So inquisitive

Nathan is almost 2.5 which means he is now at the stage where he is asking lots of questions. I can't tell you how many times a day I hear "What's that mommy?" or "What are you doing mommy?" and today while I was looking for something, "What are you looking for mommy?" He is such a curious young man.

Pictures

Just a few pictures from his 2 year and family photo shoots:

Costumes and Mashed Potatoes

As Nathan is talking more and more (saying crazy long sentences, singing any song he hears, and reciting nursery rhymes and books) it's fun to see what he thinks about the world around him. He comes up with some interesting names for things based on association. He calls lollipops "costumes" because he remembers getting them for Halloween when he had to wear a costume. Other candy he usually calls "Trick-or-Treat" for the same reason. Mr. Potato Head in our house is "Mashed Potatoes." My reaction must have been priceless the first time Nathan said he wanted to play with Mashed Potatoes.

And one more cute thing. Yesterday Nathan decided to line up his books to make a track for his trains...how cute and smart is that!

I'll have to post some more updates later.

Just for memory sake

I just copied the sidebar with Nathan's favorites before I updated it so we wouldn't forget his favorites:
Favorite Fruit: I love them all!
Favorite Veggie: Carrots (raw please)
Favorite Animal: Cat
Favorite Toy: Slide
Favorite Uncle: Uncle Dave (my only uncle)
Favorite type of vehicle: Airplane
Favorite Shape: Oval
Favorite Song: The Wheels on the Bus
Favorite Color: Orange
Favorite Book: No David by David Shannon

The Zoo

Nathan is finally beginning to really enjoy the zoo. Since the weather was beautiful today we headed out after lunch to see some of our feathered, four-legged, and furry friends. Nathan really wanted to see the giraffes, tigers, and monkeys. We got to see 2 of the 3 so that wasn't bad (the giraffes were hiding out somewhere warm not anticipating a 60 degree day). Nathan was also very impressed by the butterflies. We went to visit the crocodile where he told the zoo worker that the crocodile says tick-tock, tick-tock (from Peter Pan).

Catch Up Time

Alright, both kiddos are sleeping and AT&T just called to say our internet speed has been upgraded, so I just may have time to finally play catch up here with Nathan's blog.

I think we have to go all the way back to Turkey Day. Of course, being so bad at remembering my camera I don't have any pictures. We spent Thanksgiving with Michelle's family. Nathan had fun with Grandma and Grandpa and Aunt Jenni. Here is a really cute picture of Nathan from a couple days before Thanksgiving.


2 days after Thanksgiving Grandpa (Jon's dad) got married to Grandma Judy. Again, bad mom, no pictures. Nathan did really good for most of the ceremony but he was very fascinated by the fountain in the back of the chapel. The person performing the ceremony told me afterwards he was afraid Nathan was just going to jump in.

December brought snow. Now I'm a good mommy and have some pictures. Here he is all bundled up and ready to play.

Being pulled around the back yard on the sled. I think we will attempt a hill next year when he's a bit closer to 3.


I have always wanted to make a gingerbread house, so on Christmas Eve that is just what we did...well sort of, it's a graham cracker house.


After building our graham cracker house it was time to open our Christmas Eve presents (jammies).

Christmas morning we woke to this.

Nathan really enjoyed opening presents this year and he really understood the whole idea of presents. Lucky kid got to open presents 4 days in a row and then had a birthday a few days later. He was a bit confused when he no longer got to open any presents.


Christmas Day was spent with Michelle's family. Here is Nathan opening a present from Grandma and Grandpa. Then the day after Christmas we spent with Jon's family.

Nathan was very interested in Grandpa Didgeridoo:
Cousins: Tyler, Nathan, and Emily
Our family:
Whew this is a long post. Well at least I'm through Christmas now. I will post more soon.

I Love You

Nathan has started to give us completely unsolicited I Love Yous. It is so cute and I love hearing him say I Love Mommy (or Daddy or Emily). I still have so much to catch up on but when do I find time to blog with such a busy toddler. This past weekend we went to Grand Rapids and it was Nathan's first time in a hotel. We went to the Children's Museum and he had a blast. Pictures are still on my camera because I am running out of space on my computer.

