Hirthday!

 We celebrated James' birthday this week.  

So Matthew talked and I talked about how much he loves daddy:

Matthew was super excited because when you're two, birthday = cupcakes and cupcakes are something worth telling every little old lady in Safeway about.  (literally.)  Matthew started by frosting the cupcakes

 

but couldn't keep from eating the frosting so he was put on sprinkle patrol.

 Catherine was content to just eat the ribbon.

She's still on a starch and yogurt diet, but she is in better spirits than earlier this week and doesn't seem to mind missing out on cupcakes:

 All in all not a bad day.  In other exciting news its musical beds in our house.  It should be a big black dog in a big black bed:

 and a little white dog in a little white bed:

 But some days we end up with both dogs in the little white bed:

 Or sometimes even a baby and cat:

A Day at Home

Matthew and I decided to take a day at home yesterday. He's been so on and off with feeling well and I have been camped out recovering from the weekend so it was time to stay in our PJs, do some meal planning, clean/organize the office and all those fun things that pile up on you when you ignore them. We were pleasantly surprised to get a call from Uncle Ed and joined him on Skype. Through the wonders of modern technology Ed actually took these pictures from the UK of his favorite niece and nephew and then sent them back to me. Weird and creepy in some ways but mostly totally cool.

Matthew's hit or miss with catching a ball and throwing it forward but finds the act of us throwing the ball hilarious, as well as a game of monkey in the middle. Notice the disaster that is my living room did not get touched on our day "off", but we sure had a lot of fun :-) I also cut a chunk out of the middle of the video to prevent nausea as I was adjusting the camera and keeping a little monkey away from it. You can thank me later!

Painting, Waffles and Chores

Matthew continues to work on his thriving art career. As soon as we get past him trying to eat the paint I'm sure it'll be worth millions!

Much like the rest of the U.S. it's a lot cold and a little snowy here (or maybe everyone else got a little cold and a lot snowy). We had a very laid back weekend and tested out Matthew's new gift from grandma and grandpa Pozun.

Circus waffles were a BIG hit (you know, because Mr. Paint Eater is such a connoisseur)! I'm less fond of them because they're a pain in the butt to pour in the molds but they were the perfect size.

And here's a longer-ish video of Matthew and his chore of picking up the dog dishes in the morning. I wish I hadn't missed the "a ha!" moment when he realized June was done and he ran over for the dish. There's 20 secs. missing of Matthew just looking in the closet saying bowl. Unfortunately, much like unloading the dishwasher, Matthew has discovered the joy of clanging metal and the chore now takes longer than it used to. You can also observe the morning chaos of our house with a really noisy cat and 2-3 other pets who need to act like they are completely starved of attention. Enjoy!

A Boy and his Dog

Someone has been busy with his artwork . . .

when he's not busy running around squealing and chasing the animals. Between chasing the cats through the tunnel or trying to climb onto the chairs and ottoman he's a busy kid. Sometimes though, he just needs a good cuddle with his favorite (or at least our most submissive) pet:

Up in the mountains

On Saturday, James tested out his downhill legs this weekend at Bridger Bowl with some friends. On the midwife's (and common sense) orders, I sat out and Matthew and I hung out around the house. Today however, we took to the snow and headed up to the falls. We rented snowshoes, but it turned out we probably didn't need them. The trail we headed down was popular enough that ice climbers, skiiers, snowshoers and other hikers had packed down the trail pretty well. However, we did some off trail hiking and took the steeper route up and they at least made decent crampons. As always we needed to take an obligatory pic of Sky enjoying the snow:

We passed some smaller falls and ice climbers along the way. These are pretty accessible and seemingly popular. I'd guess there were 20-30 climbers throughout the canyon while we were there, though we only saw maybe 6-7. However, ice climbers tend to start their day a little later (and from the parking lots stories a little more hungover) than those of us with toddler alarm clocks.

Another set:

It was cloudy when we started but I was able to get a decent B&W pic of the mountains from the trail.

And here were Grotto Falls. Unfortunately they don't get enough exposure to melt the snow so we couldn't see the falls themselves, but we had the trail mostly to ourselves and it was a gorgeous day.

