My Baby Boy is Two!

This post is going to be a bit out of order, since I'm not used to the way blogger uploads pictures now.  And we have had lots of things happen lately that deserve a post, but I thought this was the first priority because::

My Zekester is 2!  Everyday I love that kiddo more and more and I just can't get enough of him.  He is such a crack up and constantly has us laughing.  I especially love that he has learned how to tease.  The other day he was sitting on my chair in the kitchen and asked "My chair?" (is this my chair?).  I said "nope, Mommy's chair" and tickled him.  Then he got his mischievous grin on (shoulders up, chin tucked, sneaky grin as he slowly raises his face to begin his mischief) and declared "Zeke's chair!!"  I kept insisting (with tickles for emphasis) that it was not Zeke's chair, but Mommy's and so he kept declaring that it was his.  He knew that it was mine and I loved how he enjoyed pretending to not know so that I would react.  He is such a ham! 

One of his favorite words this week is "oh."  He says this to just about every statement we say to him like they are all very interesting and he has come to a clear understanding of something.  And he has also taken to saying "whoa" and "wow" quite a bit too.

Zeke is really cute with his toys.  He has about seven that he insists on sleeping with every night (and most of them aren't very cuddly).  He also tends to remember where everything came from.  For example he has a cat that Santa gave him at the bank last year and he always holds it up and says "tiny ho ho" and every time he holds up his tigger cup that Jantzen and Stephanie gave him recently he says "Tanks Jantzdrink"(thanks Jantzen).

He is very appreciative of the little things.  He directs his bedtime prayers now and he could go on and on and on for the things he is thankful for.  When we had family here a while back all the kids had matching blue shirts and now it is not uncommon for Zeke to pray for "Lissy blue shirt, Zinc Zinc blue shirt, Juya blue shirt, Zac blue shirt, etc, etc" and he prays for just about everything he can see.  It is fun to spy on him as he looks around the room to find things to pray for.

He loves to give "crash hugs" which means he charges across the room with his arms held out behind him until he crashes into Trustin or I and we are supposed to fall backwards and "crash."

 This lovely position is what is know around here as "the dead cockroach."  In honor of Trustin's brother and his family coming to visit last week from Texas, where the roaches are even more impressive than our Vegas variety, Trustin decided it was necessary to teach Zeke this useful pose.  I love my husband! And may I say, my son is definitely the cutest dead cockroach ever (not that the competition is very fierce aside from his handsome daddy, the rest of the competitors are all quite unwelcome in our home).

Yesterday I was cleaning up in the kitchen and I hear a little call of "help peaze, Mommy, help peaze."  Zeke had crawled under this chair and gotten stuck. 

So on to the birthday festivities:

We decided to celebrate with just us this year since Zeke got a big party last year and we didn't know if I'd be close to childbirth (guess what, I'm currently betting she won't be here until the 20th. She seems in no hurry to move things along thus far at least). But we did want it to be a special day for Zeke so we devoted the entirety of Saturday to complete Zeke entertainment.  This is where the pictures get all out of order.

 

 One gift that we knew was a must for Zeke's birthday was a special chair.  He found his old bouncer and used it for a long time as his reading and movie watching chair.  In hopes that he would stop thinking of it as his chair I hid it in the closet for several months.  When he found it I told him it was for baby Ashlynn he said "Zeke baby" and climbed on.  He loved that chair, so to avoid sadness when the baby who gets the chair is not Zeke but Ashlynn we needed an adequate replacement.  A Mater and Lightning McQueen chair was hit.  He immediately sat on his chair with his new "Keen," "tiny Mater" and "big Mater" and requested that we watch Mater.  We obliged and let him watch a movie and eat a delicious dinner of MacCheese.

 In the earlier part of the day we went to a splash park with one of Zeke's buddies.  Zeke loves splash parks and friends, so it was a great few hours.

 He played with the trucks his Uncle Jantzen and family gave him for a long time before he decided to open any more presents.  I think he would have been thrilled even if we'd stopped right then (and they were the first ones we opened).

  

And you thought the cake I made for Trustin was a bit of a flop...So this picture doesn't look nearly terrible enough...It was worse in person. Remember how I contemplated making a fondant cake?  Good thing I didn't.  I probably ought to master a regular cake first.  This one was intended to be one giant balloon but instead my cake fell apart into about 13 pieces, (three of which were sort of big enough to frost) and my frosting skills needed some major work.  Luckily Zeke was still pleased.  In the week before his party we kept asking him what he wanted and he said "blue cake" and when we asked him what kind of presents he said "pink."  Hmm.  We were short on the pink present ideas (or perhaps we wanted to be short on them) so we compromised with a pink cake with blue frosting. 

