First Family Picture

I know I have been very neglectful of the blog lately, but we have been busy! Last weekend we had our family pictures done. This is the one and only one we got that was good, and this was after the photographer edited Tim's head in from another shot. Parker was an absolute nightmare throwing fit after fit. I think we are getting to the terrible twos a bit early. I will get more pictures up after Christmas, so in the meantime....Merry Christmas!!!

18 Month Check

Parker had his 18 month check today and is doing very well according to the doctor. He had to get his Hep A shot and a tetanus shot today, which he did not like at all, but nurse Kristy gave him his first dum dum lolly pop ever, and that seemed to make it all better. Below are his stats as of this morning:

• Weight: 28 pound 0 ounces (76th percentile)
• Height: 33 1/2 inches (84th percentile)
• Head: 49 cm (82th percentile)

As we can all see, the kid is still big, and still has a huge head, although it has shrunk down from the 89th percentile at the last visit. :) I was also given a paper on what he should be doing and how he should be acting. Parker fits the profile to the "T".

Smiles and Friends

This is Parker saying cheese for the camera. This is one of his new tricks he likes to do.

Goofing around with daddy.

All tuckered out. We are trying to get him to one nap a day, and have been mostly successful, but sometimes, he just falls asleep before we get to nap time.

Happy Halloween!

One of Parker's favorite things is to play with the laundry basket. Being pushed around is his favorite part.

I am watching our neighbors son Luka for a few weeks while his normal babysitter is out of commission. The boys get along pretty well, but have their spats from time to time. Neither one is a very good sharer, so that causes problems. Here they are reading their books.

What's more fun than drinking milk together in the laundry basket?

Snack time!

Parker saying "cheese" with Stacey.

Saying "cheese" for me this morning. He was the only one this happy, as he did not quite get that we are supposed to actually sleep an extra hour for daylight savings time.

Trunk or Treat?

We went Trunk or Treating at our church tonight, with our friends, the Caseys. Parker is a cheeseburger this year for Halloween. With our festivities tonight, we'll get two uses out of his costume...woohoo! Parker had a lot of fun running around tonight and even made it to a few trunks. He liked digging in the bowls for candy, even though he couldn't really eat much of it. :)

Ainsley, Parker, and Hayden

Family photo op

Trying to figure out how to get into his candy.

Stacey wanted to be a cheeseburger...

...and I decided to try it out too!

After Parker got out of his costume, daddy let him drive the car. This is one of the things he loves most, but rarely gets to do.

My He's Grown!

I just brought Parker's infant carrier back to the house since my friend had been borrowing it. I left it out when I got home, with the intention of putting it in the basement in the morning, but Parker is having so much fun crawling in and out of the baby seat. It is one of his favorite things to do right now. So, the picture above was taken when he was six weeks old, and the shot below is from last week sometime. It really puts into perspective how big he has gotten. Funny how he is a diaper baby in both. :)

Trip to Oak Harbor

The aftermath of stealing mommy's ice cream bar. He thoroughly enjoyed it!

Uncle Kelly thought it would be funny to stick a mini nilla wafer on Parker's forehead. The best part was that there was cookie residue on his forehead when we finally pulled it off.

Parker with his girlfriend Hopie.

With grandma on her birthday.

Hopie, Kelly, and me.

Kelly, my mom, and me.

There is an awesome park by my mom's house we took Parker to several times. He loved the swings the most, and the slide was a very close second.

He also liked this music making thing.

With Uncle Kelly and mommy.

With Grandma Bonnie and Uncle Kelly.

Grandma Bonnie, Minnie (the dog), me, Parker, and Uncle Kelly.

Grandma was tickling him and Minnie was licking him.

My little cutie pie!

At Red Robin with Uncle Kelly and Bryan.

Parker and I both got lucky and we each had our own seat on the plane ride both directions. Here he is on the way home.

This is a preview of Parker's Halloween costume. He refuses to wear anything on his head, so it was a little harder than expected to find him a good costume.

Parker Update

Well, I was going to add a bunch of pictures to this, but I keep getting error messages, so just my boring writing will have to do this time. Parker and I head out to my mom's house for nine days tonight, so hopefully I can get a bunch of pictures up on here then.

