Happy Valentine's Day

My Valentine's Day card from David!

And the gorgeous flowers that Matt sent me!

Dinosaurs and more

On Saturday, after our Little Gym class and breakfast at Garden Cafe (our typical Sat. morning routine), we took David to the Museum of Nature and Science at Fair Park to see the dinosaur exhibit. We weren't sure if he would enjoy it or be scared, especially since the dinosaurs are really big and move around and make loud roaring noises as you walk through the exhibit. He loved it! He even started making growling noises back at the dinosaurs (which is absolutely adorable and he now makes when you ask him what a dinosaur says) and has been playing with the dinosaurs toy figures that we bought him ever since we got home. 

In addition to the dino exhibit, the museum is the greatest place for kids. We were so over the top excited to discover this place (especially the children's museum part- which is like the mecca for curious/active children). They have all sorts of science experiments that kids can do (which Matt and I really had fun doing and reading about as well-- reminds you how much you have forgotten since high school physics), a sand pit to "dig" up dinosaur bones, and an entire children's museum with all sorts of cool kid stuff (a fire engine with fire suits and hats that the kids put on before hopping into, a music center, a water center (David was more focused on splashing that pouring water in the mills to see how it makes the wheels spin), a performing arts stage and costumes for the kids to dress up in, etc.). We bought a membership and think this will definitely be a place we spend a lot of time in the future.  

This is down in the Children's museum...

 There is a part of the children's museum that is a farm theme where you plant the seeds (this consists of putting different color balls in holes--see pictures below), milk the cow, sort the veggies, collect the eggs from the chickens, etc. It is really neat. David was a big fan of putting the "seeds" in the holes.

Snowpocalypse- Day 4

For the fourth consecutive day, Dallas is snowed in (well, Tuesday was all ice, Wednesday was snow and ice, yesterday was left over snow and ice and today, a new layer of approx. 6 inches of snow!). The roads were a little better yesterday, so Isabel came in for the afternoon and Matt and I were each able to go into the office for a few hours (which was a nice break from being stuck inside, but the drive was not fun).  This morning we woke up to lots of snow and news that both of our firms were closed (which in lawyer terms mean you get to work from home). Luckily, all of the courts are closed so Matt was able to play with David while I got all of my work done so we could go out and play in the snow! Unlike the typical snow in Dallas, this is the kind you can actually play in. Here are the pics and a video of David in the snow:

Emma joined in the fun.

Emma was bouncing around like a bunny in the snow.



 





A Winter Mess

After getting rain and sleet throughout the entire night on Monday, we woke up Tuesday morning to a completely frozen Dallas. Before the temperatures dropped into the teens on Tuesday, we bundled up to go outside and see the frozen neighborhood (and to try to convince Emma to do her business outside). Here are some pictures of our very short trip outside. As you can see, we don't exactly have the necessary winter gear to last very long in these kind of temperatures (because we live in Texas and this is pretty rare).

Unfortunately, Aunt Hayley decided to brave the weather and head into the office on Tuesday. She ended up slipping on the ice outside of a gas station trying to get home and suffered a pretty bad head injury. Matt took her up to the ER and she had 10 staples put in her head-- ouch! We are all definitely staying inside after this...

Lots of New Things - New Table, New Bed and New Potty

When David woke up Sunday morning, he got out of bed, went and found his Tiger house shoes, an oven mitt (which he took out of the kitchen drawer that he can open by standing on his tippy toes) and a water bottle. He gathered all of these items and came into our bedroom to show off his treasures. I didn't get to the camera in time to get him with the oven mitt-- turns out, he could not master the drink with it on, so this picture only partial captures the moment. (PS- All the boxes and stuff in the background relate to the "new" stuff referenced in the title of this post- we went shopping on Saturday afternoon and got David a little table, a toddler bed and some other organization items for the house. After working on them until late Saturday night, we decided to call it a night and left everything out.) 

David's new table. This is him eating breakfast at his own little David sized table.

 We also replaced the crib in our bedroom with a new toddler bed because David figure out that he could escape from the crib (and we didn't think it was safe to have him scaling the side of the crib on hard tile flooring). He seems to like it so far... well, about as much as he liked his crib..

On the way to the park on Sunday afternoon. The weather was perfect!

Kid loves going down the slide, even though he usually falls off the end. He is quite the daredevil.

Just some random pictures. One great thing about Little Gym is that they teach the kids to put toys away by singing this song (Its time to put the balls away, the balls away, etc.). It works great at the house- he is more excited to put the toys up and have us sing than to play with the toys.

