Chillaxin'

Lately, Dax will rest with his hands behind his head while snoozing in the car or

when he is finished with his meal. 

Life must be pretty good at 17 months.

Exploring Columbus

We're settled in to Columbus and have really had a great time exploring this little town. In case you ever forget where you are, there are primary colored "C"'s throughout the city to remind you!

 A couple weeks ago we took Dax to Columbus' little children's museum. It was the perfect size for a couple hours of exploration for a short attention span. Dax's favorite was the bubble exhibit, we made some huge bubbles!

 It's hard to tell, but Dax and I are inside a bubble in this picture!

 Dax and Curt taking a little break.

Dax has also loved exploring our apartment down here. It is much smaller and older than our place in West Lafayette, but it is pretty exciting for a little guy. Because we only brought bare kitchen essentials we have extra unused cabinet space that we don't have at home. Dax moves the few pans out that are in there and crawls through the cabinets to play peek-a-boo on the other side on a daily basis. He will be in for an adjustment when we move back home and the cabinets are all full and child-proofed. 

Dax and I spend most days exploring a local park, playground or pool (it's been a fabulous summer!). Tonight we happened upon this fabulous playground. It was a blast!

Here Dax is holding my hand as we enjoyed my favorite attraction of all playgrounds, the rocking bench.

Dax is getting independent and social, both scare me a little. Here he took off to go down the slide by himself. Because I am both scared of heights and over-protective it took a lot of restraint just to let him go but he did it all by himself!

Doesn't he look so proud of himself?

I made a mistake in answering Dax when he asked where Dada was. I told him he was way across the field, playing in the grass, kicking a soccer ball with friends (all true). However, Dax thought that sounded a lot more fun than hanging out with me and he quickly yelled "bye bye Mama", blew me a kiss and took off as fast as his legs could take him across the field to find his Dad way in the background. It was not pretty when I had to retrieve him he yelled "Dada, ball! Dada, ball, please!!" all the way to the car.

Dax and I are having a great time exploring!

Cars, Cars, Cars

This weekend we took Dax to see 'Cars 2'. We've been so excited for it to come out and we thought it was adorable. Curtis and I have loved Cars since we went to see it in theaters in 2006 (one of our first dates post Curtis' mission). Here we are 5 years later married taking our son to the sequel, isn't it fun how life works out sometimes?

Dax loves all cars and usually sits in the backseat saying "Cah, Cah" and ferociously signing 'car' at the same time. 

We've taken Dax to a lot of movies, we usually go to matinees that have be out for a couple weeks so that he can wiggle and/or jabber if need be. Dax LOVES popcorn (did you know that the butter on movie theater popcorn is vegan and safe for dairy-allergy folks? Surprising, huh?). 

Columbus is an interesting little town. It has a pretty good percentage of really wealthy and the rest of the town is basically red-neck. We don't fit into either of these categories, but are finding ways to fit in just the same. Anyways, the past couple weeks in preparation for 'Cars 2' to come out we have been looking out for 'Cars' look-a-likes driving around here in Columbus.

It all started one day when Curtis found Mater in his work's parking lot...

And then we found Flo...

Columbus is a lot like 'Radiator Springs'. Lots of rusty old cars and then the random Porsche at the same intersection (but we've yet to spot a Porsche the same color as Sally). 

We'll keep on the look out for more Cars characters! 

Cousin Bathtime (part 2)

There isn't much cuter than two cousins in a bath (like this). This weekend we made a quick visit up to West Lafayette and  Saturday night was bath night for Dax and cousin Jaylee. 

 

More Fishing

We've been spending some time enjoying the beautiful forests, ponds, lakes and parks that southern Indiana has to offer, while living down here this summer. This evening after Curtis came home from work we loaded up the fishing pole (a recent Father's Day addition) and a picnic and headed out to a park near by.

Dax loved throwing sticks in the water and

playing with the worms the best. He loves all bugs right now and spends most of his time at playgrounds chasing ants and yelling "Bu, Bu" (bug) at them. We are still working on the art of getting ants in our hands without squishing them. He mostly kills them in the process of trying to pick them up and then looks up at me and says "Where go?". 

It was such a beautiful park, we are loving our summer!

Watermelon Face

With help from Dax, we've been going through at least a watermelon a week. Turns out to be one of my biggest cravings this pregnancy and Dax has learned to love it as well. 

I also have been LOVING this little watermelon-face!

Father's Day 2011

Dax and I LOVE Curtis. 

 He is such a great Father and a wonderful best friend. 

