The boy loves lawnmowers

 Colin loves lawnmowers.  He loves to play with his lawnmower.  He likes to look at lawnmowers.  He likes to listen to lawnmowers.  He also likes to pretend to mow with Dad!  He literally follows Brian around the entire yard "helping"him mow.  They look so cute together.

 When we go for walks I pray that we do not run into anyone who is mowing their lawn.  It adds an average of 10 extra minutes to our walk because we have to stop and watch them mow their lawn.  He is completely amazed by these things.  

 When we were swimming the other day, the neighbor was mowing his lawn and Colin had to stop and watch every few minutes and wave at the man.  The guy was probably thinking we were kind of creepy since we were watching him for a good hour or more.

 I love this picture.  They were just talking away.  

Pretty sure this made Colin's day. His dad let him touch the mower! He even walked with him and let him "push" the mower.  I am hoping this love of mowing continues through the teenage years.  I am sure by then he will be over it but I will kindly remind him, a couple of years ago you would have LOVED to mow the yard!  

Swimming and Happy Father's Day

 We finally got to go swimming for the first time this year! We went with my friend Ashley to her Dad's house and Colin had a blast.  He really enjoyed swimming but really did NOT like his life jacket.  He pretty much laid on the deck and screamed until I took it off.  So instead of the life jacket, Ashley and I took turns holding him in the water.  He was not too sure about it at first but he eventually loved putting his face in the water, kicking his feet, and JUMPING in the water.  His jumps were more like just taking steps off the edge but he still really liked it. 

 I think his favorite part was sitting in the chair and eating a snack.  Swimming must really make you hungry because this kid put down a whole bag of cookies and another bag of veggie straws.  Then 20 minutes later when we got home he ate an entire plate of pasta.  He may be small but this boy can eat.  He is finally hitting a growth spurt and more and more people are talking about how big he is getting instead of how small he is.  Our "little" guy has never made it past the 20th percentile for height, weight, or head circumference but our Doctor always tells us, "Who cares, he is obviously healthy".

 Not only can he eat, he can sleep.  I went into his room one day and found him like this.  The kid will sleep for 3 solid hours most days.  I even have to go in and wake him sometimes.  I know they say never wake a sleeping baby but there is nothing pretty about an exhausted Mama at 10 at night dealing with a wide awake toddler so after 3 hours its time to get up! What I really think is funny is how he sleeps.  I guess he didn't get the memo that pillows are for your head and not your butt :) 

 These were my boys on Father's Day.  Brian sat down to eat his breakfast by the couch and Colin ran over there and sat down and looked at me like "I'll have my breakfast here too please"  It is fun to watch Colin copy everything Brian does.  He really loves and wants to be just like his Dad.

Finally just another cute picture of Colin on Father's Day.  We went to Brian's moms house to eat dinner and Colin got to play with all of Grandmas fun toys.  I had to get a picture of him in his overalls.  I love them!

A new car and a roly poly!

 A couple of weeks ago, Colin and I were on one of our many walks and we were going past our neighbors house when Colin spotted a car.  You know those red cars with the yellow roof that every little kids seems to have.  Well I have never seen Colin run so fast.  He nearly knocked two little kids down in his pursuit of this car.  He pushed a kid out of the way, jumped in, closed the door, and took off.  Good thing I knew my neighbors and they were laughing at Colin instead of calling us in for grand theft auto.  I apologized and they said to let him play for a little bit.  Colin had a great time despite the fact that the other little boy kept opening the door and yelling "Boy Out!".  Colin would just close the door and keep on trucking.  Well after about 15 minutes I figured we better be going.  Easier said than done.  Colin was NOT happy.  I decided we had better get our own car.

 With perfect timing, my brother David called a few days later and said they had an old car that his kids couldn't play with anymore and asked if Colin would like it! Of course we said yes and now Colin is now the PROUD owner of a green convertible.  He loves this car.  In fact the day my brother brought it over it was raining and Colin could care less about that fact and drove up and down the driveway with Grandpa Stack in the rain.  We are now expert drivers, honk the horn on comand, and look how serious and skillful he is about backing up.  Thank you Uncle David!

