What Are Little Boys Made Of?, Pt. 2

Yesterday was Pizza Thursday...P is so used to going over to my grandparents' on Thursday that when you say to him on Thursday morning, "P, it's Thursday...what do we do on Thursday?"  He'll respond with, "GiGi, Gramps, Share Share, and KiKi!" (who are, in fact, all the family members we will see on Thursday).  When you ask him what he's going to eat, he'll tell you, "Fruit...and pizza!" (notice that the kid who doesn't like dessert also prefers the fruit cup over the pizza...I'm thinking there was a mix up at the hospital. :))

There are certain things that P likes to play with and do when we're over there, and I've admittedly gotten a little lax when it comes to keeping my eyes on him at all times.  Yesterday my grandma, mom, and I were all visiting while KiKi and Gramps had gone to the other room.  I knew P was in my grandparents' room, but the last I had seen of him, he was playing in my grandpa's chair.

Well, I hadn't seen him in a while, so I went in the room to check on him, and I found him holding a pen and coloring on a pad of paper on my grandpa's desk...I then noticed that the paper was his second choice of surface to color on as the pictures below with attest to...

 Can you see our first-choice for a canvas? :)

P has been reading a picture book recently called "No, No...Yes, Yes" by Leslie Patricelli.  One of the pictures shows a baby who has colored all over the walls, and when we see that picture we say, "No, No!  Don't color on the walls."  When I picked P up after discovering that he had colored all over his arm, he said to me, "No, no!  Don't color on walls."  I said, "And what else?"  He replied with, "Don't color on arms."  Amen, brother.

 I personally didn't want to take pictures of this bad choice, but I told Aunt KiKi to capture a few. ;)

Thankfully we didn't find a permanent marker! :)  The pen washed right off...

 

I love this last picture. :)  I feel like his little face is saying, "I stand by my creative use of my body as a canvas." :)

What a week! :)

Children's Aquarium

We made our first visit down to the Children's Aquarium in Fair Park on Wednesday with Share Share, and P was in heaven.  The kid LOVES animals and gets excited when we go to the pet store to look at the fish tanks there, so this adventure was right up his alley! :)

The facility is split between the salt water tanks and the fresh water tanks and then outside is a pretty incredible sting ray exhibit where you can feed, pet, and observe sting rays in a very up-close-and-personal way.  P loved it!

I wish I had had my good camera with me, but alas, the iPhone pics will have to do. 

Our first stop was the salt water tanks.  P's favorites were the sea turtle (and rightfully so!!!), the sea horses, the large orange fish in a floor to ceiling tank, the model large octopus tentacles (I wish I had a picture to show what this was... :)) next to the real octopus, and the lion fish.  Also super cool were the sharks, morey eels, jellyfish, freakishly large lobster, and freakishly large grouper. :)  I wish I had gotten a picture of the sea turtle and P...it swam right up to him and just hovered in the water in front of him.  It was really neat.

 Then we headed out to the sting ray exhibit where we got to pet the sting rays.  It really was (as my child would say)...SO COOL! :)  I was able to feed the sting rays - which was quite the experience, and then we just watched and watched and watched them...I think P could have stayed there all day.

 We was hesitant to touch them...although he would sometimes accidentally do so while putting his hand in the water. :)  He really just liked staring at them through the glass.

Here's the funny little face on their underside. :)

Here's some footage of P and the sting rays.

 

Although it would be hard for anything to compete with the sting rays, we ended our trip with a quick jaunt through the fresh water exhibit.  We saw some red-eared slider turtles eating some romaine lettuce for lunch, a seriously terrifyingly large snapping turtle (I'm not kidding...this is the kind of thing nightmares are made of), and best of all an albino alligator.  After the sea turtle encounter and the one I'm about to tell you about, we've decided that P may be some kind of animal whisperer. :)  When we walked up to the alligator exhibit, the alligator had his back turned to us.  Then, all of a sudden, it turned around (as can be seen in the picture) and just stared at P for quite a while...then when P walked away, it turned back around, and that was that.  I saw some other little kids go up to it, and it never turned around for them...so who knows! ;) Maybe P's been working on his animal language all this time... :)

We will DEFINITELY be coming back here! :)  It was a hit!  As my mom and I talked about, it is just so fun to watch the joy and excitement that P has for life and for things like animals.  To be able to see the world through a child's eyes is a reminder that the world in which we live is a pretty incredible place. :)

Q: What Are We Going to Do at the Library?

Typical Answer: "Read books!"

My child's answer: "Play!" :)

It's amazing that the library really is a place where kiddos can go to both look at books AND play.  All of the libraries around us have a good selection of puzzles, blocks, puppets, and other play things to occupy a small child.  P really enjoys getting to go and play. 

