Mr. Independent

Lewis has really starting doing things on his own these past few weeks. He puts things back in their proper place, he wants to help with things (and then tries doing them on his own), and the other day, we had this happen:

 New Toothbrush + Wanted it Opened = Go to junk drawer and get big, scary, adult scissors and try to open it, duh!

Have no fear, he didn't play with the scissors for long. Thankfully he doesn't know how to actually open them to cut anything (yet). :)

 He tried, though.

After telling him we weren't opening it because it wasn't time for a new toothbrush, he resorted to his mama's way of opening things:

With the teeth, of course. :)

I then took it away and hid it way up in his closet before he could eat through the cardboard (oooooh, he does that on other cardboard things). And I put the scissors back (in the far back of the drawer).

He also helped me change the batteries on one of his cars this morning, and I explained to him how a screwdriver works. He held it and tried to put screwdriver to screw, but he doesn't get the twisting/turning motion just yet (he's just learning how to open 'normal' door knobs, so he does sort of get it on a bigger scale, I guess).

I also fill the 'clean clothes' laundry basket with things that need to go down to the basement (whenever the laundry basket gets taken back downstairs)--I have a random 'baby spoon' (vs. toddler spoon) that we no longer use and a gift I got for Gordon Smith (that Lewis also has one of). I think he has 'helped' me put them away 4 times in the past 2 days, and I keep having to put them back in the laundry basket. He puts Gordon's gift in 'his' basket in the kitchen and he puts the spoon back in 'his' spot of the silverware drawer. It cracks me up. He is a smart little booger. [And yes, I realize in the time it took me to write that out, I could have just taken the whole basket down to the basement.] :) I usually wait until I'm doing laundry or until the basket is full.

And finally, I'm not sure who is cuter in his winter-y hat, Lewis Pete or the bear on his shirt.

 Sweet Pete

Easy Like Sunday Morning

After Kevin worked Saturday morning, it was nice to have him home all of Sunday. We slept in a little, Kevin made waffles, and we all lazed around most of the day. Kevin spent most of the day with Lewis, and I got a few things done for the play kitchen. As I was getting ready for bed last night, I realized I'd never changed out of my pajamas--oops! I guess days like that are fine every once in a while.

Lewis had some major reading time to catch up on with Dada:

 

 Lewis reading to Kevin

 Driving his monster truck on the monster truck page

 

 And his tractor on the tractor page, which is a little harder to maneuver :)

We went Target-ing Saturday afternoon and found these Lightning McQueen hat/mittens on clearance:

 They headed over to the playground at the school across the street, and Kev said Lewis kept the hat and mittens on the whole time! I was surprised--I figured he'd rip them off as soon as he walked out the door.

And, finally, toot toot!!!

Thomas :)

I found this costume at Goodwill today--he was SO excited to wear it around. I finally took it off so I could wash it, and I found one of his trucks and 3 Cheerios in the little pouch in the front. He is so funny! I also found a car costume (not Cars, just a car) at Target after Halloween, so now he has a car and a train to dress up as if he wants.

Thomas in the Crate, Lewis on the Table, New Books from The Smiths, a Hot Dog, and Wheel-a-palooza

Also known as the longest title by me, ever. I have a few pictures from a lot of events from the past week, so I'm just grouping them all together instead of posting them in a logical order. Apologies. I guess I could just call it 'Funny Things Lewis Did This Week.'

First, I encountered Peter in the hall with his ears back, slightly scurrying from our room. I went in to find this:

 Thomas needs a timeout, apparently

 Oh, nope. Going to try to ride him in the crate, which didn't end well. Thomas tipped to the side and pinned Lewis against the back corner of the crate. Good times!

 Lew still didn't get out right away, even after being pinned.

Next, it was onto our makeshift dining table for a snack:

  

 At least the fall isn't as far...

While visiting Ben, Adie, and Gordon, they gave Lewis some presents for his birthday. I gave them to him early because I knew he would love them:

 Books on Lightning, Mater, Doc, and Sally

 Sally!

 This is his 'Read to Me' face...he's on the move to my lap here.

Thanks again, guys! He loves them.

I was sitting on the couch this morning reading a magazine while Lewis was playing. He took interest in an article about clever toys/kid stuff--there was a picture of a wiener dog-shaped hot dog slicer that we just happen to have (I got it for Lew's Christmas stocking even though he doesn't like/doesn't eat hot dogs just yet). I said, 'Hey, you have one of those? Can you go find it?' I heard him go into the kitchen and rustle around in the basket where it is stored, but he came back a few minutes later without it. I figured he couldn't find both pieces or got distracted. Later, I walked in the kitchen to find this on the floor:

 The dog-shaped hot dog slicer with a piece of DOG FOOD in the little dog bowl (meant for ketchup and/or mustard if you're using it for hot dog purposes)

My sweet little buddy. :) It just made me smile and laugh and marvel at how smart he is.

