2 Years, 2 Months, and 2 Days: An Update

You are the [one] that I've always dreamed of I knew it from the start I saw your face and that's the last I've seen of my heart 2 year stats from May 2 check-up: Weight: 28 lbs. 5 oz. - 50th percentile Height: 35.25 in. - 66th percentile Head circumference: 19.75 in. - 83rd percentile It's about time for another update on our little charmer.  Communication has become much easier as Davis' vocabulary and sentence usage has increased and since he finally started saying the word "yes" so that he can answer yes/no questions.  He definitely knows how to make his wishes known [for example, "want eye keem, Mommy" (ice cream)] and naturally it devastates him if he doesn't get his way.  For the most part, he is a happy, laid-back kid, but he likes to have those two year old moments sometimes.  Once he had a 15 minute crying jag because I gave him the wrong kind of cereal for breakfast.  Heaven forbid!  Some of the things he loves are playing outside, hats, balls, snacks ("eat," "hungee," and "nack" are some of his favorite new words, it seems), pouring water, American flags, wind chimes, and jumping on things.  He has recently become obsessed with Veggie Tales - he likes to sing, and his current favorite is the Veggie Tales theme song.  He can climb ladders now and swing on the big kid swings.  He loves reading books at bedtime and once I found him with one of the books "reading" it to himself - "Night-night, sheep.  Night-night, cat.  Night-night, bird.  Night-night, goose.  Night-night, bee..."  He now says "I love you, [insert person's name here]" in the sweetest way possible and gives good hugs and kisses.  One morning in church, he spent the entire closing song alternating between kissing Daddy and kissing Mommy.  He is very good about saying "Thank you, Mommy" all the time and it is just adorable!  He demonstrates empathy, and if he thinks you are sad or hurt, he will come to you with a concerned face and give you a hug while patting you consolingly on the back.  It just melts my heart. We love you, little man!  You totally have our hearts!

Wedding Weekend

Last weekend, we traveled to Cookeville, Tennessee for the wedding of one of Greg's cousins.  The bride and groom were happy and beautiful, and it was a lovely time with family. I have decided, however, that attending a wedding with a 2 year old is far more stressful than being the one actually getting married.  This is no joke.  After Davis burned through his snacks in the first thirty seconds of the ceremony, he started talking (and it was a big space with all hard surfaces, so his noise was distracting) and the two of us spent the rest of the ceremony in the bathroom because it was raining outside and I couldn't find any other place to go.  I tried to bring him back out a couple of times but he would loudly say, "QUIET!  SHHH!" and back into the bathroom we would go.  Ha ha!  The reception included several fun events like walking out onto the floor and saying "HI!" during the toasts; splashing water on the dance floor; having two really bad dirty diapers during the reception and running out of wipes; gorging himself on M&Ms, staining his vest with red M&M coating, and then chugging water and throwing up a little; head-butting Mommy really hard during the anniversary dance, thinking it was funny, and continuing to do it repeatedly; and so on. You get the picture.  :)  But it was a beautiful wedding in spite of the rainy day and Davis did love the dancing! Some highlights of the weekend for Davis: taking a 3-hour nap in the car going both ways (which sure makes a 5.5 hour car ride more bearable) sleeping on his inflatable toddler bed for the first time instead of a pack-n-play and doing very well with it (although it's crazy how fast he would pop out of that bed as soon as he woke up, including at 2am when I suddenly heard him say "bear!" and he was already out of bed and walking around the dark room looking for his misplaced teddy bear) playing with his cousins Jack and Ellie - especially having Jack chase him up and down the hallway while he laughed and laughed meeting his second cousin Charlotte (who is just a couple months younger) and running around with her dancing at the reception going to the store to kill time and playing with balls and wearing an awesome bike helmet that looked like a monster (though he was very very sad when we had to leave the helmet at the store) seeing Great-Grandpa again and having a very sweet exchange of "I love yous" that I was able to record  showing off his suit    the four cousins    dancing with Daddy...    ... and with his cousin Jack    you should always wear a bike helmet while holding a golf club   playing with cousin Ellie  four generations of Mueller men   with Great-Grandpa



