And just like that

He's two.

Labor Day Weekend

We spent Labor Day Weekend housesitting for Grammy and Grampy. It was a lot of fun. We did pretty much whatever we wanted, when we wanted. We had our own schedule and it went a little like this:


We picked up rocks...


...and threw them into Lake Travis.

We played at the playground...

...for a long, long time.

Amery took his first boat ride on Lake Travis. He wasn't crazy about all the bumps, but he did love swimming in the lake and playing in the mud at the "beach."

When we weren't playing outside in the beautiful (non-100-degree) weather, we watched way too much TV and ate Lucky Charms.

Mustache Party

On Saturday we attended our friend Danny's 35th birthday party. Everyone had to wear a mustache, either real or fake. Fun times.


Mario and Luigi.



Groucho Marx (with nacho cheese face thrown in).

10 on Tuesday

I still can't find the camera battery charger. I either left it in Colorado or lost it around the house somewhere. I hate leaving the blog bare for so long, so I put together my first ever "10 on Tuesday." This was hard. I can't believe some of my blogging friends do this every week.

1. On Saturday morning, we participated in what may have been the Guinness record for the most people frosting a cupcake at once at Cupcake Smackdown 2.0. We needed 1,000 and it didn't seem like that many were there, but the line was pretty long so maybe we made it.

2. While attempting to pay for groceries this past weekend, I discovered my debit card was cutoff due to suspicious activity on the card. It turns out my card number was stolen and some people charged about $400 in Georgia. With the help of Jon's detective work and salesman's persistence, he was finally able to convince the local law enforcement agencies to go to the stores and get the surveillance tapes of the criminals. Hopefully they will be caught, since it sounds like they had other people's numbers as well.

3. Amery's 2nd birthday is coming up, and I decided to go with an airplane theme (see two posts ago). Whenever we talk to him about his birthday party (or anyone's birthday party, or Tommy whose birthday party we went to a month ago) he says "mmmmm, cake, mmmm" over and over.

4. I finished making these DIY napkin rings and wrapping the plasticware for the party:


Here's the template for the napkin rings. I pasted it into Word and added the clip art and text myself.

5. My next DIY project is to make bag toppers, like these, but airplane themed of course.

6. It's really hard not to keep talking about airplanes and birthdays in this list, but I shall refrain.

7. Two new phrases that we hear a lot from the baby boy lately: "Go Dude!" learned from mama yelling at stupid drivers in the car, and "Aw man!" said when he accidentally or un-accidentally knocks over a stack of toys.

8. I lied, there is a third phrase we hear a lot. He loves to sing, "We will, we will rock you!" As loud as possible with an overhead fist pump. He gets annoyed if you sing along without the fist pump. I really really need to get this on video.

9. Jon, Amery, and I are all invited to a birthday party for our friend Danny on Saturday. We are all supposed to have a mustache, either real or fake, to attend. Should be interesting getting an almost 2-year-old to keep a fake mustache on for longer than 10 seconds.

10. Here are some silly pictures (from my cellphone camera) of how we entertain ourselves.


We sit in boxes meant for books (don't freak, Jon was ducking down behind him).


We like to be carried around in the boxes too.


We cool off in the yard.


Let's hear it for the clearance rack at Walgreens. Who knew $4.99 could buy so much fun.

I have an excuse

For the lack of blogging. I can't find the charger for our camera battery. It's my mission to find it this weekend, so hopefully there will be new pictures of the man up soon.

I'm a Winner!

Sweeeet! I just won 30 custom birthday invitations from Papeterie Baby. I entered a contest on Spearmintbaby.com and was the randomly-chosen winner. Papeterie Baby has a ton of other cute designs - you should check em out.



Now for the tough decision: airplanes...



...or trains?



One quick pic from this morning. Amery's new thing is he wants to sit at the dining room table without his booster chair:

New Slide

My co-worker, Laura, gave us this great Little Tikes slide for free! I have a feeling this item will give us hours of toddler entertainment. Thanks Laura!

This is before he figured out how to walk down the slide. Now that's all he wants to do, even if it results in a faceplant to the grass.

Bliss.

What does bath time bliss cost?

Approximately $33.46 at Babies R Us. Bath time lately has been an absolute nightmare. It used to be that we had to pry him from the tub and make a ritual of happily chanting, "Bye-bye water!" over and over until he would get out. Apparently this technique backfired on us as soon as he decided he hated bath time. As soon as we would get him into the bathroom with the tub filled up, bubbles bubbling, favorite toys floating, he would start screaming, "Bye-bye water! Bye-bye water!" while he tried to escape between the removal of each item of clothing.

