Visit from Nana and Papa

 We had so much fun when Nana and Papa came to visit in December!

We FINALLY put together the train set you got from Grandma Beverly for your birthday.  I had been telling you for months that we would open it when Nana came.  You were thrilled to put the track together, but burst into tears when Papa got the train working electronically!  You just wanted to push it yourself.  

We went to the Natural History museum.  Your favorite part by far was the dinosaurs.

Don't be fooled by the fake pleasantness in this picture.  You refused to eat your dinosaur cookie at the museum (heaven knows why) and then were cranky afterward because you were hungry.

We went to Temple Square where it was SO COLD!  We didn't stay long because of the cold snap Utah was experiencing that week.

You had great fun making sugar cookies. . .

. . .and decorating them.  You also had fun snitching cookies to eat the rest of the week.

We had a "Christmas morning" while Nana and Papa were here.  You weren't much interested in the cinnamon roll pancakes or special breakfast, but you absolutely love the dinosaur set they got you!

2 1/2 years

• You've gone through another little growth spurt, and are wearing mostly 12-18M clothes now!  Yay!
• You're finally tall enough to open doors, so we have to always keep them locked so that you don't escape outside without us realizing.
• The binky is gone!  At the beginning of October, I cut a hole in your binky because you had chewed some cracks into it and I was afraid you'd suck a piece into your mouth while you were sleeping.  You were not very happy about it!  The first few days were rough, but then you seemed content to just hold the binky.  Then we accidentally left the binky at Grammy's after a couple weeks, and after a few days of telling you it was at Grammy's house, you stopped asking for it.  After all of October went by without a binky in your mouth, I swore we'd never go back!
• You now use the words "me" and "I" frequently, which means that you hardly refer to yourself in the third person anymore (although when you do, you still pronounce it "nennett") 
• You speak in long sentences now, although of course they're not perfect, and I still do plenty of translating for people. Even Daddy sometimes.  But it's very rare now that I don't understand what you're saying, so that cuts down on a lot of frustration!
• You like to play pretend here and there, especially pretending to tuck us in for a nap or you are going to work.
• You "get" counting.  You understand that it means we're numbering a group of things.  You don't count perfectly but will count on your fingers or any group of things in front of you.
• You have discovered the joy of snuggling with a soft, warm puppy.  You still chase them plenty, but you also hug and cuddle them plenty too.
• You sleep in a toddler bed now.  Grammy and Grandpa King got you a toddler mattress for Christmas, so we set up your race car bed.  I left the crib up for a few days too in case the toddler bed was a flop, but it was a remarkably easy transition.  Especially compared to the disaster that it was when we tried to transition you at the end of summer.  Guess you were just ready!
• You are going to be a big brother!  While I know you don't quite understand what that means, you do understand that there's a baby in my tummy and will tell that to anyone who asks.
• We are moving!  We decided that you and the pups needed room to run and play, so we bought a house with a small, fenced backyard and will move in a month.  It's 20 minutes north so that will shorten Daddy's commute a little so we can have more time with him.

Random Photos from November

I didn't take a lot of pictures this month.  It just flew by.  Sorry buddy :(

 

I came downstairs to find you had stickered all the couch cushions.

I tried to get you interested in Wii Mario Kart.  I thought it was a brilliant idea.  You were interested for about 5 minutes then you were done.

Your first "fort!" You pulled all this stuff out of your room cupboard and set up camp.

We've been very casually potty training.  You're really good about going #1 on the potty but had never done anything more.  I kept telling you that you would get a sucker when you did.  One night right before bed you did (on accident, really) and so I had to give you your promised sucker.  You refused to let go of it during our whole bedtime routine.

Lining your cars up got kind of out of control this day!

This is a little turkey craft I tried to have you make for Thanksgiving.  I did it with my nursery class and it went well so I tried to do it with you, but you absolutely hated sitting still and putting it together.  However, once it was done you carried it around everywhere for the next 3 days!

We have a couple nativities within your reach.  I figure we'll leave them unless it becomes a problem.  The other day you were carrying this piece around saying "it's okay baby Jesus, Nennett got ya!"