 Zeke and his daddy by the time Zeke is cold and ready for a nap.

I love the intensity and deliberateness of the way little kids run

So the biggest surprise of the day happened right after breakfast.  Balloons!  About a month or two ago Wendy's gave Zeke two balloons and he prayed for those balloons every night (including for weeks after they had deflated).  He loves balloons.  So to surprise him we spent lots of time and oxygen blowing up about 60 balloons and hid them upstairs. In the morning we had Zeke stand up below the banister and then I started throwing down balloons as fast as I could. I had sort of envisioned those game shows where a giant net releases millions of balloons all at once and it is incredibly dramatic and WOW, but 60 balloons is not quite millions and my speed to toss balloons was likewise not quite as dramatic.  But since Zeke doesn't watch gameshows, he had no clue what he was missing and he was in heaven!  We spent over an hour just kicking and throwing and running around through balloons that morning, and then resumed again when we got back from the splash park.  He loved them so much he actually said "no" to both cake and presents!  But we eventually convinced him that those would be fun too.

Happy Birthday my handsome silly boy! I love you!!

"Tah!" or as you may know it "Utah"

We had such a good time in Utah with all of our family.  I knew we would have fun but I was expecting that I would be about ready to come home by the time the trip was over, but we had so much fun I definitely wished for a few more days with everybody. 

The first part of the week we spent at Gramma and Paca's house and so here's a bunch of pictures from then:

Zeke is a monkey.  I call him ChimpanZeke.  (on a side note, Zeke is really confused about monkeys and chipmunks.  He thinks they are synonymous.  After all there is monkey and chipmunk and chimpanzee and chipmunk.  It is very confusing.  So now when we play on the swings or he hangs from playground equipment he still says "eee eee ooo ooo" like a monkey but he maintains that he is not a monkey, he is a chipmunk).

Our climber in action.  He climbed this thing several times and Trustin and I stood by to catch him just in case.  I'm waiting for the first broken bone.  I feel it has got to come soon (because he's a crazy daredevil) and I confess, if it has to come I really really hope it happens while Trustin is around too.  I'm not ready to handle such things. I don't think I can master the "calm persona" that mom is supposed to exude to keep the kid calm.  I'm more prone to tears and freaking out...I better work on that, and maybe put some padding around prime disaster spots.

 These next several pictures are of our bubble party. Soap water on plates + straws = lots of fun.

Zeke has already learned the cheesy too big camera smile.

 This is Zeke right after his favorite part of the bubble fun: popping Daddy's bubble.  Trustin liked to make giant bubbles and Zeke liked to make that difficult.  He thought it was hilarious every time he snuck his straw over and POP!

 I love these boys!

 Just say "WOW" because that puppy is huge. 

 Zeke and his cousin playing with basketballs.

 Zeke meets Maximus the horse.  He loved the horse (really two of his cousins) but he was not happy when we tried to get him to ride it.  However he has been talking about Max ever since and is so proud that he "touch nose."  He likes to pray for "white Max."

 This is our bow making party for Ashlynn.  I like this picture because a) my belly looks so big and b) Trustin is laughing as he is reading his "manly" book.  He did not want to be included in the girly festivities and fled the room entirely soon after this was taken. 

 Me and Trustin's sister and the millions of bows we made.

 Ya, she's gonna be cute.

This is Zeke's method of eating his "Ice Tone."  He ate the bottom first...

 Which resulted in one hand of ice cream and one hand of cone, and a lap getting continuously more dripped upon.

 But it just might taste better that way.

For my side of the family we all had a reunion up in Park City.  It was so much fun having the whole family together with nothing to do but have fun.  Unfortunately, almost no pictures again.  Something about my family makes me forget to get out my camera.  But here are a few we did take.

 Zeke and Daddy splashing (I label this like you can't tell.)

 I love that Trustin is such a fun Dad.  He is amazing. Yep. Love him.

 And here we are playing something.  Most of the trip was spent playing games.  The best by far was Mafia which we played a ton of.  It was so hilarious!  But alas, not much to write about except to say that Jonathan's advice is always wrong, but he sure can be persuasive.

