Creed at Two

When Creed was born, we decided to take his picture every month with the same stuffed toy in the same big leather chair so you could see how much he grew over the year.  Now this is an annual tradition (although we just got around to taking his picture this year so this is technically Creed at two years and two months).

Larry is not usually around when there is enough light to take Creed's picture so we went for it today even though Creed has a gigantic mosquito bite on his forehead.  That chair is now in the darkest room in our basement so there wasn't a lot of light, but we tried anyway.

Creed has my heart.  We have turned into those doting parents who think their child is the most adorable kid in the whole world. He's just so sweet.  And he already tries so hard to get a laugh from you.
He copies everything he hears people say so we hear a lot of funny phrases like, "Rock and roll mommy!" His most common phrase is, "Oh, boy!"  He says it when something exciting happens, but he also says it when something funny happens and he slaps his forehead while he says it.
These days he want's to do everything "I-self!" and he's so smart.  He counts to twelve (usually forgetting seven), he knows the alphabet in capital letters, he knows shapes, and he knows colors (although we're fairly certain he is colorblind like my dad and can't tell red and green apart or purple and blue)
I am completely astounded at how much he's grown up since a year ago.  Can you believe a year ago he was such a little chunky baby?
At least he's still cuddly.  He loves to sit on our laps to read books and he loves to be rocked a little before bedtime.  His favorite books of the moment are Freight Train by Donald Crews, Not a Box by Antoinette Portis, Harry the Dirty Dog by Gene Zion and Margaret Bloy Graham, and Knuffle Bunny by Mo Willems.
He's obsessed with typical little boy things; trains, diggers, robots, bugs, the movie Cars.  He collects little Pixar cars.  Sally is his favorite and he keeps telling me that he really wants Luigi.  He doesn't like to play by himself which means hours of Larry and I on our tummies on the carpet driving cars and ages of driving one of his two trains around and around the same track, but it's worth it because it makes him so happy.

Even though he is only two, he is such a good little friend.  He loves to hold hands and make his friends giggle.  He really misses Jesse and tells me every day that Jesse went on an airplane to "A-York"  We're thinking about putting him in preschool this falls just so he can make some new friends (I was totally surprised that most of the preschools in my neighborhood start accepting kids at 2 1/2, but I guess that Creed's ready, and I think he would really love it)

How can he possibly be so grownup?  I still think of him looking this way.

Picnic on the Porch

We had plans to picnic with Tyler and Lisa on Sunday and we were not deterred by the rain.  We just set up a picnic on the porch

And you really can't go wrong with raspberry lemonade, a giant fruit salad
and fresh peonies from Lisa and Tyler's new home at Grandpa Lewis's
Creed was especially happy because the porch is his favorite spot.  He spends hours driving cars along the railing.
After dinner we went for a walk in the rain

And there might have been a little singing in the rain too.

More Etsy Love

I just wanted to share some of my favorite things on Etsy right now.  Wouldn't each one make life just a little bit more beautiful?

Letter Prints by Paperfinger (first spotted on OhDeeDoh).  I can't decide if I would get S is for Sunshine, L is for Library, M is for Monster or use the custom option and ask Christina to do an R is for Robot print for Creed.
Wouldn't a vintage Secret Love Letter locket with a tiny love note in it make a romantic gift?  I would wear it all the time.  I'm so tempted to buy it, but it's not quite as romantic coming from yourself.

This wall hanging made by Little Pink House is already sold.  The description says "Hem" means "home" in Swedish.  I could attempt to make my own, but I don't think it could possibly be as lovely.

I've been eyeing the felt camera cases made by Hine for a long time.  It makes me want to buy a new little point and shoot camera just so I can carry it around all the time.
These baby shoes from frostingcouture are quite possibly the most adorable baby shoes ever made.
I already posted about this awesome superhero doll made by raplapla on my tumblr site, but I have to post it here too because I LOVE it.  The description says, "Tim is a florist from Warsaw. He has an impressive collection of grains of sand and he eats a jar of berry jam every day (and he is a super hero too)."

And I really think this Roar Growl, Gocco Print by Kidshaus needs to find its way to my home.

Creed and Jesse, Jesse and Creed

Creed is in for a shock this summer because three of his close friends are moving away.  The first to move is his best friend here, Jesse.  I've never seen two little boys this age so attached to each other.  Most of the time Creed is with other two-year-olds, playing together really means parallel play, where they are in the same space, but they are each doing their own thing.  As soon as we arrived in Utah, Creed has loved Jesse and it amazes me watched them play together and be overjoyed to see each other.

This week we had a couple of play-dates with Jesse while his parents packed and cleaned.  It surprised me to see Creed and Jesse doing the exact same things in so many of these pictures.  I don't know how they understand each other so well. 

Jesse has always called Creed, "Pew" and this week after playing with Jesse, Creed told me, "Mommy, me Pew!"







