Guess Who is 2?

Weight: 32 lbs
Height: 33 inches
Tooth Count: Unknown (He bit Joseph so we gave up. He loves us looking in his ears, but he hates us to look into his mouth. He doesn't usually bite.)
Belly Circumference: 22 inches

Favorite Foods: Applesauce, M&Ms, Pizza, Pasta, Meat, Cheese sticks, Juice, Milk, Chocolate Pudding, and Fruit

Favorite Shows/Clips: Toy Story 3, Sleeping Beauty, Leapfrog Letters Factory, Puss in Boots Old Spice Commercial (aka Kitty in Shower), Old Disney Cartoons, and Veggietales: David and the Giant Pickle

Favorite Phrases:
• "Saurs spit."-- There were two dinosaurs that spit water at the Hogle Zoo when we visited UT. Nicholas was kind of scared and simultaneously fascinated by them. Even a month afterwards though, he will say at random intervals, "Saurs spit."
• "Broke. I fix."--He is convinced that he can fix anything. When something is really broke, then he will say, "Mama fix." If I tell him Mama can't fix it, then he will say, "Papa fix."
• "No touch. I look."--He then will assume his looking position. However, looking almost always leads to touching.
• "Baby sister like binkie, like blankets, like puppy. No marbles, no markers, and no scissors."--We are preparing him to be a big brother.
• "Fire hot."/"Hot like mower."--Nicholas has a healthy respect for things that are hot.
• "Buzz and Jessie dancing."--He loves the part of Toy Story 3 when Spanish Buzz does a little dance.:
• "Self."--He likes doing things on his own. He hates riding in a shopping cart. He will keep repeating in the saddest voice, "Walk self! Walk self!"
• "Cars street. Mama helps. Look both ways."--You can tell we have had a lot of discussions about car safety.
• "Trunk."--Nicholas has decided that hanging out in the trunk of the Acura is even cooler than driving the Acura. If I don't watch him closely, he will find money and small objects and find various holes in the car to drop them down.
• "Carries."--He still LOVES to be carried.
• "Leaves fall."--He is fascinated by the changing season. He is going to have a lot of fun raking with Mom in a couple of weeks.
• "Mama back." "Mama seat." Mama's lap."--He likes me close.

Sleeping:
• He goes to bed around 8 or 8:30 and wakes up 11-12 hours later from when he went to sleep.
• Instead of telling Nicholas it is time to go to bed, we just ask him, "What do you want to go to sleep with?" He starts collecting his special items. Lately he has been insisting that he needs "two binkies" to go to bed. He has also been sleeping with his special monkey blanket, frog blanket, and choo-choo blanket. He will also sleep with his little puppy, big puppy, Ozzie (another puppy), and a couple of balls. It is a little party in there.
• When he wakes up, he has to go through and tell me about everything in his crib before he will agree to get out.
• He is still a great napper. We usually do our big outings in the morning, so that usually wears us both out. He usually will nap for an hour and a half around 1.


Favorite Book: He still isn't much of a book lover. He likes to look at his pop-up monster machines book and flipping through Harry Potter while he wears his Harry Potter hat.

Favorite Activities:
• Helping me cook. I think he just loves all the dumping and stirring involved.
• Animals. He loves feeding the ducks and playing with dogs.
• "Driving" our cars.
• Coloring, especially with markers.
• Looking at letters and numbers.
• Lining things up and making a choo-choo.
• Stacking things and making castles.
• Playing with various kitchen utensils and measuring cups.
• Playing in the bathtub with lots of bouncy balls.
• Dancing in his "dancing shoes." They are are some super girly tap shoes that I got at a yard sale. I'll have to get Joseph's permission before I post pictures of this activity.

Overall, I am LOVING two a lot more than 1. He is fun to have a conversation with and he has an actual attention span. All our work about using your words instead of just crying is really paying off. He will tell me what is wrong and we can usually make a deal that makes us both happy. (Unless he is tired.) He is a good little buddy. He loves living on the edge, but he hates be in actual trouble. He is still extremely destructive and messy, but he will now help me clean up one activity before we begin another one. He keeps me busy coming up with new ideas to keep him entertained. We have made marble race tracks, experimented with magnets, and used the fan to blow balloons up to the ceiling. It is surprising what will catch his interest. I love this sweet little man!!

I made Nicholas an M&M cake for his birthday. He liked the frosting and the M&Ms.

