Since I'm stealing the "Name That Photo" contest concept from the beloved MckMama, that quote is so true! This pic made me giggle so much but I couldn't decide on a title, so I'm putting out the request to my readers...
Give this photo a title or caption. I'll pick my favorite(s) in a few days. This contest has no prize right now, cuz, well...I'm poor. But pride can be your reward! How about that? Who knows...maybe I'll come up with a small prize for the winner.
I had a couple ideas of what it looks like she could be thinking, but I'm curious what you all think! So have at it! Just click on the comment link below to submit your ideas.
They definitely don't look exactly alike, but they do make the same faces a lot. When I came across this picture of McKenna while sorting pictures, I knew it looked familiar. And sure enough, it didn't take me very long to find Austin making the identical face!
Austin is only about 2 months old in his picture and McKenna is 3 months in her's.
As I mentioned in a previous post, a while ago now, we started weekly playdates/outings with the other kids at church. Our first outing was to the LA Zoo. We had a great time! I love seeing how much more Austin notices each time we go. And since he's learning about more and more animals at home each month, it's pretty darn fun to see him make the connections between the pics he's seen and the real deal.
(Disclosure...Rebecca and I just recently discovered how to make "storyboards" easily and are slightly addicted. Although, I really feel like it's a win-win...I get to post a ton of pics, cuz you know I was going to post them anyway, and you don't have to scroll down as much when reading my posts. )
Austin looking ready for an adventure in his new safari hat. He actually kept it on, which was a first since he learned how to use his arms at like 5 months!
Some of Austin's little buddies. He is starting to remember them more and other than occasional bouts of shyness, he has a lot of fun playing with them.
By far the favorite animal of the day was the tiger. He was in rare form - roaring and growling loud the whole time. We stopped by a couple times and Austin did not want to leave. (read...he threw a bit of a tantrum when it was time to go! Fun times!) He was just mesmerized! The tiger also started to play with a big ball, which Austin loved! When the tiger stopped, Austin started signing "more" over and over. I tried to explain that the tiger does not understand sign language, but I don't think Austin got that.
Anytime Austin sees these pics on my computer he insists on seeing the "Ahhh" video. Over and over and over! And even over a month later, if you ask him what he likes at the zoo, he says "Ahhh!"
Wrangling some animals (statues) at the kids' park
I can't not post pics of more of the animals. It's just a thing with me and zoos. I know the giraffes never change and I also know that I'm not going to get an award winning photograph of one at the zoo, but I still gotta take them! I'm doing better though - I used to mostly just take pics of the animals and not the people looking at them. And who we were with is more important to me now, than what we saw. Still need the animals though.
And one more of my sweet boy cuz I just love the look on his face.
Construction complete! Took me long enough! Turns out I'm both incredibly picky & indecisive when it comes to making my blog background. It also didn't help that I had to learn some new html to get the new layout to be exactly what I wanted. But I'm happy with it now? What do you think? Does it look right in everyone's browsers? I was having some issues with Internet Explorer, so if anything looks weird, please let me know. Old posts won't all look right. I have to go back and "fix" each of those individually. But since I'd rather be blogging about current adventures, I'll put that off until a day when I'm all caught up. Not sure that will ever happen, but I can dream, right?!
Seeing as my header was so old, if you looked really really carefully, you could see little cobwebs on the pixels, not to mention I now have an additional kiddo that was not being represented at all, I decided it's time to redesign the blog. This is just a temporary step while I figure out what I want to do. Surprisingly Blogger has just recently offered some new and exciting options with their formats, that I'm kinda digging. So the end result may or may not be like it is right now. Haven't really thought it out thoroughly.
I promise I will get back to posting shortly. My main change was to make my post width larger, so that my pictures can be bigger, so you can see my cute kiddos more clearly! And I decided where I'm at post-wise would be a good place to transition. In the meantime, bear with me!
Riddle: What do you get when you take an almost 2 year old who's going on 15 and cut his naps down to a third or fourth of what they should be for 7 solid weeks?? Oh and throw in a new sibling into the mix, just for giggles.
You get this...
and this...
and a little of this...
I would say those pics best describe Austin this month!
This has been a pretty rough month! This phase has been a test of my patience and parenting skills. And scarily we aren't even fully into the terrible twos! Yikes! We're dealing with the same nap issues and scowling skills that we had last month. I wanna say that we had slightly better naps but that the scowling and tantrums have been worse. Brian declared the other day that tantrums are his least favorite part of parenting so far. (I'm not sure he fully remembers the exploding poop days though) Austin has been so tired that he'll cry and yell at the drop of a hat at least once a day. And sometimes he's just impossible to make happy. For example, he likes to play with Brian's ID badge. We took it away cuz he was chewing on it. He threw a fit. Brian told him he could have it as long as he didn't chew on it. He threw a fit when Brian tried to give it to him. So Brian tried to put it back on his belt and Austin threw even more of a fit. Basically, he didn't want it anymore but he didn't want Brian to have it either! So disagreeable! Thankfully I know this is on the mend. At least nap-wise. We've had longer and longer naps each week. It hasn't completely erased the teenager-style attitude, but it has been better.
As bad as the attitude can be, it can't snuff out the happy kid completely! He gives the best hugs and will often come up and hug my leg for no apparent reason. If I'm snoozing on the couch while he plays (due to him getting up at the crack of dawn) he'll come over and wake me up just to give me a kiss.
