2 Years Old

Well, the little munchkin is now 2 years old. We had his birthday party on Saturday, and it went great. We had to do all of the decorations while he was down for his nap, so when he got up and saw everything, he started walking around in amazement, then started running around, excited. He loved seeing "coos" everywhere. The paw print cookies were a big success, and he loved the Blue that was stuck in the middle of his cake. He would not sit still for any pictures except when he was eating his cake (of which he liked the frosting the most!).
He loved all the gifts he received, as we can attest to, since they are strewn all over the living room floor. In particular, he loved the new cars and the car rug to drive them on, as well as the little train track he received (thanks Bevans), and is also now enjoying eating with the Cars spoon and fork that his Grandma and Grandpa Cate bought him.
Jacob's eating habits have changed a bit. The biggest change is that he is very picky, and other than french fries, you never know what he will and will not like. One new habit, though, is his hating having food on his hands. We attribute this to hanging out with Abby Bevan, who hates having dirty hands. So anyways, with his being new to using utensils, you can imagine what this is like. He will try to pick something up with his new fork, only to have it fall off. So he will then pick the food up, put it on the fork to eat it, and then cry out until you wipe off his now dirty hand. This can continue for the whole meal (as it did last night). We go through several paper towels at each meal, now.

A boy and his dog

Jacob continues to be fascinated with Blue. Every time he sees a paw print, he yells out "a coo, a coo." And he calls the show "Coos coos." I don't know why, because he can say "Blue." Just one of those things.
Well, this Saturday Jacob turns 2. Hard to believe that he is already 2 years old. Anybody who sees him, though, swears he is older. He is just such a big kid. Sometimes I think we expect more of him because he does look so much bigger than his age. Oh well.
We are throwing a "Blue's Clues" themed party for him this Saturday. We found cake toppers so he can have a Blue cake (not as easy as you might think). Everything is going to be blue. Somebody thought we should get a pinata shaped like Blue, but we thought Jacob might not take too well to people beating his absolute favorite character with a stick.
The weather is finally starting to change here, and it looks like Summer is on its way out. We have broken out the long pants for Jacob once again. That was no problem. The problem is that he has become quite fond of wearing sandals, and when we tried the other day to put socks and regular shoes on his feet, he threw a fit.
Jacob has definitely become more social. Originally we couldn't get him to stay in nursery, and were wondering if all our hopes of having a few peaceful hours at church would be dashed. But now he can't get in there fast enough. As soon as the closing prayer is over in Sacrament meeting and I stand up, Jacob grabs my hand and leads me to the Nursery room. He also absolutely loves the children's playroom at the YMCA where he gets to play while Leigh Ann and I work out. All you have to do is say, "Jacob, do you want to go to the gym?" and he is over at the door in a flash, ready to go.
It is amazing how many demands on your time you have as you get older. Leigh Ann and I have to plan certain activities, like shopping for Christmas gifts, over a month in advance, as Saturdays seem to get eaten up. If you don't carefully plan to get some time together, it is amazing how difficult it can be (and I'm sure Leigh Ann can attest to how bad I am more often than not at planning such time).

Quite the Chatterbox

Jacob has become even more vocal as of late, and is constantly "talking." Some of it is intelligible, some not, but he is definitely improving.
One of his favorite things to do now is sing the "ABC" song. Of course, he doesn't actually say the letters, and will substitute whatever sound he likes, but he is almost pitch perfect with the tune. And if you sing the last part to him, "Now I know my ABC's, next time won't you sing with . . . " he will cheerfully sing "ME!"
His favorite show on now is Blue's Clues, and for anybody familiar with it, whenever Jacob sees the pawprint, he will yell out "coo," which, obviously, is him trying to say "Clue." In addition, he will carry out a whole conversation with himself, over and over, saying, "A coo, a coo . . . oh, a coo? . . . A coo!" It is hilarious as he will do this over and over. And sometimes I will draw a pawprint, and as soon as he sees it, he says "A coo."
Perhaps the funniest, though, is that in preparation for Halloween, we bought Jacob a pirate's hat and sword (he loves wearing the hat!), which, once he saw at Michael's, he had to have. On his previous favorite show, The Backyardigans, they had an episode where they all pretended to be pirates, and sang repeatedly, "A pirate says arrr!" So, after reminding Jacob of the song, every time you ask him what a pirate says, he lets out this very deep, growling, "arrrrrrrrrrrrrr!!"
I need to post the pictures we took of him wearing the pirate's hat and holding his sword.