 We are living with just our day to day essentials here in Columbus, one thing we didn't bring with us was wrapping paper. So Dax and I had to be creative in wrapping gifts.

 We have to be creative a lot. I told Curtis I would make him anything he wanted for Father's Day dinner and being the easy-to-please person he is requested chicken & rice and jello. Of course, I added to that. But cooking dinner is always interesting when I reach for ingredients or equipment that we have at home but didn't realize we don't have here. For example yesterday I went to cook the rice and remembered that I only brought Japanese rice with us, but no rice cooker. I had never cooked non-minute rice outside of my handy rice cooker and had to look up how to do so. Or, I cooked our meal in the pan that I needed to also cook the cake in. So instead of having a layer cake presented on my cake stand, we had cake in bread loaf form, served in a gladware container. Because, that's all we had. I was the only who noticed. It's been refreshing to live such a "simple" life with limited items here. We keep a good attitude and just keep calling this summer living our "vacation home", makes us feel pretty fancy.

There is so much that I love about Curtis. One thing is his optimistic, slap-happy, obnoxious sense of humor. It is so hard to describe it. He makes Dax and I laugh everyday. Curt's sense of humor is kind of hard to get, if you don't know him. I often have to tell people "He's making a joke", because he doesn't care if people know that he is being sarcastic or not. Lately, I've been trying to write down things that Curtis says just out of the blue that make us laugh. All of these have been in the car over the past months, here is a small sampling:

Me: Have you ever seen the movie 'The Hunchback of Notre Dame'?
C: No, I have no desire to see that movie. An ugly dwarf with a thing on it's back?
Me: But he's a good person, that's the whole point.
C: No way, no one would love ever love him. Not with that thing on his back!


While shopping in the tie section a nice old woman told Curtis he should be a red tie because it says "power" for interviewing. Curt told me instead he wanted to wear his grey suit, grey shirt and grey tie that has a red line down the front that says "I am Powerful".


Me:Weird Curt, your tongue has a circle on it.
C: It's geographic, okay? It's a map. At any moment it can tell me where the next volcano will strike.


Me: What's one adjective would you say best describes you?
C: Fart-breath.
Me: Curtis, I was trying to have an adult conversation with you.
C: I'm sorry, I didn't know that's how most adult conversations started.


I married the happiest person I've ever met and life has been happy ever since. Happy Father's Day.

Little Golfer

Tonight for Family Home Evening we took our new little Golfer (and walker!) to the driving range. It was a beautiful night and Dax loved it!

 I love how Dax is watching and copying his Daddy in this picture.

 "Mama! BALL!" (and then walking it to me).

 I love these two boys!

Walking

Today was the day. 

Dax started walking!

It all started when I brought home a little golf set for Dax. He loves balls and especially loves hitting anything with weapons (IE: swords, bats, newspapers rolled up, etc.). As soon as I got the clubs out of the container he grabbed a club, stood up by himself (for the first time!) and started walking around the living room laughing. I couldn't believe my eyes! And for the next hour we laughed and squealed and clapped as over and over again he stood up and walked around the living room.

(Please try to tune out all my high pitch squeals of surprise and joy.)

Here he is showing Daddy his new trick. Curtis was pretty thrilled that the motivating factor that finally got Dax walking was a sport.

We could not be more proud of our little Golfer and the cutest part was how proud Dax was with himself, laughing and walking around saying "up.. walk, walk, walk" and then would fall down and clap.

Watch out world, here comes Dax.

Hello son.

Today I got another peek of baby boy #2 (thanks to my fabulous OB who is a little more than particular on getting a good look at everything an UltraSound has to offer (I had two UltraSounds with Dax as well). It is so rewarding to feel this little guy already kicking and squirming about, but it is so much more fun to watch him. Everything checked out great and I enjoyed the 15 minute peek into my growing belly.

This is my FAVORITE picture. His head is on the bottom right and has his legs above his head. He looks like  he has been enjoying my prenatal yoga and practicing himself.

Little feet.

Face, front on (on the left).
Hello little one!

 I see some cute cheeks, we'll see if he can grow them as good as his big brother!

Face again, this time on the right.

And in case there was any doubt after his last UltraSound... It's still a boy!

Couch napping

Dax rarely sleeps anywhere but his crib, he much prefers his own bed and schedule. The first couple days in our new place Dax caught a little cold, fever and the works. He was in a new place and mostly just cried for a couple days. This afternoon I just laid beside him and turned on Sesame Street as a last resort distraction, to my surprise I woke up after a 15 minute power nap to find this sweetheart sleeping.

There really is nothing sweeter than a sleeping child.