New Nemo Chair

Today I went to Kmart (the worst store ever) and to the grocery store. Somehow Dylan spotted Nemo 3 or 4 times. He spotted his tail on a small balloon-on-a-stick and I had to turn the bunch around to verify - sure enough! He spotted Nemo on some box somewhere, then on this chair. Of course I got it! It was only $3.50!!!!

He likes to have me open the fridge for him so he can get out his sippy cup. Today he spotted the whipped cream. I thought it would be fun to squirt some in his mouth. He didn't like that, but put his hand out for me to put it there instead. He was having SO much fun that I put his new bib on him (thanks to Malia's California grandma for making it) and sat him in his new chair for some fun. We went right to the bathtub after this.

THEN of course I got him ready for bed and let him watch his Nemo to settle down. I came in to check my email then went back to find him fast asleep. I'm a bad mommy for not putting him right in his bed, but he had been so good today and I hadn't let him watch Nemo all day. I thought it was good for a picture b/c you can see the Nemo and Marlin pictures!

A cute couch would have been a better investment seeing how uncomfortable he looks, but I liked this beach chair b/c it folds up for easy storage - and the price was right.

Discovery time in the sun

We went to the Florida Aquarium for the 3rd time this month finally w/ Danielle and Liam. (It's her pass we've been using - thank you!!!) Liam has taken steps but isn't always brave enough to walk on his own. I like this picture b/c Dylan is the big kid for once showing Liam what to do. (At church he was so rude to Liam though not sharing the toys.)

I LOVE this picture b/c it's so them. Dylan is just sitting wondering why I never stop taking pictures. He put his hat on himself so it's on kinda funny. Malia is quite the lady now w/ manners but she does NOT appreciate when someone is in her space. Liam is discovering everything now and loves "big kids." Dylan learned how to push the button to make the water squirt out. Liam wishes he could do it too. Look how good Malia is with sharing. Look how Dylan was leading Malia by the hand here. It was time to leave. My baby is growing up!

Sweet Sweet Baby

I love that Dylan is a toddler w/ his own personality, but I miss him being my tiny little baby.

This morning I have him a bath then put him in his crib for a nap so that he wouldn't be crazy for church. (Our church doesn't start 'til 1pm now.) I knew he wouldn't have that much time for a nap, so I didn't want to get him dressed in play clothes b/c I knew it would be cutting it close getting him in his church clothes.

So again w/ the dysfunctional look, but he was just so cute when I went to wake him up.

Chairs

I need to get Dylan his own special chair.

He likes to back up and sit on a lap when someone he knows is sitting on the floor. If I leave the tray off of his high chair, he'll climb up there and sit. I found him resting on the couch yesterday and taped it b/c he's just so sweet sometimes. (This is a poor quality video b/c it's with an old back-up camera).

I brought out the potty chair for him to sit on - may as well. I figure he could watch his favorite movie - Finding Nemo*. He was happy with the arrangement. That potty is still clean although his blanket got wet and had to go right in the wash. I'm not really trying to potty train, but thought if he wants a chair to sit on, it wasn't being used. The funny thing now is that he requests his potty when I turn on Nemo but he tries to climb on it and jump off and he's not good at sticking the landing. (I don't keep it in the living room.)

I just noticed how dysfunctional this looks. He doesn't have a shirt on in the video then doesn't have pants on in the picture. Oh well.

*He doesn't watch Nemo ALL day long. I let him watch it first thing in the morning b/c he requests it as soon as he opens his eyes then when he's winding down before bed time.

baby kicks

I felt the little baby kick - FINALLY.

I've been laying on my back feeling and waiting. Today the baby was in a little ball on the right side. I rested my hand there and he/she wiggled back into place then nudged my hand. So it was more of a shove than a kick. I had Steven try to feel but I don't think he was too into it so I gladly took over to feel again. I've kinda wanted to count other feelings in my tummy, but I think it's my pulse. I can finally visualize a baby that looks like the one in the bubble on the right of my blog. How tiny!

