Toddler Adventures

Oh my goodness, Austin keeps us laughing and on our toes. Today, "Gamma Dottie" and Grampa were visiting and he was having a great time. He liked showing off for them; of course they are a great audience. He disappeared for a while, while we talked. I could hear him talking and laughing by himself down the hall. After a few minutes, I went to look for him and found him in his crib! He totally scaled the wall. It's a good thing we have been planning to go buy a big boy bed. I found the one I want this morning online at Ikea. We'll go get it next weekend. Good lord, the kid likes to climb these days.
Another thing that he's doing right now cracks me up. Whenever he knows he's not supposed to do something, he does it anyway and then says "Hug?" and gives me a hug. It is SO dang cute. He pushes all the keys when I'm typing and after each push, he says "hug?" and hugs me. Earlier today, I came into the room where he was listening to music and the fan was unplugged. I got mad and said "Did you unplug the fan?!" He yelled "HUG!?" and ran over to hug me. It's rather irresistable, exactly what he means it to be.
Last night we went to dinner with "Gamma" and his cousin Kaleb and his visiting Grampa. They are going on vacation so on the drive home I told Austin that Gramma was going on vacation so he wouldn't see her for a week. The whole way home he said "More Gamma please." Very cute, I can't wait to tell her that. She'll love it.
Austin can say many many words now. He can repeat just about anything. He finally says his own name which is really cute, along with Gamma, Kylie, every letter of the alphabet and all the numbers through twenty.
Due to Gramma's vacation, I am working a weird schedule next week so I can be home half the time to watch Austin. I can't take any vacation time right now, so I'm grateful for the few extra hours per day at home. I'm going to try to squeeze in a ton of things into a few extra hours though, very typical of me.

Solo Ride

Last weekend, after attending VegFest, we walked around Seattle Center checking out what fun could be had for a two-year old. I was pushing Austin in his stroller when we passed by the kiddie rides. Being a seasoned amusement park rider, he literally jumped out of the moving stroller when he saw the rides. He ran up to the ride he wanted to go on and tried to get in the gate. This was a little car ride on a track for very little ones. No adults allowed. I explained to Austin that this one wasn't a good idea because Mommy was too big for this ride and he would have to go on it by himself. I thought that would be a deal breaker for him since he is very clingy. (He even freaks out on carousels because I'm standing next to him and apparently that's not close enough.) He was very insistant that he wanted to go on the ride and I asked him a few times if he understood that he'd be riding by himself. He said he still wanted to go on it. So finally I thought, what the heck, let's try it. Who am I to hold him back? Something in his demeanor told me that he understood & didn't care. When we went to buy tickets, he didn't even want to come with us, he wanted to stand in line for the ride by himself. When it was time to get on the ride, he got right up there and had no problem at all going on by himself. We were all prepared to have to stop the ride for him to get off. But boy we underestimated him. He took his car driving very seriously, turning the steering wheel the whole time and had a very serious look on his face as he went around & around the tracks. He eventually would crack a smile as he passed us and we were waving and smiling at him. I stood there totally crying because I was so incredibly proud of him and it was so damn cute. We didn't even have a camera with us, but I did get a short little video on my phone. It was amazing.

Fiveteen and More

So I just finished a super hard week at work, and now would like to just slide into weekend mode by having a glass of wine and reflecting on all of the cute and cool things Austin has done recently.
Brian has encouraged him to learn his numbers 11-20. I hear him practicing by himself all the time. I like how he calls twelve "twoteen", calls twenty "Oteen" and says "fiveteen".
He now can say "thank you" instead of signing it. Yay! It sounds like 'crank you".
We encouraged him to use the potty again. Yay! Although, I think I made a mistake by telling him that pee pee is actually water that went through his body and out his penis. He freaked out when I told him that. I guess it is a pretty weird concept if you're not already familiar with the logistics of it all.
Every night Austin gets a binky when he goes to bed. His Elmo doll in his crib also gets one. Tuesday morning he was sleeping with me (thanks to an especially rambunctious evening with his playgroup friends) and when he got up he noticed a second binky in our bed and exclaimed "Elmo's binky!"
Basically he's been super fun and developing like crazy. I will post about Disneyland soon!