This morning Kevin had to go into work for a half day, so Lewis and I headed downtown to the library for a free children's event called Wheel-a-Palooza (which I had totally spaced and am so glad Tonya reminded me of!!). They had bicycles, a unicycle, a bicycle built for two, skateboards, motorcycles, a scooter, a Segway, an adult tricycle, handbikes (the ones that ride low to the ground and you pedal with your hands), antique bicycles (with the teeny tiny back tire and huge front tire), etc. It was really neat! Lewis loved looking at all of the different wheeled things.

He also did really well sitting (in his stroller) through a StageOne (children's theatre) performance of two books. My favorite part was storytime--there was one with a theme of 'Things That Go' that we tried out. I was honestly ready to leave after wrestling him through the first story, but he started fighting me less and LOVED the stories and songs (all about trucks and cars and the like). We made it through the whole storytime with my anxiety at a normal level and Lewis happy. Hooray! I was/am so proud of him. It makes me more optimistic/comfortable trying out the 'normal' storytime again--I might try out a few different library branches to find who does the best job with active toddler types. :) We'll see how it goes.

Playing on the car mat after storytime

They had these neat mats spread around the room, and of course Lewis just wanted to jump all over them. :)

So that is some of what we have been up to the past few weeks!

Mirror Fun

We are coming off of quite a busy week compared to normal! My parents stopped through for a night on their way home from New Orleans (they were on a cruise last week), we did a daytrip to IKEA with Tonya and Carlton, and I got to spend a day by myself (rarest of rares) in Bloomington with Ben, Adie, and precious Gordon. Kevin's parents were kind enough to watch Lewis for me all day (thank you so, so, so much, guys). :)

Here are some pictures from the few times Lew and I were hanging out at the house this week and last:

 Lewis peering out the window in his shorty pants

His lounging pants are all getting to be a bit short (I have more in the next size up--I just haven't dug them out yet). His latest favorite word is 'house' and he loves to point to the house next door and say 'house' while we are eating. He also likes to watch the dogs if they are outside. I just thought this moment was too cute.

On the same day, apparently, because he's wearing the same outfit, we had some fun with the mirror. It normally leans against the wall in our room--I still haven't attached it to the wall after 4+ years of living here... I heard it come crashing down, so I went in to set it up again (and make sure he was okay, of course). :) Then he immediately tried to drive his cars up it (again) and it started sliding to the ground (again).

Sooo, I laid it down flat on the ground:

 Brilliant!

Lewis, playing cars with his best friend, Lewis. :)

 Checking out his Cheerios car from Grandma and Grandpa Thompson

 Vroom Vroom

While I am certainly not the world's best housekeeper, I am going to blame at least 80% of those smudges on Lewis. :)

My sweet boy. :)

He played for a good half an hour on two different occasions.

Bye, Bye Table and Hello, Squirrels!

I mentioned last week that we needed to sell our table and get a normal-height one (so that Lewis didn't fall off and break his arm). Yesterday, I did it! Yesterday morning, I was feeling particularly motivated, so I scrubbed down all of the milk and food splatters (they were a-plenty...I scrubbed for 1 1/2 hours), took some pictures, wrote up an ad, and posted it on craigslist. Within an hour, I had a bite. Then another and another. The 4th bite, I think, was the high maintenance one. He asked for more pictures, so I took some more and updated the ad, emailed the new pics to my previous inquiries, and reposted the ad with the additional pictures. I got 3-4 more emails after reposting, too! It was such an exciting process, and I'm happy to say that the very first lady who contacted me was who ended up buying it. She came by last evening to see it and put down 50%--she'll come back with a truck and the balance sometime this weekend. Hooray!

I think I watched a Lifetime movie about someone who was murdered by someone she met on craigslist, so I've been a little apprehensive about posting anything on there. I'm so glad I did it, though! Emily and Joe had given me some tips because they've sold quite a few things on there, so I texted them to tell them a) I'd sold our table and b) I hadn't gotten murdered. :) I followed Young House Love's tutorial here and it worked fabulously for me. They even had a sample listing for a table and chairs they'd sold, so I borrowed quite a bit of phrasing from them.

Because of this, it looks like we'll be eating on the card table for the time being. I'm going up to IKEA one day, so I'll look there and see if anything catches my eye. I'll also keep an eye on craigslist and my usual thrift store/Goodwill stops. The previous owners of our house had a buffet/sideboard on one wall with a round table, and I think that's what I'm going to go towards. I'd love a place (other than the table) to put our laptop and Lewis' snacks, bibs, toothbrush, etc., and I think a sideboard would be nice for that (and would give us storage for tablecloths and such). 

