Yard work

Always the big helper, Chase was excited to pull out his lawn mower last weekend when it was time to cut the grass. 

 

Friends on a Friday

We had a Friday play date last week with Wes and Parker.  Despite their 17-month age difference, Chase and Wes absolutely love playing together.  Chase was showing his love by stroking Wes' arm while they were eating dinner and watching cartoons so I had to get a picture.  Pretty funny.  :)

Big Boy Bed

Ok, folks.  Here you go.  The Big Boy Bed.  Well, not really.  It's just the 'toddler bed' that his crib turns into.  He was ok with the change from the mattress in the floor to this exciting 'new' bed, so that was a relief.

As you can see, we didn't put a rail up yet because we need to buy one.  It was only the 2nd or 3rd night in this picture so Matt and I thought we'd just see how he did (and maybe we wouldn't need the bed rail after all).

 

Around 9:30 I heard a pretty loud noise but I thought it was maybe Matt doing laundry downstairs.  Then I looked at the video monitor and saw that Chase was no longer in his bed.  This is what I found when I went in his room:

He'd fallen off the bed, stayed asleep and curled up into this position (with all 5 blankets still in tow).  He didn't even wake up when Matt picked him up to put him back in his big boy bed.

Needless to say, we'll be purchasing a bed rail this weekend.  :)

ABC's and Distractions

I love that Chase is talking up a storm.  Even more than that, though, I love the cute 2-year-old way that he pronounces things.  Sometimes it makes it hard to understand but it's just so darn cute.

Here is a video of me trying to get him to sing his ABC's but as you can tell he has a hard time sitting still.  It's also pretty funny that this video captured how inquisitive he is lately ("Mama, what IS that?").  I needed a video because I want to remember this phase.  :)

Palate dilemma

So I recently mentioned that Chase has been having a blast sleeping on a palate at his Bebe and Pop's house each week.  He even convinced Matt to make a palate for us to sleep on at our house a couple of weeks ago, which was fun (Remember 'Family Fun night'?).  However.  That palate lasted for just one night.  It was fun to camp out in the living room and all but it took him almost 2 hours to fall asleep. And he's such a great sleeper (in his crib) that I wasn't exactly unhappy to resume our regular bedtime routine the very next night. 

Well, take a look at this:

 

Yes, that is Chase's crib.  And, yes, that is his mattress.  And yes, it is in the floor.  And, yes, maybe I've lost my mind...

I took the mattress off the bed when I was changing the sheets last week and he got so excited that he demanded it stay on the floor ("My Palate!!  My Palate!!!").  So I thought, 'ok.  fine.'  The next day I tried casually putting the mattress back in it's place, hoping that he wouldn't notice (yeah, right.).  Big surprise: It didn't work.

Surprisingly enough, he doesn't exactly look uncomfortable.  He took a nap that next afternoon and he managed to roll into the corner.  Beside the trashcan.  Ugh.

 

I was hoping that this would just be for one night but now I'm not so sure.  I went in to check on him last night before Matt and I went to bed and he was completely off the mattress, pillow, and had rolled to the center of the room.

Kristina, I think we will take you up on your offer to let us borrow a toddler bed after all.  

Stay tuned, folks.  We may have a blog post entitled "Big Boy Bed" coming soon.  

Yikes.

Boo boo

 

That is what your legs look like if you are a 2-year-old little boy who runs everywhere (rather than walks).  Ouch.

And this is what that cute little boy looks like after bath time, during teeth-brushing, before bedtime.

He's so cute I can't even stand it.  :)

Multi-tasking.

Maybe we should start doing this every night after dinner?  Dishes on one side and Chase's bath on the other?  :)

Pizza

Pizza plays a large role in my life.  I love it and therefore eat it about 3 times (ok maybe more) every single week for lunch and/or dinner.  I love it with just cheese, with pepperoni, with fancy toppings like brie and pine nuts, thin crust, hand-tossed...you name it.  If it's related to pizza then count me in.  Matt loves it, too which helps facilitate my love of this food, allowing us both to eat it 3+ times per week.

However, Chase's milk allergy made the usual, easy pizza-delivery-dinner night a little more complicated.  I would always have to make him a separate dinner.  Well, not any more!!!  woo hoo!!!  Chase not only can eat cheese, he loves it!  Last night he helped me make a homemade turkey pepperoni pizza and was actually able to eat some of the oooey-gooey cheesy goodness when it was done.  Very exciting for me.  I mean, us.  :)

he loved 'painting' the marinara sauce on the dough.

Family fun night

Last week Leslie was on vacation so Chase spent the week with Bebe and Pops.  One of the fun things that they did was make a palate with blankets in their living room for Chase (and Pops) to sleep on.  Apparently they had a blast so on Friday, Chase asked Matt if he could have make a palate at our house.  This isn't exactly something I wanted to get started since Chase is such a great sleeper...in his bed.  I was convinced that there would be no way that Chase would fall asleep anywhere but his bed.  However, Matt's enthusiasm about bringing out the air mattress and "camping out" in our living room was quickly contagious so I became sold on the idea.  Chase was really excited to help Matt get things set up which was also really cute to watch.

Being the mini-engineer that he is, Chase took an immediate interest in how the pump worked in blowing up the air mattress.  After it was blown up, he then started screaming, giggling and sqealing with excitement.  He stood on the couch and started nose-diving off the couch onto the air mattress.  Again, I thought, 'he's never gonna fall asleep'.  However, it was pretty safe to say that he was happy so I was all for it.

We got all the blankets, sheets and pillows set up.  Then we got 'Finding Nemo' set up on the big screen. 

Chase snuggled in under the covers while Matt and I got everything going. This was a pretty sweet sight to see:

We turned out the lights, and each snuggled in, under the covers on either side of this sweet little boy.

It was 8pm on a Friday night and there wasn't a single place on earth I would have rather been.  Seriously.  I was in the dark, on an air mattress on the floor with my 2 favorite boys with an animated movie playing and I was in absolute heaven.  The perfect family night if you ask me.  :)

"It's too bright!"

This past weekend, Chase spent the night with his Meme and Papa (my mom and stepdad) so Matt and I could go out.  We brought our extra carseat that Matt keeps in his car for my mom to use.  Chase was not satisfied with sitting in his regular seat with the extra carseat beside him.  No.  Instead, he insisted that I buckle that one in so that he could ride in it.  If someone had pulled up beside of us on I-85, we probably looked a little crazy with him sitting there, beside a larger, empty carseat.

What made it funnier (to me) was that when we pulled out of the garage, he exclaimed, "It's too BRIGHT!"since the sun was shining right in his eyes.  Since I didn't have his child-size sunglasses in the car, I had to find the next best thing.  Which happened to be an old pair of my sunglasses that were in the bottom of the console.  I passed them back to him and he flipped them upside down and stuck them on.  Then kept them on for the entire 30 min. ride to meet my mom.  When I looked back and laughed at him, he flashed this silly grin:

Moments like that require that you take a picture. 

night-night

Ok, I'll admit it.  Sometimes I like to watch Chase sleep.  Sometimes I'll do that by looking at the video monitor.  But sometimes I'll go in his room and look at him when he's asleep.  

 ...And that sight just makes me melt.  The sight of my sweet boy, peacefully sleeping in a little curled up position just makes my heart swell with love.

And man. do I love that sweet little boy...  :)