A current favorite is the bead maze...he used to not be that interested in it, and all of a sudden he just thinks they're the best things ever!  Here's some photographic evidence. :)

 Happy boy!

Who wants to look at books when you could play with a bead maze?!?

Last time we went, P and I played a game where I would tell him to go and stand on a number on the story-time mat.  He was loving it!  Unfortunately, my phone died while I was filming, but you can get the idea.  My request before the video started was for Parker to go and stand on the number 2...and at the end, I promise he makes it over to the balloon with the number 10 on it. :)

What Are Little Boys Made Of?

We had a rough week made up of two firsts - first bee sting and first black eye. :( 

We had gone to the spray ground by Aunt KiKi's house last Monday and had been having a grand old time.  P went over into the grass for all of 5 seconds and all of a sudden came out screaming and reaching for his toe.  K and I looked down on the sidewalk to see a bee on the ground right by his foot.  We scooped him up, stomped on the bee, and tried to figure out where he had been stung.  Turns out it was square on the bottom of his big toe - as the stinger was still there.  K remembered that you're not supposed to pull a bee's stinger straight out but instead are supposed to scrape it out...turns out she was right.  As bee's stinger is barbed and will break and stay in your skin with its venom if you try to pull it out.  Hooray Aunt KiKi for being so smart!

I was a little worried since he's had some allergy issues that he might be allergic to bees, but seemingly, there wasn't anything to worry about. :)  We went back over to Aunt KiKi's and watched some Elmo while Nurse KiKi put some baking soda paste on his toe.  He handled it like a champ!

 Nurse KiKi administering first aid.

And then, 6 days later, we got our first black eye.  I was getting ready back in our bathroom, and J and P were playing in the living room.  They were having a grand old time, and then all of a sudden I heard a horrible thunk (it really sounded like two pieces of wood being knocked together) followed by hollering...and rightful hollering at that!  P had been spinning around and had fallen and hit just under his eye on the coffee table (thankfully NOT on the corner of the coffee table - UGH!).  It started to balloon up pretty quickly, so we got some ice and sat down to watch Mickey Mouse Clubhouse (sense a theme in our medical treatment plan?).  Thankfully he recovered quickly...but man, oh man.  It was a doozy.

Here's our sweet boy with his shiner.

He was all boy this week...hoping next week is a little more uneventful. :/

July 2013 - B.W. (before Watervale)

So we've made it to the July pictures, and it's only the first week of August, so I'm feeling pretty good about myself. :)

I wish I had more, but these are the few pictures I snapped of our small group 4th of July get together (minus Melissa and Jonathon because it was J's birthday!)  We invaded my parents' house since they were out of town and just enjoyed the unusually mild Texas heat for July, went swimming, and ate the most Americana food possible - burgers, hot dogs, brauts, corn on the cob, beans, watermelon, potato chips, pasta salad, and two types of homemade ice cream. :)  We had a blast and enjoyed getting to hang out with our dear friends.

 Everyone watching the Rangers and eating ice cream

 Little Courtney enjoying some chocolate cherry ice cream.

 Daddy and P.

 Do you see the chaos of toys on the floor?  Between the three kids, we had out every toy my parents have in the house. :)  (p.s. - pregnant bellies make good tables.)

 

Sweet Kinley holding three train cars...and if you look closely enough, she has some evidence of some vanilla ice cream on her face. :)

The rest of the pictures are just random happenings during the month of July through the lens of my iPhone.

 P has been thoroughly enjoying climbing on beds and burying himself in the pillows....and not just at home.  Anyone's bed is fair game.

 My sweet friend Katie invited us to go and check out the kids' area of the Perot Museum.  We happened to run into some of our favorite friends there. :)

 P really enjoyed himself...here he is filling in all the empty spaces with flowers.

 I came across this random idea on Pinterest, and one of our therapists had told me that fine motor skills were tied to speech development (I guess some of the same areas of the brain are used), so we tried it.  P did a really good job...and ate more Cheerios than he put on. :)

 One overcast day we went to the spray ground by Aunt KiKi's house...it was like the spray ground apocalypse.  At one point we were the only people out there.  Totally bizzarro...but really fun!

 We've been doing LOTS of swimming.  Here's a shot of P's after-swimming hair.  Pretty spiffy, no?

This picture is also associated with swimming...he was so exhausted after playing at the pool with some friends that he more or less collapsed on the floor while we were making lunch.  That's some kind of tired.

May 2013 in pictures

Just to keep things interesting, I just looked back through my phone and found pictures from May that I never posted...so you know, here they are...after the June pictures...at the end of July, because that's how we roll.