Onto the squirrels...

Monday is (apparently) Squirrel Appreciation Day, so Creasey Mahan Nature Preserve near us had Flying Squirrel Day today to celebrate the occasion. They also dedicated a toddler play area which has been a work-in-progress since last spring when we first visited. When we got there this morning, Lewis went in the nature center and looked around at the exhibits, played with other kids, colored some squirrels, etc. Then they said it was time to get started and asked us to sit down (that will never happen) and listen to a presentation (that will never happen) and watch as they show us two actual live flying squirrels (that will never happen) and then sit through a six minute video about squirrels (that will never happen). Lewis was squirrely (hahaha--get it?) within the first 15 seconds of sitting down, so I tried to stand up and hold him. That lasted about two minutes, and then he was trying to escape from my arms. We snuck outside and decided to just take a hike instead. I'm sure the presentation was very nice, but there's no way we could have sat through all of that.

It was perfect hiking weather--in the 40s and sunny. It was pretty breezy out in the open fields, but it was nice in the woods. Here are our pictures:

 First, Lewis' breakfast.

We had just a little bit of OJ left, so I let him try it with a straw. He took some sips and then plopped in a few mandarin oranges from his bowl, followed by some cheerios. Yum-my!

Noooow, onto our hike:

 

Twins :)

 

Hello up there!

 

He went from walking pretty well independently to wanting to hold our hand to wanting to be carried. I think we walked about a mile, so he did pretty well! 

After our walk through the woods, we hit up the playground which is always a big hit: 

 

 

After we were done playing there (it was pretty breezy), we headed back to the car, across a few soccer fields and a baseball field. We put up Lew's hood for the walk back and giggled at how it made the sweatshirt look a bit too small on him. Must be that big noggin' of his, stretching it upwards. :) 

 Heehee.

:) Crop top!

So, Squirrel Day didn't quite go as planned, but we had a fun morning in the woods, getting some mud on our boots. :)

Lewis and Carlton do All About Kids

One day last week, we headed out to All About Kids for toddler playtime. It's a pretty cool place--there is a fenced-in area for toddlers/preschoolers, a large gymnastics area, a pool, karate studio, birthday party area, etc. We stayed in the fenced-in area--I learned later that we could have gone out to the gymnastics equipment and trampolines to try those out for an hour, but I wasn't sure if our admission covered it at the time. It was time to go by that time, anyway, but maybe next time we'll see how he does on the rings, bars, balance beam, floor exercise, etc. :)

We also weren't sure at first if parents were allowed to go in the play area. There was a group of 2-3 parents who were standing outside the fence when we got there (I told Kevin later that they were a little Real Housewives-ish...and their kids were a bit snotty. I found myself trying to reason with a 3-year-old at one point about why Lewis COULD play with the ball b/c so-and-so was playing with the car now and no longer cared about the ball). I was glad when their group went over to the gymnastics side and left us. The majority of the other kids/parents were very friendly. Anywho, we quickly realized we needed to be inside with the boys to help wrangle the madness.

Here are some pictures (most were blurry b/c they were running around most of the time...here are the least blurry ones):

 He immediately found a ball to carry around.

You can see some of the gymnastics equipment behind him.

Checking out one of the inflatables 

He wasn't sure about going in them at first--he spent the first half of time playing out in the open with the trucks, balls, slides, etc. Then the second half, he started going in the inflatables to fetch balls I'd throw in for him.

 Vroom Vroom Vroom!!

 Where Carlton spent most of his time!

He happily sat for a long time, watching the action around him.

 The car was kind of falling apart as they played with it--the yellow roof and, subsequently, the door kept falling off. Lew was very concerned about hanging the door back on properly.

 The clearest of the inflatable pictures I got...

 The balls he was carrying around

The hot pink and black one was the one that the little boy was trying to steal for the little girl (who had lost interest and moved on to the car). The girl was pretty sassy-she tried to push Lewis out of the car and take the ball out of his hand. Then she cried when Lewis was in the car (even after she had moved onto something else). I guess this sharing/not sharing thing is in our future, but shoooo!

The other car that was fought over.

I think Lewis and Carlton would have both been perfectly content to just have a selection of cars, trucks, motorcycles, tricycles, etc. to rotate through.

It was a fun day! There is another location that we might try out next time, just to see what it's like. 

23 Months Old

23 Months Old

His stats (from BabyCenter):
Height: 37 inches (above 95th percentile)
Weight: 33.5 pounds (above 95th percentile)
Head Size: 21 inches (above 95th percentile)

He lost 1.3 pounds since last month but gained an inch in height and .5 inch in head size. He was extra wiggly this morning, so height and head size could be off a bit.

