day with the fam bam at the zoo

Today we decided since Zeke woke up with WAY too much energy for us that we would go wander around at the zoo and hopefully burn some off. No such luck about the energy but the zoo was still pretty cool. The boys are NOT fans of cooperating with picture time so we just got a couple but here they are....

Santa Rosa Plateau

One of Dad's favorite old pastimes is hiking....and cliffjumping. So today we decided to check out if the Tenaja falls had water in them. The actual hike is 0.7 miles so we figured that Zeke could probably make that no problem so off we headed this morning...It turns out there is in fact water in the falls. And Zeke is not capable of walking that far but dad was super and carried him most of the way. Anyways we had a great day. Here are some good pictures of the day.

Halloween

Zeke was a SWAT policeman this year. We carved a total of eight pumpkins over a course of two weeks cause he loved watching us carve them. Yeah, I said it. Watching. He didn't want to help just really loved the after effect of turning off all the lights and watching them glow. We ended up trick or treating at Grandma Chris' house and neighborhood. Zeke thought trick or treating was amazing however he didn't quite grasp the entire concept. He kept trying to put the candy from his pumpkin head back in people's bowls when they opened the door. He also thought he should check out the inside of basically every house we went to. It went a little something like this....ring the door bell. Nice person answers the door with bowl of candy. Zeke says "trick or treat" and runs in their house. OMG. embarrassing. "so sorry nice people giving my son candy....he just needs to check out the inside of your house". Do I run into their house after him? Or not? He was really cute though. And has been carrying around all his little SWAT things since. Happy Halloween!

big boy bed

So this is a little embarrassing to admit but I'm just going to throw it out there anyways. My 3 year old still sleeps in a crib. There is no good reason for it, except that with Mat and I's extreme conflicting schedules and both of our lack of good night sleep Zeke sleeping in his crib (aka baby jail) is extremely convenient. That's all. Oh and for the past year I have convinced myself that he really does LIKE his crib. SOOOOOOOOOO. That being said...Mat and I talked about it about a month ago and decided in fact it was probably way past time to get our toddler out of the crib. So tonight we changed his crib into a toddler bed. Which consisted of taking the front part off and putting a baby rail on. Not even an intense change. It's the same freaking bed just missing one side. That one side is a big deal. SERIOUSLY. HUGE. DEAL. I can happily say though that after 8 times getting out of bed. 2 potty trips. 10 times saying good night to daddy and 2 hours later...my small child has finally fallen asleep for the first time in his big boy bed. Now it's the morning that will be the next fun adventure!

adventures in potty training.

I'm not gonna lie. I hate potty training. It was seriously easier to house break my dogs then potty training my kid is going to be. AND. Honestly....we haven't even spent one full day in undies. Forget pull ups. Zeke uses them like diapers. I think if Zeke doesn't attend his first day of kindergarten in diapers then my entire parenting career will be successful. Zeke has developed one of two routines regarding the potty training issue. The first super fun one is that he only wants to go potty when we want him to be going to bed. So, like it's nap time. K: "ok Zeke it's nap time turn off TV and let's lay down for a little bit" z: "potty. potty. potty. mamamamama. pottttttttttttty." k: " fine. let's go." 20 minutes later. still sitting in the bathroom. there's nothing. and now we battle nap time again. Bedtime routine is almost the same but played out with Dad instead of Mom. The other super fun thing is dragging him kicking and screaming into the bathroom cause I can tell he needs to go. This obviously is even more fun the first adventure. It basically ends up with pee on the floor, the wall, zeke, me and anything else remotely close...except the toilet. Today when i tried to put underwear on him he took of screaming down the hall naked that he was "no underwear today!" oh well.....there is alway's tomorrow. and maybe preschool.

Daddy

We had a fire here directly behind our house on Thursday. I'm uploading some pictures still and I will post them as soon as they are done. The firefighters were on our street for two days after that and Zeke was fascinated. I love this picture.