Fun In The Sun

As I said in our last post, we took a week off and spent part of the time at the beach in Gulf Shores, Alabama. We were blessed with beautiful weather, and an amazing condo. This place was like a mansion, and I would consider moving there (marble countertops, stainless steel appliances, 3 BR, 3 BA, HDTVs in the living room and all 3 bedrooms, with DVD/VCR included). It was on the 7th floor, and we had an incredible view of the lagoon, and were right across the street from the ocean. Combine that with lots of good seafood, and we loved it. Jacob didn't think much of the water (the ocean or the swimming pool), but did love playing in the sand, after we washed the sand off of his face!
This was too cute to pass up. We wouldn't put on one of his shows (currently Blue's Clues is his favorite) in the living room, so Jacob went to join his Uncle Brian in his room to watch his TV.
Jacob didn't think much of the pool, but he absolutely loved the inflatable swimming ring we got him that was shaped like a dolphin. He has a walrus bath toy that he plays with, and apparently this dolphin looked like the walrus (to him), so he called it by the same name. He can't quite say walrus, and so the dolphin became his much beloved "Walry." He dragged "Walry" all around the pool, once in a while dipping "Walry" in and asking, "Wheresat Walry? Where is he?"

I took this picture last night! It was too cute to pass up. I even got Jacob to smile (it was actually because he had just pulled his Blue out of the wastebasket and was cheering). Jacob was great on the whole trip, and did extremely well considering the amount of time he spent in his car seat (30 hours, along with incidental traveling around town).
All in all we loved the trip. Jacob had a blast. We all got sick of watching (over and over) the Blue's Clues DVDs, which is currently Jacob's favorite show, but it was a small price to pay for him behaving so well on the trip. If anybody else is considering a trip to Gulf Shores, we would highly recommend going just a week or two after the peak season, like we did, and you will get great rates while the weather is still good. And I can recommend an excellent condo!
Now we have to settle back into the normal routine, until our next vacation! My family is making the trip out here in November for Thanksgiving, and we are all really excited. Richard is coming out from Utah, David from Korea, and my mom and Clyde from California.

Weird Eating Habits

Jacob has been a bit frustrating as of late with his ever changing eating likes and dislikes. The only constants seem to be ketchup, french fries, grilled cheese, and fruit loops. Everything else is completely hit and miss, and can change from one day to the next.
So imagine our surprise at some of the odd things that he has developed a real taste for. For one, he loves dill pickles. We tried this at one of our local BBQ places, and he just gobbled down the dill pickle slices (almost as surprising as the fact that their is halfway decent BBQ this far north of the Mason-Dixon).
He likes my Cracked Pepper and Olive Oil Triscuits. In general he likes most crackers, but I thought for sure that the high pepper content in these would be a turn off. Not really, though. The little boy mooches off of me whenever I have these out.
Finally, and this was the biggest surprise, Jacob loves salsa. We went out to eat at our favorite Mexican restaurant last week, and Jacob normally will munch on the tortilla chips. He kept pointing at the bowl of salsa (we assume because it looked so much like his beloved ketchup), so we pushed the bowl to him. We thought for sure he would start crying once the salsa hit his lips. This is by no means a super hot salsa - I would say mild-medium - but imagine our surprise when, rather than crying out, he proceeded to redip his chip in the salsa. For the rest of our meal, he continued to eat the salsa - not just dipping the chip to wet it, but actually scooping out the chunks and everything. Who knew?
We are heading down for a week to spend time with Leigh Ann's family. We are planning to take a couple of days and head down to the gulf coast (Gulf Shores, AL) for some sun, sand, and surf. Unfortunately, we may end up getting rain, wind, and indoor pools. Cross your fingers for us.
For Labor Day, we were daring and staged a large grill out at our humble home. In total we had 10 adults and 5 children, and our kitchen and living room were packed to capacity. It went well, though, and we had plenty of food and everybody seemed to enjoy themselves. A new family that we have met through church came as well with their 3 children, along with our friends the Bevans, and a few others. Jacob played the role of the troll under the bridge, challenging all that tried to pass by his chair as he was eating. Actually, what he would do was kick (lightly) one of the other children everytime she passed by his chair.
Jacob is exactly one month away from hitting 2 years old. He continues to grow and learn. His vocabulary is increasing, and he is getting better at letting us know what he wants, but there is still a lot of gibberish mixed in with real words.
Leigh Ann just had her schedule changed at work, so she now goes in later to work, and we find that we no longer have to have a regular babysitter for Jacob, as we can now trade him off on the days that she works. This means Leigh Ann gets more time with him (we will wait to see how she survives that!). Our friends the Bevans will watch him on Fridays for a few hours, but Jacob seems to love going to their house. Their little girl comes over on Mondays, so Jacob gets to see his girlfriend twice a week. Quite the ladies' man.

