Oh the cuteness...

Okay, the kid is cute...seriously. I don't think I am biased. Not only is Rusty CUTE, cute, he also does so many cute things! Here are a few of the latest:

• He has learned how to say "cheese" and crinkle up his nose whenever the camera comes out. It is seriously adorable. Tonight I caught him with our little point and shoot. He was holding it up to his face and saying "CHHHEEEESEEE!" over and over again!
• He pretends that he is SO adult whenever he gets ahold of my cell phone. He "texts"-which involves punching the buttons with both thumbs and looking at the screen. He also "calls" people frequently. Yes, sometimes accidentally, but USUALLY it is just him holding the phone up to his ear while walking around and saying "Uh huh!" Usually he says that he is calling Nana. Nana must be something special!
• He loves to airplane into our arms. He sits on the edge of the couch and bounces up and down saying "Go, go!" before running and leaping into our arms to fly. He loves it and it is so adorable to hear his little voice saying "doh" for go!
• He got a little piano book from his Grandma B for Christmas which he LOVES. His favorite song is "If You're Happy and You Know It" and he has already figured out which button to push to make it play. When it plays and gets to the spot for the CLAP CLAP he claps his little hands. It is TOO sweet!
• His favorite TV show is "In the Night Garden." When he wants to watch it-although trust me, he does NOT always get what he wants!-he comes up and sort of dances like the main character in the show, Iggle Piggle, dances. It's so cute that it is hard to say no, but I don't want his brain to turn to total TV mush so I do say no often. Sometimes though, he gets that treat and watching him dance is pretty adorable.
• The "ball" is what it is ALL about in Rusty's life right now. Any kind of ball, it can be a bouncy one, a fabric one, a squishy one, one made out of crumpled up paper...he does not care. If there is a ball around, he is happy. He loves to throw them, bounce them, and attempt to kick them. He repeatedly grabs whatever ball happens to be in the vicinity and holds it up while asking "Ball?" His dad is the one that plays with him the most...I think they have spent hours in the hallway throwing the ball, bouncing it, and just rolling it around. We have a wee bit of a problem, though, in the fact that when he began playing ball so long ago, he wasn't that good at it. Now the kid SERIOUSLY has an arm, and he can whip that ball like nobody's business. This is fine and dandy if you are outside, but when inside, he tends to hit things like TVs, pictures, and glass figurines...not just in our house, but in other peoples'! Now comes the delicate chore of teaching exactly when it is okay to throw the ball, and where. Any suggestions!?
• "Uh huh!" That is his favorite phrase and I don't think I have ever heard a kid say it quite the way that little Rusty does. Oh man, it is simply one of the cutest things I have seen or heard, even our friends and family think so! YES, I have captured it on video, but it remains stuck in the wasteland that is iMovie, with all of my other videos, waiting for me to process it.
• He waves bye bye to everyone and everything. The other day I was driving away from the mall and he waved and said "bye, bye!" When we were flying home from SD he was waving at everyone on the plane and charming the heck out of them. They were all smiling and saying what a good boy he was. He is, you know, a VERY good boy!
  

Okay, I think that is enough of the cuteness for now, but there is so much more to share! I might have to write another cuteness post sometime soon. For now, I will leave you with his CHEESE face. This particular photo was taken when we were home visiting my family, and he was outside in the snow with my dad. He was having a ball, as you can tell!