 Fun in the bath.

 This is a super old pic (like from February), but just in case I never posted this on the blog, I had to share!  These are two of P's buddies from Square 1.  I love these babies' mamas and love that we all had toe heads! :)

Back to May...here is P reading "by myself."  He likes to take a book, go just far away enough that I can't touch him, and will look back at me from time to time while reading a book of his choosing.

 Helping me clean the cat hair off the couches!

This is from Easter weekend at the ranch (which, I suppose, was at the end of March and not May...this post is out of control).
P sees that daddy is sleeping...

 And when daddy sleeps, P eats as many chips as he wants. :)

 Love this picture Cousin Whit took of the ranch.

 Mom and Dad. :)
 

My precious grandparents.  I love the way my grandma is looking at my grandpa. :)

 Drumming on the couch.

 Rocking the headband in the car...

 ...and while drinking water.

 This sweet boy has the most sensitive skin.  Here is a horrible hive that he got from some hair stuff used when he got his haircut.  Needless to say, we won't be using that product again. :(

 This was my loot from my Mother's Day goody bag from Whole Foods.  It was a crazy awesome surprise.

 P enjoying some strawberries at Whole Foods.

 Reading a favorite book - The Cow Who Clucked.

 Running around the trees in the park.

 Rockin' some sunglasses.

 3 school buses...at 1 time!!?!?  Life is good.

 

Which month's random pictures are next? :)  Stay tuned...

June 2013 in pictures

Due to my blogging delinquency, we are once again going back in time to look at months past, but alas, it is what it is.  Here's the month of June told through a totally random assortment of pictures.

 I checked out the new Pearl Cup coffee shop by my house one Saturday afternoon while P napped and enjoyed a latte and a good book.

 P fell asleep on a morning run after waking up too early.

 Got together with some friends for a cookout.  Here's P with his buddy Jay playing with stickers.

J's been making some real progress in the backyard this summer.  Here's a before and after of the bed right outside of our back door.  Our trumpet vine has yet to bloom (boo), but everything has been growing because J installed drip irrigation.  Go figure, if things get watered every day, they grow!  Seriously...drip irrigation has changed our life.  I highly recommend it.

 5 minutes before this picture was taken, P was fully clothed.  He proceeded to ask me to remove his shoes, then his shirt, and then his pants. :)  Happy summer.

 We were able to go and say hello to our neighborhood cows several times this month.

 Sweet sister had two baby showers during the month of June!

 The doves that live in my grandparents' courtyard laid their second set of eggs for the summer in my grandma's hanging basket.  Here are the two babies. :)

 While shopping for tri gear with dad, P figured out the age-old childhood game of "disappear inside the racks of hanging clothes in the store."

 I got new running shoes...the uglier they are, they faster you go, right? :)

 Mom and dad went to Italy to celebrate their 60th birthdays this year.  P enjoyed being able to chat with them via FaceTime.  Technology is pretty cool.

 P had a blast at our dear friends' little girl's 3rd birthday party.

 Elephant + sprinklers = so fun!

 Playing with the bubble machine after lunch.

 After his haircut we walked down to J.D.'s Chippery, and my little boy who doesn't like sweets asked for a "cookie bite." :)  There may be some evidence of his cookie bite of choice on his lower lip.

 On my flight to San Francisco, I had to watch the NBA Finals Game 7 like this...on the laptop of the guy who sat in the row in front of me.  Since I couldn't listen to the game, I also followed along by watching the ticker on the bottom of the screen while having my TV tuned to ESPN2.

 Got off the plane just in time to watch my beloved Spurs lose to the Heat. :(

 After a number of trips to Braums where sweet P didn't get anything while Mommy and Daddy did (it's not our fault - the kid really doesn't have a strong desire for sweets!), we got him his own little cup of vanilla yogurt.  He enjoyed a few bites and then was "all done!"  Not to worry...I helped him finish it. :)

 P went for his first ride in the car grocery cart.  He loved it.  I got a hardcore arm and core workout.  Those things are NOT easy to steer!

 P enjoyed a popsicle. :)

 At small group we had a sno cone party. :)  Yum!

 P wanted his water table to be a swimming pool.

P has gotten back into enjoying the game of turning the lights on and off.  He'll come up to you and say, "Hold you."  At first you think he's wanting to snuggle you, but you soon realize that he's only using you as a means to an end - you're taller than him, and he needs your height to help him reach the light switch.  At GiGi and Gramps', P found another solution...bypass the middle-man and take matters into your own hands.

 J and I celebrated our 8 year anniversary with a dinner out to Nicola's at the shops at Legacy thanks to a giftcard from his parents as a congrats for completing his Ironman.

The End. :)