Life of a 2 year old boy...and his dog.

My latest completed project, that I started oh, sometime this summer as I was collecting old yard sticks I could find at garage sales. So it's like a piece of history, but functional. If you know me I don't have much use for things without function. S is quite the helper and he loved this project, probably because it was like playing with lots of swords until I finally got it together. Now he just uses my knitting needles as swords, and bats, and drumsticks.
His first black eye...mean kids. Just kidding, it was of course from his best friend Chile (the dog).

The delights of paint, "it looks great on the paper I bet it would look even better on my belly!" The brush was used for a short period of time, haha.

Despite the negative consequences he receives, he continues to play in the dog's water, and takes many of his toys for a swim therein. Here is bunny soaked and ready for the washing machine.

Chile has to get in as many photos as possible :) A boy loves his boxes, and this one is the perfect size for him to fold himself up inside. Hours of fun.

This is the typical scene in the kitchen as I'm cooking dinner...two creatures crawling around under my feet. And what fun would it be without a collander on your head?

As he is such a great helper in the kitchen, he must inspect, take inventory,and rearrange his ingredients. He frequently brings me a can of pineapple or peas and says "eat". I haven't openned a can for him yet, they are more fun unopenned as he can then continue to play with them.

As for other news, he is becoming more able to dress himself, feed the dog, do somersaults, help unload the dishwasher, and with baking. He is more than able to clean his room, put books, clothes, and toys away from around the house, put the clothes in the dryer, take his dishes to the sink, and entertain the dog for hours. I love my little helper and I'm so proud of him! One of my favorite things he does is get out a dominoe or 2 and hold it up to his ear like phone and say "Daddy-O, Daddy-O, truck, Mama, Daddy-O" It's too cute to behold. Hope you all enjoy the pictures.

Birthday 2

Our little boy is 2! He is so much fun and is continuing to learn and show his personality. We often find him with a bucket on his head, or lining up his cows, horses, sheep and pigs on his truck, for market I guess :) He spends a lot of time on the stool next to me in the kitchen, doing whatever I am doing. He is also now in the habit of taking my fingers and saying "room", which means he wants me to come play in his room. He loves to tell the dog "NO" and is pretty handy with a hammer. We went to Home Depot for their kids workshop and once I set the nails in the predrilled holes he put them in the rest of the way with hardly a miss. As for mischief, his biggest temptations seem to be the dog water, because everything needs a bath or needs to go swimming :) and the dog food, as it is so much fun to dump out and withhold from the dog. Here he is visiting his gifts before his birthday. He knew they were for him.
Openning some gifts from family, he had a hard time remembering how to do it since it was half a lifetime since he had done it last.

Here was his largest gift, a teepee made by my parents, with his flashlight of course. This was a big hit at the party and it's big enough for me to go in and play with him...very nice.

Party and cake...this is the second year I have bought ice cream and forgotten to put it out, and the second year no one has asked me about it! He loved the cake and the friends but had quite the strange look on his face when everyone started singing to and looking at him.

"I can eat cake all by myself anyday, but I still need help with vegetables!"

It continued to snow for over a week after his birthday and he didn't like it the first time out, maybe because Chile jumped on his back and he went over like a tree facefirst into 6 inches.

But he loved making snow angels and falling on his back into the snow, he is by the way a great snow angel maker :)

Chile!

So in October we got our puppy and named her Chile. S loves her and sometimes hates her (puppies have sharp teeth!). We are thankful that she now sleeps through the night. Puppies are worse than newborns for the first couple weeks :)

This is S and Chile on the swing. One night I let her out, sleepy and groggy as I was and she didn't come right back to the door, I started looking for her and spotted her on the swing by herself in the middle of the night for a joyswing. I wish I had captured it on video, she has done this several times since then, but I didn't get a video.

Here is S trying to play in his sandbox that we forgot to cover before it rained, a lot!

Playing in the yard with a four-legged-walking-turd

J snuggling the Chile dog the first morning we had her.

One of the most recent pics I took of her, she has grown so fast!

S loves to get down and try to snuggle with Chile, which lasts for moments before the nipping begins.

Here and there they do get to snuggle.

Chile just can't stand to see S in the tub, I'm not sure if she's worried about him (because she hates the bath) or if she thinks she's missing out on all the fun (because S makes so much noise giggling and splashing and laughing during bathtime.) So She spends the entire time he's in the bath with her front paws on the edge, trying to lick him and grap his toys.

Vacation! Part 2

These pictures start from the end of our trip and work backward...oops.

At Crater Lake, Oregon...beautiful and cold.

Boat ride on Lake Shasta to Caverns on other side...touristy but not busy the day we went.

The one night we spent at a hotel, we had so much fun and got a much needed good night's sleep after sleeping in the truck for over a week.

This is at Lassen National Volcanic Park, the hike was to a place called Bumpass Hell where a guy named Kendall Bumpass discovered mud pots and boiling pools, but lost his leg to one when the surface gave way burning his leg in 240 degree sulfur water. So they built boardwalks to prevent this for tourists ;)

This was in a ghost town called Bodie, and old mining town in California preserved as it was left, they just locked up all the buildings and you walk around looking in windows. I thought this site was pretty cool because it wasn't set up to look like "how it used to be". It was actually left as the people left it...dusty beer bottles and papers on the bars, junk in the sheds, merchandise on the shelves in the mercantile. So if you ever drive through this terrible area of miles and miles of nothing, stop at Bodie.