Today we got together one last time for a trip to the zoo. As we left Creed kept pointing to Jesse and saying, "Again! Again! Jesse Play!" and I explained that Jesse is getting on an airplane and going far away, he isn't going to live here anymore.  Poor Creed broke down in tears.  We are really going to miss this little guy.

It's like Christmas around here

Creed has never had that many toys, but it seemed like a lot of what we had were hulking pieces of plastic and since many of them were hand-me-downs, they weren't working too well either.  Truthfully, I didn't think too much about it until our vacation to California.  Larry's mom had several bins of toys from when Larry was little. It was so neat to see Creed and Larry playing with the toys that Larry used to love.  When we got home I saw things with new eyes and realized that we owned practically no toys that would be worth holding onto for grandkids.  In fact, we didn't own a lot worth holding onto for Creed to play with.

After we talked about it a bit, we decided to use some of my PayPal money from Sycamore Street Press to buy Creed some heirloom quality toys (that we don't have to worry about poisoning our child and most were environmentally friendly too, and as an added bonus most of them are so pretty that it makes constantly picking them up or shuffling around them a little less troublesome).

A wooden front-end loader on clearance at Land of Nod

And a digger

This awesome modern dollhouse also on clearance from Land of Nod.  Creed is drawn to dollhouses at friends' homes, and I was happy to find one so gender neutral.  It was the biggest splurge but it is already worth it for the time Creed and his friends have spent with it.
This Charlie and Lola mini playset because we needed people to live in the house and the Plan Toys people are a little scary looking, plus Creed and I both heart Charlie and Lola (ok, I especially heart Charlie and Lola)
And last but not least, this parking garage made by Melissa and Doug.  I knew this would be a big hit because a store in our neighborhood has one in a little play-corner for kids and Creed always has to be torn away from it.  He loves to run cars down the ramp and move the elevator up and down.

Creed has been very busy since these toys arrived. I'd have a hard time saying which one he likes best.

Before the people arrived, Creed's cars lived it up in the house, watching the flatscreen TV, napping in the beds, raiding the fridge.

He wasn't as excited about sorting through his toys and deciding which ones to pass on, but I think he's decided the new toys are worth it (and I'd like to think our talks about how we're passing his toys on to other kids that don't have as many toys had an affect too, but who knows).

And now life is a little more beautiful around here.

Do you Tumble?

I've been so disorganized lately.  It's mostly due to wanting to make the most of every moment with my toddler, but I'm sure there are things that I could be doing to make things easier.  There is much to do around our home, but today I'm thinking about my online world.  This blog needs a redesign (but I'm not a programmer so I'm not sure how to make things just they way I want them so I've been putting a redesign off).  My other blog needs a complete overhaul so I haven't even been blogging there.

And how do you keep track of things that you want to remember online?  Do you bookmark them all (I have more things bookmarked than I care to admit)? Do you print them out and keep them in a binder?  Do you use another site like Delicious to bookmark things?  Today I decided to take one small step and try Tumblr to bookmark things.  My site is simplyradiant.tumblr.com.  It seems so much like blogging that I'm not sure that I like it.  At this point, I'm not sure if I will keep it up.  You can upload one picture to each post and add a link to the site it's from so you can click on the picture to get to the site.  I like having a visual reminder of what I bookmarked, but I wish that I could just have set categories to put them in like clothing, sewing tutorials, decorating ideas, etc.

Feel free to check out my site although several of those things may end up on my blog sooner or later.  

By the light of the silvery moon

How did I get so behind on blogging?  Sooner or later, I will catch up.

We have an annual tradition of holding a moonlight flashlight Easter egg hunt for grownups the Saturday before Easter, but we were in California so the hunt was off.  Since we planned the trip fairly last moment, I had already stocked up on goodies so two weeks later as I started taking down the Easter decorations, we decided to leave them up and hold an impromptu hunt. It was too late to invite any of our friends with kids who would need babysitters, but luckily we talked Tyler, Lisa, and Danielle into heading over.  We were all still in our church clothes but we had to bundle up a little because it was COLD.  This is after I hid the eggs, but before the hunt started.

Larry made me promise to post this closeup so you can see how awesome my outfit truly was.
And here are our hunters, ready to go!
The rules were simple.  Everyone was assigned a color of egg to find (13 each) and there were four golden eggs that anyone could find and redeem for a bigger treat.  This year was the best hunt so far because I found the coolest nesting eggs that stacked together in groups of four so I had a lot of different sizes to hide.  

I also hid 10 Cascarones (hollowed out real eggs filled with confetti) and if you found one and smashed it on someone, you got to steal one of the eggs in their basket.  It made the hunt really exciting.

Tyler ended up with most of the gold eggs, but he shared with everyone.
We spent the rest of the night talking and enjoying our spoils.

It always ends up being way more fun than we expect (And we expect to be pretty fun).  I highly recommend holding a moonlight flashlight Easter egg hunt of your own!

Note to self: next year, plan ahead so we can invite more people and make sure to have plenty of flashlights on hand.