Finally, the potty... David has been really interested in flushing the toilet when anyone goes potty at our house, so we decided to buy him a little training potty to sit next to the real potty. We are not trying to potty train him yet, but thought it would be good to get him familiar with and use to sitting on the potty. His potty starts singing whenever you "go" in the potty- it is very cute. By some freak coincidence, he actually went pee-pee in the potty when we sat him there the first night we had the potty. This caused the potty to start singing and David was very impressed. The problem is that now he wants the potty to sing every time we go into the bathroom, but doesn't know how to make it do so. Being the mischievous kid that he is, he took the thing apart and found the sensor that makes it sing. Here is a video of him taking apart the potty, pushing the sensor and then dancing as the potty sings. It is adorable, but I am pretty sure not the best thing for our future potty training efforts.

Saturday Morning and Hair Cut Round 3

Starting this Janurary, Matt and I take David to Little Gym every Saturday morning at 8:30 (which would have been early for us pre-David). I was up early and got some good pictures of David waking up (yes, he was in our bed) and then him waking up Daddy...

After Little Gym, we headed to get David a new haircut. We had to kill some time before Snip-its opened so we stopped by SMU campus to play around. Notice David's crazy hair...

He did much better this time. Turns out, he just hates the cape. He will no longer wear a bib when he eats and as soon as they put the cape on him, he started crying. We took it off and the rest of the haircut went just fine (helped in part by the sucker). They even used the clippers to give him a real big-boy haircut.

Here is an after picture with his new "boy" haircut. He looks so grown. Better pictures to come on later posts.

Happy Birthday Isabel

Last Friday was Isabel's birthday! We stayed up late on Thursday decorating the house and went to Whole Foods to get a cake (I am really bad at baking, so it is not much of a gift to have a cake from me). We have been so blessed to have Isabel in our lives the last year and hope that she had the absolute best birthday!



The Little Helper

David loves to help, especially with cooking and making coffee. Since he gets pretty heavy to hold while trying to do these tasks, I was really excited to find this kitchen helper stand (One Step Ahead online- great for kids stuff). It arrived last night and, like everything made for children, required some assembly, which, as you can see,  David was more than willing to help with as well.  David did great pushing the button to turn the drill and using the screwdriver (although he wanted to try to use it anywhere but where there were actual screws). So far the reviews are good... he really likes his stand and used it to watch me cook a late dinner last night. It was very cute-- he has learned to say hot and so he pointed to the pan and said hot the entire time.

Oklahoma, Caroline, and the 15-Month Check-Up

We are still catching up on seeing everyone after our Christmas vacation (that being, we missed seeing a lot of family during the holidays because we were off enjoying the Caribbean). We headed up (via plane since David is still not a fan of car rides) to OKC to see Matt's grandparents (MiMar and Granddad - David's great grandparents) and to meet Caroline (Jake and Stacey's little girl who was born last week). David also got to visit with his Uncle Luke (who didn't get to go on our cruise because of his new job) and Matt's cousin Shelly.

David also picked up a new word since we got back from our cruise- Bruce. As odd as it sounds, the kid clearly says Bruce when he sees his Papa Bruce (Matt's dad). He also has decided that all dogs are named Emma as our dog and our neighbor's dog, the only two dogs that he really spends any time with, are both named Emma. It was a bit confusing for him to get the concept that Granny D's and Papa Bruce's dogs were named Gunner and Winston and he promptly rejected that concept referring to them as Emma the entire trip.

David has discovered climbing and was a huge fan of getting onto the coffee table. We would otherwise have tried to discourage this behavior, but he was being quite the "into everything" toddler at his grandparents...so this turned out to be the least destructive activity.

Granny D made super yummy spaghetti and David loved it...

Caroline - The greatest part of our weekend was meeting Jake and Stacy's beautiful daughter, Caroline. Matt has been best friends with Jake since they were in grade school and we just love he and his wife Stacy (although we don't see them as much as we would like). They are an amazing couple and will be great parents and it was such a treat to meet their daughter (who we refer to as David's future girlfriend). Caroline is just perfect. David was really good meeting her and gave her the sweetest hug when we first got there. It was amazingly adorable, but I, of course, did not get a picture of them together. Jake, who is an extremely proud new daddy, had the video camera on hand and got a great video of the moment that I imagime we will be using to embarass our children in a decade or so.

 Notice Jake and Stacy's little dog, Rigley, next to me in this picture-- David also referred to her as Emma.

 How cute is this little outfit..a week old and the child is already sylish!

Finally, David had his 15-month check-up this morning. He is in perfect health and progressing as expected. His stats were 24 lbs 2 oz for weight (50% percentile), 32.5 inches in length (85% percentile), and 18.5 for head circumference (45% percentile).