Help, someone replaced the baby with a little boy!

It has happened.  Our cute, roly poly Baby has been replaced with a rambunctious toddler.  It’s so sad, but exciting at the same time.

Showing off his belly to be “gotten”

Pretty proud to be standing on the stump while camping.

Aaron has gone from not saying much, to speaking the strangest of words.  When asked to say “Daddy” he says “Mama” with a grin on his face.  He says, “teeth” “cheese” “ball” and “Steve!” (from Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs, the monkey’s name is Steve and he says it a lot).  He nods yes and no in answer to our questions and does a lot of pointing as well.

But, the most exciting thing in “Aaron’s world” is his use of the potty.  About a month ago we started putting him on the potty when we noticed he was about to poop.  That went on pretty regularly for about a week but then we quit because he didn’t seem too interested.  This week he walked over to his toilet and pulled at his pants.  I took his diaper and pants off and he sat down and actually went.  This has happened about four times since then, even with dry diapers  as well (instead of a full diaper and then pee in the toilet).  I’m super excited about this because he actually seems ready to train.  I’m ready.  We’ve been buying diapers for four years!

So, our little baby is now on his way to becoming a big boy.  I’m sad.  I miss my baby!!

What do you do when you see a bear?

You take a picture, of course!!

This bear was digging through the garbage of our camping neighbors on Friday morning. We were relaxing after a morning hike when we heard someone yell, "Bear!" I looked up from my knitting and, sure enough, there was a bear! Vanessa called for the kids while I yelled to Sam to get the camera. We then all ran after the bear. Both to chase it away, and also to get a better look.

Nathaniel was super excited to see a bear in the wild and we all learned a good lesson. Put away our food because the bears will come after it during the day.

Vocabulary

Nathaniel has started playing more online games lately. While Sam was in school he had a lot of afternoons where he was either grading papers or working on school work while Aaron was napping. That left Nathaniel to play by himself so often times Sam would let him play for a bit on the pbs kids website. While online Nathaniel would watch Martha Speaks (a show about a talking dog that has a ton of new vocabulary words) and Sesame Street's "Word on the Street". He learned words such as amazing, dangerous, excited, and exhausted. This has made for some interesting (which is also a word he's learned) conversations with the three year old.

"Mommy! That is amazing!"

While watching UP yesterday, "Mommy, this movie is too dangerous."

When talking about my brother coming to visit, "Mommy! I'm so ee-sited about Uncle Ian coming out!"

And whenever he doesn't want to do something that we've told him to do (like clean up his toys), *giant, dramatic sigh* "I can't, I'm ee-sausted!"

On the other hand, Aaron stilll communicates mainly with tribal yells and pointing. He says, "Mama" "Daddy" "Hi" "bye" and everything else is either "oh!" or "AHHH!".

He'll get it eventually. :)

(Yes, we have a lot of other stuff to update on including our trip to Catalina, Sam's graduation and other fun stuff that has been going on, but I haven't uploaded pictures yet and the kids are currently taking turns punching each other and screaming so...that's for another time.)