Just a Whole Lot of Random

Two blog posts with no pictures of Shae surely warrants an entire blog post with little cohesion, but lot's of pictures of Shae.  

Shae loves walking around the house with these little soft baseball's in his mouth.

Or making this face at me when I ask him to do something. (The kid has my eyebrows, what can I say).

Or saying "cheese" to any possible object that has a camera.

He really loves smelling flowers or candles which is really funny to watch him do because I don't know that he is actually sniffing anything... And we love that the last two times we've gone to the temple that there has been a huge group of people taking quinceañera pictures out front. The temple does make a mighty fine castle backdrop for a picture.

Let's just take a break from the pictures for a sec and talk about how this little munchkin has turned crazy over the past few weeks. Okay, not crazy all the time. He's still super sweet and funny a lot of the time, but he's definitely turning into a toddler. He's started having some pretty epic meltdowns as of late, you know, the kind where you pick em' up and they turn into dead weight saying, "No, no, no, no!" Heaven forbid we are out in public around 11:00 a.m. when nap time approaches. I made that mistake a few too many times last week. Leaving the train station play set at Barnes and Nobles--meltdown. Taking the shakers away at the end of story time--meltdown. Putting him back in his stroller at the Farmer's Market because it was getting busy--meltdown (i just kept walking around the market while he screamed and at one point started to laugh because I felt so silly. A sweet older lady came up to me and patted me on the back and said, "Good for you for laughing, sometimes that's all you can do."  This morning he got mad getting out of the bathtub and flung his naked body onto the bathroom floor wailing. That was a fun sight.

The meltdowns really only happen around nap time thus far. I don't doubt that more will come as he gets older. It's interesting to learn how to handle this new side of Shae.  It's not all that fun in the moment, but after the breakdown has past, I can see how he is learning what he wants and how to express himself. He can't express himself in many other ways so a meltdown is sometimes the best way to do it. Little toddlers don't have much self-control, I suppose that's something that we as parents have to patiently teach them, or.... we can both just have meltdowns together. Someday's are better than others. 

Back to pictures...Shae currently loves hiding in the cupboards, closing the doors on himself and then peeking out at us. He thinks us saying, "Where's Shae?" is the greatest thing in the universe

He's also really into sitting on the "big" swings as of late (although even after a few falls he doesn't seem to get that taking one arm off to quickly point at a doggie does not end well).

This boy is just getting so big! We took a big good-bye-baby step two weeks ago and sacked the pacy. I was bracing myself for a miserable week, but then a miracle happened... he cried for 20 minutes the first night and then, that was all. The second night he didn't cry at all. "Must have been a fluke," I told Darin as the third night I prepared for the worst, but again, he went down just fine. I apologize to anyone reading this who has had nightmare experiences taking the pacy away, I really did expect that to happen and I don't really know why it didn't, but I surely ain't complaining. He did cry for a few minutes with naps, and sometimes still does, but nothing like what I expected. I'm grateful that he still has his other oober attachment of the "geekie" (blankie) to help soothe him at night, I think that helped a lot.

And some more randomness to finish off the post.

We go to the park. A lot. Even when the slides aren't fully dry from the previous days rain and we get our bums all wet and have to drive home naked because mommy is unprepared, all the while reading Elmo Christmas books.

And sometimes we walk 20 minutes to the park just to sit on the playground stairs for half an hour playing in mulch. I've said it before and I'll say it again, it's the simple things that make life great (probably one of the biggest lessons I've learned thus far from being a mom).

The End.