Eat it, Mama

It's so adorable, all the stuff that's pouring out of his mouth. A lot of it is still jibberish, but if everyone listens, we can often make stuff out now. He also gave us a rousing rendition of Old McDonald today, huzzah!

I've been so busy this week, with Baby E here, and other family, and just everything. Peanut's been thrown for a loop too, regressing on cup drinking and potty training :( But he's a cutie and we'll all get through it.

We've gone lots of places and had lots of fun, and tomorrow while we're at work he'll be spending all day with Baby E, Aunt K and Meemaw. I'm sure they'll be driven insane by the end, but Peanut will have fun!

He discovered today that he can reach the lightswitches... that'll be fun? He ran around flipping them for awhile (no chair/stool required!) and we were... delighted. So we distracted him with a fun game of folding/cutting paper, he happily built up his collection in the other room in a big pile, silly kid.

Crazy to think that he's that tall now. Sheesh, and he's 34 months now. Tomorrow's my birthday month, then it's his. He's going to be freaking 3 years old. Doesn't seem that long ago that he was a little baby crying all night while I rocked him.

It's a good thing that it's his Uncle A's birthday today, gave him a legitamate reason to sing Happy Birthday. A rare treat, someone to sing it to! Too bad he's not up here though, that'd be waaaay better :) He's upstairs restless right now, but I think about to crash, he's been having a hard time falling asleep, but that last tooth is almost all the way through, hopefully a more normal schedule next week combined with that tooth finishing up and we'll have our completely sweet and less complicated boy back. In the meantime... IT'S A BABY!

What's in space, Peanut?

Helping me try on glasses

So yesterday, upon coming home from school, we inquired what he learned in school. Didn't get a "correct" response, that's normal. (He starts listing off his friends - T and Sweetie Pie) But the school has started to supply us with key words for the day, and they're having a space week, so we looked at the list, it was pretty basic, and idly asked what could he find in space?

For the first time, my little munchkin responded correctly. "Moon." Mouth agape. What else Peanut? "Stars."

Holy crap mun. He's growing up!


He's learning how to play on toys differently at school, and he's getting so brave. Like here, where he scaled up the side of the play house in the neighbors yard. Never seen him do that before!

Today he's going on a field trip to the splash pad! We'll see how that goes - there's a train that goes around it and the last time we went... he didn't even get wet he was so distracted? Did I blog that already? I feel like I did, so moving on.

He's been extra cranky. Some days are worse then others, but like 4/7 days a week we get Sir Crankster. Last night was Sir Crankster. His crying was my soundtrack for the evening.  Teeth cut through - fast please! We're totally mostly through on #19 but #20 still is just teeny points, best I can tell.

His favorite books right now are The Very Hungry Caterpillar (when we get to the page with ALL the food, he pretends to eat it all) The it's a toss up, maybe a Spot book or a Train book, and the last two nights he's asked for The Runaway Bunny, which is completely new for him, I like it when he enjoys a new story. We let him choose who's going to read each book, I'm the clear favorite ;) So usually we have Daddy read the final book regardless of what he wants.

Shoot, I just realized that we didn't cross out anything on our Baby E calendar this morning. He's coming on Saturday!!

Got to get his room cleaned up still. I don't want to spend a ton of time in there yet, on Saturday I'll need to strip the bed and change the sheets for our guests anyways. That's right, Peanut will be camping out in our room! Asked the school to stick his sleeping bag in his cubby after his nap for me, we'll see if he stays in it, or if he ends up climbing into our bed. But I can be hopeful :) I leave to pick him up in about 2 hours, I'm excited to see if he's just a bundle of excitement. And words. And all sorts of stuff <3

I have to start dinner soon, I feel like we've been eating it a ton, but I've got leftover ingredients for ratatouille, so I might as well use them. Get everything prepped so I can just throw it in the oven when we get back home. Peanut doesn't like the pieces, but he likes it pureed over rice. And I like it without rice and Daddy... likes it with rice, a sandwich, cookies and maybe a plate of spaghetti (have I mentioned how much he eats?) So it should work out fine.