The Holiday Curse

It seems that Davis is cursed to be sick for almost every holiday.  He was sick for his first Christmas, this past Thanksgiving, and now Easter!   I pretty much spent the three days before Easter trapped on the couch with a feverish, sickly two year old lying on my chest.  This was a disappointment, because not only do I hate to see my little one feeling so unwell, but we were also unable to do a lot of the fun Easter activties that I had hoped to do, like dying eggs and going to a community Easter egg hunt.  On the bright side, Davis is still too young to have any idea what he's missing, so at least I didn't have a sick kid who was also devastated at not hunting for eggs.  Thankfully, he felt better enough on Easter Sunday itself that we were able to attend church.  Davis adored the special music and clapped after the beautiful prelude.  :)  When we came home, he was eager to get his hands on his Easter basket.  Again, it's lucky that he's still so young, because I didn't have a chance to go to the store like I'd planned, so his Easter basket was a little bit on the slim-pickings side.  But he was happy opening the plastic eggs and lining up the handful of chocolate bunnies that he got.  He also learned to say a new word: "Bunny!"  And since the afternoon was sunny and semi-warm, we even got to take a walk and play at the park . . . with jackets on instead of winter coats! Will this curse of holiday illnesses ever be broken?  I would like to petition for all holidays to be moved to the May-September time period so that no further holidays are disrupted or ruined by the attack of mean, nasty germs.  Who's with me? waiting for church to begin . . . I love how his hand is in his pocket and he looks like a little man Look, mom, a bunny!   So many bunnies!

Terrific Two

In this family, we are low-key about birthdays.  As luck would have it, though, Davis' second birthday fell on a Saturday, so we were able to have my parents, my sister, Greg's brother and his wife and son, and Davis' best buddy Nolan and his parents over on Saturday morning to celebrate.  We had already celebrated with Greg's parents the week before when they were town. Last year, I chickened out on the birthday cake front and got a store-bought cake.  This year, Greg was adamant that Davis needed to have an Elmo birthday cake, as he has a bit of a toddler crush on Elmo at the moment.  So I did what any modern mama would do and Googled Elmo cakes until I found one that professed to be The Easiest Elmo Cake Ever.  Not being much of a baker, I was a bit nervous about this little project.  The cake looked weird after I baked it, I had trouble figuring out how to put my homemade buttercream frosting on it smoothly, and I was not especially confident about how the decorating would go. But - I think it turned out pretty nice, don't you? Davis was pretty impressed by his Elmo cake, at least.  In the days since his birthday, he has asked for "Elmo cake" more than once (even though it is long gone).  :) He was probably wondering what on earth we were doing when we sang Happy Birthday to him (Greg had to hold his hands to keep him from grabbing the cake - he must have wanted a repeat of the first birthday cake smash!).  Maybe next year he'll be old enough to figure out the blow-out-the-candles part of birthdays. The cake-eating festivities this year were significantly less messy than the first birthday.  :) Davis' little cousin Leo thinks Davis is 2 cool - haha, love it!  He was ready to party!   Best buddy Nolan had a great time playing with Davis' new (and old) toys. It must have been a successful morning of birthday fun, because Davis certainly did take a great nap afterwards (and Mommy got a nap, too!). On Sunday we made some sugar cookies shaped like the number 2.  Davis likes to say, "Two!" and was happy to make his Cheese Face for the camera before eating one of his special birthday cookies. We may only be three days into having a 2-year-old, but so far it's pretty much awesome.  Terrible two moments aside, we are loving his personality and watching him grow up!

From Loving the Life We Live

Happy 2nd Birthday, Davis!

Today our precious brown-eyed baby turned two years old. *sigh* Such a big boy now! More pictures and a recap of the big day will be forthcoming next week sometime, but right now, I'm wiped out from birthday fun.  Suffice to say that Davis had a super fun second birthday! We love you, little man!

