Ohhh nooo!!!

"Oh nooooo!" Xander's favorite phrase this past week, it's too cute, but getting a tad repetitive. At first he would only say it when he dropped or spilled something, now it has become his go-to phrase. ALL day it's, "Ooohhh Noooo!" he says it long and drawn out like that usually.



One of Xander's favorite animals is a horse, or neigh as he calls them. We decided we'd try to find him a small real looking toy horse. We took him to Target and found a rack full of life-like small plastic toy animals. We decided to let him pick out his own, immediately he grabbed the horse and said, "mine!" Yeah "mine" is one of his new words this week too. I was hoping we had time before everything became "mine". I will say usually though if he tries to take something that's not his and says, "mine" I just correct him and he'll give it back, usually. Anyways, back to Target, I went through all the animals, Giraffe, Bear, Elephant, turns out he's a pretty picky kid. He settled on a Horse, a Lion and a Dog (not one that looks like our dog Bailey he didn't like that one, he got a golden retriever). They are currentely his FAVORITE toys. All the sudden I'll hear him in the other room... "ROOAARRR!!! ROOAARRR!!"and when I walk in he's holding his lion and roaring with all his might. It's pretty adorable. The cutest is if I ask him, "Who's my little lion?" he will throw his head back and give me a huge "ROAR!" (above is a picture of him playing with his animals)


Meet "Monkey" and "Sea", Xander's bedtime buddies, well now they are his best buddies really. When we stopped swaddling Xander I decided the only way to get him to continue to sleep all night long was to create a routine. Every night we have a set routine and because of this routine he sleeps all night every night at least 12 hours straight, rarely do we have a hiccup. Here's the routine: after dinner we brush teeth, next we change to his jammies, than he and daddy count to three (he has gotten two and three down but still won't do one) and turn off the light. Then we lay him in bed with his blue fluffy blanket folded as a pillow, his "B" or favorite blankie as his blanket, and then a second blanket over his feet. On one side his light up seahorse that plays music and the other monkey. Finally we lay him down, turn off the light, start his bunny music box, we say night night and he says night night, it's too cute. And that's it. He's out! Now let me say it was NOT always this easy at first, but we stuck to this routine. We've been doing this since he was 6 months old and too big for his swaddle. For the first 6 months maybe longer he would cry for at least 10 minutes before finally going to sleep. But now we rarely hear a peep out of him. Lately Monkey and Sea have become much more than bedtime pals. We are NOT allowed to leave his bedroom in the morning with out them or the house for that matter. Now every morning when we head to Grandma's office we have to make sure we have all of his toys, usually my purse is filled with elmo, cookie monster, at least 2 toy cars, his favorite toy dinosaur, a sippy cup, blankie thrown over my shoulder sea horse and monkey in my arms. Thankfully Xander can now walk himself to the garage door!

Lastly I got Xander a couple new books this week, just small ones. One with Dora, one with Thomas the Train, one with Dino's, and one with a bunch of farm animals. When I got home I gave them to him and snapped the below photos. He was SO excited and kept flipping through each one, pointing things he knew out. He couldn't decide what to read first and he was just SO excited. I think he might believe they are a set, because he never reads just one, he always has all four, kinda funny.

My Food Blogs have Moved...

Hi Everyone!

If you haven't noticed all of my food blogs are gone. Well they didn't disappear, just relocated. I decided I really want to keep this Blog dedicated to Xander and our family adventures. I really hope to one day print it all out for him so he has an amazing story of his life. But I do love to cook and talk about food more than just about anything, so I decided I should just start a Food Blog. It's called Inspirational Ingredients I hope all of you will read it and enjoy!

I'll also put a link to it on the top right of this blog. I'm still in the process of setting it all up but I've moved all my recipes over already. Please read and let me know what you think : )

Crystal

Xander this week...

This was a good week, but uneventful for the most part. Highlights include Xander discovering he can now reach to climb on the dining room chairs and then guess where? On the dining room table! He does this every chance I'm even the tiniest bit distracted. He's pretty quick about it too. I walk into the kitchen to fix breakfast, next thing I know he gets really quiet. Whenever he gets quiet I KNOW he's up to something. Then of course I find him sitting on top of the dining room table. I would take a picture of it, but I don't want him to think it's cute and get encouraged to do it more. I swear I can put him in time-out 10 times in a row and he still gets on that table, Chris thinks he testing me, he's probably right. Other highlights, Xander's discovery that he loves String Cheese, it's too cute. He's actually not a big fan of cheese in any way, everytime I try mac and cheese he refuses it and throws a fit. Which has kinda been shocking to me, because I thought kids liked cheese? Well he just likes what he likes, apparently I was just getting the wrong cheese. And I think he also likes that he can peel down the wrapper as he eats it. He's definitely got his mother's eating habits, not his father's! haha

Oh and say goodbye to those ugly couches haha! While they are comfy they aren't pretty, we invested in some great and much needed couch covers this week, they will be arriving soon. Yay for Tax Refunds!

