Climbing wall

Simon made it almost all the way up this climbing wall at the school park on his own. A few more tries and I think he'll be able to make it all the way to the top.

Easter Bunny and Outside time

Alan and I both had Good Friday off work, so Jenn also got the day off. Alan, Simon and I started the morning early and we were off to Little Beans to meet the Easter Bunny by 8:30. Then we played at Little Beans, met the Easter Bunny, played in the park and generally had a fantastic day.

Happy Easter.

Going down the big slide!

Lots of pictures and a couple videos all the way at the end after the jump...
(Easter Bunny pictures in high resolution.)

Naked bunny

Explore and much more music class

A new bunny in town

Simon and I got these dollar bunny ears today and they might make the best dollar we've ever spent list! ....now if only we could get the hopping with both feet down :)

Legos

Lunch!

Time away and Kix

Colleen watched Simon from Thursday to Sunday so Alan and I could have some time away. It was amazing trip for us with lots of relaxing and reading by fireplaces, some board games and even rock climbing! We for the most part had our phones away or off and ignored everything that wasn't a Simon update - which we got daily from Colleen. Thank you again, Colleen, for giving us such a wonderful weekend!

Simon and Colleen had a great weekend together. He was really well behaved for her the whole weekend. They ate spagetti squash, played in the park, read lots of books and generally had a great time.

Good Morning.

Lots more pictures to catch you up and a video of eating breakfast this morning after the jump.

Around the World

For the past couple of days Simon and I have pretended to be robots, and walking/dancing around the kitchen to some appropriate dancing robot music.  I finally managed to catch a few seconds of video of him doing that this afternoon.

Time Change and Out to Dinner

With the time change on Sunday the 17th Alan and I planed not to adjust Simon so that instead of going to bed at 5 and waking at 6ish, Simon would go to bed at 6 and wake up at 7ish. He wouldn't change, just the world around him would -- PERFECT PLAN!

Sadly, it didn't work that way. In the 1 week we tried it Simon just kept on waking up right at 6ish as though he had an alarm clock set. But he was going to bed later so had one hour less of sleep. We definitely noticed an attitude shift and after 7 full days we decided to switch him back to the 5pm bed time. Last night he passed out at 5 with a greatful sigh... And woke at 6 again on the dot.

In that one week of later bedtime we at least managed to go out to a family dinner. (One of the reasons we wanted the later time was to do family things like that.) I was working from the coffee shop so picked up Simon at 4 and we met Alan at the Wellington train stop for burgers at DMK. Simon and I were about 15 minutes early, so we waited on the platform and just watched all the trains go by. What a happy kid. I didn't manage to get his excited oooh! face but you can see how focused he is on the tracks.  When it isn't cold and rainy I'm going to take him to the platform and we can watch trains until he gets sick of it. (This video was taking about 10 minutes into our waiting for Alan. If possible he was more excited every time a train went by.)

In DMK Simon ditched the tomato and lettuce and most of the bun but inhaled his burger. We decided it was time for him to try onion rings and they were a huge hit. You can see him begging for more in the next video. He got a grown up sized burger and still managed to find room to shove (literally) those onion rings in. He is right - they are the best darn fried onions around.

Imaginary Car

The other day we had a package delivered in a large flat box.  I sat down in the box and told Simon I was driving a car.  He thought that was great, and climbed into the "car" with me to go for a ride.  After a bit, I pointed at the blank wall in front of us and told him there was a red light so we had to stop.  I asked him to tell me when it turned green so we could go again.  He waited patiently for a few seconds, then pointed at the wall and said "Geeen! GOOOO!!" so we pretended to drive again.  It was really neat to see him using his imagination like that... he's been making his stuffed animals dance and drinking pretend tea from cups for a while but this was the first time I can think of that he's played just by imagining things in his head.

After I got out of the box car, he asked me if he could drive.  He grabbed a bunch of his animal friends and the packing paper from the box and took a pretend road trip (hitting a few red lights along the way).  And the next morning and the past few days he keeps going back to play with his car.

After the jump, a video of him driving and a few pictures of him loading up the car.

Bloody Nose, Pasta dinner

Simon got his first bloody nose today. He was running around in socks playing as he does so often that it has been an accident waiting to happen. He went to stop and his feet just slipped all over and momentum kept his top half going a little too fast so he bopped his face smack on the ground. He sat up stunned and started to cry. Jenn gave him a snuggle and as he calmed down she noticed the trickle of blood. They tried icing it but apparently that doesn't work very well on toddlers. He was tough though and all was fine but bloody noses are scary. Poor kid.

To end on a much happier note. Here he is later in the afternoon eating a meatball and some pasta for dinner.

