Major Storm Damage

I kid obviously on the term "major".  Drew and I left the house for 15 minutes this afternoon to go pick Chase up from school.  When we came back, we see our tree had fallen!  Our poor little "baby" tree that was only 4 1/2 years old!  We noticed it was windy, but never in a million years would we have thought that was enough to knock our tree over!

As a family we said our goodbyes.  You should have seen the look on Chase's face as Drew picked the entire tree up over his head and and put it out on the curb!

Ok, tornado sirens on going off, so we're about to pile into the bathroom!  Good luck everyone!

**Update** No tornados, but some scary looking clouds.

Conquering the Cup!

Chase has shown a big interest in regular (i.e. not sippy) drinking cups for quite a while.  He is no where near ready to drink from them on his own because he thinks they are toys, but he loves to practice!

After the rain on Sunday, we sent him out to the backyard for some practice.  Most of the time, he ends up dumping the water down his chest and just laughing.  There are a few moments where he looks like he has it down pat!  Because the "terrible twos" have crept up over the past couple of weeks, you should have seen the tantrum that occurred when we tried to bring him back inside!  So dramatic!

I took quite a few pictures, but I really just couldn't decide which ones to post (or how to edit) so I just posted a bunch.  My brain is a little fried to say the least.

A father teaching his son the necessary skills of life.

19 1/2 months!

I wasn't really planning a 1/2 month post, but it's a lazy Sunday and there have been lots of things I've forgotten to write about over the past couple of months, so now is a good time before I totally forget everything.

• Chase loves his riding toys...his firetrucks, his wagon, his police car.  For a while there he could only move backwards in them.  Over the past month or two he figured out he can move forward too!  He's an awesome steerer too!  He also loves his push toys - his popcorn popper thing and his popping lawnmower!
• As of yesterday, he has a new random word.  Apple.  He said it for the first time as we were walking through Target.  Being the sucker I am, I then went and bought him random crap as a reward that he doesn't care about.  Last night he woke up around 1 AM and refused to go back to bed.  He came into bed with us and proceeded to be hyper and crawl around on the bed on top of both Drew and me until sometime around 3.  Sometime in the middle of the night, he just starts screaming out "Apple!".  I don't think he knows what apple means.
• Also last night, he wubbled my arm (what "normal" people call raspberries!).  We had a good laugh about that.  Heck, there's nothing else to laugh about at 3 AM!  I also got a good laugh when he crawled over to Drew and started beating his back like a drum!
• Chase laughs spontaneously in the car and it's just the cutest thing ever.  Also in the car, he will say "ahhh!" when prompted (similar to when you just drink a big glass of water and you are so refreshed you say "ahh!").  It's very sweet, but he only does it in the car!
• He LOVES Chick-fil-a chicken nuggets.  I also let him try their lemonade fully thinking he wouldn't like it because it was sour (and then there would be more for me).  Boy was I wrong!
• Apparently he loves one of his classmate's moms and he hugs her everytime she picks up her own son.  I don't know how I feel about this yet.  He also blows kisses to the daycare teachers when he leaves in the afternoon.  He doesn't do this to me though. :(
• I bought him a game on my iphone that he really likes.  It's called Peekaboo Barn.  It was funny to see him finally realize how the touchscreen worked the first time we played that game.  The problem though is that he LOVES to press the home button on the phone, so when we are playing a game, he can't help himself and he presses the home button and closes out the game...and then he cries.
• Speaking of crying, when he has his now daily little tantrums, he collapses on the floor each and every time.  It starts with a drop to his knees, which is immediately followed by him falling to his stomach, and then placing his forehead on the ground and then lifting his arms up off the ground by his sides!  It's very dramatic!
• Chase likes to go "fishing" in my bedside table drawers!  He can't see into them, but he can open them and reach into them.  My side of the room is a constant mess because of this.  He can also clear countertops now because he's grown so much.  We had it made for a while because we could sit stuff on the countertop about 5 inches from the edge and everything would be safe.  Nope.  Not now!  He will resort to pulling up on the countertop and scaling the cabinets if need be!
• Starting just a few days ago, we are now sleepsack free!  He now just sleeps in regular PJs and a blanket.  Though there is nothing cuter than him walking across the room in a fully zipped sleepsack!  He waddles like ET!

I suppose this list is random enough for one posting!  Good night!

Tiny Dancer

Chase is going through a dancing phase right now.  I hope it never stops.