Green Crayon!

I always said that one day Xander would wake up and just start talking, well beyond the basics like milk and nana. This week it happened! Xander started repeating EVERYTHING I say. I say ok, he says ok, I say toes, he says toes. It's too cute, everything from let's go to what's wrong? He repeats it's all. It's completely amazing to me. I try to test him with new words and he never ceases to amaze me, so far he can say almost anything, well aside from the really big words like elephant.

Another thing he learned this past week was his first color, Green! He loves green. Not sure why, maybe because turtles and dino's are green? He said it for the first time the other day while coloring. I was shocked when I realized he was actually coloring with, yes green! Then a couple days later he put it together, he was coloring and suddenly started running around holding his green crayon up in the air proudly yelling "Green Crayon! Green Crayon!" like he had made this unbelievable discovery. It was too cute! But what was really amazing to me was that I never said, "That's your green crayon" or "green crayon" at all to him that day! It's like he had been storing it up in his little memory just waiting to amaze me. I've tried to see if he knows any other colors, he has said blue and yellow, but not consistently. Also he is very partial to coloring in only green lately. I gave him a choice of maybe 5 crayons this morning to color with and when I came back his pooh bear coloring page was green very green, not much else, haha

Pictures from the week -

The first two are of Xander playing with his animal puzzle. It's definitely his very favorite toy this week. He enjoys putting it together over and over and over, while telling me what sound each animal makes. It's pretty adorable, although after the 15th time in a row, it does get less cute haha




This next picture was taken this weekend. After a long morning of playing, just before nap time. He likes to lay by the front door sometimes, I'm not sure why, but he can see his cartoons from there so he'll just lay and watch. I couldn't help but snap a pic


The next set are of office adventures this past week

Xander hiding...


Reading...


We don't go anywhere with out his "B" (or blankie as I call it)


Xander multi-tasking - drinking his milk while getting grandma's attention

How to keep a toddler busy for an hour!

Play-doh!

Haha! It really works! I made Play-doh for Xander last week. I was out of food coloring and used Kool-aid to color, which is actually not messy at all, and makes it smell like fruit. Thankfully Xander figured out very quickly that it didn't taste good at all and it lead to a very productive hour of pure toddler entertainment!

EASY PLAY DOH:

2 cups flour
1 cup salt
4 tablespoons cream of tartar
2 cups boiling water
2 tablespoons cooking oil

Mix dry ingredients together in pot, add the boiling water and cooking oil. Stir over medium heat until it forms a ball. Let it cool. Keep in air tight container in refrigerator when not playing with it.

I had to help him get started but after he got the hang of it he was mezmorized!

Spaghetti Night!

Last night...



starts out with the fork...


eating with the hands is faster...




I love the red spaghetti face! haha


Xander LOVES Spaghetti, of course a bath is required afterward

Explora, Peas, and the letter B...

The letter of the week is... B! Xander learned that he likes words that start with the letter B this week, B is for Bailey our dog's name or as Xander now calls him "Beelee", he'll yell his name over and over and pat his leg to call him haha it's so so cute, it's amazing how much they imitate us. The letter B is also for Big Bird or as Xander likes to call him "Big Bee", he really likes big bird, which is kinda funny to me considering he doesn't like to watch Seaseme Street but has several books with pictures of Big Bird and that's really how he learned his name.

Next I'll address the "Peas", now when I say peas, I really should be saying Please, but this is how Xander says it, much cuter I think. We've been working on manners lately, for example instead of throwing his milk at mommy and yelling "MALK!!!" (this is how he says milk) at the top of his lungs, I have started making him go pick up the cup and bring to to Mommy and say Please or "Peas" before I will get him more milk. The other night at dinner he actually handed Daddy his cup said "peas!" and then when Daddy brought it back he said "tank oo!" (thank you) I was SO proud!

Lastly, we took Xander to Explora (a local Children's museum) this past weekend. We went with another couple and the four of us had a great time just watching Xander have a blast. The best part for me would be when we arrived at the toddler section, there were little ones running around playing with all sorts of neat toys, blocks, balls and do you know what he did, walked up to the book shelf, picked out a book and sat down next to Daddy and handed it to him to read! haha I was pretty proud! Here's a couple great pictures from Explora:











Also a couple great pictures I took yesterday at the office, yes he still comes to the office with me everyday, this is him "working" yesterday at my desk, notice winnie the pooh on the computer, I guess he wanted to take notes haha!