Easter weekend

We spent Easter weekend in San Diego with Rob, Julie and Sam. We headed out to JTree for a couple days, for some hiking, bouldering, and tunneling through rocks.  Our trip included a night camping, during which we all actually slept.  I think that may be our first ever non-miserable night camping with Logan. There are a lot of things like this that finally seem easier, 3 months before I turn back the clock 2.5 years.



Sam, Rob, Mark, and Logan hiking in JTree



Joshua Tree

Logan tunneling

  We headed back to San Diego for the rest of the weekend, where our primary goals were to eat and go to the beach.  We managed to fit in Trader Joe's, fish tacos, In n Out burgers, and frozen yogurt at this magical place that let you serve yourself from 15 different flavors with unlimited re-fills and free samples and a giant toppings bar.  Its times like this, when we're so impressed with a big city concept like self serve frozen yogurt, that I realize we're turning into real country hicks. We also made a couple trips to the beach.  Mark got to surf, I spotted some dolphins, and Logan just spent the whole time trying to avoid the sand. We were at the beach in Florida just a month ago, and Logan loved it-- thought it was the ultimate sandbox.  This time he couldn't stand to have sand on him.  When I took his shoe off, he refused to put his foot down in the sand, and when he got sand on his hand he would hold it out to me with this look of disgust for me to wipe off.  Wierdo. He did like playing frisbee.  He makes a big production of getting in his stance, winding up, and it looks like he's going to just nail you.  The exciting part is you never know which direction its going to go and who its going to hit.  He can throw it a decent distance,though. 

Logan, Rob, Sam, & Julie at the beach

We decided to go to a community Easter Egg hunt, along with the rest of southern California.  There had to be a thousand people there.  I've never been to a community hunt before, so it was kind of fun to see the madness of a million kids running after eggs, and they had all sorts of jumpy castles and face painting and arts and crafts stations.  But you had to wait in line forever to do any of it.  I think in the future we'll stick to the back yard...

Discovering Smarties in his Easter Egg

Logan & Sam with their Easter loot

We headed home early Easter morning, and then we got home we had another Easter egg hunt.  You can never have too many Easter Egg hunts. 

Happy Easter!

Going to the Zoo

Grandma Z came out to visit in March. I'm sure we did many great things, but as I am writing this 2 months later and can't remember them all, we'll concentrate on the event documented in photos: the zoo. Kenny has a season pass for the zoo, and herself loves the zoo, and so the zoo is Logan & Kenny's special activity. They have a song they sing-- Going to the Zoo-- which Logan sings with great gusto. He really likes his trips to the zoo, but perhaps more for pushing the stroller, riding the train, and riding the carousel than the animals themselves.
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Zoo with Kenny & Grandma Z

Logan's usually more interested in pushing the stroller than looking at the animals

Riding the train with Kenny

Riding the carousel with Grandma

Only Logan

Me: "Logan, do you want a sister or a brother?"
Logan: "No sister.  No brother.  Only Logan."

Clear enough.  But like it or not, a sister is coming, and I am so excited!  For me, because she will call me every week and take care of me when I'm old (I'm pretty sure this is a gender-based trait).  For Mark, because he'll have a little girl that adores her Daddy.  And for Logan, because he'll have that person that's known him forever, through all his cute and awkward and proud and embarassing moments, and is always there for you no matter what.

2 years 2 months

At 2 years 2 months, Logan's favorite things are Thomas the train, Super Why, building legos, coloring, and racing around the house-- on foot, car, or bike, and preferably as a jaybird (naked).  His pretend car trips are usually to Costco.  He likes to hammer out the ABCs with his toy hammer like Alpha-Pig.  He likes to watch Grace do her spelling and math homework at daycare.   If you ask him what he wants for dinner, the answer is invariably macaroni and cheese or Thai food.  He likes to dance-- his favorite song, to which he has little moves and knows some of the words, is Stubborn Love by the Lumineers.  He's started talking about friends a lot. When he's playing pretend, I often hear "Will you be my friend?  Yes? Okay."  I guess its that simple when you're two. He says Buddy and Charlie (Kendall's dog and cat) are his best friends.  Some other funny things he says:

"I’m just tooting" (When we ask him if he’s pooping… he is, but he’ll only admit to tooting)

"Oh, man!"  (Said about anything that’s frustrating or not going quite right)

"I’m so excited!" (Mainly referring to everything at the airport)

"I sure am!" (For example, I say "you're so cute." He replies "I sure am!)

"Oh, my life!" (Referring to all the stuff he has to put up with from us or the other kids at daycare.  He got this one from Tammy.)

Random pictures

As long as I'm in blog catch up mode, here are a few random pictures I found on my phone:

Logan and Auntie Kenny on the stairs at her house at Christmas

Logan at a gymnastics birthday party at the local rec center.  He loved it!  I've been wanting to bring him here, but its normally only open to over 3 year olds.

Playing in the dryer.  Nothing wrong with that, right?