Parker's big thing this week is that he wants to feed himself, and for that matter, everyone else around him. Monday night, he managed to steal both Tim's and my fork while we were eating dinner, and he proceeded to try to feed himself and me. He did actually manage to get some food up on the fork at one point. Then, yesterday he refused to eat his yogurt for me. Then, the phone rang, so I set the yogurt on his high chair tray with the spoon in it to see what he would do. Dive in, is what he did. He loved trying to feed himself, and actually managed to get about a quarter of the yogurt into his mouth. The rest of it, well, lets just say it was EVERYWHERE! In his hair, in his eye lashes, all over the highchair and his jammies. I ended up just throwing him in the bath, even though he had just had one the night before. I was out of yogurt this morning, so we'll have to try it at Grandma Bonnie's house. ;)

Speaking of Grandma Bonnie, I have been telling Parker that we are going to visit her. So, then I will ask him questions, and he will respond to me. Here is our conversation:

• Me: Parker, are we going to Grandma's house?
• Parker: Ya
• Me: Parker, are you going to terrorize?
• Parker: Ya

It will be interesting to see what he gets into since he constantly is keeping us on our toes. He has grown taller, and I know this because he is now miraculously able to reach and pull things off the counter that I thought I had set far enough back...case in point, Tim and I were eating, and he managed to get a dirty bowl and measuring cup off the counter I thought was far enough back. Tim noticed it and asked me if I had given them to him. I hadn't, and they were really dirty, so we had to take them away. He is also climbing on everything and saying "UP" so we have to make sure he isn't climbing on things that can hurt him.

Parker is starting to say new words here and there. His new favorite word is hot. He sometimes uses it in the right context, and he sometimes just says hot. Some other words he says now are: apple, cheese, mommy, daddy, pizza, Stacey, Hayden, Ashton (comes out Ashti), puppy, hi, pool, ball, pop. He also has a few short phrase, they are: Who is it? (this comes out when my cell phone makes any sort of noise), What's that?, and I did it. Obviously, some of these things are way easier to make out than others, but he is babbling up a storm, and really trying to talk more and more. At least he comes by it honestly. ;)

Go Wildcats!

This was our best attempt at a family picture. All the other ones, Parker is running away from us. Notice, he is very unhappy to be in our grips in this one.
Parker conked out on daddy in preparation for the big game against Iowa. He still didn't make it until kick-off, but the Wildcats beat Iowa, so all was good.

He is loving his rocking chair these days, and can even get up in it all by himself.

He is also finally taking interest in his giraffe.

Parker thinks the broom is cool and likes to help mama. Too bad he just moves the dirt all over.

Mr. Busy Pants

Tim informed me I have been slacking on the blog, and then I realized it has been a few weeks and he is right, so here is what Parker has been up to for the last few weeks....first, he is now climbing the stairs like a mad man and looks for any opportunity to go upstairs with mom or dad. He is still trying to figure out how to go down them, as he refuses to try going down on his belly, even when we pull him.

Kissing mommy instead of smiling for the camera like he was supposed to be. I am not complaining though. I love those sloppy kisses!

For some reason he is sometimes interested in his pacifiers that for months he has cared less about. I think he likes chewing on them because it feels good on his gums.

Daddy was trying to stretch after a workout, but Parker had other plans for him.

Taking a break for a picture while playing with his house.

He loves to mow our carpet and kitchen floor.

Parker realized he can climb up to the strategically placed boxes, so now said boxes are piled on top of each other to still help block some of the hard to baby proof items.

Parker got some cool new foam blocks, and daddy put on in the front of his shirt, and one in the back. He was very confused on how to get them out.

Mr. Tornado tearing apart the newspaper ads he pulled off the kitchen table.

What a little ham!

Cheering for Navy on Monday...too bad they didn't win!

I had to wake him up from his nap the other day, but he looked so cute I went and grabbed the camera first.

Cheese!

"Mommy! I really want my milk, now!!!! Why are you taking so long to get it for me????"

Happy after he got his milk!