New Shades, Yard Sale, Reading Lots of Books, and Chasing Tomatoes

I found these cute little sunglasses for Lew at Target the other day. I didn't think he would wear them for long and/or figured he would totally break them, so I bought two pairs (they were in the $1 section). He kept them on for quite awhile and carefully folded them up when he was done. Totally surprised me! Of course trying to get him to stand still for a picture was a total fail--he doesn't stand still. :)

We had our first-ever yard sale yesterday, which was mediocre. We made a whopping $86.75. Not quite enough to buy a fabulous new couch, but better than nothing, I suppose. I spent most of a day going through all of our closets and storage bins, pulling out items to part with. Then we spent a few evenings pricing and organizing things and about 30 minutes setting up and 45 minutes shutting down. I'm not sure that it was worth it--it totally wasn't--but at least it was a beautiful day.

I did have time to weed the front flower beds, so there's that. :) And, most importantly, we took two carloads of leftovers to Goodwill and only brought a few items back into the house. I'm feeling good about clutter in the house and am feeling semi-organized at the moment.

Reading just a few books with Dada this afternoon:

Just one more!

Lately, he's started going over and grabbing ALL of his favorite books for us to read. He usually doesn't let us read cover-to-cover--we just have to skim the highlights as he flips through them. Unless it's a truck book--then he'll point and 'dah!' at his favorite trucks over and over.

We had a little bit of time to kill before bedtime tonight after our walk, and Lewis was all about his new favorite toy in the backyard--tomatoes. He'll go pick one off of our ridiculously large cherry tomato plant, and he'll throw it (and laugh) and chase it down and throw it again.

I've got my eye on you, little tomato! You're mine!

Where is it?

He had trouble spotting it from that far away.

Got it!

Got it again!

I see you, Mama!

This is the ridiculous tomato plant. (Sharon, I meant to give you some this weekend!) It's been spilling over the side nearest where it's planted, and since I've taken other plants out, it has started spreading the length of the raised bed, too. It's crazy.

18 Months Old

Lewis is 1 1/2 years old today which suddenly sounds really old to me!

18 Months

His doctor's appointment went well--he had to get three injections and screamed more than ever while he was getting them, but was fine again once it was over. He got some sweet hot pink band-aids and an Elmo sticker out of the deal. :) We don't go back in for a check-up now until 2 years.

Update: He's hobbling around a bit this afternoon from his tetanus shot and looking at me like, 'Ma, what is wrong with my leg?' Poor buddy. :)

His stats (from the doctor's office):
Height: 35 1/4 inches (100th percentile)
Weight: 29 pounds 13.5 ounces (98th percentile)
Head Size: 19 1/2 inches (93rd percentile)

What he's doing this month:

• Is still interested in/getting better at putting things into things. He likes to unload all of the tools from his tool bag and then put them all back. He likes to help put leftover food away into its containers (though he also sometimes puts in in the container and then pulls it back out and into his mouth). Toys back into their storage bins (sometimes, when we directly ask him to). Books back on the bookshelf (and he gets really frustrated if he can't get the book back into the empty spot).
• His love/obsession of all things motorized continues. He has a couple of books of trucks that he loves to flip through, and he still points out big/loud trucks when we're out and about.
• He is getting better at eating with a fork (when we remember to give him one). He's sort of gotten the hang of stabbing the food and bringing it to his mouth, but he usually just pulls the food off of the fork and eats it with his hands instead.
• Mealtimes are messy times. Eating itself is pretty clean, but once he decides he's done or once the dogs start swooping in for leftovers, he can clear his tray with the slightest flick of a wrist and bits of food are flying everywhere. He also loves to hand feed leftovers to Peter (Hattie probably would be trying for them, too, if she were taller). Peter's mouth is at just the right height for easy access.
• He still loves shoes. He loves to bring us ours (usually when we don't need them), and he'll go find his when we ask him where they are.
• He really seems to be picking up on our reactions this month (and then acting/reacting, accordingly). The biggest example I can think of is when he climbs up on the entertainment center behind the TV and shakes the TV and laughs--as I get up to get him (totally pissed off but trying-and obviously failing-to appear calm), he just laughs like a crazy man. (I have tried just calmly asking him to get down, but he ignores me/shakes the TV even harder.) That is usually my cue for no more The Today Show and that it's time to get going for the day. I have my eye out at Goodwill for a taller entertainment center. He's either going to fall off (bad for him), push the TV off (bad for the TV), or a combination of both (bad for us all).
• His language skills seem to be forming a little more each day. He'll look at us and rattle off some jibberish, to which we nod and agree. His most clear word is 'Uh oh!' He also definitely has a 'Dah' for 'dog' that is different from his 'DAH!' for most any/everything else. He points and 'DAH!'s to everything (in books, outside, in the house) and we tell him the name of everything he points to--I guess he's storing up that knowledge and will one day unleash his mad vocab skills on us. He still does 'Na-na-na' for 'no.' His favorite sound to repeat lately is 'Blah'...after Kevin puts him down for bedtime, he'll lay in his crib and just say 'blah-blah-blah-blah' with pauses in between. Other than that, he doesn't say much else.
• He HAS started answering us! We've been asking him questions for awhile now as we go about the day (from something I read about in What to Expect the Toddler Years, I think), and now he'll sometimes say 'Yea!' or something that sounds like that if it's something he really wants to do. It's pretty great to be able to communicate with him clearly, even in those fleeting instances. I know it will only grow.
• He loves books. He will point to pictures and say 'Dah!' and we say what it is that he's pointing to. He'll also read to himself--it goes a little something like 'Dah! Dah! Dah! Dah!' He loves to coax Kevin into reading more and more books at bedtime (they usually just skip through and hit the high points).
• He has started going to the refrigerator and grabbing at the doors first thing in the morning, wanting his milk.
• On that note, he started turning his sippy cup upside down, depressing the soft spout just enough to let milk out. Just enough to make a puddle on his high chair tray and then splash milk everywhere with both hands. :) On the walls, the floor, our dining room table. Kate suggested it was time to move onto a different style of cup, and Lewis just happened to start drinking from a straw while he was at my parents' house a few weeks ago, so the timing worked out perfectly. We switched to cups with straws that flip up and down which are going well as far as milk messes are concerned. However, he can flip the straw down and can't open it back up on his own, so we play a lot of 'Where's the straw?' until sometimes he gets frustrated when he can't take a drink.
• Current Tooth Count: 16

