21 Months Old Already?

Wow. Time flies! This boy is only three months away from turning two years old. That is just crazy.

These days he is just in love with his dada. He runs screaming to the door laughing and shouting dadadadada when Mark comes home. When Mark is here he wants dada to take him up for his nap, and at night he definitely wants Mark to take him up to bed. It is truly just so cute how happy he is to have his dad around.

He still loves to spend time outside, and lately he has enjoyed "hiking" through our backyard with Mark. They take the trail through the woods up to the park. He doesn't like the tall grass touching him, but other than that part loves to pick up rocks, point out trash and listen to the birds.

Last week Harrison figured out that if he stood on a small bucket he could see up over the pool table. Oh boy. I think we are going to have to put the pool balls away soon because if he climbs up onto the table and throws those, some serious damage will be done.

Just look at how happy he is with himself:

He got some new-to-him toys and books sent to him from his cousins Jeffrey and Charlie, and has really had a great time playing with them. Here he's enjoying one of the books and making animal noises as he reads about them.

On Saturday we went for a walk down the street to visit Harrison's favorite neighbor dog Millie. He really wanted her to come to the fence and lick his hand--here he is trying to persuade her to come to the fence to see him.

And, here is my monkey boy at his finest. We had the windows open in our bedroom and apparently he thought it would be a good idea to climb onto the window sill. Really?

He scampered up here like he had done it 100 times before and just laughed. Needless to say I took a quick picture and then removed him from the situation...what a nut.

He has gotten a lot better at communicating what he wants lately, and will use his words/signs to show us. It seems as if any day now he'll be rattling off a whole slew of words the way he is babbling. He is now saying "no no" if he doesn't want something, which is very helpful...except when you ask him to do something like come with you to get a new diaper and he tells you "no no". And he will say "bye bye" and wave (used to just wave) so we are definitely getting somewhere!

Happy Halloween!!

Happy Halloween!!

Harrison had fun roaming the streets of our neighborhood dressed as a frog. He's never really been outside at night so it was a whole new world for him. He was a bit shy when a woman dressed as a witch approached him, to the point where he hid behind Mark's back. But, other than that he seemed to have fun being outside. He didn't really knock on many doors, but did have fun watching the other kids.

Monday morning he wanted to put his costume back on and wore it around the house for about an hour. Whatever makes him happy!

Earlier on Halloween we went to a pumpkin patch. He had a great time roaming around the pumpkins and trying to pick up the really big ones. He loved the shirt he had on, with Curious George and the pumpkin on it, and all day he would look at it and smile.

October Update

Harrison has been keeping us very busy...so I haven't had a lot of time to update the blog lately. He seems to be learning more every day and putting things together even if he isn't talking about them.
For example, he knows that if you go potty, you also wash your hands. If we tell him one of us is going to the potty, he signs potty and then signs wash hands.

In the morning we talk about what we are going to do that day. He seems to really like having a conversation with me like that, and we talk about the things as we do them throughout the day.

One of his favorite things to do is to go to go Costco (smart kid!!). Why? Two reasons. First, they draw a picture of a bunny on the back of our receipt when we leave and give it to him. Second, he LOVES that there are birds all over the parking lot, because he feeds his leftover snacks to them and is so excited when they come eat them. So, when I tell him we are going to Costco, he signs bunny, and then bird, and gets a big grin on his face. And when we leave, he signs bunny at the people who check our receipt, and then signs bird and saves some snacks (goldfish, puffs, etc.) to throw at the birds in the parking lot. It is just too cute!

Now, it did break my heart the other night when I realized he understood what I was telling him. On Friday night we went to a friend's birthday party and had a babysitter come stay with Harrison. As I was feeding him dinner, I was telling him that mama and dada were going to go bye-bye and Harrison was going to stay with Miss Nicole. He wrinkled his face up and started to cry! He grabbed for me and was done eating, and just kept saying mama, mama and didn't want to let me go. Then when Mark got home he did the same thing to him. He totally got what I was saying when I said we were leaving and boy, he didn't like it! His babysitter wasn't even there yet and he was already upset, so now I know not to warn him next time...

Here are some pictures from the last few weeks:


Harrison definitely digs his potty. He knows what it is, knows the sign for it, and occasionally likes to sit on it. One step at a time...



Someone dropped off two awesome Tonka trucks at the sandbox on the playground a couple of weeks ago. Harrison loves this one.



Wednesday is our favorite day to go for a walk in the morning...because it is garbage day! Harrison watches very intently as the truck cruises the neighborhood. We were playing in our driveway after our walk, and he was so excited when he heard the garbage truck coming to our house. He sat and waited on the curb and watched as it picked up all of the cans in our cul-de-sac. Then, about five minutes later, he went back to the same spot, sat down, and signed more. He didn't really understand that the truck wasn't coming back.



Here is Harrison's new hiding place. He laughed so hard when he truly did surprise me here. All of a sudden I couldn't find him, and when I walked by the laundry room and saw him he just couldn't stop laughing. He did it again a few minutes later so I made sure to get a picture of him.



Harrison's friend Hunter came over the other day. They had a great time playing with all of the toys upstairs. Then all of a sudden Harrison decided to make sure Hunter looked his very best. So, he used the pool table brush to straighten out Hunter's hair. As you can see, Hunter wasn't quite sure what the heck was going on! I hope one day they can look back at this picture and laugh as hard as their parents did when they saw this.



Time for another dance party on the silpat. And, yes, I do wash this before I use it :-)



Fun with Nonny. He had a great time while she visited and made her play with him quite a bit.