Florida

We got to spend a weekend in Florida with Janelle, Lucas, & Axel. Logan was super excited about the airport. This must be one of the best parts of having kids-- getting to share a little bit of the joy they get out of every day things that we long ago wrote off as inconvenient and annoying. Its kind of like school buses. Where as before they were unnoticed at best or annoying if you got stuck behind one, now my automatic reaction to seeing a school bus is, hurray, a school bus! And if we're lucky enough to get behind one, which doesn't happen often, so much the better for studying its every movement, the way the lights flash, the sign comes out, the kids get on and off, and imagining that far away day when we're five and we finally get to ride one.

The airport was like that for Logan. He thought the parking garage was awesome. The elevator, the escalator, the moving walkway, the train-- pretty much a 2 year old's amusement park. As we heard the train approaching, he turned and said breathlessly "Is it Thomas?" We were pretty sure it was one of his friends at least. Riding the escalators up and down and practicing our dismounts killed a good half hour. Pushing buttons on the elevator was thrilling. He loved the conveyor through the security scanner, loved looking out the windows watching all the little trucks zoom around the planes loading bags and refueling the planes. He kept turning to me with this big open grin saying "I'm so excited!" The highlight was when a pilot boarded the plane right in front of us. Logan spotted him in the terminal and then it was like we were standing next to his lifelong hero for the next 5 minutes. He just stared at him and turned to me every so often to make sure I was equally impressed.

One thing Logan was not so impressed with was sitting in his own seat. I had to hold him down during takeoff and he through a huge fit. We were on a little plane and I’m sure everyone thought I was torturing the poor child with the way he screamed. On the up side, he wore himself out with all the struggling and slept the rest of the way there.

Logan was super excited to see his cousins. He and Axel had a ball riding in the car together and playing super heroes, legos, trains, and hide and seek. Lucas would make funny faces and do silly dances and Logan thought he was hysterical. Axel gave Logan a bagful of his Thomas trains that’s he’s outgrown. Logan was in love and sleeps with them every night now. The first night he got them in Florida, he lined the trains up along his pillow in bed (which was a mattress on the floor next to our bed). The next morning, the trains were there, but Logan was not. I looked everywhere, and finally got out a flashlight and found him under our bed—way in the middle, where he’d had to wiggle past all sorts of other things stored under the bed to get there. I had to pull him out by his feet. I have no idea what motivated him to crawl way under there, but it seems his trains had priority for the bed.

We’ve been looking at pictures today and Logan keeps asking to go over to Lucas & Axel's house. If only if it was that easy. Here are some photos from the weekend:

Logan & Lucas at the Armament Museum

Testing out all the buttons in the A10 Warthog at the museum

Sandcastles at the beach.  Logan thought this was the best sandbox ever.



Axel instructing Logan on how to pat the sand down to make a good sand castle

The masterpiece

Tree fort.  The trees were dripping with Spanish moss

Serious tool conversation

Swinging at the park

Axel let Logan help with legos, but Logan didn't really do it right.

Super Logan!

Super Axel and Super Logan

What's more fun than wearing a bucket on your head?

Winter update

The past month or so has gone something like this:
Week 1: Kate sick
Week 2: Mark sick
Week 3: Logan sick
Week 4: repeat

Logan was the sickest I’ve ever seen him. He did not get up off the couch for 5 days. I think I’ve watched enough Sprout to last a lifetime. We finally went to the doctor on day 5 and they took pity on him and gave him some antibiotics and within a day he was racing around the house again. Then I kind of missed the mellow sick Logan. He hates the antibiotics… screams and kicks as Mark holds him down. You’d think he was being tortured. Tammy does it for us during the week. I don’t have the heart. But that’s okay, I’ve surrounded myself with people that do.

This sickness coincided with him officially going off mama milk. I don’t think it’s a coincidence—I’ve heard that happens. I remember somebody saying that after a few days, they’d forget all about nursing. Maybe that’s true if they’re weaned at 1. At 2, Logan has asked for milk every day for 2 weeks. He has a long memory. I think that’s part of the reason he holds grudges so long.

Somewhere around week 2, I went on a work trip. This was the first one I’ve been on since Logan was born, besides a one night trip to DC. Neither Mark nor I travel much, but Mark’s been gone at least 3 or 4 weeks, and I was pretty sure it was my turn for a week away. It didn’t hurt that it was Key West. I won’t lie, it was pretty great. I got to go for sunset runs along the water, had at least a whole hour every day to do whatever I wanted to do, and I didn’t hear TV the whole week. I didn’t sleep as much as I dreamed I would, though. Mark & Logan enjoyed themselves too—Logan actually paid some attention to Mark without me there. As an extra bonus, I got to see my Aunt Susie one night, and she made Christmas Eve dinner for me. We attempted to replicate it here in Colorado this Christmas, but there’s nothing like the real thing.

Here are some pictures from the last month:



Pretty sunset on the drive home.  Maybe someday I'll get that cracked windshield replaced.



Logan helping Daddy stick clip his route

Attempting to get Logan to nap at the crag.  Didn't work.

The view from my hotel in Key West

If you're shoes are big enough, you don't have to wear pants

Family X-country ski trip turned hike.  We haven't had much snow this winter.

Logan's first time on skates.  This was the day before he turned two.

Mark taking his climbing OCD to a new level. He carried an umbrella up to the rest to shield himself from the hot sun.

Logan & Mark on a trip to the playground.  All Mark needs is a raccoon hat and they'll be twins.