Vacation

Hello blog fans...We are on vacation in the Outerbanks and having a splendid time. The weather has been perfect...sunny but not too sunny, hot but not too hot. Evan is having lots of fun in the sand and pool but is still pretty much terrified of the ocean...which is just fine by me for now. Unfortunately we have yet to take a single photo. :( I'll try to get a bunch tomorrow so stay tuned.

However...last weekend we went back to Rochester to hang out with the newlyweds one last time before their trek across the country. While we were there we took on the Museum of Play with our newly potty trained(ing) toddler. It was a challenge but very fun. I highly recommend it and we'll no doubt return since we enjoyed only a fraction of all there was to do.

The huge section devoted to the Berenstein bears was a huge hit since we've been reading lots of their books as of late.



The Butterfly Museum was fun too. Well worth the extra couple bucks.

Babybook Fodder

Sometimes I'll tell my Mom or a friend stories about Evan and they'll say..."Ah, that's one for the babybook." Well...not so good about keeping up his baby book. So here are some memories we want to keep of Evan.

He likes to list his "favorites". He'll randomly announce "I like the front door, banana chips, the black car and Mama best." Too bad for the back door, the tan car, Dad and whatever the opposite of banana chips is.

Also babybook fodder is that he recently said he wanted a puppy. So..let the record show that he started asking for pets when he was 3 years old from his decidedly unpet-loving parents. Anybody want to place bets as to how long he'll have to wear us down before we give in?

We think he's going to be really good at those annoying SAT questions that give you one analogy and ask you to complete a second. Last night when I was tucking him in he told said "I'm a carrot, Dada is a rutabaga and you're a lettuce." Sometimes he picks different trucks for each of us, or characters from Cars or whatever.

Buzz Lightyear and other memories

About a month ago Evan was thoroughly obsessed with Toy Story (1 & 2). He was sick a bunch and so watched a lot more TV than usual...mostly these. I'm not too surprised that he started "pushing a button" on his chest and throwing his arms out into wings a la Buzz Lightyear. He does this upon meeting someone and tells them promptly "I can fly." He loves for us to swoop him up and fly him around...into the house, upstairs to bed, into the bathroom to use the potty. Flying is the way to go. The bucket his legos came in is his space helmet of choice (which means there is often a pile of legos on the floor). He also likes to act out scenes from the movie with us. He'll say "I can fly" to us and if we don't say "Can't" fairly promptly he gets angry. Like, come on Mom, learn your lines!!! He also does the "Who's the real Buzz?" scene from TS2. I'll have to try to get a video. Anyways, it's all pretty darn cute.

2 bucks worth of fun

So we tend to try our best to buy a limited number of things at Walmart. There is just so much cheap stuff there calling our names it is very hard to resist it all. Usually we manage to control ourselves but the other day I just could not resist getting Evan a Pixar Cars themed flashlight with character lenses...for about 2 bucks.


This provided and continues to provide long stretches of entertainment. It is especially fun in the bathroom with the lights off...convenient given our current adventures in potty training.

Potty Training - Part 2

Since it might be hard for me to take interesting photos of the potty training process to make blog posts about training more fun, I've added a potty training tracker to the right sidebar of the blog. You can track Evan's progress there if you're really interested.

When I got home from work yesterday Russ reported 4 real successes and that he had cleaned up ZERO puddles!!! GO RUSS!!! GO EVAN!!! That's huge, right? It's so hard to know if things are going well since every kid is different and we've never done this before. However, I think we should be super happy that Evan is wearing underwear (many pairs of underwear) all day (except to sleep), asking to sit on the potty, sitting on the potty for long stretches, going on the potty some of the time and generally having a good attitude about this BIG change in his little life.

Completely Gorgeous

My sister's wedding was so beautiful...and her photographer did an amazing job. Here is just a snippit of all he took. I can't wait to see what he got of Evan.

I'm on a roll here people...please comment so I'm motivated to keep this up,k?

Potty Training - Part 1 (of probably 27,432...ugh)

Well, today was the start (like, for real, this time) of our potty training journey. We threw Evan a Teddy Bear's Picnic themed Potty Party
after reading a book called How to Potty Train your Child in Just one Day. Hmmm...

The idea of the party is to make the transition from diapers into underwear as fun and fight/stress free as possible. You spend the morning putting a doll into underpants, teaching it how to go on the potty, showing the doll that accidents happen and how to deal with them etc. We took the doll's one diaper over to a neighbor's house that has a baby and gave it to them. After saying goodbye to his diaper the doll gets to have a party and get gifts. Then in the afternoon it's the kid's turn. Evan wore underpants (many, many pairs of underpants) from Noon until bedtime with no tantrums or fights...but plenty of accidents and lots of time spent reading books and singing songs on the potty and we did have TWO real successes!! We said goodbye to 2 grocery bags full of diapers around 4:30 and left them on the neighbors porch.

We're not sure really if we should feel defeated or triumphant. We'll see how tomorrow goes, I guess.

Catch up

Very shortly after Evan turned 3 (actually about 3 minutes after his birthday party) my Dad gave Russ a model airplane.

It was a stealth transfer of RC spoils and I did not become privy to the new acquisition until the next day! (I guess I am fairly hostile to incoming RC vehicles...we have many in the house) Anyways, after a short get-to-know-you period, I've warmed up to the idea of a model airplane flying hubby and have actually enjoyed accompanying him on his flights. Evan and I go along to the big field near the playground and climb rocks



(Please excuse the shaky camera work...it gets better)
or blow bubbles while Russ flies his plane around. Sometimes we go for ice cream after. It's a nice family activity that I remember from my own childhood. Ah...good times.

Look...photos AND a video.

Blog Fail

Hi all,

Well...I guess the new laptop has not contributed to my blogging efforts very much. Mostly I surf through Ravelry, Facebook and my friends' blogs. Hi Karen, Hi Charla, Hi Amanda!!!! You guys rock!

(The title of this post is a play on the name of website Russ likes to visit called Fail Blog...check it out)

It's my knitting...blame it on the knitting. Oh, and I guess the last few months have been a bit busy preparing for my baby sister's wedding! Yes...wedding! She's married. It was a beautiful day from start to finish and she was beautiful and glowing with happiness. :) It has been a lot of fun to share in all the activity and to have reason to go to Rochester about every other weekend for a few months. We'll miss her and her new husband, Andrew, bunches when they move to Arizona soon.

I'll be sure to put up pictures of the wedding as soon as I manage to wrangle them up from friends and family. Evan was an awesome ringbearer. Totally cute in his vest and tie, took a nap and then danced the night away with his mama. The boy can bust a move! I guess it's the thought of trying to figure out the whole picture thing too. It's very intimidating and keeps me from just blogging text...who wants just text?!? (Please comment that you like text, if you like text. :)

We just got home from Evan's friend Sophia's 3rd birthday party. We had a good time...what's not to like about yummy food and ice cream cake. Russ left early to go accompany the chorus and I rode home with a friend. My knitting is in his car. Really, it's the knitting.