a couple of decent snow storms here lately. Luckily we aren't getting hit like the east coast. Both storms have given us around 4 inches, which is plenty to have fun in, but not too much to hamper a lot of daily activity. Susie got some new boots for Christmas, so she's been wearing them a lot this winter. A couple weeks ago Cade found them and decided he wanted to try them on. He pretty much got them on all by himself, so we had to take a picture. I'm amazed at how much he looks like a little boy now. Definitely not a baby anymore!

Here's a video of him walking around in the boots. I was just off camera and had picked him up and kind of dropped him into the boots. He was excited to be in the boots and gave an emphatic, "All right!" This is a phrase he likes to use; very cool in my opinion. Then he tries a little bit of a dance move. Dancing is something he still loves to do, both on his own and in Susie's or my arms. On the weekends we have a pretty standard routine when it's time for his afternoon nap. He'll ask to dance and we'll put something on in the kitchen. His favorite is the latest One Republic album. We'll dance around and he'll just fall asleep on my chest. I love it. Back to the video: after dancing Susie asks him who's boots those are. Cade has been staring to put adjectives with nouns lately. He'll identify possession (Chili's food) or describe something (orange ball). Like I've said before, it's really interesting to watch how his brain picks up on things. Lastly, he points out a frog on a book nearby. I don't know which he likes better, but dogs and frogs are his two favorite animals. I know it sounds like he's saying "poop," but I can assure you the noise he makes after pointing out the frog is his version of "ribbit."


After the first snow we were able to go sledding at one of the local golf course's driving range. At first Cade didn't like it. I think it was because of the snow that sprayed up into his face. But after a few runs we couldn't convince him it was time to leave. He was pretty upset when we strapped him into his car seat.


Since we don't usually get a lot of snow and because the kid grows so fast we haven't invested in proper snow attire for Cade. So we layered him up a few times and stuck his feet in some rubber Snoopy boots that I had when I was a kid. They were too small to leave his shoes on in the boots and too big for his feet with only socks on them. As a result they kept falling off. Apparently he was having so much fun that he didn't really seem to notice when one would fall off. He would just keep walking on the snow in his socks.

On a different note, I had some work travel that took me to Orlando and Merritt Island a couple weeks ago. I recently got back in touch with an old college baseball buddy that lives in a condo right on Cocoa Beach. So I stayed with Susie's brother Dustin half the week and with my friend David half the week. I was able to run on Cocoa Beach before the sun came up, walk upstairs to get cleaned up, then watch the sunrise from the condo balcony. It was a very therapeutic way to start each morning.


And last but not least, here's a video of Cade singing his ABC's. He's been ending his song with Rockies for quite some time now. Sigh.....I guess eventually he'll learn it the right way, but we always laugh at "q, r, Rockies!" so it's probably getting reinforced. Oh well. I love how his nose scrunches up when he says Rockies. It does the same thing when he says Mommy or Daddy.


We're pretty excited for the next couple weeks. This Friday my sister and her husband are coming out for the weekend. Cade loves Amy and Paul. The last few times he's seen Paul in a picture he says "Apple Paul." I guess that's close to "uncle." Then Amy and Paul will take Cade back to Colorado for a week at my parents' house. The following weekend my mom will bring him back to us. Then the next week Susie's mom is coming to take care of Cade for the week. What a lucky kid. Susie and I definitely agree that we are getting a lot more visits with our family now that Cade is here. Not a bad deal. Until next time, thanks for stopping by.