Blast from the past

I was looking for a handwritten recipe amongst a stack of magazine recipe pages and scraps of paper when I ran across this picture stuck to another piece of paper. I haven't seen this in ages. It was taken 7 years, 1 month and 1 week ago. Wow. It was back when we were engaged and we had gone to Chuck E Cheese with Garrett's (and my soon to be) niece and nephews. What a fun find!

Everything is more fun in a box!

Can you see why he is sad? He accidentally kicked off a shoe.

Add a blanket and everything gets even better!

His naps have been much shorter since we got the box and he has been waking up from his naps asking to play in it. He's just too excited to sleep!  :-)

Twinkle twinkle little star...

Lately our little boy has started stalling at bedtime (as well as nap time). He wants to read every book on his bookcase and he comes up with reasons that he needs us to come back into the room. Instead of his regular easy 7:30 bedtime, its usually 8:30/9pm before he actually goes down and stays down for the night.

A few months ago we purchased a video monitor when we transitioned him to his toddler bed. It is so helpful being able to peek in on him! I wondered what he was pointing to on the wall so I went to go check on him.

(by the way, he knows we can see him because when I was in the room with him he turned to the video monitor camera, waved, and said "Hi, DaDEE!")

He had gotten his turtle night light out and was projecting stars on the wall and singing twinkle twinkle little star. I'm sure the fact that its still light out when he goes down for the night doesn't help him want to sleep.

My firm parenting resolve went out the window and I stayed to play with him for a while. Sweet little moments.

After singing him goodnight again I checked and saw a telltale green glow on the monitor...yep, not technically out of bed but not sleeping.



 More twinkle twinkle singing.

Finally after going in a third time he was laying in bed crying. He had put the night light back on the floor next to his bed but the light was in his eyes. I turned it off and he went right to sleep. Success?

It sure is fun to see things through his eyes and share in his enthusiasm. :-)

Splash pad!

This summer has been the first summer where you have not been afraid of splash pads! I have taken you out to three different splash pads over 5 different visits and so far you have only enjoyed it twice. (the first and the last time). Still I am so excited that you are starting to enjoy them! I can't wait until next summer when I am sure you will probably have even more fun!

You still like to stay near the tamer water and you prefer the least crowded splash pad that we have visited. It makes me happy to see you excited though!

Such an awesome way to have fun during the hot summer!

Quarterly Update: 30 Months!

In other words, you are now TWO and a HALF. Whoa.

You weigh 29.5 lbs and I have no clue how tall you are. Recently it seems you had a growth spurt though. Also this morning your shoes seemed tight so we are graduating you to size 7's. You are still wearing a few size 24 month but mostly size 2T. Size 2T still has some room to grow.



 At 2.5 you know your shapes, colors, and most of your body parts. You also know most of your lower case and upper case letters. You can also count from 1 to 10. You love numbers and the alphabet right now and get so excited when you see numbers and letters.



Your favorite two shapes are octagon and oval. Your favorite color at the moment is green. You also appear to be left-handed.

You are getting better at climbing. You can climb to the top of the bridge and up and down the slide at the mall play-place all by yourself  now.



You have started giving kisses as well as hugs. It's so sweet. We thought you'd never learn to give kisses!
 

You greet your Dad first thing when he walks in the door from work. Then when he comes to give me a hug you join in and give us a big hug and say "Sweet Sweet". You are such a sweet little boy.



You LOVE airplanes and rockets. You call robots "rockets" too.




Your love of rockets started when you found one of your daddy's model rockets. We didn't have to tell you anything about it. You saw it, your eyes lit up, and that was that.




Nine times out of ten you ask to see a rocket cartoon. (Wallace & Gromit "A Grand Day Out", "Wall E", or the "Incredibles". Basically if there is an episode of anything with a rocket or a robot in it you are good. You do prefer actual rockets to robots though.



When reading goodnight moon you will say goodnight to everything in the picture. I heard you say "Goodnight, See you!"

