Beach Week

About a little under a week ago, we came back from a relaxing week at Rosemary Beach in Florida.  We went with my sister and her family and my mom.  In the mornings we went to the beach.  At noon, it was naptime.  And the afternoons were pool time!  It was such a nice change of pace from the norm!

The nine hour drive to the beach went pretty well.  On the Sunday drive down, the first 5 or 6 hours were relatively peaceful, but Chase got real antsy the last 3 hours.  I have to say I was pretty antsy too.  I definitely had "beach fever"!  Our can of Gerber veggie puffs and cooler of milk definitely saved the day for Chase during those last few hours.  The nine hour drive back was uneventful and Chase behaved perfectly the entire way back.

I believe we already knew Chase was a little water baby, but that was just confirmed in Rosemary!  He was never happier than when he was in the swimming pool or the ocean.  He even learned to kick his legs a little in the pool by the end of the week and could move a little on his own.  He was fearless by "jumping" (more like falling forward) into the pool into Daddy's arms (he also did this off the coffee table!).  The sand on the beach was not his favorite.  Just getting the grains of sand on his hands made him fuss.

Chase surprised us and slept on his little toddler air mattress really well during the week.  We even settled into a great bedtime routine that has come home with us.  He no longer requires rocking at night.  We can put him in bed with his little cup of milk.  He'll drink all he wants.  He'll give us the cup back and then turn over and go to sleep!  Amazing!  I can even manage to put him to bed now!

On to the pictures....

I could bet serious money that the boys here are watching either Shrek or Spongebob.  We watched A LOT of that during the week.

Since Chase has eartubes, we tried to be careful and keep his ears dry.  He's wearing his "Earband-it" here.  It makes his face a little squooshy!

Here he is "diving" to Daddy!

The ONLY time he liked the sand.  We should have given him the shovel earlier!

I'm imagining him saying here, "Can we please stay here forever??"

Chase's cousins who kept him thoroughly entertained all week!  Gray refused to smile for the camera!

This pool made me seriously reconsider getting one!  If only I got huge bonuses at work!

Swimming on his own!

The highlight of Chase's 4th

The Super Duper Slip-n-Slide.  Thanks Vinsons for dreaming up such a thing!

 At first, Drew forgot the principle that you must get wet BEFORE getting on the slip-n-slide.  It ended awkwardly.

It wasn't all clean fun though!  There was a mishap that ended up with Chase being halfway covered in mud!

Happy 4th!

Salsa

We took Chase to our favorite mexican restaurant last week.  This was going to be the first time that we ordered something from the menu for him.  It was also the first time we let him eat chips at the restaurant since he can now eat them without choking like he used to.  I thought it would be funny to let him try just a tiny little bit of salsa.  He kind of acted surprised when he tried it, but you could tell he liked it.  I still thought it was a little strong for him, so I tried to move him on to the cheese dip instead.  He wasn't a fan of that though.  This video was taken shortly after we let him try the cheese dip.

Also, at the beginning of the video, he's laughing at a little girl who poked her head over the wall to stare at him!

21 months!

It's been about 12 days since I've really written anything on this blog.  That might be a record or something.  Honestly, it's laziness and me not wanting to go upstairs.  I'm much happier lying in bed with my iphone checking Twitter and Facebook or sitting on the couch watching Shrek for the 50th time this month. 

I was out of town for work on Chase's actual 21 month birthday, so I made sure to delegate the task of monthly pictures to Drew before I left.

