Shoe Shoppin'

Just a couple pics to share with you tonight. We went to Academy to get Michael some new running shoes and Colin was being a total goof while we were there. I think he was showing off for the cute college girl shelving shoes! :)
He is apparently feeling a bit better...

Allergies, Cookies, and Toys. Oh My.

Well, Colin has been suffering from allergies for the past few days, so there have been very few pictures taken. :( He is feeling quite a bit better today, but still has a runny nose and stuffy head. We even went to go play at Adriana's again. And I took no pictures. What is wrong with me lately? I promise to start doing better again and get back into the habit of taking and posting them regularly!

These photos are from yesterday. What do you do when your puny 17 month old begs and cries for cookies? "Mama, cookie, please, cookie, mama. Mama, cookie..." You get in the kitchen and make some! He was so happy to have some oatmeal cookies and a juice and I was glad he felt like eating something. Check out the bottom of the post for a couple videos of his joy eating the cookies (and his amusement at me not wanting him to put them in my mouth ~ thanks, but I had enough of that with my baby sister).
Here he is this morning. He has even started going into the bathroom and getting toilet paper to wipe his own nose. Saddest thing I've ever seen.
I have a few pictures of his favorite things lately. One is this fireman's helmet. I found it the same day I got the army helmet, but this one has not been beaten by the cheese grater. He loves wearing it and will keep it on for nearly an hour at a time. One of his favorite things to do with it is pull it down over his eyes, walk until he runs into something, lift it to see what he ran into, then pull it back down and start walking again.
Silly little guy!Here's another of his favorite things this week. These small animals have been played with almost constantly for the past three days (since we bought them Wednesday morning)!
And Michael caught him pulling this book off the shelf
I'm sorry. But really, what did you expect from a child of ours? ;)
And the videos I promised you. The first one is a little long. At first he's just eating and then he gets a bit silly at the end.


In this one, he just discovered "no thank you" and apparently finds the fact that I'm saying it to be one of the most hilarious things he's ever heard. Did I mention he's been feeling under the weather and might be just a bit slap happy?

NOT a "Safety Protective Device"...

This past weekend was bad for Colin's head. He hit nearly every square inch of it on something by the time the weekend was over. On Friday I was vacuuming, which he loves. He was showing his excitement by running gleeful circles around the sofa. Unfortunately he cut the corner short coming up behind me just as I pulled back the vacuum cleaner, colliding with it at full speed. He got a lovely goose egg for his trouble, seen here a few days after the fact.

On Saturday, Michael got out the vacuum cleaner to do a small spot in the living room. With perfect timing, Colin ran for an army helmet I had found for his pretend box! We cracked up!
Sadly, the army helmet's label was right and it is NOT a "safety protective device". Here is the helmet later in the afternoon, looking like Colin took a shot to the head. Actually, the helmet took a blow with a cheese grater, Colin's new favorite toy. *sigh*
In other news, we joined my new friend Kim and her daughter Adrianna at their house for a play date this morning. Mary, Emma, and Baby Connor were there too. We had such a good time hanging out and Adrianna is one lucky little girl because she has an awesome swingset in her backyard! We played out there until the sun drove us back in the house. I got next to no pictures today (what's wrong with me?!?); sorry!

Anyway, funny thing though. Colin, who has NO fear of actual animals, wanting to kiss each and every one of them, is apparently terrified of a dancing Elmo. I have no explanation. But family, if you were thinking of getting him a mechanized toy for Christmas, you may want to reconsider. He came over the hug me and then when I was laughing, went to Mary for comfort instead. Later, when he would catch a glimpse of Elmo, he would shudder! Kinda funny; kinda sad.

Courtney, it was the exact same reaction Ryleigh has to talking pumpkins!
Emma is pretty skilled at climbing up the ladder you see at the far left of this picture. Colin preferred trying to climb up the slide. It's really only a matter of time before they can get to the top of the platform all by themselves, I fear. They both seemed to like being up there and being king and queen of the hill. Two peas in a pod, those two. Two peas in a pod. Both dangerously curious, monkey-like, endlessly energetic, and bottomless pits. At least I have Mary with whom to commisurate.

Oy Vey!

It is 102 degrees outside with no breeze and my kid wants to play out in it. Ug. That's all I have to say.

Dressing Himself...

I just have a few random pics for you this morning...

For the past few days, Colin has wanted to wear whatever he wore the day before instead of what I pick out for him, so yesterday I just let him pick whatever he wanted from his drawers. Not too bad, eh? (Plus you can't really see that the shorts have red in them.) At least we were only headed to Target! He insisted on a hat too, which I thought was funny.
For afternoon fun, I decided we would try gluing for the first time. He enjoyed sticking the pompoms and bits of paper to the cardstock. Hopefully this will get better and better!
And finally a couple cute ones from bath time.
Enjoy, maybe we will do something earth-shattering to take pictures of next. But don't hold your breath...

Sea World (and first chore)

Well, Colin is apparently going through a growth spurt because Wednesday afternoon and evening he kept falling over and since then he has been eating enough for two little boys. In an effort to keep him from giving himself a concussion yesterday, I decided a trip to Sea World was in order (where I knew I could convince him to stay still in a stroller most of the trip).