They look a little different than last summer when we visited with Uncle Ed:

But the ice flows to the right of the falls were certainly pretty.

Unfortunately, because we had all kinds of peace and solace, there was no one around to help us get an attempt at an updated family picture so we went the self-portrait route.

We just couldn't squeeze Sky in this time so he and Matthew tried to pose. Too bad Sky was too distracted by the snow accumulation on his paws to pose for the picture. We still haven't figured out which is more likely, us getting Sky to wear booties or us getting Sky to allow us to trim the hair between his pads but one of those solutions will hopefully be underway next time we take him to the mountains. He really slows us down when he's stopping every 5 minutes to mope. We'd feel really bad for him but as soon as we let him off-leash the snow doesn't seem to bother him at all :)

Of course, Matthew's favorite part of the day is always a warm beverage when we get back. He's totally chill in the backpack during our hikes but doesn't care for wandering around the car in his snowsuit. Daycare says he does the same thing during recess and he and his friend V. just kinda stand on the porch awkwardly and stare.

And here's a snugglebear waking up after a good nap.

And making dinosaur noises with daddy:

Undercover Funny

Very few pictures have been taken around here but Matthew's been babbling/talking like a crazy fool and sits for a long time playing with his toys, moving them around and talking to/at/for them. Speaking of talking, Matthew's weird and stubborn just like his parents (shocking right?) and instead of learning normal, everyday toddler words his favorite animal words to say are Elephant (Elly), Iris (Eye-iss), Cock-a-Doodle-Doo (Cah a oo oo), Fish (ish), Owl and Olivia (ah-liv). There's no dog, moo or baa to be had from this child despite the number of times each day we talk about putting the cow in the barn or read the farm book OR talk about the dogs that are constantly in his way and knocking him over. Maybe he's just waiting until he can say canine and bovine.

When I bring the camera out to film one of his silly sessions of him talking to his toys he gets pretty serious and/or tries to attack the camera. The one exception is the video camera on my laptop. For Skype, Matthew feels the strong need to entertain grandma and grandpa with all of his hilarious tricks and demand applause and laughter for his antics. Grandma and grandpa are always willing participants, ready to cheer him on every time he fake falls.

Tonight, however, I was able to sneak this video while he was fully entertained by Iris and the tunnel.



That laugh is seriously one of the best parts of my day. I also (finally) gave his hair a much needed trim. That combined with the adorable sweater from Grandma Watson makes for one adorable little man.

In other exciting news, Matthew has a very important chore in the morning. When the dogs are finished eating, he picks up their bowls and puts them away. He takes this task VERY seriously. June eats in the kitchen and Matthew hovers and watches her very closely, and not even a second after she finishes the last morsels, he scoops up the bowl and puts it in the closet (or bangs on the closet until we open it depending on how big of slackers James and I have been). He then ventures over to the laundry room and waits until we open the door to let Sky out and then dutifully puts the bowls (bows) away and shuts the door. It's not that big of a deal but he takes his task very seriously and considering his completely age appropriate attention span is like 30 seconds, the whole thing cracks me up to watch. It's also good for him to have another chore since he figured out that banging silverware together makes awesome music so now unloading the dishwasher is a far longer and louder experience than I'd like.

Oh yeah, I forgot that Matthew's picked up one normal, favorite toddler word: no. He will often have his snacks while standing at the ottoman which the dogs see as prime opportunity for begging, at which point I tell them no. Now, Matthew sees the dogs begging and walks over to them and as he reaches out to give them his snack will say "no no". Apparently I still have some work to do with 2 species (possibly 3) regarding the word's meaning. :-)

Another gorgeous weekend

Bozeman has yet again evaded the mysterious Bozeman winter we've heard so much about. Though we did get a nice dusting when I returned from WY the other week, since then it's been mid-60s and gorgeous. We may not have ended up with a few feet before Halloween as everyone warned us, but 2-5" of snow is forecasted for tonight, but in the meantime we went out to enjoy the weather this weekend.

Matthew did a few more laps around the apartment with his car. He loves to push it around and has become adept at turning it and getting it unstuck without needing to look pitifully at us and sign "help". However, he has no interest in pushing it in the walker position and now will only use it when it's down in full ride-on mode. He also as no interest in riding on it, just lots, and lots of pushing it around the house and around the apartment.