The picture doesn't show truly how dirty he is, but our campsite was ALL dirt, and he had a marvelous time. We also had a bear visit us during the night here is Yosemite, and I was so thankful for the locked bear boxes the campground provided.

Hiking in Yosemite, stopped for a snack.

Sequioa National Park...he looks like the size of a chipmunk.

We drove through Las Vegas, I hope I never go there again, but it is pretty amazing what they have built in the middle of the desert, the energy that goes into each building and the effort they give to get you to spend money....Most of it a waste, but amazing what man can build. For example S and J are watching the light/water/music show at the Bellagio, where water shoots like 20 stories high or something like that.

The shark aquarium also in Vegas....it was pretty cool, we all thought so.

He's got it.

I showed S how to play and now I can't keep it out of his hands (and mouth)!

Vacation! Part 1

Part 1 because there are too many pictures I want to share :) We started out driving to Moab, Utah, met up with our friend, Andy and enjoyed the warm (sometimes HOT) days. Enjoy the photos.


Hiking up Mill Creek, Moab. S spent a good part of 12 days in this backpack without complaint, but who would complain to get carried all over beautiful creation!

When it was hot, we hit the higher altitude in the La Sal Mts, I can't remember the name of this lake, but we heard elk.

This was my favorite hike, in a slot canyon called Little Wild Horse. S liked to be able to reach out an almost any point and touch the rock canyon walls.

Same canyon, pretty cool.

More of the same.

Andy got a turn to carry the backpack and cargo, it was a nice break.

This place is called Goblin Valley, very interesting erosion.

Hiking out of Goblin Valley.

Funny faces in the french press at the campground. The campground we stayed at was really nice with a pool and hot tub, S really likes to swim. Stay tuned...more will come when I have time.

Long and Busy summer

Our new house, it's so nice to have a fence, I can let S run free in the backyard. The grass is still coming up.

My dad made a child size table and chairs for my sister and I when we were little and now it's in our home, S loves it and has almost completely given up sitting in his highchair in preference for sitting at his own table. For dinner he still sits with us, but breakfast and lunch are informal enough to make good use of "his" table.

After the buzz cut, with my clogs. He actually walks pretty good in them.

The first house we built this summer, sold to a lady who seems to be a nice neighbor. Pretty much the same house as the one we built for ourselves, with the exception of some interior wall modification.

Before the buzz cut.

I haven't forgotten that I started this blog to tell you about S progress, I have just barely had time this summer to sit down at the computer at all. He has changed so much in the past 6 months and every new thing makes it that much more fun. His language surprises me all the time. We have the Chronicles of Narnia bound with a picture of Aslan the Lion on the front. When I was unpacking the books I showed it to him and roared, he loved that and I told him it was the Chronicles of Narnia, he repeated Narnia, and to this day gets the book and says 'nana'. Haha. He has also started to notice certain items at the grocery store, none of which I have ever purchased, but the marketing people sure know what they are doing...he notices all the gummi things and cereals with pictures of cars or tractors or dogs, that seem to still be at his level from the cart. So I just acknowledge what he sees and we move on :)

He still loves trucks and does everything he sees us do. The other day J said he smelt something funny and couldn't tell where it was coming from, the couch or the rug. I proceed to smell the couch and the rug back and forth to locate the odor, S gets down on all fours and I see him with a wrinkled up nose going back and forth on the rug. Too funny. I have seen him do this with everything from raking the yard, using the shovel, screwdriver, vacuum, hand saw (trimming trees), hairbrush, and toothbrush, and many other things. I guess that is how he learns, so I'm happy he's learning. His sign language vocab has grown as has his spoken language. He continues to ask to go outside, read a book, eat, sleep, play and it seems a hundred other things along with please, thank you, and help. His new thing is climbing, he gets in his highchair by himself and he gets the stool to look up on the counter, we've been training him that he can do that but feet do not get to go on the counter.

Some friends of ours have a lab who just had a litter of puppies, they are all chocolate and we are planning to get one in a couple of months, since that is one word S continually repeats "Doggy, Doggy, Doggy." As we have been landscaping the past week or so, he has thoroughly enjoyed the dirt, and I have enjoyed the Borax to get it out of his clothes :) He also likes to carry around an old cell phone that we gave him saying "Daddy, Daddy, Daddy (then mumbles of a toddler nature)". We are planning to take a little camping vacation next week, which is much needed after the 2 houses we built this summer, but I don't know how it will work with potty training...he has been wearing underwear mostly during the day, and still diapers at night. Being home and having a potty available at all times makes this process quite simple since he has been going on the toilet for over a year now, he knows what to do it's just the communicating that he needs to go that we are still working on :)

There is so much more but this is long enough for now.

Yippee for Friends

Well, we have had a great April so far. We have had our friends staying with us and started the house. Here is S with his raincoat he got for his birthday from our neighbor in Colorado, Marilynn. Our friends little girl turned 2 this past week, so I made her some things. This 'mock' crazy creek chair and the picnic basket in the background, they both seemed to be hits with a little girl.

This photo is from the day we poured the slab for the house. It rained but turned out great despite the anxiety we had when the rain fell.

This was a trip to the lake with our friends. It was a beautiful evening and we all enjoyed throwing rocks from the jetty.

S and his 2 best friends. This cat has made a great companion for the young ones as it has the highest level of torture tolerance I have ever seen in a cat. In the midst of tail pulling, hair pulling, ear pulling and eye poking, this cat keeps purring and coming back for more affection. She frequently visits our deck but lives next door.