Toddlers Take Over Lake Erie

I think part of the reason why it's taken me a while to post is that I'm a bit overwhelmed by all the fun things we've been doing - good problem to have right?

So, baby steps, baby steps, baby steps...a quick one about the lake fun we had with the Kid Crew.

Becky, Cory, and Will came up first - it gave Will and Miles a chance for some male bonding over a soccer game in preparation for the World Cup.


Besides sports, what else do males bond over? Techie gadgets, of course! Here are Will and Miles, checking out cartoons on the iPhone (aka Crack for Toddlers).


Heidi, Darren, and Janelle arrived a little later, and that's when the real fun with three toddlers began! Sadly, this is best picture I have of all three kids together - eating breakfast in their jammies. We were way too busy to think about taking a group photo - we were occupied with breaking up fights, soothing temper tantrums, and stopping kids from pulling down their pants (that kid shall remain anonymous).


The highlight of the visit was our visit to East Harbor Beach. I had zero hope that Miles would go in the water, but he proved us wrong! He still preferred the beach and got a little miffed the couple of times he fell down, but he didn't totally hate it either.


Janelle and Miles eating fistfuls of Cheesy Poofs - and even bigger fistfuls of sand:


Janelle's dad, Darren, will not allow her to date until she's 35, so I can't refer to her as Miles' girlfriend. Photographic evidence may speak 999 other words:


What a great time with great friends!

Turning Two

After what seemed like months of pre-parties, Miles finally turned two years old on June 7.

While Daddy and Nana went to class, Papa and I got the privilege of taking Miles to the zoo.

Miles' favorite parts were the elephants, the giraffes, and - the tip of the top - the dolphins playing basketball. He rode the carousel with Papa. We're making progress - he didn't completely freak out, but this is about as happy as he ever got about the whole experience:

Miles cheered up after more looks at the dolphins and chatting about it over lunch.

We all took a nice long nap then headed to Incredible Pizza Company to continue the birthday boy's day. For those of you who haven't been to IPC, it's pretty much Chuck E. Cheese on steroids. It has all of your typical arcade games, plus Go Karts, Mini-Golf, and a Bowling Alley. We saved all of that for future birthdays - Miles was thrilled with the toddler games. Oh - and the plentiful buffet - Miles was in the mood for spaghetti that day:

Air hockey was his top game of choice:

He also really liked the little car rides:

The favorite part for the rest of us was watching him play Disco Duck, a kids' version of DDR:

Birthday Fever

Miles is now a beautiful, smart, funny 2-year old boy! He speaks in complete sentences and can count to 10 (or 20, if you don't count 13 and 19). He can recite his ABCs, although Q is K and LMNO is "eh-uh-eh-oh". He loves singing songs, playing with cars, and anything to do with sports. I continue to be amazed at what he can do. 

The extended birthday partying continued throughout the entire weekend leading up to Miles' birthday. The Kahls all came up to celebrate, and we started by going to Miles' first WNBA Indiana Fever game. Miles loved watching Freddy Fever's antics from afar, but he didn't really enjoy him up close:

He loved watching big girls Aunt Ashley and Hannah getting riled up and cheering, and he got excited when they brought out the balloons. Miles especially got a giggle out of bonking Grandpa on the head with said balloons.

Most of all, he just loved watching basketball, especially when he got to cuddle up with Granny:

The next day, Uncle David and Aunt Hilary came up, and we had one more cake - this time it was an ice cream cake. Miles never quite got the concept of blowing out the candles, so was good that the wind did it for him.

He got some cool presents, the biggest of which being a giant inflatable kangaroo. Thanks, Grandpa.

What a fun pre-birthday!

Long Weekend to Par-tay!

This past weekend, we went up to Nana and Papa's house on Lake Erie. Miles was so excited to see their house and was saying "I go Nana Papa's house" for about a week beforehand. We hadn't been there since he was 15 months old, so he probably didn't even remember it!

The main reason we made the trip was to celebrate Papa and Uncle Craigy's graduations. We are so proud of both of them! Because the whole family would be gathered for the Graduation Party, we decided to celebrate Miles' birthday a little earlier to save everyone the trip to our house.

Miles had been requesting that we sing "Happy Birthday to Miles" for several weeks, so he was completely overjoyed when about ten people did it all at once!

The crown jewel of realized expectations was the cake. A couple months ago, Miles started talking about "breakfast cake" after we mentioned it. Because his party was the day before the Indy 500, we told him we'd get him a race car cake. He was so pumped!

Then came present time! The first gift he tried to rip open didn't have a tag on it, so I asked him "Miles, who is that present from?" He replied, looking a little confused, "Santa?". Here he is, discovering that Uncle Bub got him a cool new fire truck:

The weather was beautiful, so we took about a half-dozen walks down to the lake. Lyla loved watching her big boy cousin in the stroller:

However, Lyla was the one that proved to be the most brave! She loved splashing in the lake, but Miles didn't want to have anything to do with it. He finally found a lake activity he liked when Papa showed him how to skip stones.

Sorry I have no pics of the lake - I kept forgetting my camera on our walks! We'll be returning next week for our family vacation, so I'm sure I'll have plenty of pictures by then.

In other news, we had Miles' 2-year doctor visit today, and he was (mostly) great! This is the first time he didn't act totally petrified of the doctor, and he even laughed a little when the doctor checked his belly. Too bad he threw a fit right after the doctor left. Miles wanted to leave the room, but we had to wait for the nurse to get his shots. The shots definitely gave him something better to scream about! We apparently have been remiss in teaching him the word "thigh" because he kept screaming, "My knee! My knee!" all the way to the car.

According to the doc, he's 29.5 pounds (70%) and 34.5 inches.  The doc said that height was in the 35th percentile, which seemed weird to me, especially since everyone comments about big he seems for his age. The about.com online calculator says it's closer to 50% - I think the nurse transposed the height and weight numbers. The predictions for his height as a grown man are between 5'9" and 5'11"...beautifully average like his daddy.

Birthday parties #2 and #3 are next on the agenda!

I Get a Kick Out of You

The time has come for another round of adorable Miles pictures, just in time for his second birthday. Here are just a few, but you can check out the whole album on Facebook.

If you love these as much as I do, take the kiddo (or middle-aged spouse, family iguana, or yourself in an indulgent new outfit) to Portrait Innovations. I think I've gushed about them before, but they're great with Miles, produce pretty pictures (yeah, my starlet son probably helps), and you get a ton of prints for your money.

So, on to the good stuff!

The crowd favorite:

Representin' the Bulldog Nation:

Playing with blocks:

And knocking them down again:

(Almost) Dos, Deux, Zwei, Two!!

And now...the most controversial of them all:

Jason loves that one. I think he's pretty cute in it, but I also think it looks like he is getting ready to go off to college! Aunt KK calls it his "old man" picture. Uncle Bub probably put it best, like Miles is saying "Evenin' Ladies..." ready to chat up some hot toddlers sporting sundresses and bloomers, drinking chocolate milk out of their sippy cups at the Baby Singles Bar. What do you think?

We have more pictures than we know what to do with, so if I plan to see you soon, please be prepared to take a load off of our hands! We have enough wallets for him to give out to all of Morristown Jr./Sr. High School, I do believe. I'll make sure to write "Don't change. It was fun knowing you. Class of '26!!" on the back of each one.

Next stop - Birthday Party #1 of 3!

A Day for Mommy

The good news for me - we've been able to spend our evenings and weekends with Daddy again. That's bad news for you, my fair readers, because nights together means holes in the blog timeline. Lucky for you that Miles' cold made him too cranky to go to the grocery store tonight. That means Jason has a date with Meijer and I have a date with all of you.

I'll spend this evening's date talking about my date with Miles and Jason on Mother's Day. Did you notice that "Mother's Day" is singular this year? Although the grandmas were in our thoughts, they had other obligations, so this year was all about me, me, me! It was such a great day.

After church, I got a nap while Miles had his. Then, we were off to the Indianapolis Museum of Art. Not surprisingly, Miles only lasted through Gaugin's early years and partially through the pointillists. That's 10 minutes, for those of you unfamiliar with the IMA.  Thankfully, it was a nice afternoon and the museum has beautiful gardens.

Miles' favorite part of the day was watching the fishies:

We then went to dinner at one of my favorite restaurants - Claddagh. This is Miles "excited" face - guess he was really pumped about fish and chips.

Not really...I think he was more pumped about wishing Nana a Happy Mother's Day:

It was the best Mother's Day I could have - spending time with my boys!

On a completely unrelated but obligatory Miles progress note, we're in the Potty Prologue. Most days we get a "no" when we ask Miles if he wants to sit on his Froggy Potty (still in the diaper on phase). On Sunday, he got really excited when we told him he could bring his new (ok, garage sale) fire truck with him.

We'll keep you posted on the potty progress...the perfect ending to a perfect date, right? 

Derby Delight

We had a fun weekend down at Uncle David and Aunt Hilary's house at their annual Kentucky Derby celebration.

Miles was only slightly interested in the horsies on TV. After a half-dozen or so races, I can personally see how it loses its luster too. I guess there were plenty of people there (and dollars too) that disagree with us. One of those was Daddy, who flushed several of our dollars away by not winning a single race.

Despite his lack of interest in racing, Miles tried to at least look the part. I tried to enable a repeat performance of Miles' "Little Jockey" shirt from last year, but he refused to take his sweatshirt off the entire time. Luckily, he humored us with the tacky hat for a minute or so:

The best part of the party was getting to spend time with some of Miles' favorite people. Grammy enjoyed her bonus time with him, while Miles enjoyed his sucker from Aunt Hilary:

Miles loved hanging out with his cousin Lyla, escorted by Nana and Aunt KK:

Big (Boy) Ben and Miles had fun playing together...or should I call them Pete and Re-Pete? Miles liked to do and say whatever Ben did, and they did a pretty good job of playing catch, coloring, and playing with trucks. They also were excellent at resting together on Miles' new race car bed:

On an unrelated but equally cute note: Miles' first taste of sushi:

He was ambiguous about it at first but got really excited about dipping it in the "green stuff". I said no to the wasabi, but Daddy wanted to let him try. At first, I didn't think Miles actually got any, so we let him take a bite. Wish I would have gotten a picture of that surprised face! Please don't call Child Protective Services...all turned out ok.