dane, at 14 months

I just wanted to write down a lot of the cute and fun things Dane does right now, for his grandparents and great-grandparents but also for myself to remember.

Now, really. This is just getting ridiculous.

How is this child getting so big? Tommy and I ask ourselves this every day, along with the question, How is he so cute?

Also, where did he learn how to have such an attitude? Seriously, he is like 14 months going on 14 years. If you ever tell him No, or anything remotely like no, like "Careful," or "Be soft" or "Don't poke Indie in the eyeball," he starts grunting and yelling at you and trying to hit whatever person is closest to him. If I ever try to hold him while Tommy is home or take him away from Tommy, he leans as close to Tommy as humanly possible while pushing me away with all his force, screaming like I'm torturing him. If I ever tell him to stop throwing his food on the floor, he looks right at me and rubs his dirty, food-covered hands in his hair because he knows I HATE it.

Seriously, we are in TROUBLE with this guy. I thought stuff like this was reserved for the Terrible Twos for some reason.

This is what it looks like every morning while I eat breakfast. He has to stand at my feet and scream until I pick him up and let him have some of my cheerios or raisin bran.

He wants to walk EVERYWHERE. We can no longer carry him out to the car or from the car into the house--he wants to walk, but we have to walk all the way around our apartment building and it takes approximately 17 times longer with him walking and trying to escape to go in different directions. If I want to keep him entertained on a stir-crazy day, I can just bring outside and let him walk around the grass and sidewalks of our apartment complex and he is 100% content. This is honestly the best picture I can take of him these days, because sit still HE WILL NOT DO. HE MUST WALK.

Also, there are some good things going on with the babysitting swapping I'm doing. It took Dane and Indie a few months to get used to being around each other, but now they are BEST friends. When they knock on the door in the morning, I always say, "Is that Indie? Should we go get Indie?", and Dane starts wriggling and giggling with anticipation of his BFF being here to play for the day. They follow each other around allllll day long and make eye contact and just smile and grin at each other constantly, and make each other laugh by doing silly things together (seriously, it is SO funny to see them be silly together). And they HUG each other all the time. Look:

Oh. My. Gosh. This picture just kills me--Dane is TOTALLY putting some moves on Indie. Where do you think he learned those? (Tommy's totally trying to take all the credit.)

Babysitting swapping is the BEST now that they are friends with each other and love playing together. They still fight over toys and hit each other sometimes but they LOVE being together and they are so happy together to spend the whole day here in the apartment without going anywhere, which almost NEVER happens when it's just me and Dane here together. I love it!

Also, remember how I said before that he was saying a bunch of words? He was saying no, ball, pumpkin, banana, mama, and a few others just a couple of weeks ago. Well, he's absolutely lost every single sound he used to make except for "ahhh." He's mastered how to point, so now any time he's trying to tell you something, he will just point at it and say "ah!" And you have to acknowledge his interest in whatever he's pointing at. He is totally trying to communicate and tell us things that he's thinking about, just without using any actual words. I know it'll come around sometime. For now, the pointing really is pretty cute, and efficient.

Also, he loves dinosaurs and his dinosaur books.

The absolute BEST thing Dane does right now is bring us books. A lot of time if I am doing something else he will just walk over to me with a book (of course, saying "ah! ah! ah!") and so clearly trying to tell me, "Mom, read me this book right now." And, of course, I can't help but drop whatever I'm doing to sit down with him and read it. And once you start reading, he goes to get more and more and more--and he is very opinionated about which books he wants to read. You can't choose the book for him--he'll just push it aside and wait until you get the RIGHT one that he's pointing at. I just love that he loves books, and I hope he continues to be obsessed with them. I would happily spend all (okay, most) of the day reading to him if he wanted to.

He loves climbing in and out of his bumbo. Indie loved the bumbo chair and Dane had never shown any interest in it before she did, but now he will climb partway in (one leg hanging over the side) and sit there and just give me a big grin like he is SO proud of himself for climbing into his chair.

He has a few little hiding places around the apartment he's started going to and just sitting down in. If there are chairs pulled out from the table, he'll walk under and sit down under the table and look very sneakily at me, or he'll sit in the corner of the kitchen and just hang out there. He also likes to sit with his back up against the bathroom door and wait for you to come play with him. I love that he is adopting little spaces to be his own.

