Time with G&G Booga

Dear Parker,

We have spent the last couple of days at your Grandma and Grandpa Booga's house.  You are having a great time.  We bought some pops (which you love) and you blew through a whole pack on the driveway.  Last summer you mostly threw them or stomped them.  This summer you love to JUMP on them.  Look at that air!

You jumping on Pops

Schererville, which is the next town over, was having a carnival/festival thing with rides.  We thought it would be fun, and it was!  You played the duck game twice (and won lots of miscellaneous junk).

Pulling a duck at the "carnival"

The most momentous thing, however, was that you rode something by yourself!  Last summer we took you to the State Fair and you attempted to get on several rides with your Mom, but freaked out at the last second every time.  Your Mom and I were a little concerned that you would do the same thing again.  You are apparently a big girl now because you LOVED this car ride.  The first time you passed us after it had started you yelled, "I'm not afraid!!!!!!"  It was super cute.

Your first carnival ride by yourself!

You also rode the carousel.  We had Mom ride with you just because it goes pretty fast and there's nothing to really strap you on to that horse!

You and Mom on the wicked fast carousel

You loved the car ride so much that you wanted to go on it again.  So, we let you.  This time you chose a firetruck!  Uncle Stu thought that you looked like a pro in the picture I sent him and said that you should go to work for him in the morning! ;)

Ride so nice you rode it twice

The carnival was in a park that had some play equipment that you had a great time crawling all over.

Climbing at the playground

The best part were these rings that you could reach from the ground.  You love hanging but usually need help to reach anything that you could hang from.  You could grab these all by yourself.

Hanging at the playground

This morning, we went to visit Grandpa Booga's new plant while Grandma was at the eye doctor.  You were not super excited at first, but warmed up and kept asking Grandpa to show you more "cool stuff."  You liked the forklift so Grandpa took you for a ride.  You also liked standing on the big scale and looking at all the metal hoses.  Grandpa even cut you off a little piece so you now have your own flexible metal hose.  We went to lunch and after your nap we went to the park.  You had a lot of fun there and even climbed a spider net all by yourself.  We came home and you wanted to play croquet.  But, what you really meant was that you wanted us to play and you wanted to sit in a chair with Mom's iPhone and play the letter game.   We let you for a little bit.    We had dinner and you reluctantly went to bed.  You have been having a good time.  We have one more day before we leave.  I will post some pictures of you at the park tomorrow.

I love you.  You are getting so big.  I forget that you are just 2 still.  I know you are close to 3, but I think many times you act as if you are 4 and I have a hard time remembering to go easy on you when you act your age.  But, I do love you more than anything.  I'm having a great summer with you.

Love,
Mommy

at 2 and 3/4

Dear Parker,

You are getting drastically close to being 3 years old.  We still have 3 months left in which I will call you 2 and 1/2, but you are technically now 2 and 3/4, so I thought I would give a little update about the things you are doing now.
Here goes:

Imaginary play - you are WAY into this.  You take your babies (Allie, Crackers, Tiny Baby, Pig Baby, Squishy Baby, Koko, Glinda and the 3 or so other unnamed babies) to the store, to school and various other places.  You mother them constantly.  You make sure they always have their cloths.  (Yes, each baby now has her own specific cloth that comes with them.  I can't keep them all straight, but you can.)  You make sure they take naps and have the toys they need.  You cook them food.  We took lunch to Mom today and you had to pack a lunch for Allie as well.

Imaginary friends? - I don't know whether or not to call these friends, but we are frequently visited by the Pamas and the Hayfers.  The Pamas are animals, I think.  According to you, they are "Giant" and covered in fur.  They walk on 9 legs, but have no eyes.  They also have hair on their heads in addition to the fur.  Allie does not like the Pamas.  Then, there are the Hayfers.  They are very small and apparently many of them are babies.  We don't yet have much information about their appearance other than they are very small.

New things you are into: Lately you have been obsessed with puzzles.  You have completely mastered all the "pre-school" puzzles in our house (the ones with the picture underneath the puzzle) and you can do several 12 piece regular puzzles (ya know, the kind that come in a box and you have to look at the picture to put them together.)  You help me with the 25 piece puzzles.  You haven't quite figured out the whole "do-the-edges-first" concept.  Instead you like to find all of one thing and put it together.  (Like, let's put together the elephant.)
    
You have a tracing book that I was really hoping you would get into about 3 months ago, but you are very excited about it now.  You trace straight lines and curvy lines, but get a little confused when they combine straight and curvy.  Then you just draw a circle! :)
    
You have also recently become excited about learning your letters.  Thank goodness.  I am confident in saying that you know B, H, O, P, Q, S, W and Z.  There are many others that you get sometimes. You confuse letters that look the same or sound the same....like C with S or I, J, L and T.   I guess that is to be expected.  I would really like you to know them before you go to school in the "fall," but I'm trying to not stress about it or pressure you.
  
 You still like to "read" and make up stories for the books you don't know or recite from memory the books you do know.
    
You have many pretend phones and get many important calls.  Most of them go like this, "HelloHowAreYouGoodOkayBye."  It's all very quick.  At least two times in the past week you have exchanged "texts" with Grandpa Booga in which he has thanked you for the gift cards you bought him.  I'm not sure where you got the idea to buy gift cards, but apparently he enjoyed them. ;)

New Adventures: Yesterday, I was working on staining the fence.  You were trying to be such a good girl and play in the yard by yourself.  Then, the neighbor boy came out and you started "playing" with him through the fence, so I just went over and asked if he wanted to come play in our yard.  So, you had a playdate with a kid neither of us knew very well.  He was pretty well behaved and you seemed to enjoy his company.  Here's the thing though.  He will be 5 next month - so he is more than 2 years older than you are - and you played together just fine.  I guess I don't know if this is normal or not, but you do seem to enjoy hanging out and playing with older kids.  Whatever that means.