I've still got a ton to do before time's up, I've barely even touched work. So much to doooooooooooooo~! But here, in honor of his trip to the splash pad today, here's a video of him chasing the train that goes around it, instead of playing in the water.

Singing Happy Birthday

Peanut and I headed out to the stores tonight with Daddy to get a few things, he started to get a little antsy so we did a duo of 'Happy Birthday' which is his first and only song he'll sing.

He's had a testy few days, we had to bring out the timeouts tonight, as he'd look me in the eye and disobey me after I'd warn him. 10 minutes later he'd be doing it again, whether it was throwing trains or dropping things off the table or whatever... sigh. testing children.

I wanted to blog during the day today, but I spent it preparing for our guests next weekend. Can't wait to see Mr E again soon!

This is an old picture of his hair, but I just looooove Peanuts hair.

Hopefully I'll do better next time!

A day of Pictures July 2014

I tend to space these out about 6ish months apart, so we were due for one. A day of pictures (and video!).

Typically I start these out with going to wake him up, however this time, the opposite happens. Peanut, being in a bed instead of a crib, woke up before us at 630 (awww, I prefer it when he makes it to 7-730) and came into bed with us until I could manage to crawl out. He didn't sleep great last night, but it was great compared to a few months ago. He's been fairly consistently sleeping through the night, he had a hard time falling asleep though last night, woke up crying at 4, and woke up early. But he does have two molars pushing through (the last two!).

So he convinced me to get up, he begrudgingly took care of business, and we headed downstairs. I asked him if he wanted to play or eat, and he said "play." So we went downstairs to feed the cats and play with toys for a little bit. Peanut immediately grabbed a truck and headed for the train table. Then after that he strung all the train cars together and tried to take them under the bridge and up, but they got stuck, and he got quite distraught :/ I'm hoping this was random and not an indicator that we're going to have a more emotional day.

We headed upstairs for breakfast. Usually he's a peanut butter toast kind of guy, but ever since Daddy brought home some Chex on sale, he's been begging for some. So I've relented a little on the Chex stance (we had a cross contaminated box in the past) and let him have some. And now that's all he wants to eat. I'll likely hide the rest of the boxes after we finish this one - it just makes me nervous that both us and the internet have had bad luck with them. But he gobbled it down with one little problem. He freaked out a little bit and started babbling on when I got him set up, and it took me a few minutes to figure out why. He's often dressed by the time we eat, and especially if he's headed to school, I put a bib on and a towel over his lap. So he wasn't happy that his normal company was missing.

But that was easily remedied and breakfast went on with peace. Up until he noticed his favorite book sitting on the table, The Big Red Barn (well, it's his favorite book this week). And of course he wanted to red. Sly me asked him to take it upstairs to sleeping Daddy and have him read it to him. So we went up, I got the picture, and came down here to start this up. So begins the day of pictures!

It'll be fun, trust me.





After typing that, I turned around to Peanut dragging his Thomas tent over to me, we got down and played with it a little bit, then moved on to making block tunnels. Block tunnels are on his ASQ36 form, so another one I'll be able to check off the list later on when he turns 3. Daddy joined us and they began to play a little yellow. Peanut loves when he plays yellow, and saying 'Daddy died.' when the sound effect comes up. He also likes pretending his Percy plush is a rocking horse, silly kid :)

So soon after this, it was time to go get dressed, I gave him a few choices in shirts, and he choose the green one. Excellent choice kid! It'll be great for later *foreshadowing* we came back down (well, Peanut chose to pretend to fall down the stairs a few times.

Then we got out some different trains and train tracks and got out our 'funnel tunnel' and played around with that for awhile. The light even chose to work on it today :)

But the morning was quickly was going by, and we had some tasks to do. We needed to hit up the library to return a few books and a movie, I wanted to get a few pictures at the park for a side project, and we need to go exchange his sandals. More on that later.

For now, there are few things that Peanut loves more than a car ride, also I inched up that chest strap after the photo, should have just done that before, but ah well. Adventure time!