I figured I would go out this weekend and pick up a few new bath toys to entice him. Then I arrived at daycare after work. Whatever they had for lunch today was plastered into his hair and crusted behind his ear. The daycare ladies apologized, saying they cleaned him up as best they could but he threw a fit. Yep, been there ladies. So we took an immediate detour to BRU on our way home.

About 15 minutes and $33.46 later we walked out with the following recipe for success:


Sassy Count 'n Spell Bath Appliques (good call, Nina!) - $5.99


Sassy Catch 'n Release Net - $2.49 (reg $4.99 but the Sassy bath stuff was BOGO 50% off)

He loves to scoop up the floating toys. Every time it floated away from him he yelled "coop! coop!" until he got it back.




Elmo Tub Mat - $13.99

This was mom's idea. She thought maybe he felt unstable or like he was slipping around too much in the tub. It doesn't stick that great to our cheap 1980's plastic tub, but after he sat on it for a while it stayed in place. He loves to find Elmo under the water.


Fisher Price Ocean Wonders Corner Cubby -$10.99

Ok, I admit, this is for me. I'm an organizational freak, and I hate when the bath toys don't dry all the way. We have the Boon Frog Pod already and it's filled with toys that I'm not ready to part with yet, so I picked up this handy thing to hold the new letters and numbers. I love that the bottom is mesh and hangs over the corner of the tub so everything dries.

Oh, I guess I should elaborate on the outcome. He hopped right in as soon as he saw Elmo and the new letters and numbers waiting for him in the tub. Minimal complaints were heard during hair washing, and he happily got into his PJs post-bath. Right now he's watching Toy Story...hence the reason I have time to blog. :)

Flashback Friday

July 4, 2009 (9 months old)

Happy 4th of July!

Father's Day 2010

I'll try to catch up on blogging about our trip to Colorado when I have some time this coming weekend. Until then, here's some pics I took of Amery for Jon's Father's Day gift (his are framed):




Sorry they're so small. If I try to make them bigger Amery ends up looking like the Elephant Boy.

Flashback Friday

Amery in June 2009.

New Favorite Meal

We had a very exciting dinner the other night - Amery learned how to dip. Ok, so maybe not so exciting for the rest of the world, but I think it's cool. His new favorite meal is organic strawberries (why they're organic), Earth's Best French Toast Sticks with a drizzle of syrup (also known as "Elmo Sticks"), and YoBaby 3-in-1 Meals yogurt with apple and sweet potato (for dipping of course).


Cause food pictures are artsy.


Going in for the dip (notice the different plate since we had this two days in a row).


Toddler success!

Grandma and Grandpa's Visit!

We had a nice long visit with Grandma and Grandpa. Here are some pics of what we did:


Checked out the Austin duck tour.


Got Amery his first pair of boots.


Found a hat he can't take off.


Bought a new lightweight umbrella stroller with a few accessories. So much lighter and easier to tote around than the old travel system stroller. Oh, grandma got him some new kicks, too.


Went to the Cameron Park Zoo in Waco. Two thumbs way up for this zoo. Some of the enclosures are on the small side, but the animals look well taken care of and there were only a couple per area. Lots of indoor air conditioned spots along the trail too. We got through the whole park without feeling rushed in about two hours.

Wordless Wednesday

Everybody's Workin' for the Weekend

One of the reasons I haven't been blogging as much is we've just been too darn busy on the weekends. But it's good busy. I need to get caught up so I can start new with all the fun we'll have when Grandma and Grandpa get to town on Wednesday, so here's a cheater post with a bunch of pictures of all the fun we've had so far this spring (almost summer).

Easter morning at home and at Grammy & Grampy's house.

The new bubble mower is serious business.

It's already in the 90s almost daily here in Austin, so pool playdates with buddies are a must.

Amery-to-English Dictionary

Sorry everyone! I've been promising more pictures from Laura's trip to Austin and I just plain haven't had time to upload them to the blog. So, since I still have no photos to share, we're going to have a little lesson on Amery Speak. This blog entry will serve as a translator to anyone conversing with our one-and-a-half year old.


Ameryspeak: mikka
Translation: milk



(Image copyright of Disney, i.e., don't sue me)
Ameryspeak: Mucka Moo
Translation: Mickey Mouse



Ameryspeak: daddy
Translation: vacuum (Jon is "Papa" so luckily this isn't all that confusing)


Ameryspeak: Mama Me or Meemaw (over and over and over)
Translation: I want to watch Mommy & Me or any other annoying DVD you'll let me watch

Ameryspeak: Neena
Translation: Kona

We've been busy

But I promise to update soon with all the fun stuff we did when Auntie Laura was in town!

Hint - It was at LEAST this much fun: