Left, Left, Left Right Left

We're working on left and right.  Apparently, he's pretty good at it.

In case you're wondering why his face is so messy, it's because he ate four bowls of frozen blueberries.

Weekend On Our Own

It was our first two days without Dad since last spring.  We miss him.  But we made the best of it.

Friday night it poured down rain so everything was soggy Saturday.  Even though it was a beautiful day, we headed to the indoor playground while the sun dried the outdoor stuff.  I didn't take the camera, which didn't matter much anyway since Brendan wouldn't do much of anything unless I did it with him.  After about an hour he kept telling me "eat, eat" so we left to go get some lunch.  We headed to the Chinese restaurant we used to go to all the time.  As soon as we walked inside he started yelling "NO!"  I have no idea what his problem was, but we definitely couldn't eat there.  We left.  And went to McDonald's.  And all was right in Brendan's world.

After his nap it was still pretty out, so we got out his bike.

This is as far as we got....which is right in front of our house.

We ditched the bike and walked to the playground.  Our new favorite game is jumping over the cracks together.

He wouldn't do much playing on the equipment.  There was another kid there and lately he'd rather watch what everyone else is doing than play.

He did find a wayward piece of sidewalk chalk, and he had a good time with it until he threw it in the trash can and I wouldn't let him dig it out.  Then it was time to head home.

This morning we were out of the house bright and early...to go to church.  We tried a new church, and we both seemed to like it.  We'll try again next week, and then we'll see if Dad likes it when he gets home.

We bought some groceries, and had some lunch.  Brendan likes Subway, but he doesn't like his sandwich.  He doesn't eat much bread, unless it's in the form of a cinnamon raisin bagel.  He doesn't really like lunch meat either.  Or cheese.  He ate baked Doritos and yogurt.  Together.  As in, he dipped his nacho doritos into his yogurt.  Yuck.  But better for him than chicken nuggets.  FYI - he ate a hamburger at McDonald's yesterday, never chicken nuggets.

He took a long, glorious nap, and then we headed out to play.  I cooked lasagna so we just went to the little playground by our house while it was in the oven.  We had more success with the bike today.

I've learned that I'm not always a big fan of other people's kids.  I like all kids, for the most part, but sometimes I'd prefer to just be around my own.  Especially when other kids are being bossy at the playground.  And really especially when their parents aren't at the playground with them.  Tom's fix for that is to tell him he hears their mom calling.  I haven't progressed to that point yet, but I was close today.

We still had a good time.



Favorite January Photo

My favorite photo from this past month for the Paper Mama Photo Challenge and the Click It Up A Notch Photo Challenge.

No contest. This is probably one of my favorite photos ever.

Happy Birthday, Peanut!

I can't believe our little peanut is 2 years old.  How did that happen so fast?

We had his party last weekend since we knew Daddy was going to have to go out of town.  We considered bowling, but since the bowling alley doesn't even open until around nap time, that was out.  We knew we needed an indoor venue, and we knew we did NOT want to have the party at our house.

Xystus Kidsland to the rescue.

We miss you, Taeko.

When he got up from his nap he was delighted to find a basketball goal in our living room.

He could hardly contain his excitement.

You should just hear how excited I get when my boy makes a basket.  I'll always be his biggest cheerleader.  For now he loves it.  I know in a few years I'll be an embarrassment.

He loves to be just like Dad.

Since today was his actual birthday, we had a date for birthday pancakes.

He had his two year well check-up (he checked out perfectly), and he doesn't need shots (except the flu shot) until he's 4!

I heard he had a rough afternoon at daycare.  This is probably due mostly to boredom since he is now the oldest in his class.  I'm sure the dreary weather and lack of outdoor play also has a lot to do with it.  So we went home and hung out together.  We ordered pizza, and ate chocolate cupcakes.

Don't worry, Dad, I'm giving the rest of the cupcakes away and we'll be eating lots of fruits and veggies the rest of the time you are gone.  Today was just special. 

We Moved!

We've been MIA lately because we've been so busy MOVING!  We moved from off base to on base, and although we were pretty ticked about the circumstances that caused our move, it could not have worked out any better.  Sometimes I hate people who tell you "everything always happens for a reason," but in this situation, it's true.  We love just about everything about our new house.

Brendan loves our new blinds.

I have a feeling we'll be paying for a few of those when we leave here.

We moved into a neighborhood on base that we didn't even know existed until they offered us this house.  It's at the top of a huge hill and we can actually see off base when we look out our windows. 

Some of the things we love about our new house:

There is a playground in our cul-de-sac. 

There is more than one electrical outlet per room.

The kitchen has so much cabinet space that I don't even have enough stuff to fill it.

There's a pantry!

There's a garbage disposal!

It takes me 6 minutes to get to daycare.

There's no mismatched wallpaper.

We even have a carport, which means my back no longer gets soaked while I buckle Brendan into his car seat.  And the peace and quiet is phenomenal.

We really enjoyed our time off base, and we miss a few things about it, especially our neighbors, but we are so happy to be where we are now.

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This weekend we headed to Nago to go to the Neo Park Zoo.

It. Was. Awful.  Disgusting isn't even the word.  It was pitiful. And stinky.  And depressing.  I refused to take pictures of the animals (beside the birds).

The first "exhibit" is a sort of aviary where you can feed the birds.  These big guys made me nervous because they'd creep up behind you.



I let Brendan feed them from the safety of his stroller and I was afraid they would realize he had food and peck him.  Thankfully, they didn't.  We had to walk, and wheel the stroller, through bird poop.  It was awful.  Tom was convinced we would all end up with the bird flu.

The place was a big ripoff.  You had to pay admission, and we also bought tickets for the train.  Then we got to the petting zoo (if you could call it that), and you had to pay admission to that, too.  We would have had to pay for both Tom and me, but Brendan was free.  That made no sense to me since we would have been going in order to let him feed the animals.  So we skipped it.  Then we got to the monkeys, but you had to pay to see them, too.  So we skipped that as well.  At that point, we were both ready to hit the road.

We did end up taking the train ride, since we had already paid for it.   By then Brendan was ready for his nap, so Daddy got some good snuggles.  The day wasn't a total bust - these are two of my all time favorite pictures of my boys.

He rallied when he saw these things.

Today dawned cold and rainy.  Our boy does not do well inside the house all day.  It makes all three of us miserable.  So off to the play land we went.

Daddy tried to go down the slide backwards.  I heard a big thump and turned around to see this:

Shootin' some hoops with Mom.

Hopefully it won't be two weeks before I post again.  Somebody is having a birthday party this weekend!