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:

Children's Museum

Amery made his first trip to the Austin Children's Museum on Sunday. We took advantage of the free hour offered by the museum from 4 to 5 pm every Sunday. That hour exceeds his toddler attention span by a good 45 minutes so that was plenty of time. Turns out everyone else in Austin takes advantage of the free hour, but we still had fun:

Checking out the wind tunnel.

Taking after mama.

Hanging out with papa.

Building stuff.

Eighteen Month Check Up

This is going to be a pretty boring post because there's not much to say - he's completely healthy! Considering he had one continuous ear infection from November through February this is the best check-up we've had in a long time. His height is 32.5 inches (51st percentile) and his weight is 23 lbs 14.5 oz (21st percentile). He's tall and skinny and perfect.

Amery's favorite words right now are: Neena (Kona), mama, papa (usually said in a whisper, your guess is as good as ours), Dukel (for both cats, not just Feral Dukel), hi, bye, eat (using the sign for 'eat' and said more like eeeeeeeeeeeat), and of course, mine. He says other words, but these are his faves.

We hung out at the park with some friends today:



And that's all we got.

Bluebonnets!

One thing you learn pretty quickly after moving to Texas is that it is tradition to take your kids, plop them down in a field of bluebonnets, and snap as many pictures as possible before they start eating them or throwing a major temper tantrum, whichever happens first. We were lucky to catch Amery on a good day and he seemed to rather enjoy the experience.

Easter Egg Hunt

We met up with a whole bunch of mamas and babies at the park today for an Easter egg hunt. It was Amery's first and I wasn't sure if he'd be into it. He was into it.


Hey, what's this thing?


Whoa, here's another one.


You mean I get to keep 'em? Sweet!


I think I can fit a few more in here.

Don't worry, I gave a few of these to the littler kids. They pretty much crawled around and drooled the whole time. Not like I ever did that.

He was pleasantly surprised to discover that there was stuff to eat inside the eggs.