A Two-Year-Old

We are now the proud care-takers of a two-year-old. And he's definitely getting really good at acting the part, mostly in the way of talking and conversing and learning new things. But also occasionally in the way of melt-downs, defiance, and independence. Sometimes he does something naughty and you can just tell from the look on his face that he's doing it to get a rise out of you. He's already learning the sweet pleasure of annoying other people...

We got to celebrate his birthday twice, once when lots of the Joneses were here on Sunday and once with just the three of us on his actual birthday, Wednesday.

On Sunday we celebrated by opening presents from Nana, Papa, Kelsey, Jake, and Andrew and then by slaving over the recreation of a Superman cake from Adam's childhood. I think it's safe to say that the one from the 80's was much more visually appealing, but the one we made for Jack sure had a lot of love and time poured into.

 Attempting to hold up two fingers, but looking more like a love and peace obsessed hippie from the 70's

 Sitting with all his presents

Still attempting the two fingers thing. It's a lot harder than one finger was. 

 Adam got a little mouthy about the condition of the cake that we had slaved over, so I had no choice but to cover his face in red frosting. Maybe he'll think twice next time...

Then by the time his actual birthday came along we had lost all of our visitors. They all had gone up north to Rexburg for the beginning of the semester. So it was just Jack and I during the day. We started out the day by eating pancakes in the living room while watching Toy Story.

Then since he got all sticky and needed a bath we decided to make it a fun, birthday bath. We made shaving cream finger paints and had a good time painting the tub before the actual bath.

After the bath, we went to our fun local toy store. They were doing story time that day so we went for that they when they found out it was his birthday they gave him a wrapped gift. They're so nice there. The time before that, they gave Jack a little airplane to make him less sad about having to leave. Love them.

After the toy store we picked up lunch to go at Kneaders and met Adam at a park for a picnic. When we asked Jack the night before what he wanted to do, that's what he said. "Play at park. Eat lunch."

 Eating lunch and opening his cute little birthday cake present from the toy store.

Playing with the microphone I got him at the toy store.

 And then for the evening we ordered pizza in, then opened and played with his gifts from us. He was pretty excited about the Batman and Joker building set he got. He and Adam love to play with it together. Jack's getting really good at pretend play and Adam loves to have a little super-hero obsessed buddy.

From the Mouth of Jack

Now that we're getting into the fun stage of Jack experimenting with language and voicing his cute, silly opinions and concerns, you'll probably start seeing from time to time a post devoted to funny, sweet things he's been saying or doing. Enjoy.... (cause we sure do)

Some of you may have already heard some of these, but I still want to get them written down.

He shows signs of extreme enthusiasm for food, which I absolutely love. He's an awesome eater and gobbles anything we put in front of him. Some of the more interesting things that he loves are feta cheese, broccoli, and hummus. So here's what Jack's got to say about some of his favorite foods...

-While eating a hot dog: "You da man, Ketchup"
-About a particularly good batch of oatmeal one morning: "This AMAZING, Mom!"
-And every morning when I pour him a cup of milk, he gets all giggly and can't sit still. It's his happiest time in the whole day.

He's got some words of advice occasionally too:
-While Adam and I were cleaning up the gross mess he made during naptime and lecturing him about how naughty it is to play with one's feces, he looked up at Adam and said, "Don't worry, Daddy." Well said, Jack Jack, well said.

He gives very heart felt, sincere compliments:
-To me: "Hair prettiful, Mom."
-To Adam: "Good job keeping pants on, Daddy." (As you may have gathered, we've been having difficulties keeping pants on lately. Which is particularly difficult when we also have difficulties keeping hands out of diapers...)

He's developing some good manners:
-"Scuse me, I burped."
-"Umm, Daddy, Mister Daddy?" (It's always good to teach a child to respect their elders, right?)

It's fun to see him experimenting with voice inflection especially with raising your voice at the end of a question. When he asks a question he raises his voice for the whole question, then goes even higher at the end.
-His favorite question is: "Mommy, whatchoo doin?" It cracks me up every time because he says it in a condescending kind of way as if I'm in trouble or something.
-He likes to start conversations with questions too. At dinner while Joneses were here he was sitting by Jake and asked: "You like potatoes, Jacob?"

It's been a long time coming, but he is finally expressing love for people and things on a regular basis.
-Talking about Nana to Kelsey he said, "I love her, Kelsey."
-One night he was having a really hard time getting to sleep, so I gave in and when to rock him. As I was trying to calm him and make him sleepy he whispered to me, "I love you so much."
-And on the topic of love, he's starting to talk a lot about marriage and getting married in the temple. So last night he found a tie in our closet and wrapped it around his neck. Then he came over to Adam and said, "Daddy, I getting married!" He hasn't picked the girl yet, but he sure has the tie picked out.

One of his favorite responses to being asked to do something these days is to say, "I can't."
-Ever since the experience with the girl with the claws in nursery, he's had a harder time going. One Sunday at the end of Sacrament we were prepping him for it and he started shaking his head saying, "No nursery, I can't. I can't!"
-Then on  the same night that he couldn't sleep Adam went in after I had attempting twice to rock him to sleep. The first thing he told Adam when he picked him up was, "Jack Jack can't sleep." He sure is figuring out how to take advantage of our emotions, huh?

He loves music and catches on to melodies and lyrics incredibly fast. Some of the songs he likes to sing are:
-Don't Worry Baby by The Beach Boys
-Let it Be by The Beatles
-Hey Hey We're the Monkees by The Monkees
-We are Never Ever Getting Back Together by Taylor Swift
-Tiny Turtle
-Popcorn on the Apricot Tree
-Sleeping Bunnies (from nursery)
-The Birthday Song
-Elmo's Song
-I Love to See the Temple
-And so many more... He listens to a song a couples times then starts singing the chorus along with you. Crazy kid.

Wow. This ended up being a lot longer than intended. Some of these are from a while ago. So next time I'll try not to wait so long before I do this. Hope you liked it.

Harvest Days Parade

Last weekend we were supposed to get to go to a Drake Family Reunion in Twin Falls, Idaho. We were so excited to get to see everyone (especially our long lost Hawaiian buddies) but we only made it as far as Midvale before we heard the bad news. There was a big wildfire really close to the campsite. Everyone who was already up there would be evacuated and the reunion was basically cancelled. Bummer...

But the story isn't all bad because it ended up being Harvest Days weekend in Midvale, which is basically bigger than Halloween, Christmas, and Everyone's Birthdays combined in my family. Oh the many childhood memories of going to the parade with Grandma and Grandpa Drake. It's the best parade in town.

 The night before we went to the park and Jack got to see a real live fire engine and fireman. The tires are taller than he is...

 Then in the morning all the kids (and aunties) sat on the curb so we could be in on all the action and get all the candy. Syd and Mike are MIA cause they were at a Daddy/Daughter campout.

 The cute photographer.

 All of us girls. We tried to cover Christie up cause she didn't have her family reunion shirt on.

 Then the show began. The policemen start us out. We all got to give them high fives as they passed by.

 You know it's homey and personal when the cop's got three children in his car without seat belts.

 There are some interesting characters.

 And groups of people who seem to have no affiliation with a business or organization, but it doesn't really matter cause they have candy...

 Where can I find an outfit just like that guy's in the middle to give to Adam?

 In my experience, old guys are nice, but a little stingy with the candy. They only throw one or two pieces at a time.

 We promised our vote to every politician, so long as they'd just give us some candy and maybe a fan.

 This old guy in the funny hat was popping wheelies for us.

And we all loved the creepiness of this weird bear. It was an elementary school's mascot. Scary...

 This lion guy was pretty awesome. For all the cars that went by we'd try and get them to honk cause we're noisy, unruly parade-goers. For this truck, the lion saw us doing the honk sign, but the driver didn't. So first he tried to yell from behind.

 But that didn't work and he was a man on a mission, so he scaled the driver's side of the truck and got his attention that way.

 Well done, lion guy, well done.

 This clown asked us to email him this photo and gave us his business card. I think we lost it, but if you're reading this, clown man, then just know that your picture did end up making it onto the world wide web after all.

 This guy was really tall.

It must be impossible to find pants that fit him well.

So the weekend didn't turn out how we thought it would. We spent a lot fewer hours in the car and ended up with sore throats from yelling so much in the parade. But at least we got the candy, right?

When Girls Attack

Jack got beat up by a girl. It looks more like he got in a cat fight, though. Nursery can be a dangerous place. You never know when a moody girl is going to go on a wild rampage and scratch the whole class up.

I came to pick him up and he was snuggled up to one of the nursery workers obviously recovering from a pretty good cry (you know that frantic hiccuppy type breathing?) I asked what was wrong then saw the battle wounds on his face.

Apparently, a handful of kids walked away from nursery yesterday with some injuries. It doesn't look too bad today, but yesterday it was pretty red. He's got a couple scratches by his eyes and a few on his nose and upper lip. He's pretty tough though, cause when I asked him how nursery was he said, "nursery fun!"