"Thank you for peaches"

Ok, so I am soooooo far behind on blogging for the kids, and I still have to post about Christmas and Nathan's birthday (which was a blast, he had so much fun) and oh so many other things but I had to post what happened today.

I was oh so tired and knew Emily would be waking from her nap soon so I tried to convince Nathan to take a nap with me. We went and laid in "Mommy's bed" and pulled up the covers and I closed my eyes. Next thing I hear is Nathan saying "Father, thank you for day, thank you for peaches, thank you for peanut butter and jelly, amen." It was too cute.

Another cute prayer story, on Sunday we went to Tyler's (Nathan's cousin) baptism. It wasn't at our church and things were a bit different for us, like there were no kids at the service except for ours and Tyler. The rest were either in the nursery or "children's church" so it was very quite, as compared to a typical LDS sacrament meeting. While Tyler was being baptized the reverend said "amen" and Nathan very loud and proud said "AMEN!". I think everyone in the chapel must have heard it because everyone chuckled.

He's one smart cookie!

I was completely shocked by this during bath time this evening. Nathan was playing with his toys, which includes a foam number and letter set, and he started naming some of the letters correctly. He couldn't do them all but he got about 10 of them right on the first try . I had no idea he could do this since he usually just calls all letters "D."

In the video he does get one letter wrong. I just picked random letters and did them in no particular order. I didn't get this on video but for the letter "W" he calls it "WX." Most kids think L M N O P are all one letter, my kid thinks W X is one letter.

Nathan and Mommy sing the ABCs (and other things that make me so smart)

Nathan is trying to learn the alphabet song. We practice every day and he's getting quite good despite the fact that he seems to only join in around "H" or so.


Nathan's counting is also getting better. He no longer hates the numbers 1 and 4, so now he only discriminates against the number 9.
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10!

Nathan is also trying to learn his colors, but they can be tricky. He has orange, black, and brown pretty good now. He sometimes gets blue and green right too.

Nathan is starting to speak in little 2-3 word sentences, its great. His first sentence was "Shut the door."

As I said in the other post, Nathan is "reading." He has actually started memorizing some of his favorite books and reads along with us when we read to him. So cute!

Nathan knows that boats go in water and airplanes and stars are in the sky. And he knows so many other things, he is one smart cookie.

Nathan Reads a Book

We are very excited that Nathan's favorite activity seems to be reading. He enjoys reading even more than running around being crazy (which he does quite a bit). Most afternoons after his nap, Nathan will take his blankets and pillows off his bed and sit on the floor by the foot of his bed reading books until I go in and get him (I suspect that some afternoons he starts his nap out like this too because there have been times I have caught him sleeping on top of his pile of pillows and blankets and books and toys). Then I have a proud mommy moment because my not even 2 year old loves to read! Not only does he like to read but he loves being read to. Several times a day he will come up to me holding a book and say "read to to." I think he means "read to you" which is what I say ("Do you want me to read to you?").

Halloween 2008 Pictures

I'm finally getting around to adding this year's Halloween pictures. Both kids were little pumpkins so we had our own little family pumpkin patch.

Trick-or-Treat!

Although Nathan went out for Halloween last year this year he REALLY understood what Halloween is all about.

Halloween 2007- Dragon

(we didn't realize until after pictures that you can't see the teeth on the top of the cotume) Nathan had several opportunities to trick-or-treat this year. We went to Zoo Boo! We had our church "trunk"-or treat which ended up being a "hallway"-or-treat do to yucky weather. Then at Book Tots (story time at the library) they did a little trick-or-treat activity. And of course Halloween night. We went to Grandma and Grandpa's house to trick-or treat in their neighborhood. While we were at G-ma and G-pa's house waiting to start he found g-ma's candy that she was passing out and kept going up to the bowl, said trick-or-treat, and helped himself to a piece of candy! The first couple of houses he decided that he was just going to walk right on in the door. Luckily they were all houses of very good family friends. After that he got the hang of it and had a blast. He was very polite and said trick-or-treat and thank you at every house. He was even more excited if the house had a dog. He would say "dog, woof, woof." Now we just need to figure out where to hide the candy so we can control how much he eats. Between Nathan and Emily (because I of course had a basket for her candy too) we brought home about 5 lbs of candy. Not too bad for only doing two streets with only a few people giving out candy.