New Friends

Simon found a scrap of yarn on the floor and Jenn told him it was a little worm. He has spent the past 3 days or so throwing the worm in the air and then searching the ground for it. Who would have guessed that we could get hours of entertainment from a scrap of yarn?

Jenn and Simon have been hanging out with another nanny and her two little charges. Gabby (in the purple jacket) is three days older than Simon and lives at the end of our block across from the school. She has a 6 month old little sister, Cecelia, who mostly just leaves the big kids to play. Simon and Gabby are a good play-pairing as Simon is very much more vocal than Gabby (who says only 3 words) and Gabby is much more physical than Simon (she's also about 3 inches taller than him). Unfortunately they are moving away at the end of this week, so the almost daily play dates will end.  Jenn will just have to pick up more nannys! 

Synchronized Sliding

High Five!

Potty Training Update

We are taking potty training pretty casually but there has been some pretty awesome progress... Simon went pee in the potty! Twice! The first time was February 26th and the second was Friday, March 8th.  Jenn has been really great about remaining consistent and keeping up potty time without a lot of progress. For potty time Simon hangs out on the potty and reads for a while and every once in a while will stand up and check the potty to see if anything happened. He is pretty excited about the potty, especially flushing the big toilet, but doesn't 100% understand yet what it's all about.

No pictures for this post. Thought it was best for everyone.

5 pancakes

Simon ate 5 pancakes for breakfast this morning. AND a bowl of fruit and two pieces of sausage. I guess he was hungry?

Intense train cleaning

Today we had a very intense train cleaning session. In his fist is a napkin with a bit of water on it. Everything got cleaned this morning. Floor, trains, train table, hair, toes, etc. Even the stool got a cleaning top and bottom. 

Snow Man

Yesterday we got quite the snowstorm. They predicted 10 inches to start at 3am. At 7am there was no snow and I felt a little silly for working from home. By mid morning it seemed like just a light snow but it accumulated like crazy and snowed constantly for hours. I was so happy to be home so I could play!

Mid morning or so Simon came into my room to say hi and we watched the snow out of the window. This picture is a little dark, but look at how excited he was to see the snow out there! We planed a snow-play date after Simon's nap and I got some work done. 

Outside pictures and video after the jump.

Mini-Muffin Breakfast

Rarely on a week day do we all have breakfast together, but today was one of those mornings. Jenn came early so Alan and I could leave/start work at 7. As a result we had some family mini-carrot-muffin eating time around 6:45ish. 

More pictures after jump.

2nd Home haircut

The first haircut I gave Simon didn't work out exactly as I'd planned. For Simon's second haircut I actually prepared. Novel, I know. 

We purchased a children's clipper kit that included a very nice cape, the clipper, a pair of scissors and just generally felt more official then the scissors pulled from my sewing basket. It also came with a little how-to dvd which I watched with Alan today at nap time. Alan and I had very different takeaways from this 10 minute how-to... Alan reasonably thought it had looked hard. I of course thought - piece of cake!  

Luckily they suggested having the kid watch a DVD to keep him focused on the entertainment instead of the buzzer. It reminded me of the same lesson I had supposedly already learned with the first haircut at home (with Simon constantly grabbing at the scissors) and I reflected that that was the key with the professional haircut. Distraction. So we set him up to watch an episode of Blues Clues on the computer. It was quite the success. Simon stayed relatively still and we got to cut his whole head. 

It took the whole episode but I'm sure I'll get faster. I say I, but really Alan did his fair share of clipping. It was easier if you could step back for a second and see what was going on - but we didn't want to let Simon get used to no clipper.

Here is a before...

"This whole cape thing is suspicious,
but I get to watch Blues Clues so I'm sure it can't be bad."

Unfortunately I caught him with the clipper edge once and gave him a little nick above his right ear, which he barely seemed to notice but did bleed a spot, beyond that it went rather smoothly. I'm sure I/we will get better with time, but I think it came out pretty good.

All done and I look great!

Lots of before and after pictures after the jump....

Naked baby and big boy cup!

Simon has been stripping down most mornings this week and has been using a real cup too!

Big fish

Jenn, Colleen and Simon went to the Aquarium today. I'm sure they'll have more pictures, but here is a teaser...

Batman and suspenders

Colleen joined us today at Safari. She even got Simon ready for me so we could be on our way faster. Check out his outfit... Japanese batman shirt from Jenn, Striped undershirt, Checkered suspenders from Colleen and new Jeans from GaGa Cindy. He was looken pretty darn cute! 

Simon just wouldn't look at the camera this morning.

Snuggles and french toast.

Love the face!