We swung by the library then headed to the park. Peanut loves his 'white water.' We drove over there, saying hi to the kids playing there, and ran right over to the white water tower. ZOMG SO BIG SO FUN FREAK OUT TIME!!!!! but soon after that, we heard train noises. Specifically I heard what sounded like the train crossing going off, but no horns, but we walked down to the trainyard from there. A park... with a water tower... a block from the train tracks. This is heaven for Peanut.









Unforunately it was quieter then I hoped. The 'green car' was shunting a tank car around, but it was behind stuff and not easy to watch. There was some other stuff going on, and it was intriguing, but not AMAZING for him. So as soon as he remembered (well, turned around and saw) the white water tower, he was happy to return.

He ran straight to the tower, but as it was going late, we got him to go run over to the slides, he went down them several times before I asked him if he'd like to go drive by the tracks, which he was down with that idea. Momma knows how he ticks ;)

So we took off, here's the new car, I don't think I've posted a picture of it yet. Fairly confident. We took off to exchange his shoes. A few days ago we tried on a bunch of sandals as the velcro is dying on his current pair. We found a nice pair... got it home and it was a WTF? It was clearly too small. So not sure what happened there, but we went back and... there wasn't a single sandal that fit him there. We even had an employee scan each one to make sure.

Sooo we got a size up with adjustable straps that we could cinch around his ankles to keep them on and let him run around the store to make sure he wouldn't trip. It looks good, so we took them. We'll see how this afternoon goes. It was really getting late at this point (as it took us FOREVER to decide about what to do with the sandals) so we went home and just put some water on to boil (Peanut loves 'bubble' water) and cooked up some 'yellow pasta' aka GF mac and cheese. It just sounded nice on a cool day, and it was quick and brainless.

And he loves it.

Loves. it.

Of course he was getting tired and there wasn't a lot of time to let it cool, so there was a little drama when he forgot to blow, but otherwise he cleaned his bowl. Omnomnomnomnom!

I neglected to get a picture taken as he was getting ready for a nap, my bad, I laid down to read him stories, and found myself dozing off, so we cuddled up together until he fell asleep (pretty quickly despite a cat wanting to join us and the tornado sirens going off) and then I slipped out. And there he naps. My snuggle buddy :)






-----Nap Time---

He took a good nap and woke up in a pretty good mood. Here he is showing off his bedroom, it's kind of haphazard right now, we're planning on getting him a nice bed for his birthday and doing some redecorating in there, now that we know he's a trains and vehicles type of guy.

It'll be crazy bright in there, but none of us care :) It just makes it fun! And zomg I can't wait for the new windows to be in! New curtains! Everything!

Apparently also we lost a big branch/trunk thing (well, significant) we were checking it out with Kiara before we left the room. Though it doesn't look like you can see it here. I've always loved the view from his room though <3

Anywho, after that we just had some generic free play time. Lot's of train plaing, I had some work to finish up that didn't quite fit into his nap period, dinner to plan, misc around the house stuff. I had been thinking of setting up a ton of animal crossing and seeing if he was maybe interested in checking that out. Maybe in a few months, it was fun and nostalgic though. Makes me really want a 3DS so I can check out the most recent version though :) Ah well, dreaming! We'll save those upgrades for when Peanut's older and we'll go, hey, you've been playing SNES/Gamecube/Sega, but check out THESE graphics, mwaa haa haa haa haa! Yeah, we're raising a gamer ;) there are worse things.

HE'S RUNNING RIGHT AT ME, RUUUUUN!

The temperature is dropping outside (is it still July?) It's just after dinner time right now and it's 59 degrees. So we changed him back into pants and into long sleeves. We had a hectic moment there and I completely forgot I was doing this for awhile. I went outside on the deck to harvest some vegetation for dinner, and let Peanut come out with me. A week ago we sprayed a hive under the deck and it seemed like there wasn't much going on out there, so I figured it was safe, but I told Daddy to keep an eye out just in case there were scragglers. Well, I think there's a second hive, because shortly after I left the deck for the garden, they started to swarm under the patio furniture, and Daddy was quick to scoop him up to safety :/ I'm not sure the kid's even going to want to play out there any more.