In our ward, there are five other kids born within weeks of Nicholas. One of the mothers suggested we do a joint birthday party for all the kids. Nicholas loved the party. He got to finger paint for the first time and there was all the juice he could drink. He also loved bowling. The destructive nature of bowling just appeals to him. They picked to do the party on Nicholas' actual birthday.

Nicholas wanted pizza for his birthday dinner, so we took him to CiCi's. He ate an impressive amount of pizza, ranch dressing, lemonade. We then took him to his favorite park. Surprisingly, his favorite park doesn't have a playground. He loves to go to Irving's War Memorial Park because it has lots of statues and fountains. He got a remote control car for his birthday and enjoyed driving it around the park super fast. After dark, we settled down and watched How to Train Your Dragon. We tried to keep our birthday plans really simple and just mainly spent time doing whatever Nicholas wanted to do. Nicholas LOVED his birthday.

State Fair

We originally planned on celebrating Joseph's birthday last Saturday, but Nicholas was under the weather and I had church stuff most of the day. I was then going to surprise Joseph with a camping trip, but sadly it became too expensive and impractical to do with a two year old and pregnant wife. Our back up plan was the Fair. We had free tickets and very few free weekends the rest of October, so we jumped at the chance to go on Friday because Joseph had only a short day. I can't believe this is our third time going to the Texas State Fair.

Our first stop was the petting zoo exhibit. It is one of our favorite parts of the Fair and we were excited that Nicholas is finally old enough to really get into it. They have tons of animals that you can feed and pet. Nicholas was willing to pet/feed anything that got near him. He made special friends with a baby camel.

Our next stop was the cute little play farm area that they have set up next to the petting zoo. Nicholas put on an apron, collected eggs, planted seeds, milked cows, and rode a tractor. His favorite part was using the shovel to plant seeds. He would have stayed there all day. At the end, they gave him fake money for his work and he was able to buy a bag of chips.

Nicholas also loved "driving" all the cars on display and watching the bird show. His favorite part of the bird show was Graucho, the singing parrot. We have watched him multiple times on youtube since then. Nicholas keeps on asking for the "singing bird."

The State Fair has a contest each year for the best deep fried food. We usually will buy the winner and try it ourselves. Deep fried buffalo chicken in a flapjack was the winner; however, we broke tradition and Joseph picked some fresh made lemonade instead for our Fair treat. Nicholas and Joseph both passionately love juice. Nicholas drank more than anyone. We ended up getting a refill.


The firework/light show at the end of the Fair was fabulous. We ended the night by watching and dancing along with an Elvis tribute concert. Nicholas was a wonderful sport the whole day, but we complete got him off his sleep schedule and haven't been able to get him back on schedule since. Nicholas just gets more and more fun as he get older!!

Joseph at 27 years

Joseph enjoying his steak birthday dinner today.

Height: 5'9.75"

Weight: Higher than his wrestling weight in high school

Favorite Toys:

• He is very excited for his new GoogleTV box to come
• His Nexus One phone

Favorite Activities:

• Teaching Nicholas to like the things he likes. Yesterday, he tried to convince Nicholas that he liked watching Papa play Final Fantasy VII. He did succeed in teaching Nicholas to say, "Chocobo." He has been more successful at catching Nicholas interest with other activities. While Nicholas wasn't too interested in watching football, he did love it when Joseph taught him the proper way to hold a football and let him run "super" fast around the house with it.
• Going to the park with Nicholas.

New/Favorite Words:

• Thrombocytopenia
• Pathopneumonic
• Henoch-Schonlein Purpura
• Cytomegalovirus
• Quasar

Big Accomplishments This Year:

• Finished his second year of medical school. On Friday, Joseph also finished his internal medicine rotation.

Sleeping Habits:

• Joseph has the strangest sleeping habits out of anyone in the family. It doesn't help that for the past few weeks he was on call all night at the hospital every five days. His major sleeping problem is that he has a hard time falling asleep and a equally hard time getting up. He will lay in bed for hours tossing and turning or playing games on his phone before he finally drifts off to sleep.

Favorite Food:

• He is easy to please and will eat whatever I make him. He is even good at eating all his vegetables.
• He loves eating what we have grown in our garden.

Quirks:

• He hates power cords to get tangled.
• He wears cargo pants with his tie and white shirt.
• You know that tree climbing phase kids go through? Joseph never left.
• Being partly deaf has made him capable of sleeping through anything.