Re-edit

There are certain pictures in my collection that I just love to play around with when I'm editing.  This is one of them.  I just love this version so much that I had to share.

Elmo

Ok, this video is insanely long and honestly you'll get the gist after about 30 seconds, but this is for Drew and I because it makes us laugh!

Memphis Flood

Since the river crested today at 48 feet just short of a new record, Drew and I just had to finally make the trip downtown to see the big news story!  It was amazing!  Driving over the bridge to Arkansas was unbelievable.  The river was enormous!

Of course we had to turn the event into a tourist attraction.  Once we got downtown, we realized we weren't the only ones!  There were lots of families, lots of cameras, and a lot of oohs and ahhs!

Here are a few pictures of our family with our camera.  As expected, there were lots of oohs and ahhs.

We made it to the corner of Beale and Riverside and took our picture right on the edge of the river.  That's about as close to the river as I'll probably get ever again.

My Little Boy

There pictures are just a hodge-podge of things from this past week.

He gets a very silly look on his face when you blow the hairdryer towards him in the morning!

Messy face from tonight's dinner!  I turned this black and white to hopefully draw a little of your attention away from the mess he has going on under his nose! :)

My child loves to climb...ANYTHING.  His latest major conquest was to climb onto our kitchen chairs which are pub height.  Obviously Drew and I both had our attentions on something else at that moment, or else I would have never let him try that one out on his own!

All this climbing has resulted in bruises all over his legs!

Mother's Day

I had a terrific Mother's Day on Sunday!  I woke up around 7 when Drew brought Chase in to see me.  I almost had to instantly pop out of bed to see part one of my gift - a clean kitchen, living room, and hearth room!  See, I had to get out of bed to see it ASAP because Chase already had eyes on it.  He can't stand seeing things in a proper place! :)

My big Mother's Day gift was my Kindle!  I've been pining for one of these for about 5 months now, after I rediscovered reading during my Christmas break and after a good 10 year break from "required" reading in high school and college.  I instantly purchased the new Tina Fey book, which 50+ pages into it is pretty hilarious!

Anyways, our first stop that morning was to Drew's parents house for brunch #1 and then our second stop was to the Spring Creek Ranch for brunch #2.  Chase had fun playing with his grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins for a good part of the day!

One of my favorite moments of the day though was after brunch #2 when we were at Sherrie's house and Grayson, who is supposed to be napping upstairs, shouts from his crib, "Happy Mother's Day!".  So sweet!!

Although my Kindle is pretty cool, just being Chase's mom is the best gift. 

Phone Pics

Drew and I have collected various pictures of Chase with our phones this week.  Since I'm only with Chase in the morning, and Drew is with him in the afternoon, these pictures help the other see what they are missing out on.

This first picture helps show a new phase Chase is entering into.  A phase where his favorite direction is "upside down".  Drew's message is on the left, and mine is on the right.

In the first picture, he dumped the remaining goldfish crackers out on the floor in front of him and then instead of eating them, just swirled them all around with his hands.  In the second picture, he reached up and grabbed my coin sorter and turned it upside down and there were pennies, nickels, dimes, and quarters EVERYWHERE.  I still find them occassionally in our bathroom and bedroom!

I love he has the same expression on his face in both pictures.

Both of next pictures are from today.

This morning as we were getting ready, he started pulling all of his overnight diapers out of his basket.  With each one he pulled out, he said "Elmo", regardless of whether it had a picture of Elmo or not.

Here's the backstory - Chase has been saying Elmo a ton over the past week.  We first noticed him saying it when he is looking at his unused diapers.  When I show him a real Elmo, he acts like he doesn't care.  I've concluded that they must say and show him Elmo when he gets his diaper changed at school.

As I was pointing out and saying "Cookie Monster" on his diapers, he would repeat back "Elmo".

The aftermath.

On certain days when Drew has graduate school classes, I pick Chase up.  When I do this, I also have to think of dinner...which is not my strong suit.

Tonight, he had chicken bites (similar to a chicken "crab cake") topped with garlic hummus and a wheat thin.  He loved it!

Sunday's Dinner

I just remembered I had these pictures on my camera from Sunday.  When I saw what was occurring during dinnertime, I had to take a couple of pictures!

As I was uploading and editing my pictures, I played around with some black and whites and thought this black and white was really cool!  You can see all the tomato sauce!

 Unfortunately for Chase, he already had a bath that afternoon and was really upset when we took him to the bathroom to wash up after dinner, but didn't put him in the bath!