I love this picture! Harrison always likes to look at himself in the mirror after his bath and this time he decided to be very silly with daddy.



Harrison found these random glasses in a drawer in our room, they must be 15 years old from an old Halloween costume. He certainly enjoyed trying them on and acting crazy in them!



Harrison's potty doubles as a step-stool. He finally figured out how to pull it up to the sink and turn on the faucet to wash his hands, which is one of his favorite things to do. Can you see the grin on his face?



And, the glasses are back!

20 Months Old!

We took some pictures to celebrate turning 20 months old...these are a few of our favorites.

Well here we are, somehow 20 months old! Will he really be two years old soon? Hard to believe...

Lately the weather here has been just beautiful so we have spent a lot of time at the park. We go in the morning after our walk, and then again in the afternoon. Harrison is happiest when he is outside, so it is really great to finally have this nice weather as opposed to the heat. I will miss this in July!

Here are a few of my favorite playground photos from the last week:

He likes to ride the cement mixer


One of my favorite faces he makes

He looks so cute in his sunglasses but hasn't wanted to keep them on lately

Harrison is still learning new signs all the time, although he's been more into Curious George than Signing Time shows lately. He even made up a sign for "raisin" since he likes them so much. We still don't have too many words, but he sure seems to be trying. He tried to say "vegetable" the other night, and I think he's tried to say bug, moon, and a few other things I can't remember right now. He's also signing "please" a lot when he wants something. Yay for manners!

Harrison has been in a "space saver" high chair which attaches to a regular chair at the table. However, lately he has started to look too big for it and seems kind of uncomfortable. So, we broke down and ordered one of the seemingly giant full-size high chairs. He loves it! His tray is much bigger so we have less food on the floor and he has more room for books and cups (since he insists on having both milk and water).

This weekend Nana, Uncle Richard and Aunt Allison came to visit. Harrison had a great time playing with everyone...he loves having people here to play with!

Reading with Nana

It was great weather so we spent a lot of time at the park. He is getting better at climbing every day and loves to swing on his tummy on the big kid swings...he never did like the bucket swing.

Lately he loves to play in Mark's truck. As soon as Mark gets home from work Harrison runs to meet him (we are usually outside waiting!) and can't wait to climb in the truck. He gets this look on his face that is sheer happiness and just bounces all over the front seats pushing every button.

Another new fun activity we started this week is coloring. Finally he likes it! I have tried to get him to color for probably the past six months and he always just wanted to take bites of the crayons. But, finally, he likes it. He signs "colors" when he wants to color and will sit in his high chair and happily color for up to 30 minutes sometimes. Whoo Hoo! He ends up with marker all over him, but thankfully washable markers really come right off in the bath without any scrubbing. He also loves to take the caps off of all of the markers, put them back on, then put all of the markers back in the box.

Harrison has been keeping me busy lately so I haven't had much time to post, but I'll try to at least get some pictures posted more frequently so you can see his cute face :-)

An Injury and a Trip to Birmingham

Things have settled down here after a busy last couple of weeks.

Two-and-a-half weeks ago Harrison decided to help me vacuum. That was going great as you can see:

Well, after we put away the canister vac and got out the regular one, things quickly went downhill. We were using it on the rug, and Harrison pointed out some little specks of things under the couch that he wanted me to get. As I was using the attachment for that, he managed to tip the vacuum up to look under it and decided to stick his finger in. That didn't end so well.

He ripped most of the skin off of the side of his left forefinger next to the thumb. He was so sad, it just hurt so badly, and I felt horrible. We were able to go straight to the doctor, and he was so good on the way there. He didn't cry, just kind of whimpered every now and then. The doctor took one look at it and kind of cringed...not exactly what you want to see.

So, we spent the next two weeks elaborately bandaging his hand twice a day. It looked so much worse than it was because in order to protect that one finger we had to wrap all four of them together. Poor guy! He was a great sport and only pulled it off a few times.

Although it isn't completely healed, it looks so much better now than it did. Good thing these little guys heal quickly!

Harrison and I spent the last weekend of September visiting my sister and her family in Birmingham. We had a great time and got to do lots of fun things--go to the museum, the zoo and a bowling birthday party!

It was really fun to watch Harrison play with his cousins. He loved having playmates right there ready to go when he woke up in the morning. And, he couldn't believe how many cars, trucks, trains and balls there were to play with. He really wanted to see Jeffrey's fish and tried to climb up on his dresser to touch the fish several times.

Friday afternoon we took Harrison and Charlie to the museum. Here they are enjoying all of the fun things, there is so much to do there, and there is even a little aquarium area on one floor. Harrison loved seeing the fish (and couldn't quit signing fish as he saw them)!

On Saturday we had Charlie's 4th birthday party at the bowling alley. Harrison had so much fun running around the place, trying to hide in between lockers, checking out all of the balls, bowling with a ramp and watching the kids. He also really enjoyed "playing" the games in the arcade.

And the three cousins enjoyed a group hug :-)

On Monday we took Harrison and Charlie to the zoo after we picked Charlie up from school. It was a beautiful day, and both boys had a lot of fun.

We got to feed the lorekeets. Harrison was very entertained by that until he tried to pet one of them and it nipped his hand. Whoops! You can see in the second of the two bird pictures below he looks a little surprised by that...

Putting on a hat to enter the "mine shaft"

Riding the train with Aunt Susie

Our trip was a lot of fun and Harrison was great on the airplane. It was good to come back to cool weather!