Memorial Day

Yes that is our dog hiding in the bushes while Zeke torments her

Who gives a 2 year old a water gun?

All in all we had a fabulous day. We stayed home and hung out just the 3 of us and we played in the sprinklers, with water guns, BBQ'd, napped, and just had a great time as a family.

Video 47

Video 46 (trimmed-2)

such a big boy

Papa Joe got a new dirt bike for his birthday so he brought it over to show it off this weekend. Zeke is not so sure about it AT ALL.

Papa is showing him all the buttons....horns and lights and such. Maybe this thing isn't SO bad.

Still not super sure about it.

Ok....Well if Grandma got on it maybe it's ok.

And even Mommy hopped up. Don't worry. I stayed right there! I could barely touch the ground. We will leave the super fun bike riding for Papa!

Now that the weather is getting warmer around here Mat has been testing out his smoker that he got for Christmas fairly regularly. Zeke's favorite. Corn on the Cob.

Zeke is all about Daddy lately, he wants to be involved in everything Mat is doing. I thought this was funny. Mat is trying to play a video game and Zeke has posted up pretty much smack in the way. I don't know....maybe Mat is more fun then I am! Doesn't surprise me considering Mat calls me the Danger Police. I'm pretty sure that's a Mom's job though.

easter

So this is the first year Zeke has actually had any idea what is kinda going on with holidays. Easter was no different. I thought Mat's mom wanted to do an egg hunt so we skipped it and she had some other fun stuff so we didn't actually hunt for eggs this year. Instead we got parachute bunnies which were super fun and entertaining! And we also got a tricycle that makes all sorts of fun noises.

Zeke wasn't super convinced that the way we showed him was the best way to ride it so we had to check it out a couple different ways.

All in all easter was a success. I missed the coloring of the eggs but Mat video taped it so I'm going to try to put it on here. It was probably best that this was a dad event because I came home to a bowl of broken eggs, every coffee cup I own stained with dye as well as my bedsheet that Mat used to cover the table. Good thinking ahead DAD!

A couple other random pictures

I am serious. We really love to read around here. 500 pages....no problem MOM!

This is Zeke's new favorite "hang out" spot. In the back of the dump truck. I can't imagine it's super comfy but hey....whatever makes the kid happy right?

wild animal park

Mat and I decided about a month ago that it was a smashing deal to get year long memberships to the San Diego Zoo AND Wild Animal Park. It was a pretty smashing deal if I do say so myself. So we packed Zeke and ourselves up yesterday and headed out to the Wild Animal Park. I'm not going to lie....we were a little disappointed (Mat and I). We walked forever and barely could see any of the animals. Zeke on the other hand was SUPER excited about.....the birds. He wasn't really interested in anything else, maybe cause he couldn't see them! Next time we are going to the ZOO!

read

Z Man's new favorite thing to do...read. And still favorite thing in general is anything having to do with Cars movie and more importantly "Mater". So....here he is. Reading his Cars book. Love it.

low on pictures

so mat stole my disk out of my camera so I had to find older fun pictures that my son will probably kill me later for sharing with the world.

I have been super busy as my job (stadium pizza) is in the process of relocation and so we have had a forced semi vacation that I feel like i have worked most of. We spent six hours today training on our new computers and will spend the rest of the weekend training and then having two VIP nights for customers friends and family. Busy weekend. I'll try to get more posted on here next week!

Zeke entertaining himself in the cart at Sam's Club. He thought this thing out of the plant pot was a hat. HI LA RIOUS. He had all the people around us cracking up.



It amazes me how such a small person can try my patience so regularly. When they say terrible twos they aren't joking in Zeke's case. I like to say he's opinionated. It makes me feel better about how insane I'm pretty sure he's going to make me. My Mom keeps saying it's going to pass but I'm not so sure I ever grew out of it! However....when he's being cute and good ( about 2% of the day) he's freaking adorable....