"It is not a toy"

Elizabeth joined us at the pool. Afterwards, Bei just climbed into her lap in our hotel room. He is a cuddler!

We were demoted to the kiddie pool! It was a shorter slide ride, but we still had a great time!


We got to the top of the slide to find out that only one person can go at a time, that included a 2 year old boy. No way! Rules are made to be broken.


The oldest and youngest together from my side of the family. Taylor is 18 years old and will be attending University of Minnesota in the fall.

Bei and I headed over to my sisters in Wisconsin for Thanksgiving on Wednesday. I told my sister that I would come and help her. I think I was more of a hindrance than a help, but I'm still working on the multi-tasking mom thing. Dan came on Thanksgiving day and we stayed until Saturday. It was a really nice time.

I recently weight Bei and he is 24 lbs! Yeah! I can tell that he is putting on weight because he is getting heavier for me to carry. He recently recognized the letter "s" in words and he over emphasizes them. It is no long school butt, but school bussssch. At times he sounds like he is going to slobber on you, because there is so much slurping going on,when a word ends in S. The best way to describe it is to put the beginning of Arnold "Schw"arznager on any word that ends in s. The word "This" sounds like "Thischw".

He loves to spell his name "B E I", okay I do the actual writing, but he loves to say it over and over. This week, I'm teaching him his last name is Krueger. He hasn't learned to spell it yet, he just needs to understand it doesn't just end at B E I. Won't he be suprised when he learns his real name is Daniel. Poor kid, will be so confused!

Plus, he loves to count. Everything we do, we count count count. Walk up the steps we count, put dishes away, we count, steps to the table from the stove we count. He usually will say 1 2 4 5. He is always forgetting the 3, but I think it is pretty good that he loves to count. The other neat thing is he loves shapes, he can identify most shapes. Circles, square, triangle (you wouldn't be able to distinquish that is what he is saying, but I know Bei-ese), diamond, heart, star and he is just learning rectangle. The thing I gather about this kid is that he enjoys learning. He has the attention span to sit and focus on whatever is in front of him. And most of the times he initiates the learning. Now, I hate to write anything favorable because every time I do, it all stops. Remember, how I bragged about the 50 kisses a day? The very next day the kisses stopped and it has been pretty dry since then! Remember, when I bragged that he was sleeping through a thunderstorm that had me jumping out of my skin? He woke up right after that, not because of the storm, but because he had a fever, but it was the same outcome. We were up all night. The other night one of the parents that we traveled to China with, emailed me, and updated me on her daughter since she has been back home. One of the things that she mentioned was that her daughters night terrors were becoming less frequent as time went on. I wrote back and said Bei had never experienced night terrors. Yes, you guessed it, I heard it start lightly in his sleep and then it just continued to get worse until he was into a full cry and sobbing mode.

One last story, over Thanksgiving, one of the statements that I commonly use in our home came back to haunt me. "It is not a toy" is one of my favorite sayings. I use it when Bei wants to play on the computer and the camera or do something dangerous like use adult scissors.

Saturday morning, Bei wanted to walk on my sisters treadmill. We had done it the night before, we would walk on the treadmill, stop and then let the belt carry us off to the floor. What could go wrong? It is similar to a toy... Anyway, I put Bei in the middle and then I stood with my feet on the outer edge of the treadmill belt. I held his arms, so that he wouldn't fall and thought I had everything under control. So walk up the treadmill we would go and then ride it til it brought us back to the floor. We were doing this for about 5 minutes when all of a sudden "Owwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww" My foot that only had a sock on it, had gone between the belt and this plastic thing that held the belt on . It hurt!!!! Man...I wanted to swear and cry! But I restrained myself on both accounts due to my little guys presences. I was really worried that it had severed my pinky toe or it was just hanging by a little bit of skin. I finally gained enough courage to take off my sock and my toe was still attached, but it was a dark purple and bleeding in multiple places. I thought I would show my bewildered son why I was hopping around and yelling owie, so I stuck out my foot for him to see mommie's owwie. And I guess Bei did what any normal 2 year old would do, and he grabbed my bloody moosh mash toe, and yanked it back and forth!!!! Okay, son...no medical school for you, your bedside manner is just too barbaric...back to engineering school for you. Dan went upstairs with Bei in his arms and my mom asked why Bei was crying? Dan calmly said because Liz is crying...okay the grabbing of the toe, put me over the edge and I cried. Now that my toe is cleaned up, I realize that my toe was never close to be severed and it is somewhat of a superficial cut and is healing quickly. Oh yeah...I almost forgot to mention, someone in my family (I married him) kept mentioning after the incident "you know Liz, treadmills are not toys." Ahh...thanks Dan, I usually tell Bei that before he gets hurt...