Ho Ho Ho...No No No

 

I think it is pretty safe to say that Blake did not like seeing Santa this year.

On our way to see Santa we asked Blake what Santa says and he said, "ho, ho, ho!".  After seeing Santa we asked him what Santa says and every time we asked he said, "no, no, no" and got very upset.  Maybe next year Blake and Santa will be friends, but this year Blake would just like to admire him from a safe distance.

Happy Halloween

Pumpkin Patch

My parents have a really fun pumpkin patch by their house, so when my sister in law asked if we wanted to meet her there we were all for it!  They have so many fun things to do there that Blake didn't know what to do first.  He was so busy looking at and pointing at everything that it was super hard to get any good pictures of him.

They had a bunch of wood cartoon characters that Blake really liked, especially when he saw his two favorite people Woody and Buzz Lightyear.

 There was also a tractor and a some wooden cars for the kids to sit in and drive.  Blake thought the tractor was fun, but once he saw the wooden cars there was no turning back. 

 Blake was in heaven.  His favorite by far was the firetruck.  He loved it so much that he refused to go drive any of the other cars and got really mad when any other kid would try to come in the firetruck with him.  The only other person he was willing to share the firetruck with was his cousin Zachary.  I guess I have to be happy that he is at least willing to share with his family members. It's a start. 

Blake's other favorite part was the jail.  I kept trying to get him to look at other things, but he kept going back to the jail.  I love this picture of Blake.  You can just see the "Mom, do you see this!?!?!" expression written all over it.

Unfortunately, Blake's least favorite part was the pumpkins.  There were just too many other fun things around for him to get excited about a boring pumpkin.  Every time I tried to get him to stand by the pumpkins to take a picture, he either refused to look at the camera or he would just pick up the pumpkins and throw them.  He is a total boy.

I had one last trick up my sleeve to get some good pumpkin pictures with Blake.  They had a house that was completely made out of open shelves with pumpkins sitting on them.  I thought Blake would definitely like that more than the pumpkins in the field because it was a house and he loves going inside play houses.  So, I took him inside the pumpkin house and got my camera ready.

I only got this one picture because 20 seconds after this picture was taken, Blake started pushing all of the pumpkins off their shelves onto the ground outside of the house.  So much for my trick.  Luckily, they had bales of hay surrounding the house so he didn't break any of the pumpkins, but we were definitely done with the pumpkin house.

Even though I didn't get very many traditional pumpkin pictures like I wanted, we had so much fun and were glad we got to spend the afternoon with family.

Blake Stashes

I have a new favorite activity in our house and it is called looking for hidden Blake stashes.  I think it is hilarious when I am going about my normal day and find a Blake stash somewhere.  The stashes normally involve some sort of snack food and/or his cars and trucks that he has stashed into something and they crack me up every time I find one .  Here are just a few Blake stashes that I have found recently. 

Fruit snacks stashed in Blake's shoes

Cars, Trucks and Motorcycles stashed in a pile of pillows

Cars, trucks, and crackers stashed in Blake's highchair

So Thirsty

Blake found a new source of drinking water the other day.  He has always liked playing in the water hose water, but this is the first time he actually thought of drinking it.  He is always making us laugh!

First Trim

Blake has been practically bald forever and then for some reason his hair decided to all grow in at once and extremely fast, especially in the back.  In two weeks, he went from having hardly any hair to having a mullet and needing a haircut.  I had been convincing myself that we didn't really need to cut his hair for a few weeks (because I did NOT want to admit that Blake was growing up), but when he started looking like he had a tail, I knew it was time.  So, I finally did it.  We turned on Toy Story to distract Blake and I cut off the tail.  I also decided that I don't have a clue what I am doing with cutting anyone's hair, but Blake doesn't seem to mind.

The Pre-Cut "Tail"

Cutting off the "Tail"

Deciding I wanted to keep just a little more of his hair

The finished product-Blake without a tail

 Although he would have fit in just nicely in Hachie with a mullet, I had to admit he looked a lot better without it-no matter how tragic it was for me to admit it was time. 

Our Summer

We haven't been too good about posting on our blog this summer! Even though the Texas heat is in full force now, we were able to do a lot of fun things before it got too hot to go outside. Here is what we have been up to this summer.

Water Table Fun

We have spent a lot of our hot days playing with Blake's water table.  He absolutely loves playing with it and always gets so mad when we try to get him to go inside. His favorite thing to do is fill up one of the cups and either pour it all over himself or just water the grass with it. 

California Trip

 

We were able to go visit Eric's family in California for about a week.  Blake got to go swimming in Nana and Papa's pool, play with the big flag outside their house, and hang with his partner in crime/cousin Hannah.  Blake loves Hannah so much and was constantly trying to hug her the whole time we were there.  Hannah quickly figured out the signs that a hug was coming from Blake and started running away from him. It was pretty funny to see Blake running after her with his arms out ready for a hug.

4th of July

With Blake's obsession with flags, the 4th of July was Blake's favorite day ever.  We started off the day getting the traditional 4th of July breakfast, donuts.  We even ate them on flag plates, which Blake loved! Then we headed to Waxahachie's 4th of July parade with some friends in our ward.  It has taken us a while to get used to small town parades, but now we just think they are amusing and fun.  Blake didn't move for 30 minutes, it was amazing! With all of the flags, flashing lights, cars, firetrucks, motorcycles, and balloons he was in heaven.

Lots of Climbing

Blake learned how fun climbing is and has not stopped since.  He climbs on everything, including his chair in the pantry to get himself a snack on the shelves.  He was pretty proud of himself for that one! 