We also headed over to enjoy the Dinosaur Park a few last times. He's really gained quite a bit of confidence with his movement and is now a climbing, crawling, scooting, almost running monkey.

Taunting me from the top of the slide with threats of heading down face first (or like he almost succeeded in trying the other day, sitting up but backward. Yikes!) He's hard to resist, look at those big gorgeous eyes!

Today we decided to take advantage of the nice weather and head to the very empty lake so Sky could take one last swim for the season. Matthew insisted on carrying the thrower and pushing it the entire way. In fact, ever since we pulled it out of storage this has been one of Matthew's favorite things to do.

Sky was quite pleased and even though the wind picked up, he didn't seem to mind as the ball would drift further and further away.

While Sky took his swims Matthew made sure to hold onto the thrower for me, though he learned pretty quick to give it back as soon as Sky got near the edge of the water. Matthew found out that crazy, wet, shaking, excited Sky was nothing he wanted near himself and that could be Mommy's job.

I think on the walk down to the lake Sky had maybe forgotten about the awesomeness of the thrower since he was able to walk without paying any attention to Matthew and the thrower.

On the way back Sky didn't take his eyes off Matthew or the thrower once, which made for a very long, very chaotic walk back. At least now I know how to train Sky to be a Lassie-like protector of Matthew and Matthew will be safe, as long as he's carrying a bright orange stick almost as tall as him.

Headbutting Cats

This week has been a whirlwind. It's a concert weekend for me at work, we've had a variety of appointments and at some point, little man came down with bronchitis again. Sooo, basically it's a week of survival. Matthew's newest thing he likes to do is to to nuzzle and snuggle. He also likes to snuggle/headbutt the cats. The cats surprisingly don't mind, until he pets them a little to hard.

Cat Fight?

The cats have spent all afternoon on the couch and it cracks me up. It reminds me of when Matt (my brother) and I were little. We would take lots of trips from Cheyenne to Grandma's in this little old Rabbit:

In the back seat between Matt and I there was a little Playmate cooler. It was the wall and line dividing the backseat to (theoretically) keep us from annoying one another. That little cooler went everywhere with us, maybe because dad liked his sodas or maybe because Matthew and I were brats and it only served the purpose of keeping us separate. Who knows? :-)

Maybe when we were gone this morning Sky decided the cats needed some separation.

Funny Felines

The other day after his nap, Matthew was hanging out with his kitties.

Apparently, they are hilarious!

Wait, I'm sorry, did I say kitties, they are in fact "ats" (as well as most everything else in the house). Here's Matthew correcting me as I seem confused. As a bonus, enjoy an up close and personal methodical baby attack.

How Matthew Eats a Sandwich

Yesterday, Matthew and I took a nice hike with some other moms and kids. We saw a few turtles and lots of ducks. I'm going to go with this turtle being in an, uhhmmmm, deep meditative trance as it was the only one who didn't retreat as our group approached.

Last night, Iris was being incredibly cute as she watched and batted at the window, watching a grasshopper on our deck. I'll spare you the 2 minutes of video where she just sat there and I waited for her to do something cute. In the meantime, someone else decided he could be even cuter though you can kinda follow Iris in the corner.   Then he decided to show you how he so delicately eats his sandwich before getting distracted by the dogs who are somewhat patiently waiting for him to finish so they can patrol for stray food:


Yet somehow, all that delicate, sandwich tearing turns into this:

Because no matter how hard a press his sandwich

He prefers to split open the slices and eat the filling first.  In fact, I think sandwiches generally turn into a messier meal than say pasta and sauce with this dude.

 

Look Ma, No Hands!

The other morning, our family was jostling for a position in the sunny spot in the dining room.

Matthew reached to say hello to his friends.

And gave June a quick pet.

And then investigated June's shedding in his sticky hands and wait, what . . . he caught us by surprise and was standing all by himself for a while!

Olivia continued her fight for having the sun spot to herself

realizing that feet hugs were the best way to go about driving Matthew crazy enough to leave.