Communication

My friend has a baby who's about a week older than Dylan. She's a girl and I've heard that girls are more advanced than boys. She blogged that Layla knows over 40 words so I decided to count Dylan's:

36 Signs
Again
Airplane
Alligator
Baby
Ball
Bird
Blanket
Brush teeth
Book
Cold
Come here
Dog
Drink
Eat
Elephant
Fish
Flower
Hat
Help
Horse
Hot
Milk
Monkey
More
Night night/sleep
Off
On
Please
Potty
Rain
Shark
Shoes
Socks
Sun
Up
Water


28 Words/Sounds
Abbey
Alligator “NAP!” (for snap)
Bird “brbrbrbr” (he flips his lips w/ one finger and it makes a noise)
Ble (as in yucky, while he sticks his tongue out and makes a face)
Cat “EE ow” (for meow)
Cow “MMMMmmm” (for moo)
Baby
Ball
Bird “uh uh uh”
Bug
Daddy “dada”
Duck “dika dika dika”
Fish “ees/ah ah ah ooh”
Frog “boe boe boe” (who knows why)
Hot
Lion “AAAAAAAAah” (in a scary roar kind of voice)
Malia “EE-uh”
Mommy “Ommy/mommy”
More “moe”
Nemo “ME-moe”
No
Ouch “aow”
Out
Please “eeeeees/leeeees”
Rosco “Ohhh”
Shark “ay ay ay yay” (while showing his teeth and chomping)
Uh oh
Up

Some words overlap both lists b/c he does a sign and some noise along with it that I will recognize if he does it from the back seat when I'm driving. He recognizes a ton more words than this, but these are what he can produce back to me. Some times he'll spot a word that he knows and will repeat it until I acnowledge him.
So he doesn't speak 40 words yet, but how do you say when he "knows" words? He knows over 40 words that I say. Oh well.

Steven's 1st Trial

Steven just had his 1st real trial, and he did great!

He was at the office 14 hours yesterday, and got up early for the trial today. Today was even longer. He was almost there for 18 hours! - the jury was out 'til 10 pm w/ no verdict then the judge asked them to try again and they spent another hour just to be a hung jury! So they'll do it all over again in a month. At least Steven has his 1st one done and out of the way.

Good job, Steven and Heather!

bellies

Stacy is due a month before Corrie who's due a month before I am. I'm just over 15 weeks here. Fuzzy picture here, but you get the idea.

Lowry Park Zoo

This is how to go to the zoo: use a pass, take your brother to help with the babies, then have your friend meet you there. That way you can take pictures while the babies each have someone to play with! Oh, and you have to get the big snow cones at the end to share after a hot HOT day!

Rhinos

They got to watch the monkeys go to get their food from the lady who pushed fruit through the chain link fence. Fascinating!

Penguins in hot Florida?! They're from Africa. The exhibit opened this summer!A whole Elephant family! Look at the babyWe thought it would be pretty cool to let the babies feed the giraffes, but . . . Dylan was scared to death! Look at Malia's opposite reaction! She fed him a cracker and wanted to do it again.

Dylan was a bit skeptical about riding on the cammel. He started to cry, then remembered he was supposed to be a tough guy.Malia went 1st and loved every seccond of the ride.It was such a hot day. I knew the zoo had a play area w/ water for the kids so we changed them in their swimsuits and splashed with them some. They started out with their sun hats on . . . but when they got wet . . . Dylan was done w/ his. Luckily it got overcast at that point. Who knew that water spouts and holes could be son entertaining?