I know I end almost every blog post about Dane this way, but we LOVE this guy and just can't get over how awesome he is.

sweets-less

Let's just say that Tommy and I have been the WORST at eating too much dessert lately. Probably since I was sick and pregnant, oh, TWENTY MONTHS AGO. But man, it is SUCH a hard habit to break. Every night, right around this same time (it's 7:59 p.m. here right now, in case you were wondering), this feeling that we just NEED something sweet to finish off the day just hits. We have really, terribly, unfortunately been in the habit of eating dessert almost every night for a while--we'll try and be better for a few days and then somehow fall off that wagon almost immediately. The only solution is basically to HAVE nothing sweet in the house, so that we can't fulfill that temptation when the craving strikes. I feel like I have read a lot of stuff lately about how sugar is addictive and the devil and you should just cut it out of your diet altogether, but I'm not really at that point (at all, OBVIOUSLY). So we are trying to stick a newfound goal of only eating dessert on the weekends, which is worthy and admirable and really shouldn't be that hard. But look at me--I'm just blabbering away on my blog right now to try and distract myself from the desire to go whip something up in the kitchen.

But anyways, since I'm already here, might as well post some pictures of Dane. I was practicing my photo class skillz and had my camera out the other day while he was playing and took a few pictures. He is into biting everything right now--all of his toys, even the shapes box.

But he is ESPECIALLY into banging things with spoons. Particularly this rice bowl that goes with our rice cooker, because it makes a loud, very satisfying sound. It's best with the wooden spoon, though. He could do this all day. Pretty sure this means he's going to be a percussionist.

GOLDEN! So rarely do I ever catch him smiling!

Also, on Saturday, we went for a hike at Eno River State Park. We borrowed a baby backpack from a friend, and Dane really liked it at first (it may look like he's uncomfortable in this picture, but he was smiling and chatting).

He liked it, that is, until he DID NOT LIKE IT, and made us take him out and let him walk. Walk in the direction that he wanted to walk, whether it be into the river or into the woods and nowhere on the path. Walk at whatever pace he wanted to and stopping to eat dirt and leaves periodically. Even when we'd met up with some friends from Tommy's program, he was very, very offended that his walking had to be curtailed so that we could keep up with the group.

And when we wouldn't let him walk like he wanted, this meltdown ensued, complete with stiff-board baby body, angry screaming, large spit bubbles and snot running into his mouth and all. His first all-out temper tantrum! So cute and endearing! (But I love how Tommy's laughing in this picture.) 

Oh, well. Maybe our hiking days are over, at least until we can get a better baby hiking backpack he isn't so offended by. Or until we get a baby who isn't so opinionated and supposedly independent. Anyone want to trade?

(Just kidding.)

pumpkin patch

For about a week or so, Dane was obsessed with pumpkins and would freak out whenever he saw one when we were on our little walks through our neighborhood. Some of our neighbors go all out when it comes to Halloween decorations and he would just die when we got to their house with a billion pumpkins all around their yard. He even started saying "pumpkin" whenever he saw them--although really it was just "puh-puh" but we are obsessive parents so we count it as one of his words that he knew. So we wanted to take him to a pumpkin patch before Halloween and see how excited he got. Unfortunately, we waited too long and his pumpkin obsession had kind of died down, so he was semi-interested but not really as excited as we'd thought he would be, haha. But it was still a fun, cute little outing. AND we got these adorable pictures of him sitting in the bin of pumpkins! I mean, LOOK! 

Then we started walking around the pumpkin patch and he didn't want to do anything except for walk, walk, walk, walk, walk. No stopping for pictures, no looking at the pumpkins, I'm BUSY, Mom! I need to keep walking! Dane would have made a great pioneer child (walk, and walk, and walk, and walk...). 

And then we tried to cramp his style by trying to get a picture of me and Dane in the pumpkin land, and that started this awesome series of pictures of Dane trying his darnedest to get away from me. Come on, Dane. All we wanted was ONE good picture!

Get OFF of me, Mom! (And notice the ever-present rice spoon.)

Finally he succeeded and got to go off on his own like he wanted to. We just watched him and said "Bye Dane!" and he didn't even care.

cheeseball

We were trying to get Dane to color something last night (as a gift to send to his uncles) and he was really throwing a fit about it. He was SUPER tired after a long day at church AND daylight savings so he was throwing the markers and screaming unhappily, like this.