From Loving the Life We Live

Official February 2013 Post

I just realized that I have no posts yet for February, so I'm throwing some random pictures up here to make an Official February 2013 Post. Davis thinks he's pretty hot stuff when he wears his sunglasses.   A busy day at the crayon un-peeling factory.  He patiently peeled wrappers off crayons (with the occasional sigh thrown in) for at least a solid half hour.   This kid loves to play with hats!  One of this morning's activities was putting pipecleaners through the holes in an upside-down colander.    My parents came to stay for the weekend earlier this month and I just had to share this picture of Davis riding horseback Grammy-back because I think he just looks so cute and happy in it!   We have officially entered what I have labeled "The Cheese Phase."  I was trying to take pictures of Davis playing MegaBloks with his grandparents.  Here, he has noticed the camera and is pointing at it while loudly alerting my parents to the fact that THERE IS A CAMERA.  This is IMPORTANT BREAKING NEWS, people!    Immediately afterwards, Davis turned to me and said "Cheese!"   Here is a close-up of his Cheese Face.  I thnk that we will be seeing quite a bit of this Cheese Face during the Cheese Phase (unfortunately, because he has such a cute smile).  I'm interested to see what happens when we get his 2 year pictures taken. Speaking of which, my baby is turning 2 in just two and a half short weeks.  Wowzers!! 

From Loving the Life We Live

I'm a MOMMY!

It is rather odd how excited a parent can get over some little thing that their child does.  You will have to bear with me as I indulge in telling a few stories of little things that have happened this week to bring joy to this mommy's heart.

This has been a landmark week for me.  This week, my son is finally calling me "Mommy!"

(insert rainbows, smiley faces, and happy sparkly unicorns)

Prior to this week, I have been "Mama" or, lately, just plain "Ma" - or perhaps I should say "MAAAAA!"  Since Mommy is my chosen name, I was ecstatic to hear it for the first time ever coming from the lips of my child.  It just melts my heart every time I hear him say it.  :)

In other news, after bathtime last night I was singing "How Much is that Doggy in the Window" in front of the bathroom mirror, only this time Davis happily chimed in with the "WOOF WOOF"s.  Again, super exciting to me although probably ho-hum to anyone else.

This morning, Davis got out his nursery rhyme book.  He was looking at the "This Little Piggy" nursery rhyme and then spontaneously took off his sock and grabbed his big toe!  Interestingly enough, I am always trying to play "this little piggy" with him and he is not especially interested in it and almost never lets me do all his toes.

Speaking of socks, Davis is rather obsessed with them.  First thing in the morning when I go to his crib, he grabs the feet of his sleeper and says "sock."  He will ask for socks when I'm dressing him and always tries to put them on (same thing with "shirt," which he will sometimes pick for himself out of his dresser).  He found one of Daddy's socks on the floor this morning, said "sock," took off his own sock, and then tried to put Daddy's sock on.  After some assistance from me, he realized that the sock was too big, so he took it off and tried to put his own back on.  We went to play with his little friend Nolan today, and Nolan has a habit of taking off one (but only one) sock.  When Davis realized that Nolan had a bare foot, he said "sock," so I handed Nolan's sock to him and Davis bent down and tried to put the sock on Nolan's foot!  Nolan, bless his heart, was more than happy to let Davis do this and agreeably lifted up his foot and tried to poke his toes into the sock that Davis was holding open.

On Sunday, I swear that Davis said a complete sentence: "Get the ball."  If you don't believe me, there were witnesses - unbiased third parties who confirmed that they heard him say "get the ball."  I am so looking forward to having a child who can really talk.  Davis has at least 80 words now, so he is on the way.  His newest word today is "mine."  Hmmm...that might not be one of my favorite words for him to say.

It is the cutest thing ever hearing Davis count.  He has started counting to three before doing something, like throwing a ball or jumping off the couch.  It is nice that he gives us some warning, in case he has something forbidden in his hand to throw - we have to the count of three to get to him and prevent disaster from occuring!

Yep, though hard to believe, I am most definitely a mommy.  I get all excited about every little thing this kid says and does, and now for the first time someone in this world calls me "Mommy."  :)  If you, for some crazy reason, don't find these little stories and tidbits as fascinating as I do, you may want to step away from this blog!  It is sure to become my way of recording all these funny and heart-warming little anecdotes so that I won't forget them, because every moment is so precious and I want to remember it all!

From Loving the Life We Live