Meatballs and Whiffleballs

A few videos from last week:

First, Lewis tried spaghetti and meatballs for the first time this week and seemed to love it! As did the dogs. :)

Still working on the concept of sharing

Knocking it out of the park!

He was going crazy, hitting it over and over and over again. And again. :)

The Urban Stampede

This morning, Kevin and I took part in The Urban Stampede here in town! It was super fun (and I totally felt like I was on The Amazing Race), but it was a LOT more intense than we were expecting! I could have sworn I read we'd be walking/jogging 2 1/2 to 3 miles (of the 10 total) and taking public transportation the rest of the way, but I bet we walked around 8 miles. It was rough towards the end (and I'm totally wiped out now), but we still had a very fun time. (And thanks to Sharon and Scott for babysitting Lewis--it sounds like they had a very fun time at the zoo).

Bring it, Stampede!

 Bopper and Mark, from last season's The Amazing Race!

 They were very cool guys--we talked smack with them about Kentucky/Louisville/Indiana basketball. They were racing at 1pm (we left at 11am), so they were just mingling and handing out autographed pictures. Kevin's autographed pic says 'Go Big Blue' (he's the big Louisville fan, whose color is RED).

We also saw Mary of David and Mary (from Kentucky, also from The Amazing Race)--they were responsible for helping organize the race and gather their reality show friends to come. The list of who was supposed to be there was pretty long, but they might have been participating in the race or might be at the concert this evening--we didn't see hardly any. You could pay like $100 more to race with a reality star, but we obviously didn't go that route. :) We did see Chris Daughtery (from Survivor: Vanuatu, not the American Idol guy)--he actually won his season! The one with Twila? Anyone remember that? I had to Google him. I exchanged 'hi's with him.

The challenges were fun--there were 10 stops: sketch a picture blindly based on a verbal description by our teammate at Union Station, walk together on 2x4s with rope loops around a circle at Churchill Downs, let down a rope from the 2nd floor at 4th Street Live down to the 1st floor to get our next clue, hammer 10 nails straight into a small marked off area at Slugger Field, build a house of cards with really lightweight wood (on a windy day) as tall as a Louisville Slugger bat at Louisville Extreme Park, fill a large bucket with water by using only a little bucket that had holes in it at a fountain, spin a hula hoop on an arm for 3 minutes each (so 6 minutes total) without dropping it at Joe's Crab Shack, assemble a (really hard at first until the little kid volunteers told us the one we'd chosen was the most difficult of all) puzzle under the 2nd Street Bridge, roll a tire using 2 pieces of PVC pipe at the Belvedere, and a final memory puzzle at the Belvedere.

So we were all over the city--the only bus we took was from 4th and Broadway out to Churchill Downs for one task and then back. The rest was all walking! Making it worse for my feet, I had to do the bucket of water challenge and my shoes and socks got soaked with another hour to go. Oh well--it was really fun!

 Kevin hammering nails

Our first beautiful house of cards (taller than a baseball bat)

Kevin nailed it on the first try, but the whole thing blew over before the judge could come over to check it. It took us about 10 minutes to build another successful one--very frustrating, but fun.