 Today Colin said "Bubble" for the first time.  The kid is really starting to pick up on words and is making his mom and dad very proud.  Here is a picture of him "blowing bubbles".  Blowing bubbles sounds so nice and it should unfortunetly, blowing bubbles with Colin is not such a relaxing event.  First, Colin really likes to soak the wand really well,  getting as much soap as possible on it.  He then proceeds to whip it out of the bottle very quickly.  Warning! Step back at this point because you are likely to get soap in your eye, hair, all over your clothes, etc.  There have been many afternoons that I have been soaked with "bubbles".  Next, take another step back because this kid means buisness.  He whips that wand around so hard that we are lucky to see one bubble.  He also whacks whatever is close to him.  Today it happened to be the green convertible.  If you look at his face you can see the force he puts into this.  Blowing bubbles at our house is a dangerous event, especially to poor Tracker but Colin loves it and now he says "Bubble" so how can I refuse him the opportunity to waste half a bottle of soap, soak his moms clothes, and give anything close to him a black eye.  He sounds so cute when he said "Bubble".

On our walk today Colin got to hold his very first roly poly.  I really love showing Colin new things and I am always looking for opportunities to do this.  As soon as I saw this roly poly I grabbed it and showed Colin how to let it crawl around in his hand.  Colin was very intrigued by this.  I should have known when that roly poly immediatly rolled into a ball upon entering Colin's hand that this would not end well.  Colin dropped the roly poly several times and picked it up each time.  Finally, the roly poly started to crawl around in his hand and I started to say "oh good boy, be nice to the roly poly" and looked away for one second to look at my pictures.  That is when that poor roly poly met its end at the fingers of my 16 month old.  In the one second I turned away Colin grabbed the roly poly and in true boy fashion smashed it between two fingers.  I am sorry roly poly family.  I promise to leave all of your alone from this point on. 

 

First trip to the library

 I take these pictures so I can show him when he is a teenager just how much he LOVES to do the dishes.  Doing the dishes is probably one of Colin's favorite things to do.  Every time I go near the sink, he pulls a chair over so he can help.  There are several times throughout the day when I really do not want to do dishes and he will pull his chair over and then try to push me towards the sink.  Today we did the dishes first thing in the morning because we were going to the library.  We didn't have too much time so we had to cut our dish washing time short.

 This was his reaction to having to stop doing the dishes.  That is usually my reaction when I know I HAVE to do them :)  Like I said before I will keep the pictures just to remind him when he starts giving me attitude about doing the dishes.

 Today was our first trip to the library.  Like most libraries they have a toddler program that lasts for about 30 minutes.  During that time we sing songs, say funny poems, and read books.  I thought this would be a great way to get Colin around some other children during the summer.  This was a picture of him on the way to the library.  He was laughing because I was talking about how much fun we were going to have.  I thought we were going to have fun. 

This is where we went wrong.  I did not know the library was going to have blocks.  Colin loves blocks.  He spends much of his time during the day playing with some type of blocks.  We went over to the block table while we were waiting for the class to start.  When it was time to go over to the play group, Colin did not want to go.  I eventually got him over there basically kicking and screaming.  He would not sit still without his binki (I despise that thing).  He was ok for a little bit because he enjoyed me throwing him around to the music (note to self:  do not work out before library class again, library class is a workout in itself).  As soon as a song ended we had a wrestling match with him wanting to go to blocks and me wanting to enjoy class.  I was sweating. Colin was sweating.  Finally, I gave up and we played with blocks.  At the end of the music class the teacher had a bubble machine and since bubbles also rank up there on the list of things Colin loves, he ran over to see them.  So I learned my lesson.  Next week I will show up right on time and NOT go over to the blocks. 

Colin fed himself his own yougurt today. You can see he was very proud of himself!
Yum!

Brand new haircut and first black eye!

He never cried just wanted to know what in the world is this guy doing.

Getting ready for haircut. I kind of miss the curls :(

Hope you enjoy all the pictures. I will be sure to add more daily!

Summer is here!!

Just like the title says Summer is FINALLY here! I am excited to finally live my dream job of stay at home mom. Since I will have much more time, I am planning on blogging and adding pictures several times a week.
So far this summer Colin has had a stomach virus and now either a cold or allergies that are accompanied by sneezing, coughing, and a very runny nose! Hopefully we get the sickness out of the way now so we can enjoy the rest of the summer.
Today is a very rainy day so that means Mom is desperate to find things to keep a 16 month old entertained which has proven to be somewhat difficult. So far we have ate breakfast, danced, played catch, sorted and stacked blocks, chased each other around the kitchen, played with shaving cream, and played with our shape blocks. It is ONLY 9:30am. We have a very short attention span. Did I mention that he also tried to put a battery and thumb tack in his mouth? He is a very fast and very good climber.
I will be back at nap time to update with some pictures of Colin's first haircut. I know a lot of people have been wanting to see them! I would do it now but my little guys patience with me on the computer is done. Maybe we will try a nice long swim (bath) to wear him out.