But as soon as he saw that Tommy had pulled out the camera, he gave the biggest, cheesiest, most hilarious eyes-closed grin we have ever seen. He normally REFUSES to look at the camera, but for some reason for about five minutes last night he was cheese-ing it up.

Oh, man. What a cheeseball. He is such a nut.

halloween!

And now, although I know all of you love hearing my deep musings about life and my current psychological state, I know that most of my audience just reads this blog for pictures of Dane, so here are some more of those to satisfy that crowd (here's looking at you, Camille).

Here's the thing about Halloween. I really don't like putting in a lot of time and effort and money into costumes, and I can never think of anything good that Tommy and I should dress up as, and then I don't want to put in a lot of time and effort and money into getting dressed up as something just mediocre, and then it's this vicious cycle which means that we've only had good costumes ONCE since we've been married (when we were HP and Hermione. That was awesome because it was super easy and looked really good). This year was looking like it was going to be the same way until we went and saw Beauty and the Beast at the DPAC on my birthday. We were really enjoying the show, and the actor who played Gaston was especially funny. Tommy leaned over to me and said, "Too bad my high school never did Beauty and the Beast, because I would have been an awesome Gaston." And it was like lightbulbs went off in my head--that would be the perfect Halloween costume for us: Belle and Gaston! So I decided to try and make it work with the least amount of time and effort and money possible. Thanks to our local thrift stores and my newfound sewing skills, I was able to cobble together costumes for both of us that really didn't take too long or tax my patience too much. Here's the final outcome:

Not too shabby, right? You'll notice Dane doesn't go with the theme. That's mainly because a) it would be WAY too much work to make him a Beast costume or a Chip costume or some other Beauty and the Beast-themed outfit. It was much easier to have him wear this pumpkin costume that my mom sent him. But also b) he was soooo dang CUTE in this pumpkin outfit I didn't want to pass it up. Ditto his cowboy costume.

So Dane was a pumpkin and Tommy and I were Belle and Gaston, and we had a gazillion Halloween activities that we went to this year that made the energy spent on our costumes well worth it.

First up was our ward's trunk-or-treat on Friday night:

Then, on Saturday, we went to a Halloween party at a friend's house (no pictures, sorry) and then the Duke Stats Halloween party--the stats department's big event of the year. It was scheduled to start at 8 so we weren't sure if we were going to make it (because Dane's bedtime is at 7 and it is sacred) but they bumped it up to 7 (surely because they wanted us to come) so we made an appearance and Dane was the start of the show. This is the night he wore his cowboy costume, complete with his hat from the state fair and his cowboy boots that Tommy wore when he was a baby. Hello, SOOoooo cute!

This isn't a great picture, but this is (almost) all of the students who started in Tommy's year. A few have left the program and one wasn't at the party, but this is the rest of them! Glad we got this picture, since there rarely are times when they're all in the same place.

And just for those of you who are curious, we tried last night to get some better pictures of Dane in his cowboy costume so that we could see his boots better. Therefore, he was pants-less. And hilariously cute. But how awesome are those cowboy boots!?

This picture makes me laugh so hard because it looks like Dane is trying to join Beyonce in the "All the Single Ladies" music video. SERIOUSLY, it does. Show those thighs, Dane!

And then, like that wasn't enough costume-wearing for one week, I took Dane and Indie to the library yesterday for Halloween storytime. Dane was thrilled to get out his pumpkin costume again (seriously--he started giggling and grabbing at it as soon as he saw it), but Indie's costume was really a hit. Dane LOVED it and kept trying to crawl all over her to grab at her little hood that had a kitty face on it. He kept smiling and looking at her like "Isn't this so fun?" and she clearly is begging me to rescue her in this pictures, haha. 

TOO MUCH LOVING! He was just so excited about Indie the kitty.

It is seriously impossible to get a picture of both babies looking at the camera. IMPOSSIBLE.

And this was the best I could do of all of three of us. This is how library storytime goes with both of them--they both want to crowd on my lap and I have to bounce them up and down singing nursery rhymes with them along with all the other moms and dads at the library.

My only regret is that we didn't take more pictures of OURSELVES in our costumes this year. We concentrated so much on trying to get cute pictures of Dane (and he tried so hard to thwart us by refusing to look at the camera) that we forgot to get any good ones of our hard-earned costumes. But it was a great Halloween this year. Holidays just seem to get more and more fun with a baby--Dane just gets cuter and more excited by the minute, it seems. We love it!