They also had Photo Ops which were pictures we had to take at designated landmarks along the way on each leg in order to be admitted to each challenge--the pictures get progressively worse, and Kevin's facial expressions get funnier, the more pooped we were feeling. 

 With King Louis XVI

 On a TARC bus

 Tebowing in front of The Louisville Palace (theater)

 With the White Castle sign (feeling and looking rough)

 With Pee Wee Reese

 With a chicken sculpture

 In front of the bike rental shop

 In front of Joe's Crab Shack

And with the Belle of Louisville--almost done!!

(We also ended up taking a lot of self portraits as the teams got spaced out towards the end.)

Super fun day--I think I'll look into doing more adventure races. Maybe more like a 5k instead of a 10 miler, though. :)

Pool, Dogs, Cart, and Park

A few pictures from our week. First, he was back in the pool one day, fully clothed:

 

:) 

We went back out to Henry's Ark one day this week--it was way more crowded than in times past and way hot, so we just did a quick once-through the animals and handed out our bag of carrots. This sweet lady/fella was new to us:

 Miss Piggy

I walked in our room the other day to find the dogs laying like this, tail to tail. Made me smile.

 It is not quite as funny when Peter stretches out like that while Kevin and I are trying to sleep.

 And then up went Wild Man Lew (and his new favorite toy, a hanger) to disrupt their peace.

Later, playing in the basement:

 I still fit!

(under the coffee table)

 Probably not for much longer

He bumped his head quite a bit while maneuvering around.

 Going shopping!

I found this cart at Goodwill a few weeks ago and couldn't resist. It's the perfect height, and he really seems to like loading it up and pushing things around in it.

 Carrying important things, like his new monster truck from Grandma DeeDee

And going for a ride himself! :) Haha.

Kevin called me down to the basement last night to see this--Lew apparently had wanted to get in the basket and Kevin obliged. It was a bit of a tight fit for the big boy. :)

Yesterday we headed out to the playground--we haven't been in a while, I think because it was pretty crowded the last time we went. Yesterday we had the whole place to ourselves for the most part.

 See ya, Mama. People to see, things to do, places to go.

 Vroom Vroom!

 A little bit stuck

It was funny--the little kid play area seemed to be a little bit smaller yesterday for Lewis. It's still the 'right' size for him, but there were definitely moments of remembering how small he used to be when we first started going there (and how big it all seemed then).

 Total amazement

He kept wandering over to watch this boy digging in the sand. He'd go and stand and watch for a few minutes, then move on. Another time, he took off running excitedly from the playground up to the swings, and he tripped over that short wall and went face-first into the sand. I saw it coming in total slow motion but couldn't make it stop--he cried for a minute and had quite a lot of sand on his face and clothes, but he brushed it off and went back to watching the big kids.

And, finally, I found him a toddler-sized UL hat yesterday:

 Go Cards! We're #1!

And, go Hoosiers. I still need to find an Indiana hat.

(Especially since they are the preseason #1 in basketball, above UL and UK. Represent.)

We'll pretend he's cheering for football.

It appears as though the worst of the 3+ week teething episode is behind us. We are no longer doing Advil and Orajel for naps and nighttime, and he's been sleeping fine and without mouth pain the past few days. The 4th and final of the 4 teeth still hasn't come through the gum, but his gums are very red and it seems like it will be any day now. So now we just have the 2 year molars remaining in the near future. Can I get a hallelujah?

Hiking, Hanging with the Dogs, Staying Cool, and Go Team USA!

Lew's new favorite thing this week is to climb up on our bed or the guest bed--he runs over to the edge and says Eh-Eh-Eh for us to pick him up. We've started going '1-2-3' and make him fly up onto it, which he seems to love. Usually Hattie is on our bed, so she doesn't necessarily love having him on her level, but she tolerates it most of the time.

 Best buds

We finally made it out to a nature preserve I've been wanting to check out this week, even though it was 95 and nasty by noon. They had a nice nature center with a bird blind and lots of native animal taxidermy. They had cute nature crafts to do, too, but Lewis was more interested in chasing the volunteer naturalist's boy around.

We took a short hike--Lewis did really well! I didn't bring the stroller, so I ended up carrying him a few times (did I mention how hot and sweaty it was?). I definitely would like to go back (with a stroller) with Kevin and maybe the dogs. There were nice, secluded, shaded trails with actual wildlife. They have a frog pond which was full of life with dragonflies, two wood ducks, a turtle, and a few bullfrogs (I heard, but did not see them).

 

 Trekking ahead

 My sweet little hiking buddy

Later that day, it was back on the bed for Lew and Hattie:

 

 Lewis was blowing raspberries at Hattie Boo

 Peter Dink yawned

 There's my handsome boy.

We played more outside in the heat:

 Spray me, Mama!

 Yesssss!

 Again, please?

Oh, and lest we forget the Olympics are going on!

 USA!!

So fly.