First we went to see the seals. It was early, so they were very active and vocal. Colin kept "orking" at them and flapping the backs of his hands together. I'm pretty sure he thought they could hear him and were "orking" back. We just sat there and watched until he told them "bye-bye" - I decided we'd do that with each thing we visited to spend as much time as possible.
Next up was the dolphins. He loves watching them "go fast" and chase each other. He's gotten pretty good about laying on his belly on the dolphin wall so he can put his hands near the water. Obviously I can't get a picture once he's doing this though! He's also figured out what dolphins are and calls them by name both in books, in person, and on his Blue Planet DVD.

He absolutely loved it the several times where they came up close to us and splashed him, giggling and squealing in delight!
Our last stop of the trip is always the aquarium. He loved watching all the fish (and every yellow one was "Bob Fish!"We stopped to see the dolphins for a few more minutes before leaving, then went home and had lunch. Afterwards, we watched the dolphin episode of Planet Earth and talked some more about fish and birds. It was a good day. :)

Colin has his first official "chore"! He has been wanting to help us with Percy's dog food for quite a while now. So as of a couple days ago, twice a day he gets to carry/push the bin over to Percy's bowl, scoop out the food, and then push it back and put it away. Percy likes it because Colin keeps wanting to give him just a little more than one scoop and asks several times a day, "dog, eat?"

Funtastic

Today was our last regular summer playgroup and we met everyone at an indoor playground called "Funtastic Playland"! LOL! How corny of a name is that? :)

We had a ton of fun though and there were so many things that even the little kids could do. Plus, I was super-impressed with the people who run it because they stamped each kid-parent combo with a number when we went in and then checked every single person when we went out to make sure you were the parent that matched the kid. Wow!

Like a doofus, I left my SD card in the computer when I grabbed my camera on the way out of the house. Fortunately, my new phone takes relatively decent pics and Michael bought me a 2 gig micro SD to go in it, so I snapped away with that! Here are just a few:
Riding a bouncy seal! He LOVED this thing more than I would have thought and actually bounced hard enough a couple times that he bounced himself clean off!
And a car with steps up the side and a slide down the back that was a hit with both he and Emma!
There were also bouncy houses that he of course liked and lots of places to crawl in and up. There was also a snack bar, where he dragged me a couple times and a poor mom from our group he kept running up to and begging popcorn off of. I swear I feed him! He ate twice this morning before we left, on the way there, while there, on the way home, and when we got home. Really. There better be a serious growing spurt in our future!

Meet Bob the Fish

Well, Colin is happily driving his new trains around the game room, so I think I have a couple minutes to blog.

No, we did not get a new pet. Colin has requested his first book by its title! Last night we were downstairs and Colin got it in his head that he wanted to read a particular book. He grabbed Michael's hand and said, "book, book. bob fish. bob fish," and dragged Michael upstairs to read Bob the Fish!

He can name all the characters/animals in it too. Clever boy! :) Here's a pic, pardon the bluriness, Colin didn't want to stay on the title page a few minutes ago when I was trying to make the picture.
Then, this morning while I was showering, he and Michael were apparently reading about animals.

***backstory: Colin, though he previously knew animal names, has decided the past several weeks to call all animals by their sounds instead (except cats and dogs, which are still "cats" and "dogs")***

Michael decided he was going to convince Colin this morning before leaving for work that this was a "horse" not a "neigh". Colin kept insisting that it was a "neigh" and started pulling out other books with horses and pointing to them as though to show his daddy that "no, see every book says it's a neigh". LOL! Way to pull out references, son! I am so proud! When Michael was walking out the door, Colin was still trying to chase him down with yet another published example of a "neigh"!

Deal of the Year

We got the deal of the year...but sometimes the deal of the year can be a bit overwhelming.

So I started looking yesterday on Craigslist for some good train stuff for Colin. As luck would have it, I immediately found what looked like a too-good-to-be-true offer that had just been posted the day before. Someone was selling a collection of Brio/Melissa & Doug/Thomas train stuff for a really good price and the pics online looked like it was in good shape. I email them and Michael and I decided to meet them last night to check it out.

Michael's first comment to the guy was, "I thought you said your kids played with this!" There was barely a scratch on ANYTHING. The entire set was in remarkable condition and they wanted less than what just a train table normally costs. Needless to say, we bought it! Here's a summary of what we came home with:

Train table, +80 track pieces, ~20 cars/engines, bridges, bridge supports, trees, signs (stop, yield, RR-xing, crosswalk, etc), people, animals, street lights, houses, train station, a canvas bin, and a wooden train box with a padded seat lid.

Colin and I dumped it all out this morning and sorted through it (obviously it's not ALL staying out right now). Man, there was a LOT!
Here's Colin playing with what we elected to keep out right now. This kept him busy most of the day and all evening!
I'm lovin' this table too...I know he'll like the train set for a long time, but the lip on it makes it perfect for Legos, blocks, animal figurines, drawing, almost anything!

Squadron Picnic

We met Michael for lunch yesterday at the squadron picnic. Colin didn't like that I tried to give him something to eat beforehand and threw a knock-down-drag-out tantrum (following me around the house stomping and screaming as I finished getting stuff together). But he had a good time once we were there! I gotta start getting these turned the right direction. Sorry!
Yesterday evening, we got a cute zebra card from Nana and Grandpa commemorating Colin's first trip to the zoo! He carried it around forever saying "zebra, neigh". :)
And one more pic, just for fun: