David has learned how to crawl out of his crib. Almost on the same day he turned 2! Luckily, we haven't had any big crashes from the other room, so he must be pretty good at it. Last night he decided to get up in the middle of the night, about 2:30, and walk into our room, saying, "Hiiii" in a not very quiet voice. Funny now, but not so much when we are trying to get a few winks.

Fortunately, he went back to bed easily enough, and slept without any further interruptions. But I don't want to wake up one of these nights to a big THUMP! And then some crying, which would wake up Isabelle, probably scared to death, followed by more crying.

So, I took the side off his crib today. He has already fallen out of bed once tonight, but I do have a couple of couch cushions next to his bed, so no harm will be done. Now we just have to wait for him to learn how big his bed is. He does have a habit of scooting into a corner of his crib though, so we might have a few nights with many interruptions until he gets that worked out.

The other fun game is trying to teach him to stay in bed when it is bedtime. So far this evening, he got up about 4 times before he stayed in bed. I know that it is fun, when you're two, to get out of bed and peek out the door, but too much of that will lead to grumpy kids in the morning.

He loves being able to get in and out of bed by himself and insists on going back and forth to get more stuffed animals to sleep with him. This morning after saying 'Hiiiiii" to the kitties he was calling "Maamaa" and came in to find me. David wakes up easily and ready to go (unlike me and Isabelle), so no more taking time to leisurely stretch before getting up, until he realizes that dancing on the bed at 6am is not as fun for Mom and Dad as it is in the afternoon.

Julie and I made cupcakes for the kids from an idea that Julie found somewhere. Bugs in dirt! What better for a two year olds birthday?!? A little ground up graham crackers, some berries, and some candy, plus a little imagination, and, well, you can see for yourself.

Today we had a picnic in the park for David. It was a pretty warm Saturday afternoon, but not as hot as it had been, only the low 90s (33 C) instead of above 100 (38C)! We had an area under a lot of trees though, and there was also a breeze, so that was nice. Unfortunately, the picnic area was abused the night before, and was not clean at all! We had to do about 30 minutes of scrubbing the picnic benches and tables to make them suitable for a gathering of family and friends. After that was taken care of, I fired up the BBQ and more people had come, and the mood was a bit lighter. (Cleaning someone else's old ketchup spills and mashed french fries kinda put us in a sour mood.)



We had most of the family there, a few friends from daycare, and a few friends from before kids. The kids pretty much just played with each other, running up and down a small hill, and playing with an assortment of new squishy balls and blowing bubbles. We were so busy though, I don't think I really got a chance to talk with anyone aside from a greeting and a few sentences. I fired up the Bar-B-Que a little later then planned, thanks to the cleaning, but soon enough I had one grill loaded up with burgers, and another with our Bar-B-Que beans, which I heard were quite good :-P I also put on some Mickey burgers. I think the kids liked them. They ate them at least. Maybe it was only the adults that liked the burger with ears motif.

You can see from the pictures that we also had animal shaped plates for the kids. And the occasional adult. And yes, we also had a lot of tradional picnic food. Everything from spinach salad to potato salad. Then came desert.....

This morning we had a little celebration for David's second birthday. I made pancakes, which he loves! As does Isabelle. So we are off to a good start of the day already. Then we grabbed a few bags and boxes for the great unveiling. And, of course, Isabelle was right there to help.

The first gift was a big truck book with lots of glossy pictures. Ohhhh....big eyes showed it was a success. David loves trucks, and he gets really excited when the garbage trucks rumble down the street early Friday mornings. We also have the occasional delivery van or even a firetruck to get him all excited. Which brings us to his next gift, a big Tonka truck! Oh Boy! (He got another one from our beloved daycare provider too, which is great because Isabelle likes to push it around too.)

As far as David was concerned, that was the only present he needed. After that, he really didn't care about all the other cool stuff he got, which included; a 6 ft (1.8 m) rubber snake, a set of building blocks, a squishy textured ball, a couple more books, some clothes from Grandma Judy and Grandpa Jimmy, and a big flourescent tiger that farts from Grandma Judy. We also got him a pink umbrella stroller just like Isabelle's, so they don't fight over who gets to push their critters to the park.

Naturally, Isabelle was very good about teaching David to share that day. And she was really good about sharing and taking turns too. We did get her a present though, a birthday cake set (kinda like this).

Isabelle... Isabelle, Isabelle, Isabelle.

She is starting to say such funny things... The other day she told us that she needed to "drink a lot of water because she was flushed..."

She also said that her stomach wasn't "actually" full.

And then today in the car she said " Mommy, remember 3 days ago when that kid wanted to ride my bike, and I was like, Hey, that's my bike... you can't ride my bike."

I am afraid of the teen years!!!!

David had his 3rd developmental assessment this month. He actually scored lower this time than the last, but not because there are developmental problems... mostly just becasue he's 2. The P/T wanted him to play with things that he thought rather belonged on the floor. He was also a little bashful with her and spend a lot of time looking at her cautiously with his finger in his mouth.

He still runs with his shoulders pinned back a little, which indicated that his truck muscles are still a little weak. And they don't think that his vocabulary is where it should be, but again, his performance was not indicative of his ability. They want to see him one more time before he turns 3 just to make sure everything is moving in the right direction. He has another hearing test at the end of the month, so we'll see if there are any problems there. I think he's perfect and just fine.




I do have to say though, I don't remember Isabelle going through the "terrible twos," but I think we're going to get them with David. He is so head-strong when he doesn't want to do something, and yells "nononononono!!!" He seems to be listening a little better and following direction a tiny (teeny-tiny) bit better. He 's also very independent. I think it's interesting that Isabelle is thought of as the leader at her daycare, but at home we see that she often follows David. It isn't that she doesn't TRY to get him to do things her way though!

Oh and David is a little tank. He already weighs in at 32lbs and is just solid. I think he's on a growth spurt too. It's hard to tell about that though because he eats like I can't believe.

A few more camping shots:

A couple of weekends ago, we went on our first camping trip. We have wanted to go camping for a while, but we just new the kids were not ready. And boy were we right! Well, sort of.

We were invited to go camping with another family we know through daycare. Since they could do it, why couldn't we? So we jumped at the chance to go camping at a wonderful Lake Tahoe campground. We loaded up the kids for the drive up the hill, which went pretty well, especially since we gave Isabelle a little Dimenhydrinate. (We started to notice that on a few trips over 15 min, Isabelle was occasionally telling us her tummy hurt, so we thought we might try a little motion sickness medication, and it seemed to work.)

All in all it was a good trip. Camping is hard work though, and even harder with kids that you have to watch every second. After a night with no one but Isabelle sleeping David and after a long hike (where both kids had a sit-in protest for walking and had to be carried) we decided to pack up and head home. We were all pretty wiped out. It turned out to be a good thing, as we had a work BBQ to attend on Saturday and the extra day gave us the rest we needed. Also, if you've been watching the news, the fires in Tahoe are causing the bears to seek food where they can find it... including busting into people's houses. After seeing one on our hike and then hearing about him mowing through a Citronella candle that someone left on a picnic table 2 camps from us, I was ready to eliminate the risk of being bear food. Yikes!!

We're thinking that next year David will be old enough to stay in the sleeping bag and we'll be able to enjoy it a little more. Isabelle was a terrific little camper!!

We didn't have much time to take too many pictures, but there are some. We'll get them up in a few days...