Dylan likes to stick his finger anywhere it will fit. Every kid likes to try to run away at amusement parks, right? He was playing hide 'n seek behind one of the big boulders. He looks skinny here, but as you can see in all the other pictures, he's still got his buda belly.Did I mention the big snow cones? YUM! We shared two. Look at what a good share-er Malia is! And look at Dylan's huge mouth!A fun time at the zoo! Dylan napped in the car on the way to church youth night, then was wide awake for our Wednesday get-together at Andre's. What a busy day!

Happy Anniversary to Us!

Steven and I have now been married for 5 years!

I saw that my cousin Julie and her husband had a great idea to switch off planning something for their anniversaries. Julie does the odd years I think. I mentioned it to Steven who thought it was a great idea since he usually did all of the planning.

So, I decided to plan something. I have the email of some of his friends at work, so I took a ton of balloons over for her to fill his office with. She couldn't fit them all in her car, so I decorated Steven's car when he was at work with the rest of them. The party store had 3 kinds of "5" balloons and I got them all. I thought they'd be good and rediculous in Steven's office. Someone who saw me put these on the car assumed it was someone's 55th birthday. Oh well. He usually works late, so we just took Dylan to Steven's mom's house for the evening and we went to dinner at a restaraunt I've been wanting to try out for over a year - Pacific Wave. We almost went once but felt too casually dresses. We were right! Each entre was around $30 and the salad was a lot extra. The salad was delicious and worth it!*

We decided to go somewhere else for desert, so we went to Ceviche. That was delicious! Nobody could say I wasn't showing after that! We didn't take any pictures. It doesn't feel natural to take pictures of ourselves when Dylan's not there.

The next day Steven helped his mom cut down some wasp-infested bananna trees and picked up Dylan while I watched my cousin's cute girls. We napped then went on a fun excursion! (This is the part I planned this year.) We chartered a sailboat for sunset - a "sloup." Steven and his friends want to rent a sail boat and sail to an island in the Caribean for Steven's 30th birthday, so I figured this would be fun. B/c we're not rich even though we were acting like it, Darren and Corrie went too. So the four of us and our captain casted off a little after 6pm. It was a fairly big sailboat w/ a basement. Darren was pretty giddy that he got to help so much. They did all of the ropes stuff and took care of raising the sails etc. Steven was at the heln most of the time though we all took turns. When I went up there, the wind picked up and we were about to do a 180 so the captain took over. He said it wasn't my fault, but the boys think it's pretty funny that the same thing happened again only when it was Corrie's turn. She thought we were going to tip over. Look at the horizon and my crazy hair:There was a storm that followed us out, but it went past us the other way. We went about 6.4 knots out then a little slower back. We were gone about 3 hours. It was fun! Of course Steven and Darren think they're ready to go w/o a captain next time. The sun was going down - last picture:We hadn't eaten dinner before, so we took cheese and crackers, strawberries, and sparkeling grape juice. Corrie made two kinds of cookies too! We were still a little hungry so we ate at Frenchy's since we don't get up to Clearwater Beach much. All I wanted were the fish tacos, but since it was probably a mystery fish, I decided that I should probably eat something else. (I did have a delicious bite of Steven's.)

So, that's our Anniversary weekend together. Steven's live-like-you're-rich weekend continued the next day when he went sky-diving w/ Andre and Rita b/c it was her birthday. Steven was pretty excited that he had to sign death wavers twice in one weekend. How adventurous! Even if I wasn't pregnant I don't have that desire to go jumping out of an airplane. Zip lining in Costa Rica was amazing enough for me. *This pregnancy has been so different from my last one. Before I craved watermellon, ice water, and berries. With this one, I needed the saltines to calm my tummy and I really like pickles! The other thing I've been craving is good seafood - the expensive kind:) I want lobster and crab leggs but would settle for a blackened grouper sandwich. Out of those three, I'm only supposed to have crab which is expensive and not offered that many places we go. I just heard that lobster is the roach of the sea - yuck! Oh well, at Pacific Wave, I ate the the special that ended up being pricy, but it was one of the fish that wasn't on my "no no list" and it was a special occastion!