Picasso?

I am constantly trying to come up with new activities to occupy our very active boy. I went with my mom to her church's yard sale a couple weeks ago and was pretty successful. We bought a plastic Little Tikes easel that I thought would be perfect to keep on our patio so Hunter could paint and draw.

I bought him finger paints and decided to let him go at it this weekend. Well, I forgot to think about my son, when I purchased them. Since he hates getting his hands dirty, when I told him what to do, he looked at me like I was crazy! So as you can see we decided to use a paint brush.

He seemed to enjoy him self for about 5 minutes before he found it more fun to try to paint the patio door and the grill cover. Well at least he was occupied for 5 minutes!

Mick's Birthday

Hunter has been able to celebrate a lot of birthday's recently. When Patty came to visit in late March, we celebrated hers, then my moms last weekend and this weekend Mick and Joyce came to visit and we celebrated his. Hunter loves singing happy birthday but most of all he equates a birthday with cake. And he loves cake!

Hunter really bonds with men/boys very quickly. He wanted "Uncle Micky" to do everything for him, push him in the stroller, put him in his seat for meals, sit with him at breakfast, it was so cute. Their visit was too short but we all had a great time. Hope they are back soon!

The next visit will be from Kelly, Darin, Dom and Luca at the beginning of May. They are in town for Darin's niece's baptism so we aren't sure how much we will get to see them, but hopefully the boys will be able to play together a bit. It has been so long since we have had all the boys together.

Terrible Twos

You might look at this picture and get the idea that here is a sweet, relaxed, happy almost 2 year old. You would be wrong. For the last week our sweet child has spent much of his awake hours possessed! He has more energy than he knows what to do with. Sunday morning we were at the park at 7:30 am, because Hunter inside is an accident waiting to happen. He climbs on tables, runs at top speed, throws toys, basically anything he shouldn't be doing. He spends much of his indoor time in timeout for his infractions.

So outside is the place we take him to burn off the energy and keep him out of trouble. Unfortunately he has a limitless amount! We had my parents and brother over Sunday night to celebrate my mom's birthday. That helped a lot. He enjoys having other people to play with and entertain.

The other issue we are having is tantrums. He is extremely opinionated and wants to either myself or Kerry (usually the one not doing the task) to get him milk, fix him breakfast, get him out of his crib in the morning, put him to bed, give him a bath, get him dressed etc. If not, he screams bloody murder and throws himself on the floor. For the last three mornings we have had to talk him down from the "I don't want to get dressed" tantrum. It is just exhausting. How to working parents get themselves out of the house on time each morning? It is baffling!