What he's doing this month:

• Letting us read entire books to him. Well, one or two books, in particular. It's a start.
• He really likes a Thomas the Train book called A Crack in the Track. I think his favorite part of the book is when the bus (Bertie) arrives at a broken down Thomas to take the passengers on to the next station. We read it every time we sit down to read.
• Making the connection between items in his books and items around our house.
• If there is a picture of a baby in a book, he might go and point to the Huggies wipes packaging that has a baby on it. We were doing a puzzle of a construction site the other day and I asked him where certain types of trucks were on the puzzle (dump truck, roller, concrete mixer), and he would go over and find his toy version of that truck and lay it on the puzzle and drive it around the scene.
• His words are many now! My favorites are Haaht for Hattie and Boo-uh for Peter.
• He is also saying his s's and sh's and ch's. So Bus sounds likes bus instead of bah.
• He will try to repeat most anything we say to him. Sometimes it sounds very close--sometimes he can't quite get it out. Our favorite thing he repeats is Lewis Pete!
• After Kevin reads to him and puts him into bed at night, Lewis says Night and Bye-Bye (in the sweetest southern twang) when Kevin leaves the room.
• He is very much into his toys.
• He loves building things with his Mega Bloks. The past few times I've gone to pick him up at the Y, he has snubbed me (by pretending he didn't see me) and kept on building with his blocks. He loves them--we have a bunch here at home, too, and he's really started stacking them high.
• He's also still very much into puzzles.
• There is a Cars book that Grandma and Grandpa Thompson got him for Christmas, and he loves to push the buttons to play music and shake his booty to it. He bounces up and down and is so cute.
• He's getting more into coloring. We had one yellow crayon + couch incident and some scribbles on the tabletop, but otherwise he's doing a pretty good job of keeping crayon to paper.
• He really likes dunking outside on his basketball goal. We might have to look for an indoor version for the winter so he can continue working on his skills. :)
• He's really funny about putting trash (or occasionally non-trash) in the trash can and laundry in the laundry basket. He's become a very good helper, for the most part--I can ask him to go put something in his laundry basket (and he will) or ask him to go put something in the trash can (and he does).
• Gramma and Papaw Carter watched him for a few days this month and taught him to blow kisses and say tugga-tugga-tugga-tugga-...-TOOT-TOOT.
• He now walks up the stairs with ease. He still scoots down them on his butt, but sometimes he gets brave towards the bottom and walks down the last few by holding onto the wall.
• Slooowly becoming a more adventurous eater. 
• I realize it is my fault. I just haven't quite gotten into the swing of feeding him our normal meals. It's so much easier for me, logistically, to feed him 'his' food (mac and cheese, PBJ, etc.) in his high chair while I prepare dinner for Kevin and I. But then Kevin and I are trying to eat dinner with Lewis climbing onto the coffee table, and it's madness.
• Since the new year, I have started starting dinner with him still playing, and then I put him in his highchair to have some fruit while I finish up the main course. It has worked out the past few weeks that Kevin gets home right as dinner is ready, so all three of us have been able to sit down and eat together (what a concept!). He sometimes eats what I've made, and sometimes not (still PBJ or mac and cheese). This is definitely something I'm working on.
• And when he does have mac and cheese, it's Kraft's veggie mac and cheese (made with cauliflower pasta) with smooshed sweet potatoes and parsnips mixed in.
• Napping well and sleeping well overnight.
• Over Christmas, he had a few days of bad naps. 45 minutes in the car one day, no nap another, and 30 minutes in the car the third day. Even when we were here at the house, he was having trouble going down (too much fun to be had!). Now that we're back to our 'normal,' he has started napping better and sleeping better overnight (sleeping in a little later).
• Current Tooth Count: all 20!

Take a Seat, Lew (and Get Off the Table!)

A few weeks ago, I moved Lewis from his highchair to a booster seat at the table. The straps on the highchair had reached their limit (with his height), so I read what the next step was for the grows-with-him highchair. A booster seat, it is.

 First lunch in his new set-up

He's done fine with it so far, I guess. We have a pub-height table and chairs, so we're still using the strap between his legs and around his waist. We no longer have to wash the tray from the highchair, but we are dirtying a lot more of his plates and bowls (since we just put food right on the tray before). So less hand-washing and more dishwasher-running.

There is a new problem emerging, though:

 Mr. Twinkle Toes

Even when he shouldn't possibly be able to climb on the table, he is trying to climb on the table! He also uses the booster seat to climb onto the table more easily (to get snacks, his toothbrush, etc.) and just climbs, in general. We talked about it, and I think we are going to try to sell the table we have and get a normal-height one instead.

 Even though he is a climbing fool, we still love him. :)

And these may not look like much now, but between now and Lew's birthday, they'll be turning into a play kitchen!

More pictures once they're finished!

Sink and Stove/Oven on the left, Refrigerator on the right