This year's pictures to come soon!

Nathan Goes To School!

Today was Nathan's first day of preschool! I can't believe that our little boy is going to school. We found a great program for toddlers that share many of our educational beliefs. He will be in school two mornings a week. I'm hoping this will give him the social interaction he craves. I'm also hoping that this will give him an outlet for all of his extra energy. And for me it gives me time to focus on Emily and doing things that are just so much more difficult to do with 2 children.

I wasn't sure how Nathan was going to react. When he first started gong to nursery at church he would cry, but now he is excited to go to nursery and bounces down the hall and right on in without any tears. Of course at home we have been preparing him by telling him that he was going to school. When we got there he was excited and recognized the classroom from our visit earlier this month. I was able to walk out the door without any tears from him or me. I think he is really going to like going to preschool. Only 1.5 hours until I pick him up. I better go do the things I need to get done!

In the car with the school in the background:

In the office getting all the paperwork turned in:

With his teacher, Miss Megan:

Playing:

More pictures to come after I pick him up! OK I lied, no more pictures. There weren't very many photo ops (didn't want to get pictures of the other kids knowing that I wanted to put them online). I have decided 3 hours is NOT a long time at all and I still barely got anything done, but Nathan had a blast and that is all that counts!

Pictures!

Here are some recent pictures (we freed up so computer space by deleting programs that came preloaded on the computer that we have NEVER used and didn't even know were there, so we have pictures again). Enjoy!

Carving the pumpkin. Nathan actually was not into touching all the pumpkin goo. He wanted nothing to do with it until it was completely cleaned out. The picture with him reaching his arm in he is trying to get a toy. It's the only way we could get him to reach inside the pumpkin.




The finished product. Daddy did the carving but Nathan picked the design. We gave him a few to choose from and of course he wanted "Twinkle, twinkle little stars" because he can't just call them starts, they are twinkle, twinkle little stars.Zoo Boo:

I just wanted to show that even Nathan can fit in my baby wrap. So yes even if you have a good sized baby you can still benefit from the sleepy wrap!

Just being cute:Loving my sister:
Hurricane Nathan struck. What he's still there!
He's been wanting to get in this swing since we brought it upstairs. Something tells me he's just too big:

Potty Training?

Back when Nathan was 12-13 months old I was determined to attempt potty training. So we would put him on the potty throughout the day and every time he would go pee. Then when he was 14 months I (Michelle) took a temporary job for a month and that ended our potty efforts. Since then Nathan has had no interest in the potty. I was so afraid that we had missed our window, that now it would be a very long time before he showed any interest in potty training.

A few days ago he came up to me holding a pair of Big Boy Underwear (we bought him a few pairs to try to encourage). He was trying to put them on over his pants. So I took off his diaper and put them on. Of course he wet his pants, but he was at least showing interest.

This evening Jon was changing Emily's diaper and Nathan comes up to me and says "poop." Every once in a while he will tell me when he has already gone poop, so I just assumed that was what he was telling me so I told Jon to change Nathan when he was done with Emily. Well it turns out that Nathan was mid-poop when Jon started changing him. So he ran to the toilet and Nathan finished up on the potty! I really think he may have been trying to tell me he had to go poop. I hope this is the start of the process!

Zoo-Boo!

This past Saturday we went to Zoo-Boo with some friends who we have not seen in quite a while. It was great to see old friends. Nathan (and Emily) are our little pumpkin patch this year. They were so cute in their costumes. I will post pictures as soon as I get my computer issue resolved (see Emily's blog if you are interested in exactly what those computer issues are).

The Pumpkin Patch

Today was our first annual trip to the pumpkin patch. Mommy took tons of pictures. Enjoy!











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Nathan also got to bounce in the bounce house and see lots of animals. Maybe I will get those pictures uploaded another day, but if not your not missing much (the bounce house pictures aren't that good and the animals don't have Nathan in any of the pictures).