Nicholas at 23 months

Weight: 32 lbs

Height: 34 inches

Belly Diameter: 22 inches

Favorite Foods: Pizza, Pasta, Ice Cream, Milk, M&Ms, Hot Dogs, Peaches, and Strawberries

Favorite Phrases and Words:

• "I look."---This is his response when I tell him not to touch something because it will break. He also assumes his looking position. He will bend down and put his hands into fists and hold them up next to his body.
• "Carries"---He LOVES to be carried by Mama.
• "One. One. One."---He will run over to my kitchen utensil drawer and keep repeating this. It means he wants to choose one utensil to play with. He LOVES kitchen utensils.
• "Mama."---He is still super attached to Mama.
• "Broke. I fix."--He is such a man. He wants to fix things all by himself with no help.
• "Much."--When we play in the bathtub, I tell him "too much" when he turns the water up on high. Now when he wants a lot of something, he says, "Much."
• "Super fast."--He likes to race and swing super fast.
• "No push."--Nicholas knows he gets in serious trouble when he pushes people. At random times, he will say, "No push." He then will list off all the people he is not allowed to push and then says, "Sorry."
• "No potties."--Our first step towards potty training is that Nicholas now knows that he is not allowed to go potty in the bathtub.
• "More Grandma. More Grandpa."--He misses his grandparents. He really bonded with them while he was up in UT.
• "Hold."--Nicholas loves holding things.
• "Dump."--He has an overwhelming urge to dump things out.
• "Messes."--He loves to make messes.
• "Pour."--He loves to pour water from one container to the next.

Favorite Shows: (He is getting MUCH better at watching TV.)

• Word World
• Toy Story
• Beauty and the Beast
• Baby Signing Time
• Chip and Dale

New Tricks:

• He can count to ten all by himself, though he sometimes skips 6 and 7.
• He will repeat pretty much anything you tell him to.
• He can say his ABCs with help.
• He can correctly identify both sets of Grandparents and most of his aunts and uncles. (Before our trip to UT, he could only say Grandpa.)
• He can identify Jesus, temples, and prophets.
• He is saying lots of sentences.

Favorite Toys:

• His stuffed puppy is his FAVORITE security object.
• Phones
• Flashlights
• Magnets
• Ball Popper
• A Bucket of Pennies
• A Bag Full of Beads
• Papa's Tools
• Kitchen Utensils
• Swing
• Sandbox

He continues to be a happy and busy explorer. He keeps me busy and constantly entertained. He also continues to be a wonderful sleeper.

My favorite parts about this age:

• The look on his face when he is thinking.
• How he is finding new ways to express what he is thinking.
• His complete love and trust in Mama.
• That he will still turn around and run towards me when I say, "I'm going to get you."
• His laugh and that he thinks Mama is hilarious.
• He gives the best loves/hugs/pats.
• He has the cutest smile and is so expressive.
• When he is really happy, he will rub his belly with both hands.

My least favorite parts about this age:

• He is testing his limits. He knows when he shouldn't do something and he thinks it is funny to see what Mama will do when he disobeys.
• He is all consuming and loves Mama's complete attention, except when he is having fun destroying something.
• His constant exploring is extremely messy business.

HOT!!

Nicholas was spending Saturday morning "helping" Papa in the yard. Joseph had to mow the lawn and had explained to Nicholas at least 5 times not to touch the lawn mower. Of course the moment Joseph was distracted, Nicholas ran and touched the hot lawn mower. Joseph ran cold hose water on his hand as soon as he heard Nicholas cry out. Luckily, Nicholas was smart enough not to touch it for that long. He was very upset until noon. We convinced him to play in the bathtub with the cold water running on his hand. He kept on crying and saying, "HOT!" We also got him some Tylenol and some Aloe Vera. (We told him that the Aloe Vera was hand sanitizer, which he LOVES using.) He then asked to go to his crib. It is his little happy place. He laid down and watch the WHOLE movie of Beauty and the Beast with his puppies. (That was a small miracle. This boy won't watch more than 15 minutes of a movie at a time.) After that, he was back to his usual self. He doesn't even favor his other hand. We hope he learned an important lesson that will save him from future accidents, but we hated watching him go through the pain associated with this lesson. The picture is of his hand this morning.

Happy Birthday to Maren!