Okay, baby.  I guess this is long enough for now.  I can't believe how old you are getting.  You look old and act so grown-up sometimes.  I love you so much but am not quite ready for all this big kid stuff.  I love you so much.
Love,
Mommy

Splash!

Dear Parker,

You have certainly been getting your fill of the summer water activities lately.  Last night, your cousins came over to play and you all played in the pool.  You were much more aggressive with the "swimming" when other kids are around.  I think it also helped that the water was MUCH warmer than it was the first time you used the pool.  You splashed and tried to blow bubbles and dumped water on Alex's head.  There was a slightly scary moment where you lost your balance and went under and couldn't get yourself up, but Uncle Stu was right there and grabbed you.  You were totally fine and even laughed it off!

This morning, Mom needed to go into school for just a little bit, so we came along and went to the park across the street.  In addition to some pretty fun playground equipment, they have a "splash park."  I wasn't sure how you would react to the splash park part seeing that when you run through the sprinkler, you usually run around the sprinkler.

At first, you weren't too sure - just hanging out on the edge of the water.

 You liked wading through the "river" to the big rocks at the end

 but eventually you warmed up and ran through the water like a champ.

 This picture kills me because you look so old running like that.

 The biggest excitement of the day, however, came on the slides.  First there is a ladder to get to this enclosed platform area that leads to all the slides - you just climbed up the ladder all by yourself.  Then, I was trying to keep my eye on you on the platform, but it was very hard to see because it's kind of enclosed and it's pretty high up.  So, I went underneath and was looking around for you.  Then, I looked at the bottom and there you were.  You had gone down the really big slides all by yourself.  Before you had always wanted to go down with Mommy or Mom.

You kept to the biggest twisty slide, which is pretty slow because of all the bends, but then you tried the straight slide.  Mom started moving as soon as she saw you go in, but she didn't get there in time.  You just popped out the bottom and landed flat on your face.  It is a FAST slide.  Very Steep and Very Straight.  You said you had fun on the way down, but you didn't like falling.  That seemed like a good time to go home.  So, we grabbed some lunch (where you ATE an entire sub sandwich that was chocked full of meat) and came home.  It was a really good morning.

I love you so much.  I am looking forward to more days like today.
Love,
Mommy

Social Skillz

Dear Parker,

Saturday was graduation at Mom's school.  This is always a big day because we have to do the ceremony, the reception and then, inevitably, several graduation parties.  You did pretty well through the ceremony.  You made it for over an hour and only missed the last 2 speeches (out of 6, so not too bad.)  All in all, we only missed about 10-15 minutes, which I think is pretty good.  You did alright through the reception, but mostly because we let you eat. (This was not my finest nutrional parenting day, but you didn't die so I'm calling it a success.)

After the reception we had 5 graduation parties to attend. (Not to mention the three on Sunday and the one this evening.) You were a trooper.  There is such a difference between last year and this year.  Last year, you clung to my side the entire time.  This year, you ran off with other small children as well as teenagers.  It's nice.  You are socializing and I don't have a toddler stuck to my hip.  I'm so glad to see the change in your social skills.  I don't know whether to attribute it to school or just you growing up, but either way, my baby is gone.

Right now, I am listening to you "go to sleep."  Riiiiiiight.  We'll keep working on it.

I love you, baby.
Mommy

Catching Up: Visiting Sadie

Dear Parker,

I'm still working on getting caught up.  Over Memorial Day weekend we drove to Columbus to visit our friends, the Smiths.  In the past, we have tried to visit with them and things have gone tragically south - Sadie hasn't slept at all, you got the flu.  It's just been bad, so we were prepared for something awful to happen.  However, things were great.  You each had your moments (usually when you were tired) but overall, you had a fantastic time and loved playing with your friend.

We kept very busy visiting the zoo, the Franklin Conservatory, playing at the park down the street from Sadie's house and going to the Memorial Day Parade.  You had such a great time, but I honestly think you had the most fun when you were chasing each other all over the house - up and down Sadie's super cool loft bed slide.  I hope we can visit them again soon because I think you are going to be really good friends.

I love you,

Mommy

Catching up: Visiting Tyler

Dear Parker,

I've once again fallen a bit behind in your letters (even though I just promised to try to do better.  I guess this is me trying to do better.)  Anyway, a couple weekends ago, we drove to Michigan to finally meet your new cousin, Tyler.  You absolute adored him.  You were very patient waiting to hold him.  You had to wait several hours because he was eating and then we had to go to Uncle Steven's game and then you needed to take a nap.  But, when you finally got to hold him, you didn't want to put him down.  you held him for about 40 minutes.  You were so excited!  (A picture is below - they loaded in the wrong order.)

Aunt Stacy also came up for a little bit and you were so excited to see her.  I managed to capture your welcome hug.  It's so cute.  I love how much you love your Aunt Stacy.  You had tons of fun playing with your Aunts and Uncle and Grandma.

 We spent a few hours and Grandma and Grandpa's house before heading home and you, of course, wanted to jump on the trampoline.  The last time you were on the trampoline was last July and you are so much bigger now.  Last year you didn't even know how to jump.  Now, it's one of your favorite pastimes.  So, you just hopped up and started jumping.  I think, if given the chance, you would have stayed on there all day.

We had a great, but quick, visit.  I'm hoping we get to see everyone again soon.  You LOVE your cousins.
I love you.
Mommy