21 Month Stats:


Unofficial weight: On Friday at the Dr, he was 30 1/2 lbs fully clothed
Clothing size: Varies.  Mostly 2T.
Shoe size: Same as last month.
Diaper size: Size 5
Favorite toy: All his little vehicles...police car, fire truck, plasma car.  He zooms in those across the house very quickly!  Also, Mega Bloks.  He's a firm believer in having as tall a structure as possible.  He also loves to destroy what he creates.
Favorite foods: Chicken nuggets, mashed potatoes, corn dogs, ice cream cones, cereal bars, pretzels, Doritos...chip off the old blocks.
Least favorite foods: We haven't discovered anything new.
Words: We haven't had a huge change this month.  He says Dog all the time now...even for cats.  He also says Door and "Ana" (Banana).  I heard him say "Daddy" today as well.
Teeth: His upper canines are just starting to pop through.  I'm sure the bottoms will follow any day now.
Daily Routine: Two weeks ago, he started transitioning to the "Bouncing Bears" class at school.  Last week was his first full week in that class.  He's done really well with the transition.  There isn't a big difference from the Turtles to the Bears, except just being around kids that are 2 instead of 1.  He came home that day picking up stuff off the ground and throwing it.  So that begins!  I'm really excited for the change though.  I like him being around the older kids so he can learn from them.
Tricks:  Drew and I love when we stumble across something day to day that Chase has been taught in school.  The other day in the car, I was singing the various verses of Wheels on the Bus.  I get to the part where I sing, "the mommas on the bus go shh, shh, shh" and Chase then puts his finger to his mouth and goes shh!  It was adorable!  We've also stumbled across his knowledge of the movements for "Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes".
 
Other things going on:
 
Yesterday, Chase has his first big "boo boo" in school.  Apparently he was climbing the wrong way up an indoor toy slide (totally sounds like something he would do!) and then fell, bumping the back of his head on the way down.  He was bleeding a little from his head, but they couldn't get a good look at the wound because of his hair.  Drew and I were together nearby when we got the call since I had the day off work, so we got there probably within 20 minutes of it happening.  All we could see when we got there was a boy who was happy until you tried to touch his head to get a closer look.  That's not surprising though because he hates it even when you try to get frosting out of his hair.  All we could see was some blood that was caked in his hair, but it had obviously quit bleeding.  I called the pediatrician just to be safe and they squeezed us into an appointment that they scheduled at 4:20.  It was 4:10 when we left the daycare, so we rushed through traffic to get to one of the locations that had an opening.  We were only about 3 minutes late!  The doctor and Drew held Chase down on his stomach to get a better look at the wound (Chase was screaming and thrashing around!).  It took a little bit of digging to figure out what we were working with.  It turns out there was no actual cut at all!  It was just a little hematoma.  Almost like a little blood blister under the skin.  He must have pinched that skin during his fall.  The bleeding was just from some pressure building in the blister.  Drew and I were so relieved!  I was so sad for little man having to get hurt, but it could have been so much worse. We spoiled him on the way home though with a corn dog and an ice cream cone.

This month he's been trying to jump.  He tries to jump by just moving up to his tippy toes.  He hasn't actually left the ground yet, but he is getting more bouncy when he tries.

A-Boo

Chase wants to play "a-boo" with you!

One of the many perks of having a son

Back on the Web!

We have been without internet for a little over a week in this house which explains the lack of updates.  Surprisely we didn't get a lot more done around the house without internet because most of the time was spent on the phone explaining to Comcast our issues 4 times a day! 

I'm a little behind so I'm going to try to get caught up.  I'm going to be backdating my posts to the proper day so I can remember the chronological order of various events!

Trip to the Botanic Gardens

Drew and I made our first trip back to the Botanic Gardens since our wedding.  We went for the sole purpose of visiting My Big Backyard to help entertain Chase for a few hours.  We went at 9 in the morning since the heat index was supposed to go up to 110 that day!  We strolled along the little path visiting as many things as we could.  Even that early in the morning though, it was really hot!  Thankfully we rounded our way to the water sprinkler area right at the time Chase's face was a red as a tomato!  He had a ball!

Now I'm about to overload you with pictures! :)

A little commentary about these pictures - We heard the "thunder" when we were in the Wizard garden and we rushed over to catch the rain.  I didn't really know what to expect here.  I figured it would be a light misting.  When we got there, it had just started misting and one other boy about a year older than Chase was hanging around there and another family just sitting around.  Chase enjoyed the misting and then the heavy "thunder" started and the water just started pouring.  The other kid ran to his mom and Chase started squealing and running around in circles.  The family on the bench started cheering him on and he was loving it!  If there is one thing he loves more than water, it's attention!  He was the only one that played in the water and he left drenched!