We celebrated my birthday on Saturday. I was frankly too tired to plan a fun outing. When it came down to it, I just asked for Joseph to watch Nicholas while I cleaned the house. I also requested a nap. I guess I'm showing my age and the fact that I'm in my third trimester. (FYI: I often forget how old I am. I have to ask Joseph how old I'm turning.)

Joseph spent the morning entertaining Nicholas in the backyard. It had rained hard that morning and there were plenty of puddles for Nicholas to explore. Later that day, Joseph came home with flowers. The sweetest part is he had taught Nicholas to say, "Happy Birthday Mama!" It was the first time he had said, "Birthday." (We have been trying to get him to say it for awhile.) This is my first birthday that my offspring could wish me a happy birthday and that was probably my favorite part of my birthday. Dos also kicked a lot in order to say, "Hello."

Nicholas didn't completely understand the whole birthday concept and he did argue with me sometimes that it was Papa's and not Mama's birthday. He did, however, enjoy our Sunday birthday treat of ice cream and berries! I think that was his favorite part of my birthday.

Joseph also made me a wonderful birthday dinner on Sunday. We had fresh caprasi salad from the garden, steak with sauteed mushrooms, and a seafood pasta. There are few things better in life then a good steak with mushrooms.

I also convinced the boys to have a family picture before church. I love how I can get them to do anything I want on my birthday.

Here is Nicholas "singing" happy birthday.

Nicholas at 22 months

Weight: 32 lbs

Height: 33 inches

Belly Diameter: 25 1/2 inches

Tooth Count: 14

Current Obsessions:

• Dumping out things. He has an overwhelming urge to dump things. He is pretty tricky because he will be helping clean up and then suddenly grab the box/bucket and dump it and laugh hysterically.
• Soon-to-be-uncle Josh. I think Elisabeth has competition for who thinks about Josh more during the day. Every time Nicholas glances at the wedding announcement, we are treated to a five minute ode to Josh.
• Stirring pitchers full of juice or water
• The Kitchenaid mixer
• Playing in the sink
• Playing with buckets filled with coins
• Playing with his bag full of necklaces
• Blowing bubbles in the bathtub
• Stickers
• Kitchen utensils

Current Hates:

• Diaper changes. The only time he is willing to play by himself is when he knows he needs a diaper change. Suddenly something on the other side of the room from me is super interesting. He also tries to tell me that Whitney, the girl we babysit, really is the one that needs the diaper change.
• He loves cooking, but he can't handle when his job is done. If you have him stir something, he has a little breakdown when he has to be done stirring.
• Getting dressed. I don't blame him with the heat.

Cute Quirks:

• Anything we tell him is dangerous, he translates that into meaning that it must be "HOT."
• He can say his ABCs by repeating after me and count to ten. He, however, really struggles saying "W."
• He loves to say, "Ready, Set, Go!"
  

General Demeanor:

• He is a very happy boy. (He gets his happy personality from his Papa.) The only time he is seriously unhappy is when he is tired. (He gets that from his Mama.)
• He is a great talker and very clear for his age. I think it is because he knows he won't get anything from Mama unless he uses his words. Whining gets you nowhere fast with Mama. If he is being too unreasonable to use his words, it usually means he needs a nap.
• He is still super active. He has a quick attention span, but it is getting longer. He goes from one activity to another with lightning speed. Thankfully, his active nature is balanced out by the fact he is a great sleeper. He is super easy to get to take a nap and to go to bed. I just tell him that we should go find his puppies, baby, and blanket. He then lays down and he will say, "Bye-bye" as I walk out.
• He is ALL BOY. He loves tools, getting dirty, dogs, balls, and bugs. He loves to fix things, but refuses help. He wants to do it all by himself.

Favorite Shows:

• Barney
• Beauty and the Beast
• Davy Crockett (He says, "Rock" when he wants to watch this movie.)
• Chip 'n Dale (He says, "Munks" when he wants to watch this movie.)

Favorite Food:

• Peaches

This is a picture of Papa and Nicholas pretending to be pioneers that had to "push" and "pull" things across the plains. We all raced around the house pushing and pulling toys. It was a big hit with Nicholas.

He loves his swing and going "high."

You can tell from this picture he is all man.

Josh! Josh! Josh! Josh!

Nicholas immediately latched onto Uncle Josh when the wedding announcement came. Whenever he sees the announcement, he's good for a minute or two of straight "Josh"ing. This is just a small taste of what has given us lots to laugh about. We are also very proud of him for immediately associating Elisabeth and Josh with the temple where they will get married.