new perspective

We finally did it... we turned Zane's car seat around.  I'm kind of a safety freak, especially when it comes to Zane.  After watching the tiny crash test dummies in the videos during our car seat safety class, I was definitely going to follow the AAP's guideline to keep him rear facing until at least 2 years.  I was having a tough time deciding whether to wait a little longer or not... but we did it.  Zane was pretty excited to have the new view and was kind of in a daze for a while as he stared out the front window when we were driving around this weekend.  Once he got used to his new vantage point, he started pointing out all of the trucks and buses.

It's still just as hard to get him into his seat... we thought that might help, but no!  He still doesn't like to sit still and be tied down :)  He also now has a much easier path to the front seat.  Tonight when we got home, he kept saying "I want to drive!" As soon as he was unbuckled from his seat, he was between the front two seats and climbing over the console before I even realized what happened.  Then he jumped into the driver's seat, started shifting and steering :)  It was pretty funny.  Then he accidentally honked the horn and startled himself, so that was my chance to get him out of the car!

You can almost see in this picture that he finally got a haircut over the weekend too.  It was long overdue, and he no longer has to say "eyes! eyes!" because his hair is poking into his eyes. 

Zane was cracking me up tonight because two of his most used current phrases have to be "I want to see poop!" and "I want to see booger!"  (Can you tell he has a lot of poopy diapers and has a cold again?)  But then he has heart melting moments, like when he was in the bathtub tonight and responded to his daddy saying he was going to be right back with "ok, love you."  :)

3 footer (almost)

Zane's two year check up was this morning, so we got his updated official stats!  He's now 29 pounds, 2 ounces (65%) and 35.5 inches (80%) tall; that's 7 pounds and 4.5 inches up from last year.  He's more than half my height!  It was the first time he had to stand up against the wall to get measured instead of us stretching him out on the exam table. :) He has stood on the scale there before, but this time we had to take his shoes off, and he was not pleased - "NO!! SHOE ON!!!"  Overall, his pediatrician was happy about where Zane's at developmentally, and we have to back down on some of his milk, which no longer has to be whole milk... woohoo! 

Zane and I had a 3 day weekend, so we wrapped up his birthday weekend by watching garbage trucks :)  We even had two of them behind the house at the same exact time, if you can believe it!

Then we met up with one of his BFFs, Eli, and his mom and baby brother at the Children's Museum.  It was pretty hysterical watching the two of them run around (zig-zagging), but at least they stuck together!  I tried to get a picture of them together, but they were too fast.... here's a blurry one of Zane driving the bus:

Zane's second year was pretty fun overall, and we're looking forward to what year three has in store for us.  I'm predicting more big emotional swings - big fat crocodile tears, some yelling, and lots of giggling.

2!!!

Happy 2nd Birthday to Zane!!! It's hard to believe our tiny munchkin is now a 2 year old!  He definitely can throw us some serious attitude now like a true 2 year old, but it's gone by fast! Here are his 2 year t-shirt pictures from today (it's harder than ever to get him to stay still!):

Zane had a great birthday weekend that started with coming home from school on Friday afternoon to see Grandma and Grandpa (he even called them Grandma and Grandpa occasionally instead of Comma and Comma).  Yesterday we had a party for him with some of his friends from school and a few of our neighbors.  It was a truck theme, and eventually turned into the kids bouncing on balloons that miraculously never burst!

Then today we celebrated his birthday with some blueberry pancakes and checking out his new wheels... he of course had to take his new tricycle from Aunt Ginger and Uncle John ("MY bi-cull!!") through the puddles out back right away:

We sang Happy Birthday to him and let him devour a cupcake after dinner tonight.  He was a little extra wound up getting ready for bed...

happy valentine's day!

Here's a picture of our new favorite vase! It's our Valentine's Day present from Zane that he decorated himself (with a little help from his teacher on the finishing touches).  Today he came home with the card holder he decorated with a bunch of valentine's cards from his friends.  They got to hand them out today... very cute! They also got to bake cookies and have a dance party with the waddler class to the Wiggles.  I think it was a fun day for him!  He even had a super small class with just his two best buddies - apparently they were in rare form cracking each other up all day.

Here he is helping to put his Valentine's together last night after dinner (we seem to always just barely be on time around here these days!):

He's been quite the little Mr. Manners lately, and we're both very excited about that!  Zane's been a champ about saying "please," "thank you," and "no thank you" lately.  I'm really hoping it sticks with him!  It is very hard though to continue doing something he doesn't like (changing his diaper, wiping his face, taking his pjs off in the morning...) when he's repeating "no thank you!" over and over again!

Another thing that's been tickling us about our little Valentine is the way he says words with an L in them like block, airplane, clock... they come out with an extra syllable, like "buh-lock" and "air-puh-lane."  He may say a few words that sound a little crass when they come out (truck and bulldozer come to mind!), but usually it's pretty sweet, like "guh-lub" (glove).

song bird

In the past several weeks, Zane has started singing songs on his own. One of his usuals is “Twinkle Little Star,” only he usually starts with “like a diamond in the sky, twinkle twinkle…”It’s really cute! He also sings “rock baby!” (aka, “Rockabye Baby”), usually when he has a stuffed animal covered with a blanket. The other day, Zane’s toddler room teacher, Miss Danielle, got to witness his not-so-tender caregiver methods when he stacked 3 little pillows on top of a baby doll, patted/pounded on them and sang “rock baby” very loudly :)  We’ll have to practice being gentle more often before summer rolls around!

One of his other new songs is “Happy Birthday,” which is quite convenient since his birthday is just around the corner (is he really turning 2???) and a bunch of his friends have birthdays around now too. 

He's also really working on buckles... like his booster seat and car seat.  Now he has to help, when he gets in, so it takes a little longer.  Then when he's all done, he likes to open and close the buckle as many times as you let him.

Zane’s also trying really hard to get his colors down. Everything has been blue for the past couple of months, but I think it clicked for him that those color words apply to colors now (I’m not really sure what he thought we were talking about, but words are funny things!). Which will be helpful when we do things like offer him a choice of crayons… hopefully soon he’ll actually mean blue when he says “blue” and won’t get so mad when we hand him the blue one when he asks for it! You can see the wheels churning in his head when we start talking about the colors of his cup, bowls, plates and utensils at the table. 

Last week, Zane’s theme for the week was “Where daddy go?” because he was out of town all week for work. It was a long week, but we made it! He would even ask Miss Danielle about daddy every now and again throughout the day. Poor Zane! At least Zane got to have a video call with him most nights before bed… yay for facetime!

On Sunday afternoon, Zane helped host the Super Bowl festivities at our house. He was pretty excited to have everyone over, and he likes to shout out “football!” when there’s a game on tv.

Then this week, I actually had to travel for work, but it was only a 24 hour trip. The boys survived just fine despite a few complaints before I left :)  And Molly too! 

I did have to take Zane to the pediatrician on Tuesday afternoon before I left because he was acting like he had an ear infection (which he’s never done before, even when he’s had one), and he was telling the truth! The ear he was digging around in was even the infected one. His doctor wrote a prescription for antibiotics and gave us the option of starting them right away or waiting a day or two before starting them… but we went ahead and started them since he’d had a few rough nights already and was having a hard time napping for much longer than an hour (his normal is 2-3 hours).

So after not getting much sleep between Zane not feeling well and lots of work, I’m looking forward to a couple more normal days at work and then relaxing and planning Zane’s birthday festivities this weekend!