And he LOVES to wake Brian up in the morning. It's the funniest thing. McKenna has been eating just about the time Austin could potentially wake up, so I leave their door and gate open while I feed her. So if he does wake up, he can just come out of his room by himself. I try to get him to come into the front room and not wake up Brian but he usually dashes in there instead. He quietly stands by Brian's head, just staring at him, or giggling quietly until Brian senses his presence and wakes up. Scared the bejeezus out of Brian the first few times he opened his eyes to a little face close up and personal! I'm pretty sure Brian does not enjoy it as much as Austin does, but it is pretty funny!
His signing is almost all gone and I'm kinda sad to see it go! Just a little "more" here and there and "please" & "thank you" when you ask him too. He says "more" now rather than signing it most times. It's so fun to hear his little voice. My favorite phrase of the month is "Here it is!" It's pretty clear too. He says that anytime he finds something you ask him to on a book page or that he's been looking for in the room. He's also picked up "Uh-Oh" this month, which is funny to me, because that usually is a phrase they learn much much earlier.
Austin got some new puzzles from his cousin and he's loving life. 2 of them are already too easy for him and it's been just a week and a half. One is a new kind - not a jigsaw but a pieced puzzle nonetheless. His previous puzzles have one "hole" per piece. He was confused for about a day and now he can do it in about 45 seconds. One of the other puzzles had a piece missing and I can't tell you how badly that bugged him! Every time, at the beginning of doing the puzzle and at the end, he'd point out the missing piece and say something. What he said, I'll have no idea, but it sounded very serious! Grandma Judy fixed it for him this weekend by sawing out a new piece out of wood! Now he points out the different piece. We can't win! lol
Oh and he claps for himself still when he's done with the puzzle. He knows without a doubt that he is doing something tricky and should be very proud of himself!
Austin has 14 teeth and 2 more that are close. He finally cut the left canines, top & bottom. That's when naps started to improve!
Austin loves trains! Brian jokingly calls it "an unhealthy obsession"! I don't know if I'd go that far, (He's not as obsessed as Jack!) but he is smitten! And I'm just as smitten with his "Choo Choo!" He points them out everywhere. He also points out trucks & motorcycles with great excitement, so really he just likes machines!
When I talk to him about his senses, I point to the body part that he's using. So if we smell something, I point out that he's smelling with his nose. When we hear something, I ask him what he's hearing with his ears. So now, when he hears something interesting, he points to his ears to ask what it is.
He is enjoying McKenna more and more. Now that she plays with toys he can get down and bat her toys around with her Although, mostly he does just get upset that she has something he thinks is his. But he'll come over to her on the couch and pat her belly and talk to her and gives her kisses and fist bumps. He even held her on the couch. I got some great pics of them that I will hopefully post sometime this year soon.
We are seeing marked improvement on his coming, staying and stopping skills. They still SUCK when he's tired or cranky, but in general they are better. At the last few playdates at parks he has done really really good. I have a large hook on my stroller for carrying bags and we've turned it into his handle. So when I want him to stay near the stroller, he's supposed to hold the handle and he does! Can you tell I'm shocked?!
Lastly, we started the path towards potty training. I don't think he is anywhere near being ready to really give it a go, and probably won't be until he's a little more verbal (and actually has a personality of wanting to please rather than do the exact opposite of what you want because it's funny) but I wanted to at least get him to realize there are other options than the diaper. He hardly ever is in the bathroom outside of bath time, so I wasn't sure he knew that Daddy & I use the big toilet. So I got him his own and ask him occasionally if he would like to sit on it. When I first got it he was stoked and wanted to sit on it, but hasn't wanted to since. He also wanted to put his hand in it and take it apart. Thankfully it was still clean! I'm trying to comment when I notice he's pooping. He can correctly tell me yes or no when I ask if he has pooped, so I feel like that's a step in the right direction.
But so I don't leave you with only cranky pics of my sweet boy, here's my favorite for the month!
Austin gets bored these days waiting for me to take care of McKenna. It's not so bad now, but when she was newborn she would take up to an hour to eat. And then there were all the dirty diapers to be changed. And then she had to be rocked to sleep. And then Austin and I would get to play together for maybe about an hour before we had to repeat it all again. During that stage, he developed an interesting way of asking to go out and play that clearly expressed his frustration and boredom! He would just start hollering "Go, go, go, gooooooooo!" This is so frequently heard at our house (sometimes he wakes up and starts at it, so I know it's not just a boredom thing, he just likes to GO!) that I had to document it.
The first clip is more how he usually says it. The 2nd and 3rd he was a little silly but you can see the passion with which he wants to Goooooooo! Plus the weird face he makes in the 2nd clip just kills me, so I had to include it too.
Funnily enough, at the time I had no idea what he was saying at the end of the 3rd clip. I thought he was just being silly. It wasn't until I started watching it so I could post it did I figure out what that was. He's quacking. Yes, those are quacks! He wanted to go see the ducks. Not sure if we actually saw ducks that day, but I hope we did! He was doing a good job of telling me what he wanted, I just need to learn Austin-speak a little better, I guess!
Gosh, I love this kid! He cracks me up. Never a dull moment, I promise!
