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!

New Phrases

I have been doing way too much traveling lately so I haven't been able to take as many pictures of Hunter or write many posts. But I thought I would try to write down the common phrases Hunter has been using lately. He is constantly talking. He is learning to sing the alphabet song and if we are on walks or driving in the car breaks into his version with the letters all mixed up at the top of his lungs! Kerry took him for a walk in Old Town and had to switch to walking on a side street because Hunter was singing so loud. Other popular expressions:

• "Be careful" - as noted in the earlier Daredevil post, Hunter constantly pushes the limits of what he can do so we started using this phrase pretty regularly. Now he says it after he does something and narrowly misses injury.
• "No do that" - self explanatory. Needless to say he hears this a lot.
• "Not ours" - I began saying this to him because he tries to touch/open all the cars in our neighborhood. He now says this also when we are at the park and he wants to play with someone else's toy.
• "One more and that's it" - usually he completes my phrase when I tell him he can have one more cookie or bedtime story and he then says ....and that's it!
• "What doing?" - this phrase just started this week, not sure how he picked it up, but I was in the kitchen making dinner and Hunter was in his chair eating dinner and asked me "What doing?" I told him I was cooking and that satisfied him.

He has also entered a disturbing phase of tantrums. He can get quite angry, mostly at me and will scream at the top of his lungs, turn bright red and throw himself on the floor. Praying this will end soon, it is incredibly frustrating. I guess it is a sign we are entering the terrible twos!

Daredevil

As you may be able to tell from this pic Hunter has a new scrape above his left eye. It also extends to his nose. He flipped over the handle bars of one of his ride on cars on Saturday, scraping his face and chipping his back molar.

Patty came in town Saturday afternoon and we went to the park on Sunday. Kerry was shadowing him up the stairs to go down the slide when Hunter turned to look at two little girls coming into the park, lost his footing and hit his chin on the steps, causing a big cut and a good amount of blood. Thankfully Patty saved the day with a band aid and we were able to stay at the park. That afternoon I made a trip to the drug store and stocked up on bandaids, antiseptic spray, a mini first aid kit and scar fade cream.

As you can see from this picture, head first is now his preferred way down the slide. When we are at the park, most parents let their kids Hunter's age climb up the jungle gym themselves. I don't feel like I can do that. There is this one section where you can either go down the slide or go down a fire pole. I think that if a bigger kid went down the fire pole, Hunter would try it and that is like 12-15 feet up. I must look like an over protective parent, but I think most kids know their limits. Hunter is eager to try anything, the kid has no fear. I think it is a matter of time before we are in the emergency room with this one!

Addison's Baptism

We went to Rachel and Todd's daughter Addison's Baptism on Saturday and then went back to their house for a little party after. Hunter of course was rambunctious in church, but the ceremony was short enough he didn't distract too much.

They had about 7 kids back at their house ranging from 8 to 3 months so Hunter had plenty of kids to play with. He is finally getting to that age where he can go and play with the kids and mom and dad can do their own thing. Yeah! Hunter had a ball and became particularly smitten with one little girl around 4 or 5, Megan. When her family was leaving Hunter specifically said "Bye Megan" it was really cute.

Daycare is doing a great job of teaching Hunter please, thank you and excuse me. He has used please and thank you pretty regularly and in the last couple of days excuse me is coming into play. What is really funny is that he says excuse me to inanimate objects as well, like tables and chairs. He did it last night at dinner when he wanted to get past the kitchen chair to look out the window and kept saying excuse me. We couldn't help but laugh.

Great Weekend

What a great weekend. Spring is finally here (we hope) and the weather was great. Saturday we spent the majority of the day outside which Hunter loves. He was tired early so he went down for his nap around 12:15 and slept for 3 hours! It used to take us so long getting him down for a nap, there was the initial crying realizing it was nap time, then the rocking and singing until he was asleep and then trying to get him into his bed without waking him up. I know, you are supposed to put them to bed drowsy but awake, but that never worked with Hunter.......until now. We have made such progress in the last couple of months. On Saturday I was able to put him in his bed completely awake and he went right to sleep. This is such a huge accomplishment for him, I think it is his age, and consistently sticking with the routine, but he is doing great and making our lives so much easier.

Sunday we went to my parents for dinner. Hunter was so excited to see Gigi, Papa, and Mark. We played outside as well and Mark is like a big kid to him, so he loves to do anything Mark wants to do. Plus he got to eat a cookie and ice cream for dessert so he was in heaven.

This morning the first words out of his mouth were Papa? Gigi? Mark? He wanted to know where everyone was and what they were doing, which I had to repeat over and over. So cute.

Now to start another week......