You have an incredible memory. You have memorized where the colored fish go on your fishing game and can put the puzzle pieces on top of the correct spots even though there is no picture underneath and you haven't got the fine motor skills down to put them in their place. (These are some of the last pictures of you in your nursery before we switched to your big boy room)

Your memory also covers remembering exactly what spot to resume your earlier tantrum at and dragging tantrums out for an hour or two with breaks between crying fits. You don't like to let go of things. We have to watch what we say about "later" and "next time". You remember.

You were playing with a seed pod you found outside in the car. You wanted to pick it up, look at it, and then put it back in the door handle area of the car each time you got in the car over the span of one weekend. Suddenly over a month later you decided to look in the door handle and when there was no seed pod you threw a huge sobbing fit every time you got in the car. For DAYS. Don't even get me started on your Halloween bucket. You STILL remember that back in October I filled it with popcorn.

We have been working through your massive tantrums with time-outs. You are getting better at managing them now. It's so hard on my Momma's heart though. The other day when your 2 minutes was up you came out of your room, looked at me with two huge teardrops on your cheeks and said "Thank you...". AGH! I felt that knife twisting in my heart.

You are doing a great job with identifying emotions and telling us how you feel. It's pretty cute. My favorite is when you walk around and say "Happy! Happy! Happy!"

We also hear "Sad, Whine (yes, you say 'Whine' when you are feeling whiny instead of acting whiny sometimes), and Cry" "(the ultimate fake cry....saying the word. lol.) Sometimes we also hear "Scared" but not very often.

Your catch phrases these days are: "Oh dear!", "Oh my!", "Don't worry.", and "Watch out!". Usually you tell me "Don't worry" whenever I am telling you to stop doing something. Like pouring water all down the entertainment center. You also like to lead us around the house saying "Where we going?" and when you are crying you say "Whats wrong, whats wrong..."

One day I saw you line up two Godzilla monsters facing each other really close together. I've seen you do this several times and I had no idea if they were fighting, hugging, or what. The other day you told me that they were Mommy and baby monster and that they were hugging. Melt my heart. (You also like to watch a you-tube video of a boy and girl snowman ice skating. You tell me that it is the baby and the mommy.)

You know your Delorean Hot Wheel car by name. This makes your daddy very happy. He's got grand plans of working on a project car with you one day when you are much older.



You love to tickle us and asked to be tickled by running through the house yelling "TICKLE ME!" at the top of your lungs. You have even gone up to strangers and tried to tickle them.



You are becoming more independent and imaginative in your play. It's fun to watch you and hear your dialogue. Also you have started lining up some of your toys like cars and magnets. Notice how you specifically lined up the animals so that they were standing on their heads. You played with them for a long time and had lots of dialogue as you did this. I also found your graham crackers lined up one day. Well, one remaining bite of each of your crackers. It made me smile.



Speaking of crackers, when eating a cracker you like to bite it and then tell me what it looks like. For example, the other day you showed me that you had a volcano cracker and a rocket cracker.

You are learning (and using!) your manners. You say "Thank you" unprompted anytime someone hands you something. We are working on "You're welcome" and "please". You say them but you need reminding. I love how people say such nice things about you when you are polite. You also tell people "Sorry" when its appropriate too. We accidentally bumped carts at the grocery store with someone else and you sang out "Sorry!" I love hearing you talk and appropriately use your language skills. It's sometimes hard to believe that 6 months ago you were just starting to talk!






I recently found a couple of beanie babies from my teenage years and you named them Mommy kitty, Daddy kitty, and baby. You sleep with them and carry them around. Especially baby. He's your favorite. Also lately you have been seeing pretend monkeys everywhere. We went to the park with another 2 year old and you boys would go up to trees and beat on them with sticks and look up at them for monkeys. Not sure what started this.

I know I always say this but you are at such a fun age. It seems a little surreal that you are already two and a half years old and that at the next quarterly post I write you will be a big brother. Seems like just yesterday that you were the baby!