It's Official!

Swing!

Trying Out Tennis

Um...Maybe Try Hockey?

Baseball--The Movie

The Boys of Summer

We've been enjoying the late evening summertime sunlight by walking down to our local park and playing baseball and tennis after work or after dinner. Parker pitches the ball so accurately that you can actually "play" baseball with him--he always makes sure to stand right on the pitcher's mound, one parent bats, and the other parent plays outfield. It's actually really fun!

(p.s. Jared hit the ball so hard that the bat kind of exploded, hence the duct tape holding it together! Show off.)

Hand-Me-Downs

Some friends of ours gave Parker a big bag full of some of their son's outgrown clothes--Parker was so excited to have so many cool new things to wear! He was particularly enamored with this t-shirt of the superhero called "The Thing" and wanted to wear it today. He also insisted on wearing a nice pair of brown sneakers, even though they are about four sizes too big for him! He seems convinced that they help him to jump really high. He wore them for most of the morning, but then took them off at the end of our visit to the music museum, admitting that they were in fact a bit too big for now :)

He has also been talking with his stuffies a lot more lately, and requested to bring his "puppy" along to the museum. He pretty much forgot about puppy the entire time we were there--I ended up being the one to tote puppy through the museum--but then as soon as we got in the car Parker realized that puppy didn't get to play any of the instruments. Maybe next time.

Music Museum

We visited the Museum of Making Music in Carlsbad this morning. Parker has been noticing the different instrument sounds in music lately, so I've been naming and describing the different instruments to him. It was nice for him to be able to see them in person--drums, trumpets, saxophones, tubas, guitars, pianos, etc. The best part of the museum, for Parker, was the "interactive" room at the end, where you can put headphones on and try out different instruments. He especially loved the drum set (which sounds really cool through the headphones), but I finally had to pull him off so other kids could have a turn!

(p.s. This was my first experiment editing a video with iMovie on my new computer, so bear with me! It's pretty fun to use, so I'm looking forward to learning how to use it better.)

Sailing With Grandpa Geoff

We spent a great few hours out on the water with Grandpa Geoff this weekend!

Guess Who

The Sweet Taste of Success

Yay!!! Parker reached an important milestone yesterday--let's just say that he's finally one step closer to potty training. We are so excited--Jared had promised him that if he...used his potty for...well, number two...that he could choose any chocolate to eat from our box of See's candy. Every day for the last couple of weeks he would peruse the candy box and imagine which chocolate he would eat when he finally did the deed. So, I made sure to catch his celebratory indulgence on film and in some pictures--here's the video. However...we also had to make a special trip to Toys R Us after this to pick out a new tractor. That, in fact, was the real motivator that finally got him to accomplish the big one--I promised him that afternoon that if he used his potty, he could go to the toy store and pick out any tractor he wanted. Now, Parker is REALLY into tractors right now, so he wanted to get a new one SOOO badly that it was what it took to finally make this happen!

Pool Time!

Now that we have a pool in the back yard again, it feels like summer is officially here! Actually, it means that June is over, so now we finally get to see the sun again and it's warm enough to get naked and start splashing! Although, Parker seems to be a bit unclear on the concept of a "swimming" pool, as the first thing he did was throw every single toy he could find in the back yard into his pool until it was completely full, and then proceeded to throw every single toy back out onto the grass. No wonder his swimming classes aren't going so...swimmingly.

Snoozing in the Red Bed

Mimi (Dee) passed an adorable little toddler bed on to us last week, and even though we weren't necessarily ready to move Parker out of his crib (he has always slept great in it, and has never seemed to want/need to move on to a regular bed), we thought it'd be fun to set the toddler bed up in his room to help him eventually transition to a "big boy bed." Well, Parker didn't pay much attention to the "red bed" for the first couple of days, but then after asking to take a nap in it one afternoon, he has been sleeping in it since--both for his naps and at night time! He somehow made the transition instantaneously--I think he has been sleeping in the red bed for about three full days now, and hasn't asked to go back in his crib yet. We still have the crib set up in his room, so it's a little crowded in there--at some point I think we'll just have to accept that he has moved on and take the crib apart! He sleeps great in the bed, too--actually, he has been napping for almost three hours now, and I can't get him to get up!! Honestly, I think that he hasn't realized that he can get out of the red bed anytime he wants to--he still calls for us to come get him up in the morning, and we have to call back that he can just get up!! So, we haven't had to deal with him getting up a hundred times at night when we're trying to get him to go to sleep--and hopefully it stays that way! Now I'm just a little nervous about the prospect of him getting up and wandering around at night while we're asleep...!!

New Fishing Pole

At 2 years, 4 months old Parker is on his third fishing pole! He got really good at casting his old one, but the reel finally broke and his dad decided that moving up to a new pole made the most sense. So we checked out a few "kid sized" poles, but Parker had his heart absolutely set on the "Bat Man" pole! It came with his own little tackle box, which we filled up with some of his very own lures. We headed out to Lake Morena in the Scripps Ranch area just to check out a new lake and find a place for him to try out some casting. Didn't catch any fish, but he started getting used to his new, longer pole; there is also a paved/unpaved trail around the lake, which is about a 5-mile long bike ride. The weather was beautiful and we got some much-needed exercise.