Woody and Buzz

 Blake has a serious obsession with Toy Story, so we have had a lot of Woody and Buzz this summer.  He doesn't ever sit still for 5 minutes, but if we put any of the Toy Story movies on for him to watch, he will sit and watch the whole thing! He goes into what we call a Woody and Buzz trance. The obsession has come to the point that he does not like to watch anything else but Toy Story and gets mad at us if we try to put any other show on.  He knows that it takes two remotes to turn Toy Story on (the TV and DVD remotes) so he will go find those two remotes and bring them to us when he wants to watch it.   

Founders' Plaza

 One of the other things Blake is obsessing over is airplanes.  He loves looking for them in the sky while we are driving and points them out to us when he sees one.  The DFW airport has an observation area called Founders' Plaza and we thought it would be perfect to take Blake there to watch the airplanes take off and land on the runways.  For some reason on the day we went the airplanes weren't landing on the closest runways so they were a little too far away for Blake to see. He got to see a few parked airplanes though and he loved it! 

So, that has been our summer so far!  We have had a lot of fun and now that it is over 100 every day, we are playing inside until August is over.

 

 

18 Big Ones

Lately, I have been so amazed at how fast time seems to be going by and how quickly Blake seems to be growing up. It seems like it was just last week that he was just crawling and now he is 18 months! Even though he is 18 months, Blake thinks he is already at least 2. He tries to do everything the bigger kids do and gives me and Eric the attitude of a 2 year old too. Attitude and all, we love him like crazy and are so glad he is ours.

18 Month Old  Blake-isms

-Loves watching Toy Story 2
-Seems to like Buzz Lightyear more than Woody
-Loves motorcycles, airplanes, flags, balloons, cars, and trucks
-Likes to dump all of his cars and trucks out of his bucket and then throw them individually back into the bucket. Once it's full he will dump it out again.
-LOVES being outside
-Goes to the refrigerator doors when he wants something to drink
-Likes drinking his drinks with a straw like a big boy
-Insists on brushing his teeth with an adult size tooth brush instead of a kids sized one
-Has started eating fruit again-likes raspberries, bananas, peaches, pears, strawberries and watermelon
-Will only eat carrots for vegetables
-Likes to climb and play on mom and dad's bed
-Walks on his toes sometimes
-Hands you something when he is doing using it or eating it
-Usually eats or throws things with his left hand
-Says "bah" when he points at things
-Likes to wear Mom and Dad's shoes and walk with them on his feet
-Makes really good airplane and car noises
-Likes to watch golf on the TV because there are lots of flags involved. He gets mad when they pan away from the flag scenes.
-Thinks its fun to squish food in his hands when he doesn't want to eat it
-Likes to have a little bit of water still running out of the faucet once his bathtub is full so that he can play with the water and stick his head under it

Nature and Science Museum

Eric took half of the day off work a couple of weeks ago so we took full advantage of it and decided to go to the Dallas Nature and Science Museum. It is such a fun place! The museum itself is really interesting, but they have an amazing children's museum that we specifically went to see. They had so many fun things to do that Blake couldn't decide what he liked best.

In the farm room, he checked out some chickens and attempted to ride a tri-cycle that was way to big.

Then he drove a firetruck and checked out some fish.

Then we discovered the two areas that Blake loved the most-the sand table and the water table. He honestly could have played at both of these tables forever, especially the water table. He accidentally splashed his face with the water and he thought that was the greatest thing ever. Next time we go I will have to remember to bring another set of clothes with us since he was completely wet by the time we left the water table.

Eric and I found some fun things to do too-like making massive soap bubbles!

A Little Too Close

It is definitely spring time here in Texas! Blake and I went to the grocery store this afternoon and as were leaving the parking lot I saw a bunch of people looking up at the sky and taking pictures. I had no clue what was going on until I got a good view of this:

Do you see the tornado?? I immediately drove home and as soon as I got in the garage the tornado sirens starting going off. I got everything ready in our "tornado room" in case Blake and I needed to take cover. This tornado touched down about 10 minutes West of our house and was headed our way, but luckily it went back up into the sky before it got to us. We had lots of wind, rain and hail though! Having lived in Texas for most of my life, I should be used to these by now, but this one was just a little too close for me.

Blake's Bluebonnet Hatred

We met up with my family this weekend to go to the Bluebonnet Festival. We had a lot of fun, but we have officially decided that Blake HATES Bluebonnets. Remember this picture from last year?

We figured it was just because Blake was so young last year and just wanted to be sleeping instead of sitting in flowers and that this year would definitely be different. This year:

He is a little older, but we got the same reaction as last year! We tried a lot of things to get Blake to smile, but he wanted nothing to do with the Bluebonnets. We thought maybe he would like it better if one of us sat with him.

H

He stopped crying, but you can still see just how unhappy he was to be surrounded by flowers. So, we tried a different spot that had a Texas flag nearby (Blake loves flags right now).

He was a little better, but Blake was still very unsure about the Bluebonnets. So, we tried surrounding him by his cousins Carter and Clara thinking that would help (His cousin Zachary was there too, but he loved the Bluebonnets even more than Blake did so he isn't in this picture).

We still didn't get a smile! We finally found a really amazing field covered in Bluebonnets and Indian Paintbrush and we finally had a little success.

The smiles didn't last long, but we were still able to get a few more non-crying pictures in and we had a really fun time with my family. We also now know there is definitely something Blake hates about being in the Bluebonnets. Maybe by next year his hatred for them will be less. We can't wait for next year's picture!