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 -

What Does Baby Say?

Last night I was in the kitchen making dinner and Hunter brought in one of his books - "What Does Baby Say?" - sat down and started "reading" it on the floor.  I picked up the camera to try to catch him without notice, as he usually will start pointing to the apple on the back on my phone and want to see the picture if he sees me with it and then the photo-op is over, but I managed to get a little bit of it on video.  He was saying what the baby says from looking at the picture on each page.  It amazes me every day how much their little minds pick up at this age!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yfgIf8kx8Hc

We had a bit of a rough start to the week as we all passed around the stomach flu.  Luckily everyone is better and the house is now completely sanitized from top to bottom. :)  I sure hope we don't have to go through that again anytime soon!

21 months

Here we are....at 21 months.  I'm already starting to think about Hunter's 2nd birthday party.  Crazy.  "They grow up too fast" is just one of those cliche lines that you always hear from people when you're pregnant or have a newborn.  Kind of like "Your life is about to completely change" or "You'll never sleep again"...you just think "Yeah yeah yeah, I've heard it all".  But man, it really does go by too fast.  It's just not right!

One thing that I forgot to mention on my previous post and wanted to make sure I documented was something Hunter said on Christmas Eve.  We went to a candlelight service at church that evening.  Hunter hasn't really ever been around candles except for birthday parties, so when the candles were being lit he started saying "Happy Birthday, Happy Birthday" over and over....and quite loud I might add, which stands out a little while Silent Night is being softly sung. :)  So, it turned from just "Happy Birthday" to "Happy Birthday Andrew", "Happy Birthday Dada", "Happy Birthday Mama".  AJ told him that it was Jesus' birthday and to say Happy Birthday Jesus.  Which he did....repeatedly for almost the entire car ride home.  Regardless, it was pretty stinkin' cute and made me smile thinking about the sweet innocence of children and the true meaning of Christmas.

He's getting much better with his colors.  Everything used to be blue, but now he's saying the correct color of objects more and more - green apple, orange golf club (yes, he does have an orange golf club, he's not just making it up!! :) ), yellow school bus.  He also can correctly identify about 8-10 letters, depending on his mood.  Sometimes he'll get stuck in a rut and keep saying the previous letter over and over again so then we have to call it a day on practicing his letters. :)  He can somewhat count to 13.  I say somewhat because sometimes a couple of them get jumbled up in the middle, but he's doing a really great job.

He's moving right along with putting sentences together, even sometimes saying "I".  The other day he said "I push the door dada" (he LOVES to push doors closed and still loves pushing buttons), which is by far the best sentence he's said so far.  He also said "I want another" at dinner the other night.  Still, most of the time it's more like "Hunter jacket on", "Hunter drink", "Hunter sit", "Maggie eat pood (food)", "open it please" (his manners are still fantastic).  He's starting to get the hang of the fork and spoon more and more and claps for himself when he successfully gets the food on to the fork/spoon and into his mouth.  So cute!  He knows his last name is Johnson and says Hunter Johnson all together.  The other day he even caught the football from a short distance about 6-8 times in a row!  He's currently sleeping about 12-13 hours at night with an 1.5ish hour nap during the day.

He's such a sweet little boy and when he tells you he loves you out of the blue it just melts my heart!

Negotiation - Toddler Style

Hunter LOVES Mickey Mouse and Elmo.  He always asks to watch them but, of course, doesn't get to as much as he would like to.  Somewhere along the line he's learned that persistence pays off though, because if I say no to Mickey, he'll go through the entire line of characters hoping that I'll eventually cave.  The conversation goes a little something like this -

H:  "Mickey, please"
Me:  "Not right now, sweetie"
H:  "Minnie Mouse"
Me:  "No, Hunter"
H:  "Goofy"
Me:  "Maybe later"
H:  "Duck"
Me:  (starting to ignore him)
H:  "Elmo"
and it continues...."Big Bird, Ernie, Bert, Oscar, Peeeeeeeease Mama."

He also picked up on one of the not-so-common Mickey Mouse characters while he got to watch whatever he wanted to in the car during our road trip.  The older duck with the glasses named Professor Von Drake, or "Propessor Dake" as Hunter says.  Sometimes he'll throw that one in there too because he knows it cracks me up every time. :)

Happy New Year!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

We spent Christmas morning here at home this year. Santa was very good to Hunter and Andrew. They woke up Christmas morning and opened their gifts and later on we hit to road to drive up to Indianapolis to see my family. This is the 3rd time we've driven. The first time was pre-baby and it took us 16 hours. Last year, Hunter was 8 months old and it took us 19 hours. This year it was about 17 1/2. Not too bad and Hunter really did great overall in the car. He had his moments, but heck, so did we! All I can say is thank goodness for the Volvo DVD system!

We arrived on the 26th and got to spend a couple of days hanging out with Aunt Mitty and Uncle Brian (and their doggie "Petch" -- translation: Fletch) before they jetted off to Florida for the new year. We spent some time with Grandma Hunter and other family members, and of course Hunter loved hanging out at Mimi and Papa's house (with their doggie "Fo-fee" -- Sophie).

Big milestone here - Hunter pee-peed in the big potty for the first time on 12/26! I'm not expecting this to become a regular thing, but he said he had to go and sure enough, he went! There was a bit of a mess involved, so I'll spare you the details. :) He has a Sesame Street potty seat that sits on top of the big potty here but all he does is sit there and point/name all of the characters. I think I'll need to get a plain one when we start full-blown potty training!

I was terrible at taking pictures once again, but here are few from the past couple of weeks.

Hunter's new playhouse:


Trying to get a good pic for our Christmas cards:

Opening his rocking chair from Mimi and Papa on Christmas Eve:

New Year's Eve dinner - here he is looking at pictures of himself on Mimi's phone:

Hunter, Daddy and Papa. It was actually quite balmy in Indy that night:

I have NO idea where he picked this up but think it is totally hilarious and still crack up when I watch it. I guess he's seen AJ doing push-ups before, but it is one of those things that the says/does out of the blue that make you realize how much he actually does pick up on! Such a little show-off. :)