Oh, how I love this boy...

A cute little girl at the park the other day, allowed Israel to borrow her bike (she couldn't ride it as one of the tires was flat) to give his pet ladybug a ride.  He put his unfortunate friend in the pocket there and pushed him around a good while.  Israel is extremely fond of catching (or rather having us catch) small animals and making them his pets.  He's had lizards, fish, a pack rat, a frog, ants, ladybugs, etc.  He names every one Israel.  So cute.  The other day our car happened to catch a dragonfly.  We put it in a glass vase for a while and looked at it, and then as we usually do, we encouraged him to let us let it go.  As it was flying off into the sunset (actually it was flying in the opposite direction of the sunset), Israel told me, "He's going back to his mama."  That little statement just melted my heart.  What a sweet, smart little boy.  I just love him.

A couple other cute things I want to be sure to remember-- often at night now when I give him a kiss, he'll say, "Let's try that again!"  And he'll continue to say that and play his little game til I don't find it amusing enough to keep playing it.  It does get old, but I sure love it.  Also, if he ever discovers a small space-- a pocket for instance, or a hole in a toy-- he comes to me and asks hopefully, "Chocolate chips in it?" and I've never been able to deny him his request.  He is just too adorable with his big, bright blue eyes, pink cheeks with new little freckles, and messy blonde hair.

He's finally officially completely potty trained.  It is so nice to only have one child in diapers.  He got into the preschool, so I had to force him.  I knew he knew better, so when he'd poop in his underwear, I got pretty angry.  Now, every time he does his business in the toilet he tells me, "You be happy now...," and looks all hopeful like, "Right?" Its cute, but it kinda makes me sad.  Poor kid got quite a few spankings and time-outs in addition to being yelled at by me. 

He likes to get up pretty early.  When we discourage him from bothering us, he tells us, "The sun is up.  It's awake time." When we want him to go to bed at night, though, he doesn't want to listen to our argument that the sun is down so its sleep time.

In the car he likes to go "super fast."  Sometimes, obviously, we can't go as fast as he'd like us to.  I tried to explain it to him, and then the other day he wowed me when we pulled onto the street that takes us into town and he told his dad, "This is a slow place."  So he gets it, and he knows on the way home just where we can go fast again.  I just think he's so clever and smart.