Zeke and his cousin Syri (or Syria as Zeke calls her).  He would follow her everywhere everyday if he could.  When he'd wake up in the morning he'd call Mommy or Daddy and then the second we would open the door to his bedroom (the closet) he would smile and say "Syria?"

 Syri, Zeke, and Kaylee traipsing through the forest.

And that is pretty much it for pictures of that part of the trip. (lame, I know).  We were so sad to leave and Zeke has been missing everybody like crazy.  White Max isn't the only addition to his prayers.  Practically every prayer has to include every cousin, aunt, uncle, grandparent, or pet he can think of.  It is pretty sweet.  He loves family so much!  Oh, he also has decided that it is so funny to call the baby in my tummy Airi (my brother's little daughter's name).  He knows that her name is Ashlynn but he gets such a kick out of insisting with a mischievous grin that her name is Airi.

And just for fun, here are a few pictures of Zeke playing "Bask shoot" another  favorite pastime of his.

Check our that air!



Well I have gotten quite behind in the documenting of our lives, especially considering how much we've been up to lately (and are still going to be up to over the next little while).  Zeke is being spoiled rotten with family time.  My mom, sister and niece were here one weekend (shame on me, not a single picture), then the next weekend Trustin's folks came to visit, then two weeks later we went up for over a week vacation split between practically all our family.  And there is a lot more adventures to come.  And did I mention that I'm going to have a baby in 5 weeks?!!! Yahoo!!  But time is flying, I can't believe she is almost here.

So here are a few cute pictures of the weekend with Gramma and Paca, and we'll see how much more I can get to soon.

 Gramma and Paca have the coolest hats!  For a week after they left Zeke kept saying "Want Pac hat"

 And no surprise there, but that kid is pretty darn cute in his Pac Hat

 Zeke also got to do some finger-painting for the first time.  He is like his daddy in that he doesn't really like to get his hands dirty (even though he loves playing in the dirt he always wants to wipe off his hands, and he often requests that I carry him over muddy spots).  Thus, fingerpainting was a really tentative experience, and not nearly as messy as I was secretly hoping for. 

Here we are at the Hoover Dam on top of the new bridge.  It was crazy crazy windy (bad day for the loose shirt, but I wasn't quite in such a pickle as the multitude of tourists in windblown miniskirts, oops).  Zeke hated the wind (he's like his Mom in that one but he liked looking out at the dam.

And last of this batch, our little future missionary.  He wouldn't smile for the pictures but he was so proud of this badge.  Trustin and I had to try hard to not crack up during sacrament meeting when Zeke started flashing his tag at the missionaries rather smugly. 

Big Grins, Messy Hands, and a Flying Zeke

So this post is just a mix of several fun days or moments over the past month.

First: Welcome to one of Zeke's favorite spots in the house. Zeke is pretty easy to please and one thing that has always made Zeke so excited is the dump truck. It comes twice a week in our neighborhood and everytime Zeke hears it he runs to the window and makes me pull of the blinds so he can sit and watch. He especially likes it when we are already outside and he can make me run to the front yard and see the dump truck up close (I'm a little less fond of this as I always feel a wee bit awkward waving to the garbage man and he loads up our smelly trash for the week). When he was a kid Trustin used to want to be a garbage man and apparently this ambition is genetic.

And here are a few of our Easter egg dying photos. As expected, Zeke loved it! Miraculously he only squashed 3 eggs. (which left us with a grand total of 9, but luckily Zeke had no qualms about dying and redying the same eggs again and again).

Mommy showed him how to do it nice and careful...

Daddy was quite skilled with the wire dipper...But...

Zeke quickly found a much more efficient way to drop and retrieve eggs. Just shove his whole hand into the cup. His hands were still unfixably blue for church the next morning. Secretly this made me really happy.

Zeke had fun with the egg hunt, for about 15 eggs and then Trustin and I had to help gather the rest of the the 48 pack I'd tossed around the yard. Zeke did however love tossing them all into his kiddie pool which was full of dirt and jumping in himself. And ever since then he's discovered the joy of squeezing the eggs and making one end pop off and fly into the air.

This is Zeke's face after the wind blew dirt in his eyes.

And this is Zeke Lightyear! Last night Trustin and I decided to chop up a piece of cardboard and let Zeke fly around the house. Zeke was thrilled. The wings were the first toy he requested after he woke up again this morning.