You combined the pieces from our two nativities and without any prompting faced everyone in to look at the baby Jesus.  Pretty good grasp on things :)

Making silly faces for the camera

Halloween Costume 2013 - The Man in the Yellow Hat

You love Curious George so for Halloween I made this costume for you!  You fought me (like usual) the whole time I was dressing you, but then was surprised and delighted when I made you look in the mirror and you realized you were, "Yellow Hat!"

 

You were also very surprised to see your friends in costume.  Lydia was a monkey (convenient) and Ellie was Kevin from the movie Up. 

 

The Harris family came down for Halloween like tradition dictates, and Pete and Daddy decided to take you and Lydia trick-or-treating for the first time.  I had practiced with you that afternoon and you had a decent grasp of saying "trick or treat" when you knocked and then "thank you" when you got candy.  Except all that practicing got lost a few doors down somewhere in all the excitement once you realized people literally were just handing out candy, and Daddy said that you just would grin and giggle when people would open the door.  After they took you kids down our street you all came back home for dinner and snacks and tv. You were a crazy person on Halloween night!! All hopped up on stolen candy and adrenaline.  Your favorite part of the whole day though was helping to pass out the candy once you came back home!  Except that you didn't really get it - I would open the door and you would say "trick or treat!" before they had a chance to say anything, and then start putting candy in their basket.  One of your favorite parts was when a family dressed as the Incredibles came by.  You are currently obsessed with that movie and you kept following their baby around saying "hi Jack-Jack! hi Jack-Jack!" (That's what you call the movie, too)

 

You were absolutely ruined for the next week.  You kept climbing onto counters and looking in the pantry saying "Halloween treat?"  Just a sugar addict like your mama I guess.

 

Halloween Activities

I let you paint a pumpkin. . .you had a lot more fun painting yourself.

You decorated sugar cookies for the first time with Ellie!  I frosted these but you put the sprinkles on all by yourself!

We went to Kav and Joey's for a Halloween party.  Look at this amazing Halloween feast!

These were the Minion pumpkins that I painted for our porch on Halloween.

October - Owie on the Toes

For as active of a little monkey that you are, you don't get hurt much.  A rare bump on the head or bruise, and I think we've only had to use bandaids once or twice.  So when you hurt your toes, we were both a little rattled!

 

I had let you go outside to play with Ellie for a minute while I finished making dinner.  When I went out to get you, you were riding up and down the sidewalk on her tricyle.  You propel yourself by pushing off of your big toes.  You weren't wearing shoes because you literally were only outside for about two minutes.  I was horrified to see big red splotches on both big toes.  Not only had you worn holes through both socks, but had scrubbed the skin off of your toes!  There was a little blood drop trail on the sidewalk behind you.  Not only that, but you hadn't even noticed because you were too distracted giggling and following Ellie up the sidewalk!  It took a couple minutes but finally I was able to convince you to look at your toes so that you could understand why I was saying we needed to go inside to get bandaids. 

 

 As we were walking up the stairs the adrenaline wore off and you started to freak out.  I took you up to the bathroom and set you in the sink to clean you up before you could bleed all over everything. You were whimpering and generally just soaking in all the sympathy you could, but a pink Starburst seemed to smooth things over okay. 

I bandaged you up as best as I could but you spent the next two days trotting around on your heels so that you didn't have to put pressure on your toes.  I'm not sure if it was because they hurt or just because you were aware of them.  You made sure to show everyone your bandaids the next day.

October - Random Pictures

Just chillin' and watching a movie.

Playing at Rachel's house

Snuggling the puppies and watching cartoons

I was cleaning upstairs when you came and showed me that you had white powder all over your mouth.  Fearing that you had ingested something dangerous, I ran downstairs to find the source.  Thankfully, all that had happened was that you pulled your formula canister off the counter and spilled it everywhere.  Not great, but certainly the safest white powder in our house!

This butter is clearly screaming "Bennett was here"

Look at those gorgeous baby curls at the base of your neck!  They show up whenever your head is a little damp, like after baths and naps.

Mommy was obsessed with the Waffle Love truck this summer!  Yummy!  Here I am trying to pass my passion onto you.

Cold fall morning.  The large lump by your feet would be the puppies snuggled up inside the blanket cave.

You opened up my blush and dumped it ALLLLLL over yourself.  It looked like you had a black eye and dyed hair.  Of course this happened the morning of family pictures!  Oh well, I was just glad that you did this before your bath and not after.