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We have a new pet in the family. Levi's turtle. I guess it's name is Hector Rentoria. Nathan always calls people Hector Rentorio, but this is a girl turtle, so it's Rentoria. But, we really just refer to it as the Turtle, in order to teach Levi what that animal is called. He can't seem to separate it from a fish. He either calls a turtle a fish or a fish a turtle.

It seems to really like Levi. It's rather timid, as turtles tend to be. But, when Levi goes up to the tank and says, "Hi" (which he does quite often) the turtle always swims over and they stare at each other for some time. Levi is the one who reminds us to feed the turtle. He runs over to the tank and yells, "Eat!" Although, if it were up to him the turtle would eat about 20 times a day.
Pippin thinks we're just asking for trouble by bringing that thing in our house. When we have to get the turtle out to clean the tank, Levi and I have the duty of sitting on the floor with the turtle while Papa does the dirty work. And Pippin is right there, stalking the turtle with his hair sticking up. A couple times he's gone into a barking frenzy, which is extreme for Pippin. He's not a (bob)barker. I don't think they'll ever be true friends.


Levi had his first little craft the other day. I bought him some Mickey and Tigger stickers at the store, so when I came home I gave him a piece of paper to stick them on. He doesn't like to leave them on his shirt, but he wants to stick them to something. So, he put every single sticker on that paper, and then he got to have a pen and draw around them all. He was pretty into it.

While he was using the pen, I started teaching him how to draw circles. We talk about shapes every once in a while. It's not a concrete concept yet. But I think drawing the shapes will be better for him than just looking at the shapes in a book. He seemed to pick up on it. By the end he was drawing them himself. They were a little abstract, but I could tell he had the idea, just not the hand control.

Auntie Vera sent Levi a box of fun stuff a couple weeks ago. And one of the prized possessions was a pair of O Toodles ears. People who haven't watched the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse recently won't know. But, Levi sure does. He says, "O Toodles" when he's supposed to while watching the cartoon, so he was pretty excited about the ears. Mickey mouse talks to you through the ears and plays Mickey says and stuff like that. He says, "Mickey says sit down. Did ya do it?" And Levi says, "Yea."

So, I need to work harder at getting a better picture of this, but this is the best I have so far. Levi has picked up on tickling in the last several weeks. So, he comes and tickles your face and your neck. But his face is the funniest part. You can kinda see it here, but it's a lot more severe than this pictures shows. He squints his eyes almost closed, crinkles up his nose, hunches his shoulders and kinda bares his teeth, as opposed to smiling. And he says, "eeeeeee" while he's doing it. It's pretty dramatic.

This is just a cute pictures to end with. Looks like he should be saying, "Howdy ma-am. Gooday"