But the boys had rice and chickpea curry for dinner and I had egg drop soup (I only eat grains for one meal). It was apparently pretty tasty, we have to get that cleaned up so we can fit in the rest of our plans before bedtime!

Oh, after the hornet incident, Peanut took his revenge by... shoving a thermometer into the screen door? Great >< good thing we have a new sliding door in the works.

So yeah, soon after this we decided we needed to run to the store for Peanut's school lunch tomorrow. So I took him out as we were getting ready to go and got this awesome shot of him playing hopscotch <3 I think this one will end up on FB too.

We played, headed out, stocked up on food for tomorrow and used a few coupons. We love coupons! Then we decided to make a detour.

Guess where?!?!

Yeah, the train tracks of course. We parked nearby and walked up and down them for a little while, sending him into preschooler fandom.

It was fun and lovely and then I realized I was getting texts from I who had stopped by. We hurried to the car so we could have a quick rendezvous, which was delightful. We ran around the house outside (well, one of us did) and chilled out till bedtime.

Of course when we went in we realized Peanut barely ate any dinner.

So we sliced up some cherries and we warmed up some leftover and Peanut polished off every single bite. Hungry boy! The up the stairs for bath time, which when Daddy's home, it's a freaking blast.

We read wore warm pajamas since it's like below zero out there in July or something. We read The Very Hungry Caterpillar, The Big Red Barn and The Blue Train. He was an excellent sport and actually fell asleep right away. I presume, I haven't heard him so he must have.

So that's his day, it was a pretty good day, I like to think it was swell, but he's got school tomorrow, I'll try to update on... Thursday! We'll see how that goes! Thanks for reading!

THE DEER, School and talking!

A picture is worth a thousand words.

Well, at the end of May, Peanut and I hit a deer. That sucked. But actually things have turned around a lot since. We were all fine, aside from my right leg which is doomed anyways. Still bruised. Still hurts from the running accident a few years ago. It's doomed. We got an amazing deal on a new to us car which is ended up as an upgrade, Peanut essentially got a scholarship and is going to pre-school 3 days a week. And he's getting even closer to talking.

So let's see here, the talking is the main one, I think, as this is his blog. As long as you talk about subjects he's interested in, he can get quite chatty. We were driving to visit Daddy today after picking him up from school. We were working on getting him to say "I do it" after he incorrectly asked for help when he was getting into his carseat (as in, I asked him if he wanted help, he said need help, even though he had already gotten up there). He could say all three words fine, but putting them together he wouldn't pronounce 'do' at all. It was just like a dropped sound. ANYWAYS we stopped at the light before the tracks and this was the conversation.

Apparently no more splash pad - too much train!

Me: We're almost there now.
Peanut: There it is! A choo track!
Me: Yup, but we're stopped at the light.

<pause>

Peanut: Go, green!
Me: Yup, here we go, should we go over the train tracks now?
Peanut: Yup, o'er choo tracks! <bump> Wow!



It's so fun to watch this develop :)

School is going pretty great. We mainly wanted him to interact with other kids. He's still only 2 so he's not really playing with other kids, just alongside, but he's making improvements. He'll yell goodbye to them on the playground, the teachers say he'll clean up after them (toys have to stay in certain areas, Peanut is apparently really great at following those rules) and he's learned one of their names. Well maybe he knows other names, but distinguish-ably one of them. We'll call her T! Also he loves the Guinea Pig, called Sweetie Pie. On our way out today he stopped by it's room and called 'Bye-bye Sweetie Pie' which was adorable. He pedaled a little bit in the school's parking lot for a fourth of july parade, we're still working on pedaling, he defaults to hoofing it a lot. Plus someone gave us their old bike (pink!) that their kids had outgrown, so we can practice at home.

So yeah, often as not I come to pick him up and he's wandering the playground, but he likes to wander. Or coloring at the picnic table, but that's cool too. Every now and again though I find him playing with another kid and my heart warms <3 and I know it'll only get better over time as he gets older and gains new social skills.

So yeah, that's the synopsis. I'm not going to promise to update, but I'll try to update Tuesdays and/or Thursdays. This is important to me, it's just hard to find the time/energy to make a nice update. But days alone should really help that, as long as I remember :)