Birthday at the Tulip Festival

I love tulips. Fortunately, they're usually in bloom during my birthday. So for the last couple of years, I've taken off work on my birthday and we've headed up to the Wooden Shoe Tulip Festival near Woodburn and drunk in the beauty of the fields of color.

This year, Oscar was old enough to enjoy some of the family activities on the farm, which meant we all enjoyed them!


Oscar and me in front of one of several steam powered tractors. I couldn't believe the custom detail paint jobs!
Oscar and Adam getting a close up look from the driver's seat. We could climb on all of them.

We decided to try the Cow Train--a bunch of cows made out of plastic barrels pulled by a crazy kid on a Kubota. Safety Girl was impressed that our cow compartment came with a seatbelt on the bolted-in plastic grade-school-style chair. The driver insisted I wouldn't need it.
The driver let Adam ride for free so he could take pics & video of us. Cool!
I could not stop laughing, in part because the ride was so bumpy, the wind was in our hair and Oscar was alternately squealing "Whee!" and "Moo!"

And here's a tiny bit of video from the ride.

Oscar explored a hay bale play structure, including this irrigation-tube type slide.

Oscar tried out another slide that was super fast (short & steep).

And then there was the slide that was the granddaddy of them all. The ladder and height of the slide terrified me. I couldn't brave it.
Oscar was determined, so I cajoled Adam into assisting him.
The hay-bale-mover slide, with Adam and Oscar near the top.


Here's Adam & Oscar's second ride. I was too nervous and then laughing too hard to take video of the first ride (Once he got to the top with Oscar, Adam hollered that he didn't think he could fit through the railing at the top! He could.). When Oscar got to the bottom, he hit the ground hopping and screaming with joy, turning in circles, arms in the air. It's an understatement to say that he was excited.


Adam showed Oscar how to do the duck races. Oscar was interested in all the other (bigger) kids, especially that girl on the end. If you listen closely, you can hear him say "hi" as he stretches out his arm to wave to her. When she waves back, he does a full-spin dance of happiness.

A nice woman who was in charge of three littles was able to snap our best family picture of the day. What a wonderful birthday!

Stats

Oscar had his 2-year check-up today (only a month late!). Dr. Weiler was impressed with his willingness to go along with everything during the appointment, starting with when he raised his arms so she could lift him onto the exam table to when he voluntarily said "Ah!" and opened his mouth so she could peek inside.


He's growing well, seems to be on schedule for everything developmentally and seems to get along just fine with only about 8 hours of sleep at night, thank you very much. The ~2 hour naps help, but we were possibly hoping for some edict to get that boy more sleep.

He weighed in at 29 lbs. 13 oz (68th percentile) and is a half-inch shy of being 3' tall (71st percentile)!


He also experienced his first for-hire babysitter tonight. She proclaimed him an angel. The feeling is mutual.





His language has exploded since the last post. "Please more WordGirl!" "Ulysses drink water from cup." And my favorite, on the last day of our recent vacation, "Joe home." He was ready to head home, bless his heart. Oh. He calls himself Joe. He said Oscar a couple times yesterday, but he often shortens words or phrases to the last word or sound. We call him Oscar Joe, so he's shortened it to Joe.

So our camera took its last bounce on that recent vacation; we haven't tried to upload photos.

Crazy fan yelling

Oscar likes to turn on the fan in his room and then yell into it.
He's also replaced "Dada" and "Mama" with "Daddee!" and "Mommee!"

Oscar, age 2

If you ask Oscar how old he is, he will tell you "Two."
If you ask Oscar how he's doing, he will say "Uh good," with his inflection rising.
If you ask Oscar what he ate or would like to eat, his answer is "Meat."
Oscar likes to watch "Car? Eye?" and "Truck? Eye?" videos on YouTube. That's how he refers to Pixar's "Cars" because all the cars and trucks have eyes.
On the street, he will identify Jeeps, trucks, cars, rigs (SUVs) and Neenee (Mercedes Benz, like his Naunie drives).
He has started to string a couple words together like "Mama work" and "Dada home." Tonight we think he uttered his longest sentence: "I don't want to." (when asked whether he wanted to put away his toothbrush and toothpaste)
Today he marched through the kitchen and into the bathroom and shut the door. Adam checked on him. He was using Mr. Potato Head's nose to "unlock" the door and told Adam "key."
"Key" is also what he says for cookie, Monkey and cat. Context is very important when trying to understand toddler speak.

Lately when we go for a walk, Oscar's often walking instead of riding in the stroller. Here's a nice family walk we took last week.

Waste Management

Our friends Will, Stacy and Sam are on vacation at Playa Viva in Mexico. This morning Oscar and I were checking out the resort's Web site (Will had tipped me off to a cool video of baby turtles). Oscar wasn't too impressed with the baby turtles, but there were many other videos available to watch, like "Nature Preserve" and "Tree Houses." Which one did Oscar want to watch? "Waste Management." Chip off the old, old block, eh?

Is it any wonder it was on his mind? Tonight he pooped in his potty for the first time. Yea! Photos available upon request.

In the meantime, here are a couple recent pictures to tide you over plus a video.

Oscar sporting, sort of, his new hat from Gramma's trip to San Antonio.

Punk Rock Bath Time


Happy Easter

Mr. Sandman, I love you

Oscar after his 3-hour nap, bringing Mama a giant cookie at work. Right after this shot, he bit right through the plastic into that chunk of sweet goodness. Photo by Jillian Daley.

Many, many of you have listened to our family's woes about lack of sleep. Every night. Every day. Ugh.

The beloved Sandman paid us a nice visit yesterday (3 hour nap for Oscar) and last night. Oscar was up 3 or 4 times by 10:30 p.m., so we gave him some baby pain killer for the excruciatingly huge molars that are cutting through his sweet, soft baby gums. We've done that before, so it's likely unrelated, but he slept—like a baby—until 6:15 a.m.

Adam got to bed after we dosed Oscar, and he didn't have any insomnia. Yea!

I was up for a work project until midnight, but I got a solid 5 hours in, until I started worrying that we hadn't heard Oscar yet. I slept fitfully for the next hour or so until he woke us up.

I'm not foolish enough to hope that this will continue. But I am grateful that my family got a good night's sleep. We needed it.

Babbling

Oscar has many, many new words, both verbal and signs.

He also tells us stories, talks on whatever he's using as a phone and asks questions (we can tell by the way his voice goes up at the end of the babble).

He is obsessed with a mole on the bottom of his left foot and will show & tell anyone who's interested, "mole!" as he pulls off his shoe and sock and grips his little foot as close to his eyes as possible to make sure the mole's still there.

Another of my favorites is when he says "home." He really draws out the o-m sound.

The other day, he was making fake crying sounds and hugging George, his stuffed monkey, and patting him consolingly. I got a little teary seeing my son's compassion for his distraught friend.

One of the fun babbles Oscar does is...well, I can't figure out how to spell it on here. In any event, I managed to capture it on video tonight, so thought I'd share.