Mimi Visit

Mimi came for a visit last week and just left today. We love when she's here and hate when she leaves! Hunter had a great time playing with her and unfortunately was asleep when we dropped her off at the airport this afternoon so he has been asking for her all day. When we got home he went to the stairs and yelled "Mimi, where are you?". :(

She babysat on Sunday night so AJ and I could go on a date night for Valentine's Day. We went to the new Vince Young Steakhouse downtown which is actually converted into a restaurant from the house where MTV's Real World was filmed when they were here several years ago. Ambiance - pretty cool. Food - okay. We'd go back but it's definitely not our favorite restaurant in Austin. I did get a picture with Vince though, so that probably is influencing my opinion a little bit! Unfortunately it was dark and the pic is blurry so it didn't really turn out.


On Valentine's Day Hunter had a menu full of hearts - heart shaped red velvet pancakes for breakfast, heart shaped grilled chese for lunch and heart shaped pizza for dinner. The pancakes were kind of a bust, but I love experimenting with new things and coming up with some lasting traditions for him to look forward to.

As I've previously written, Hunter loves pushing buttons. Today he said probably one of his most complete sentences yet as I was putting something in the microwave - "Hunter push the five button". Later, he did it as he was sitting at the computer with me - "Hunter push the N button". It makes me a little sad that he is growing up so fast and I won't have little baby phrases to gush over too much longer. I need to get the video camera out and just tape him talking so I can remember his sweet little phrases!

22 months

My little Hunter Bear is almost two! How is that even possible?!?

At 22 months, Hunter is the sweetest little boy. He just says and does the cutest things and has great manners. He even thanks himself sometimes when he does something nice. :) He even has good manners with strangers - "Bless you, guy" - totally unprompted to a gentleman sitting next to us who sneezed. :) His only bad manner so far seems to be one that we've been struggling with ever since he has been feeding himself - throwing food on the floor from his highchair. If anyone reading this has any suggestions on how to get this to stop, I'm all ears.

He pretty much knows all uppercase letters, around 5 lowercase letters, and numbers 1-9 at this point. Sometimes he will get a couple of them mixed up, but he's got them all down pat for the most part. If you hold up a letter or point to a letter he correctly identifies it. He will say what letters he sees at random times (walking into CVS, you hear "C" "V" "S" as he points towards each). If he is sitting on my lap at the computer he will point to letters on the keyboard and say which one he is pointing to. It's pretty stinkin' cute. This also works in reverse, so if you tell him to find a letter on a page or the keyboard he will point to it.

He's always been a yes man up to this point but "no" is slowly starting to make its way into his vocabulary. He still says yes for most things but when you ask him things like if he's tired, if he wants to go to bed, if he needs a diaper change, the answer is a firm (and quick!) "no".

Speaking of not wanting to go to bed, he's starting some bedtime stalling tactics which are pretty funny and cute. When he's saying night-night to whoever isn't putting him to bed, he'll start telling other random things he sees night-night too - "Night-night TV", "Night-night chair", "Night-Night cup". And he always mysteriously needs a long drink of water right at the time we are headed into his room.....weird how that is. :)

He's getting MUCH better with his utensils. He loves to use a fork and is doing a pretty good job at getting things onto it and in his mouth.

He still loves Mickey Mouse and Elmo but has really gotten into playing with trains lately. He still loves any kind of ball and loves jumping. He's such a funny little boy and has such a great personality.

Snow!

We had another snow day this year! This year wasn't as snowy as last year, but it's always fun to wake up to snow in Austin since we don't really get it that often.

Hunter wasn't a big fan last year -

This year is was just okay for him - he didn't like it in his mouth at all! I think he was mostly happy to just be outside.

There were a lot of kids and doggies playing in the fairway -

Maggie enjoyed herself -

By the afternoon the only sign of a snowy morning was a lone snowman -