Calling All Cars

As I said, one of Jacob's favorite games is to hide his cars, then turn to you and ask, "Wheresat cah?" He loves these little cars, because they are particularly easy to hide.

Sometimes eating can be so tedious, don't you think? In an effort to not be the world's worst parents when it comes to what we feed our child, we have begun to make whole meals out of vegetables. Jacob still is fond of some types of food that are green, such as peas. But sometimes, it just isn't quite as exciting as macaroni and cheese, or a grilled cheese sandwich (are you catching a common theme for his favorite foods?).
He has added quite a bit to his vocabulary as of late. Maybe it is from hanging out with his girlfriend, Abby, who is quite the accomplished speaker, and is a few months younger than Jake. He now can say car (cah), cup (cuh), shoe (soo), ball (bah), block (blah), Winnie the Pooh (Pooh), no (NO!), mommy (mommy or Mom!), daddy (dada), cheese (sounds kind of like shee, but we are confident it is cheese, because he holds up a piece of cheese when he says it). I may be leaving out a few things, but that is a pretty good list. He also understands toes, even if he will not say it, because if you ask him where his toes are, he will reach down and grab them. He can also correctly identify his bath toys, which are boats, a walrus, a shark, an octopus, and a lobster, and if you ask for each one, he will pick them out of the water and toss them at you!
Finally, what collection of children's pictures would be complete without one of your child walking around in your shoes. Jacob now enjoys taking my shoes and putting them on. It has been fairly difficult to catch him in the act with a camera, but Leigh Ann was finally successful.
Not a lot of news to report. August has been a mixed bag, weather-wise. We had a week where it was miserable, both hot and humid, but we seem to have kicked the humidity, which makes it a little more pleasant. Leigh Ann has been battling a dual bacterial and viral infection, and has temporarily lost her voice. Ever the active one, having to spend a couple days at home with nothing to do is almost worse than the illness itself. I come home to find her bored out of her mind.

A month of Potter

The month of July ended up being dominated by Harry Potter. Leigh Ann and I were able to go see the newest movie, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, the day after it opened. We saw it on the IMAX screen, with the 20 minute action scene near the end in 3-D. This ended up not being quite as good as we had hoped, as the action got very jumpy and hard to follow.
On the 21st, then, our copy of the last book in the series, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, arrived in the mail, and Leigh Ann began at once to read it. She was done within a week, and I then quickly read it. So now he have the whole story. On the whole we both enjoyed it. Leigh Ann has now decided to reread all of the books, while I have decided to go back to my old favorite, J. R. R. Tolkien. I've started reading the Hobbit (I don't know how many times this makes for me).
Jacob's vocabulary continues to grow. He enjoys pointing out cah (car), cuh (cup), stih (stick), and ball (which he uses interchangeably for both balls and rocks) wherever we go. Of course, his favorite word is "no." He has lately taken up saying it 2-3 times whenever he says it. Thus, when you ask him if he wants to go to bed, he will usually reply, "No . . . no . . . no!" I can't imagine how he has picked up this word.
We continue to believe our son has been blessed with an overactive sense of humor. While he can now say both "Mommy" and "Dada," he seems to enjoy switching them. While with me, he will call to me, saying Dada, and whenever he hears the phone ring, he will look at me and ask "Mommy?" However, when Leigh Ann appears, instead of calling out "Mommy," he will yell out "Dada." We are convinced he does it, not because he doesn't know the difference, but because he knows it will get a good laugh.
He currently has a few favorite games. One is to throw the ball around and chase after it. Another is to take some object, usually a ball or one of his cars, hide it, and then go up to you and ask "Where'sit?" This is great fun for him, and he gets a huge grin when you discover his hiding place (which is usually always the same place). His final game is hide-and-go-seek, which he especially enjoys playing with his friend, Abby. He will hide around a corner, and then shriek with delight when she comes around the corner and finds him. Jacob really loves playing with Abby, and loves it when he goes to her house to be babysat (I usually have to drag him out to the car, with him kicking and screaming because he doesn't want to leave). From time to time, though, he can get pushy with her, and we are trying to teach him not to push other children.
Otherwise we are continuing on as usual. Summer hot weather has hit us here in Columbus, although we have had quite a few days thus far where the weather was really pleasant.