For You

The Phone is for Him!

Snack

Ollie has insisted on getting his own snacks for a while now. He knows what he wants and he wants it now. Once he gets his desired snack, he changes his mind and gives it to you to eat. Last night, this caused 3 people to be eating ice cream at the same time, Ollie, Annie and me. I also got the pleasure of eating his yogurt after dinner. It definitely was a medley of food for dinner.

Snazzy Socks!

As you can see, he gets his snack by standing on the counter and picking them out. He isn't quite strong enough to open the fridge door, yet. Once he can do it, we are in trouble. If we are lucky, he will follow our missives to wait after dinner for a snack. No one is that lucky with a toddler.

Presents or Not

This was Ollie's haul at Easter. He had 2 chocolate bunnies gone by lunch. The rest of the candy met its demise later in the day. He was one sugar high boy that day.

He got plenty of toys, potato head family, legos, baby einstein movie and parental torture device. He used this in the afternoon on his aunt.

He was thrilled with it, she wasn't so much. Next year, we'll be doubling our pleasure/torture with all the toys. If you see us with blindfolds and earplugs, you'll know why.

Last night we bought Tori a bunch of clothes at a garage sale preview. We bought her clothes up to 2T of varying shapes and sizes. Some were never worn. It was a pretty good haul and we came home with a box full of laundry. I have another box full to get from my mom in May and more from her other grandma. We should be set in the clothing department for awhile. We only hope she doesn't have gastric reflux like Ollie so she can actually wear some of them.

Weekend

This past weekend was cold and wet, so we didn't go outside much at all. I'm sure Ollie would have preferred otherwise, but the weather conspired against him. He was good about being inside for most of the weekend, but that was probably because we did a bit of shopping and got out of the house.

Saturday we went to Target and the pet store. Ollie is fascinated with the birds in the pet store, so we always visit them when we go. They usually have cats from the animal shelter there as well. Ollie goes from cage to cage, trying to pet them and they generally want to be touched by him. It is just our cats that don't want any thing to do with him.

The funniest part of the weekend was while Ollie was telling his knock-knock jokes. As I mentioned before, he says "knock knock", we answer "who's there?" and he laughs. This time around was no different, except he asked different people at the same time. He said "Daddy, knock, knock". I answered, then he said "Mama, knock, knock" and she answered. Each time he laughed like it was the funniest thing in the world. Finally, he turned to Baby, one of our cats, and said "baby, knock, knock", she just stared at him like he was an idiot, of course as parents we laughed.

He didn't do too bad with going to bed the past couple of days. He cried a little bit Saturday night, but it didn't last long. Sunday night he was really tired. He took a later nap than usual, so I thought he'd be up late, but by 8:30, he was looking like this:



He laid around with us until about nine, but still said "no" to our inquisitions of his tiredness. About that time, he wasn't given a choice any longer and he gave his parents kisses and he laid down without a wimper. Hopefully, the trend will continue this week.

Keys

If you are missing your keys, the first place to look is in this boys direction.



His recent obsession is keys. He is specific on which keys he wants. He recognizes whose keys belong to whom. He'll ask for them by the name of the person to whom they belong. If he isn't using your keys to start his vehicle (by shoving them in the gear shift and bending the keys), they are probably in the seat of the vehicle. Keys are that important!

The key obsession has caused keys to be temporarily lost and he is no help in finding the keys he misplaces. So far this hasn't caused any keys to be replaced. He usually lays them in plain sight, unlike his monitor that we never found. We are guessing that ended up in the trash. Hopefully no keys end up with the same fate.

How to Frustrate Your Parents

Parents are easily frustrated by their children. I am no exception. One of the most frustrating things that Ollie does is say he wants something to eat. He'll ask for "nuiy bars" and we'll give them to him. He'll proceed to take a bite out of each and carry them around for awhile.

After playing with them for awhile and getting them all over everything, he will ask for another food to take a single bite of to repeat the process. Hence, you will see a lot of food with one bite out of it going in the trash in our house. You will also see an upset Ollie after we tell him 'no' to his next food item.

He has yet to master many skills, but he has mastered how to frustrate his parents easily.

Smash Eggs

This is how you are supposed to dye eggs.

Step 1: Get eggs

Step 2: Color Eggs

Step 3 is missing. It consists of throwing other eggs on top of your first egg and smashing them both. It also includes using your hands to retrieve the eggs once you are done with them. Then there is the mandatory destruction of clothes with food dye and knocking over of cups full of dye. The finish is running off to play while your parents clean up your mess and prepare your bath. Easter day consisted of making a mess out of candy, but that is another story.

Baby Sister

Pointing out his baby sister

He has no idea that she is coming or how it will change our family dynamic. He does know that Tori is something we talk about a lot. He says her name, but doesn't know it applies to the being in his momma's tummy. I'm just hoping he doesn't try and take her back to the hospital in his wagon like his momma did to her brother.

He Dislikes

Swings and the Zoo. Those used to be Ollie's favorites. He now dislikes both. The only thing he enjoyed at the zoo was the goat and llama eating food out of my hand. That was hysterical. The monkeys, sea lions, camels, meerkats (which he loved last time), lion, Rooster and every other animal in the park scared the crap out of him. The rooster flapped his wings, Ollie was scared, the camels walked by, Ollie was scared, the meerkats ran around, Ollie was scared. It was a good waste of $11 for his parents to enter, but Ollie was free. The most fun he had was when we ran into kids from his babysitters. The rest of the time Ollie was more interested in the people, than the animals. That is until they all scared him.

Swings were no exception to scaring the crap out of Ollie. He used to only want to be in the swings. Now, we couldn't get him out fast enough. He wanted to try different swings, but we ended up with him wanting out each time. He did swing slowly for a little while. He also was watching another kid swing, so he was distracted from his own swinging. Pictures, slides/parks, swings and zoo's. All things not to do with Ollie. Maybe in a year or two he'll want to do this stuff again, but for now it is off limits.

Caught a Thief

This morning while emptying the laundry, I found a yellow plastic ring with a bit of rubber with yellow hearts on it. It was one of those rings that link together with other rings to make long chains. We have a bunch of these in Ollie's toy box, but this wasn't like our rings.

Ollie wore his Tigger overalls to the sitter's yesterday. They have a lot of pockets and Ollie likes to put things in his pockets. He must've put it in is pocket, forgot about it and it came out in the wash. I gave it back to him to give to the sitter this morning and he didn't even fake being interested in his stolen booty.

He dropped it on the floor when we got to the sitters as the other kids pointed at the robot on his shirt. He wasn't really with it this morning, so he just stood there and stared off into space while being poked in the robot. I guess they couldn't get the robot to start. At least it didn't turn into another wrestling match.