Biker Bandito

Parker has finally gotten the hang of riding his bike! He was initially a bit reluctant to try to learn to ride it, as he wasn't very successful at first. But we took him down to the tennis courts by our house a couple of weeks ago, and the whole thing just kind of "clicked" for him. I think it really helped that he has a lot of room for steering error in the tennis courts, as opposed to on the sidewalk. I shot this video this afternoon during a break in the rain showers, and he got right back into the swing of things! You've gotta love the sound effects--he seems to add a whole variety of them to just about everything he does these days.

Broccoli Bounty

We finally harvested a giant head of broccoli from the veggie garden this evening...we probably should have cut it a little sooner! We ate some of this beast with dinner tonight, and it was delicious. There's even more broccoli in the garden ready to eat...anyone need some??!!

Daddy's Little "Helper"

Parker always wants to be doing whatever Jared is doing, and if it involves any kind of tools or fixing anything, Parker makes sure that he is RIGHT THERE all up in Jared's business. Jared "loves" this. It certainly makes fixing anything a much bigger challenge!

Crazy Driver Alert!

We took Parker to Legoland for the first time in January; they have some "cars" that kids can drive around a track themselves--they have to actually push a gas pedal to go and steer with the steering wheel, the cars aren't on a track or anything. The minimum age for drivers is 3 years old, but he was so close to his third birthday that I figured we could fudge it a little bit! Unfortunately, he's never had the chance to "drive" a toy motorized car that some kids have, and he was still yet to grasp the concept of steering his bike or tricycle. So, you'll see that he needed some serious extra help driving his car! In fact, I kind of suspect that the employees stopped the ride early because they were getting tired of having to help him. But I was SO proud of him for even trying to drive one of the cars by himself--he is often pretty reluctant to try out new, strange things, especially by himself, so it was a really big deal that he did this! Parker is wearing a beige shirt, and is in the blue car in the very front as they start.

Feeding Frenzy

I actually shot this video a while ago--on February 23rd. But I think I've finally figured out how to post videos on here again...

Parker is really "playing pretend" a lot more, engaging with all of his toys as animate objects. He also loves it when Jared gives him some fishing lures to play with...thus, one day as we ate lunch together, I looked over from what I was reading and was surprised to see that Parker had lined all of his "fishies" up around his plate so that they could share his sandwich with him!

A Carrot for the Easter Bunny

Easter Eggs

We're managing to make Easter a little bit of a bigger deal for Parker this year...somehow I totally spaced last year and we didn't do any of the usual fun activities (in fact, I still have an unused Easter basket and a couple of Easter books hidden away in my closet that I never gave him last year...). Luckily, Grammy made sure that Parker got to die Easter eggs today--along with a little help from a new bunny puppet! Parker has been practicing hiding some pretend eggs around the house, so he should be ready for a good backyard Easter egg hunt by this weekend. Although, even though he always hides the practice eggs himself, he seems to instantaneously forget where they are...I guess that means at least it's a surprise for him every time!